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The Current Transcript for February 5, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: It is in the national interest to move forward with the Kinder Morgan pipeline and we will be moving forward with the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It is a fight over the transport of fossil fuel loaded with economic and environmental implications and expectations. But the real fallout over the Trans Mountain pipeline may be political as the Alberta and B.C. premiers each push conflicting views and the prime minister takes a stand that satisfies neither side. The proposed Kinder Morgan expansion that would triple capacity to move oil from the Alberta oil sands through B.C. to the coast and then out on tankers to Asia has the potential to make or break political futures. In a moment we'll hear how the implications are nation-wide. Also today the lobster is almost alone in being a creature that we cook while it is still alive.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Probably the only food that we have that the consumer is asked to kill—with the possible exception of maybe fresh mussels or oysters—but they don't have eyes and they don't move and twitch as much.

AMT: The debate on whether a lobster can feel pain is decades old. But more than one country is now forcing an end to the live boil method. So what do we know scientifically about lobster pain? Are we anthropomorphizing arthropods or simply recognizing reality? Hear the discussion in half an hour. And the new Staunch literary prize is designed to reward authors of thrillers whose plots do not include brutalizing women.

SOUNDCLIP

BRIDGET LAWLESS: The constant depiction of women as victims and of quite gratuitous sexual description I think doesn't help anything about how women are treated or scene or how they feel about themselves.

AMT: At a time of #MeToo is this progressive or regressive? In an hour three women who write in the genre share their views. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

As Alberta and B.C. go to war over Kinder Morgan oil pipeline, politicians are worried about jobs — their own

Guests: Shannon Phillips, Tzeporah Berman, Gary Mason

SOUNDCLIP

RACHEL NOTLEY: B.C.'s actions are unconstitutional. This is not a dispute between B.C. and Alberta. It is a dispute between B.C. and Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN HORGAN: We are going to put in place a scientific panel to look at the potential consequences of a catastrophic spill. I don't think that that's unreasonable. I'm surprised at the response we're getting from Alberta. It's within our jurisdiction to put in place regulations to protect the public interest and that's what we're doing.

AMT: Alberta's Rachel Notley, and British Columbia's John Horgan: two western, NDP premiers sharply divided over the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. And there's much at stake on both sides. The $7.4 billion pipeline proposal is an economic juggernaut, but one that carries with it major environmental concerns. And after B.C. put new environmental roadblocks in its way last week, Alberta retaliated, by suspending talks to buy B.C. electricity. It is an escalating tiff with consequences for the whole country and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made it clear he's on Alberta's side—pushing for Kinder Morgan's pipeline expansion to be built—carrying oil from Alberta to the B.C. coast. We'll hear from people in both B.C. and Alberta, but we're starting in Alberta. Shannon Phillips is Alberta's Environment Minister. She joins us from Calgary. Hello.

SHANNON PHILLIPS: Hello.

AMT: What message do you have for John Horgan's NDP government in B.C?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: I think our message is pretty basic, which is that proposals that are unconstitutional, that seek to take federal jurisdiction now with respect to what goes into a pipeline, are outside B.C. jurisdiction. And more to the point they do get in the way of job growth on both sides of the border. And certainly as Albert's economy is looking up, the entire Canadian economy is looking up, and these proposals in fact do shatter investor confidence and are getting in the way of Alberta's recovery, and are a direct attack on working people on both sides of the border.

AMT: Well we saw premier Notley suspend electricity talks with B.C. last week saying that could cost B.C. half a billion dollars a year. Is that the beginning of a trade war?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: What is the beginning of is a conversation about the fact that when B.C. takes actions that are unconstitutional and that are an attack on working people in Alberta, that Alberta will respond. And we have begun by saying that we are no longer interested in conversations around our existing intertie in southern Alberta and there will be more as we examine more proposals.

AMT: Now you make the point that Alberta feels this is unconstitutional. Given that provinces do have some jurisdictions over environmental issues, including property and civil rights in a province, the management of Crown lands, municipal areas of control, is it very clear cut that this is constitutional in your mind or is there wiggle room there and how do you deal with it?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: Well certainly I am well aware of what the powers of an environment minister are in a province. I am one. And B.C. has every right to make environmental regulations within their jurisdiction. What they don't have the right to do is regulate what goes into a pipeline, how much, either existing pipelines or proposed new pipelines that are within federal jurisdiction. And that's what they have done. This is the equivalent of British Columbia waltzing into a federal cabinet meeting and proposing to amend the Criminal Code. Pipelines in terms of their content and in terms of the regulatory environment around them is the jurisdiction of the National Energy Board and the federal government. And this particular proposal—the existing pipeline that is now 50-years-old—does have federal approval and so does the proposed expansion of that pipeline.

AMT: Now as the Alberta Environment Minister, do you think that the environmental concerns that premier Horgan has raised about catastrophic spills and having to look into that are legitimate concerns?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: It is always good to have a look at our environmental regulations and our response to environmental events and modernize and update those regulations as we go. What is not within B.C.’s jurisdiction is to regulate or throttle or turn back volumes within a pipeline that are in federal jurisdiction. What this does is it signals to investors around the country that proposals or projects that have already received regulatory approval are somehow subject to a new set of rules and that really shatters people's ability to make long-term investments in the country, whether it's in Alberta, British Columbia, or elsewhere. And for a province that is just getting back on its feet where the economy is now finally looking up through recovery of some of our resource sector jobs and also our government's diversification efforts, this is a real kick in the teeth for Alberta workers. And I will add it is also pretty hard on people in resource communities in British Columbia and along the route. It is hard on people in resource communities in Saskatchewan and elsewhere. And you know we're a resource economy in Canada and undermining confidence in already approved projects is not something that provincial governments should take lightly and [unintelligible] at British Columbia's insistence that they throw these projects into question. It's not a good way to govern quite frankly. It shows that they're more interested in pandering to specific interests than they are in governing in the best interest of working people.

AMT: So what do you think of the prime minister's stand on this? What do you think Ottawa should be doing in this dispute?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: We need to hear a specific statement from Ottawa that this particular proposal is within their jurisdiction. And you know the prime minister has been very clear that this project has been approved and it will go forward and it will go forward with an ocean protection plan and a spill response plan, as well the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change. Now we as a government understand that Canadians have questions about emissions from both, Alberta's oil sands and the oil and gas industry across Canada, more generally. And that's why we have put forward a cap on emissions for example. That's why we have put forward a plan to reduce emissions through carbon pricing and reinvesting in clean tech and industrial efficiency and other measures like renewable's to in fact the most ambitious plan in the country. And Mr. Trudeau was very, very clear that within the approval of Kinder Morgan that it came with and because of Albert's leadership and so that is a good thing and it was a good thing that he underlined it last week. But what we need from the federal government is a specific statement that B.C.'s actions are in fact an intrusion on their jurisdiction and that is problematic for the growth of this country and for working people across this country.

AMT: Before I let you go if B.C. stays steadfast on this, what do you do?

SHANNON PHILLIPS: Well we are examining our options right now and [unintelligible] have said over the last couple of days we don't threaten premier Notley's government doesn't. We just do. And so we are looking at our various options on ways that we can effectively send a message to British Columbia now that British Columbia has sent a message to working people across this province that they are not interested in their best interests. And so we’re looking at our options.

AMT: OK Shannon Phillips, thank you for your time today.

SHANNON PHILLIPS: Thank you.

AMT: Shannon Phillips, Alberta's Environment Minister. She joined us from Calgary. We did ask to speak with someone in the B.C. government and no one was available.

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Ah, show of hands—who thinks it's time for these people to leave?

[Sound: Crowd cheers]

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: OK, thank you, please go. Yes, we're going to ask the police to remove you.

AMT: The prime minister faced a crowd of unhappy and unruly people at a town hall event in Nanaimo late last week. Many of the Vancouver Islanders had questions and concerns about the pipeline. Tzeporah Berman is a long-time B.C. environmentalist. She's an adjunct professor in the faculty of environmental studies at York University, and a board member for Stand.earth, a group that campaigns for environmental causes. She advised the previous B.C. Liberal government on climate change issues. She was also part of a committee that advised Alberta Premier Rachel Notley's government on environmentally sustainable ways to develop the oil sands. Tzeporah Berman joins us from Vancouver. Hello.

TZEPORAH BERMAN: Hello.

AMT: What do you make of what you just heard from the Alberta minister?

TZEPORAH BERMAN: Well, you know I have tremendous respect for Minister Phillips. This government in Alberta has had a hard hill to climb and they've done I think an admirable job in being the first government in the history of Alberta to really start to address climate change. And at the same time what we need to recognize is that you know Rome wasn't built in a day. And the fact is right now while there is a climate plan in place in Alberta, we can't meet yet our national climate targets. And there is no plan to reduce emissions from the oil sands overall, so the cap allows an increase. And how it begins to be an issue with this pipeline, the fact is we don't build pipelines for 10 years or 20 years. We build pipelines for 30 or 40 years. And we're in a situation now where we can’t even meet Harper's weak climate targets and our current climate plan is about 40 to 70 million tonnes over.

AMT: Interestingly though that's not my premier Horgan is arguing. He's saying they need a scientific panel to look at the potential consequences of a catastrophic spill. He's not talking about emissions.

TZEPORAH BERMAN: That's right. And there are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, the government of British Columbia has a responsibility to protect its citizens, to protect our waterways, and to ensure that the safety and risk issues associated with this pipeline are addressed. And this mess really began because Trudeau made a bad decision—a very political decision—and a bad promise that he had promised to fix. The Trudeau government criticised the National Energy Board process under Prime Minister Harper for not being evidence based, for not listening to communities, and in fact created their own ministerial panel which submitted a report that had six huge unanswered questions and said there were serious unresolved concerns on risk. A week later Prime Minister Trudeau approved the pipeline despite all of those risks; despite scientists in the U.S. and Canada briefing the government that there was an increased risk with the expansion, that it was unacceptable, and that the transport of oil sands products posed a huge risk to ocean environments and to our waterways.

AMT: Well it's interesting because in the news today is that the Ottawa government poised to introduce legislation that would overhaul the way the federal government does environmental assessments. And the ideas they might merge, the National Energy Board with assessments on environmental and economic impacts, social and health, all together. The fact that this is pending, could this slow down Trans Mountain or should it? What's your view on that?

TZEPORAH BERMAN: There's no question that it should. I mean if this was a project that was being reviewed today—under the new laws that the federal government is introducing—it's highly unlikely that it would be approved. And the fact is when this pipeline was reviewed, the National Energy Board was not allowed to look at issues of climate change. The National Energy Board restricted who could speak to the panel to such an extent that thousands were turned away and refused. And even despite that within that existing flawed process, there were still huge concerns raised because this is a pipeline that goes right by schools. This is a pipeline—the line runs through the second largest and third largest cities in British Columbia. It terminates at a tank farm at the foot of Burnaby Mountain, where the fire marshals have submitted reports to the City of Burnaby saying that the risk is unacceptable.

AMT: And so where do you see this going? Alberta has now suspended electricity negotiations with B.C. that's worth half a billion dollars. Where does this go?

TZEPORAH BERMAN: I think the fact is that the Trudeau government is underestimating the concerns in British Columbia and the thousands of citizens that are standing up, who really feel betrayed and not heard by this process. I mean there was a real irony in that town hall where the prime minister was saying you're not listening. Well the prime minister hasn't been listening to British Columbians who have been raising these concerns in the process and outside of the process now for several years. And so I think that more and more people are going to start standing up not only on issues of oil spills and risk and climate change, but also Indigenous rights. The fact is that the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and many others have said that they're going to oppose this project if Kinder Morgan tries to build it. And they've created a website called Coast Protectors. 22,000 people have signed up there and said, 'we will stay with the Chiefs. We will oppose this project'. So it's not going to be an easy road.

AMT: Tzeporah Berman, thank you for your thoughts.

TZEPORAH BERMAN: Thank you.

AMT: Tzeporah Berman is a long-time B.C. environmentalist and adjunct professor faculty of environmental studies York University. She joined us from Vancouver. Our next guest says the political consequences of this pipeline fight could be far-reaching. Gary Mason is a national affairs columnist with The Globe and Mail. He’s based in Vancouver. He happens to be in Grimsby, Ontario today. Hello Gary Mason.

GARY MASON: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: It looks as if we've all got a problem.

GARY MASON: Pardon me?

AMT: It looks like there is a problem here.

GARY MASON: [Laughs] A big problem. I mean I can't remember a situation like this in the West for quite some time. But I mean the implications are going in so many different directions and are so far reaching it's hard to believe really.

AMT: Well take me through them briefly here. First of all B.C., John Horgan is the premier because he cut a deal with the Green's. He needs to oppose this, does he not?

GARY MASON: Yeah, he does absolutely I mean he's in a very uncomfortable position in the legislature. He absolutely depends on the support of the three-seat Green Party, which already feels uncomfortable with certain things that the Horgan government is doing in terms of pursuing LNG projects over in China. He has got to push hard on this. And to be fair to Horgan he's not doing anything that he didn't say he was going to do during the election campaign, which was to use every "tool in his tool box" to try and stop this thing. So he's pushing through with what he has to do and he really doesn't have a choice politically.

AMT: Does Rachel Notley?

GARY MASON: No. She doesn't have a choice either because—I mean it's interesting when you look at. Her job security depends on this pipeline and so does John Horgan's to an extent, but at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the outcome. But she's already in trouble. I mean Jason Kenney, the leader of the United Conservative Party, is making hay with this as you would expect. And if there isn't like substantial progress on this pipeline before the next election in Alberta in 2019—I mean she has zero chance. I mean she can see her job security sort of slipping between her you know fingers right now.

AMT: And what about Justin Trudeau in Ottawa?

GARY MASON: Well I think he's got problems too. I think after the last election they had made a breakthrough in Alberta—a few seats there. And I think that is his goal and his hope was that he would build on the popularity that he has to sort of make a breakthrough in the West which has always been difficult for the federal Liberals. But you know in Alberta you can see the disappointment that they have with this guy because I mean they didn't see him doing much to save Energy East—that's dead. He basically drove a stake through Northern Gateway by saying he was going to put this tanker ban. The one project that he's sort of been mildly supportive of is the Trans Mountain pipeline, but they don't see him doing enough and doing anything beyond saying, 'yes it's going to get built'. If this thing continues to drag on and Kinder Morgan says, 'enough is enough. We're losing money by the day. We're going to walk away from this', well there will be long-term implications for the federal Liberals in the West.

AMT: And we heard the Alberta environment minister also talk about the implications for investment across the country.

GARY MASON: Well absolutely. I mean there's already a perception that Canada—when it certainly comes to resource development—is not an easy place to do business. It's far easier in the United States and in other places where the regulations you know aren't as tight. But also there seems to be this constantly moving target in Canada when it comes to resource development. So I mean the reputation is already bad and this whole dispute only damages it further.

AMT: So Gary Mason before I let you go, who has to bend?

GARY MASON: Well I don't think it's a question of bending. I think Justin Trudeau is going to have to exert his will on this file and bring this to a boiling point and solve it one way or the other. It can't continue to drag on this way. He's going to have to show some leadership on a file that he hasn't so far.

AMT: And should he be on the side of Alberta on this? Do you think?

GARY MASON: I think so. I mean he's promised Alberta a pipeline. I think this is probably the only pipeline—the last pipeline—that will be built in this country. I think Alberta needs it. I think he has to make good on the promise that he made to the people of Alberta and he has to do more to get this pipeline built.

AMT: OK. Well Gary Mason we'll watch it unfold. Thanks for your insights.

GARY MASON: My pleasure.

AMT: Gary Mason, national affairs columnist with The Globe and Mail, based in Vancouver. He joined us today from Grimsby, Ontario. Let us know what you think of this fight and what our last guest is saying about where it needs to go. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. Stay with us. The news is next, and then as Switzerland moves to ban boiling lobsters alive, we are wading into that roiling debate. I'm Anna Marie Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast, and on your radio app.

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Back To Top »

Should boiling lobsters alive be banned? Experts disagree on whether crustaceans can feel pain

Guests: Shelley Adamo, Lesli Bisgould

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, a literary prize in the era of #MeToo. If you ever pick up a thriller to read you know the genre is cruel to its female, fictional characters. A new prize is setting out to change that. It would honour the best new book in which no female character is sexually exploited, raped or murdered. I'll be joined by a panel of female writers in our next half hour to debate whether the prize should be celebrated. But first, a lobster tale.

SOUNDCLIP

CRAIG FLINN: This is a pound and a half lobster. I believe this is a male. Yes! And here I have six litres of boiling water and I have one tablespoon of sea salt per litre.

AMT: What Halifax chef Craig Finn is about to do will soon be against the law in Switzerland. Come March 1st, the European country will become the latest jurisdiction to ban boiling lobsters alive. It's part of an emerging debate about boiling lobsters alive and whether it should be considered cruel and unusual. But back in Craig Finn's kitchen, it's everyday fare.

SOUNDCLIP

CRAIG FLINN: I'm used to it. I've been cooking for 23 years now and I'm a Nova Scotia cook so I've cooked a lot of lobster. I certainly can understand why it would be troublesome for some people. I think this is probably the only food we have that, we, the consumer is asked to kill with the possible exception of fresh oysters and mussels—but they don't have eyes and they don't move and twitch as much. So here we go. It's head first. Drop the claws in. Take your hand off the crossed claws and I immediately submerge. Put the lid on.

[Sound: Cutting lobster]

CRAIG FLINN: He's obviously turning red and I think that slight little twitching of the muscles contracting like is what bothers some people. But it's also for me a very normal thing that's part of the process after he's been in for 30 seconds or so.

AMT: From a culinary perspective, we may have lobsters down to a science. But from a biological perspective, new research is teaching us new things about these creatures from the complexities of their lives, to questions about their ability to feel pain. Shelley Adamo is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University. She studies crickets, which like lobsters, are arthropods. She's joins us from Halifax. Hello.

SHELLEY ADAMO: Hello.

AMT: What's your view of this new law in Switzerland?

SHELLEY ADAMO: The idea lobster might feel pain is based on some interesting, recent research that shows that lobsters have some complex behaviour and have complex learning abilities. And this was more than people had thought before this is Bob Elwood's work. And this is certainly true. And you can see other invertebrates like bees for example have some amazing learning abilities. They can navigate. They can find their way back to the hive. So people have been wondering given that they have these very tiny brains. But despite that they have these advanced behavioural capacities. So what does this mean in terms of their ability to not necessarily think, but maybe to feel? And that's I think where scientists at least are kind of struggling a little bit because with lobsters and with insects and other invertebrates, their brains are very, very different from ours and they're also very, very small. So the average insect for example has less than a million neurons in its brain and you have about 80 billion. So it's many orders of magnitude larger and it's differently organized. Even though we might have an idea, we do know some of the areas in the brain that's important for us to feel pain, lobsters don't have those parts of the brain. Now this doesn't necessarily mean they can't feel pain, but it makes it very difficult to know for sure. As a matter in fact you can't know for sure.

AMT: Let me ask you. In your lab you perform research tests on crickets, do you think about their pain?

SHELLEY ADAMO: Well you know you always wonder and I do think that they actually don't feel pain. I don't actually think lobsters do either. Nevertheless, when we do our research on our crickets, we are very careful because you can't know for sure. And also it's this respect for life that I also want to instill in my students, that even though it’s just of little life, we want to make sure that we treat it with respect. So we actually anesthetize our animals before we use them for experiments. On the other hand though I would say, the evidence is really not there in terms of whether or not they can feel pain, and again because their brains really are so very much smaller than ours. And it's fine I guess if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt because we can't know. It's a very difficult thing to know. You can't ask them for example. We have to be a little careful because on the other side for instance with insects, if we decided that we were going to just assume with little evidence that insects can feel pain because they can move as if they felt pain, they can [unintelligible] if you put an insecticide on them, then that would mean that for example you wouldn't be able to spray for bedbugs, you wouldn't be able to do research to get rid of mosquitoes that carry malaria. So the real costs involved in extending the benefit of the doubt—a little too wide in my mind.

AMT: OK. Well before we go into all of that, let me go back to lobsters. I got some specific questions for you, if I may.

SHELLEY ADAMO: OK [laughs].

AMT: So you say they probably don't feel pain. Is there evidence that they may feel pain?

SHELLEY ADAMO: Yes. Well I guess the evidence comes from two lines. One is again they have these very complex behaviours. For example, in some lobsters, but not others. So it's a bit species specific. If they damage a limb, they'll guard it. So they're sensitized to any contact with that area. That isn't true for some lobsters. So it sort of depends on the species and that's true with insects too. Sometimes they'll walk on a damaged leg and it doesn't seem to bother them. And the other area is the fact that it's now known that opioids for example can decrease nociception, so the ability to feel damaging stimuli or a damaging event can be reduced in lobsters and insects by using things like morphine.

AMT: So what does that mean? Specifically on the lobster, what are you saying? If you can decrease that ability, there must be some ability there.

SHELLEY ADAMO: Well that's what some would say and I would disagree.

AMT: What would be your explanation for that then?

SHELLEY ADAMO: My explanation is that every sensory system is modifiable and the ability to feel damage is no exception. Sometimes the animal is in a fight for its life and it can't be distracted by the fact that it's been damaged, so it has to just carry on. So all organisms have the ability to sense damage and also to ignore that damage when they have to.

AMT: But you're saying that's not the same as feeling pain?

SHELLEY ADAMO: No. I guess one way I would look at it is if you're looking at the lobster or an insect, is it really more like a little person or a little robot because you can program robots. There's actually someone at Northeastern University, Joseph Ayers, so he builds robots based on lobster brains. So he creates artificial lobster brains. And you know he would say that, 'no these are simply hardwired connections and it doesn't require any subjective experience', so that sense of discomfort and despair and negative feelings we can have when we're in pain. The lobster can simply register it's had some sort of damage and then have a muscle response without any subjective experience.

AMT: Now in this law in Switzerland they have to stun them before they submerge the animal in boiling water. Is stunning them first more humane?

SHELLEY ADAMO: Well I'm not sure. I don't know a great deal about the Crustastun, which I think is the name of the gun that they use—the electrical shock mechanism. Again you can see the people who designed these laws don't necessarily know a lot about invertebrates because they want you to stun them my understanding is—I've never used one—between the eyes because you want to get the brain. The problem is lobsters have lots of brains. You've got one big brain there, but you also have some sort of substantially sized brains further down. And then you have a whole series of brains down the tail. So what part of the brain do you think you need to knock out? And does the Crustastun stun all of them or just the main brain?

AMT: Now as animal protection laws for mammals become stricter and you've already mentioned the issue of protection for smaller creatures such as insects. What are the potential implications to science if insects were to gain more protection?

SHELLEY ADAMO: Well my concern would be—you know it always sounds good. Benefit of the doubt because as I said we cannot know. My concern would be that there are two issues with arthropods like insects and other organisms like that. First of all, in many insects are competitors for us for food, and if we're going to use any kind of control mechanisms because most of those control mechanisms are neurotoxins—and they don't kill immediately—then we are basically going to allow the arthropods to take a big chunk of our food supply. And in a world with seven billion people, I'm not sure that's going to that's going to work very well for us. And then of course the other issue is with disease. A number of insects are very important disease vector, so they carry the disease like malaria. And if we're not allowed to do research on mosquitoes, then all of these insect vector diseases, lyme disease, various other diseases, we're going to take a huge hit for something that I think is highly unlikely.

AMT: OK. Well thank you for your views on this.

SHELLEY ADAMO: You're welcome.

AMT: Shelley Adamo is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University. She joined us from Halifax.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My father fished for 60 years and we used to run a lobster pound and ship them all over the country. I cooked four or 500 hundred pounds at a time. I would have heard screaming. I was dumping them in tray after tray after tray.

VOICE 2: I just want to say that lobsters can be put to sleep by standing them on their noses.

NORMA LEE MACLEOD: Is that what you do?

VOICE 2: No, I usually don’t take the time. I'm just too hungry.

VOICE 3: My father is a lobster fisherman. I understand that people in the industry don't want to admit that lobsters feel pain. But me personally, what I've witnessed over 30 years, I can say that lobsters feel pain maybe not on the same level as you or I, but they feel pain like any living being.

VOICE 4: I'm a recreational fisherman, if I want to go fishing trout, when you want to describe what I'm doing, I'm putting a worm on a hook. Does that worm feel the hook's pain? [Unintelligible] so it can’t breathe now. And a fish bites the hook, gets it on a slip, I pull it into my boat and the thing is gasping for air there. I mean does it feel pain? When is this stuff going to end? Like what do we have to do? Why are we talking about this for?

AMT: Well some callers weighing in on the debate about whether lobsters feel pain. That was on CBC Radio's Maritime Noon. Lesli Bisgould has been listening. And she'd like to weigh in too. She teaches animal rights law in the University of Toronto's faculty of law. She ran Canada's first animal rights law practice. And she's in Toronto. Hello.

LESLI BISGOULD: Good morning.

AMT: What do you make of what you just heard on those clips?

LESLI BISGOULD: Well it's a range of opinions that we've heard about different animal issues for many years and it's interesting now that we're having it about lobsters.

AMT: So what do you make of Switzerland's new law?

LESLI BISGOULD: It does seem to happen around the world in different jurisdictions. An incident happens that prompts a jurisdiction to pick a particular area to pass a law about and the rest of us are surprised as to why they're picking that. But it does tend to foster a really important debate that we need to have. So to the extent that it's done that in this case I am thrilled.

AMT: OK. Well they are cooked alive. They are dumped into boiling water alive.

LESLI BISGOULD: Absolutely.

AMT: Why do you say they deserve more rights?

LESLI BISGOULD: Well I think as the scientist who spoke who you interviewed earlier explained, there are some things that science may not be able to prove conclusively one way or the other. But we do know even if we can't prove 100 percent that lobsters feel pain, we can prove 100 percent that they avoid painful stimuli. We just heard about how many brains they have. We heard about the nervous system that they have. So there are enough markers that we can identify that relate and that correlate to experience of pain. And of course it's going to be different in a lobster than it is in a human being. But there is enough there for us to be cautious. And in a country like Canada we're fortunate enough to have a wide array of choices, in most places not everywhere in most places, for our food. Why wouldn't we choose something that we know isn't causing harm rather than something that might be causing harm?

AMT: Do you extend this to insects as well?

LESLI BISGOULD: Well I don’t want to dismiss that argument as invalid because it is an argument to have. But it concerns me that we go there so quickly when there's so much to talk about. I think people like to talk about insects because it seems to be a way of making the entire ethical discussion about animals seems silly, and it's an easy way to dismiss it. When the truth is we have very profound problems in respect of even the animals that we say we care about, the mammals that we know. We have extreme violence that is caused to those animals in a systemic, institutionalized, and a very profitable way in Canada. So when we start talking about insects it's a way of trivializing a debate that we really need to have about our treatment of all the animals that we share the animal kingdom with.

AMT: And we don't have a bedbug fishery after all.

LESLI BISGOULD: We don't have a bedbug fishery [laughs].

AMT: The CBC callers we just played are obviously a random sample. Many people eat lobster without thinking twice. How do you convince skeptics that it's worth considering the pain of lobsters?

AMT: That's the hundred thousand dollar question or maybe now a hundred million dollar—whatever is the equivalent. I mean it's an area that the movement to try and create progress for animals has struggled with for decades in respect of all animals because the sorts of practices that we commit in order to put other forms of meat, whether it comes from pigs or cows or chickens or goats on our table causes such extreme pain and other forms of suffering privation, psychological suffering, deprivations of various kinds, that it's just too early to even go there. We have no protections in place. We have hundreds of millions of animals going through extreme pain and suffering every year for our food and that's a serious problem we have to deal with.

AMT: OK. And we did hear Shelley Adamo, the scientist, argue that lobsters and insects likely do not feel pain.

LESLI BISGOULD: Well what I appreciated about her comments is that she quite honestly said we can never know. We can never know for sure. So she's chosen to come down on the side of probably they don't and that's consistent with the work that she does using animals in research as she does and so it's not surprising that she airs on that side. But I appreciate her honesty in saying we'll never know. And when I come from an ethical perspective where I don't have quite the same I guess interest in exploiting animals in a sense, I would argue that we are on the side of caution. Why wouldn't we apply the precautionary principle? Why wouldn't we choose actions that we know don't cause harm rather than actions that might?

AMT: At the same time someone when argue, when a scientist says we'll never know, they're talking about specific science as opposed to someone who's talking in a wider term. That someone might say, 'well you're anthropomorphizing. You're saying they're going to feel like we feel'.

LESLI BISGOULD: Right.

AMT: 'And that's not very scientific at all. That's just an idea that comes up'.

LESLI BISGOULD: Right. So there's a very long history in talking about animals. We have a very long history of underestimating, not only animal pain, but the animal experience altogether. So animal communication, animal social life, animal psychology, we have over time dismissed animals as being unthinking machines because our science didn't know enough. We weren't able to interpret their own behaviours. We were in fact anthropomorphizing. We were using our own standards and our own experiences to judge other animals. And we've learned over time that that's not the way to do it. You can't take a creature out of out of her own environment, lock her in a laboratory, judge her by our standards, and determine if she's intelligent. 'Well she doesn't speak English, she doesn't write poetry and she’s not intelligent'. Now science recognizes to understand animals we have to look at them as individuals in their own environments. We thought elephants don't communicate with each other. Well now we've learned that their communications are at too low a tone for the human ear to perceive. So it's not the elephants that have been flawed all of this time. It's us. It's our own understanding. We underestimated elephants because our scientific method didn't allow us to understand their communication. We know that a lobster avoids painful stimuli. We know that a lobster has a brain. We know some things. It's not as though we're just picking this idea out of the air and saying 'well maybe. Seems like that blade of grass may feel pain, so let's not step on it'. I mean it's not that arbitrary. It's come from science. It may be that this particular aspect of science is in the early era as the other branches you know that I alluded to earlier you know we've had a little bit more time and scientists working on them.

AMT: How long have you been practicing animal rights law and teaching it?

LESLI BISGOULD: I don't practice it now full-time. I had my practice. I started about 25 years ago. I did it for 10 years. And I've continued to work on it in that time. I've been teaching for going back about six or seven years, and what I've seen is absolutely shocking. When I started my practice I sat alone in an extra bedroom in my apartment because I couldn't afford anything else and I had no one to talk to. There were no lawyers to call. And now we've got a national organization called Animal Justice which works on animal legal issues in Canada. I've got classes of students where the majority of them tell me they've gone to law school only to become animal lawyers. So it's a complete transformation in a couple of decades. The topic has really exploded and is very front of mind for many people now which is a very exciting development.

AMT: What are the biggest changes you've seen in the treatment of the animals through that kind of law?

LESLI BISGOULD: It may be an unusual thing for a lawyer to say but I don't think law is what changes us. I think law is a reflection of the changes that we've already accepted—with some exception. So I spend most of my time as a lawyer trying to disabuse people of the assumption that the laws protect animals. I try to show how laws operate and how the little words that are embedded in their actually serve to protect the people who want to exploit animals rather than the people who want to protect them. But there have been changes. One that's in the news right now comes out of British Columbia where the Vancouver Park Board, who operates the Vancouver Aquarium, recently passed a bylaw that would prohibit any more cetaceans whales and dolphins from being held captive at the Vancouver Aquarium. And the Vancouver Aquarium challenged that legally and we still don't have the results. But they've now come out and said that they are going to abide by it. So that's a reflection of the growing public sentiment—comes after documentaries that have come out about practices at SeaWorld, the practice of collecting dolphins to keep in captivity. So as people start to see these things they say, 'maybe there's other ways we can entertain ourselves'.

AMT: So looking forward, what would you want to see and changes in terms of how animals are treated under the law? What are the big areas you'd like to actually see some significant movement on?

LESLI BISGOULD: For me the most important thing that law can do is keep the doors and windows open. I don't want to pass a law that prohibits people from engaging in practices that they all want to do and that they don't understand why they should be stopped. I think law is a tool to ensure that our democracy can really have honest open conversation about right and wrong. So I want to make sure we don't get what they have in the U.S. Ag-gag laws, laws that prohibit anybody from taking any pictures or getting any information about factory farms. I want to make sure we can see where food is coming from, we can see what's done to animals, and we can have an honest discussion about whether we think that's OK or not. And then individuals I'm quite convinced will choose otherwise. When they see what their food really looks like before it ends up on their plate, they'll choose to stop eating it.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

LESLI BISGOULD: Thank you for having me.

AMT: Lesli Bisgould is a Toronto lawyer and adjunct law professor at the University of Toronto. She joined us in our Toronto. Do you think twice before boiling a lobster, or eating one? And, do you think the push for animal rights is a good thing? Has it gone too far? Let us know. On Twitter we're @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook and comment, or email from our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link.

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AMT: Well this is Black History Month and we have some special programming coming up this month. Over the next few weeks we'll be taking The Current on the road for a series of town halls. We want you to join us in Halifax, Vancouver, and Montreal. We'll be having in-depth conversations. We're calling this series Facing Race. And it's about some of the most pressing issues related to race in Canada today. In Halifax I'll be looking at the legacy of anti-black racism and its effects on everything from housing to environmental decisions. That is Friday, February 16th at the spectacular main Halifax library. You can get tickets online. They don't cost anything. But you do have to reserve. In Vancouver, Piya Chattopadhyay will hear how race impacts people’s experiences with health. And in Montreal Duncan McCue will hear about competing identities in Quebec and how race and language has an impact on people's livelihoods and sense of belonging in the province. You can go to our website for more information cbc.ca/thecurrent. The first one, February 16th. A Friday night in Halifax at the library. Now stay with us in our next half hour, as a genre thrillers are chock full of horrors for their female characters. But does that mean that fictional characters should have their #MeToo moment? I'll be joined by a trio of female writers to share their thoughts about a new literary prize that aims to do just that. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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A book prize that bans violence against women won't help those suffering in the real world, say writers

Guests: Sheena Kamal, Melanie McGrath, Melissa Yi

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Two professional women killed in their own homes by strangulation. She has a high count level of chorionic gonadotropin in her blood. I'm thinking she was pregnant. If we don't stop him he will kill again. It's about power and control. It thrills him to stalk these women.

VOICE 2: Haven't you heard, there's a strangler on the prowl?

VOICE 1: To break into their home...what could be more intimate then strangling the life out of another human being?

AMT: That's a trailer for The Fall the acclaimed British crime drama starring Gillian Anderson. It's a familiar story. A killer on the loose. Young women meeting gruesome ends. And a driven investigator who must solve the crimes. Thrillers like The Fall have become hugely popular on screens big and small, as well as in books – always have been. But the genre has also come in for criticism for their portrayal of women and often violent treatment of female characters. It's such a prevalent trope, that it's sparked an innovative backlash in the form of a new literary prize. It’s called the Staunch Prize, it will be awarded to the best new book that does not include women being beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered. Here's its founder Bridget Lawless explaining her goals for the award, in an interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens.

SOUNDCLIP

BRIDGET LAWLESS: The constant depiction of women as victims and of quite gratuitous sexual depiction I think doesn't help anything about how women are treated or seen or how they feel about themselves in the wider world. It's a bit of an easy get out for plotting. In thrillers, especially in crime thrillers, there's a lot more sexual violence and women as crime victims as well. But, it's not entirely necessary to make a thriller. I'd love to see more work that really more original, really leaving that behind and coming up with some new stuff for a new era.

AMT: The new prize has been lauded but not universally so. Some have voiced concerns that it underestimates women who make up around 60% of the readers of these books. Others say that violence against women is exactly what thriller writers should be writing and talking about. We've brought together a panel of three authors to share their thoughts now. Sheena Kamal is author of The Lost Ones, a crime novel set in Vancouver. That's where we've reached her by phone. Melissa Yi is known for her medical thrillers including Human Remains. She's in our studio in Hamilton, Ontario. And Melanie McGrath's latest crime novel is Give Me The Child. She's in our studio in London. Also a warning, some of the content we're about to discuss could be disturbing to some people. Hello everyone. Welcome.

MELANIE MCGRATH: Hi.

MELISSA YI: Good morning.

MELANIE MCGRATH: Good morning.

AMT: Uh, I want to start...

SHEENA KAMAL: Good morning.

AMT: Hello all of you. That's great. We've got all of your voices there now. Melanie McGrath let's start with you. What are your concerns about the Staunch Prize?

MELANIE MCGRATH: Oh well first I want to congratulate Bridget Lawless. She's done an amazing job of creating more conversation about this. We need more debate. We need more conversation. So I think as a way to get us all talking about this, this is a brilliant strategy. However I think the prize itself however well-intentioned is rather misguided. And if I may say why I think it's misguided. I think first and foremost violence has no moral hierarchy. I think we can all agree that criminal violence against men, women, and children is wrong. My latest book for example set in the London riots, so it explores a lot of violence by children against children. And I think another thing that we would all agree is that we have to accept that violence is a reality of our culture, our societies, and that one thing we have learned from the #MeToo movement is that when we deny reality, we have a problem. So I think the fact of there being violence in crime novels is not the problem, it's the treatment of it in some crime. And actually I would say that crime fiction is well ahead of the curve in terms of the way it treats the victims sensitively and foregrounds them and foregrounds their experience as compared to for example TV, film, and games. And the example you had right at the top of this section—The Fall—I think is a perfect illustration of that. I know a lot of crime writers of crime fiction have problems with The Fall because we see a lot of the violence from the point of view of the perpetrator. The violence is always against very young beautiful often half naked women and the perpetrator is a very hot, young man. And I think that's problematic. But I think if you look at crime fiction, you read as much crime fiction as I do, the incidents where that kind of exploitation occurs in crime fiction is vanishingly small.

AMT: OK. We'll pick up on some of those points you making as we get into our discussion. But let's go to Melissa Yi. What do you think about the Staunch Prize?

MELISSA YI: I love the Staunch Prize. I'm very excited about it. I'd like to pick on a few things that Melanie was saying. By not talking about violence against women in these specific books, she's not denying reality. I think she's just choosing to spotlight the thrillers that don't happen to show violence against women, which is great. You know if we were showing art and someone decided not to use the colour blue, it wouldn't be that were discriminating against blue. It just happens to be that she doesn't want to award her prize to the ones that do happen to include violence against women. And probably I think crime fiction is ahead of TV. But that's a pretty low bar. I think we can do better than that.

AMT: Melissa, is the Staunch Price something that you would compete in? Would you enter that prize?

MELISSA YI: Well it just so happens that my latest novel Human Remains doesn't have violence against women. It has to be a book that was published in the last 18 months. If you happen to write a book that fits that criteria, then you can enter. And I certainly would.

AMT: OK. And yours doesn't have violence against women. Was that a conscious decision because of your concerns about that or was that just where you went with this plot?

MELISSA YI: Well I was aware that 75 percent of the time homicide victims are male. And I do think disproportionate number of books focus on women as victims because they tend to get a very emotional reaction from both men and women. You know coming on this program and everything I looked at my medical thrillers and I was like, 'you know most of the time I do have a male victim or at least it would be 50/50' because I do try to be fairly realistic when I write.

AMT: Sheena Kamal, what's take on the Staunch Prize?

SHEENA KAMAL: Well I think it's important to first of all acknowledge that it really just is a prize. So what it is good or bad it is—I agree with Melanie is that it is starting a conversation and addressing something. And I personally would like to be eligible for all prizes all the time. That's just how I roll. But at the same time it's OK not to be submitted for a certain prize. That's fine with me. But what's baffling about it, like what really gets to me, is that it attempts to address gender violence by not addressing gender violence, which is so strange. So I know that I started writing crime fiction because I wanted to look at gender violence and I think this is the best way to do it. Crime fiction is a very broad genre, so we must not forget that. I mean you do have the salacious, grotesque kind of thriller's that I think the Staunch Prize was created in response to. But there are also a lot of writers and a lot of crime fiction out there that are trying to look at issues gender violence with one a more nuanced perspective and trying to do it justice and be sensitive in the writing. So it's really hard to for me personally to know that I am considered to be part of the problem maybe when I do a lot of hard work to make sure that the violence in my novels are always personal and I don't allow the male gaze at all when it comes to violence against women. So it's first person, present tense. It's really all very personal and very direct and about the women. It's not about projecting violence onto a victim. It's about somebody's experience with it.

AMT: So Sheena you're telling me that it's because of what's going on around you, you want to highlight what's happening to women through your fiction.

SHEENA KAMAL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you just look at what happened in Toronto in January. Five women, possibly six, were murdered by their intimate partners. That is gender violence. That's domestic violence. I mean we look at the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, we look at the issues of the exploitation of minors in Canada and around the world. Gender violence is really important to tackle. And I choose to tackle it through thrillers and crime fiction.

AMT: Melissa Yi, for those listeners who don't read a lot of this genre and I do appreciate we're talking a wide range; tell us how common violence against women is and how it's depicted.

MELISSA YI: Well I may not be the most well-read, but I was struck recently by a thriller—I don't know how graphic you want to be.

AMT: Don't be too graphic. Give us an idea.

MELISSA YI: It starts off with evisceration of women, basically. And then after the autopsy they find out that she has been raped in multiple ways, including the wound itself. And then a woman is crucified and left on a car and then at the end the sister of the first victim who is a police officer is raped by the same perpetrator. You know it was just endless, endless violence.

AMT: And how do you react to that, Melissa?

MELISSA YI: I thought it was a good book. But I haven't read another book by the same author since. And I'm not saying that she shouldn't write it. She's extremely popular. She's done extremely well and good for her. And she does raise the same point that you know there are certain authors who choose to show the violence in order to try and turn people away from it and demonstrate that this is wrong and you know as a species we should be moving away from this.

AMT: Can I ask about that? Maybe Melanie you want to weigh in. Like every sadistic thing you can think of will end up in there. How realistic is that?

MELANIE MCGRATH: Again I would say that it's not necessarily the fact of the violence itself; it's the treatment of it within the context of the fiction. So if I depict violence and actually as it happens most of my books don't have graphic depictions of violence because I don't find them necessary and I feel that you have to earn those kinds of depictions. But they only exist to titillate or they only exist in order that a man can say something about them or solve the crime, then we've got a problem. But I think it's all about context. And one of the issues I have with the Staunch Prize is that it takes the violence out of context from the book itself. And I think books should be rewarded on the basis of whether they're good literature in any genre. And a book depicting extreme violence can be great literature or it can be terrible. It all depends on the context of the book. I happen to have it in Give Me The Child, there happens to be a child on child violence. Why isn't there a prize for depictions of books that don't contain child on child violence? You know it's almost as though we're singling out violence against women as though it were something inherently different from violence against men or violence against children. And I don't actually believe that. By focusing on the violence it's decontextualising and that's when we have the problem. That violence in crime fiction, if it's contextualized, if it's sensitive, if it is clear that if there's a woman victim, if it's clear that the woman is the owner of her own body, and the impact of the victim is explored not only from the victim's point of view but also the impact on the violence on individuals and neighbourhoods and societies around that victim, then it seems to me that the violence is earned.

AMT: And Melanie does it doesn't make a difference if a man or a woman is writing this? Like overall. Do you see a difference, a general difference, in this genre depending on the gender of the writer?

MELANIE MCGRATH: Increasingly not. I think if you'd asked me that question 10 years ago I might have said something different. But I think that male crime writers have become very, very good ones—responsible ones—have become very, very sensitive to accusations of misogyny. And most of them have responded by being very, very careful to do exactly as I've said. To foreground the victim and to make the victim—if it happens to be a woman—someone who is not simply a cipher for some guy to make himself a hero out of. And I think that we can trust readers—most of whom are of course women in our genre. We can trust readers to find the level of graphic violence or otherwise that they're comfortable or not comfortable with and that's signalled in all kinds of ways. On the cover, it's signalled on the blurb, it signalled on the kinds of writer they are. And I don't think it's our business to protect women or protect readers. I think we can trust women and readers to do that for themselves.

AMT: So the majority of readers are women. What do you think women get out of reading these stories of violence and crime?

MELANIE MCGRATH: Well I'm not all women [laughs]. So you'd have to ask individual women. But I can certainly tell you the answer for that for myself what I get out of it. I think for myself and I've been a victim of violent crime. I've witnessed violent crime. and I've been socialized and as I think many women have to be conscious all the time of the presence of the possibility of violence. And so I think women, whether for good or bad, live in a constant kind of low evil vigilance about violence. And so in a way violence or the presence of it or the potential presence of it, is something that's ever present in their lives in a way that it isn't for many men. And I think we get to explore our worst fears in a safe space and in the vast majority of crime fiction remember that the case is solved, that equilibrium is restored very often by and more increasingly by female detectives who are given agency. And I think we've put ourselves in the position of those characters—female characters—in the book who have agency rather than the ones who are victims.

AMT: Sheena Kamal, what do you think?

SHEENA KAMAL: I like the idea of equilibrium restored. I remember there was one book in particular that I really wanted to love and it was about gender and race and set in America. And there was extreme violence projected onto a black woman. And the two white detectives, they were at the end of the case—they pontificated about the moral injustice faced by this woman—when equilibrium was restored it was restored for them and not her. And that really, really bothered me and I think that's why I do address gender violence in my books because I really do want to show a different perspective. I don't want to leave it with the detectives at all because I don't really trust them. And I do have to say that I kind of agree with both things that Melissa and Melanie have said in terms of readership. And I have a very specific case when it comes to thrillers. So if I find that the violence is grotesque, if I find that it's salacious, and maybe with the way that Melanie has just described it "not earned," then I will close the book immediately and not read on because I do want to talk about gender violence and do want to talk about these very important issues, but I want them treated with respect in crime fiction. I think that the problem for me is often the gaze, not just crime fiction but gender violence in the media. So on TV and films in the way that it's depicted, are the writers male or the directors male? Jessica Chastain just recently came out with a tweet and she was talking about Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino and how you know the kind of violence that was phased in that particular rape-revenge story in Kill Bill that she was referencing. And you know it can be really icky. But you don't want to censor anybody and you would just also want to make sure that what you're reading and as a writer what I am writing is written with respect.

AMT: You both talked about this, and I'm wondering what Melissa thinks too. The idea that you have to earn a certain depiction. What does it mean to earn it for a character to earn that?

MELISSA YI: I think instead of just having gratuitous violence right off the cuff because you want to shock people and grab them in that way. The way that you earn it is by developing relationship. Often to me reading is an intimate act between the writer and the reader. And the reader is creating a world in their head and in their heart. So when you earn it, you establish that kind of relationship. I'd like to add something else as well.

AMT: Go ahead. Go ahead.

MELISSA YI: OK. To me part of the reason that people are upset about the Staunch Prize is that they take it as either censorship or criticism saying that Bridget Lawless is saying you shouldn't include violence against women or she is critiquing you because you have written a violent scene with a woman in it. I don't believe that is the case. I think, as Sheena said, it's one prize. It's set up by a woman with her own money. And what she is choosing to do is she and her co-judge want to look at this set of books. And I don't think that we can criticize her for that. This is her money and it's her decision and she can do that. It doesn't mean that there aren't excellent books that show women in dangerous situations and that's excellent too and this is a conversation and we can have more prizes that rewards that.

MELANIE MCGRATH: Can I jump in there?

AMT: Absolutely. Go ahead.

MELANIE MCGRATH: I absolutely agree that Bridget—I am all for prizes especially prizes for women writers although this isn't a prize for women writers as it turns out. I absolutely agree if Bridget wants to set up a prize then that's great. I just think that the particular brief of the prize might give out to people who don't read a lot of crime fiction a strange message about what crime fiction is for. I feel very much so and I think most of the people working in crime fiction that I know that crime fiction we are explorers in the realm of violence, whether that's gender violence or violence against children or perpetrated by children or whatever kind of violence and the impact of that violence on communities, neighbourhoods, individuals, and so on. And I think that the Staunch Prize to people maybe who are not as familiar with the crime fiction world as I am, maybe it sounds a little patronizing.

AMT: The actual award sounds patronizing?

MELANIE MCGRATH: Well that it could be perceived to be somehow protecting women from reading violence. Protecting women from a certain kind of book where violence is part of the story and I just think that's not what crime fiction is for. Crime fiction is not for the violence. It's an exploration of the impact of violence on individuals, societies, cultures, and so on. So it’s not the violence itself that's problematic. It's the impact and how it's portrayed. And that's a nuance switch the Staunch Prize—it seems to me—doesn't address.

MELISSA YI: I find that so interesting because I have the opposite point of view. I think that for me, for myself, I don't read thrillers for the impact of violent actually. I read it for justice being served at the end and we can work our way through to justice by looking at violence. But to me that's really my eye on the prize.

MELANIE MCGRATH: But that's part of the impact... Sorry to interrupt. But that's part of the impact of violence that whether justice will or not be served in my view

MELISSA YI: And the other thing I would say is that when you worry that it's not good publicity for crime fiction. To me it's more like if they weren't interested in crime fiction in the first place they may be turned off by the prize. It might just open people's minds and get them interested in it just in the vein of any publicity. Even bad publicity is good publicity.

AMT: Sheena Kamal, what do you think?

SHEENA KAMAL: I mean at the end of the day I really try not to worry about what readers will think about the kind of crime fiction that I write. I worry about how I treat it, so it's very personal the way that I view it. And so as long as I find that I'm writing with respect I think it's fine for me what I do. I do actually kind of agree with Melanie in that I find the prize kind of patronising and it's OK I think it's pretty harmless and like it's been said you know it's good that these conversations are happening. But I don't actually feel like it serves the #MeToo movement. I think it ignores gender violence and rewards people for ignoring it maybe. It can be perceived that way and that's not the intention I don't think. But I think that it can be looked at in that light. It is at the end of the day really just a prize.

AMT: Well it got us talking. It got us talking.

MELANIE MCGRATH: It really did [laughs].

AMT: So I appreciate that. We have to leave it there. But thank you, all three of you, for sharing your insights and your thoughts today.

MELANIE MCGRATH: Pleasure.

SHEENA KAMAL: Thank you.

MELISSA YI: Thank you.

AMT: That is Melanie McGrath is a British crime writer. Her latest book is Give Me The Child. She was in our London studio. Sheena Kamal is the author of The Lost Ones. She was in Vancouver. And Melissa Yi writes medical thrillers. Her latest is Human Remains. She was in Hamilton, Ontario. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today Tom Power is joined by actor Haley Joel Osment. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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February 5, 2018 Episode Transcript

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