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The Current Transcript for May 2, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Try new Floorafloor, for itchy watery eyes, it's floorafloor, side effects may include nausea, vomiting, water weight gain, lower back pain, receding hairline, itching clothing, liver spots, blood clots, rings worms.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: How suggestible are you when you hear a litany of possible side effects to medication you take. Do you feel queasy, get itchy, scratchy, blotchy, worried? A a new study suggests a correlation between adverse reactions to Statins and the prevalence of websites about Statin side effects. So do people Google side effects and then feel them or do they feel them and start Googling. And what does it mean for doctors trying to warn patients of adverse effects. In a moment we're exploring the consequences of the Nocebo effect. Also today, raising a boy to be a man.

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VOICE: Being emotional is part of like human feelings, so that's still being a man too. Cause a man feels sad sometimes. He feels happy.

AMT: In an era of MeToo with phrases such as toxic masculinity and the Man Box in the lexicon, parents are finding that how we define masculinity needs a second look because the expectations can be harmful to both boys and girls. We've got a panel of parents ready to weigh in, in half an hour. And after learning that Canada played an active role to help France extradite him, after fighting for more than a decade, after being imprisoned in France for three years with no charges, Hassan Diab now home in Canada, is not looking for compensation or vengeance.

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VOICE: Money for me doesn't mean a lot especially after this long ordeal, just one day with the kids is worth more than all the money they could give me, these people.

AMT: Hear his story in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Segment 1

Guests: Baiju Shah, Brian Goldman, James McCormack

AMT: Well, we kind of all do. Experience any new ache, pain, rash, receive a new prescription and maybe go straight to Dr. Google for a little medical sleuthing. A new Canadian study may make you want to think twice before searching online for a second opinion. It's looking at what is known as the Nocebo effect, which is basically the opposite of the Placebo effect. Where a placebo makes you feel better, a nocebo can make you feel worse. So if you search the internet for information about a new drug you're on, there's research suggesting you could be more likely to experience the adverse reactions you're worried. In a moment we'll speak with a doctor and a pharmacist about how they navigate the tricky terrain with patients. But first I'm joined by Dr. Baiju Shah. He is a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He's the lead investigator on a new study called, "Does Googling lead to Statin intolerance." We've reached him in Toronto. Hi Dr. Shah.

BAIJU SHAH: Good morning.

AMT: First of all can you just define nocebo for us.

BS: So nocebo is kind of like the opposite of the placebo effect. So the placebo is well known when you have a sugar pill, not knowing that it doesn't actually have anything active, you still start to feel better. The nocebo is kind of the opposite where you have a medication that probably has benefits, but because you go in with preconceived notions that it might be harmful or cause you to have side effects you actually are more likely to experience those negative effects.

AMT: And so when did you first suspect that searching online for adverse drug reactions could create this nocebo effect.

BS: We had seen this study published by an international group a couple of years ago, about Statin side effects. And we noticed that there seem to be a much higher rate of those side effects in English speaking countries than in other European and Asian American countries which was it was a bit of a surprise because we couldn't really think of a good biological reason why that would be the case. But it seemed like the effect of the internet could be something that would make that difference. We see that clinically all the time where patients are coming in, talking about side effects, but inevitably it's something that they read about on Google. And so that's what sort of prompted to investigate whether there was a link between the internet and these side effects.

AMT: Remind us what Statins are.

BS: Statins are medications that are used to treat cholesterol. They've been well documented in patients who were at high risk for heart disease, to lower the rate of heart disease, stroke and mortality, and they've been around for many, many years and they're very effective.

AMT: And, go ahead.

BS: Sorry I was going to say, but they do sometimes lead to the side effects of muscle aches and pain.

AMT: I was going to ask you what the adverse reactions were. Okay. And so how did you conduct this survey. What did you do?

BS: So we looked at the countries that were reported in that previous study. So in that study they'd shown the rates of Statin's side effects experienced by patients in the different countries. And then we used a Google search for the Google implementations in each of those countries to search for Statin's side effects. And we figured out that the proportion of websites in each country about Statin that talked about side effects was actually correlated with the rate of side effects in those countries.

AMT: And so what does that tell you.

BS: So it suggests that the more likely the patients are to be able to find information about side effects when they go on Dr. Google the more likely they are to have the side effects. I mean of course it doesn't prove that the particular patients who experience the side effects actually went to the internet, that would be a difficult study to do, but we did show that this correlation definitely exists.

AMT: Well I have a clip I'd like to play for you. We spoke to Dr. Paul Enck. He's a professor of Psychosomatic Medicine at the University Hospital at Tubingen in Germany. He's a bit skeptical about what conclusions can be drawn. Listen to him.

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Paul Enck: What the paper reports in fact is that in English-speaking countries there is more information on Statins and there's obviously also more side effects on Statins. This is not a casual relationship, you don't know what is what. You don't know whether the website is actually responsible for your perceived intolerance rates or whether the intolerance rates caused by, you cannot interpret that.

AMT: So he's saying you don't know, did they get the adverse effects and then Google it or did they Google it and get the adverse effects.

BS: Oh for sure and I agree, I mean I think we're looking at the websites that are printed in or available in these countries and these languages that are about side effects, so we don't know whether people had side effects and then they blogged about them. And that's why we're finding them when we Google up side effects in those countries or the other way around. I mean I think there's no way to know that difference, I guess what my response would be, again it's hard to imagine there is a biological difference why people in England and Australia and Canada would have higher rates of side effects than people in France and Germany and Sweden. So I think the fact that there is a difference in the internet is certainly a credible reason why we're seeing those difference.

AMT: Right and just to clarify, you're not actually looking at patients reporting it, it's doctors estimating the number of patients, so the percentage of patients that would have adverse effects.

BS: Correct, yeah.

AMT: So could the doctors be Googling?

BS: That's possible too, I suppose. I think most doctors though would tend to go to the clinical trials, which report a fairly low rate of the side effects and are done internationally and are pretty consistent.

AMT: So what do you do with this information?

BS: So I think there's sort of two main messages. One is to patients, to be careful about what you read online and I think in the era of fake news, this is something that everybody is thinking about now. But just to, it's I mean I doubt they're going to stop people from going to Google to learn more about their health conditions and their medications but I think it's important for people to go to credible sources and to go to places that are reporting believable results and to not necessarily get too sucked in by what you're reading on blogs and so on. And then the other message would be to health care providers and pharmacists and people who are dispensing medications and to remind them that you know your patients are going to be going online and going to be reading about this and what they read actually can have important clinical consequences. And so it's best to really deal with that head on and acknowledge that you know you're going to read this on the internet, you're going to read about these side effects. But listen, this is why you're taking this medication. This is why it's important. This is how it's going to help you. And hopefully by emphasizing those benefits and really making clear why patients should be taking those medications it can sort of reduce the impact that some of those negative preconceived notions might have.

AMT: And again we're talking solely Statins here, we're not talking about other drugs.

BS: Yeah in this study in particular, we only looked at Statins. It's been actually well studied in the area. There's been several studies in the area of Statins, just because there seems to be this great, great disconnect in the proportion of side effects that occur in the real world compared to what was reported in political trials but I'm sure the same would apply for other drugs too.

AMT: Okay well Dr. Shah, thanks for your time today.

BS: Thank you so much.

AMT: That is Dr. Baiju Shah, he is a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the lead investigator on a new study called, "Does Googling need to Statinn intolerance." We reached him in Toronto. Well, my next two guests have both had to figure out how best to navigate the potential harm of the nocebo effect, with keeping patients informed about their health and choices. Dr. James McCormack is a professor in UBC's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He teaches pharmacology to healthcare providers. He was also a practicing pharmacist for many years. James McCormick joins us from Vancouver. And Dr. Brian Goldman is an emergency room physician in Toronto. He's the host of CBC Radio as a White Coat, Black Art and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello gentlemen.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Hello Anna-Maria Tremonti.

JAMES MCCORMACK: Good morning.

AMT: Brian Goldman, what questions does this study raise for you?

BG: The questions basically the big one not just a physician and the host of a radio show. The information that we give on the radio show and the kind of information that's presented in the news, how it's framed. I'm sure it surely gives anybody who is a medical practitioner who appears on the media in the media, some pause for thought. And by the way this is not the only example, in which this has happened there was a study in New Zealand that found that increased news coverage of side effects of the Human papillomavirus vaccine led to increased reports of side effects.

AMT: So not only going on the internet but actually just having having it reported as a problem or people are it's the power of suggestion, you're saying.

BG: Yeah it can be and I guess the other big thing is you know we live in the age of informed consent and that means accurately giving every side effect. And this as we've all known that if you tell some people about a list of side effects they're going to get them. And so do we have to change the way we give informed consent.

AMT: James McCormack what questions does this raise for you?

JM: Yeah. It's really interesting because it doesn't, none of these studies and we've talked about this for years in regards to you know if you tell a person about side effects do they get more side effects and it's actually really hard to tease that answer out because what might be happening and it's impossible to know, is it might be that because they learn about the side effects, they may report them more often. It doesn't mean necessarily that they will get them more often, if you know what I mean. Is that you know if you didn't know a particular side effect was caused by medication, you might not report it as caused by that. And there have been lots and lots of studies that have tried to tease this out and this in conjunction with this one, as well. And it is almost impossible to know whether us telling people about side effects actually increases them actually getting them or just reporting them. But it really doesn't matter a whole lot because as Brian was mentioning, we do have to in medicine today is talk to the patient about the side effects and he's exactly right in saying we need to give them the sort of accurate information and so in this case what one would do and I'm a big fan of shared decision-making. Not to say that oh you definitely need to be on a Statin or you definitely need to have your blood pressure checked, but here's the potential benefit. And we would, you would lay out, you know if this number of people took a Statin over a number of years this many people would benefit. And when it comes to the side effects of things like Statins, in general, they are very well tolerated. Most studies don't actually show that there's an increase in side effects compared to the groups that get placebo. And so, but what's really interesting with this is a lot of people seem to complain about muscle aches and so it's really hard to give a number. But what we would do in this case is say, roughly speaking, five to ten per cent of people will complain about muscle aches. It is unlikely that it's caused by that medication, but you need to be aware of that and if it occurs we need to talk about it.

AMT: Brian Goldman have you seen the Nocebo effect play out with patients.

BG: Sure. You know there are apocryphal stories of patients who were told you'll live five years and they live five years. You know they have a disease they're given a diagnosis and they live five years. By the same token I've seen the opposite occur. There are patients who have Stage 4 cancer, even terminal cancer and hang on long enough to see, to march down the aisle in a wedding or to see the birth of a grandchild. So there's no question that the mind can play an effect. I have to say that in the, you know, physicians have long been taught, other healthcare providers have long been taught to harness the placebo effect: a pleasing manner, be kind, be empathetic, be optimistic and they are I guess implicitly taught to try to tame the Nocebo effect. When it's one on one, you know, when I'm in the emergency department do I say you know we're going to give you some local anesthetic and it's going to numb the area and you'll be comfortable or do I say it's going to feel like a bee sting or it's going to burn, burn, burn, burn. And that will be the worst part of the procedure and I have to tell you that most of the time I say the ladder and now I realise that there are actually studies that show if I tell somebody that the local anesthetic is going to hurt, it hurts and then they feel terrible about having had that, 'oh that's the worst thing that's ever happened to me,' so maybe I have to change my speil.

AMT: Okay so do you actually measure like when you're, when you've got a patient who's got anxieties about medication or treatment, do you kind of try to temper that?

BG: Implicitly when you're talking about somebody who's anxious and they're worried about radiation from a C.T. scan. Implicitly you have to try to change, you provide context, I think as James McCormack just said, you talk about all the people who do well with the procedure, who don't have side effects. That's framing the the message. I think we do it ' implicitly, I dont think we, you know it's not a scientifically calibrated as what I may be saying if I'm talking about a patient who is having a stroke and is about to receive a clot busting drug.

AMT: James McCormack have there been times when you've talked to someone about the side effects and they thought, well, you know given the side effects I think I'll pass on that drug.

JM: Oh for sure and the Statins are a great class of medications because the vast majority of people dont actually benefit from them and so that's why you have to have the discussion because when you talk about the benefits of Statins and there are many ways of doing it, there's lots of online sort of tools that help guide health care providers and patients to go. If for instance, the way I mention it to someone who is on a Statin, if for instance a person who's never ever had a heart attack or a stroke, what we would be saying is roughly speaking we do it in, take a little bit longer than this, but we'd say if 100 people like you, if we give you a Statin it will reduce the number of people who have a heart attack by roughly one to two per cent. So that's the potential benefit about a one or two percent benefit or a reduction in your chance of a heart attack. And we probably what would also be very useful is talk about what their chance of a heart attack is, if we didn't do any treatment. And so we would say your chance of a heart attack is around five per cent over the next five to ten years and we can maybe reduce it down to four or three percent or whatever the numbers would be for that patient. And then you talk about the potential side effects of the Statins and in general we would say most people don't actually get side effects. They may report things because you can imagine muscle aches are very, very common. Whether or not you're on a Statin, lots of people get muscle aches. Where it gets tricky is teasing out the probably, maybe the one or two per cent of people that might get them because of the medication. It's really what we call a shared decision and it's not, I shouldn't really care whether my patient takes a Statin or not, I should care that they're well-informed, that they made a decision based on the best available evidence and then the next thing that we gotta do is make sure that if they are going to be taking it, make sure that they are tolerating it and then not having adverse events cause if one or two per cent are benefiting, even a small percentage of people not tolerating a drug is going to make it where they may not want to take that medication.

AMT: Brian.

BG: We're talking, it's very important that we focus on the the big thing here and that is expectations of patients. That's what Dr. Shah's study was about. And we have to know what expectations patients have when they are embarking on a course of chemotherapy. If they've had chemo that didn't work before, they may believe that the next round of chemo isn't going to work and therefore they might say no to it.

AMT: Or they might have experienced terrible side effects and say no, is that correct as well?

BG: That is also true. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So what we're talking about in a lighthearted way, with Google is that I googled and got the side effects or did I get the side effects and then googled. Is that on an individual basis people are making decisions and I've certainly had families where one person refused chemo and radiation because they had a parent who had a terrible reaction to chemo and radiation, when they had their cancer. So we have to know what those expectations are and deal with them.

AMT: We have to understand what the studies really are medically, as opposed to the anecdotal things as well then. Obviously.

BG: Exactly.

AMT: It's interesting because off the top we played that, you know, we've all heard them and those are American ads by the way, I don't think you can technically you can't advertise like that in Canada.

BG: That's correct.

AMT: So they start reading the side effects and they read them fast because there's so many and you see them, we've all seen them on television and thought, so why do they even sell that drug. But a part of that is a liability issue is it not, you have to kind of tell people this could happen to you or like how much of that plays into this?

BG: It's a liability issue and it's also accuracy. There are regulations that govern that kind of how that information has to be presented in the United States, in this case.

AMT: James McCormick you work with health care professionals, what do you tell them about this kinds of things. What are the conversations like about doctors providing it.

JM: Yeah it's exactly that, you know, litany of side effects that are presented in commercials or on TV or even in the CPS, which is sort of the driver monograph book, is really not useful just to sort of give to people. You have to sort of work your way through and say, you know pretty much every drug can cause a side effect, so let's talk about the ones that are most likely. And when we express that information we need to not use terms like common or less common or rare because the evidence is really clear that when you use those words people don't understand the magnitude of it. For instance there is a really interesting study that said, if you tell a person that a side effect is rare, the most common response is they believe that means it's about eight per cent, which is not even close to what almost any health care professional would be saying, if they said rare. So what we would want to say is.

AMT: What would it be if it's not eight per cent.

JM: There is no magic number, the problem is we use these words without actually thinking about what they actually mean. So we can't actually give a particular number to it so what we could say is we should probably use ballpark numbers of percentages and to say you know the chance of having a side effect is about one percent. So one in a hundred people get it or it's about ten per cent and then most importantly, if it does occur what do you do about it.

JM: OK James, we have to leave it there we're out of time. I think rule number one here is have a bigger conversation with your healthcare provider, but thank you both.

BG: You're welcome.

AMT: That is James McCormack, professor at UBC's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He's in Vancouver and Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art in our Toronto studio. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. The news is next and then it's a question that boys deal with, what does it mean to be a man today? We'll ask next.

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Segment 2

Guests: Rachel Giese, Clay Dennison, Brandon Hays

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, it was a relief to his supporters, family and friends when Canadian academic Hassan Diab was returned home from France this January, after more than three years in jail without being charged with a crime. Now CBC News has new information about Canada's role in his extradition and we've got more on that story in half an hour. But first what it means to be a man.

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AMT: In the space of months the MeToo movement has blown the lid off lifetimes worth of men's bad behavior. It has also breathed new life into the question of what it means to be a good man. That's a question young men find themselves grappling with today.

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VOICE 1: One of my older like friends I ask them what it's like to be a man.

VOICE 2: What do you want to know? Why do you ask them?

VOICE 1: Because I'm getting so I want to like become a good man, so.

VOICE 2: And what do they say?

VOICE 1: They tell me like, you know, you have to take care of yourself and to take care of your family and your friends.

AMT: Our producer Karen Marley, spoke with some young men in Toronto about what being a man means to them. Fittingly at a time when gender expectations are being re-examined and up ended, their answers ran the gamut.

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VOICE 1: Being emotional is part of like you know a human feeling so that's still being a man too. Cause a man like you know, he feels sad sometimes, he feels happy.

VOICE 2: Do you ever try and impress people with kind of your manliness, like a girl or whatever?

VOICE 3: No, not really.

VOICE 4: I want to be strong enough to like protect people and keep them safe. Like I don't want to have to worry about not being good enough to do something, if I don't do that I feel like I'm not good enough for myself.

VOICE 2: What does it mean to be manly?

VOICE 4: To respect others, like be a gentleman, like have manners.

VOICE 2: Do you ever feel a pressure to be more kind of more manly, more macho when you're with your friends, from your dad or anything like that?

VOICE 5: Yeah I do. I want to impress everybody actually, when the time comes.

VOICE 2: And what does it mean to impress someone, what do you have to do to impress someone as a guy?

VOICE 5: Like taking out, let's say we're falling trees, I could do that with the saws or fix the cars, whatever.

VOICE 2: So like kind of strong physical stuff.

VOICE 5: Yeah, physical stuff.

AMT: Well from being in touch with your emotions to being handy with a wrench, young man's ideas of manliness may be changing just at a time when their parents and society at large, harbor more and more concerns about our boys. How they're doing in school, whether they're making friends and making the friends and choices they need to be mentally healthy and how young men of colour are also often judged on sight. Here are a few Toronto fathers on what they're thinking about as they raise their sons.

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VOICE 6: So I don't have any particular interest in raising a walk tall and speak softly and carry a big stick kind of child. On the other hand there are times when that's really important, right. You can't go through life just venting all time. My kids are also half Japanese. We're living between cultures and I think that means you've already got two kinds of masculinity. You've got two then you should be able to triangulate a third and then maybe that one could be what you think is right.

VOICE 7: First, he can support himself, his own family right. I think second he should be strong enough and not dependent on anybody else. For girls, it's a little bit easier than boy, right. Cause the girl can look forward a boyfriend, which is very successful and the girls don't worry about that daily life stuff.

VOICE 8: I think that's like what a man should be like somebody who shows like, you know, good values and doesn't have to be like somebody who goes and uses aggression and beats people up or something like that. Somebody who faces responsibility.

VOICE 2: Is that any different for your daughter?

VOICE 8: No.

VOICE 9: There are seven boys in and out of my house. Yeah I think they are who they are and we don't worry too much about how manly they are or not.

VOICE 2: Do they feel pressured to be that kind of stereotypical man?

VOICE 9: They may feel that at school, but I don't think they feel it from us. And if anything they feel the pressure to be the nerds that we are. And so maybe we've succeeded in that.

AMT: Well we're going to keep this conversation going with three parents of boys. Rachel Giese is a journalist and editor at large at Chatelaine magazine, she has one son. Her new book is 'Boys: What It Means to Become A Man.' Brandon Hay is the founder of the Black Daddies Club, a movement to change the negative image of black fathers. He's the father of three boys. They are both with me in Toronto and Clay Dennison is a stay-at-home dad, to a 10-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. He's in Calgary. Hello everyone.

CLAY DENNISON: Good morning.

RACHEL GIESE: Good morning.

AMT: Rachel Giese let's start with you, what did you think of what those boys we just heard had to say about.

RG: It was amazing. It was incredibly fascinating because I think it captured how complicated and influx this moment is when it comes to understanding masculinity and maleness.

AMT: So Rachel when you talked to boys for your book, what did you hear from them about being a man?

RG: I think that they feel quite confused I think the conversations that adults are having are trickling down to them, but they're not being engaged in those conversations as meaningfully as they should be. So I think on one hand there's a monolithic of a boy that's emerged that we assume that the experience of boyhood is the same, so when we have conversations about boys being in crisis or boys being in trouble or we have to worry about boys, we assume a single experience and boys experiences are much more diverse. I think the boys who most need our attention and care are not getting our attention and care, the way that they should. And I think that there are also a lot of boys who feel anger and resentment in this moment.

AMT: Brandon Hay when you're listening to those dads what does what they were saying compare to how you look at and talk about manliness with your sons.

BRANDON HAYS: Right. When we talk of masculinity I think you have this immature script about masculinity, you have a mature script. I think I was taught an immature script growing up and I think it has been a relearning around masculinity that I'm still learning and I'm still teaching my three boys. With my eldest son we went to go see Moonlight. We had a conversation around what is black masculinity and when he said to me he was like, you know dad, masculinity is a performance. For me that was like this proud dad moment, you know what I'm saying like that's the equivalent of like the game-winning touchdown for me cause I feel like he's far ahead at 14 than I was at like 21. Right. But I do think there has to be a stepping outside of the box or the man box, so to speak. In the last two years I've learned the most around masculinity or black masculinity from gay black men or trans black men. And I think that has done me a great service in terms of how I parent and let go of certain things that I was taught.

AMT: Like what?

BH: Being born in Jamaica there's these ideologies of what black masculinity is so having a lot of money, not being gay, having a big penis or having a certain kind of body and recognizing that that is super destructive. Yeah.

AMT: Okay well Clay, let's get you into this conversation, what kind of image of masculinity did you get from your own dad growing up?

CD: My father was the typical alpha male in some ways. His attributes are today may be defined as toxic masculinity. I've heard that term used. He grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, studied engineering. The lessons he typically taught me were you have to win, you have to succeed, you know you have to dominate, you have to be stoic when times are tough and push through. In many ways my relationship was very difficult with him. In this new era that we're in now, there are so many different masculinities that are becoming acceptable and in many ways the old-school type of man, his attributes are sort of being denigrated. As a kid I wasn't happy with my father's attributes, but in hindsight there were certain aspects of who he was that today I can actually appreciate. As a parent now I'm trying to straddle both the traditional concept of masculinity, as well as the more contemporary, updated forms. You know if you look at the old type of masculinity as stoicism or self-reliance, the primacy of work or competition. There are definitely negative aspects to all those things, but there are also positive aspects to all those things, which I don't want to be lost. So what I'm trying to do with my son is to teach him that many of the old-school concepts were toxic if they were extreme, but there's also good aspects to them. But we can bring in more contemporary concepts like it's okay to be sensitive. It's good to collaborate, it's good to communicate. You don't have to be so stoic that you're silent when you need help. It's tough though.

AMT: Rachel you and your wife adopted a boy. When did you first start thinking about specific questions of what it means to be raising a boy.

RG: I mean initially not so much, in part because my wife and I were both white and our son is indigenous, he's Anishinaabe. So a lot of our focus was on keeping him connected to his culture. I think also because we're both queer, I think our understanding of gender was a lot more broad. What struck me is when I would start hearing things from other people, when they would observe something in our son and they would say, 'oh that's so typical of boys'. He's a very high energy person and so the assumption was, well that's a boy quality and is it, I don't know. But to see very early on, him being slotted into these roles.

AMT: Brandon you're nodding your head.

BH: I think a lot of our young men are being taught immature masculinity scripts cause you have men who are 60, in the clubs still moving as they're teenagers basically.

AMT: So when you talk about an immature script you're talking sort of stereotypical traditional to the extreme.

BH: Exactly.

AMT: OK. I have a clip I want you all to hear. This is Glenn Stanton. He's the director of Global Family Formation studies at Focus on the Family, which is an evangelical Christian organization. And this is about the importance he sees in teaching boys specific values of manliness. Listen to him.

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VOICE: Teaching boys about manhood is so much more important than teaching girls about womanhood. Womanhood more naturally develops, manhood does not. Manhood is demonstrated through action, through service, whereas womanhood is just an essence. But the important thing is we need to understand that manhood is a thing, that a good man is not just a feminized male and that women desire good men, not macho men, but masculine men and that masculinity is not the assertion of power. It's service.

AMT: Rachel Giese let's unpack there, what are you thinking?

RG: I mean I think it's interesting that he talks about the idea of manhood being built cause I think it's true. I mean I don't know that womanhood is an essence, that's not my experience, I think that femininity is as much a creation as masculinity is. But I think that what that gentleman was speaking to is very much still part of our culture. The idea that we are divided into male, which has distinct qualities and female, which has distinct qualities that these are opposites. I think the problem is is when we say we're going to portion off some qualities and say these belong to men and then these other qualities belong to women because that sort of traps men in this place that is typically sort of stoic and hard and emotionless and aggressive. And women in a place that's docile and quiet. It's interesting, I feel like at a moment when men and women are living lives that are more and more similar and equal in a way, there has been this blowback and a desire to move back a bit to more defined male and female labels and roles.

AMT: Clay Dennison how much do you differentiate between the values you'd like to see in your son and in your daughter?

CD: You know I don't, I in a way I follow their lead. My son is very, I guess you could call him a boy boy and my daughter has turned out to be a girly girl. But that hasn't been a result of us believing in a binary concept of masculinity or femininity and sort of trying to keep them in those boxes, it's just my son just happened to love playing with cars and tractors and I do understand what Rachel is saying that you know that the pendulum might be swinging the other way in the sense, if you have this vacuous vague concept of masculinity, it makes it difficult for parents to raise their son. It's easy to have a single target and say, 'son this is what it means to be a man.' And it's much more complicated when you say there are multiple masculinities out there. Embrace who you are and we'll help you with that journey. It's not easy. It's easier when things are defined.

AMT: Yeah I know we've been talking about something called the man box, Rachel, the Seven Pillars of masculinity, what have you learned?

RG: Yeah a lot of sociologists and people who do work around masculinity use the term the man box. So the idea that there is a sort of culturally understood set of norms that govern you know what masculine behavior is, so it tends to fall into things like being sexually aggressive, being financially successful, being traditionally attractive, being emotionally stoic, in control of your emotions, you know socially popular amongst other men, like the John Wayne kind of manliness. You know the trouble with that box, I mean there are many troubles with that box, so many men are shut out because of race, because of class, because of sexuality. So if you've traditionally been shut out of economic opportunities and if what it means to be a man is to have a lot of money well then are you a real man, if you're not economically successful. If you're not straight, if you're not sexually successful, if you're not conventionally good looking.

CD: Oh can I make a point there, you know it's interesting. I am a stay-at-home father now, but my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes five years ago, but prior to that I was a successful career guy in many ways sort of the archetypal. I'm not a minority, I'm Caucasian, I'm tall, I'm athletic, I was in the man box. And in many ways that was my identity and I felt secure in that. After my son was diagnosed with diabetes, I actually ended up leaving my career and becoming a stay-at-home dad. I couldn't believe how hard it was to suddenly not be in that box. We live in a nice neighbourhood, it's quite traditional conservative neighbourhood. I'd meet a dad or something at a dinner party or something and he'd say so what do you do. Welcome to the neighborhood and I'd say oh I'm a stay-at-home dad and I'll just get this blank look back. I felt humiliated and embarrassed even though what I was doing was for my family. So then I would backtrack and try to fit back in the box again and I would say, well you know I did have a successful career.

AMT: Have you talked about this with your son, Clay?

CD: I have a lot. In fact maybe because of the way I actually did respect my father's success. I have worried that my son doesn't have me as a traditional male role model. If he just sees me, you know, making daddy's famous spaghetti sauce, is that enough? So it's.

AMT: And how do you answer that?

CD: It's a really tough one. I think things have turned out for the best. I think my relationship with him is better than I could ever have imagined. I now introduce myself and I say I'm a stay-at-home dad, that's been a couple of years now, I don't backtrack. I don't need to.

AMT: Brandon I want to ask you how does race influence how you approach questions of masculinity with your sons.

BH: So I noticed from daycare going into like JK, you know my three black sons were like cute and they're adorable and as they got older now.

AMT: How old are they?

BH: My youngest turns 12. Julian turned 14 last weekend. My eldest is turning 16 in September. Like when there's incidents like Trayvon Martin or Eric garner. I have to have conversations with my sons about these situations and this idea of black men being seen as unhuman or unlovable. So there's that intentionality at home to like tell my kids every day that I love them, but when they go into the school system as my kids were getting older, the response that they were getting from teachers were shifting compared to like other students who are white or non-black. There was a quick acceleration to go to the office or very punitive responses to the like, you know, average boys' development. It's a hard balance of like, you know, not making my boys you know be afraid to go out in the world and engage. But also to make them be aware and let them know that yo like maybe not, you know, wearing that durag going to the mall is not the best option.

AMT: How do they respond to those conversations with you?

BH: I think it's challenging right, because I grew up in a criss-cross era, you know, so you know these guys wear their pants backwards and I did it, you know like this is part of the expression, right. I think for me as a black father, I get scared. I get legitly scared whenever I see, you know, I see Eric Garner getting choked out on TV and nothing happens. Like I have to talk to my kids about it and the challenging part is knowing that I can't protect them, right.

AMT: And all the other stories in Toronto of carding of people being stopped because they're black.

BH: Exactly. Even having late night classes, I used to hate having late night classes because I went to York, which is in close proximity to Jane and Finch, so you know, I felt like people were like does this guy go to York or is he from Jane and Finch?

AMT: Yeah. You talked about school as well and I want to pick up on that with Rachel. Your son as an indigenous teenager, what's his school experience been like?

RG: It's been difficult. There's a tonne of research indicating that teachers are much more likely to harshly punish children of colour, particularly black boys and indigenous boys here in Canada. So for sure, I think that my son has certainly had the experiences where I feel like he has been much more harshly penalized for things. I also saw very early on, the desire to call in the police to deal with things even in elementary school and my friends who have white children, who also can get into trouble from time to time as kids do, did not have the same experience.

AMT: How do you talk to your son about this?

RG: We talk pretty candidly. We, you know, we're pretty clear to him about, he's not a problem, he's a great kid, he's a lovely person, but the world is going to perceive him differently and he needs to be conscious of that. We also want to protect his youth. We don't want to lay such a burden on him that he doesn't get to be a little kid.

AMT: And into this whole conversation comes the stories of misogyny. In the news, whether it's with the Toronto van attack, with MeToo, with President Donald Trump's comments about grabbing women. You know President Trump excused his comments about grabbing women in his locker room talk. How do you navigate that conversation with boys?

CD: There seems to be a regression, this misogyny is coming back. But you know it's a strange situation because on one hand I see the group of boys that my son associates with, they are less misogynistic. They speak differently than in the 1980s', when I grew up. When I grew up, it was very, very common for boys to use pejorative terms like if you don't like something and say oh that is so gay. My son's friends seem a lot more sensitive to those issues. On the other hand, you see this regression. I'm not really sure what to do with it. I mean the whole MeToo movement also has kind of gone from exposing these very predatory men to now I don't know how to prepare my son for growing up, if an anonymous accusation on social media can bring down your reputation.

BH: I think for myself it sort of, it comes down to like having these teachable moments. And what I mean by that is sort of like if I'm driving with my sons and you know a song comes on and I hear my son you know sing along the lyrics, I'm like, I'll like stop it and have a conversation like whoa, what is this person saying. Sometimes my kids get annoyed with me, just in terms of like, 'OK dad, I just want to my music and just whatever right.' Yeah.

AMT: Well I just want to ask about like, I'm going to ask you about toxic masculinity as well. And I've got another clip I want you to hear, this is Dan Bilsker, a psychologist in Vancouver. This is his concern around some of these discussions.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When I hear reference to toxic masculinity, my reaction is that this is a kind of stigma. It's a caricature of men that to me, stops the exchange of ideas or prevents rational discourse. The vast majority of men are simply not like this caricatured image of toxic masculinity. It isn't accurate.

AMT: OK Rachel.

RG: Sure. I mean I understand why people, their hackles rise with the term toxic masculinity because they think a lot of people are believing that is saying that being male is toxic. And I, you know, I'm sort of careful when I deploy that term. I do worry that when people sort of say, well we can't say toxic masculinity, it feels again that we're having to protect a lot of feelings of men and I don't want to dismiss men's feelings, but it does feel like the MeToo movement for the first time, men actually getting some real punishments for horrid behaviour and the men that we've actually seen being punished for bad behaviour. It's not a rumour that's spread on social media, I think that a term like toxic masculinity, I think we have to be careful to not dismiss it so quickly because I think it's actually useful because I think what it does is it actually separates behaviour from men themselves. It's not saying all men are like this. It's saying that there are types of behaviour that come with performing masculinity that can be toxic.

AMT: Before I let you all go, I'd like to hear what you are all thinking about the kinds of men you are seeing your sons becoming.

CD: I am so unbelievably happy with the way things have been turning out. I actually learned a lot from my son. He has a lot to teach me because sometimes my knee jerk reaction can be the traditional sort of toxic masculine response. I've seen that socially where my first recommendation will be, well why don't you just push him away and tell him to get lost. If he's harassing you and then of course he'll be like, dad what are you talking about. You know, like that's not how you do things, you just, I just make a joke.

BH: I think the context growing in the Caribbean so there's this idea of like, you know, you want to be a man. So it's this idea that man up, you know, or man don't cry and all this other nonsense. Well I think for my kids it's sort of like there's importance for my three boys to like let them know it's OK. It's about modelling that and being vulnerable with my kids and it's also tough, right, cause there's moments where it's like letting them know, like OK you know, I'm having a tough day or I don't know or you know, what you said hurt my feelings. Like these weren't dialogues that would have with me basically.

AMT: That range of humanity.

BH: Exactly I was reframing that.

AMT: And Rachel, what kind of man are you seeing your son become?

RG: He's lovely. I mean my son is got a huge open heart, like he's a real heart in the sleeve, kind of person. There's an aspect of him that is kind of a jock, you know he plays hockey, he skateboards and that is also coupled with an incredible you know tenderness and sweetness and a curiosity. So I'm really grateful that he has not felt yet that he has to tamp that down that he feels that he can move in the world with an open heart. And I have a lot of optimism when I see him and when I see his friends.

AMT: Thank you all of you for this.

RG: Thank you so much.

CD: Thank you.

BH: Thank you very much.

AMT: Rachel Giese, author of "Boys: What It Means to Become A Man." She has a teenage son. Brandon Hay is the founder of Black Daddies Club, he is the father of three boys. Clay Dennison is a stay-at-home dad to a 10-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. You can share your experiences and thoughts on raising a boy. On Twitter we @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Email us from our cbc.ca/thecurrent. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to this and we'll put up some happy snaps of our panelists on our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us in our next half hour CBC reporter David Cochrane joins me with a government memo that raises questions about Canada's role in the extradition of Canadian Hassan Diab. This is The Current.

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Segment 3

Guests: David Cochrane, Robert Currie

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

At least four people have been killed and ten injured in what's described as the worst anti-Semitic terrorist attack in France since the Second World War. Windows on several streets were shattered and buildings and vehicles were damaged, when a powerful car bomb exploded outside a synagogue near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

AMT: Well that CBC News report on that bombing in Paris that killed four and injured 40 happened in 1980, but nearly 30 years later in 2008 it remained unsolved when a Canadian man found himself implicated in the synagogue blast. Hassan Diab was an academic in Ottawa, a sociology professor. He found himself the subject of an extradition request from the French government. He was arrested by the RCMP. After a lengthy process he was extradited to France in 2014, where he spent more than three years in jail. And yet Hassan Diab was never charged with a crime. This January he was finally returned to Canada to much fanfare, but important questions remained about the role Canada played in that extradition. Now as Hassan Diab adjusts to life back in Canada, CBC News has obtained a memo that sheds light on that question of Canada's role in sending him to France. CBC reporter David Cochrane has been working on this story and he's with me from Ottawa. Hi David.

DAVID COCHRANE: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: Before we get to the memo, tell me about the life of Hassan Diab now.

DC: Yeah it's better now than it was during his 38 months in a French prison, but it's definitely still an adjustment and I think that's about as big of an understatement as I can make about what he's going through. I mean when you look at this battle, one of the most intensely litigated extradition hearings in Canadian history, it has just consumed his life for a decade. It cost him his job as a university lecturer here in Ottawa, it's wiped him out financially, his savings are gone and the prison time completely just ripped him away from his family.

AMT: Three years away, a long time when you have a young family.

DC: Yeah and he's learning right. He's learning how to be a dad to this little girl Jena who grew up while he was in prison. He's getting to know his son Jad, who was born while Hassan Diab was behind bars, his wife was seven months pregnant when he was taken to France. And so we visited the family at their Ottawa apartment over breakfast and I asked her son about the best part being back home.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The best part is definitely to see the family. To be with the kids, like to hold them, to talk to them, to interact with them on a daily basis. And the more you do this, the more they get attached to you and they feel they want to go, they want to play. You know, this is the brightest part of it. It's not easy I would say, it's still tough, still recovering, put it this way. And I get always like the strength from just seeing the children in the morning. I took them all day to the park. They didn't have school. Just spent the day, that was you know, its good therapy for me to be with the children. So they really help alleviate the conditions of these, ten years it's not three years and two months. Three years and two months in that prison and six, seven years here under horrible conditions.

DC: OK here, Hassan Diab, paused there and kind of laughed. He's playing that breakfast game that you know every parent plays, I've done this with my kids right, the spoon or the fork it turns into an airplane, it's going to land to try to get the kid to eat.

AMT: Right.

DC: And while Hassan is trying to get his daughter Jena to eat, Jad says the plane is going to take Jena to France. And then there's that kind of awkward laugh because to his children, France is not a place, it's not a country, it's a prison. That's where they visited their dad. France was a jail. So he's home now, he's with his children, but even in these quiet breakfast moments, France still intrudes into the family's life.

AMT: And he talks about this ordeal lasting for longer than three years, remind us the timeline on how long this has gone on.

DC: Yeah, it's been a long time. I mean the RCMP arrested him in November of 2008 at France's request and that set in motion this intensely litigated extradition case. He was held in jail right off the bat for five months, before he even got bail. And then by 2011 an Ontario a judge ordered him extradited to France and then Diab and his legal team, they appealed this all the way to the Supreme Court. His case was denied and he was flown to Paris and taken to France's largest prison. So he started his stint in the Fleury-Merogis prison on his daughter Jenna's second birthday. That's the day he walked into a cell and less than two months after his incarceration began, his wife Rania Tfaily, she gave birth to their son Jad. So those were the first family milestones that he missed, but they would not be the last.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It was the most difficult period. And then you have one birthday after another. His first, his second, her second, her third, her fourth and her fifth. I missed them all. What more can you lose, if you lose these things, there's nothing left in life. I felt, these were things, events were accumulating to put more pressure on you and OK, this is the end of it. At the same time they say, keep going. Don't stop, don't give up. So we had these two different voices, one calling that's it, give up and the other one, no, don't give up.

AMT: And of course he did not give up, but what were those years like for him in prison?

DC: I mean they were pretty rough. I mean this prison, Fleury-Merogis, it's this decaying, concrete mega prison. It's the largest in Europe, it's been repeatedly condemned for the terrible physical conditions. I mean it leaks, there's mold, it's drafty so it's freezing, it's overcrowded and on top of that, it also houses some of the most dangerous criminals in all of France. We've got convicted and suspected terrorists. Anna Maria, this is the prison where the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack, it's where they met. It's a place where al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked inmates, they used their time behind bars to recruit from the prison population and even one of the perpetrators of the Bataclan attack was held here on the same floor as Hassan Diab. So this is where he spent 38 months. One thousand, one hundred and fifty seven days, alone and confined to a cell for about 20 to 22 hours a day.

AMT: So he was alone. Was he in with the general population of that prison?

DC: No he was on a protected ward with other prisoners that were considered too vulnerable to go into the general population, so ex-cops, ex-prison guards, sex-offenders, pedophiles. But these were all people serving time, I mean Diab was only under investigation. This was pretrial detention. There were no charges. And he says that the other inmates said he would talk to, like when he was on a bus going back and forth the court appearances, they kept saying like why are you here, you don't belong here. And it turns out they were right, it just took the French courts three years to figure that out.

AMT: And how did he deal with all of that emotionally?

DC: Well his kids, I mean his therapy now, he focused on his family, he focused on his wife, he focused on his kids. He had letters that he was sent to him by by supporters, urging him to hang in there and you know when you do the tally of everything he's lost and missed, I just found it amazing that he didn't get angry and that he's not out, you know, filled with rage now. And so I asked him when we sat down, I said, "How are you not consumed with anger?".

VOICE: [sc]

VOICE: You know if anger solves anything, I would be super angry because if you get angry at this point, you lose yourself. That's the last thing you still have, like your mind. I tried a lot of times, thinking of this same question in the cell, in the middle of the night sometimes. Just I wake up in the night like most of the nights and you have this question, am I angry now? If I get angry, really what will happen. I think I will kill myself like just like that. What can you do, what else? There's nothing else. Do you commit suicide? No, because you have, you know, these wonderful guys and the family and the kids. And do you solve anything? And the answer was constantly, no. It's better to be calm, to think of what you can do to lessen the problems of something like the extradition law, to get rid of it for instance, to make something really beneficial not to just lose it and go on a rampage, like wild or whatever what happened to me. This is how I debated it and I did this for long, long, long nights and this has over there.

[/sc].

AMT: It's quite extraordinary. David, all that, all those long nights, those months in those cells, no charges, what was taking so long?

DC: Well you know, the simple answer is that there was no case and that was almost clear from the beginning. I mean under France's anti-terror laws, you can be held for up to four years and eight months in pretrial detention without ever being charged. That's held for investigation. He spent three years, two month,s before being released and the charges dropped, but you know leading up to that Anna Maria, French judges had ordered he be released on bail eight times because the case is so weak, that he'd be allowed out of jail, have some freedom. But each time the French government appealed and got the bail revoked.

AMT: And what made the case so weak?

DC: Well from the very beginning there were problems. I mean the only physical evidence they had was handwriting analysis from two French experts that linked Diab's writing to the bombers and they got the Bombers writing from a hotel registration card that he filled out and a police statement that he signed when he was arrested a couple of days before the bombing for shoplifting. But this was later to be, later revealed to be deeply flawed because his prints were never matched with any of the prints found at the scene. And it turns out Hassan Diab has an alibi. Diab was in Beirut, on the day the bomb went off in Paris, he was writing exams and university records and other witnesses confirm this. So you have no prints, you have a flawed handwriting analysis, you've got an alibi and that got Diab ten years of legal battles and 38 months in prison.

AMT: And if there was no evidence, how did France manage to convince Canada to extradite him?

DC: Well the Department of Justice didn't need much convincing because the Department of Justice helped make it happen. And this is what we've uncovered. You remember this handwriting analysis that I just mentioned and how it was flawed. Well that became a very serious problem for the French case in late of 2009.

AMT: How so?

DC: Well the defense basically impeached it. They impeached the French handwriting evidence because they had their own experts that analyzed it and proved that some of the comparison samples, the French were relying on, they weren't even written by Hassan Diab. These were documents that Diab signed, but they were filled out by his ex-wife. So they were using her handwriting to compare it to the bombers and the case was essentially falling apart because that handwriting is the only physical evidence that they had.

AMT: So what happens, the case is falling apart, how does he get extradited?

DC: Well what we've obtained is a memo. It's a confidential memo that reveals really for the first time the steps that Canada took to help France's case. So this was November of 2009, they've just learned the handwriting is falling apart. A lawyer named Claude LeFrancois, the senior lawyer handling the case for Canada, he wrote France warning that significant evidence required for extradition would be lost. And then he asked them for two things to save the case. A new handwriting analysis, using proper samples and fingerprints of the bomber that France had to compare with Diab's and LeFrancois wrote that those prints could be extremely persuasive and perhaps conclusive. So Canada is aware at this point, the French case is falling apart and it directs France to deliver specific evidence that it needs to help extradite a Canadian citizen.

AMT: OK, they want more evidence. They say it's needed, what happened?

DC: Well case-saving evidence takes time. So LeFrancois gets an adjournment, that gets France the time it needs to get the evidence and then four months we've gone through the court transcripts, they show LeFrancois repeatedly telling the court, he has no knowledge of what France was doing. So we took this memo to Donald Bayne, he's Hassan Diab's lawyer.

DC: [sc]

VOICE: Is that Canada's role? Should the Department of Justice be doing this? This is France's case? Canada has no case against Dr. Diab, never did. If the French case is manifestly unreliable, seriously defective falling apart, so be it. Canada's not the investigators for France. And yet this Department of Justice representative, directed France, urged France and to do it promptly because he worried that this whole case was going to collapse and says so to get a new handwriting sample. So he's directing the French investigation.

VOICE: [/sc]

DC: Not just directing it Anna Maria, saving it, as it turned out.

AMT: Yeah. How was it saved?

DC: Well so May of 2010, we flash forward a couple of months, new handwriting analysis arrives and the prosecution calls this, in later arguments, its smoking gun. What happened was the defense handwriting experts, they looked at this and they tore this apart too and they said the methodology was wrong, it was critically flawed. The conclusions were improbable, but under Canada's extradition laws any evidence that France submitted that wasn't tainted, like the original handwriting evidence was, legally it has to be considered reliable. So because this used proper samples, it couldn't be impeached like the first two reports were. So the prosecution's smoking gun, as they called it, it was legally bullet-proof and because of that the judge ordered the extradition even though he called France's case weak and Anna Maria he warned in his written decision that it was unlikely to lead to a conviction.

AMT: I'm getting confused though, so why wasn't all of the other evidence that seemingly exonerates Hassan Diab taken into account? The fingerprints that didn't match, the alibi.

DC: Yeah I mean the simple answer is this is not a trial. This is a hearing and it all comes back to the extradition laws. And under those laws, the prosecution France, they only need to present evidence of guilt. The defense can challenge what the prosecution tables, that's what they did with the handwriting, but it can't bring in its own evidence. This is why Diab couldn't present the alibi that I mentioned earlier and why the fingerprint evidence that didn't match, the defense says it was never shared with them, it was never shown to the court. And these are all things that Hassan Diab and his lawyer Donald Bayne say just need to change in the extradition law because Dhiab lacked the basic protections they would have had, had he faced a similar charge here in Canada.

AMT: So what's the Canadian government saying about all of this, David?

DC: Well we reached out to them a couple of weeks ago and Claude LeFrancois, he did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but a Department of Justice spokesperson said in a statement that this is normal practice for Canadian government lawyers to advise extradition requesting states like France on how to strengthen their case. The spokesperson says Canada doesn't disclose these communications with its foreign partners to the court. So it's normal practice for Canada to help a country make its case better and it's normal practice to keep those efforts private from the court and the defense.

AMT: So where does this go next for Hassan Diab?

DC: Well unfortunately for Mr. Diyab, his battle is not over because he's out, but France has appealed his release. Those arguments were heard April 11th, the decision is going to be made on July 6th, if France wins Diab faces the prospect of another extradition request or maybe even being tried in absentia.

AMT: And in the meantime?

DC: Well, in the meantime he's just trying to put his life back together. He hasn't worked in 10 years. He hopes to get back into academia. He has a Ph.D. in sociology. He hopes to get some kind of work because the family really doesn't have a lot of money at this point. Don Bayne who people may know as Mike Duffy's lawyer, he worked for for free for nine years. He estimates that he's given Diab well over a million bucks in free legal work, but he's still got legal bills in France and they've relied on a lot of people over the years. Him and his wife Rania Tfaily, who also is a university professor, they've got this large network of supporters. They helped them fundraise for their legal costs, the handwriting experts, they've been donating their own money. Some of them put up their houses as collateral for his bail. Now they've never told Diab exactly how much money they've raised for him because they don't want them to know. But he he can never pay them back, it's just going to be beyond his means, but he says he wants to try.

AMT: And is there any talk of compensation?

DC: Well if the French process eventually ends with full exoneration, Diab's going to be entitled to compensation for France for his last time, it's called a tariff and I'm told it would work out to a little over a hundred thousand dollars Canadian for 38 months in jail. I mean that's not even close to covering what he lost. Diab says whatever money he gets from that, he's going to give it to those supporters who donated to help him out over the years. Donald Bayne, his lawyer thinks Diab has a case against the Canadian government, but when I talked to Diab about that, he told me he's just not interested in suing.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Money for me doesn't mean a lot, especially after this long ordeal. A day with the kids is worth more than all the money they could give me, these people. Just one day with the kids is more than all their money.

DC: So he doesn't want money, Anna Maria, what Diab wants, what Donald Bayne wants is an inquiry into what happened. Now the Justice Department is doing an internal review and an internal review to see what lessons can be learned. That doesn't work for Bayne and Diab, they think there needs to be a public accounting here of how Canada's extradition laws work and more importantly how they fail because their ultimate aim is to get those laws changed so that there's just no more stories like this one for us to tell.

AMT: David thank you.

DC: You're welcome. Thank you.

AMT: David Cochrane, CBC reporter in Ottawa. Well global affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland did address these new revelations yesterday speaking in the House of Commons, she said her department will look into the decision to extradite Hassan Diab. Meanwhile there are people in Canada working on getting the extradition law changed. Robert Currie is putting together a group of experts to make recommendations to the Canadian government. He teaches Transnational Criminal law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Hello.

ROBERT CURRIE: Good morning.

AMT: What were you thinking as you listened to this story of how Hassan Diab is working at adapting to his life back in Canada.

RC: Well Anna Maria, I've been following this case since Mr. Diab was arrested in 2008 and that the human side of it is appalling and inspirational all the same time, particularly given how Mr. Diab has reacted in recent times. But the legal side of it is one where I think even if he's not feeling angry, Canadians may start to feel angry about it.

AMT: We heard about the memos showing how the Canadian government was working with the French government on their case for extradition, what's your reaction to that?

RC: Well I guess it's, it's two things. One it's not unusual for extradition authorities in different countries who are partners, to work with each other to facilitate extradition processes and requests. So the Justice Department rep whom Mr. Cochrane quoted is quite right about that and there are good public policy reasons for that because the legal systems of different countries often don't speak exactly the same language and intergovernment communications can be quite useful in keeping the process moving. But on this one, I think there are some surprises. I think there are some things that would upset Canadians. First of all that, when the RCMP analysis indicated that the fingerprints didn't match when they came into Canada and were analyzed and then they were withheld from the defense. That's something that I think raises a problem, but secondly and more generally I think Canadians would be surprised and upset that Canada kept putting so much energy into propping up a French case that was falling apart.

AMT: And why is it necessary anyway for Canadian officials to work with other countries who are looking to have suspects extradited?

RC: Well extradition is a weird little corner of the law and every country does it differently and it's always driven by the country's own domestic laws and their processes, the way their courts work and the way their laws work. So it's standard practice and I think it's good practice because if for example you might have a country that Canada partners up with in extradition relations and they will say things like, you know, you might ask for sworn evidence, we don't have that concept in our law of sworn evidence. Can we work out an alternative? Can we work out a way to to make things more efficient? So there are very good reasons for that to happen, but when you see a situation like this where there's a practically a Keystone Cop operation going on at the hands of the requesting state, which in this case was France, there's a point at which in my view, Canadian government officials ought to be looking at that and saying OK are we really going to keep propping up this process or is there a point at which we draw a line under this and move on from this obviously flawed case.

AMT: So in other words it can go too far.

RC: Exactly. I think it can go too far and one of the main problems with our extradition laws is that there aren't any pressure valves built in for cases like Mr.Diab's, which are unusual. I think it's worth saying that most extradition cases run forward very efficiently because they involve you know people who have committed crimes in other countries. And there's a lot of interest in, public interest, for Canadians and people of other countries for extradition to proceed smoothly. But when you have a case like this, we need some changes in our law in order and we can talk about that, but in order to deal with the unusual cases as they arise.

AMT: So in other words you don't have a problem with the overall system, but but some of the specifics need working.

RC: Yes there are a number of specific points and this case I have always said is the best example of a case, which shows that the lack of ability for an individual to challenge the case of a requesting state in our system, needs to change.

AMT: So if the laws don't change, who would be affected the most?

RC: Possibly anyone. And this is the frightening thing about extradition because any of us when we are abroad, could get into trouble with the local, legal process and then be sought for extradition, even in a case like this where the requesting state's case is ridiculous and increasingly becomes clear how ridiculous it is. And yet the the wheels of our extradition process grind forward. So it could literally be anyone, it doesn't have to be someone like Hassan Diab who happened to be living abroad in 1980. It could be somebody who goes on vacation to a tropical destination or it could be a businessperson who operates in various other countries in the world.

AMT: Have you seen any indication that the government is open to changing this law?

RC: There have been public statements by both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice arising from this very case. The Prime Minister indicated a willingness to look at our extradition laws to make sure they're operating fairly. The Justice Minister said something similar and directed this internal inquiry that that Mr. Cochrane mentioned. And that's where it has to happen in terms of a new law being drafted, but I would suggest and I'm not alone, that the federal government needs some input as to how these laws should operate in the future.

AMT: OK Robert Currie, thank you for your insights into this.

RC: It's my pleasure.

AMT: Robert Currie, Professor of Law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Halifax. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Ahead of Mother's Day, Actor Marcia Gay Harden opens up about her mother's quiet influence on her career and the pain of her mother's Alzheimers diagnosis. That's on Q today. Earlier I spoke with three parents about what it's like to raise sons in an era where the meaning of manliness is in flux, in many ways Kelly Carrington is a pretty typical man, but in one way not so much. We're going to leave you today with some thoughts from Kelly about being a man, as he tosses a football with his three sons at their home in Prospect, Nova Scotia. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

AMT: [sc]

VOICE 1: OK I'm a dad. I'm a partner to my lovely wife. I am a gardener, canoer, woodworker and then a doula. "Hey, hey, hey. No no no. Don't kick your brother please." I don't think when people have in their brain what a duel looks like. I don't think that they see me. You know I'm 5 foot 11, 220 pound, black man with dreadlocks. You know like if you're meeting new people and they ask you know what do you do. And I'm like well I'm a massage therapist and a doula and they're like 'no, no, what do you really do'. I'm like that's what I do, that's my job. And they're like 'Oh cool, I didn't know that there was any men'. And I'm like well as far as I know, I'm the only one. "Easy, easy. Do you guys get it, what I do?

VOICE 2: You help people through birth, before, during and afterwards.

VOICE 3: I don't really know.

VOICE 1: Masculinity to me is being fair, not being afraid to show your emotion, being kind and being a good human being. I don't understand how that is such a foreign concept. I really do not understand. Especially with MeToo and all these horrible stories that are coming out about these men and how inappropriate they are and dangerous. How is it not more important now to be raising boys to be more compassionate and all those other things right. I think it's more important now than ever. I don't want my boys to ever feel pressured to be somebody that they're not. No matter what society's telling them.

[End theme]

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May 2, 2018 episode transcript

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