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The Current Transcript for May 3, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

This is a moment of unprecedented attack on the State Department.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It was just yesterday that President Donald Trump presided over the swearing in of a new U.S. secretary of state going out of his way to praise thousands of diplomats and embassy staff. But the man you just heard tells a different story documenting the Trump administration's assault on its own State Department to the point where he says it has weakened American influence. In just a moment Ronan Farrow who worked for the State Department before becoming a journalist talks about what he calls the war on peace and the end of diplomacy. We'll talk about his work and the MeToo movement as well in just a moment. Also today from MeToo to bullying in the workplace.

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They don't believe that good governance should be based on these types of tactics. I just- it may have served a purpose at one point in our history I don't know. I can tell you it doesn't serve a purpose today.

AMT: The complaints began over behavior in the caucus of Newfoundland's governing Liberal Party but they raised uncomfortable questions about what has long been seen as the cut and thrust of political discourse. We're on that story in about half an hour. And in the conversations about dying with dignity this woman speaks up in praise of what she calls a compromised life worth living.

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I don't want to pick a date and say this is the end of my life simply because when I think about what's transpired in the past year, what I would have missed and I would've missed out on a lot.

AMT: Ing Wong Ward has lived with spinal muscular atrophy since infancy. Now she has cancer and because of the complications of her existing condition it cannot be treated. But rather than medically assisted death she wants our society to treat terminally ill patients with medically assisted living. Here her in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Trump is creating a world of empty embassies and risking global stability, says Ronan Farrow

Guest: Ronan Farrow

SOUNDCLIP

You have three thousand five hundred security personnel and thousands more diplomats embassy staff civil servants and administrative personnel all of whom collectively play a vital role in advancing the safety liberty prosperity and all good things of the United States, very important people great people. As President Eisenhower said in 1953 make no mistake. The reason we have representatives around the world is to protect American interests.

AMT: Well that is the U.S. president Donald Trump yesterday swearing in his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. But for all his praise of the State Department's role in the world there are serious concerns inside the organization about its ability to fulfil that role under the Trump administration. In fact yesterday's ceremony marked the first time Donald Trump has set foot in there. My guest today spent a lot of time at the State Department during the Obama years when he worked in the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, though you may know Ronan Farrow best today as an investigative journalist. His reporting on Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood moguls sexual assault allegations earned him a Pulitzer Prize along with the New York Times and crucially it helped launch the MeToo movement and effect major societal change. To discuss that and the ideas in his new book Ronan Farrow joins me from Boston. His book is War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. Ronan Farrow. Hello.

RONAN FARROW: Hello Anna Maria. Good to be here.

AMT: Well congratulations on your Pulitzer.

RONAN FARROW: Thank you so much means a lot. It's something that I don't at all take for granted partly because that story was so beset by so many obstacles. And I really just constantly come back to the bravery of all those sources and I'm grateful their stories were heard.

AMT: You won the Pulitzer for exposing Harvey Weinstein, so I think a lot of people would be surprised to see your new book is a detailed analysis of American diplomacy. So let's start there. How do you square what President Trump said in that clip we just heard about the importance of the State Department with how his administration has dealt with the institution?

RONAN FARROW: Well I think what he said is absolutely correct. You know the work of America's diplomats is indispensable for American citizens and for our close neighbours in Canada and for our allies all around the world. You know these are the people who help keep the North American continent safe. You know they screen countless visa applicants who could potentially be dangerous. They pull American citizens out of dangerous situations and those can also often be situations that embroil Canadian and other citizens. This is work that matters for the world and for global safety. And of course at the top level these are also the men and women who have the most expertise in creating the deals that overt global conflict, to make sure that we as a nation as a nation that significantly shapes the fate of all nations have non-military options at our disposal. To your question about how you square it with what has actually happened under the Trump administration, there is no easy answer to that. This is a moment of unprecedented attack on the State Department where countless career diplomats have been purged from their jobs, where the prestige and power of the diplomatic profession has been badly eroded and undercut and where - at the top level of the State Department - there is utter chaos that obviously culminated in the very recent and unceremonious firing of Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo's predecessor.

AMT: And so now Mike Pompeo, former CIA chief, is the new secretary of state. He has a reputation as a hawk. What do you think a Pompeo State Department will look like in world affairs?

RONAN FARROW: Mike Pompoe has matched the president's saber rattling and his threats to dismantle the Iran deal for instance. He seems not to be particularly concerned about preserving the large scale diplomatic accomplishments of recent history. He is legendarily a hawk and in a world where increasingly the problem is that America has the capacity on the military side and not on the peacemaking side. There are a lot of questions amongst career officials at the State Department as to whether he will be the kind of leader who exacerbates that trend and puts still more power in the hands of military and intelligence leadership. Or whether he is someone who can pull out of what has really become a nosedive in American diplomacy.

AMT: You spoke to every living secretary of state for your research. What were some of the concerns they raised about the state of the State Department under President Trump?

RONAN FARROW: Many of them have grave concerns and Colin Powell was incredibly uncensored here saying you know the Trump administration has ripped the guts out of American diplomacy, that we are in the midst of mortgaging our future, is one phrase that he used. And he's right in a sense you know that the damage that's being done to America's capacity to negotiate and make peace is something that isn't going to be fixable overnight. You can bring in leadership that really prioritizes large scale diplomatic endeavor and that's important but it's going to take years to reinstate the flow of talent into the department, to make sure that we have the young ambassadors in waiting coming into the system in the first place so that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we don't have a world of empty embassies which is what we're looking at right now.

AMT: Well let's look at some of the fallout just in what's happening right now. This week U.S. diplomacy has been front and center with two precarious situations; the Iran deal, the peace talks between North and South Korea. The Iran deal was a huge struggle for the Obama administration to get accepted. What did that deal say about the way diplomacy should work?

RONAN FARROW: You know the lessons of the Obama administration are interesting and complicated. There are senior Obama administration officials like Ben Rhodes, who as you know one of the most influential foreign policy voices in that administration, saying kind of a mia culpa. You know that there was an early period where there was a policy process overtaken by what Rhodes called celebrity generals. You know that during the United States review of its posture in Afghanistan, which is a place I served for the State Department, we didn't really let diplomats voices into the room. And one of the stories I tell in War on Peace is how that resulted in occasions where we really actively sabotaged opportunities for diplomacy. That said, to go back to Ben Rhodes , he talked about a course correction. And I think it's a pretty fair appraisal of what happened to say that they of course corrected . At the end of that administration you wound up with, after several years of really doubling down on diplomacy, the Iran deal, the thaw in relations with Cuba, the Paris climate change accord obviously you know all accomplishments that are under threat now. The Iran deal is of particular interest because I think it represents both a lot of the importance of diplomacy and also a lot of the misunderstandings that diplomacy carries with it. There's this fantasy that there was some alternative perfect deal and in fact you know the architects of the Iran deal are the first to admit that it is highly imperfect, that it addresses only a narrow slice of Iran's bad behavior. It doesn't address their human rights abuses or their non nuclear missile tests or any number of problems that we have with them. But it's unclear how those other issues would have benefited from us also confronting a rising nuclear power in Iran. And what seemingly every world power ally of the United States involved in that deal agrees on is that Iran has, within the narrow confines of that flawed agreement, abided by its terms. So you have a situation with the Iran deal where if the United States pulls out it will look like exactly what it is, which is American leadership, meaning we sabotage our own deals and do so unilaterally. And that will send an extraordinarily alarming signal to our allies and drive a wedge between the United States and many allies around the world. But it will also, maybe more importantly, send a message to North Korea . What is the next rogue regime that we hope to make a deal with to contain their nuclear power supposed to think when they see us walk away from the last time we tried this?

AMT: And when you look at Korea Mr. Trump is taking credit for bringing the north and south together. He's already being touted as deserving the Nobel Peace Prize. Could it be that his unorthodox methods to that point on North Korea have worked?

RONAN FARROW: Time will tell. It's completely possible that for instance the American president meeting with Kim Jong Un will prove to be part of an effective diplomatic approach. There's no reason why that can't be part of diplomacy with North Korea. However there are also a lot of reasons why we have turned down that opportunity in the past. And there are a lot of occasions on which North Korea has said the things that they're saying now that seem optimistic and it turns out they were lying. And there's a real risk all of the experts involved in North Korea diplomacy say that we end up getting played if we go into this meeting. You know that absent a core of experts of the kind we used to have to steer policy in that region to really identify the pressure points, and steer us away from pitfalls and make sure we don't make commitments we shouldn't be making. You know without that kind of attentiveness from career diplomats who know the region we may well end up getting played this time. So it's really a wait and watch situation. I think obviously everyone hopes for the best. But the point is if we had a functional diplomatic apparatus there'd be less risk associated with this gambit.

AMT: Okay so even like the angry tweets and the public threats, even if they could push something you need the diplomacy happening behind the scenes you need a whole other layer going on, and you're telling me that those people actually don't exist anymore, do they?

RONAN FARROW: I think that's right. You know there was a core of North Korea experts at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration when we last tackled this problem. That was an attempt that was not a complete failure. You know it fell through in the end. But we made a lot of inroads particularly in our dialogue with China around this issue. Those are threads that we will likely have to pick up if we want to resume regional diplomacy there because the Chinese have more leverage over North Korea than anyone. And right now we don't have that kind of a core of experts and we don't seem to have any interaction between the people who really know those lessons of the past and the current approach.

AMT: . President Trump ran on a platform of America first did people in the State Department see that as a warning, that the State Department was going to be gutted?

RONAN FARROW: I think when this administration came in people didn't know what to expect because Donald Trump didn't really campaign on specific policy promises.You know there were a lot of atmospherics certainly, he talked about you know bad deals and reducing spending abroad and not kowtowing to foreign powers as much. You know the great irony is that in slashing our diplomatic capacity we've actually ceded more and more authority to for instance China which is in the process of going in the other direction and spending more and more on its diplomats around the world.

AMT: It's almost unwitting, isn't it, that the United States is pulling back China's just moving in?

RONAN FARROW: That's exactly right. In place after place around the world we see a situation where China is building more bridges and more dams and has surprisingly given China's reputation as just sort of a commercially minded rapacious interloper. You know shuttle diplomacy underway. They've they've got an envoy tackling regional peace issues in Sudan for instance. This is a new side of China. And while it's going to take a long time for China to eclipse American leadership. The trend line is pretty striking. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that in many of the places I'm talking about we no longer have American ambassadors.

AMT: And what does that mean for the United States? Like connect those dots into the future for me.

RONAN FARROW: I am careful to not paint an overly rosy picture of American leadership either. You know I fully embrace the fact that the United States is an imperfect global leader, that you know the impact of our leadership can often be deleterious to global security, that our human rights track record is not spotless either. But I still do believe that a nation like China which has a serious authoritarian streak and serious human rights issues that it has not confronted, and despite this new mounting diplomatic face that they are putting forward to the world is still very much about its own narrow commercial interests. I think that we should all question whether we want that brand of leadership to overtake the United States influence.

AMT: Is what President Trump has been doing to the State Department really unprecedented?

RONAN FARROW: Unprecedented is a word that gets thrown around a lot when outlets describe what is invariably called an assault on the State Department, or a war on the State Department. And it is certainly a new extreme you know we've never seen an administration come in and just you know sack career expert after career expert all at once. We've never seen this degree of an empty state department or empty embassies that have acting low level officials instead of ambassadors. This is new. But I hesitate to use the term unprecedented because actually there's plenty of precedent in American history. And those are the occasions when we have done similar slashing and burning of America's diplomatic capacity, not to the same extent, but in a similar direction. And we can derive clear lessons from that if we choose to. You know you look at the Clinton administration where, after the Cold War, James Carville who was Clinton's campaign manager said it's the economy stupid. That was the mantra. And they came in on a promise of domestic reinvestment and one of the consequences of that is they sent out Warren Christopher there, for secretary of state under that administration, to make a call for slashing the State Department that sounded very similar to Rex Tillerson rhetoric over the past year. And in the end we slashed diplomatic and development spending by 30 percent over the course of the 90s, closed a ton of embassies, shuttered and folded into the State Department proper two very important government agencies devoted to information and arms control and lost a lot of influence. And when 9/11 rolled around we did not have the kind of robust diplomatic capacity that I think we needed. And all of this contributes to a soup of complicated reasons some of them unavoidable but some of them avoidable that led us to this hyper hyper militarized presence in the years since 9/11.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about the militarization of foreign policy in the U.S. How has relying on the Pentagon and the intelligence services changed the way that the United States carries out foreign policy?

RONAN FARROW: Well I'm very careful to point out you know no one, no sane person, is proposing that we as a nation surrender military might. Indeed the best examples of diplomatic leadership came about because there was a kind of synergistic combination of military might and the threat of military might and diplomatic endeavor. You know if you look at Bosnia and the Dayton peace accord brokered there by Richard Holbrooke. That is an agreement that came about partly because he was able to array the threat of NATO strikes around his diplomatic theater. He was a colorful larger than life guy and you know made all these kinds of grand gestures during the negotiations, had luggage moved out in front of the American negotiators rooms so that the other side would freak out and think that the negotiations were over and come back to the table. You know this was all supported by American military might. That said you know I think what most of the voices in this book agree on is that there is a problem of balance. You know Madeleine Albright, Clinton's second secretary of state, talks about the inevitability of a larger Pentagon than State Department but she also talks about it being way out of whack, way way more imbalanced than it needs to be and how that is deleterious to our interests around the world.

AMT: I'm struck too when you talk about the cutbacks and the reductions. You've got a little story about where was it that they needed a satellite dish for the roof, and they had to jerry rig it with a barbecue.

RONAN FARROW: [Laughs] I believe that was in the embassy in Beijing during the 90s when Clinton was really hacking away at the State Department. Yeah lots of colorful anecdotes, sewers leaking, and as you say in one embassy you know these poor career foreign service officers like getting on the roof and jerry rigging up like a barbecue grill to try to get TV signals, because they were so desperate for coverage and they didn't have money to actually have satellite dishes. And you know this is not a productive way to empower our diplomats. It wasn't then and you know a similar and much worse story is playing out now.

AMT: Last month the State Department confirmed it's investigating how allegations of sexual harassment and assault were handled inside the department. And many people are saying it is the MeToo movement that motivated that investigation. What are your thoughts now that the MeToo movement has come to your old workplace?

RONAN FARROW: Look I think we should all welcome accountability in every career, in every walk of life. It was always very clear to me, reporting on these stories about sexual violence, that this was not about Harvey Weinstein or about Hollywood. This was about the abuse of power and the systems that silence survivors of sexual violence regardless of what career they're in. And you know many of your listeners will, I'm sure, be all too familiar with the dynamics of powerful men in whatever community, whatever business you know using their power to either abuse people or just as importantly silence people that they have abused. So I think it is a welcome sign of not just what our supporters did but the bravery of men and women coming forward and talking about their stories of abuse that you see these kinds of follow on investigations in every walk of life including diplomacy.

AMT: And this is where I see some overlap in your work as we're talking today. Your job in the State Department brought you to Afghanistan and as a journalist you interviewed suspected war criminal General Dostum. You have taken risks. You've faced powerful people. How did those experiences prepare you to investigate the mighty Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein?

RONAN FARROW: You know I was very fortunate to grow up in a family where a lot of my siblings were adopted from around the world, with very serious disabilities and special needs. And the people I loved most were a pretty direct reflection of many of the world's problems. You know people who had come from terrible poverty and abuse and it was there for hard to ignore those problems. And I also had the benefit of a wonderfully public service minded and very brave single mom who raised me, and I owe a lot of my sense of principle to her. I don't always live up to it but I try in earnest. And you know I have tried, maybe because of the combination of that and kind of growing up in a family of storytellers as well, to put a spotlight on stories that I don't think are being heard and to elevate voices that I think we should hear more of. And that spanned work I did in Sudan where I was writing about survivors of sexual violence as a tool of war in that region to exposing these alleged mass killings in Afghanistan. You know going out there as I reported on this book War on Peace to kind of dig up, almost literally, evidence about a mysterious mass grave in the desert and multiple administrations in the United States covering up evidence that it had been the work of an ally of ours, an ally that we laid down with in the context of a very militarized moment in foreign policy where we kind of sidelined any concerns, except giving guns to the guys who could help us go up against our enemy in the short term.

AMT: Abuse of power takes many forms doesn't it?

RONAN FARROW: It does indeed.

AMT: Your fact checker at The New Yorker Natalie Meade tweeted that working on your Weinstein reporting was the most high stakes work she had ever done that it gave gray hairs.

RONAN FARROW: [Laugh] I apologize for the gray hairs Natalie. Natalie's hair looks fantastic. And Natalie is a fantastic journalist and fact checker and it was really a remarkable team effort at the New Yorker, after a long saga of fighting to get that story out to be embraced by and supported and defended by David Remnick who is the editor of The New Yorker and one of the great living journalists. And Natalie and a guy named Fergus McIntosh and a woman named Tammy Kim and the list goes on and on a cadre of incredible fact checkers and lawyers and copy editors. You know it really is a team effort to do reporting of this kind. I'm so grateful to everyone who poured a whole lot of sweat and blood sleepless nights into breaking these stories.

AMT: Did you have an idea of that exposing Harvey Weinstein would resonate that powerfully and that widely?

RONAN FARROW: I'm just so grateful that it did. You know I was very much locked into the concerns about honoring the bravery of the women who spoke to me and making sure that their sacrifice and courage hadn't been for nothing. And I don't know that I spent a ton of time thinking very far beyond that except that I knew in a general sense that this was the tip of the iceberg for a deep vein of untold stories. And that I had some sense that the bravery of these women might inspire other people. And clearly it has. And I'm just profoundly grateful to them and everyone who has heard and followed on their message.

AMT: Sexual harassment and worse by powerful men has existed for a very long time. What was it about this moment in history that made the MeToo movement possible do you think?

RONAN FARROW: I think the world changed. I think Anna Maria, that where once was the case that survivors of sexual violence, particularly those whose abusers were powerful, looked at the media landscape and saw no example of stories like theirs being told and increasingly brave survivors have chipped away at that status quo. We now see examples stretching back a few years that I think predated and helped inform the moment we're in currently. You know you can look at what Bill Cosby's accusers went through, being smeared terribly and dealing with very divisive reactions but telling their stories bravely. And you know I struggled to cover that issue as much as I could. It was apparent to me that we weren't doing enough to tell those stories. And when it came to speaking to these survivors of sexual violence in the Weinstein story, you know we had long and painstaking conversations about all the ramifications of their speaking. And understandably they were trepidation and they feared retaliation. And you know I think they were profoundly motivated by the desire to help other people and the knowledge that they could maybe warn the next person to come along. But I think they were also empowered by those little shreds of precedent that I could present to them. You know that I could say yes they got a brutal reaction but they did tell their stories in the case of Cosby. You know that Gretchen Carlson at Fox News had told her story and had been respected afterwards more recently. You know that there was a growing push towards accountability where maybe, just maybe, they could envision a universe for the first time in which they might be heard.

AMT: This week Ashley Judd said she is suing Harvey Weinstein for harming her career point. And for him pointedly telling a director that she was a nightmare after she refused his sexual advances. How did you react to that news?

RONAN FARROW: I think Ashley Judd is a very committed activist and a very principled person. And I think she's being smart and calculated about how she makes her moves on this for maximum impact. You know I know that that suit is not about her bottom line. This is about sending a message about the kind of retaliation that we tolerate in all of our industries. And you know I think on multiple occasions she's done a great service to this issue and to other survivors of sexual violence. You know it's not just her. A lot of the women in the Weinstein story recounted similar instances of retaliation. Mira Sorvino, who spoke for the first time in some of my stories, also was enmeshed in some of the same examples where Peter Jackson has admitted that Weinstein put the kibosh on her hiring for Lord Of The Rings, and you know she and I have talked about that personally and you know I think it's devastating. You can imagine for anyone in any career that, at the prime of your moment of opportunity, for actors that's a moment that you can't easily get back. You know she is in a different place in life now and that that same moment won't come again I hope. Other wonderful moments do. But I think it is a source of tremendous sadness to her that she was blacklisted in that way and that there is such an immediate example of someone who wanted to hire her and didn't because, in part, a powerful guy came crashing down and said don't do it.

AMT: You know President Trump has called the women who have accused him of assault and harassment 'liars'. He's threatened to sue them. Why is it that he has survived those allegations while the MeToo movement has exposed and brought down other powerful men in politics, in business and in Hollywood?

RONAN FARROW: Well you know I'm careful not to conflate multiple different things that are going on here. I think that the suppression initially of that tape of Donald Trump bragging about forms of harassment and assault, and then the fact that he prevailed in that election even when that tape emerged, did galvanize a lot of women who were really frustrated and survivors of both genders, I imagine, of harassment who were frustrated and probably in that sense you know this was one of the many catalysts that contributed to that moment in terms of why there hasn't been more accountability on those allegations. You know I think that's a really fair question task and you know in some ways Donald Trump is a sui generous figure. He has leaned into the things that his critics find objectionable and there are so many claims of harassment around him that he has been able to very effectively kind of leverage the fatigue of the American public, and the tendency to view a large number of claims as white noise.

AMT: I'm just wondering what you think with your own journalism look at the coverage of the Russia scandal, look at so much investigative reporting right now. Do you see this as a golden age sort of or revamping or a renewal of investigative reporting right now?

RONAN FARROW: I hope so. You know I can only speak for my little narrow experience of it but I know that, when I was in American network television as an investigative reporter on one of our large morning TV shows, it was viewed as sort of quaint. You know there were wonderful investigative journalists at networks across the United States and in local news across the United States but it wasn't viewed as you know an upwardly ascendant corner of the business. It was sort of oh how novel you're doing investigative work. And this was at a time when many of those units that I just described were shrinking and were sort of beset by cuts and an unwillingness of corporate overlords to run that kind of reporting. And I'm talking systemically not not in my case specifically. So I'm relieved to see a moment where there is so much public dialogue about the renewal of good investigative reporting and I'm just so grateful to all the reporters out there striving to do that and really succeeding in doing that. And at a time when there is this you know classic authoritarian move of undercutting the press and you know this charge of fake news. It's really been extraordinary to see how many wonderful men and women in the press have risen to the occasion and to put a spotlight on important truths.

AMT: Ronan Farrow good to talk to you. Thank you so much.

RONAN FARROW: Thank you Anna Maria. I really appreciate it.

AMT: Ronan Farrow Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist with The New Yorker. His new book is War on Peace the end of diplomacy and the decline of American influence. He spoke to us from Boston. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to this conversation. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site c bc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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What's going on in Newfoundland politics? Here's a quick breakdown

Guest: Anthony Germain

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

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AMT: Accusations of bullying and harassment are rocking the rock. We will head to Newfoundland and Labrador later this half hour where members of the province's House of Assembly have been accusing one another of impolitic behavior. And later in today's program my conversation with disability rights advocate Ing Wong Ward. She's been diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer but says rather than die with dignity she chooses to live with dignity.

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SOUNDCLIP

With respect to the culture of bullying. It is very much alive and well in the House of Assembly today.

A difficult week as an MHA difficult week as a woman.

I am the MHA who loves the formal complaint against Minister Joyce.

There was two witnesses there when I got up at my own seat, walked about at my seat and she chased me in my own seat in the cabinet members and [unintelligible]

I asked the Premier can he state unequivocally that the foreign minister has not raised a single issue or concern with him or staff regarding their harassment and intimidation that she faced from her colleagues?

I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, we will not tolerate bullying ,not tolerating harassment, Mr. Speaker we dealt with it properly in the last week or so.

[Applause]

AMT: Well some soundbites from the story that is rocking Newfoundland and Labrador were politicians in the House of Assembly are accusing one another of bullying and harassment. The details of the allegations remain somewhat murky but the political cost to the governing Liberal Party is pretty clear. Two cabinet ministers have been stripped of their portfolios and booted from caucus. Eddie Joyce and Dale Kirby will now sit as independents. CBC journalist Anthony Germain has been watching all of this unfold. He is the host of Here and Now on CBC Television in Newfoundland and Labrador. He's with us from St. John's. Hi Anthony.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Good morning.

AMT: Was there a sign, what was it, that these bullying and harassment allegations were coming?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well the first official thing Anna Maria was when the leader of the opposition and former [unintelligible] premier Paul Davis asked a general question that kind of came out of nowhere, and the question was in a nutshell was the premier aware of any complaints from members on his side of the legislature about harassment or bullying behaviour? That's officially where it starts to get cracked open. Unofficially our station was prepared as this whole thing started to fall apart because one of our journalists, the host of the radio morning show a guy named Fred Hutton, he'd been working his sources on this stuff for about two months. So he had a fair bit assembled there was a small team of us who were put together and we knew that a lot of dirt and discontent was coming. And then as is often said in this part of the country, they are skull of a sudden came right out over. You here you had liberals leaking, not just to us, but imagine this; leaking to the leader the opposition. Now you and I Anna Maria I've covered politics since the Bible was a three page flyer. How bad does it have to be for a government to start leaking stuff to their opponents?

AMT: okay so let's go through this. Two cabinet ministers booted from Cabinet and the Liberal Party what are they accused of?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: We don't really know. Other than the accusations are what the premier calls behavioral in nature and they are not sexual or physical. So it's very murky just what bullying harassment and intimidation actually means no specifics.

AMT: And who's accusing them?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: uWell at the moment for government MHAs. Former finance minister Cathy Bennett came forward now. The other three have made formal complaints. Cathy Bennett's kind of complaining publicly and then there's Tracey Perry she's an opposition MHA. But she says now she has her complaint ready to go but she has no confidence in the process set up to investigate these complaints. As you and I are talking is a developing story here, Cherie Gambin Walshe. She's the cabinet minister who basically came out and said I've complained against a fellow cabinet minister. She this morning is saying she too has no faith in the process that Premier Dwight Ball has chosen to put in place to investigate these kinds of complaints.

AMT: That's pretty serious stuff. Anthony I want to play a tape of an exchange you had with Eddie Joyce, one of the men kicked out of his party. You spoke to him just after he was publicly named as the target of a complaint.

SOUNDCLIP

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Are you a bully.

EDDIE JOYCE: If I am a bully, ho ask Kevin Parsons MHA, how many times he was in my office. Up to three weeks ago, he was in my office calling mayors, working out stuff that he needs for capital works.Go ask Kevin Parsons, go ask Kevin Parsons how many summer jobs I got his students.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: But what does that have to do with me asking you if you're a bully?

EDDIE JOYCE: How can you be a bully if you deal with everybody in House of Assembly?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well you can be a bully by yelling at people, by assaulting people, by blocking doorways. There are lots of ways to be a bully that aren't sexual.

EDDIE JOYCE: But how am I being a bully. This is what I am saying. This is the point on the CBC part. Let me finish the question. Let me finish please. As I said, go ask Kevin Parsons how many jobs I got his students.

AMT: Okay so he was the municipal affairs minister, lost his portfolio. He's denying this. What do you make of what he was saying to you?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yes. And environment. Well I was baffled. It felt like I was speaking to him in Mandarin he was answering me in Arabic. That sort of interview where my words really didn't seem to be registering in his brain. Mr. Joyce somehow thinks that because he's like Santa handing out goodies to members of all parties that that somehow negates any possibility of him being a bully. So my take on it is he's an experienced politician from a different school of thought, and he can't see that strong arm tactics and confrontation and getting into people's faces that that might be construed as bullying.

AMT: Okay you mentioned the former finance minister Cathy Bennett. She has come forward with her own accusations. She left Cabinet last year. What reason did she give at the time for her departure?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well at the time she said it's for personal reasons. You know we often hear 'this for personal reasons' or 'I want to spend more time with the family'. And I thought it was because want to take a harder line with the unions than the government did. But what came out now is that you know I thought she might be swooned but you know she has come out with a different explanation that we weren't really expecting.

AMT: And you had an interview with her as well. Let's listen to that.

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ANTHONY GERMAIN: Take me back to July of last year. What was the turning point when you realized you could no longer remain as this province's finance minister?

CATHY BENNETT: I experienced things like intimidation, isolation.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Can you be more specific about this? How did this manifest itself? I don't want names of people but were people pointing fingers at you, casting insults?

CATHY BENNETT: You know the people who understand how bullying happens in the workplace understand that it is a cumulative effect.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: What's the worst thing that happened? What made you feel the worst?

CATHY BENNETT: I think you know I said earlier today, the fear of being on the wrong side.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: But do you feel like you were the victim of an old boys network?

CATHY BENNETT: I think that the politics of today has not been modernized. And I think there are a number of reasons for that. And part of it is that there's not enough women in the House of Assembly. It's also one of the reasons why I myself my colleagues feel passionately about speaking out about this issue.

AMT: So she was one of the province's most powerful politicians. What did you make of your conversation with her?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well on the one hand you know Minister of Finance, next to the Premier is the biggest portfolio but it's extremely damaging because it's just another voice added to the bullying and harassment pile-on that we're watching. And the Premier has to face the fact that here he has a female finance minister contending that she couldn't stay in her job because of the behaviour of some of the men around his cabinet table. And she did say that an organisation takes its cues from its leadership. On the other hand she offers no specifics, talks about a culture of intimidation, toxic work environment but no names, no concrete examples of bullying behaviour as far as I can tell. She complains about being excluded from meetings. Is that bullying or is that just part of the nasty reality of internal alliances in Cabinet? And unlike the other women she hasn't filed a formal complaint that one would expect would contain specific details. So she said she wanted to come forward and add her voice to support those women.

AMT: And I guess the question is do the nasty realities of of working in Cabinet, are they acceptable anymore?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Right.

AMT: She's still in this party. She's criticising it. How has Premier Ball handled all of this?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well his line is almost like bullying is in the eye of the beholder, that yes things get heated and sharp and passionate and maybe what one person sees in the heat of the moment might be interpreted as bullying. But she has him in a tough position because she said she has no confidence in the way these bullying charters are going to be investigated. Normally when an MHA speaks out against their leader like that they get tossed. But how can he expel somebody from caucus who's accusing and coming forward with bullying allegations. He is in a tough spot.

AMT: And as you say you've got people speaking out about the actual process, now. But you've also got two politicians who filed police reports.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yes. This has to do with a strange Twitter account. Whack Job N.L.

AMT: And do we know who's behind that?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: No but this is what we're hoping to find out. And it's it's a hard hitting kind of Twitter handle with some of the obscenities that the identified people who they think are leaking for a Liberal Party, describing them as people who leak more than a Bay Robert sewer pipe. Bay Robert's lovely town not far from St. John but apparently has some sewage issues. And what's weird is Colin Holloway, a backbencher who has also made bullying complaints, he told reporters that he believes it's somebody very close - maybe from within the legislature - kind of like that 1970s horror movie when a stranger calls you know 'Whack jobs tweets are coming from inside the house'. Now we don't know that but this is just another sign of how far the wheels have come off in politics in Newfoundland Labrador.

AMT: Well it's interesting so you also have a man who's complaining of bullying. And Anthony you've been covering politics a long time. Being a politician in Newfoundland and Labrador, how does that compare to the rest of Canada?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Well see I think that's what's interesting about this, that it's raising a fundamental question. You know you talk about whips and toeing the party line or else or you'll never get a street paved in your writing again if you don't toe along the line. And if you think about this place in particular you know places like Newfoundland Labrador - Quebec. But looking here you know Danny Williams, Brian Tobin, Pettiford and certainly above everybody John Crosby, these were aggressive confrontational men baptize in a system that was created and designed by men. And all the complainants say you know what, let's take a look at this and maybe it is time that we take a serious look at how we can change our political system and make it more civil where all that kind of strong arm stuff is a thing of the past.

AMT: Okay we have to leave it there. Anthony Germain thank you.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Okay thank you.

AMT: Anthony Germain host of the CBC television evening news program Here and Now in Newfoundland and Labrador. He joined us from St. John's. Let us know what you think of that story. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook and go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us because in our next half hour I've got a conversation with a disability rights advocate who is choosing to live day to day with her terminal illness, rather than opt for medically assisted death. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcasts and on your radio app.

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'A compromised life is worth living': Why Ing Wong-Ward won't choose medically assisted death

Guest: Ing Wong Ward

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. If you were with us for Tuesday's edition of The Current you heard my conversation with the children of the Brickendens. Their parents, Shirley and George, ended their lives together this year after more than 70 years of marriage, in a double doctor assisted death. They are just two of the thousands of Canadians who have opted for medically assisted death since it became legal in 2016. But even as more Canadians are making that choice, not everyone who meets the criteria for an assisted death will see it as right for them and that includes Ing Wong Ward. Ing is a former radio producer here at CBC. She is also a disability rights advocate. She got her first motorized wheelchair at the age of three and has used one ever since to get around because she lives with a condition called spinal muscular atrophy. Ing has also been diagnosed with an incurable form of colon cancer. I visited Ing Wong Ward at her home in Toronto where she lives with her husband and their young daughter.

AMT: I was looking at your Twitter page. I don't know if you know it out my heart or if you need to read it. Tell me how you describe yourself on your Twitter page?

ING WONG WARD: Ing Wong Ward associate director of the Center for Independent Living in Toronto on leave. I have to say I am on leave. Opinions are my own, unapologetically disabled and definitely not inspiring. So yes that would be me. I don't see myself as an inspiring person at all.

AMT: In fact you don't like it when people tell you you're inspiring.

ING WONG WARD: No it makes me really uncomfortable and I'm not alone in that. I think many people with disabilities I do not want to be seen as inspiring simply because we are disabled. It's become a trope. It's the first thing people say oh you're so inspiring, as opposed to getting to know me as a as an individual, as a person. You know like I like to joke. I hope you're inspired because I love shoes. I hope you're inspired by the number of books that I read or that I'm really proficient knitter. Now I hope you're inspired that I'm a loyal spouse and a good mother although the only only person who can determine if a good mother is my child. Sometimes she really gets crazy with me or is made crazy by me. So yes I don't think that that's the first thing that people should look at me simply because I am a person with a disability and say 'you so inspiring'. It's you know it says something about how we see disability in this society.

AMT: I want to talk about your health. What's the most recent update your doctors have given you?

ING WONG WARD: My health is complex. I was diagnosed with colon cancer over a year ago. My cancer is inoperable. I've had twenty eight rounds of radiation to shrink it. Because my colon ruptured I developed a very large abscess, the bacterial abscess that took three months to resolve. That had to be drained. I had to wear drain 24 hours a day for three months which is pretty unpleasant, had to be emptied every night. And so once that was resolved then there was talk of perhaps putting me on chemotherapy pills. But because the abscess is an ongoing concern, putting me on chemo pills will suppress my immune system and therefore I could develop a serious infection, a life threatening infection. So at this stage I'm being monitored. So there's no active treatment. I'm essentially a palliative care patient.

AMT: And you also live with spinal muscular atrophy. First of all what is that?

ING WONG WARD: So spinal muscular atrophy is a congenital disability. The easiest way to explain is that I have pings in my cells that don't connect, that don't talk to my spine. So in other words there's signals missing and I don't walk. I've never walked. I have other people help me babe, get me dressed. All the activities of daily living, I need assistance with and my muscles are very weak. So I'm dealing with muscle weakness, lower respiratory system. So when it comes to cancer, anybody who has cancer takes a huge hit physically. So I took a very big hit last year when I ended up in hospital. I ended up in hospital multiple times because of the infection, because of various complications and it was a massive pit. At one point I said to my doctors, you know, I'm amazed I'm still alive. You know like there's no reason why I should be here. I think it's kind of a miracle that I'm sitting here looking at you having this conversation. And yes my case is very complex. Oh yes. Not an easy patient, not typical patient.

AMT: And we're sitting here talking about this in your condo as if we're talking about just anything, Ing.

ING WONG WARD: Yes I realize that that's strange but I think this has become part of our lives now. You know it's not easy. It's not what I want from my life. It's not what I expected of my life by any stretch of the imagination but I think I've always been the type of person who is forthright. And so when people ask me about this I've just told them, you know, every person who deals with cancer has a different way of coping of dealing with it. I have friends who have quietly written to me and said 'I know that you have cancer. I have metastatic colon cancer. Can I come over to your house and talk to you?' And I say sure. You know, I've had people write to me and say 'I'm getting breast cancer treatment I don't want anybody to know. Are you in radiation right now? Will I see the radiation waiting room at Princess Margaret?' And I've said well maybe [Laughs]. So it's amazing to me how many people cope with cancer and people have different ways of dealing with that. Mine has been to talk about it.

AMT: And how do you talk about your future?

ING WONG WARD: The future has definitely changed because I used to think in terms of 20 years, 25 years. My husband I talk about 'now' a lot, very much in the moment. I don't plan anything more than I say a week in advance. So I have appointments scheduled. I see a psychiatrist. I have scheduled appointments with her for the next several months. But you know in terms of five years, ten years, no. Not anymore. I think it's a real day by day thing. But it's also a week by week thing. But it's you know I'm not even thinking about what I'll be doing in September, October, you know Christmas. So I you know I vaguely think that yes I'll be around for that. I don't see why it wouldn't be. It's so uncertain. And I think one thing we had to learn to live with as a family is a certain amount of uncertainty which is difficult. So a lot of this has been about rethinking and reshaping and reframing how we live.

AMT: And how have you done that? What have you told your daughter?

ING WONG WARD: That's been the hardest part. So our daughter is turning 10. And you know when I went off to the hospital for the first time, I honestly didn't think I had anything major and I ended up in hospital for 11 days. It was very difficult for her. And then I was in and out of hospital over the course of the summer and she refers to it as the hard times. And so we told her very honestly every step of the way what's happening. When I was diagnosed with cancer you know we told her that mommy has cancer. When I went through radiation we told him mommy is going through radiation that would make me very tired and I'd be sleeping a lot, because I did sleep a lot. I was barely awake most days serves, awake enough to getting on with her and do bedtime stories. But that was pretty much it. You know I told her that we wouldn't be going on vacation and we wouldn't be doing the normal things we do his family; going to the gallery and the weekend or going shopping, that kind of thing. And then when we knew that the cancer was coming out what I basically said was the cancer is not coming out and the cancer will make mommy sticker. Based on the advice of my palliative care doctor and my psychiatrist. We have not told her what the longer term prognosis is because at her age this could be very traumatizing. So there will be a point when we have to have that conversation and we absolutely will. But at this stage you know it's.. It's not the kind of thing we want to go down that road as of yet simply because it could be deeply upsetting for her.

AMT: I want to back up for a moment in. You are not a woman who is stopped by seeming barriers. At one point I think on one of your feeds you've called yourself wheelchair unbound. Talk to me a little bit about the choices you've made in pursuing your life and in not stopping against seeming barriers.

ING WONG WARD: I think I am an incredibly stubborn person to the point of utter obnoxiousness. I really do. I mean I don't and when I think back upon my life I think yeah I don't look at myself and think wow, I'm so cool. I'm so great and look at everything I've done I just want to jump into doing everything full hog. And so I think over the years I've looked at it as Yeah I have a disability. There are real barriers but how dare society impose those barriers, not just upon me but so many other people disabilities. And I've taken a great deal of solace in the community of people disability that it's not just about me and not just about what I say or do, but I belong to a much broader movement of people who have an incredible incredible things. Like I look south of the border to protests at Capitol Hill amongst Americans with disabilities who are getting arrested to protect Medicare Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. And I sit here and think the way I have it easy, I just you know trot down to the hospital with my Ontario Health Insurance Card and I get treatment. I don't have to worry about these things. So for me I do think that what I've done in my life comes down to stubbornness and a will.

AMT: So where does that stubbornness come from? What was life like when you were a kid?

ING WONG WARD: My parents were immigrants. My father's from China. They have the classic story. My mother is from Singapore. They met in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia as foreign students. They looked across a crowded room and say 'Hey, I like the looks of you' and so began their relationship. And I know both of my parents. Now they're old and they're quite sweet but they were very stubborn people. My father was a very stubborn man. He you know came to this country on a Ph.D. scholarship because he wanted to make something of himself and my mother, as a Singaporean girl, a member of eight children, eight children and very very poor. This was before Singapore was the glittering metropolis it is now. She would look into the world and say 'I can't stay here. I need to I need to go on. I need to do something'. She chose to come to Vancouver because she had relatives there. So I think a lot of my stubbornness comes from them. My mother definitely fought for me. She pushed me hard to be independent. I was like 11 years old and had to make my own orthodontist appointments. So when I look back on my childhood and my youth there was this expectation that I had to fend for myself because no one would bend for me.

AMT: What would they say to you?

ING WONG WARD: Well for my mother in particular. She was very clear that with my disability that I could not be sale labour. That was her terminology. That if I was going to look after myself - and she fully expected that I would look after myself - I would have to do in school. I'd have to get a degree. I'd have to find a job that would enable me some level of self-sufficiency. And she didn't know fully what that looks like. There was no expectation that I would fall through the cracks. I think I knew very early on that that was simply not acceptable. That was not going to be my life.

AMT: Why did you pick journalism?

ING WONG WARD: When I was 11 I was I went to a mainstream junior high, so mainstream being a school with non-disabled children and I, up until that point, been at a school for disabled children. And I had to make friends, back then there were no attendants to help me with my coat and my locker and my books and whatnot. And so I made friends with this girl and we were typical friends. We fought. We'd giggle about boy. We'd do things at school and then she moved away. And a year later she got in contact with me. Her mother had entered her into a contest because she'd been my friend because I was somehow very special and she won the award. She won three thousand dollars and a trip to summer camp. And I remembered that ,the local media was all over this and there was a profile of my friend who was no longer really my friend at this point, and the way I was described was so forth me even as a young girl it was you know how sad and pathetic I was, and how she picked me up out of the dirt. And it was not our friendship at all. I remember at that age in my head and I still remember it at the age of 44 now, I can do better than this. And so that's why I decided to become a journalist to change that point of view.

AMT: And I listen to you now and I wonder, journalistically, we still live a long way to go.

ING WONG WARD: Thank you for acknowledging that.

AMT: You have been talking about how we in the media look at disability and changes in people's ability when it comes to chronic or terminal or severe illness. And we talk about dying with dignity and all of this kind of dovetails well.

ING WONG WARD: .You know this is what I'm thinking about now. This is where I'm at. When I decided to become a palliative care patient, because it was something I had to actively decide, a lot if it came down to self advocacy for me. I have been a lifelong self advocate and actively encouraged other people to be self advocates. And for me the question has always been about living with dignity. And how do you as a person with a disability live with dignity, which means having a range of choices in community sports. But also when it came to palliative care, it was about me having control over the stage of my life which was end of life care. And not knowing what the prognosis is ,how long you know a year, two years, three years, five years. So it just made sense to from a very pragmatic point of view to meet with the palliative care doctor. And as I spoke to her I realized I've always had this discomfort with the term dying with dignity as it relates to medical assistance and dying. Because in my view it's slowly become the implication that there is only one way to die with dignity, that when your body starts to fall apart, when you start to lose function, when you need incontinence care, when you can't eat anymore, even though you're still alive somehow that's not dignifying. And yet I know so many people with disabilities and so many people in a variety of circumstances who are not defined by how they go to the bathroom, or how they eat, or how they communicate. So what is this whole notion that these are things that should make us think that dying is the only way to deal with this. It's very subtle but it's something that's been discussed amongst disability rights advocates around the world. You will find anywhere in the world where there is this discussion about dying with dignity that there are disabled people who are deeply deeply concerned that this speaks to our existence. And so for me it was never on the table to look at medical assistance in dying. It's frightening to me. I believe that people should have the choice in this country. There's a law in place. I think we need to have a greater understanding of who's choosing medical assistance and dying and why. And the 'why' piece is extremely critical to me because I also know now that across the country people are not able to access public palliative care and hospice care in a timely fashion. People with disabilities are not able to access the supports they need in various parts of the country and that makes sure will live much closer in my view. So we have no national standard on palliative care. Palliative care as a concept is relatively new. So why is it that we only talk about medical assistance in dying? For me I don't want my end to come at the end of a point he poisoned syringe. That to me was very blunt. It's a blunt statement. And I recognize it's a blunt statement that make people uncomfortable. But let's be honest about medical assistance in dying. Whatever your situation is, somebody is coming to your bedside to enjoy your life. You know we can talk about the need for that. We can certainly discuss why some people feel that that is the best way for them to end their lives. I have to say for me that is terrifying. I can't do that. For me the end should be a mystery. I don't want to pick a date and say this is the end of my life simply because when I think about what's transpired in the past year, when I could have died at many different points what I would have missed and I would have missed out a lot.

AMT: When we talk about dying we never talk about living and nobody's dead yet.

ING WONG WARD: I'm sure as heck not dead yet. I know I think about that every day. There was a period when I was very very very like I'd wake up and I'd say oh I'm still alive today. So you know my life is definitely smaller right now. You know my apartment is you know my main base of operations. And you know it's not what at all we would have expected even a few years ago but it still has meaning. Tim and I are together. We're very fortunate that he's with me. We still bicker like we used to, sometimes but different things than we did but we still bicker. I think we're still who we were when we first got together. It's our 20th anniversary in August. We've had a lifetime together. And you know we know that it's not going to be a marriage as long as we both would have wanted but it still has meaning. It's still... We still want to be together. It's drawing us closer together. Even on the days when it's very mundane we're still together in this. And I think that has really pulled me through.

AMT: Is that another reason you're not interested in picking a date for a needle?

ING WONG WARD: Yes that's a big part of it. I think about my daughter all the time. I think how- you know she's 10 almost and I think how would my husband explain that to him when she is older. You know a lot of this comes down to me being around for her. And there will be a time when he will have to say to her that I want you to know that your mother tried. She wanted to be here for you. The only time I cry when I talk about her [cries].

AMT: I remember when you were pregnant because your pregnancy was so complicated. You fought for that daughter.

ING WONG WARD: I did. You know I had a good pregnancy and then I went to respiratory failure, ten hours after she is born. And I remember at the time I can't die of this baby. This baby needs a mom. And that still halts. This kid needs a mom you know and I think about that all the time.

AMT: In a note to friends and family on Facebook you said 'a compromised life is still worth living'. What do you want us to confront about the way we think about living and dying?

ING WONG WARD: I want us to really consider what dignity means and to not focus on purely the physical losses that we're all going to face whether it be through old age or illness. I also wanted to think about as a society what are we willing to pay for. You know it's harsh to say this but I think about this particularly when I look at what's happening to disabled people in America and the United Kingdom. I feel very lucky to be Canadian, but I also worry in the back of my mind that you know as we perceive that resources are shrinking, how much willingness will there be to fund communities of self support services. And so I want us to think about what dignified living means to the most vulnerable in our societ,y particularly when it comes to disability because I think people with disabilities can have the most amazing life if they given the support that they need. And too often I read stories even in this country where people aren't getting the support they need and there's always that level of despair. And I feel that despair in a way nondisabled people don't, that's ultimately about the quality and making sure that everyone has a shot to achieve what they're going to achieve whether it's in my case having had an incredible career and family or for someone else it might be something that's very different, but it's no less dignified and it's no less meaningful.

AMT: You know, I know you don't want to be called inspirational, but you're inspiring us to think, so thank you.

ING WONG WARD: I'm okay with that, inspiring people to think

AMT: My conversation with Ing Wong Ward. We were at her home in Toronto. She's a former CBC Radio producer. She's also a disability rights advocate and associate director on leave at the Center for Independent Living in Toronto. If you were one of the people on our Twitter feed the other night, you'll know that I wrote that many people to whom I speak make me cry and stay with me after, and Ing Wong Ward is one of those people who made me cry. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q and I'm still crying after my conversation with Ing about life and death. We'll end today with music from American musician Sufjan Stevens. He released the song Life With Dignity last year as part of an album to support the Cancer Support Community. We'll tweet a link to the music video for this song as well it's a portrait of three people; an 85 year old war vet, a 35 year old chef and an 8 year old student all facing cancer at different stages. I'm Anna- Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Song: Life With Dignity]

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