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The Current Transcript for June 26, 2018

Host: Mike Finnerty

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I'm not like looking to be a movie star. I just went to school because I followed my dream and the best way of using my dream is to serve my own people.

MIKE FINNERTY: She wanted to be an astronaut then a radiologist and she's finally settled on brain surgery. Meet the young doctor from Rwanda training in Canada. She says Canadian healthcare is teaching her how things can improve in Africa. Also today --

SOUNDCLIP

Come on, Willie. I know you can do it, boy. I know you can jump this wall. You can do it. You can be free. Come on.

MF: Attempts to free whales and dolphins held in captivity in Canada have run into a wall named Senator Donald Plett of Manitoba. And in an hour, the 95-year-old podcast sensation Harry Leslie Smith. He's Telling young people not to repeat the mistakes of his generation. Tens of thousands of them are listening.

SOUNDCLIP

I think it's time that we started becoming, as a nation, more angry.

MF: Hello, I'm Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Meet Rwanda's only female neurosurgeon who trained in Canada

Guest: Claire Karekezi

MF: Claire Karekezi is going home. The physician will return to her native Rwanda next month as one of the country's few neurosurgeons. Her return has been a long time coming. For the past seven years, she's been globetrotting -- Sweden, the United Kingdom, Morocco, the United States and Canada -- finishing her studies. She is completing a specialty in neuro-oncology at Toronto Western Hospital this year and excited to return to a country that is in short supply of her medical expertise. Dr. Claire Karekezi joins us in our Toronto studio. Hello.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Hello Mike.

MF: It's been such a long journey for you in the past year you've spent here in Canada, in Toronto. What's that been like?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Well, it's been a very good experience between growing up in my field, neurosurgery, and making good friends here -- lifetime friends -- and surviving the winter. It was a great experience.

MF: You survived the winter.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I did survive the winter.

MF: What did you want to do when you were growing up as a girl in Rwanda?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I was always interested in science. I went to school. My parents helped me a lot in going to school. And in my high school, I was more interested in mathematics and physics. So that was my major when I was in high school. At that time I was more thinking about being a pilot, working at NASA. And eventually, as I was more interested in science, in biology and chemistry came along, this led me to medicine. And at the end, I just decided to go for medicine.

MF: It sounds like you wanted to be an astronaut.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yes. I wanted to go to the moon.

MF: The period when you were young in Rwanda included the genocide, didn't it?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yeah.

MF: How did that affect you?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: So I would say as for any kid who grew up there during that period, that affected us. Most of the kids lost their entire families and they were able to come through that hardship and to sort of pick up themselves and become very successful. That has been very sort of inspiring. So we sort of had this instinct of being resilient and never give up. And that's the way it affected us. And of course I was away from school during that period. It was like 100 days. And most other kids came back through that traumatized. So they weren't able to go back to school because they were having serious trauma. I would say I was lucky to be able to go back to school and to even pursuing my career and be where I am today.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Where you are now, you are in a career where you will spend hours and hours -- really painstaking work -- saving one life. And during the genocide, hundreds of thousands of people died over a period of just days. Does that give you a sort of perspective, a different perspective on medicine and the field that you've chosen?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: It does. When, as you said, when you think that you spend a whole day saving one life and how in a blink of days, people were just dying and the whole world watching. I would say that's unfair. It was unfair. But the good thing is we came through that and we are a strong nation and people were able to not focus on that, but to pick up themselves and to push and to be the very strong people we are today. And I'm proud of that.

MF: A lot of your training took place abroad, right?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yes. Yeah. When I was doing my midcourse studies in Rwanda, it's six years. So I started in 2012. Sorry, in 2002 to 2009 almost. I graduated in March 2009. And during the whole training, you have to work three years. You work for three years of basic sciences and then from the fourth year, you start doing clinics. So during clinics, you go to hospitals and you interact with patients, you start doing clinical examination. You start seeing like more clinical things. And that was the time I had a chance for the first time, get out of the country and to go abroad. So that was my very, very first touch with neurosurgery.

MF: Was it to Sweden?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yes, it was Sweden.

MF: Because you at first were interested in a specialism in radiology.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yeah.

MF: And that switched to neurosurgery.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Exactly. So I will tell you. When I applied for this exchange program through the International Federation of Medical Students Association, I was given this time to go to Sweden and you have to choose a department in which you want to be. That time, my only focus was to go to Europe. I was young and that was my first time to get out. I didn't really think of what I wanted to do and it was the traditional summer period. So most of the department closed for the elective time and neurosurgery is one of very demanding fields. So we really never see no to people who come every day. So I found myself in this neurosurgerical department. That was it. So I met my very first mentor. That's Dr. Jan Hillman. When we met, he was like oh, you're the student from Rwanda. I said yes. He was like have you been to the OR? That's operating room. Well no, I've been going around, I've been seeing patients. He said this is the time to go to the OR. So he took me down there and most of his residents and fellows were on holidays as well. So I got the chance to scrub in as, I would say first aid, not first aid but next to him and share with him the binocular of the microscope. That was really inspiring, seeing the brain for the very first time. And he was very patient with me and he was showing everything to me. I was so amazed.

MF: What was it like?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: It was -- I cannot tell, you know? When you grow up in the medical field, at a certain point when you study clinic, you know that you want to be that kind of doctor that give pills and the one that cuts. That at least you know. And then at one point, you don't know exactly what kind of cutting doctor you want to be. So you have to figure out. But when I saw the brain, I said this is the kind of doctor I want to be. But not only because of that, but because of what Jan Hillman was able to trigger in me. That was amazing, the way he was just talking to me and he was showing, being patient with me. That's what I call mentorship and inspiration to young people and I hope really to become one of these in the future.

MF: What was it about the brain and being in that close proximity to brain surgery that really flicked a switch for you?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Well, I was amazed in a way. You can open someone's head and actually navigate or go through his brain and actually save his life or her life. And the person comes back to, wakes up and do well? I was like wow. This is possible. I mean, this is amazing and that's what I want to do.

MF: It sounds like a miracle.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yeah, it sounded like a miracle but now I'm kind of used to it.

MF: You work a lot with tumours. Was that a tumour surgery?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Yes, it was a tumour surgery but again, I was young. At the end of my training day, Mr. Hillman told me Claire, you have probably seen one of the most complex cases I have done in my entire career. But I wasn't able to judge myself because I had little knowledge about that. And then when I go back to that in my head, I'm like wow. I did really see a master taking a brain tumour and I was young. I was really blessed to be exposed to that.

MF: Well, and I hear you saying wow and how impressed you were. But was there a side of you that was also saying I can do that?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I would say 90 per cent of myself was saying it's impossible. You know when you say wow but then you say how can I possibly do that? That was 2007. Rwanda had barely one neurosurgeon for 11 million people. I remember sitting with Dr. Hillman during the classes, having coffee. He was like Claire, I think you can become a neurosurgeon. Just think about it. And I told him Dr. Hillman, this is impossible. There is no how I can become a neurosurgeon. We have no training program. We barely have one neurosurgeon. So I'm a woman. I'm young. It's never going to happen. Yeah.

MF: So that procedure that he was doing that day, when it kind of became clear to you, how normal would that be of an intervention for you to do now?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Oh, that would be -- of course you need time for -- so you learn how to do a procedure and then you need to do as many procedures as you can. That's a lifetime experience. Every patient is different from the other patient. But I think I feel comfortable taking [unintelligible] and removing the tumour.

MF: That process you were just talking about, how much of that learning took place at Toronto Western Hospital?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: So Toronto Western Hospital was really the stage of, I call it, maturation for me. I came from Morocco where I spent the last five years being a resident. So you are a resident. You start being a junior resident, then you become a senior resident and then your last year, you become a chief resident, which gives you more responsibilities and you start doing your own cases. And then when you become a fellow, you have chosen a second area of your speciality. You want to go more in and for my experience was to deal more with brain tumours and some other complex lesions. And this is what I have been doing for a year. So you are, for instance, four times a week for the last year. So that's a repetitive experience. And you keep seeing patients and you see complications and you learn from masters. And these people here really helped me growing up. So they sort of see you as the resident you were and then they pick you up to sort of make you the most-ready surgeon. So when you finish the fellowship, then you can be an independent surgeon. And it was an amazing experience.

MF: How much of that kind of work, the kind of detailed kind of work and the complicated cases that bring in other teams, will you be able to do when you're back in Rwanda?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: It will still be hard. We barely have a good established oncology team. But one of my really focus will be to sit with my colleagues and really, really acknowledge the hard work they have been doing, trying to address this neurosurgical care. And most of the cases I believe they have been doing were tumour cases, were cancer cases. And I think we can all come together and think in a way of building a neuro-oncology team that has not only neurosurgeons, but has oncologists. Radiation oncologists are the people who deliver radiation, that deliver chemotherapy. So that's what I'm hoping to really bring back to Rwanda, if we can just have that kind of thinking, and build up a neuro-oncology centre or be really -- I would say Toronto had an impact on me. Really.

MF: In Rwanda, 11 million people.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Twelve now.

MF: Twelve million now. And in terms of neurosurgeons, you'll be one of?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Currently there are four. When I go back, we'll be five for 12 million people. And that's a far cry because the World Federation of Neurosurgical Studies advise at least to have one neurosurgeon to 500 people and in Rwanda it's one neurosurgeon to three million people, which is really still a problem.

MF: But it sounds from what you're saying that there is work to be done.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: There is a lot of work to be done but I'm not discouraged. And I think I'll be able to help and we'll be be able to do that. It's not going to be the next day when I get there. But I believe that we'll make an impact in the future.

MF: How do you expect, when you get back to Rwanda, you'll be received?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I think most people are happy and I received a lot of encouraging messages. I'm not looking to be a movie star. I just went to school because I followed my dream and I kept following it. And the best way using my dream is to serve my own people. I'm not interested in money. I'll be more happy saving people and I think everyone is in that spirit. My country is one of the country that has been encouraging women to go for more positions that were occupied by men in the past. I feel encouraged but I think as anywhere you go, like when I went to Morocco, when I came here to Canada, it's always sometimes hard to prove yourself as a young female. But I am willing to do what I have to do and in the service of the people, I'm not looking about what people will be thinking or talking about.

MF: Amongst the other neurosurgeons in Rwanda, how many others are women?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I believe I'm the only one.

MF: Do you think that will mean an extra burden on you or that you will have to prove yourself in a way that maybe the men don't?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: I'm not looking about proving myself. Everywhere I went, even in Canada, will have been a burden. When I came here, even more difficult because I am a woman, I'm from a developing country. I went far from my home to get trained and I arrive here as a black, young surgeon. So I would say it will have been even difficult here. But I made it. So if I made it here, I made it in Morocco, I am not really scared of going back to Rwanda and encourage even other young females to join my speciality. And yeah, I am willing to do what I can do. As long as you have good judgment, you have good training and you know what to do and you get people. I think of course you have difficult days as anyone. I also have maybe good days.

MF: What are you most looking forward to when you return?

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Well, I think at least being honest to myself and to my patients. See the patients as people who come to you seeking for care and be able to be the one that can guide them in that good way without harming them. That's my goal.

MF: Dr. Karekezi, thank you very much for coming and talking to us.

CLAIRE KAREKEZI: Oh, that was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

MF: Dr. Claire Karekezi. She's a neuro-oncologist completing her certification at Toronto Western Hospital under Greg Wilkins Barrick chair in international surgery and she's returning to her native Rwanda next month. Claire joined us in our Toronto studio. Music from the Rwandan singer Cecile Kayirebwa. The CBC News is next. Then Bill S-203 seems to be stuck in captivity inside the Canadian Senate. The bill to end the captivity of whales and dolphins has languished 29 months in the upper chamber. And we'll hear why in our next half hour. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Should Canada ban keeping whales and dolphins in captivity?

Guests: Camille Labchuk, Donald Plett, Murray Sinclair

MF: Hello. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MF: Still to come, Harry Leslie Smith is a 95-year-old Brit whose podcast and Twitter feed have developed a mass of millennial following. He knows a thing or two about inequality, having grown up in extreme poverty and living through the Depression and the Second World War. In half an hour we'll revisit Anna Maria's interview with Harry Leslie Smith. First, a story of cetaceans and senators.

[Music: Marineland theme song]

MF: A catchy tune, but in reality everyone doesn't love Marineland. For years, animal rights advocates have railed against the theme park for keeping whales and dolphins in captivity. And since 2015, a bill that would ban keeping and breeding dolphins whales and porpoises in captivity, has been winding its way through parliament. It's called Bill S-203, and after 29 months of consideration, it had nearly got a third reading vote in the Senate last week. But thanks to some last minute maneuvering, that didn't end up happening. Camille Labchuk is a lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice, a non-profit animal law organization that advocates for animal rights and animal protection legislation in Canada. She is in Ottawa. Hello.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Good morning, Mike.

MF: What happened to Bill S-203 in the Senate last week?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, unfortunately, despite this bill having tremendous public support and having sat in the Senate now for 29 months and having gone through 17 committee meetings with extensive scientific evidence about why captivity is cruel to whales, Bill S-203 was blocked last week from reaching a final vote. It's not that senators voted it down, it's that they didn't even have the opportunity to vote on it because Conservative Senate whip Don Plett has an enormous amount of power and was able to use procedural delay tactics to prevent a vote.

MF: And he's standing by. He's going to be able to speak to that. But why do you think it happened that way? What's behind it all?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, it seems to be the case of one senator taking a particular dislike to this bill to get whales out of captivity and because he's the Senate whip for the conservatives. he does have just an incredible amount of power. He can bring amendments and sub-amendments and force votes on all of those and what that ends up resulting in is just hours and hours and weeks and weeks and days and days of delay. So it's really unfortunate to me that the Senate is not able to do its job and vote on this legislation. I think the House of Commons is very eager for it to get over to that side so that MPs there can debate it and vote on it as well.

MF: Why is it important? Why Do you want it to become law?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, I think that the more that we learn about whales and dolphins, the more we understand how absolutely cruel it is to keep them in captivity. We don't think any whale deserves to live out their life in a bathtub forced to perform silly tricks so somebody can make money because whales, they didn't volunteer for this. We know now that in the wild, whales travel vast distances. They Dive really deeply and they live in these amazing complex social structures. Scientists say they have their own languages and cultures. But in a tank, their lives are impoverished and frankly miserable. So it's really important for Canada to lead the way on this issue. We're seeing a movement around the world of countries and states and other jurisdictions banning whale and dolphin captivity. And Canada, unfortunately we have some of the worst animal protection legislation in the western world. So I think it's really important for us to lead on this issue and to move forward with this provision.

MF: What evidence is there that these animals are suffering?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, the committee, the fisheries committee in the Senate studied this bill extensively. They underwent 17 committee meetings and they heard from most of the leading marine mammal and cetacean scientists in the world and those scientists were pretty united in their criticism of whale and dolphin captivity. They say that it's bad for them psychologically to be living in those tiny environments and forced to perform tricks. Many of the scientists pointed to physical ailments that the whales and dolphins experience and shorter life spans as well. I'm sure a lot of people listening today have watched the film Blackfish already and really understand what that film exposed to the world, which is that whales and dolphins frankly just live miserable lives in captivity and that they deserve freedom.

MF: And some of them seem to self harm in captivity.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Yeah, that's right. We've seen footage of whales and dolphins pounding their heads against the glass that confines them. We've seen them with ground-down teeth because they chew on things. When you keep animals in captivity, they often develop what's called stereotypic behaviours, which is repetitive actions that they perform over and over again abnormally, Which is the result of the psychological suffering they're enduring while being confined.

MF: How many theme parks or other institutions would be affected by S-203?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, there's only two places in Canada that still keep whales and dolphins in captivity because this is something that's already on its way out, I think. We've Got the Vancouver Aquarium and Marineland. And interestingly, the Vancouver Aquarium has already said that it won't keep whales and dolphins in captivity anymore. It was hit with a by-law locally in Vancouver saying that they couldn't do that and they've fought that in court. But in the meantime, the public outcry over it was just so intense that they backed down from it. So it really at this point is just Marineland that's still the holdout. We think there is a really exciting path forward because there is an organization called The Whale Sanctuary Project which is investigating opening an open water sanctuary for belugas, for other whales and dolphins who are rescued from that life in an amusement park. So this is something Canada should be moving towards and moving away from confining animals for entertainment.

MF: But in terms of Marineland, this really is a death sentence, this bill.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I actually think it's an incredible opportunity for Marineland to reinvent itself. I don't think it's still profitable to keep whales in tanks because we know it's no longer socially acceptable. Marineland is a private company, so we don't have access to its finances. But we know that in the United States, SeaWorld, which is a similar entity, they've lost over 200 million in the last couple of years alone and their share price keeps going down. So I think we're getting to this point where people just don't want to see whales in tanks anymore. They're not giving their business to places that still keep them in thanks. And that Marineland has a great opportunity to move its animals to a sanctuary and lead that path into the future.

MF: But if things are winding down and we're seeing fewer and fewer of these sorts of institutions and many institutions taking the decision like Vancouver did, the aquarium there, no longer to have whales and dolphins in captivity, why not just let that take its course? Why resort to legal measures?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I think it's important when we reach a societal consensus, especially on animals, that we take what we all agree on and enact that into a legal standard. It sends a really important signal that as a society we take these issues seriously. And when it comes to animals, unfortunately we haven't taken them seriously enough for a very long time. I mean the last time that Canada passed any noteworthy animal protection legislation was in the 1950s when it updated the animal cruelty offences in the Criminal Code. So I think this is something that Canadians are ready for. We're now understanding much more about animals and whales in particular in this case. And we need to see some laws.

MF: And do you not think there is any good that comes out of Marineland? I mean we heard that catchy tune and lots of people do go. They are -- well, they find the animals magical. And I just wonder if that doesn't have any kind of futility in terms of even some of the work you do going forward.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I think that most of the children I know are obsessed with dinosaurs but they've never actually seen a dinosaur in person. They've learned everything that they know about them from documentaries and from reading books. So I think there's tremendous ways to find inspiration about animals that don't involve doing something that hurts them. You know I went to zoos too when I was a child and probably marine parks too and I don't think we knew better back then. When Marineland started in the 60s, we didn't know better. But now we know better and I think it's incumbent upon us as a society to do better.

MF: Camille Labchuk, thanks very much.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Thank you.

MF: Camille Labchuk is a lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice. She's in Ottawa. We requested an interview or comment from Marineland for this story. We've not had a response. As you just heard, Senator Donald Plett of Manitoba is very much opposed to Bill S-203, despite the frustrations of the bill's sponsors and animal rights activists. Senator Plett says he remains to be convinced that it's a good law. And Senator Donald Plett is on the line from Steinbach, Manitoba. Hello.

DONALD PLETT: Morning. How are you today?

MF: I'm well, thanks very much. Why are you opposed to this bill to end whale and dolphin captivity?

DONALD PLETT: Mike, before I go into the interview, I want to take just a moment to pass on my very, very sincere and best regards to Mrs. John Holer on the very untimely death of Mr. Holer, the owner of Marineland just this weekend. It's a sad day. A great Canadian has passed away. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mrs. Holer at this point. Now as far as the bill itself is concerned, Mike, one of the largest reasons is that this is not something that the federal jurisdiction should be dealing with. This is provincial jurisdiction as the Minister of Fisheries pointed out.

MF: Your colleague Senator Wilfred Moore who presented the bill originally and a letter endorsing the bill that was signed by marine biologists from around the world, that letter states in part, quote: "At a minimum, the maintenance of these species in commercial captive display facilities for entertainment purposes is no longer supported or justified by the growing body of science on their biological needs." How do you respond to that?

DONALD PLETT: Well, Mike, Senator Moore has never traveled to either Marineland or the Vancouver Aquarium, has never spoken to the independent and internationally recognized marine biologist, marine biologists such as Lenny Cornell, Dr. Andrew Trites. Dr. Trites states when Mr. Moore and now Mr. Sinclair talk about these animals being in tanks or bathtubs, he quotes -- there is a tendency for people to quote maximum deaths recorded for individual animal or a given species for the furthest distance it has swum, as though somehow those are the conditions that one should be providing for them in a captive setting. What is missing is that discussion is in fact that the reason an animal dives deep is it is looking for food. The reason why it swims a long distance is because it is looking for food or trying to avoid being eaten by a predator such as a killer whale. If an animal is protected from predation and if an animal is being fed, it doesn't need to do what it is doing in the wild. We had 14 witnesses -- top marine biologists -- at the Senate committees that were opposed for various reasons to this bill. And so clearly when people from Animal Justice say this is archaic and we're comparing the study of dinosaurs -- which are extinct -- obviously we can not study dinosaurs in their natural setting. They are extinct. Comparing that to whales and constantly talking about cruelty to animals, I encourage them to visit these great research centres and look at them. They are being studied weekly by the Ontario government and by the British Columbia government. And there is no cruelty to animals there. I visited these institutions.

MF: Senator Plett, just because for instance a beluga would dive to a depth of 800 metres for food doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other benefits and doesn't mean it might also be for exercise or for play or have all sorts of good effects that come from that, and healthy effects. So do you really not think it's cruel to keep them in these concrete pools?

DONALD PLETT: I absolutely do not think it is cruel and neither do independent marine biologists. They study these animals and they say these animals are healthy. They are happy. They have companionship. They are not fleeing predators. No.

MF: What about the self harm though? What about the incidences of self harm where they seem to be bashing their heads against walls and grinding down their teeth? And there was of course that famous case of the whale who ended up taking human lives because of great mental instability from being in the conditions it was in?

DONALD PLETT: Well no, you are making an assumption that that is why the whale has done that. That is an assumption that there is absolutely no proof of. And no, they are not beating themselves up. I have been at Marineland and I challenge you -- I challenge Murray Sinclair to visit Marineland. They don't do that. They argued legislation without studying legislation and that is a problem.

MF: It's not very often that you get the NDP and the Liberals and the Conservatives and the Greens on the same page, but it does seem that bad is what is happening with this bill. Last week, MPs from all parties called on you to get the bill to third reading. Why don't you want the bill to go to a vote?

DONALD PLETT: Well, the fact of the matter is that our party does not support this bill. There is no indication that it does. We have a free party where individual MPs, individual senators have the right to speak. When I introduced an amendment to this bill at the last week we were sitting, it was supported by not all conservatives, but about 95 per cent of the conservatives. It was supported by a number of the independent senator groups that supported my amendment and so I did try to bring it to a vote. Senator Sinclair, who [unintelligible], he says I'm not allowing this to come to a vote. It took 36 days to bring this to third reading. Ironically, they day he made his third reading speech was the day that CBC was on the hill with a film crew doing a documentary that he is going to be the star in. And I find it ironic that he used that day to bring it to third reading, and then did not call for a vote. His second, Mr. Senator Christmas spoke to it a week and a half later, didn't ask for it to come to a vote. The independent senators and the Liberals held up two other bills that dealt with animal cruelty -- cosmetics Bill 214, Senator Mike McDonald's shark fin bill, 238, and they held them to ransom. If they are concerned about animal cruelty, why would they not allow those bills to come to a vote as readily as they are now saying that Bill S-203 should come to a vote?

MF: Do you see this bill ever coming to a vote in the Senate?

DONALD PLETT: Well, I cannot say that one way or the other. There were tactics that in fact the ISG could have used to force it to a vote had they chosen to do so. They didn't.

MF: Senator Plett, thanks very much for speaking to us.

DONALD PLETT: Thank you.

MF: Senator Donald Platt of Manitoba -- long-time opponent of Bill S-203 which would ban whale and dolphin captivity in Canada. Senator Murray Sinclair has championed Bill S-203 since the retirement of Wilfred Moore, who is the former senator who introduced the legislation back in 2015. Senator Sinclair has been listening to the conversations from Winnipeg. Hello.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Good morning.

MF: Can I just get you to address some of the points that Senator Plett just made there. He feels he is not deliberately stalling the bill. Is that right in your view?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: This bill was sponsored by Senator Wilfred Moore back in 2015 when he was a senator and he's been retired now for almost a year and a half, I think. And it's still sitting at a point where we've not voted on it. And all I'm saying -- and what others are saying -- is let's get it to a vote and let the Senate decide. The main concern I have with regard to bills that are in the Senate, coming to the Senate, is that the rules do not require that bills have to come to a vote at a certain point in time because the rules are really developed around protecting the rights of individual senators. Senator Plett, towards the end of his remarks, he referred to the fact that this has been the case of how we've done business for 150 years. In reality, the Rules regarding the ability of senators and Senate whips and Senate leaders to be able to conduct proceedings as though they are just like the House of Commons, has been in place only for a relatively short period of time, the last 30 years or 40 years or so. We really do need to question whether the Senate should be functioning in the same way as the House of Commons. It is supposed to be a place of what the originators of the Senate called the place of sober second thought, which is that we are to be more deliberative and more concerned about the overall public and regional interest that are at play here. And with the appointment process that's now in place with the establishment of an independent senator's appointment process, we're planning on changing that. We think that as a group, the way that the Senate has been doing business in the last 30 or 40 years is not conducive to the public interest.

MF: Senator Sinclair, on the substance of the bill, Senator Plett contends that if you visited Marineland and talked to the quote "independent biologist" there, you would understand that there is not cruelty taking place with the whales and dolphins being held in captivity. How do you respond to that?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, first of all the committee did a study of the bill -- and I was on the committee throughout -- did a study of the bill and called the various scientists who were involved in this field of study to ask them to give us their opinions and advice about not only the merits of the bill but also the issue of cetacean captivity generally. And I have to say that almost all of these scientists who were called on behalf of Marineland and Vancouver Aquarium were affiliated with Marineland and Vancouver Aquarium, were hardly independent. They admitted as much in the course of their testimony, but they asserted that as scientists they had an obligation to maintain some neutrality. But the reality is that they were advocating for Marineland and Vancouver Aquarium as much as the owners of those enterprises were doing, or the employees were doing. And so we were looking for were people who were not connected to those as ongoing business entities to do an analysis of the crucial elements that are necessitated by having whales taken into captivity, and that is whether it's necessary to do so for purposes of research. And we concluded that it probably is some research benefit but that it should be closely supervised and provinces have the ability to do that. And There is a provision in this bill which allows provinces to regulate the captivity of cetaceans for research purposes. Taking animals into captivity for purposes of protecting them is allowed in this bill. Taking them into captivity for purposes of treating them for injuries that they sustain is protected by this bill. So the one thing that we want to be sure that people understand is what we are trying to prevent is the industry has established a tendency to take cetaceans into captivity solely for the purpose of breeding them or reselling them to other display facilities and for purposes of putting them on display for entertainment purposes and making money that way. And we say that those are improper purposes. And in doing so, they house them in facilities that every single independent scientist who has looked at this situation says it's harmful to these animals and is resulting, and they're undergoing great distress and engaging itself in harming behaviour.

MF: Senator Plett says it's just straight up not your jurisdiction. Is it squarely in federal jurisdiction to do what you're doing in S-203?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: I've been a judge for 28 years before I went to the Senate. I know a little bit about constitutionality here, so give me some credit. There are constitutional issues at play here. There's no question of that. This bill recognizes that. This bill allows for the constitutional powers of the provinces to be protected. But the issue of animal cruelty is squarely a Criminal Code question and right now, it is in the Criminal Code that you can treat any animal cruelly. And a question of what amounts to cruelty is not well defined in the Criminal Code. What this does is it defines the issue of cruelty for purposes of cetaceans and whales.

MF: And just lastly, the chances for S-203 in your estimation?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, if we make it through the summer with the House proroguing and that's always the question. If the government prorogues Parliament, then everything dies on the Order Paper.

MF: And it's back to square one.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Assuming that doesn't happen, then when we reconvene in September, then this will be one of the first orders of business for me.

MF: Senator Sinclair, thanks for your time.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Thank you.

MF: Senator Murray Sinclair. He Is an independent senator from Manitoba and we reached him in Winnipeg. Coming up in our next half hour, the hard won wisdom of Harry Leslie Smith. I'm Mike Finnerty. You're Listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Senior podcaster Harry Leslie Smith says he'll 'drop dead' before he stops fighting for equality

Guest: Harry Leslie Smith

SOUNDCLIP

My name is Harry Leslie Smith and I am almost 100 years old. My memories and my voice are my last weapon against the political tide. I want to return to Britain and the world to the darkness of my youth when the ordinary worker grubbed for existence, while the one percent of that day lived off the fat of our labor like princes during the days of slavery. So welcome to my last act of defiance.

AMT: With those words 94 year old Harry Leslie Smith launched his first podcast. It is called Harry's Last Stand. It has attracted tens of thousands of listeners eager to hear the political views and personal insights of a man with his life story. And what a story it is. Harry Leslie Smith has survived a lot; extreme poverty in childhood in Britain, the Great Depression, the Second World War and later, living in Canada, the loss of his wife and one of his three sons. As he puts it, he's seen humanity at its best and at its worst. Now he fears the world risks repeating past mistakes. So he's warning a younger generation to protect the values and gains for which he helped fight. And he's using their tools to convey his message through his podcast and his 144,000 followers on Twitter. He is also the author of several books. His latest is called Don't Let My Past be Your Future. Harry Leslie Smith is with me from London, England. Hello.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Hello. My name is Harry Leslie Smith.

AMT: And you are defiant [laughs].

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: And I will be to the end.

AMT: And you have said that you want your grandchildren and their generation to think about the fact that they must fight against the dying of the light. What do you mean by that?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I mean I can see already that retreating back to my past. Life is not good anymore for ordinary people. We realize that when we see the abundance of food banks, people try to survive in a country which has become more selfish. All I see here is rows and rows of people lying the on the sidewalk with a blanket over them or a sleeping bag. And I think what a shame that this is happening to a country which one time it's the greatest country on earth.

AMT: You know you make the point in your first podcast. You know you're almost 100. Why would a man in his 90s marching toward a century be so worried about the future?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I worry because I like people. I love people. I know what it's like when people suffer and suffer I mean real suffering. When you go to bed at night with an empty stomach and you get up in the morning with an empty stomach. And all you can feel as a kid it's real and it isn't the center of your stomach where you're charging to school and you don't know what to do to fill that void.

AMT: That's how you grow up isn't?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh it is.

AMT: You were in Barnsley, Yorkshire am I right?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: That's right.

AMT: You were very poor. You had a sister named Marion what happened to your sister?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Marion was my parents’ first child, actually. She was born in 1915. And my father was a miner. And the people who owned the mines worth the upper crust and they didn't believe in paying good wages so they could barely survive on his income. And the only place where you get to live when Marion was born was rather fetid structure of a house. And we always had a feeling that that was the house where Marion contracted chest problems.

AMT: She got tuberculosis didn't she?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes.

AMT: And how old was she when she died?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: About five or six.

AMT: So your family was living in real poverty and you had to go out and find food at times with another sister, Berta.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: We had no choice. We had to have food. You did everything possible where you thought there might be some [unintelligible] that you could push into your stomach. We used to go behind restaurants and go through the garbage bins in the mornings on our way to school, and hope that maybe some guest had too much on his plate and had been scraped into the bin. Sometimes we were lucky but most times we were not.

AMT: How old were you when you were first sent out to work?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I was five, actually.

AMT: What did you do?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I was what you call a beer barrow boy. And I pushed a cart with bottles of beer around the neighborhood to give a little Clubfoot to the poor people they could never afford more than one bottle at a time. But they had to have something to raise their spirits and hope I guess.

AMT: But you were just a little kid that must have been hard to push that around.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: It was. And that cart had big [unintelligible] wheels and if I went down the curb I had to let it down gently then push it across the street and then turn around and pull it up on the next pavement. It was a test of strength.

AMT: I can't imagine. Harry Leslie Smith you also tell a story about a new pair of winter boots.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Ye. That was when I was about 13. I was going to a school in Halifax, England. We again were pretty pretty down poor. And we never had new shoes. Everything was old. And when the holes began to appear in the bottom of the shoes, then you would push cardboard into the soles so your foot wouldn't be on the ground. But this particular day I just couldn't find anything to stick into the shoe. So I did not go to school and went I went next day Mr. Doss said “where were you yesterday?” And I lifted up my shoe to show him and they said “see me tomorrow after school.” So the next day I came to school. He pulled out from his desk a new pair of shoes. [Sobbing] I was really really shaken.

AMT: What a lovely story and you still remember it all these years, later.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh yes.

AMT: You make the point that your dad worked in a coal mine and he lost his job. At one point, he took you and your sister to the gates of Weetabix factory. What was he doing?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: He was looking for work. Yes. But of course there was nothing for healthy men. And my father, injured in the mine, he had a truss around his stomach to hold his belly button in place and he couldn't have got a job but they had offered it to him you know. So anyway when they said “no I'm sorry,” he would say “you've got any Weetabix that you can let me have for the children?” and said “Sorry mate.”

AMT: So he brought you because he thought they would they would sympathize with him a little bit.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes. That is right.

AMT: And they didn't.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: No. No.

AMT: It must have been hard.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh it's unbelievable. And you know my feeling is it's happening all over again. Today in this time of plenty, our richest people are not paying their share of taxes in order to keep the government's providing for the lower classes who are struggling.

AMT: Well you know in line with your concerns, I'm going to play you a report back from 1945. This is when Clement Attlee became Britain's first Labor prime minister.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

The sweeping of victories throughout the country mark an epoch in the political life of this country. I am certain that this election has been one in which the electors have thought deeply on the fundamental questions of the future and they realize that Labor is the party of the future and that Labor's policy is the only policy that can lead us to peace abroad and social justice at home.

AMT: Harry Leslie Smith, what goes through your mind when you hear that and you reflect on those times?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I remember the fact that all army groups came together as one and bluntly told the election committee, before the election, that they would only elect a Labor Party that would place in our country a national health service that was free for every man woman and child. It was something which we knew had to be given to people. We had gone forty years right up to the war, without medical attention. Can you imagine? I am sad to say I feel that the government is chipping away at it and hoping that bit by bit they will take that away from today's people.

AMT: Do you think people of this generation understand the struggle of your generation to get those things?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: They do. You can't understand the deprivation, the sacredness, the hunger was so rife. It's just impossible to describe. Well it wasn't just for a week. It just went on month after month and it became so bad that eventually my mother said to my father “I love you but I can't live with you anymore. I've got to seek a man who has a job and can provide for the children.” And before we knew it my sister Alberta and I found that we had a pig farmer. His job was a pig farmer. Apparently he'd known my mother years ago. He moved in instead of my father.

AMT: So you watched the toll of poverty on your parents, on their relationship, on everything you understood.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes. I think the only thing that saved me was I discovered the public life libraries [chuckles]. And I spent –with my sister – will be rooting through books in the early days when we were too young. It was mostly fairy stories. But as time went on we started digging deeper and deeper into serious literature.

AMT: There's still a lot of poverty across Britain today. How do you think that is affecting the social fabric?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I think you know what it's causing partly is not just there, but in other countries too, is beginning to cause people who feel that they have to do something drastic to show their disapproval of the world as it is. That is the worst possible thing because only ends up with the death of innocent bystanders or friends.

AMT: Along with all of this and your views there, you actually campaigned against Brexit. I'm interested to know how you felt when you learned a majority of Britons had voted to leave the European Union?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I think it was such a foolish move. For one thing, who is going to provide the food for Britain? I think we would find that there would be less work than there is now. They've forever pointed out the fact that the immigrants moving into Britain, which is a lie. They never ask how many Brits have gone to live in the EU. They are just not thinking straight. And I think it's not going to end good for them.

AMT: I want to ask you about your own life. After the war, you fell in love with Frieda but she was from the wrong place wasn't she?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes. She was a German girl.

AMT: As a British member of the Air Force you weren't supposed to be dating someone from the so-called enemy side.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh God. No. You could be hauled in by military police and put on charges and they will [unintelligible] you.

AMT: And the war was over.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes. Oh yes.

AMT: So you end up making a life in Canada. You have three boys and then Frieda and your son Peter become ill at around the same time. What happened?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Frieda of course contracted rheumatoid arthritis. That was a terrible, painful thing. Peter we knew was schizophrenic and we brought him home to live with us, outside Kohlberg actually. It was really a very difficult period.

AMT: And you became a caregiver to both her and Peter then.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Yes that's right. I tried to get Peter, to keep interested, take him out to have a beer, occasionally at the village pub. And also got him interested in woodcarving. I wanted to get him doing something so he felt he wasn't just sleeping and looking at the wall you know. And he became a very good woodcarver. In fact I still have a couple of pieces hanging in my apartment. He became, in later life, a great man who was called by large organizations in Canada to speak out about mental problems and was really well known for his discourse on how to survive you know.

AMT: And the experience of caring for him and your wife and having them both die. What did that do to you?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I was just devastated. In fact within a year I'd already decided that I would go back to Germany. I already knew that the apartment block in the country, where my wife lived and where I used to pick her up to go for trips, was still standing. I went back and I would stand across the road looking at the door of her apartment thinking that she was going to walk out of it.

AMT: How did you go from the despair over losing her and your son to the defiance we hear now in your podcast?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: My son John and I celebrate my wife’s birthdays and my son’s birthday every year.

AMT: It's an important time, huh?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: It was a [unintelligible] great life, actually.

AMT: And you still travel. You want to visit a refugee camp, refugee hotspots, as well. Like you still want to go and see these things, why?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh yes. I want to see how they're reacting to what is happening to their world. I want to be able to - from what I read in their faces and in the whatever they say - that by writing a book about their lifestyles, and about the way we treat refugees that hopefully I can change the world’s thinking about refugees, that I can get the world to realize that we are all human beings. Whatever color under the skin, we are the same.

AMT: You know the message you give in your podcasts about treating people equally, about your concerns, about inequality have really struck a nerve with a lot of people especially young people. Are you surprised how many young people are interested in what you have to say?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: No I'm not. I'm surprised somehow because it became more towards the last three or four years, young people are beginning to take more cogent interest in what is happening around them and they're beginning to realize that they are going nowhere. They don't have permanent jobs. They don't have enough to buy a home. They're in limbo. They have no hope about marrying and having children and a house where they can after work go back and say thank goodness and close the door.

AMT: I was going to ask you if that scares you but I think it makes you angry doesn't it?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: It does because it's only, it is greed that has driven all these rich 1 percent and 10 percent people. I think it's time that we started becoming, as a nation, more angry.

AMT: Did you think when you were a young man that and things had appeared to change that you would be fighting this again, at this point in your life?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: I did not actually. I must say this all happened after my wife died. I went to Portugal for the winters. I was there during the banking crash of 09 whether I realized what those bankers did. I felt that it was time that I became interested in governments and banks and what have you. Because not what of those banks that caused mayhem across the world and were the direct result of austerity, they didn't get the punishment they should have got.

AMT: You know I was going to ask you when you're 94 and a lot of people would either want to relax, or frankly couldn't even be able to do what you do because they don't survive as long as you do. But I realize you don't think there's time to relax at 94, that you think that this is important and you need to talk about it as much as you can. Am I right?

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: Oh absolutely, absolutely. I will be doing this until I drop dead. Because I don't think there's any greater challenges than to get people to wake up to a society which is taking advantage of their good nature because ordinary people seem to just sit back and say nothing and do nothing. It's time that they – and it will happen. I don't know where - that there will be a revolution or something.

AMT: Harry Leslie Smith, thank you for speaking with me.

HARRY LESLIE SMITH: It's been my pleasure. Thank you.

AMT: 94 year old Harry Leslie Smith author of Don't Let my Past be Your Future. His podcast is called Harry's Last Stand. Visit our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and we will post photos of him and a link to his podcast.

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June 26, 2018 full episode transcript

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