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The Current Transcript for September 27, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Attacks on Christine Blasey Ford could backfire on Republicans, says Rebecca Solnit

Guests: David Frum, Rebecca Solnit

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

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I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was very inebriated. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This is what terrified me the most and this had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe and I thought that bread was accidentally going to kill me.

AMT: That is Christine Blasey Ford in her highly anticipated testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee. That testimony, that statement you just heard actually came early on in her testimony before she was being questioned in her original statement. Christine Blasey Ford is of course now one of four women to bring allegations. She was the first. But there are now four women, including her, who have brought allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh who is President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court. For many justice Kavanagh's confirmation has become a pivotal moment for the Me Too movement, a test of its impact. The outcome of this hearing has implications for the United States on many political levels. It is the highest court in the land also on the politics and outcome of the upcoming midterm elections. Earlier in the day we were following this as our show moved west. And what you're going to hear is the interviews that we had for British Columbia as we remade our show to actually acknowledge the fact that the testimony had begun, even as we were off the air in earlier time zones. And we went to David Frum. He was listening in to the hearings. David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is of course the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. He is also a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, the Republican president. And we reached David Frum in his car in Washington D.C. and I wanted to hear his impression of the testimony so far. We don't know what happened to that bit of the audio. By the time we get to our podcast and our radio app for later in the day but I did talk to him about the fact that he had called for Republicans to delay the vote on Brett Kavanaugh and this is his answer to that.

DAVID FRUM: Here's the problem they have. There are two questions overhanging this hearing. Question one is, did it happen as is alleged? And second, if it did happen what does it mean? And the problem that the Republicans have here is that every one of them is holding to a president who makes these decisions, manifestly on the basis of a lot of hostility to women, particularly the women who bring forth the kind of allegations that so many women have brought forth very credibly against him. You don't get to be a member of this caucus unless you've signed up to support a president who is himself implicated in sexual assault.

AMT: Are you still there? You have another point to make?

DAVID FRUM: Yes.

AMT: You've said basically these are the wrong people in the wrong time to be making this decision.

DAVID FRUM: Yes.

[Indistinct conversation]

AMT: We're getting in your car obviously.

DAVID FRUM: I'm sorry. I tried to pull over safely and the police don't like that I pulled over.

AMT: Okay fair enough. So I've just been reading what you've written in the Atlantic, David Frum, and you're making the point that that these are the wrong people and this is the wrong time for this decision.

DAVID FRUM: But there implicate. I mean the problem isn't with the personality that most overhangs this room is not even Marc judge, the missing witness, who is not even [unintelligible]. The personality that overhangs this room is President Trump. When President Trump made his choice that many presidents would have looked at the record. And although the record did not show Christine Blasey Ford's testimony it did certainly show that Kavanaugh had a history of allegations about heavy use of alcohol and that there were questions about the kind of life that he had led. President Trump is exactly the kind of person that most disregard those kinds of allegations and present Trump, as he said at his press conference yesterday., feels a kind of identity with Brett Kavanaugh because he himself has been so plausibly accused of a much more serious form of sexual assault in his life.

AMT: So what are the implications for the Republican Party if Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination is withdrawn?

DAVID FRUM: Well they are they are backed into a terrible jam because of the calendar. This is the end of September. There are elections coming in November. The Republicans are expecting losses certainly in the House possibly also in the Senate. They have a very narrow margin with which to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. If this gets delayed they could be in a situation where they President Trump tries to nominate another person after the elections, possibly after the Republicans lose their majority but before the new majority is seated. It will be a period from November to January where the Republicans will still have their old majority even though their mandate has been lost. The new Congress does not take effect until until the new year. And then they have this question do they try to jam forward another nominee with the theoretical legal power to do so but no legitimacy? I think in the past hundred years there'd been something like 13 of these lame duck sessions. I am doing that from memory. I may be slightly wrong about that figure. Mostly what they do is finish up leftover business you know bills that pass through almost all the formalities that haven't quite cleared the final hurdle for the president's signature that they're tidying up session. The idea that they would do something as consequential as confirm Justice of the Supreme Court and by the way the fifth justice who will decide the majority of the court, one way or another, it's currently evenly balanced between its more liberal and more conservative wings. This is a very very very important seats and that you would do that without a democratic mandate, that's going to be a very awkward situation.

AMT: And let's talk about the importance of that seat because really a lot of this has to do with Roe V. Wade.

DAVID FRUM: It has to do with Roe V. Wade and also then there are some successful cases to Roe V. Wade. Judge Kavanagh's now has indicated, and I don’t know how convincingly to certain members of the Senate, that he's not interested in tackling Roe V. Wade. But Roe V. Wade is not the only precedent in the abortion world that you can trim back. There are other important cases where the Roe V. Wade precedent was reaffirmed and those are the cases that are probably most immediately in danger. The Republicans are aware that the pro-life cause is strictest form is not super popular but you can hem in the abortion right in ways that make it impossible to operate without directly overturning Roe V. Wade. That's maybe what this fifth seat is really most about.

AMT: And as you watch all this happen I mean you've already pointed out to the spiral underway in politics right now, what does this do, what we're watching right now to the already very divided politics in Washington?

DAVID FRUM: Well it may divide the politics because the Republicans are right now suffering a gender gap of mean of proportions so big so unprecedented that when you first look at the numbers it looks like a statistical error. I mean you cannot it cannot be that you're seeing 25 and 30 point differences in the voting intentions of men and women. But that's the way it looks. And the gender gap becomes most intense and the mutiny among Americans becomes less intense among those with college educations, and that group is precisely most likely to vote in these off year elections. Rule of thumb when there's a president on the ballot something between 50 and 55 percent of Americans vote. When the president is not on the ballot, somewhere around 35 percent of Americans vote. That's 35 is different from the 55. The 35 is older, more affluent, better educated, whiter. And it's precisely among those people that President Trump is most disliked that the electorate normally tilts somewhat more Republican than the big electorate of the presidential years. But this year because of the way the women made it much more anti Republican and in a lot of seats that Republicans thought were safe become unsafe.

AMT: David Frum thanks for your thoughts on this.

DAVID FRUM: Thank you so much.

David Frum staff writer at The Atlantic. He's the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. We reached him in Washington D.C. As I was saying this is a real crucial moment for the United States on many fronts and it may be pivotal for the Me Too movement. Rebecca Solnit is a feminist writer and historian. Her new book Call them by their True Names: American Crises and Essays is about U.S. politics and social issues. Rebecca Solnit joins me from San Francisco. Hi.

REBECCA SOLNIT: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: Tell me what you're thinking as you've been watching this testimony so far today.

REBECCA SOLNIT: Dr. Ford Is an incredibly compelling narrator of her experience. The emotion in her voice makes it even harder to go out and you know attack her although that may not stop all the people in the right wing who've been doing it. And I wonder how much this may backfire on the Republicans who decided to do it. But of course the real story is what we're not seeing. We're not seeing an FBI investigation. We're not seeing Marc judge who is the co-attacker being subpoenaed. We're not seeing the crop raiding witnesses being subpoenaed. We're not seeing the other women who are relating stories of sexual assault by Kavanaugh. And we're not seeing a 100,000 pages of what exactly it was. Kavanaugh was doing during the Bush administration for starters.

AMT: And I want to ask you a little bit more about because there are other women who have now come forward alleging sexual assault, alleging a number of things in different times, one as recent as 1998. And so what weight does that give to the testimony we're watching today even if they're not in the room>

REBECCA SOLNIT: I think there are three women who have come forward who had firsthand experiences. And that's more than enough to raise profound questions about this man's qualification to be allowed near children let alone to serve as a judge. And you know we do have other anonymous allegations that I think are less credible and if we treat them all as equivalent it feels like it could undermine these three people who've gone on the record offered to you know talk under oath and who I find incredibly credible. So I kind of feel like we don't even need to look at anonymous allegations that have ended up in the record, the Rhode Island thing the thing about Kavanaugh's shoving a woman in 1998.

AMT: I'm wondering what you make of the the questioning coming from Rachel Mitchell.

REBECCA SOLNIT: I find the very fact that they got a sex crimes prosecutor to question Dr. Ford really disturbing. You know they wanted a woman because it's all men on the Republicans side. And so they kind of got her to do their dirty work. And a sex crimes prosecutor. She's not a sex criminal and this is not a criminal court. She's also somebody who worked with Sheriff Arpaio who is sent to jail for his misconduct and who Trump pardoned, rather shockingly. So she's not only a partisan of the Republicans but she's also somebody associated with some of the worst abuse of rights in the United States. Arpaio was notorious for mistreating prisoners and racially profiling the Latinos.

AMT: She is being very careful and very very consistent in her tone with Dr. Ford. She's not accusatory. She's asking for specifics, what she remembers, what she doesn't. What do you make of her style? Where she going with this do you think?

REBECCA SOLNIT: She has been innocuous so far. But I wonder whether she's been hired because she does have this kind of pleasant harmless demeanor and because they wanted a woman to do their dirty work. Because you know they don't want to ask these questions themselves I suspect we may see her trying to discredit Dr. Ford. And these are guys who remember how lousy they looked, bullying and shaming and demonizing Anita Hill and [cutting] doing it again. So she may she may go she may go the way that we've seen her go but I doubt that's what she was brought in for.

AMT: What are the wider implications for the Me Too movement with what's under way today in D.C. Rebecca Solnit?

REBECCA SOLNIT: You know I think we've seen so many cases that have already had consequences. All the media personnel ladies at Weinstein, and so many stories and so many women coming forth, janitors and farm workers, not just high powered White Collar women, that we know we have an epidemic of gender violence misogyny and sexual violence in this country and around the world. And I don't know if it changes that much. What we're really looking at is to what extent does the Republican Party want to be the party of rape culture and given who's president they don't really seem to have a problem with it.

AMT: The Republicans who support him who support Brett Kavanaugh also some of them are taking a long view. We heard David Frum talk about the importance of that position on the Supreme Court. How are you watching that?

REBECCA SOLNIT: I think it will be a terrible day for the United States if this man gets on the Supreme Court. Not only is he against reproductive rights for women but he seems to be Trump's choice because he's got to protect the president's unaccountability and autocracy, and in so many cases he favors the powerful for the vulnerable whether it's environmental or labor or so many other things. And I think he's really a partisan hack who, as part of the Ken Starr investigation of Bill Clinton, as part of the Bush administration, was working for the Republicans not for the United States. And that's why they want him on the court and why he's a menace to everything vulnerable and to the ideals of equality and equal access to justice.

AMT: So we know that there is going to be an attempt to get a vote on this in the next day or so. Are you expecting to see justice Kavanaugh confirmed or are you expecting this testimony to actually have a greater effect on those people who were ready to confirm him?

REBECCA SOLNIT: Life in the Trump era is about waking up in the morning not knowing what crazy stuff will go down before lunchtime and that persists. We have seen a number of Republican Senators; Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski sound like they're a little bit queasy about the whole thing but one of the things we've seen a lot under Trump is that Republican senators make virtuous noises about things that are inappropriate and then pretend that they have no power and just go along with their party. So, I don't know.

AMT: Many women who were girls when they watched Anita Hill testified back in 1991 describe that moment as a feminist awakening for them. What kind of effect do you think this will have on a new generation of girls and boys coming out?

REBECCA SOLNIT: I think Anita Hill really really was a feminist awakening I remember it vividly, but I feel like we've been having a feminist awakening for five or six years since things intensified in late 2012. So now we're already awake and this is really about whether or not we matter. And we matter too. Apparently the Democratic Party, we matter to a lot of people in this country. We clearly don't matter to Republicans. So it's about whether this old guard that's worked hard to keep women silent and to allow this abuse to continue will prevail or whether we outweigh them in this one matter. And then after that whether we outweigh them in the election in November.

AMT: Rebecca Solnit thanks for your thoughts on this.

REBECCA SOLNIT: My pleasure. Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: Rebecca Solnit is a writer and an historian. She joined us from San Francisco. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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New book reveals how the CBC lost Hockey Night in Canada

Guest: David Shoalts

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to TheCurrent.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come Rob Armstrong knows two things food and cannabis companies. The Alberta chef is betting big on cannabis related stocks and doing well and he's not alone. We'll see how he's making out in about 30 minutes. But first the hockey fight to end all hockey fights.

SOUNDCLIP

Live on CBC, Hockey Night in Canada brought to you by Molsen, brewers of Molsen Export, it keeps on tasting great.

AMT: Well does that take you back? For millions of Canadians that iconic music is the sound of childhood of adolescence and adulthood a Pavlovian call every Saturday night to the family room couch and Hockey Night in Canada. The broadcast was a cornerstone of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation almost from its inception with Foster Hewitt doing the play by play on Radio way back in 1936. And then of course it moved to television in the early 1950s, Hockey Night in Canada and the CBC. It was a marriage that would last forever or so it seemed. And then in 2013 Rogers Communications won the exclusive rights to broadcast NHL games in Canada and it looked as if an era was coming to an end. That deal and the drama that surrounded it is the focus of a new book by Globe and Mail Sports reporter David Schultz. It is called Hockey Fight in Canada: The Big Media Face off over the NHL, and David Shoalts is with me in our Toronto studio hi.

DAVID SHOALTS: Hi how are you. I

AMT: You love listening that music. You have a big smile on your face, huh?

DAVID SHOALTS: Well yes I mean for Canadians of a certain age that was part of their weekly routine, was sitting down with the family and listen to that. I mean there's probably not a Canadian, as I said of a certain age, because the CBC lost control of that tune some years ago to TSN, but there's not a Canadian of a certain age who can't at least hum that tune.

AMT: They wanted me too actually. You know it's up it's funny because you make the point that that a Hockey Night in Canada, that there's something in the DNA of that in the threads of that that is even more important than Monday Night Football.

DAVID SHOALTS: Oh yes. I mean it was the most unique thing certainly in North America. You might even be able to argue the world and John Collins knew that any talks about it in the book, because he said this was different. He said it was like Monday Night Football in a way that it was a community sort of getting together to watch football. But he said Monday Night Football was different in that that was the guys night out in the bar, watching a football game. Hockey Night Canada was the whole family gathering around the television and he said that is a powerful thing to offer advertisers and certainly played a large part in why they were - him and Gary Bettman and Bill Daley - were looking to get record money out of the next deal.

AMT: Okay well let's just talk about some of the backstory here. In January of 2012 the NHL board of governors has a meeting in Ottawa. Why is this meeting so important to the CBC eventually losing the broadcast rights to the games?

DAVID SHOALTS: Well by itself the meeting wasn't important. It wasn't a make or break meeting but it was a real early warning shot over the bow of the CBC that things weren't great between the CBC and the owners of the NHL, in particular the Canadian teams. They had been getting more and more unhappy for quite some time mostly about Ron MacLean and Don Cherry, in particular Ron, because they thought Ron was biased against the management view of things in the NHL. Now Ron for his part always said, and this was mostly manifested by really contentious interviews on camera between Ron and Gary Bettman and their relationship really suffered because of that, but Ron's rationale was nobody speaking up for the players in these kinds of issues. And so someone should - and that someone I guess is going to be me. And so this of course didn't go over big with management particularly because in that period between say 2004 and 2012 there were two really big labor negotiation fights. They lost the 2004-2005 season to a lockout. And in 2012 that was another lockout in the 2012-2013 season. So this was a really sensitive issue for the owners. And then the Canadian teams outside of Toronto also had a longstanding complaint that the Maple Leafs got too much love from Hockey Night in Canada, i.e. all the primetime Saturday night a you know Eastern games and so they were always unhappy about that. But what was significant about this is that all of them were now unhappy with the CBC as the negotiating period was approaching.

AMT: And you make the point actually that when the Leafs and the [unintelligible] management agrees that should be like a red light.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes and because and so the the people that there for the CBC missed it. The two main people there were Kirstine Stewart who at the time was the head of English television I guess.

AMT: That's right. She was vice president of English everything.

DAVID SHOALTS: And Jeffrey Orridge was the head of sports.

AMT: Both of them very new in those positions.

DAVID SHOALTS: That was part of it. And you know for Kirstein Stewart's part you know she wasn't expected that part of her job to know all the little nuances of the relationship between the league and the network. Jeffrey Orridge was I think about a year into his job and he still wasn't aware. I think if there is a mistake made there they should've brought a couple of the Hockey Night in Canada produces with them because this meeting usually was just a glad handing sort of exercise. It was an annual meeting held at every All-Star Game. But Brian Burke who was then GM and president of the Maple Leafs knew what was up enough that he phoned Jeffrey Orridge and said 'Hey I should give you a heads up. I'm just giving you a heads up here. You're in for a rough ride at this meeting. You better be prepared'. And I'm not sure that Jeffrey Orridge really you know took him that seriously. And then what happened was that Burke got up first and as only Burke can just went up one side of them and down the other because he had his own beef in that he thought Ron and Don, as they are known, were biased against him and Ron Wilson - Ron Wilson the time was the head coach of the leafs - because Don Cherry didn't think they had enough Canadian players in particularly Ontario born players on the team. And this took up a lot air time in the Coach's Corner and Burke was not happy with that.

AMT: In fact they really didn't like Ron and Don. They made it mostly about them in their view as opposed to the players.

DAVID SHOALTS: Right.

AMT: So that was their other beef.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes well that was another sort of longstanding gripe of Gary Bettman and John Collins was that the broadcasts were too much of both the broadcasters. All the panel shows, the hot stove, Ron and Don they wanted the focus to be on the players which in the end is what helped swing the deal for Rodgers.

AMT: OK so you get this meeting, this very crucial meeting where people aren't catching the signs and that you've got these guys are festering, these NHL guys are festering. The CBC makes a presentation that day. What did they think of the CBC?

DAVID SHOALTS: Well that was it that the CBC made that sort of presentation because that's the way this media gone for years. Things are great and all here's what we're looking at doing next time around or next year. Something along those lines. And then Burk got up and just went up one side of them and down the other, 'you guys are biased, you guys are biased against management, you're biased against me'. And the significant thing about that was when he sat down, after he I guess ran out of energy, is that people aren't clear because some years ago who exactly - most people think it was Mike Gillis the general manager of the Vancouver Canucks - got up and said 'I agree with everything Brian Burke just said'. Now for hockey people this was pretty significant because Brian Burke and the Canucks hated each other. I mean the Canucks had fired Burke a few years earlier. And then after that after they promoted his lieutenant David [unintelligible] to his old job they fired him. So then they'd had some skirmishes over tampering with players. There are a number of loud arguments. So for a guy from the Canucks to just immediately jump up and say 'I agree with everything Brian said' this was pretty significant and it seemed to be- but it was sort of lost on the CBC.

AMT: A couple of things going on in the background here. First let's talk about the biggest handicap facing the CBC as it went into broadcast negotiations with the NHL in 2013.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes that was money. Everyone knew in the months leading up to these negotiations that with declining viewers it was becoming increasingly important for television networks to find something that would actually get more viewers as you went along. Not you know fall to all the cord cutting of millennials and that sort of thing. And the one thing that was impervious to that was live sports programming because you couldn't really record that and watch it later if you're a real fan. And so that's why these rights, even in the face of declining viewership, the prices for their continued decline.

AMT: Well not only that the NHL was looking at, the football league the NFL sweepstakes and they watched them get a really fat deal. Right.

DAVID SHOALTS: Right around that time the NFL re up for tens of billions of dollars a year. The exact number I forget I'm going to guess somewhere 40 billion a year is just astounding. I mean compared to that the NHL was a pretty small fish but they were still looking at their own significant increases. So it was pretty clear to everybody in the business that there was no way on a strictly money basis like paying for the right to the entire broadcast on Saturday night. That wasn't going to happen for the CBC. And the best thing they could have done in most people's view was make a partnership with one of the other big guys, Rogers or Bell. And that didn't happen.

AMT: Well let's talk about Rogers and Bell. They were determined to arrest control from the CBC. Why did they want it? What did they see?

DAVID SHOALTS: Well they saw, as John Collins called it, the most compelling programming candidate. It got the highest ratings of any other programming and you would control it. Now going into this no one was looking at buying all of the rights by themselves. This was something dreamed up by John Collins and Gary Bettman. They called it the gatekeeper model where you would own the broadcast rights, the digital rights, the radio rights, everything. So if anybody wanted access to that, if you are so inclined to sell some at all they had to come to you you were the gatekeeper. But going into it, it was still a multi network model they were looking at like the NFL where they parcel off their rights to about three or four networks, and each of them pays a huge amount of money, and at that time they thought that's the way we maximize our- So what they were looking at is that, well we'll give the CBC some sort of package whether or not maybe it's in partnership with one of the big guys. Most likely when they are always talking partnership they are talking Bell and TSN. Nobody was really taking Rogers seriously at that time was a competitor.

AMT: Why?

DAVID SHOALTS: Because The assumption was well Rogers is going to come in and buy a Sunday night package, because Bettman and Collins really wanted to develop Sunday night as a national viewing night for hockey as well. So that was the thinking, that, okay CBC keeps a couple games on Saturday. TSN and Bell will will also have games Saturday but they'll also have one or two other nights a week that are the NHL designate certain nights of the week as national games. There are roughly Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday now then there's the occasional game on other nights. And so TSN would buy the bulk of the package and then either shows their own games on Saturday or package some off to the CBC. And then, okay, here's Rogers over here gonna take Sunday nights. So nobody was taken Rogers - like when I say nobody I mean the CBC or-.

AMT: They didn't see Rogers cming.

DAVID SHOALTS: They didn't see Rodgers. Peli basically said, the president of of Rogers Media at that time, said 'Yes. Nobody saw us comming.'.

AMT: But Rogers had someone in the back pocket.

DAVID SHOALTS: Well they had Scott Moore as their president. And Schott had been a key executive at the CBC for many years. He was head of CBC Sports. And by the time he left in, shortly before that I think the negotiations start 2011-2012, he was also head of CBC I guess advertising that's I think it's called CBC revenue.

AMT: So he knew exactly what was going inside CBC.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes he knew all the issues and more than that he developed a really really good relationship with Gary Bettman during his years at the CBC. So he was well positioned to just go over and help Rogers with these negotiations.

AMT: Do you know if you had a non compete clause?

DAVID SHOALTS: I don't think he did because there wasn't very much time between when he left CBC and when he surfaced at Rogers. But the other key thing that that Keith Pelly and Scott Moore got more did going into negotiations was they knew people weren't taking them seriously. So they let it out that 'well you know this is kind of a rich package for us and we're not sure that we're going to bid on it'. This was by design. They wanted people to think they weren't much of a threat and another reason that this sort of helped them out was that Rogers was in the midst of shedding the CEO at that time. Nadir Mohamed was going to leave at the end of 2013.

AMT: The other thing was that Roger's in terms of straight up broadcast didn't have the reach that CBC had. But people weren't paying attention to was that it had the digital reach. It hand the smart phones, it had all this other stuff.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yeah well when they talk, when the NHL Gary Bettman and John Collins and Bill and he talked about digital reach or with the gatekeeper package, there were really only two contenders. There was Bell and Rogers because they were both cell companies, cable companies, all of these things wrapped into one. And so when they're going to lay out billions of dollars they had other ways to recoup that money. They could sell cable packages. They'd sell wireless subscriptions. They'd sell you a cell phone to watch it on. Whereas all the CBC could do was sell advertising. So they were handicapped right from the start. But I think their negotiators made it worse.

AMT: Well let's talk about that because there's also the play of egos here and what Rogers understood about Gary Batman. And you talk about Hubert Lacroix who was then president of the CBC. They needed a little bit of TLC from the CBC and they didn't get it.

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes I mean that's the one key advantage Rogers had because both CBC and Bell made the same mistake is that they didn't really know their opponent that well. Which is a little ironic in that Jeffrey Orridge was hired as the head of CBC Sports basically I think partly on the basis that he was supposed to know Gary Bettman very well, because Jeffrey started working for USA Basketball early in his career. He was a chief legal officer. Gary Bettman was the number three man in the National Basketball Association. So those two worked together on a number of projects. But the thing about Gary Bettman was he had a very acute sense of his own importance and the importance of his league. So what he was going to negotiate a major package like television rights he firmly believed that he should be sitting across the table from the most important person at that company. And what really happened was the negotiating team; Jeffrey Orridge, Neil McEnany who by then was the acting head of English TV and Hubert Lacroix had a breakfast early in the summer that summer of 2013. It was an exclusive negotiating period for the CBC. And Hubert Lacroix basically said at the end of it 'Okay guys you're in good hands. Gary I'll talk to you again when this is all over. Basically at the press conference to announce a new deal.' And Collins and Bettman were stunned they couldn't believe that Hubert Lacroix was not going to take an active part in the negotiations. Lacroix argues that he was constantly in touch with Orridge and [unintelligible] but that wasn't the same to Bettman. To Bettman it was almost like a snub and it was one more thing of 'you guys don't get it'. And then Bell made the same mistake. George Cope who is the CEO of Bell, he had a contentious relationship with Bettman anyway in his role as part owner. His company is part owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. So George Cope would go to governors meetings because he was on the board of Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment. So he and Bettman didn't really get along. George Cope he's a hard nosed guy. So is Gary Bettman and so he too did not take an active part in the negotiations and this was duly noted by Collins and Bettman. Now Collins did say that that by itself was not enough to railroad a deal between them because he said Gary would never let something personal come in the way. But it certainly didn't help. It was one more thing and probably a fairly major thing.

AMT: So in the end NHL goes with Rodgers. What's the package? How much money are we talking?

DAVID SHOALTS: Well 5.2 billion dollars over 12 years. Now, If I could just add one more, the big advantage for Rogers in all of that was Scott Moore new Gary Bettman very well and he knew that Gary Bettman wanted to sit across the table from the most important guy. So when they were going into their negotiations a few months after the CBC he insisted that Nadir Moḥamed be there and be active and for his part, Mohamed could have brushed him off because he was in the final lap as CEO. I believe his retirement - that's in quotes by the way - retirement was coming. He could have just said 'You know I'm going to be gone in a few months'. But he he went in and according to Scott played a really really active and brilliant role in negotiation.

AMT: Again Scott Moore understood the nuances of this kind of thing because, of the three, he's already working at the second one and he understood this the way the others didn't. Realistically could the CBC have kept Hockey Night in Canada, given the fact that it was facing the cutbacks it was?

DAVID SHOALTS: Yes it could. And not in the same fashion but enough of it that it still would have been a valuable property for it. I mean I think in the end that's sort of the whole tragedy of this thing for the CBC, because first the NHL offered them in their exclusive negotiating period a version. They said basically look we know you can't compete on the money. So here's what we're thinking. You get two games every Saturday. We'll give you a version of Hockey Night that will still bring in money for you. It will be at a much you'll get basically get fewer games at a bigger price. By the end of that contract they were paying 105 million a year to the league. So most people think the NHL had in mind you double that and you're going to show two games. You'll show most of the play offs. Probably the idea is that you'd share the playoffs with someone else.

AMT: I'm going to move you forward because we're almost out of time here but but Pelley goes 'President of Roger's Media says the CBC. Here's the deal'. What was the deal that he said to the CBC?

DAVID SHOALTS: He basically came on strong and he admitted he was bluffing. He said 'Here's the deal. You give us all the airtime on Saturday night. You give us your technical people. You give us space in your building,' because Rogers didn't have the kind of space needed for the studio.

AMT: For free?

DAVID SHOALTS: For free. We'll work out a dollar figure for all of that and apply that and we get all the advertising revenue. And you've got 48 hours to decide.

AMT: And CBC rolled over.

DAVID SHOALTS: They rolled over. They compounded their mistake in not taking a partnership with either the big guys and turning down the NHL offer of a version of a hockey night in Canada. And then compounded it by rolling over on Pelley. He fully expected them to come back and say 'Hey wait a minute we got the biggest over the air reach of anyone. You don't have CTV, Bell does. All you've got is City which is in a few major cities and that's it'. And Pelley says 'Yes.' He says 'I didn't have anything else'. He said if they said no I would have been face to going to Global and trying to work something out and global doesn't have the reach CBC does.

AMT: Do we did ask CBC for comment about losing the bid for hockey night in Canada. And here's the quote: "CBC put forward a fiscally responsible offer but in the end the NHL decided to go with a single gatekeeper approach for the national rights and candidly there was no scenario that would have the public broadcaster writing a check for 5.2 billion dollars. Through an ongoing and strong partnership with Rogers Media we recently signed a long term agreement that will keep Hockey Night in Canada on CBC with regular season games, the playoffs, the Stanley Cup Final right through 2026. The CBC calls it a deal that is mutually beneficial." What do you think.

DAVID SHOALTS: Well I could never get anyone to talk about this is the second deal they signed with Rodgers after the first one. Well I think it actually expires after this season. The best I can tell is, yes, it's a better deal than the first one but I don't think it's as good as they probably could have gotten if they'd played hardball the first time around.

AMT: So you're saying no one talked to you about this firts deal.

DAVID SHOALTS: People talk to me about the first deal yeah, not to many at CBC I got to admit.

AMT: That's what I mean. You couldn't get them to talk to them.

DAVID SHOALTS: I mean Jeffrey Orridge just kept saying this is the best deal possible and that sort of stuff. And Hubert Lacroix said to me last summer that even in hindsight he still thinks it was a pretty good deal. Scott Moore says much the same. OK well Scott's the winner but the second deal the one they just signed I guess a year ago last spring. It's a little better. They get streaming rights for the Games which probably gives them some revenue. They still get to carry all the playoff games, but they're still giving them the technical people and paying the freight.

AMT: And the space in the building for free. So there's lots more because it really is a back room story and we're not doing it justice but it's fascinating work.

DAVID SHOALTS: It's funny, if I had written this book a year or two earlier which was the plan with the publisher, I wouldn't found out a lot of this stuff. But it's funny in a year or two goes by and some guys feel a little safer about opening up. So yes there's a lot of fascinating stuff but what was going on in the boardrooms of all four entities involved in this.

AMT: We're going to have to leave it there. Hockey Fight in Canada is the name of David Shoalts's book. He's the sports writer for The Globe and Mail. Hockey Fight in Canada: The Big Media Face off Over in the NHL. Fascinating backroom information on all of that. Stay with us. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. [Music: Theme]

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This man made $1M investing in cannabis — but expert warns it's a lottery

Guests: Rob Armstrong, Jason Wilson, Pat Mckeough

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Marijuana legalization is still a few weeks away but for investors it's already been a crazy ride on the stock markets.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Time for Cramer and stock trading, Jim.

VOICE 2: Nothing gets your portfolio high like the marijuana stocks, had to. But [unintelligible] I am worried that maybe the easy money has been made here.

VOICE 3: After a wild week for cannabis stock, we wanted to see what the smoke signals say. What are some of these big risks that the industry has been warning investors about?

VOICE 4: Well it's hard to come up with words that really describe the kind of trading action that we have seen in some of these cannabis related stocks, but there's no doubt marijuana related issues are in a lot of radars today at least.

AMT: Here's just one example of the Wild Ride. Tilray, based in Nanaimo BC, says its mission is to deliver the benefits of medical cannabis safely and reliable. It debuted on the Nasdaq in July at twenty dollars a share. Last week the stock topped 300 dollars a share. It's since dropped back to a boat 115. Those peaks and valleys shape the debate over whether cannabis stocks are a big opportunity or a bad bet. We're going to talk to two investment experts with very different views on that a little later and we'll look at where there's money to be made based on the lessons learned from the last time a popular mind altering substance was legalized. But first I'm joined by someone who's betting big on marijuana stocks. Rob Armstrong's day job is as a chef at an oil camp in northern Alberta. He's in Lac La Biche Alberta. Hi Rob.

ROB ARMSTRONG: Good morning. Thanks for inviting me on.

AMT: Well I'm really curious to hear your story. So you bought cannabis stocks what got you buying them in the first place?

ROB ARMSTRONG: I was involved in medical cannabis as a patient before I started investing in it. I jumped on with a local Alberta company as far as my first investment in the sector was.

AMT: When did that start?

ROB ARMSTRONG: 2015 when I got involved.

AMT: 2015 and how much money did you put in?

ROB ARMSTRONG: I went to my financial advisor and basically had to fight my money out of the RSP and get it put into a trading account. And I originally put in 37,000 dollars.

AMT: In 2015. What's it worth now?

ROB ARMSTRONG: After 18 months I turned that 37,000 into a million dollars.

AMT: A million dollars.

ROB ARMSTRONG: Yes in 18 months and it would be December 27th of last year was probably one of my best days ever in the market, making 140,000 dollars in that day.

AMT: Really? What happened that day?

ROB ARMSTRONG: It was just the first day back after Christmas in mid hype and mid run of everything and the [unintelligible] a great day. And that put me over the million mark the first time.

AMT: So how much investment experience did you have before you started doing this?

ROB ARMSTRONG: I didn't have any investment experience prior to 2015. I had to learn fast terminology and just learn the systems or how to basically invest, period. No not just in the marijuana industry but just learning how to invest.

AMT: So you cashed out your RSPs 37,000 dollars, you cashed everything out and you did this. What made you want to do that?

ROB ARMSTRONG: Just realize the new and upcoming industry. You know it was a first mover advantage to just get into it. And it something that- it made sense.

AMT: So you said when you when you wanted to cash out they actually fought you at the bank?

ROB ARMSTRONG: Yes they were very skeptical talking to my financial adviser back then and I wanted all my money in to put into an investment account. And she was you know 'how about I give you 5000?' I said, well how about you give me all of it.

AMT: And now what do they say to you now?

ROB ARMSTRONG: Dow she follows me on Facebook. I made a point of showing back up. After after about a year of investing, I was in her office and she was still fairly skeptical and she asked me she says 'where is your portfolio going to be a year from now?' And we set it up on our calendar and I looked at it and I said well - this was September - I said well double by April. She says 'you're going to double your portfolio by April, those are your expectations?' I said yes. And six weeks later I made a point to going back to her office to show her I was two and a half times my money and I'd beaten my April Goals. And now she follows me on Facebook.

AMT: So how do you deal with a wild bumps? Did you have times when you when things started going south? Like what would you see what would you have thought?

ROB ARMSTRONG: I have taken a lot of my emotions out of the ups and downs. I mean I still grieve the down and celebrate the up, but I can remember my first real bad day. I've got about an hour drive to work. And in that hour I lost about 60,000 dollars. And that was my first real bad run and I was sweating. I was having anxiety. I didn't know what to do. I was a lot newer in the game than I am now. And that was rough. And now it doesn't faze me. I look further ahead on where I expect to be, I am lot better at doing my due diligence now than what I was back then. So I have a lot more confidence in the stocks that I've picked.

AMT: And how much time do you spend on this a day?

ROB ARMSTRONG: My own personal portfolio, I spent about two hours a day. By the time I'm reading through all the news releases, written articles trying to find the next trend, the next money maker that's coming. For myself it's a couple hours a day. But I'm very active on social media. And that sucks up the rest of my day. It is really fast. I mean we're running a Web site at our ryghub.com and fit multiple Facebook pages for investors. That's why I spent a lot of time on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

AMT: So what's your exit strategy? When do you sign to sell?

ROB ARMSTRONG: Selling is a lot harder than buying. Believe it or not. You know it's easy just to get to jump in but try to plan an exit strategy is tough. You don't like to leave money on the table. But I've got some companies that have numbers that I want price points so I want to get out. Other companies, it's time frames and I'm looking for market indicators or technical analysis to get out. So I'm just waiting for a news release. As I've got companies on waiting lists on the Nasdaq before I consider selling them. Each company varies.

AMT: Well it's really interesting to hear from you. Thanks for talking to me. Congratulations.

ROB ARMSTRONG: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

AMT: Okay. Take care.

ROB ARMSTRONG: Yes you have a good day.

AMT: That is Rob Armstrong he's a stock investor he works at an oil camp. He's a chef and he's in Lac La Biche Alberta. While investing in cannabis may be working for him, not everyone is sold on the long term viability of such stocks. Joining me are two people with different takes on the investment potential of cannabis companies. Pat McKeough is a portfolio manager and publisher of The Successful Investor and he's in Toronto. Jason Wilson is president of Budding Equity. Yes, Budding Equity. He advises investment companies on the cannabis industry. He's the co-founder of a new exchange traded fund that focuses on marijuana stocks. And Jason Wilson is in our Toronto studio. Hello to you both.

JASON WILSON: Hi.

PAT MCKEOUGH: Hi there.

AMT: Well what do you think as you listen to our last guest there? What was it? He said 18 months. Thirty seven thousand dollars. Cashed out our RSPs to 1 million. Jason what do you think?

JASON WILSON: It's an incredible and very fortuitous for Rob and as successful as that is, that is not a strategy. I would recommend for most- he put it on the line, it worked out well for him and congratulates, yes, but that's quite a whim.

AMT: You don't have people saying do that for me now.

JASON WILSON: No absolutely not.

AMT: Pat McKeogh what do you think?

PAT MCKEOUGH: Will somebody is going to win the lottery.

AMT: But that's what it is, it's a lottery.

PAT MCKEOUGH: It's kind of like the lottery in the sense that the odds are against the participants. Somebody is going to win but you never get a full blown boom like we're in now which has been going since certainly 2015. Many companies have gotten into the game and you know that not all of them will succeed. And you also know that, I think you can you can say pretty clearly this isn't like a computer boom you know 10 years ago, 15 years ago. It's a legalization boom of a plant that's called weed for very good reason; it's not hard to grow. You know teenagers have been doing it for decades.

AMT: So you're pessimistic about the possibilities of marijuana stocks.

PAT MCKEOUGH: What is pessimistic about the odds? I mean I'm sure a lot, maybe not a lot, some will prosper and some big companies will go and they'll do well too with a line of marijuana flavored cough drops. But what we talk about is the opportunities there in the stock market, we started the broker media limelight to make a good return on your investments and not risk a lot of money. Not risk big losses.

AMT: Pat do you think they're overvalued at this point?

PAT MCKEOUGH: Well there really are overvalued, they are trading on the possibilities of dollars or profits they may make yours for though. Many of them have negligible revenues and market caps of hundreds of millions of dollars. That just can't work for everybody, for every stock.

AMT: Jason how do you see it, because you're far more optimistic?

JASON WILSON: I'm definitely more optimistic on the sector. And I will agree with Pat on fundamentals of various companies where they're trading there's a lot of exuberance in the market right now. A lot of retail investor money that's come in and is chasing stories like Rob's. There's no question about that. And I think like any emerging industry you're going to see headwinds, you are going to see changes, I mean there's again the Ontario governments around us another curve ball this morning as to how the retail footprint will work with respect to the sales of cannabis.

AMT: What is that curve ball?

JASON WILSON: I am not 100 percent sure yet only because I haven't had a chance to read the legislation, but they're going to limit the number of stores per producer. So they're going to have a more open market share. So that could affect companies like canopy and [unintelligible] those that are bigger scale producers. And when you look at it from a pure revenue perspective there's just so much uncertainty right now. Stats can well tell us that there are probably somewhat a neighborhood to 800 to 900,000 kilograms of demand in Canada for adult use and medical. We're not sure what the price per gram will come in at. We're not sure what the margins will be to these companies. So I could see where there's a lot of skepticism about how the industry and investors in it are getting ahead of themselves. But the bigger longer term picture there will be a lot of volatility in the short term. There's no question about that. The stocks move there are highly volatile and there's going to be winners and it's going to be losers. But it's also more and I think a lot of early stage investors see this, it's not just about adult use leaf. It's not just about rolling up a reef, or the reef of madness. A lot of people are kind of picture with this industry. Kids growing weed in their backyard. It is really in large part about medical. If we look at for example GW Pharma, which is a British based company and it focuses on pharmaceuticals that are only used plant based cannabinoids in them, they just received FDA approval for Epidiolex. So this is a drug that treats childhood epilepsy. And when you think of Dravet Syndrome I mean these are kids that are under two years old that have 100 to 200 seizures a day. And it's getting you know it's actually eliminating in many cases in its entirety those seizures. So it is a real tangible benefit on the medical side and we're seeing a lot of pharmaceutical companies get involved. We're seeing just recently Tilray received permission from the DEA and the U.S. to import into the U.S. medical marijuana to University of California San Diego. And the whole premise behind that was the University of California is saying if you have a child or if you have a medical condition yourself and you're trying to regulate it or moderate it through medical marijuana, we shouldn't be letting people and doctors go to a dispensary to figure out the best way to do that. We should have more research on it. And so this is what's happening now. This is what's happening this phase more clinical trials more medical research. It's only about 10 years ago that the medical community even understood that we had the endocannabinoid system within our central nervous system.

AMT: And you also have pointed out that even like the pet industry is getting into this.

JASON WILSON: Hundred percent, even there is no clinical trials for anxiety in pets. So when you look at all the various facets of this industry it's not just about adult use and pure leaf form or oil form.

AMT: Pat Mckeough what do you think?

PAT MCKEOUGH: Well I think there's going to be a lot of employment created and a lot of very useful medical uses for marijuana but the numbers don't add up for individual investors. There's too many. You know one of our rules is it's a lot easier to start a stockbroker than it is to start a company that's likely to make money. This is just you know the law of the investment universe, that is financial physics. And when you're in a full blown boom like we're in now the odds are against the average individual investor. The gentleman who was on earlier wasn't an individual- really wasn't a you know a raw kind of person just trying to go in for a few bucks. He saw how whatever cannabis based medication he was getting was working for him and getting through a three year head start.

AMT: So who would benefit most, Pat McKeough, from all of this, the people who are already in it?

PAT MCKEOUGH: In a boom there's always some people immersed in the boom to figure out a way to make some money from it. You know whether they're consultants to companies that want to get in there whether the PR people or brokers or whatever. But I'm thinking of the needs of the individual investor who doesn't want to get burned. And I think boom are generally a bad place for individual investors because the odds are against them.

AMT: So what would it take for you to recommend a marijuana stock?

PAT MCKEOUGH: We have you know we have a free newsletter where we look at marijuana stocks and stocks related to the marijuana industry. There will be I'm sure something we can recommend wholeheartedly and with the drug company and might be process it might be a fertilizer company. But so far we've been following these things for three years. There's a lot of interesting stories. When you look at how much does this thing have to grow to justify the current stock valuation, it's never attractive in our point of view.

AMT: Jason Wilson what do you look for in a quality cannabis stock?

JASON WILSON: We look for companies that are building scale that have multiple revenue points. So when we look at the larger players, the canopies of the world, the auroras of the world, they're not just here in Canada they're not just looking at the Canadian opportunity. They're looking at a global opportunity. Medical marijuana is legal now in 34 countries globally. We also see there is the opportunity on the beverage side. I mean aside from just medical marijuana and adult use recreational marijuana use there is huge potential to disrupt alcohol sales.

AMT: Well we're going to leave it there but thank you both for giving us different views on all of this. I've been speaking with Pat McKeough portfolio manager and publisher of The Successful Investor and Jason Wilson president of Budding Equity advice. He advises investment companies on the cannabis industry. Well marijuana of course is not the first banned substance to go legit. Looking back at one of its predecessors some might give us some insight into what the future could hold for cannabis investors. On December 5th of 1933 the U.S. government ended 13 years of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. Prohibition and Canada was shorter and more erratic depending on the province which was making the prohibition law. Canada's fabled Bronfman family made its fortune during Prohibition and continued to grow rich after it ended. Daniel Okrent is the author of Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. He joins us from Wellfleet Massachusetts hello.

DANIEL OKRENT: Good morning. How are you today?

AMT: Well I'm well thank you and I'm curious to know what you can tell us. We've been talking about the wild euphoria around cannabis stocks. What was the business climate like in the U.S. leading to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933?

DANIEL OKRENT: Well it came so obvious that repeal was coming. I would say that became lobbyists around the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. So some smart operators seeing opportunity they set themselves up so they would be ready to go. On December 5th or whenever it would happen. The actual repeal process in the U.S., it took nine months which is the shortest it's ever taken for a constitutional amendment. But that was enough time for people to get ready.

AMT: And to what extent was it seen then as a business opportunity?

AMT: Well by those who had the means and the brains to figure it out it was it was obviously probably the most famous person to do that was Joseph Kennedy, father of our President John F. Kennedy, who has long been accused of being a bootlegger. He was not. What he did is he got a series of medicinal permits which enabled him to import liquor from the UK for so-called medicinal purposes. And he put them in a warehouse and he wait until December 5th. And on December 5th or December 6 he had trucks going out to all of his distributors throughout the East Coast.

AMT: So interesting, huh, medicinal first.

DANIEL OKRENT: That's a long story but under the various excuses that people would find to justify their wish to have liquor and liquor was illegal. One of them was for medicinal purposes and in fact there was quite a big business where one could go to one's position and buy a prescription take it down to the local pharmacy and get a pint every ten days. And in the big cities particularly in the east it was a booming business and kept a lot of the distillers in business in fact.

AMT: Well there is a parallel right there to medical marijuana.

DANIEL OKRENT: Absolutely.

AMT: The government also saw it as a bit of a cash grab did it not?

DANIEL OKRENT: That was I think the primary reason why repeal occurred. This is the absolute depths of the Depression in the U.S. The government is running on fumes basically unable to pay for basic services much less to pull the country out of the Depression. And somebody had the idea 'well gee we did use to collect tax on alcohol. Well let's bring back alcohol'. It was the need for tax revenue, which is really one of the primary motivations I think of the marijuana legalisation movement in the United States been seen as an opportunity to get people to pay user taxes rather than having to raise any the other taxes.

AMT: Now you mentioned the Kennedys getting into it but we also mentioned the Brahman's, the Canadian family that build their fortune during Prohibition. Who else got rich on the repeal like that?

DANIEL OKRENT: Well yeah they were doing fine until then. But as they saw repeal coming they first in 1932 they bought a huge distillery and Rossville Indiana. And they had it set up and ready to go. Similarly they took advantage of the illegal distribution network that they had established during Prohibition and the same mobsters really bootleggers who with whom they had been doing business for the previous decade were set up as legal distributors of alcohol. It was just changing their hats. They did exactly the same thing but now they paid taxes and they did it respectably and they became respectable members of the community instead of being mobsters any longer.

AMT: How common was that?

DANIEL OKRENT: Well it was pretty widespread among the larger Canadian companies, Canadian and British companies that came in. They already had the networks in place. So it was a matter of converting the networks to legal distribution.

AMT: Here in Canada people who have been convicted of cannabis offences have been quick to point out the irony that so many former law enforcement officials and legislators are now cashing in with their own cannabis companies or being advisers to or somehow connected to the new cannabis companies. To what extent did that play out in the US after probation?

DANIEL OKRENT: I don't think it did. I'm not aware that it that I should say. And I think the reason for that is that the law enforcement establishment that was in place leading up to repeal was so weak and so politically corrupted, so inattentive to what their primary task was that they were really not able to stand up to the much more acute business sense and even the financial strength of the mobsters, the bootleggers, who were better businessmen and ready to go.

AMT: Interesting so we're seeing something very new then, when we have like former Premier, former RCMP commissioner, former chiefs of police all getting involved in the business. This is a new thing.

DANIEL OKRENT: The way that politicians got involved in the business was I think mostly by accepting, your choice of words, campaign contributions or bribes from the distributors to make certain that the distribution laws helped those distributors. And the US has an extremely peculiar patchwork of state by state laws put in place in the years after Prohibition and nearly unchangeable because of the power of the liquor lobby particularly the wholesalers.

AMT: At the end of prohibition did not spell the end of organized crime gangsters found other drugs to sell heroin, cocaine, pot. Based on what happened after the end of prohibition what do you think will happen to the criminal enterprises built on the sale of cannabis?

DANIEL OKRENT: Well I would guess that the criminal enterprises will become legal enterprises. Sam Brafman and his brothers ran a huge criminal enterprise and then became the most respected people in their industry. They straightened themselves out. Again if you have a network in place you take advantage of that network. Now Canadian laws are different from US laws US laws are different from state to state. It's hard to say exactly how would it happen in any larger sense. But the opportunity for somebody who already knows how to grow the product and how to package the product and how to distribute the product and bring the revenue back in. They're ready to be in business.

AMT: What sort of social and moral lessons that the US learn in the repeal of prohibition?

DANIEL OKRENT: I think that it's more a political lesson. You cannot legislate successfully against people's appetites. The prohibition laws reduced drinking somewhat in the US but not enormously. People found a way to drink. As they said at the time everybody was happy. The drys had their law and the wets had their liquor. And that continued throughout prohibition and thus the change to legal liquor wasn't that shocking. In fact it became in some cities harder to get liquor when it became legal because there was a regulatory system in place of closing hours and you can't be near a church and you'd have to be 18 or 21 to buy liquor. During Prohibition, anything went if you bribe your local policeman you can sell as much liquor as you wanted in whatever strength of alcohol to anybody wanted at any time of day.

AMT: Well Daniel thank you for your insights into all of this. It's fascinating.

DANIEL OKRENT: Been a pleasure to talk to you. Bye.

AMT: Daniel Okrent the author of Last Call the Rise and Fall of Prohibition and we reached him in Massachusetts. That's our program for today stay with radio 1 for Q. when the Cowboy Junkies joined Tom Power to discuss all that reckoning which is their first album in six years. Cowboy Junkies with Tom Power today. Earlier we were talking about the fight over the rights to Hockey Night in Canada. There were few people more important to the game in the broadcast the number 99 Wayne Gretzky and there were few Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts more iconic than when the Great One hung up his skates for good. We're going to leave you with Bob Cole and Harry Neal with a call at the end of his final game on April 18th of 1999 when Wayne Gretzky's New York Rangers lost 2-1 in overtime at Madison Square Gardens to the Pittsburgh Penguins. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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It's been a tough week for them, they know that. He's handled it like he has handled everything with a tremendous amount of class. And the Penguins are showing some class themselves now, coming over to say goodbye.

[Sound: Cheers, music and noise]

You cannot say he didn't try in this hockey game. You cannot say he didn't go out, with all the class that he had shown us in 20 years. Probably the best player on [unintelligible] surface in New York today and the crowd stands and salutes 99 one more time. The best player in any surface in any game, at any time.

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