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The Current Transcript for November 12, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Is this right for Calgary? Does this make sense for the city? And I got to tell you something. It's not a good deal for Calgary. It is an amazing deal for Calgary.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Mayor Naheed Nenshi is unapologetically enthusiastic in support of Calgary's bid for the 2026 Olympics and he's joined by a roster of high profile athletes and sports officials. But a lot of city council and an undetermined number of Calgarians, see things exactly the opposite way, which is why tomorrow's plebiscite on a Calgary Olympic bid is so charged. After a weekend that saw proponents and opponents out making their case, we're bringing the debate here in just a moment. Also today, at 15, he was sent to the most notorious prison in South Africa. That is where Dikgang Mosenke met Nelson Mandela. Years later, he was honoured at a university named for Mandela.

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VOICE: It reinforces my revolutionary connection as well as my father and son relationship with Nelson Mandela.

AMT: He would eventually become South Africa's deputy chief justice. In half an hour, hear him on revolution, government and human rights. Just before him, Ian Hanomansing drops by with the intriguing story behind his new CBC podcast, Uncover: Bomb on Board. And on the day Amy Owen died, she was barely a teenager and far from home.

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VOICE: She was only 13-years-old and she took her life. She lost six other friends. They all died by suicide and they were all young girls, 12, 13, 14.

AMT: The alarming rate of suicide among Indigenous youth in Canada has parallels in Indigenous communities in Scandinavia, Brazil, Australia. Journalist Tanya Talaga has been examining the connections, the causes and the path forward in her work for the Toronto Star and as the CBC Massey Lecturer. You won't want to miss what she has to say in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'Nostalgia is not a vision': Campaigners lay out risks and rewards of Calgary Olympic bid

Guests: Erin Waite, Jason Ribeiro

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VOICE 1: It's not the same Olympics as it was in 1988. That's thirty years ago. I don't think the benefits are what they were back then. The ability to fund itself is going to be harder and the costs are way more expensive.

VOICE 2: I think I'm leaning towards a yes. I think in the end, the games really create a great sense of community. It really really boosts the morale of the entire city and I was here for the 1988 Olympics and it gave a really great feeling to city as a whole.

AMT: Well in Calgary, the Olympics are once again the talk of the town. Three decades after hosting the Games in 1988, the city is considering a bid to welcome the world once again for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. This time around, the city is divided at the prospect. Tomorrow Calgarians vote in a plebiscite on whether to proceed with the bid.

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VOICE 1: It's a no. Way too expensive. City people are not working. You go downtown, it's almost like a ghost town. This is not going to bring anything. It's just going to cost us a lot of money. My taxes are going to go up cause I don't believe the figures.

VOICE 2: I'm leaning toward for a yes. There's a lot of advantages that I'm seeing, some of which is bringing funding of some projects to Calgary and the funding is be used to maybe improve some aging facilities that we have and maybe we get some bonus project or two.

AMT: Campaigning on both sides of the question has been intense and if advanced polls are any indication, voter turnout is expected to be high. Joining me are two people who have been front and center in this debate. Erin Waite is a spokesperson for the No Calgary Olympics. Jason Ribeiro is with the group, Yes Calgary 2026. And they are both in our Calgary studio. Hello and welcome.

JASON RIBEIRO: Good morning.

ERIN WAITE: Good morning.

AMT: You're together. You're going to behave yourselves?

JR: We are, we have. We're actually from the same hometown in Stoney Creek, Ontario originally, so we have bonds that extend beyond Calgary as well.

AMT: And you're now fighting for Calgary on different sides of the divide.

JR: Yes.

AMT: OK well Erin, lay out your case for me. Why do you feel hosting the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is not good for Calgary?

EW: For us, it's simply not the right project for a Calgary now. It was fabulous in 1988. We have that legacy. We keep benefiting from that legacy, but going forward, Calgary needs something different. The Olympics, hosting the Olympics particularly, is not a great idea. We think we can cheer on our athletes on the world stage somewhere else, but we don't think hosting benefits a city as much as it is a cost and a burden on the city.

AMT: Jason, why do you think it is an opportunity that can't be passed up?

JR: The three basic reasons are, I think fundamentally first, is that we are an Olympic city. It's an honour that I think is bestowed upon Calgary, but worn by Alberta and Canada. I think that for a new generation of Calgarians, given our demographic shifts, this is an incredible opportunity to renew that legacy. The second is I believe that this will be an economic stimulus. And for folks who don't want to take my word for it, I think every economic agency, every company, every innovator in the entire city has endorsed the bid publicly. And the last would be that I think that we have the opportunity fundamentally from the community and from the grassroots, to make this one of the most inclusive games ever. Not just by taking on the Paralympics, which we did not host in 1988, which would give us amazing accessibility upgrades to our Olympic facilities, but also ethnoculturally given that Calgary is far different. I think with 30 percent visible minority, compared to 1988, when it was 5 percent, I think for all of those reasons this is an incredible opportunity that we should be driving forward in the community.

AMT: Now Erin, you say you don't trust the budget figures that are on the table. Why not?

EW: Well it was IOC member Dick Pound who said that there's no greater fiction written than an IOC hosting city bid book. You know it's a marketing document. It's trying to put the best light on a mega project and that involves understanding costs and overstating benefits. And you know every Olympics since 1960, has grown over budget and substantially. So you know there's a lot of reasons to be concerned.

AMT: And Jason, how do you respond to that? We're looking at a final number of $5 billion cost, $5.1 billion.

JR: Well that includes the operation. So those two budgets, operations and capital, operations, despite what you might hear, always balance or make money. Even for Sochi, Rio, which was a $50 billion game, still budgeted or still balanced on operations, which meant that they sold tickets, sponsorships, et cetera. It's usually where people get into trouble and cities get into troubles on capital and you know, as much as we want to cast aspersions potentially unfoundedly based on what other games have done, Calgary and Canada have been incredibly responsive to that. And what they've said is that we don't want to build any white elephants or any facilities that don't get used. That's not what we did in 1988. So why don't we just renew the eleven facilities from the 88 Olympics and only build two new ones, one of which is a field house, which we desperately need in the city. So I think that we've been responsive to the changes in the big movement. We've learned I think from the successes of the Pan Am games from the Vancouver 2010 Games and said what is it going to take in this climate, in time, to do this right and I think the bid committee has done that responsibly.

AMT: In fact, these are being called like the budget games because it is looking at refurbishing venues you already have. Erin, does that give you any sort of comfort at all?

EW: Well what we're hearing from Calgarians is that you know it ends up not giving them the kind of project that would get them excited. So it's not inspired them to have eleven venues upgraded, rather than anything that the city has identified as an important project such as an LRT to the airport, which we still don't have and other similar projects that are now outside of that bid. The other thing is that for anyone who has done renovations, you can have cost over runs with renovations, just as you can with a new building, perhaps even more significantly. So that's a real concern. Another big elephant in the room is security costs, which were brought down in the cost used in the bid book, just to make the numbers work at the eleventh hour, ahead of a city council meeting and those security costs are now stated at less than half what was experienced in Vancouver in 2010.

AMT: Well in fact, I've got some numbers here. So the original budget was $610 million, it was scaled back to $500 million roughly. That is less than Vancouver spent eight years ago in the 2010 Olympics. I've got a clip here I'd like you to hear. Bud Mercer was the chief operating officer for the Integrated Security Unit of the Vancouver Olympics. Listen to what he says about Calgary's projected security budget.

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VOICE: I think it's light. Just inflation would suggest that what was $550 million in 2010 is not $550 million, ten to fifteen years from now. And circumstances change that are well outside of your control. You know in my heart or hearts, I believe the number is a little bit low, but I think they'll try and I think that they're in for a bit of a surprise.

AMT: Jason, do you think they've lowballed the security numbers?

JR: Well I think we can parse out a few things here. Number one, to compare it to Vancouver, I don't think is commensurate. At the time we were just in the midst of a lot of economic anxiety related to a global recession. We were in a war in Afghanistan, Canada was. Vancouver is a port city where it has marine entry, which creates a number of security challenges. Look this is a budget that was not put together by a paper pusher. This was put together by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Calgary police services and our anti-terrorism agencies. I respect the gentleman that you played the clip from, but based on no evidence of fact from Erin's standpoint, I can't understand why you would say it should be lower or higher. I don't certainly have that credibility in that lane to make a determination, one or the other. I can just say that I trust our law enforcement, I trust the efficiencies that they found in relation to accommodations for security personnel. And lastly, I would hope that since 2010 to now, 2018 to now leading to 2026, with unmanned vehicles, drones, etc., we found efficiencies and technologies that will be able to make sure that we're more effectively protected as Calgarians.

AMT: Erin, what do you say to that?

EW: Well, none of that is in the bid in terms of those methods for any of these solutions. So I just think that with most of the recent Olympics having had security costs between 1 billion and 2 billion, there's just no reason to estimate that it would be that significantly low and you know there's those kinds of questions throughout the bid book. And for us really, it's just a matter of it being the wrong project for a Calgary now. I think there's other ways we can grow and build our city, rather than hosting the Olympics, which we've already done and already benefited from.

AMT: Calgary city council is divided, but the mayor is an enthusiastic yes supporter. Let's listen to Naheed Nenshi.

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VOICE: I think we've got a great deal for Calgary, but you know what, it doesn't matter if it's on sale, if you don't need it. And so what's really important is for us to also look at the benefits we're going to get: the sport benefits, the community benefits, the economic benefits. This is undeniably an outstanding bid and an outstanding opportunity for Calgary.

AMT: Erin, what do you say to the mayor and his vision of this opportunity?

EW: Well we've seen the other two levels of government that we absolutely critically need for this to work show tepid response to this. They did not endorse it enthusiastically. In fact, you know had to be pushed hard and their support was delivered months after it was expected. And so to me that shows that dragging of their feet, probably relates to the fact that both levels of government are facing significant debt and want to head into budgets that bring that debt in line and taking on a project like the hosting the Olympics, doesn't really serve that goal.

AMT: Jason?

JR: That's the first time I've ever heard someone say that the federal government signing an agreement to consider for $1.543 billion as tepid support. Just my mind is blown. The province has put in an additional $700 million and signed on the line. If they didn't want to, there was I think there was a lot of political consideration as to why they would support it all, if they saw no benefit. So they all put their money on the line. They've signed an agreement to consider. I absolutely fundamentally believe that they think this is in the national interest. Let's be clear, while Calgary is voting, Canada is on the ballot, Canada will be the host. So I don't buy the notion that this is tepidly supported at any level of government, otherwise they wouldn't have supported it to begin with. I think that, just to go back one moment, to say that you know this won't, we've already hosted, well who is we? There are a ton of folks, a ton of folks demographically, newcomers, immigrants to this community, that were not here in 1988. That don't have the benefit of saying well we did this, we hosted. I think it's a very privileged position and the last thing I'll say is you know the renderings from the artists who would be designing all of the renewed facilities were released over the weekend and they're astonishing. The changes are transformative and for folks with accessibility needs in relation to the Paralympics that can't go to the bathroom in the Scotiabank, in the Saddledome right now, this is a transformative shift around accessibility. So I don't think that this is just something that can be said as minor upgrades. This is actually a transformative shift in sport and recreation for the city.

AMT: I can't help, but notice that the yes side of the campaign has the mayor's backing, as well as the support of high profile athletes, the Chamber of Commerce, other sports officials. The no campaign seems to have far less of that. Erin, do you feel like it’s a David versus Goliath fight?

EW: A little bit just because of the big numbers involved and the you know money on the yes side. But for all those organizations he mentioned, there are employees and individuals who have come to us behind the scenes. They're afraid to put their name on their dissent, but they've come to us saying they're very concerned and don't feel this is the right project for Calgary now.

AMT: Jason, how do you respond to that?

JR: Well I'm a little bit perplexed by the notion that you know a registered non-profit society like, Yes Calgary 2026, which is completely citizen driven, receives no public funding is suddenly rolling in it because we're not. We're selling pins on our website for $20.26 and other donations from private citizens so that's.

AMT: You got no private funding, Jason?

JR: No, none. Just donations through our website.

AMT: But nothing from corporations, nothing from sports officials, like no big numbers?

JR: No, I'm not on the board, but I have not yet seen. Most of our donations that I believe in my conversations with the board are small donations from everyday Calgarians. So the no side likes to conflate us with the actual bid corporation, which has a task, a publicly funded task that all three orders of government actually win the bid. That is not us. We're a citizen volunteer group. Look I made this very clear from the beginning. This is not really about politicians. The mayor has come out I think for the last four days in support, when he did not before and I wasn't looking for it then and while it's fine now, he's welcome to and any other political officials are welcome to lend their support. This has always been about the community. I want to make this very clear, within a week we have signed up 5000 volunteer ambassadors that are saying we believe in these games. We want to volunteer in 2026. This is much bigger than any politician. This is much bigger than any endorsement. This is really about the community and if the answer is yes on November 13th, we have seven years to get our house in order. And I think the most beautiful part of this entire endeavor is the idea that this will give us an organizing focus. We know that we like to get things done, but it'll get everyone on the same page and I think that's a fundamental opportunity the city has to pursue.

AMT: Of course the city will be working with the IOC, the International Olympic Committee. Some on the no side, point to controversies with the IOC's reasons not to proceed. Erin, how do concerns about the IOC play into your opposition?

EW: For me personally that is the reason I'm not interested in this, but most Calgarians that have joined us they definitely are more concerned about cost, but I think there's a huge reputational risk being involved with the IOC and that's never figured into the cost benefit analysis. And further beyond any of the scandals and IOC reputational issues, it's simply the structure of the host city contract that I have concerns with. The setting up of a competitive bid process where cities compete with each other. That's a lot of what causes the difficulty in terms of cities adding on to the project, having to show this very glossy big large pageantry kind of project and that's where cost overruns come from and that's where you add things that are not what the city needs, but what IOC wants.

AMT: Jason, there have been years of corruption in awarding the Games. That's been documented. The IOC let Russia back into the Olympics, after a doping scandal. Do you have any concerns about partnering with this organization?

JR: Sure I have concerns and I think this project also comes with risks. I just believe those risks to be manageable. Look Hayley Wickenheiser is a member of the IOC. The IOC has our people in there as members as well too. So when we talk about the IOC, we're talking about people. I think we absolutely have to hold them to account and what we're seeing in the professional sports realm is just as difficult to tackle as it is in FIFA, just as it is difficult to tackle in the NFL, so when we're considering making this decision, certainly we're going to hold them to account. Certainly if you're on Canadian soil, if you're in Calgary, you're going to be held to standards around clean sport, around freeness from corruption, just like we did in Vancouver. And I want to make this other point as well too, they're undertaking a transformative governance reform called Agenda 2020. And the new norm that have eliminated the need for cities to do some of the pageantry that Erin was talking about. How can we have it both ways? How can you say it's largesse, there's pageantry, but we're only really doing something like the reuse, recycle Olympics? I don't see those two examples as commensurate. If you don't believe what they're saying, look at what they're doing. They posted the whole city contract in advance. No one said they would, they did. They're putting in skin in the game for the first time, $700 million in cash, over $550 million in kind services. And lastly, look at the results. The three cities that have been left at the end of the day, they eliminated Erzurum, Turkey. The three cities, Stockholm, the Italian bid and us, all have 60 to 90 percent renewal of venues. They're not doing any new builds and the second point is that all of their bid books are proposed bids, come in a 15 to 20 percent lower than the average winter games. So if you don't believe what they say, look at what they're doing and best believe that if they come to Calgary, if they come to Canada, they will be playing by our rules and we will hold them to account.

AMT: Erin do you consider the 88 games a success?

EW: Oh absolutely I do. I was here then. Yeah.

AMT: But you don't see that happening again?

EW: Well we did that. We had a great result. It's completely different in scale and the situation is different. How it developed at that time was different. The IOC-host city relationship is different. All of those things were advantageous to Calgary and Calgary benefited and it was fabulous. All of those things are not true now and finally, nostalgia is not a vision.

AMT: It's interesting. In 1988, it was seen as a major economic boom for Calgary. Calgary was in the worst recession in 40 years because of oil and grain price collapses. There's an economic parallel there too.

EW: Well in 89, the oil price also increased by 50 percent over 88 and then it increased again in 90. So those power cycles of oil price ups and downs, forgave a lot of errors over overspends in lots of categories, so you know that was also true.

AMT: So Jason, what are you hoping for in this turnout. You want a yes obviously, but are you expecting a high turnout?

JR: Well based on the results of the advanced voting, I think that that's clear. I want people to vote, whether you're at yes, whether you're at no, whether you're in between and you won't know until you actually get the ballot in front of you. I think to participate in the democratic process is incredibly important. You know we have a storied history in Canada with plebiscites and referendums and often times they become divisive, but for folks that are listening, I want them to know that yes and no and mnemonic devices. There's room for flexibility, there's room for context and you can justify it however you need it.

AMT: OK we'll leave it there. Thank you both.

JR: Thank you so much.

EW: Thank you.

AMT: Erin Waite, spokesperson for the No Calgary Olympics. Jason Ribeiro with the Yes Calgary 2026. They're both in Calgary. Tomorrow Calgarians vote in a plebiscite on whether the city should proceed with a bid for the 2026 Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games. They're up against Stockholm, Sweden and the joint Italian bid of Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo. Stay with us. This is The Current.

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'I wasn't going to die a slave': Dikgang Moseneke looks back at the struggle to end South African apartheid

Guests: Ian Hanomansing, Dikgang Moseneke

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

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AMT: Still to come, why are suicide rates so distressingly high among Indigenous youth? Not only in Canada, but in other countries around the world. In a half an hour, we're asking what we might learn from other countries with journalist Tanya Talaga. And in just a few moments, a giant of South African justice will join me, but first The Untold Story of an unsolved crime.

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VOICE 1: Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

VOICE 2: I said, well I was just wondering about a plane crash and she said, oh I just saw it on the TV and everyone was killed. My mum was on that plane. It's remarkable to me that a human being could decide to blow up a plane full of strangers. So many lives were impacted by this.

VOICE 3: This was not an accident. This was pure murder.

AMT: It was July 8th of 1965 and Canadian Pacific flight number 21 exploded in midair, plummeting into the woods and killing all 52 people on board. Investigators determined that a bomb brought down the plane. They found suspects, but they never identified who did it. It is the biggest unsolved mass murder that has happened on Canadian soil. The CBC podcast, Uncover, is setting out to investigate it in its second season. Ian Hanomansing and Johanna Wagstaffe are the co-hosts of Uncover: Bomb on Board and Ian is with me from Vancouver. Hi Ian.

IAN HANOMANSING: Good Morning.

AMT: Tell me more about this story that you set out to uncover.

IM: Well this is a story that I had never heard before and oddly I suppose I was in Humboldt covering the bus crash and talking to my wife on the phone and she had been just looking on the internet for information about other bus crashes. Saw a list of other events in Canada with major losses of life and saw a reference to this plane crash. And you know she and I would have been toddlers at the time of this. We never heard anything about it. She grew up in BC. I started doing a little bit of research and because all of this was pre-internet 1965, not a lot of things on the internet, but finally found a name of someone who lived in One Hundred Mile House, little community where the crash happened or near where the crash happened and started talking to her and she got me in touch with family members of those who died on board. And it's one of those stories Anna Maria where every call I made was as interesting or more interesting than the last one. I thought there's a story here to tell.

AMT: So what is known about what happened to that plane?

IM: Well that a bomb was onboard the plane. If you look at the newspaper clippings and listen to the CBC radio reports of the very next day, they knew it was an explosion because incredibly, even though this happened in the middle of the wilderness of the B.C. Interior, there were people on the ground who heard an explosion, looked up, saw the tail of this Douglas DC 6 come off, sadly they saw some bodies fall out of the plane as well and then the plane spiraled into the woods and slammed into the woods. So they thought it was an explosion. Then investigators found remnants of gunpowder and nitrates on the plane. So they quickly determined it was a bomb and then eventually in this exhaustive investigation that the police did, they determined that the person who planted that bomb on the plane was one of the passengers.

AMT: Wow, a suicide bombing. You visited the crash site with Didi Henderson, who is the daughter of one of the victims. She was 5-years-old when the crash occurred. Let's listen to her.

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For me it is sacred ground. It is akin to a graveyard. And when I go out here, I know where my father was more or less in the back section. And it's totally different than going to his gravestone in Mount Royal cemetary in Montreal. That sort of doesn't mean anything when I come back here. I've come out here sometimes by myself and just literally sense the spirits of the souls lost. So as we get closer to the crash site, there's sort of bits of metal strewn about. It definitely was a violent crash.

AMT: There are still bits of medal all these years later?

IM: There's so much about this story that's extraordinary and that is one of them, that deep in the woods you can see some of the wreckage of CP-21 and there's so much I could say about Didi Henderson. Five-years-old, as you mentioned when the crash happened, she and her sister what about 20 years ago, started looking for this crash site. Others had found it, but she didn't know that. She went looking for it and did a lot of hiking in the deep woods and finally found it. So she goes out there once or twice or three times a year and boy, like when you see that debris Anna Maria driven into the forest floor, you get a sense of the violence of the crash and a real vivid reminder of the tragedy that happened there.

AMT: That's incredible all those years later. Ian, so her dad was on the flight, who were the other people on that flight?

IM: It is a snapshot of Canada or B.C. on July 8th, 1965. People who had come into Vancouver to go to the hospital, who were headed from Vancouver to the interior of Prince George and even to Yukon for work, miners, managers. Her dad was an engineer who travelled all around. And then Anna Maria, one of the most amazing things, the four people who were early on by the RCMP, identified as suspects.

AMT: And so what was it about those four people that they identified?

IM: One was a gambler at a time when gambling was absolutely illegal. He bought life insurance policy at the airport that paid out an equivalent of 2018 dollars, a million dollars. So that was one suspect. They found remnants of powder, gunpowder on the plane, well one of the people who was identified as a suspect, was described as a loner and they believed he was carrying gunpowder aboard the plane. Things were a lot different in 1965 than they are these days. Third person was an American prospector whose psychiatrist said had a deep madness towards the world and the fourth person was a powder man, somebody who had expertise in using explosives and had had a violent time as a young person. He was in his 50s now, but when he was in his 20s, had been charged with crimes, had been charged with murder at one point, so you can and acquitted of that, but still when you look at those four biographies, you can understand why the police would say they're at the top of our list.

AMT: And they're all gone, so they couldn't actually bring them in.

IM: But here's the thing, I mean not only could they not bring them in, but when you look at this investigation, I mean no stone was unturned. Relatives were spoken to. Rooms were turned upside down in the search. We talked to one family member of one of the suspects and she remembers police coming to their yard and poking metal prods in the back yard, obviously looking for something that you know a cache of maybe dynamite that had been buried underneath the yard. Never found anything. An exhaustive investigation and at the end of that, months and months, even years of investigation, they never got beyond having four suspects, being sure there was a bomb on board, being sure some passenger put it on there, but not having anything close to certainty as to who it was.

AMT: So what did you set out to answer with the podcast, Ian?

IM: Well, I think two things: first of all, one is less an answer, but more description, to tell Canadians this story. I mean I think it's an important piece of Canadian history and hearing it through the eyes and words of people like Didi Henderson, I think is important. In terms of what we set out to answer it's could we 53 years later, get any close to figuring out who did it or even, which suspects didn't do it. Because keep in mind, those four families have lived with the twin burdens of not only the grief of their loved one dying, but the stigma of their loved one being identified publicly and this very public, as a suspect. So maybe we could eliminate some of them, but maybe through the techniques and analysis of modern day investigators, a crash investigator, an explosives expert, a criminologist, former police officer, maybe we could move a little closer to the answer. This Anna Maria is where I don't want to provide a spoiler.

AMT: I was just going to say, can you tell me how close you got?

IM: But we did move closer and we do make progress on this story.

AMT: What did it mean to Didi Henderson that you investigated the crash that killed her dad?

IM: Yeah you know I should point out that she was reluctant to speak to us. She is very kind, generous with her time, but you know a little weary of sitting down and going through all of this and she did find it emotionally exhausting and I did worry about what this was like for her and some of the other family members that we spoke to, rekindling these deep feelings. But she has said to us that she actually is happy that she did this. I should say one of the interesting moments with Didi is when we interviewed her in Hundred Mile House, she was wearing a necklace and she brought attention to it and it had a ring on it. Someone had sent her the ring thinking that perhaps it was her father's, sent it from the crash site. It wasn't, but she still wore it as a reminder of the crash or connection to the crash, but she said to us, she hoped one day that she could give that ring to the family member of the person who actually owned it. And I'll reveal this, we did track down that person and it is a pretty extraordinary moment. I.

AMT: Lots to listen to there. Ian, thank you.

IM: Yeah, you're very welcome.

AMT: Ian Hanomansing co-hosts the CBC podcast, Uncover: Bomb on Board with Johanna Wagstaffe. It launches today. Ian of course is also a host of The National on CBC Television and next month, CBC News The National will broadcast a special documentary to coincide with the finale of the podcast. You can get a sneak peek of it tonight on The National, but the podcast launches today. You can find it at cbc.ca/podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. So go to that and while you're there, subscribe to The Current. We are on podcast as well. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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VOICE: I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you, not as a prophet, but as a humble servant.

AMT: Well some of Nelson Mandela's first words as a free man. He delivered that speech from the balcony of Cape Town's city hall, after being released the same day from 27 years of imprisonment for his struggle against apartheid. The great South African leader spent those long years at the notorious Robben Island prison and for close to a decade, my next guest was a fellow prisoner and a fellow architect of the post-apartheid era in South Africa. Dikgang Moseneke would go on to become the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa, retiring just two years ago from that position. He is in Toronto today as part of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and the launch of the Nelson Mandela Lectureship in human rights at the school and he joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome.

DIKGANG MOSENEKE: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: You listen to that, you raised your fist in approval.

DM: Yes, I mean a man who after 27 years is not broken even one bit and he repeats the speech he made when he was sentenced, daring the judge to sentence him to death. And he repeats again, much of that when he's released 27 years later. Isn't that amazing?

AMT: Where were you that day?

DM: I was in Pretoria and this happened in Cape Town, in deep disbelief that in fact it had happened, but does an outcome of struggles, both at home and globally and be grateful for instance to Canadians, who rallied around to give us that global solidarity and support. It was just one of the countries the did that and a good few other people around the world who shared our plight and thought it was their plight too.

AMT: You know there's something else Nelson Mandela said, if he didn't say it that day, he said it shortly after. And we looked for the clip once and we couldn't find it, but I actually have it taped. The words taped at the top of my computer because they were so compelling. And he said, "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

DM: Yes, he debated that much with us who were younger and we were saying how dare you forgive these atrocious crimes, a crime against humanity. The United Nations had declared apartheid and we knew it wasn't just a declaration, apartheid was about repression, about exclusion, about racial bigotry, about patriarchy, about all these horrible things that excluded other people from our society. So how do you forgive just like that, the drop of a hat? So we had the debate with him, we our guys, to say no there must be purpose in the forgiveness, Nelson Mandela. And that's where we came out with the truth and reconciliation. The bare minimum you've got to confess your crimes, if you were to escape justice or accountability and the second thing was there is a prize. Forgiveness would be the prize for creating a new, spanking new democratic dispensation. So we can find space to rediscover ourselves. So many people see it as some spiritual inspiration in Nelson Mandela, but it also was practically necessary. We didn't want to continue being imprisoned, it was more important to reconstruct society than to try and settle scores and squabbles of past oppression.

AMT: What you say is so profound, as we look at the world today. But before we go any further, let's talk a little bit more about how you even got there. You were born a year before the apartheid system was imposed. At what age did you become aware of the inequality in the injustice around you?

DM: Anna Maria, at I think easily at 10. You know children, if you test, you can test it all the time. They have an innate sense of right and wrong. You know if you treat your two children unequally, they'll come back at you, mom you can't do this. So that I could see the green, the lawn was greener on the other side. I could see the schools looked better. The townships where they lived looked better and everything else. So it was not difficult to be able to determine that there's an unjust injustice you know going on here. And my own view was I wasn't going to die a slave. I was going to liberate myself. I'm going to be a free person. And I thought the right thing to do is to join an organized liberation movement, a student body that would resist apartheid and that would demand fairness and freedom, an open and just society.

AMT: So when did you end up at Robben Island, were you arrested for that?

DM: I was 15.

AMT: 15?

DM: Yeah I joined the PAC at 15 and at 14, arrested charged for be a member of a banned organization. It was our law at the time.

AMT: Pan African Congress was the organization.

DM: Yes Pan African Congress.

AMT: Which was, it was created as a sort of an offshoot to the ANC.

DM: A more militant offshoot from the ANC, which really thought more should be done to move towards and you're young, that's what made sense immediately. Fifteen years, I was, I get sentenced to 10 years in prison. But many other older people are sentenced to life imprisonment, 15, 20. Nelson Mandela the Rivonia trial is life imprisonment.

AMT: And so they sentenced you to 10 years, you were, what did they, did they see you as a terrorist, what did they say?

DM: Yes. Students were revolting against the state and who were alleged to be planning to overthrow the state by violent means. So it's not a difficult case to make. Apartheid must end. This is a legitimate state. The state must stop doing what it does and so on. All those statements were enough to get you 10 years in prison.

AMT: And when you got to that place, Robben Island, what did you think?

DM: Thanks God. Thank God there's a place for political prisoners only. So we regrouped. We were all there together on Robben Island. You know from Nelson Mandela was there, Robert Sobukwe was there, name them any other leader you can think. of Ahmed Kathrada was there, Walter Sisulu and so on. All leaders were there and we were young sitting at their feet to learn about the struggle, this purpose. What a reminder to achieve.

AMT: When you got out you ended up in law school, didn't you?

DM: Yes in fact, I studied most of the time , most of the studies I did on Robben Island, long distance studies and culminating with law school years, past and equivalent of a JD, LLB and did apprenticeship to become a solicitor for starters and called to the bar later on, and became a senior consul and became a judge of the high court and moved up the ladder, up to our Supreme Court.

AMT: And so as a young man and you're out, you're a lawyer, but the apartheid system continues. That was the law of struggle then, wasn't it?

DM: It was horrible, but the point was how to relieve people using unjust laws in the interim and how to help advance the uprising, the domestic uprising in the country. So really what you would call activists lawyers, progressive lawyers, who would try and show out the soft belly of the beast and would defend people who go on marches, to defend people who would be arrested and detained without trial and to be out there to create the courtroom as a space in which to articulate the ideals of our struggle. So apartheid pretended to be a country ruled by law and we used that pretension to expose its horrific sight all the time. So learning was fun in that sense, but with no pretension that it was a just society.

AMT: All these years later, we see a world where we see the rise of white supremacist movements in North America, we see the language in Europe, in Brazil right now. As someone who went through that struggle and saw his own country changed, what are you thinking?

DM: Horrific. Horrific. You see excuse me, apartheid was premised on the bankrupt notion that human beings are fundamentally different. Now we know that's a lie. The difference is skin deep and would arise from your socialization, nothing more than that. Human beings are human beings, have an innate dignity and right to live well and apartheid failed. It was an excuse to exclude others, to oppress others, to steal from others. So again, the rise of white supremacist tendencies I think is going to fall by the wayside. It's a matter of time. And that's why my presence here and Nelson Mandela lectureship in human rights is important. It's to remind all of us that we can't go the swastika roots of Poland. We can't go the Brazilian roots of white supremacy. We can't have the mutterings of people like Donald Trump and others in the world who want to suggest that it's okay to keep women out of it. It's okay to shut gay people, gay and lesbian people out. We've been there and we've rejected those bankrupt lines that are created in society. We best, when we acknowledge our humanity, when we drive to find each other and display solidarity, the nationalism and jingoism and believe that all that matters is our selfish interests. How could it ever be?

AMT: You know a lot of people say that these divisions come from fear and you can speak to that as well because South Africa is not perfect, but South Africa changed very rapidly really, once the apartheid system ended. What can we learn from how a group of people like yourself, who were labelled terrorists, who were imprisoned, come forward to help run a country in fairness?

DM: You see one of the wonderful things that Nelson Mandela taught, not only just reconciliation and national unity, but he also taught unity and diversity, accepting the humanity of others. It sounds sentimental and romantic, but the truth is the minute you deny to acknowledge the fullness of other people's lives and their right to live and to be there and whatever the distinction you might choose, whether it's their sexual orientation or their language or their religion or how they look or how they pray, how then you're on a slippery slope to deny the humanity of others and we embrace people who actually were if you like, our "enemies." And they live in South Africa and continue to live with us today. It's really construct the country.

AMT: We're going to have to leave it right there, but that's an important thought to leave it on. Dikgang Moseneke, thank you for coming in.

DM: Well thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Former Chief Justice of South Africa, Dikgang Moseneke, with me in our Toronto studio. Stay with us. This is The Current.

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Suicide shouldn't be 'normal' in Indigenous communities, says 2018 Massey Lecturer Tanya Talaga

Guests: Tanya Talaga

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. A word of caution as we begin this next conversation because it deals with some potentially disturbing content and a disturbing reality. We're talking about suicides among Indigenous youth. Young Indigenous people take their lives at a much higher rate than the general population here in Canada, just as young Indigenous people do in many other countries, such as Australia, Brazil, the United States, in Scandinavia and that takes a terrible toll on entire communities across this country and across those countries. Nigel Adams spoke with us last month. He is a youth coach and mentor in Nunavik, in northern Quebec.

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VOICE: There are students, at the age of 12, 13, 14, 15 years old that are talking to me saying they want to end their life and for me to hear that from one my students, it brings great pain in my chest and it's really hard for me to breathe sometimes because it's really uncomfortable for me to hear that because I do not have the qualifications of talking to people who want to end their life because I was in the same shoes a few years ago, where I wanted to end my life. It was just too much bear in anymore.

AMT: Nigel Adams is only 26-years-old, but already he's far too familiar with the reality and threat of suicide in his community. And as you heard, he's also tried to take his own life. Nunavik has seen as many as 15 suicides among young people this year, some of whom Nigel has known personally, despite saying he's not qualified to deal with people with suicidal thoughts, the task still often falls to him.

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VOICE: I received a message from one of my buddies saying he felt like he was alone and he did not want to live anymore. I'm tired of my life and I got no real friends. I need help. I don't know who to talk to anymore. So I was chatting with him for a good one hour and he said, thanks bro, I'm going to keep going and be strong too. But for me to hear about suicides at a young age like this, to feel like this, I feel hopeless because I have no one to talk to. And it's really mind boggling sometimes. Who do we turn to? Our community is paralyzed in shock from suicides. There are so many deaths that are occuring and we don't know how to speak about it? Who do we talk to? That's my message to the Prime Minister and whoever's listening to this from the community and higher up. I know that we voice our opinions, but it feels like we're being swept under the rug like dirt.

AMT: Well journalist Tanya Talaga has been looking at the epidemic of Indigenous youth suicide for the CBC Massey Lectures this year. The series and the accompanying book are called, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. Her lectures will be broadcast this week starting tonight on CBC Radio One's, Ideas. Tanya Talaga is a columnist with The Toronto Star. This year she was an Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, a program that allows a journalist to pursue a yearlong investigation into a specific subject and Tanya Talaga joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome. What are you thinking as you listen to Nigel Adams?

TANYA TALAGA: It's hard to hear him, but when I hear his voice and what he's going through, I think of so many other people in communities across this country and across countries that I have visited. So many Indigenous communities that face something totally similar to what Nigel's talking about.

AMT: What does it do to someone to grow up in a community where suicide is all around them?

TT: It's almost normal. Well my uncle took his life. My mother's friend took her life. My friend took their life. It becomes almost a way out. It's in the lexicon, it's in your everyday words and your actions, it's all around you. That's a tough thing to live with because what is so hard for someone who doesn't live in that community and who's not surrounded by suicide to understand is it becomes part of your normal everyday life. It's not normal.

AMT: And it starts early.

TT: It starts really early because if you grow up in a community, such as Nigel is, if you grow up in a northern Ontario First Nations community, it is normal because you grow up in it, right from birth too. And there's lots of studies on trauma as well and you know the trauma that a mother carries and when you're born, a child is born into this life and the child does not ask you know to be born into these circumstances, but the circumstances are all around them. It's the circumstances of many layers of trauma, due to a lack of many things, such as the determinants of health, which is something that I talk about quite a bit. You know growing healthy children, it's not really rocket science. We know how to get there, right. You have to have safe housing. You have to have a family that loves you, someone who tucks you in at night to say to you, you belong. You need nutritious food. You need access to an education. You need access to health care. And when you're growing up in a community that's missing all of these things, all these things that every other Canadian, non-Indigenous Canadian enjoys in urban and rural settings, suicide is there, suicide becomes normal.

TANYA TALAGA: What personal stories have you heard that most stay with you, as you've looked into this suicide epidemic?

TT: So many, it's hard. Of course I started all our relations with one case in particular and that's the case of Amy Owen from Poplar Hill First Nation. She was only 13-years-old and she took her life outside of her community. She was in an Ottawa area group home. I think about her a lot. I think about how she was crying out for help and it never came. She lost six other friends. They all died by suicide and they were all young girls, 12, 13, 14. It's remarkable, you know in a country that prides itself on its health care, that prides itself on just having a wonderful standard of living for everybody, we have communities where that's not the case and where children are dying, as a result. And I think of Amy and I think of her family too.

AMT: And you spent two weeks travelling across the country with the Massey Lectures talking about all of this. What kinds of personal stories did you hear from the audiences?

TT: It was remarkable, what I heard and what people shared and how everyone is also looking for a way forward. And they're grateful also to be discussing this issue and talking about it in the open. You know we started each of the lectures in ceremony too. It was such a beautiful thing because we were all coming together. It was more of a let's discuss this, how can we move forward and how can we talk about this?

AMT: So spell it out for me. How serious of a crisis has youth suicide become in Indigenous communities in Canada?

TT: You see the headlines. You know what it's like. It's unprecedented and it doesn't show any signs of stopping. I can't tell you how many times I've had to hear the Grand Chief of the James Bay region, Jonathan Soloman, talk to me about how many times he's been to Ottawa, demanding a national suicide strategy. They did their own report, the People's Inquiry into our suicide epidemic, tired of waiting for government-led solutions. They created it themselves. They traveled up and down the coast along their eight communities, a myriad of recommendations were laid out. Here's how you do it. This is what we need and then it was silence. And of course after Wapekeka happened, the seven girls that I was talking about earlier, Grand Chief of Nishnawbe nation, Alvin fiddler, again they were asking for help. And when I say asking for help too, it's not just awareness, it's also the idea of Indigenous communities need their own mechanisms to do it themselves.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about the risk factors then for young people. What kind of help do they need? Let's start with day to day, just coping with the suicides that touch them individually and what they are going through that leads them to that path.

TT: A lot of researchers will talk to you about adverse childhood events. If you grow up in a family where perhaps you've got parents or a family member that has addictions, if you grow up and you are abused, if you experience sexual abuse, if you experience unsafe housing, unclean water, no access to help to a doctor or to a nurse, these are all the things that lead up to risks. And sadly, in many of our communities, not all because not all First Nations communities in this country have suicide issues, but in many of them, this is the reality that kids are born into, the lack of basic equities that we all share in this country, not for everyone though. Not if you're Indigenous.

AMT: What did you find among Indigenous communities in other parts of the world?

TT: I found that there was quite a similarity because if you look at Indigenous nations that have been colonized, there's a lot of similar threads, things like residential schools. There were residential schools in America, there were residential missions schools in Australia, there were schools in Brazil as well. These nations also too have children that are taken away from their language, their culture, their families, everything that they've known. These people are also marginalised, they're not part of greater society in many, many ways, language, you know, you name it. And these are the threads that I see in Australia. In Northern Norway with the Sami people, in Brazil with the Guarani. All of these things lead to unprecedented high suicide rates in all the countries that I speak in, specifically when it comes to youth and in many cases, young males.

AMT: Because when you talk about these threads that are the same, then they all lead to the fact that identity disappears. You talk about four questions that I think you're quoting on Murray Sinclair. What are those four questions?

TT: Who am I? What is my purpose? Where do I belong?

AMT: And where am I going, isn't it?

TT: Where am I going?

AMT: And those are the questions you can't answer, if you have generations that have been treated this way.

TT: That's true. You know it's all part of the effects of colonisation. It's the long term effects of taking children away from their families and their culture and their language. It's removing people from the land. It's about broken treaties. It's about putting people on reserves that are you know little tiny chunks and pieces of where they used to live. It's imposing a band council system that wasn't the way Indigenous people lived and that comes from the Indian Act. It's all of these things that takes away your identity and who you are, so you don't know who you are anymore.

AMT: You mentioned Brazil. You've actually called on one of the most tragic examples of the effects of colonization on Indigenous people.

TT: There are leaders that are murdered in broad daylight and the people that do these crimes, they never really come to justice. What happens there is the Indigenous people, the Guarani were promised that they would get their land back. That never happened at all. Instead, ranchers, who worked for a large multinational companies as well, went to court and said no, you can't have that land back. And now what's happened is that they are completely thrown out of the land that they were promised. The Brazilian government appears to be looking away and the Guarani, many of them live in urban areas. You'll see them along the streets.

AMT: Cause they got nowhere to go. You write about this.

TT: They have nowhere else to go.

AMT: Well Brazil has just elected a new far right president. Jair Bolsonaro. He's pledged to take away Indigenous territory. He, I got a quote here. "It is a shame that the Brazilian cavalry has not been so efficient as the Americans who exterminated the Indians."

TT: That's unbelievable and how an elected leader is allowed to say, blows my mind. Who is electing him? How could you possibly do that when all you have to do is open your eyes in Brazil and see people living in the gutters because they've been thrown out of their traditional land. You see that view though in so many countries, you know countries would be a better place. Canada would be a better place, if you were to be equitable to all of the people in this country, no matter what the colour of your skin is.

AMT: I wonder what we can learn, the Sami people in Scandinavia, one in three people have attempted or said they thought about suicide. The communities developed an innovative holistic approach to helping young people who are suffering from mental health issues. What did you find that they are doing?

TT: It's really quite remarkable. I went to Lakselv, Norway and the Arctic Circle and I met with members of SANKS and they are a Sami-led group. They're in charge of their own mental health path forward and they have been looking at how to provide care to not just the child or to the youth that has suicidal thoughts, but to the whole family because they realise that you can't just treat the child in isolation and what the Sami have done and it's really quite remarkable is they have a care system where for an entire month, a family of a child that's in crisis, they move into this treatment center, each townhouse almost looks like a Ikea cut out, so it's actually quite lovely. Your parents are given time off work, they're given a medical note by the government, saying you know you can't penalize this person because they're in treatment with their child and they receive around the clock care and support.

AMT: So they don't take the child away from everyone.

TT: That's right.

AMT: They take everyone and work with them together.

TT: That's right. In Canada, this is what Dr. Michael from Sulekha would call the donut of care because you can't just treat a child 500-600 kilometres away from home, which is what happens here in Ontario or in Canada, if you're living in a remote community and then send them back home. Send them back home to often times to where the problems are. You need to treat the parents too. It's quite simple when you think about it and it should be practiced more and so that is what's happening with the Sami and it seems to be working by all accounts. They've got a school there on the property and so all the kids go to school during the day and when the kids are at school, the parents are treated and once the day is over, the family gets treatment. And they also go out on the land for the people that are there to treat them and I should mention too that it's all culturally appropriate healing and that's what's needed.

AMT: The Inuit people launched their own national strategy in 2016 and Canada doesn't have a national suicide prevention strategy. We talked to Natan Obed, the president of the Innuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization. He talked to us about the effects of so many suicides over his years of playing and coaching hockey. Listen to him.

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VOICE: There are so many people that I grew up playing with or have coached, I've coached children whose parents have died by suicide and each one of these deaths creates an empty space. It creates a place where there could have been positivity and strength and hope and love and it is replaced by something that's in many cases a void. The world is better with our friends, with our hockey playing buddies or parents of kids in minor hockey than it is without them. We need to do more to ensure that people have the strength to persevere, but also the support necessary that allow them to perservere. We have worked individually across the Inuit on suicide prevention for decades. What was necessary is for us to tie all of the work together and have a common purpose.

AMT: Tanya Talaga, he's talking again about the importance of community there and what he sees in community. It's not disconnected from what you're saying about what they're doing with the Sami. How can a broader suicide prevention strategy help?

TT: I actually think what's happening with Natan and Inuit communities in the north is actually a path forward. You know this is a strategy that has been written and is being carried out by Inuit people. It is culturally appropriate. It is sensitive. That actually is an example of what we can do in First Nations communities. It goes deeper. You know it's so deep the answer when you know we talk about a national suicide strategy, yes that is definitely needed, but what also is needed to is for communities having the ability to do this for themselves. Having the money and the power to not have to go to Health Canada or the federal government, fill out a form, to pay for doctors or nurses or programs. No, do it ourselves.

AMT: But how do they go about finding local people to work on suicide prevention and mental health?

TT: It takes a long time. It's going to be something that's going to take five ten years. We're talking about widespread training. You also have to be wary too that the people you're training the communities are also suffering trauma themselves. So you have to be so careful with the workers as well.

AMT: And you don't want to take it out of the local community either, like the actual hands on. You don't want to impose.

TT: Exactly. Communities know what they need. Communities know where the holes are and what the problems are and those are the strengths you have to gather. Listen to what they have to say. Let them create their own strategies.

AMT: You chose to focus on Indigenous youth suicide for your Atkinson fellowship. What were you initially hoping to find?

TT: I called the book, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward because I thought you know is there a path somewhere? Is there one area, one country, one nation that is doing it better than anywhere else? So I started looking. I started to do all this research. I talked to many mental health professionals. I read so many policy papers and I did so much research. Everything to me just seemed like it was missing something. This was far far deeper than something a study could say or something a doctor could tell me. That actually isn't where we need to go or to look at all. It gets into something more inward, more deeper. It gets to the heart of belonging. It gets to the heart of what has happened to Indigenous people here and in other Indigenous nations across the globe. This erasure of identity, this erasure of self and who we are, those are the things that need to be bolstered and understood, combined with equity. Here we are in 2018 and we still have children that have to fly 500-600 kilometres away from their homes, their language and their culture, just to get a high school education.

AMT: So again, you're talking about those determinants of health.

TT: All the time.

AMT: It's not solely getting a mental health professional to give you counselling. That's the top layer.

TT: That's the thin edge of the wedge. What I'm really talking about here is equity. Natan Obed said this and I'm just going to quote him here. He's like why is it that we have TB rates that are 250 times the national average? Why is that in Iqaluit, an Inuit person makes $17,700 a year, but a non-Inuit person makes $77,000 dollars a year? Why is it that most of our community doesn't have safe housing? Why are all of those things? Until you address all of those things, that is how you're going to get communities out from under this awful awful legacies of colonialism that had been left because Canada has looked away for so long.

AMT: We heard Nigel Adams expressing his anger at the Canadian government. Do you get angry?

TT: Yeah I get angry, of course. Who wouldn't? You just have to open your eyes. Open your eyes. Open your ears. Open your heart. Listen to what people are saying. Read those stories that are coming from Nain. This is a reality. There are two levels of citizens in this country. That's what it looks like to me. How can that be?

AMT: You know I've been watching you as you've been talking me and I see this really weighs on you too. It's not just anger, there's lots of other emotion.

TT: Of course. How can it not? These are people I know. These are people I talk to, there are people in my community. There are people that I love. They do the hard work every single day. It's really amazing. I feel so lucky in life to walk with leaders such as Tesa Fiddler, a teacher in the Thunder Bay Catholic School Board and her husband who happens to be a Grand Chief, Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation. There are people that I know face every single day, questions of racism, questions of what are we going to do today to move forward to make our communities safer. Alvin is constantly getting on a plane and flying to funeral after funeral after funeral for a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old. There are still children who lose their lives in the rivers in Thunder Bay. This is my community too. These people should matter and it shouldn't just matter to me, it should matter to all Canadians. Why not?

AMT: Well you got standing ovations at your Massey Lectures right across the country. You got huge audiences. How hopeful are you that non-Indigenous Canadians are listening?

TT: There's always hope. That at the end of the day, I think is a message. I hope I also brought a message of resiliency and one of unity because I really think when First Nations and Inuit and Metis people work together, beautiful things can happen. You know and I try to show that on the Massey Lecture tour as well. I try to bring music and art tradition to every lecture because this is who we are. We are so much more than bad headlines in a newspaper. And I think all Canadians understand that they're beginning to see that this nation is made stronger with all of the voices working together, not just some of them. And that means addressing a lot of hard issues. That means giving up power, that means giving up money, yes true, resources, working together, finding a new way because guess what Canada, what's been happening the last 150 years, hasn't worked. We got to start again.

AMT: You know just this week the Fraser Institute released a study on the cost to compensate Indigenous people for what it calls perceived past injustices. The co-author of that report is Tom Flanagan and he estimates a cost of up to $5.7 billion. Well he's written in the Globe and Mail. I'm going to read you what he's written. Canadians would not begrudge these mounting expenses if they actually achieved the objective of bringing the living standards of Indigenous people up to those of other Canadians, but that is unlikely to happen. Extensive research on both sides of the 49th parallel shows that the Native American tribes and Canadian First Nations to achieve a higher standard of living, do so by getting involved in the marketplace and generating income for themselves, own source revenue in the vocabulary of Indigenous affairs. What do you think of that?

TT: I have a lot of thoughts on that. First off, I'll say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if it's wrong. Why unlikely to happen? Well gee, Indigenous people, First Nations, Metis, Inuit people have been left out of the economy. They've been left out of the job market. Why? Do we need another history lesson here? Should I talk about the Indian residential school system? 150,000 children gone. What does that look like when you are not given the same education as everyone else? That means children go home broken, they go into the justice system because there was no healthcare system to take care of all those survivors of all those schools. So they went home, they had children and they passed their trauma on to their children. And believe it or not, it gets passed down to another generation. It keeps going and going and going because you never corrected the problems from the past in the beginning. We all know that an education leads to people that enter into a marketplace. It gives them access to jobs. It gives them access to society in general. That has been shut out, taken away from Indigenous people for so long. So how he can say all of those things is totally beyond me.

AMT: What do you want to say to Canadians and Canada's politicians then?

TT: It's time to do things differently. It's time to do things better. We all know that 150 years hasn't worked at all for Indigenous people. We can still see the boil water advisories in the northern communities. We can see Indigenous kids don't have access to a high school education, the right of every single other child in this nation. How can this be? You know, these are the things we need to correct. And if it's not working, let's go back. Let's open things up a little bit more. Cindy Blackstock once said this, talking about a Marshall Plan. That's what we need in this country. And I can hear listeners, I can almost see them rolling their eyes and going what's she talking about, but think about that investment. Think about how much richer and fuller this country will be, if we make it inclusive for everybody.

AMT: What do you want to say to Indigenous communities?

TT: Keep going. Keep united. Keep fighting. Keep standing up. Keep loving. There's so much love. There's so much honour, laughter, you know. We got this.

AMT: Thank you. Thanks for coming in. Tanya Talaga is this year's CBC Massey Lecturer. Her accompanying book is called, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. She's a columnist for The Toronto Star. She's just finished as an Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy. Her lectures will be broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas tonight, all week beginning tonight. And that's at 9:00 o'clock on CBC Radio One, ideas. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Writer, John Irving is on the program to talk about his celebrated novel, The World According to Garp. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Nov. 12, 2018 episode transcript

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