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The Current Transcript for November 28, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: You saw from the video, once that chemical is released, it does go through the air. I was in an area where I actually inhaled quite a bit of it. That's what's going to happen in those situations.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The chief US patrol agent on the U.S. border near Tijuana, Mexico has no apologies when his officers fired tear gas at migrants, but those migrants include children with lungs more vulnerable than adults. And teargas, characterized as benign by those using it, is actually potent enough that it is banned on the battlefield. Today, we're looking at this controversial chemical created during war and now seemingly on the upswing as the weapon of choice for crowd control by governments everywhere. And we've got more on CBC's joint investigation into medical devices. Many who have experienced adverse effects with implants say doctors were so dismissive of their complaints, they ended up in online communities. Now those same online groups may revolutionize our health care. Hear how, in half an hour. And then PEI is proud of its oysters.

SOUNDCLIP

PEI has the best water. There's no pollution. It's very clean. So that gives you that really great clean, salty flavor in the oyster that people just love.

AMT: But an early, brittle winter has turned that special water to ice and even with divers willing to work under that ice, oyster growers could lose half of their harvest. Their story in an hour, along with a reality check on the cost of political turmoil.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Drugs is also sold here in this market. It smells strong. It's got flies all over it.

AMT: The desperation among Venezuelans is playing out against increasingly dangerous populous politics in that country. We'll hear from a former Canadian ambassador to Venezuela, who's touting digital diplomacy and a new app to try to change the conversation around divisive and destructive politics there and elsewhere. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Use of tear gas a 'good public relations move' for police forces, says expert

Guests: Sarah Kinosian, Anna Feigenbaum

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: You saw from the video, once that chemical is released, it does go through the air. I was in an area where I actually inhaled quite a bit of it. That's what's going to happen in those situations.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The chief US patrol agent on the U.S. border near Tijuana, Mexico has no apologies when his officers fired tear gas at migrants, but those migrants include children with lungs more vulnerable than adults. And teargas, characterized as benign by those using it, is actually potent enough that it is banned on the battlefield. Today, we're looking at this controversial chemical created during war and now seemingly on the upswing as the weapon of choice for crowd control by governments everywhere. And we've got more on CBC's joint investigation into medical devices. Many who have experienced adverse effects with implants say doctors were so dismissive of their complaints, they ended up in online communities. Now those same online groups may revolutionize our health care. Hear how, in half an hour. And then PEI is proud of its oysters.

SOUNDCLIP

PEI has the best water. There's no pollution. It's very clean. So that gives you that really great clean, salty flavor in the oyster that people just love.

AMT: But an early, brittle winter has turned that special water to ice and even with divers willing to work under that ice, oyster growers could lose half of their harvest. Their story in an hour, along with a reality check on the cost of political turmoil.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Drugs is also sold here in this market. It smells strong. It's got flies all over it.

AMT: The desperation among Venezuelans is playing out against increasingly dangerous populous politics in that country. We'll hear from a former Canadian ambassador to Venezuela, who's touting digital diplomacy and a new app to try to change the conversation around divisive and destructive politics there and elsewhere. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from a protest in Tijuana, Mexico]

AMT: Well you can hear them saying ninos. The migrants in Tijuana, Mexico were warning that children were among them as the U.S. border officers shot tear gas canisters over the border toward them. It happened over the weekend, after a large group of migrants gathered to protest and sometime tried to go around the regular border crossings into the United States.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds of tear gas canisters being thrown]

AMT: Video and photos of the teargas incident has prompted condemnation from groups such as Amnesty International, which called it a new low for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, but the president downplayed the incident.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: How did you feel when you saw the images of the women and children running from the tear gas yesterday.

VOICE 2: Well I do say why are they there? I mean I have to start off. First of all, the tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. It's very safe. The ones that were suffering to a certain extent were the people that were putting it out there, but it's very safe. But you really say, why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it's going to be formed and they're running up with a child.

AMT: Well since last weekend's clash, the Mexican government has issued a diplomatic letter to the U.S. embassy, asking for an investigation into the use of the tear gas, which reached Mexican territory. Sarah Kinosian is a freelance journalist who's been covering the migrant caravan. She's in Tijuana. Hello.

SARAH KINOSIAN: Hi, how's it going?

AMT: Well I'm wondering what you were seeing that day. Can you describe the scenes leading up to that tear gas being fired? What were the migrants trying to do?

SK: Yes so it was a, it was first planned as a protest march that I think you know Mexican police have blocked off the road and many migrants told me at that point it really developed migrants to get running and they went off down through a dry canal riverbed and then it kind of took on a life of its own and you know they rushed towards the border fence and there were young men that then many were you know jumping the fence, trying to peel parts of it back. Some of the young men were throwing rocks, but the large majority of people just sort of rushed quickly up there and then a lot of them, especially women and children who were behind them were met with tear gas. And that sort of made everybody turn around.

AMT: And did you see, we heard them saying there were children there, did you see children affected by the tear gas?

SK: Yeah there is definitely children that were affected by the tear gas. There, you know, like I said young men were the first to arrive, but the group is made up of women, children and then you know men. It was around 500 people or so out of the 6000 or so migrants from the caravan that had reached Tijuana.

AMT: So what were they, they were rushing to the border? What did they expect to do, to cross?

SK: Yeah I think the ideal is to have a peaceful process march to protest the exceedingly long wait times to apply for asylum. I think some people were hoping to cross, but I think that there's this misconception that people fully understand what's happening. I mean this is these people's first time at the border. A lot of the women and children I talked to hoped that you know they would get there and they would protest these times and you know somehow they could talk to someone from the United States and maybe able to get through. I don't think that there is a plan to go jump over the border and then they'd get through.

AMT: So the president referred to a very minor form of teargas. What kind of impact did it have on people?.

SK: Yeah I mean, tear gas is tear gas. Obviously there's varying levels of how strong it is. This one definitely you know has, you burned your throat, it burned your eyes, it burns your face and you can't you know hang out in it. You definitely, you need to flee it. So you know, it was on the scale of tear gasses that I've been in you know. not as strong I suppose, but you definitely you know would choke on it and you could feel it. Many feet down the railroad tracks you know you had to shield your face.

AMT: Now the president has said in recent days that the migrants at the borders were mostly single men. They were "stone cold criminals." How would you describe the demographics of the group?

SK: So I mean if we're just talking about gender, out of around the last time I saw a counted around 5,800 people, I'd say the break down was 3,600 were men. A thousand were women, a thousand were children in the whole caravan. And then getting to the issue of criminals you know painting all Central American young men as criminals is incorrect. I don't know how he's determined that and that's you know not evidence that I've seen to be true. So that's sort of, but numerically that's a break down, supposedly around 3600 are men.

AMT: And after this incident on the weekend, did this change the plans of some of the people who were in Tijuana hoping to cross the border?

SK: I think it just added a layer of desperation and added to this notion that oh we're really you know we really can't just get here and get into the United States. I don't think that anyone thought that this was how they were going to get into the United States, but I think that you know up until this point they've moved together and have been getting through reaching their goals and now they're at the doorstep of the United States and they can see this is going to be difficult and the wait is going to be long.

AMT: Some of them got back on buses though didn't they and went home?

SK: Yes on Monday around a hundred people turned around and went back to their countries of origin, mostly Honduras. I think some people you could definitely attribute that to Sunday's events, but again they're have been people throughout the route that have turned around because I think in general the whole experience hasn't necessarily been what they bargained for.

AMT: Okay. Sarah, thanks for speaking with us today.

SK: Thank you.

AMT: That is Sarah Kinosian and she's a freelance journalist. We reached her in Tijuana, Mexico. Well we wanted to hear a little bit more about what tear gas does to the body, so we called an expert.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: You initially feel kind of a burning sensation or itching sensation in the eyes that continues becoming very painful and pungent. You feel burning on the skin in your face, in the nostrils and then in the upper airways and also in the lower airways. You produce a lot of mucus that makes it really hard to breathe. You cough and sometimes people are so upset they actually also vomit. If you have teargas residues on your clothing or on your skin, this can cause burns and other complications. If a person is exposed in a closed environment, exposure can be much more damaging. There have been deaths reported or a serious lung injury and other complications and children, elderly and people with respiratory conditions are at very high risk.

AMT: That is Sven Jordt, who is an associate professor of anesthesiology, pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. Despite what he describes though, many people, President Trump included, maintain that tear gas is harmless and just a useful tool.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The type of deterrent being used is OC-Pepper Spray. It's literally water, pepper, with a small amount of alcohol for evaporation purposes. It's natural. You could actually put it on your nachos and eat it.

AMT: Well that is the former U.S. Border Patrol Deputy Ron Colburn talking about the tear gas used to disperse migrants in Tijuana, Mexico. My next guest has researched the history of tear gas. Anna Feigenbaum is principal academic in digital storytelling in the Department of Journalism, English and Communication at Bournemouth University in Dorset, England. She's also the author of Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today. And she joins us from Winchester, England. Hello.

ANNA FEIGENBAUM: Hi, thank you for having me.

AMT: Well you heard those two very different descriptions of tear gas, one that can make you vomit, the other one that you could put on your nachos, which is correct?

AF: Well right now I'm actually looking at the specification sheet from one of the companies whose tear gas, both OC that the second speaker was talking about and CS, which the first speaker was talking about, and interestingly it contains a warning that tells us that the weapons that we know are being used on the border include lead salts, which can cause cancer and as well as birth defects and other reproductive haram and I'm reading again directly off of the text sheet provided by the company that manufactures this weapon. It also includes a warning that says that this product can only be used to by a trained law enforcement and that it may cause serious injury or death to you or others. And so I think that the manufacturers' note on the product speaks for itself.

AMT: What were your thoughts when you saw the use of tear gas on the border against migrants then?

AF: It had both recollections to me of the history of the use of tear gas in the United States, so things like the that things like the Selma Bridge March, which sticks out in American's minds as another moment in which women and children in particular, as well as men, who were peacefully protesting were pummeled with tear gas and pepper spray, causing a lot of commotion and injury and it also looked a lot like images that we've seen of this kind of use of pepper spray and CS or other forms of tear gas, being used as a form of border control, in the place of humanitarian measures, to try and stop or challenge the migrant crisis.

AMT: So tear gas was created during the First World War?

AF: So its first mass production and mass use was during the First World War and it was developed to try and get people out of the trenches, which had caused a bit of a stale mate and they wanted a weapon that would cause disorientation, both physical and psychological torture in order to be able to further shoot at or kind of pummel with other kinds of poison gas at the men in the trenches.

AMT: So how did a tool used that way end up being used by police in city centres?

AF: Well after the war ended, both in Europe and particularly in the United States, people who had been involved in chemical warfare during the first world war, wanted to develop what they called, "peacetime uses for wartime gases." And they started to think of ways that the chemicals that were used during the war could be used at home. And one of the big pushes was to police and security forces for this idea that tear gas could put down and quell protesters, disturbances and maintain control for internal security.

AMT: And this was, Britain was doing this right, first?

AF: Britain signed on later to, it wasn't until the kind of colonial independence movements in the 1920s and 1930s that the British came around to the use of tear gas. So the United States, Germany, South Africa were the kind of early adopters. The United States was pushing them on the international level. They were serving it to places like Panama, during the building of the Panama Canal. So it was really leaked to keeping control, not only of political movements, but also control of labour and particularly labour that was not necessarily you know voluntary.

AMT: So let's talk a little bit more of what's in there. You often see pepper spray used as well for crowd control, is there a connection between the two?

AF: So it's a little bit tricky. Tear gas is kind of an umbrella term that's actually developed to make it sound not so bad because calling it a chemical weapon or calling it a poison gas, either which are more accurate descriptions, sound much more fearful, much more terrorizing than calling something tear gas and making these kinds of references to being a condiment or like chopping onions. But really what this refers to is a bunch of different chemicals, the ones that got mentioned CS and OC are kind of what we normally think of as tear gas and pepper spray. They can either be delivered as aerosol, so in the spray that we heard the former border patrol man explain or they can be more like a smoke and that's what comes out of grenades and canisters. Both of those kinds of weapons are being used. So those images that we see where we see what looks like a cloud of smoke, which is why we kind of think of it as gas, are actually are coming out of grenades or canisters. They are not a spray. A spray looks like you know your hair spray. So it's very important to make clear that there is not only pepper spray being used, that is for anyone with a limited amount of expertise, one quick look at those images and you would know that that is not a spray. And we know in particular that these triple chaser grenades from Safari Land company were being used and those are canisters that can deliver either OC, the pepper compound or CS or CM. So it's a bit technical and a little bit tricky, but all of these weapons often get used kind of together.

AMT: And they're categorized as non-lethal weapons.

AF: They are and that categorization is false. And we know that because people die and often I like to say you know what exactly is a non-lethal death? So sometimes we use the term less lethal instead, which is a bit more accurate. They are less likely to kill you than something else in the same way that a bullet is less likely to kill you than a missile being fired at you, but that doesn't make the bullet you know a good idea to fire at someone. And I think this is a really important thing to remember when we think about the kind of logic that is used to justify these weapons.

AMT: Where does tear gas fit into the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention?

AF: So there is an exception that was made for what are called chemical agents and the idea was that because police or law enforcement would be using these less lethal forms of chemical weapons for defensive purposes, so to protect their own lives in times of you know armed conflict in which law enforcement lives are clearly at risk, that it should therefore be allowed to be used, whereas it shouldn't be used in war as an offensive weapon in that way I was describing with the trenches. And of course the problem with this, as we just saw, with the caravan, is that it's very hard to say that this was being used defensively to protect the lives of those border control officers. You know first of all, you only have a small segment of the population that are in the caravan that are throwing the rocks. And second of all, you know the rocks are very unlikely as we've seen in that video footage to cause death to the border guards or officers. So according to the kind of humanitarian principles that we have and things like the United Nations basic principles and use of force, there is no justification for using tear gas or pepper spray in that kind of situation.

AMT: And you know there was outrage when tear gas was used by police during the G-20 in Toronto several years ago, Ferguson, Missouri after the death of Michael Brown. Why do police resort to tear gas? What is their rationale?

AF: Well when tear gas was first marketed in the 1920s, was sold because people could use it without having much training, much money or having to do much work or thinking. And I think these things are still true today. It is a relatively cheap weapon because you can use it to police an entire space, not just an individual person like a taser. It is cost effective and spatially effective and because it is less likely to kill and it doesn't leave traces of blood, which is a really important point, it also is then a good public relations move for police officers to use. And as we just saw with the caravan, as well as what we saw in Ferguson and at the G-20 and we heard the journalist talk about earlier in the program because it causes people to flee because you have to leave that space. Anything that looks peaceful, will look more like a riot. Anything that looks calm and collected will look like something chaotic and that shift in images that the media then covers, makes it look like the police are justified in their use of control because they had to control that chaos.

AMT: How big is the tear gas market today?

AF: We don't know exact sales figures because there's absolutely no duty to document the trade or the use of this weapon on either a national or an international scale. What we do know is that since 2011, with the Arab Spring and Occupy protest, that manufacturers have been bragging that sales have tripled. We know that the number of producers and manufacturers has grown into more regions and we know that this weapon is being pushed to regions that didn't formally use it.

AMT: How would you like to see the use of this gas change?

AF: I think we need to have three particular things. One, is an understanding as the program has covered today of the public health implications, of the fact that there are serious injuries and even deaths that can come from the use of these weapons. Two, we need accountability for their use. We need to know who's using it. That should be public trade information and three, we need clarification in these international policies around when these things can be used, how potent they can be. And there needs to be real ramifications when people violate the basic principles around the use of force.

AMT: Anna Feigenbaum, thank you for your insights about this today.

AF: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

AMT: That is Anna Feigenbaum, author of Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today. She joined us from Winchester, England. Let us know of what you think of what she had to say about the potency of this chemical and its use and its growth. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us, the CBC News is next. And then this week we've been hearing about the problems caused by medical devices. Our series, The Implant Files, continues with a glimmer of hope, thanks to online communities. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

'We give the patients a voice': Online platforms offer support to people allegedly injured by medical devices

Guests: Amanda Dykeman, Nicole Daruda, Susannah Fox

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, some of the best oysters in the world come from the waters off Prince Edward Island, but there's a problem this year. An early freeze is making life difficult for oyster growers. They say they have never in their lives seen such an early freeze. We'll head to PEI in half an hour. But first, another page in The Implant Files.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: And because I was crying and begging him to do something. [Crying] To do something for me and he said you know I think you're depressed. And I said no, I'm not depressed, I'm in pain.

AMT: That is Gloria McSherry of Creemore, Ontario. Just one of the people we heard earlier this week as part of our look at medical devices. Gloria McSherry experienced serious complications after a hip replacement and like others we heard from, she found herself fighting to have the medical device inside her removed after the surgery. She spoke with us as part of the CBC News series called The Implant Files, which is a joint investigation between CBC News Radio Canada and the Toronto Star, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The investigation looked at how thousands of patients say they were injured by medical devices such as pacemakers, hip replacements and vaginal mesh. Some patients say they had trouble getting information, answers and support from their regular health care providers about the devices planted in them. So they turned to the internet, to large online health communities to getting answers and support. I'm joined by two people who had their own stories about medical implants and online communities. Amanda Dykeman had an Essure device implanted in her fallopian tubes and says it made her sick. She's now one of the administrators of the Essure Problems Facebook group and she's joining us from Davenport, Iowa. Nicole Daruda runs a website called, Healing Breast Implant Illness and the Facebook group, Breast Implant Illness and Healing and she's joining us from Qualicum beach on Vancouver Island, B.C. Hello to you both.

AMANDA DYKEMAN: Hello.

NICOLE DARUDA: Hi. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

AMT: Amanda Dykeman, let's begin with you. Can you explain what Essure is?

AD: Yes, Essure is two tiny little spring like coils, made of dissimilar metals, that they implant into the fallopian tubes and its intention is to cause a chronic inflammatory response, so that the scar tissue blocks out the fallopian tubes, thus rendering a woman sterile

AMT: And when did you decide to get this implant?

AD: Actually I decided to get it after my third son was born. I delivered and felt great and did not want to go back into the operating room, so the entire time my physician had explained how Essure was this great thing, in and out procedure, no side effects, no downtime. Perfect for a mom with three children. So it sounded too good to be true.

AMT: So your doctor was very positive, did you do any other research?

AD: You know at the time, I did kind of hop online to check out you know what people were saying or see if any side effects or adverse events had been reported and nothing was online negative it was all positive.

AMT: So you got this, when did you notice something was wrong?

AD: Right away I bloated out to where I looked pregnant. I began experiencing migraines so severe they were debilitating. My regular periods had become irregular and full of clots. So almost right away. I gained 20 pounds in between getting the procedure and going back in for the three month check up to check that they were in the proper place.

AMT: What did you do next?

AD: Well I began to find, when it first happened that I something might be wrong. I had missed a period and I wondered if I had become pregnant. I didn't think it was possible. My doctor told me that you know there was no way I could get pregnant with this device. And when I began my search, I came across the Essure Problems Group and found that there were indeed women that had become pregnant and I luckily at the time was not pregnant, but I did learn it was possible and then I began to connect the dots that so many other symptoms I had experiencing since getting the implants, hundreds of other women were experiencing.

AMT: And now I want to get to the rest of your story in a moment, Amanda, but let's bring Nicole Daruda into this conversation. Nicole, what about you? What led to you getting breast implants?

NR: Earlier in my life when I was 26 and pregnant, I had to have a lumpectomy and so that left my left breast rather misshapened and so I didn’t, I didn't reconstruct right away. I waited until I was in my early forties, at a time when I knew I wouldn't be having anymore children and I decided at that point to you know to basically to fix my breasts. And so I visited a plastic surgeon and started that procedure. That was in 2005. And I was you know I was advised then that breast implants had come back on to the market and that they were entirely safe because there was a new breast implant, a new cohesive gel breast implant that was you know supposed to be safe.

AMT: How did you feel after your surgery?

NR: Well you know what, breast Implants is a very invasive surgery. I don't think women realize how invasive it is. Most plastic surgeons want to place the implants under the chest muscle, so they pry the chest muscle off the wall with the chest and so that's a very dramatic surgery and it takes a bit of time to recover. And yes it causes pain.

AMT: And beyond that though, what symptoms did you notice?

NR: I didn't have symptoms right away, not within the first few months, like some women do. My symptoms started to come on within the first couple years and it was it started to be fatigue. The other thing that I noticed right away is that I was starting to have reoccurring infections of various kinds like ear infections, periodontal infections, things that were pointing to my immune system not being very healthy. I started to have, I started to lose hair. I started to have kidney problems that landed me up in emergency. These symptoms would kind of come and go. Also, my thyroid started to become hypothyroid. It wasn't working the way that it should be.

AMT: It should be noted that manufacturers of breast implants say that various studies that ran before and after the approval of the implants, prove that their implants are safe. They also claim that the term breast implant illness is a broad term used to encompass various symptoms. They see the link between the symptoms and the implants is not scientifically recognized. When you brought up your concerns to your doctor, what happened?

NR: Oh you know they just repeatedly denied that breast implants cause illness. They referred to studies that say that breast implants are safe and silicone is safe.

AMT: Amanda Dykeman, I should tell you as well, we contacted Bayer and I should mention that the company Bayer did not actually create Essure, it bought the company that did create it 11 years after it was approved. Bayer sent us the following statement when we asked about your experience and here's the quote. "We're very sorry to hear that a patient experienced difficulties. Patient safety is Bayer's top priority and we remain strongly committed to women's health, an area in which we have long been a leader. The safety of Essure is supported by a robust body of scientific study data." Now the company goes on to say that Bayer decided to voluntarily discontinue the sale of Essure in Canada for commercial reasons, driven by a decline in patient demand and not a product recall. They add that, "Women who currently have Essure in place, can continue to use the device. The benefit risk profile of Essure remains unchanged." Amanda Dykeman what do you make of that response from Bayer?

AD: It's their blanket response. I've been hearing that response from Bayer since I began this advocacy work and I'm not surprised. At this point I just wish they would admit the issues and the travesty that this has caused upon so many women and take some responsibility for it.

AMT: You turned to the internet for answers, Amanda, what did you find?

AD: Well when it first found Essure problems, a couple hundred women were on the page discussing issues that they have had since getting Essure. We're now a support group that boasts over 41,000 members, not just women, you know husbands and physicians and anybody else that wants to help support us.

AMT: What kind of information is shared?

AD: We're very, very careful not to share medical information. None of us are actual physicians, however we do have physicians that help advise us. We have a list of physicians that other women can recommend to help get the devices removed. We share information on how to file an adverse event report with the FDA, which is very important so that they can keep track of how many women have had issues with Essure. So basically we just share everything from the FDA website, from whatever reliable resource we can find that will help these women.

AMT: How did it feel when you realized others were going through the same thing when you went online?

AD: I was shocked because like I said, my physician had made it seem like such a cakewalk and when all these women kept joining and joining with the same symptoms, you kind of got to put two and two together and realize okay really there's something wrong with this device.

AMT: Nicole Daruda, what about you? What did you find when you turned to the internet?

NR: I found, I didn't find a lot and that's essentially why I wrote the website that I did, healingbreastimplantillness.com. I first wrote it back in early 2013 because I wished it was all the information that was available to me. When I was googling breast implant and symptoms, all that would come up is the FDA. They only list local symptoms like implants can rupture.

AMT: What did you learn from other people in the same situation as you went forward then, Nicole?

NR: Well I actually in my searching I did come across one website called implantawareness.com and a lovely lady also from BC, her name is Adella Matthew. You know when I was researching I came across her website at a point when I was suffering from a lot of symptoms and just at a loss. She helped me find a surgeon, there was no surgeon in BC at the time, she helped me find a surgeon in Alberta to take out my implants.

AMT: Amanda Dykeman, how do you know what information to trust in your Facebook group?

AD: At first it was trial and error. You just kind of learn over time what's reliable and what's not. As far you know you just have to pay attention to where it's coming from, what the resource is. If it's coming from a physician, if it's coming from the FDA. You know, trial and error.

AMT: What gap in care do the online communities fill then, Amanda?

AD: We give the patients a voice. We let them tell their stories. We remind them that they're not alone and that other people have experienced and gone through what they've gone through. And we can refer them to the physicians that are listening to us, you know refer them to attorneys that are helping patients. You know we're just a good resource for everything in between.

AMT: Would you agree with that, Nicole?

NR: Oh yes, absolutely. You know the women, we're the same. We don't give medical advice. We coach the women to share their experience, you know share the symptoms they got, share their story and the other women, reading all these stories they recognize themselves. They go aha, exactly. I had that too. I have all those symptoms too, you know. And so it's validation, it's reassurance. Many women have had the kind inner knowing that you know that getting breast implants was the only thing that changed in their life, but because they're told repeatedly it's not by the medical authority, we're there to say guess what, I had implants. I had symptoms, I got them out. I overcame the symptoms, I'm helping now.

AMT: Amanda, you got your Essure device removed, am I correct?

AD: Yes via Hysterectomy.

AMT: So how are you today?

AD: About the same you know, after my hysterectomy about 80 percent of my symptoms were gone. Due to the chronic inflammation, I do have some issues that I need to keep following-up with my doctor, but health care is expensive in America and I haven't had much luck being able to keep up with you know follow-up, but hopefully I'm proud to report I'm at least 80 percent better.

AMT: Nicole, how are you today?

NR: I'm not. I would say I'm almost completely recovered. I think I'll have a bit of permanent damage, kidney damage, but yeah, I feel lucky to have the level of health that I have back compared to you know prior to getting the implants out when I was bedridden and had multiple symptoms.

AMT: We have to leave it there, but thank you both for talking to me about what you've been through and what you're doing online.

AD: Thank you for having us.

NR: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.

AMT: That's Amanda Dykeman, one of the administrators of the Essure Problems Facebook group. She spoke to us from Davenport, Iowa. And Nicole Daruda runs a Facebook group for people with breast implants who say they've experienced side effects. She's in Qualicum Beach, B.C. Now according to my next guest, social media holds the potential to revolutionize medicine. Susannah Fox is an advocate for what is known as peer to peer health care. She previously worked at the Pew Research Center, studying the intersection of health and technology. She also served as chief technology officer in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under U.S. President Barack Obama and now she's a private consultant and Susannah Fox joins me from our studio in Washington D.C. Hi.

SUSANNAH FOX: Hi.

AMT: Let me just get your initial reaction to what we've been hearing from Amanda Dykeman and Nicole Daruda, what jumps out at you from that conversation?

SF: I want to thank both of them. I want to thank Nicole and Amanda because what they are doing is a gift that can never be repaid. They are using their voices and their expertise to sort of loan their courage to women who need it, like they needed it when they were in crisis. And that's what I've seen over and over in my research, that people go online when they need help, when the system has failed and hopefully they can connect to a patient community like the ones that have been described so far.

AMT: What gaps in the healthcare system do these online peer to peer groups fill then?

SF: What I'm glad to share is that for the most part, most people, most of my research is based on U.S. adults, I should say, people are likely to turn to a clinician when they want a diagnosis, when they want a treatment plan. They turn to the internet as a quick second opinion, just to maybe check to see if this sounds right to Dr. Google. And more and more when something feels especially mysterious or someone feels alone, they are likely to look online for someone like them. They call it looking for a just in time, someone like me because people want to get that personal experience sometimes, whether it's something every day or something very serious that before they make this big choice, they want to find out what other people like them have done.

AMT: And how often do you come across stories of people who have turned to those internet communities because they aren't getting what they need from their healthcare providers?

SF: I saw most often when talking with people who are living with something rare. If you're living with a rare condition, you might be the only person in your city or even your state, who has this condition and so those folks are very likely to turn online to find other people like them. In my research of U.S. adults what I saw is about five years ago, was the last time I was able to measure it nationally, we are at about two in ten U.S. adults who said they had gone online to find someone who shared their same health condition. This summer I did a study that was sponsored by Hopelab and Well Being Trust and it focused on teens and young adults, 14 to 22 year olds here in the US. And it was up to four in ten who said they had gone online to find someone who shared their same health condition and it again was people who were looking for support on things like emotional well-being. We also saw a higher rate of connection to peers among youths who were LGBTQ.

AMT: You're a big proponent of peer to peer health care, why do you think it can revolutionize our health care?

SF: I think that it can fill in the gaps. I think that it's a way for us to bring the other half of the team off the bench. As we heard you know it's fine to look at scientific studies, it's important to rely on science, but it's also important to get the other half of the picture. The other half of the picture is the actual lived experience with a condition, the actual lived experience of a surgery. And I don't think we're really tapping into that in modern healthcare the way that we could be.

AMT: And if we could and if we do with online communities, what's the benefit?

SF: The benefit is that doctors don't have to guess what it's like to live with diabetes. They don't have to guess about whether this surgery is the right thing. They would be able to give better advice. Patients and their family members would be able to go into a new diagnosis, go into taking a new drug with more confidence. I believe that we would be able to see better adherence to treatments, if people had more confidence that it really was the right thing.

AMT: And I'm guessing as well they would be better armed with questions, going to see their health care professional if they're talking to an online community of people who have already been there.

SF: I loved what Nicole and Amanda said about not giving medical advice in these online communities, but helping people to share their stories because in sharing their stories and maybe learning the vocabulary that you need to use to communicate with the medical professionals, that's when you can really be heard.

AMT: Do you worry about any risks of the information that gets shared on these communities?

SF: There are some risks. You brought up one, which is the danger of misinformation and that's real. What medical professionals and other people can do is flood the zone with data, with science, so that people who do want to find out the truth are able to cite the journal article, cite the study that shows what the truth is. What I also think is a danger is what can emerge as a form of groupthink, where if you're part of an online community there could be a sense that a certain way is the right way. And as we know, there are so many individuals who might not find a certain way of being to be the right way for them.

AMT: And what about the actual sharing of potentially sensitive health information on social media?

SF: That is a danger as well. It's you have to be mindful of what you are willing to share. Again, everyone lives on the spectrum of what they want to have associated for example with their real name, versus using a screen name. Facebook was mentioned as a platform and whether they like it or not, Facebook is a real platform for health information sharing and they require that people use their real names. So there's a lot of people who are willing to trade anonymity for finding out the truth about their condition and they're willing to trade their anonymity to share their story to help other people. And again, that's a gift that can never be repaid.

AMT: So you see these growing as time goes forward?

SF: I do see it growing and again, I point to the data, the survey data that shows that when people go online to find other people like them, in the study that we did with Hopelab and Well Being Trust, eight in ten young people who went online and found someone like them, eight in ten were successful and about 90 percent of them said it was helpful. So we're going to get return customers. I think this is going to grow.

AMT: Okay well Susannah Fox, thanks for your time today.

SF: Thank you.

AMT: Susannah Fox, consultant who advises organizations on how to navigate the intersection of health and technology, we reached her in Washington D.C. This is the final story in our three-day coverage of medical devices, part of the CBC News series, The Implant Files, a joint investigation between CBC News Radio Canada and the Toronto Star, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. You can hear our other stories on The Implant Files at our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And you also can view the full searchable database of adverse effects involving medical devices. If you have a device, if you are being told you need a device, you might want to check out this site and search the database of what our CBC journalists have found. They spent a year working on this. Go to the site, cbc.ca/medicaldevices. And stay with us because in our next half hour, got a couple of stories for you. An early freeze in PEI right now can mean an oyster crunch in three years time. Oyster farmer, Shawn Cooke, explains in about 90 seconds. We're also going to hear from a former Canadian diplomat who wants to talk about populism, the growth of it on the left and the right, in different parts of the world. He wants to change the conversation and he's got an app for that. We'll be right back. I'm Anna Maria Tremont. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Earliest freeze 'in nearly 30 years' is causing problems for P.E.I. oyster farmers

Guests: Shawn Cooke

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound of boat cruising in ice]

AMT: Well that's the sound of oyster grower, Robbie Moore, struggling to drive his boat through a bay in Western Prince Edward Island, looking at oyster cages that froze overnight. This year winter's come early to PEI and the early freeze is causing havoc. If you were to navigate Prince Edward Island by boat, you'd find oyster cages and lines in the majority of the province's rivers, bays and estuaries. Canada's smallest province is the second largest oyster producer in the country. Over a thousand people in the province are employed in that industry. This year's unusual weather is taking a toll on the growers. Shawn Cooke is an oyster grower from Cape Wolfe, PEI, head of the Island Oyster Growers and he's at home in Cape Wolfe. Hi.

SHAWN COOKE: Good morning.

AMT: What's the weather been like this fall?

SC: Well it's been a really tough fall. We had a really early set in with winter and in fact we have more on the way, I guess. The forecasts are bad here right now.

AMT: So when did the water start to freeze over, Shawn?

SC: Well actually it froze before the 20th of November, I guess. It was a really early freeze, probably a month or more, earlier than normal. Probably the earliest freeze we've seen in nearly 30 years.

AMT: And why does it matter so much to oyster growers, when the top layer of ice freezes over?

SC: Well the business has changed a lot in the last few years there. We've changed technology and we've gone away from bottom culture and more towards surface culture, so all our oysters are present on the surface of the water in cages and floating bags, so when you get an early freeze like that, you get that early layer of ice, that early few inches of ice and that freezes your gear in.

AMT: So literally they're locked, the oysters are locked in ice in cages?

SC: That's right. Yeah. This year that was the case. The ice made up really early and a lot of the farms went down. We were the victim of a bad fall too, it was a dry quiet summer here and then when the fall changed about the time and things started the weather turned really bad. We get into a lot of heavy wind and a lot of rain and just generally poor weather and that set back the work on the rivers and it set back the work on the land. So I guess we're the victims of that too.

AMT: Well for people who don't know how oysters are cultivated. Tell me a little bit more of what it looks like and how it works.

SC: Well we started with seeds. So we started with collectors, generally we have lots of water that we put oyster collectors onto, so they're just a plastic collector that we put some cement on. We set those out in the water and we leave them through the time when it's present in the bay and it attaches to the collector then we strip those off and we put them in bags and then we carry them forward in the farms for about three to four years before we sell them. So it's a cycle that we have to do over and over again, we have to keep sinking our cages and our gear in the wintertime to be clear of the ice and the winter conditions. So it's something we have to do quite a few years in the lifespan of the oyster before we actually get to a marketable size.

AMT: So if I were to see it in the fall, would I actually see the cages or the bags that they're in like on the surface or would they just be right underneath the surface?

SC: Yeah you would. The cages we presently use or they call them an oyster growth system, but they're a wire or aluminium cage with tanks on it that holds six bags of oysters, perhaps twelve hundred oysters per unit or something and they have large tanks on the top that hold up a 70 litres of water and there's covers on the ends. So they float on the surface with the covers on them and then for the winter we can take off the covers, we just dip them down and they fill with water and then we place them on the bottom and if you place them properly on the bottom with the tanks down to keep the oysters up clear the bottom, they winter well.

AMT: And then you bring them up back to the surface in the spring?

SC: Exactly right. Yeah we just throw them on the back lines. We put that in our haulers and our boats and we bring that up and we just take the cage of the water, let the water drain out of the tanks, then we put the covers back on and you're good for another grow season.

AMT: So you got a double whammy then, you didn't get them out of the water in time before it froze and you didn't get them down on the bottom before it froze either?

SC: Well yeah that was the real catch. The stuff was on the surface. We didn't have it all put away because everybody got behind, the contractors who do the think and work and stuff, some outside contractors that growers hired to divers and stuff to sink cages and when we get into the really heavy winds and bad weather this fall, every bad day put us a day behind. So a lot of the gear didn't get sunk, didn't get put away properly. That'll be the problem too, some of the guys who were caught and had no option. Some guys just had to take off the covers and let their gear go and if it lands improperly, if the cages land on edge or upside down with the oysters towards the bottom, if the sediment is soft, they'll not winter very well and you'll get into cases where you'll have quite a bit of mortality.

AMT: So have you had divers going under the ice to place them?

SC: Actually we did this year. Usually all the divers work, mostly all the sinking is done in open water. This will be the first year that we've got you know had any amount of substantial ice, we've sunk before with just a little shell ice and stuff before, but like last year we didn't finish sinking until the 23rd day of November, but everything was open. It was fine. You know even this time last year it was still fine, but this year we definitely got caught. The ice was substantial enough that you couldn't get through it with the stuff that we used in places, those places there were sinking cages. They were chopping them out of the ice with axes and the divers were sinking them through the ice.

AMT: So were the divers going under the ice to get those cages where they belonged?

SC: Yes, yeah. And there's fellas offering to do that now too. I just had a call the other day from a young fellow who does that work and he offered to come up and swim some cages for us because a lot of cages went down or a goodly portion of cages went down improperly. They offered to come up and turn them, so that they're setting property on the bottom.

AMT: So how dangerous is that to go diving floating around under that ice?

SC: Well I think you'd want to be well experienced and well equipped. I think it's not something for just anybody. I think the people who do this kind of work are expert at what they do. So it's great that they offer the service. Conditions are really tough. We felt really bad for the divers that were. The last day we worked we actually broke up the ace. It was light enough that we could break it up and we sank I guess nearly a thousand cages the last day we worked and the divers, we had two divers with us that sank quite a lot of them and when you see a man work in the water that cold, working back and forth up and down through ice, you know they're coming up under ice and hitting their heads on the pans and stuff on the surface. It's really tough going. It's tough on them physically and it's tough on everybody mentally.

AMT: Something to remember if we're ordering oysters.

SC: Yeah, a lot of people don't realize. Somebody said to me one day it was like growing potatoes. I said it would be if it, if you kept your crop for four years before you sold it.

AMT: Well and you're not going to know for three years, whether some of those little seed oysters actually survive this?

SC: Yeah for sure, but the way it'll work likely is there'll be some loss in every year class because when you're sinking your farm you probably have three year classes in your farm. So if you over percentage of mortality in your cages, that percentage will exist in every year. So if you lose 10 or 15 percent of your seeds, you lose 10 or 15 percent of your growout could be you know it's hard to say, but the gear that was down earlier and properly set and stuff then you start to get into issues with really, really bad storms and high winds and stuff. Then you get into issues when the bay is open that the cages will tip and even if they are property placed they can move in the bad weather. I had growers telling me that they had cages that actually were in poor position now that had been sunk properly so.

AMT: Well Shawn, thank you for explaining it all to us and best of luck to you and your fellow oyster growers.

SC: Oh yeah, not it worked. And hopefully everybody, everybody pulled together pretty good. It was a community effort in the end to get everything done and it went pretty well. Mostly smaller growers, so a small grower like that doesn't have a lot of help so you usually get help from neighbours and friends and stuff. And the job got done, everything pretty well is good now, cleaned up that way.

AMT: OK well we'll let you go. Thanks a lot Shawn.

SC: Yeah thanks for your interest.

AMT: Bye bye.

SC: Have a good day.

AMT: Shawn Cooke, oyster grower from Cape Wolfe, PEI, head of the Island Oyster Growers.

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Citizens must become leaders in order to combat populism, says former diplomat

Guests: Ben Rowswell

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Translation: I feel very vulnerable. She says I'd like to give my children many things, but I can't. I can't work in my condition. Unlike others I would have stayed in Venezuela. I didn't want to leave, she said, but to just live meant she had to leave.

AMT: The woman who you just heard in translation is one of the estimated 3 million people who have fled Venezuela in the past three years. The oil rich country continues to slide into economic and political crisis. This week the U.N. approved a $9.2 million in emergency relief aid to help pay for food and medical care. My next guest has witnessed much of Venezuela's unraveling up close. Ben Rowswell served as Canada's ambassador to Venezuela from 2014 to 2017. His career in the foreign service also took him to many of the world's most tumultuous and dangerous places from Somalia to Iraq, later to Afghanistan, where he helped lead Canada's mission. Now Ben Rowswell is on a different mission. This month, he takes over as president and research director of the Canadian International Council, an independent Foreign Relations think tank. He's hoping to use his new position to get Canadians talking about what he sees as one of the world's greatest threats today, the rise of populism. And he has an app for that as well. We'll talk about it all. He joins me now in our Toronto studio. Hi. Welcome.

BEN ROWSWELL: Good morning. Nice to be here.

AMT: Let's start with Venezuela because we just heard that woman. What signs were you seeing that the country was headed toward this kind of crisis when you were there?

BR: Well thank you very much. I saw populism destroy Venezuela. The signs that were present already when I arrived in 2014 was a fundamentally divided country, where the two sides of the country could not even hold a civilized conversation with each other. A government which had given up trying to represent the entire country and it picked one side and was just representing those, in this case on the left side of the spectrum. And a government that always placed the interests of that portion of the population over the whole and never then able to come to implement some of the policies that would have staved off the economic disaster that ensued.

AMT: It's interesting because in our discussion, populism overall, it really it goes left, it goes right.

BR: There's very little difference in the substance, whether it's populism of the left or the right. What populism does is it divides the population into good citizens and bad citizens. In different countries they're called different things. Sometimes the bad citizens they're called the elite and others they're called the 1 percent. In others, they're called the Liberals or they're called the Conservatives. The fundamental reality of populism is that it's not one nation, it's two. And the good people always have to be in some kind of struggle or fight against the bad people.

AMT: So what do you think of the idea that President Maduro's government should be investigated for crimes against humanity, something that our own Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for?

BR: There's certainly been significant systematic and massive abuses of human rights by the Maduro government against their own citizens. Canada I think did a exemplary job of standing up for human rights when we were there, mostly just by giving a channel for Venezuelan people to talk to us in the international committee about what was going on. And through that process we heard some pretty horrific things that the Venezuelan government was committing against its own citizens.

AMT: And we also know that often with that rise of populism and one leader that kind of takes over, we see authoritarianism and then a lot of people helping themselves to the coffers.

BR: There certainly is a tremendous amount of corruption in Venezuela. You also have because the populace is there is always positioning himself as the defender of the good citizens against the bad citizens, there's always an attempt to eliminate any checks and balances on them. Anything that gets in the way of attacking the bad portion of the population. So you see attacks on the media, you see attacks on judges, you see attacks on the judicial institution. Anything that might inform citizens and protect them gets systematically dismantled.

AMT: It's interesting I just noticed in the news that a former bodyguard to Hugo Chavez who was of course there before Maduro, was named the head of the Treasury, has just been sentenced to 10 years in a U.S. prison. So that again that kind of that inside cronyism that leaves everybody else behind.

BR: It's not a uniquely Venezuelan problem though and that's one reason I wanted to take this position. See I do see the similar ways of governing a country, the similar ways of capturing power and staying in power, happening in country after country, in region after region. We're seeing it in Hungary, we're seeing it in Poland, we're seeing it in Turkey, we're seeing it in Russia and there's some signs of it happening of course in the United States. So there is a spread of this form of politics, of this form of government and it poses a real threat to us, internationally and potentially domestically as well.

AMT: Well let's look at a couple of those examples. Let's go to Brazil actually. This week President elect, Jair Bolsonaro, ex-army captain has named the sixth member of the military to his cabinet. He waxes nostalgic about military regime that was in power from 64 to 85. How concerned are you by what's unfolding in Brazil?

BR: I'm alarmed by what's happening in Brazil. I think it's a major step backward. This is a country that had a tremendous embrace of democracy and human rights in the 1980s and then became a leading light in Latin America around the world for the rights it was according to its citizens. It then got trapped in this us versus them mentality, which seems to happen with populism everywhere even after President Rousseff was impeached. That division just seemed to have gotten deeper and deeper and deeper to the point that it's very difficult for any Brazilians to see themselves as the united nation, as one single nation. It's always the good citizens against the bad and that opens the way for a very dangerous man like President Jair Bolsonaro to take power.

AMT: What threats do you see connecting Brazil to what's happening in Europe or the US?

BR: Every time I hear a politician trying to divide his or her nation, saying that there's some people that are fundamentally bad, some group that needs to be that needs to be a struggle against them. When I see institutions like the media or the judiciary being attacked by those who are in power, I see the same playbook being implemented time and time again.

AMT: How do you see Russia's connection to the tide of populism?

BR: So the thing that's really alarming is that populist authoritarians seem to be collaborating with one another increasingly. So Russia is behind a lot of the far right movements in Europe. Steve Bannon actually assisted with the campaign of candidate Bolsonaro before he won the election. And the reason behind that I think is that populist authoritarians, even if it doesn't matter if they're from the left or the right, they have a similar objective, which is to increase the power that they have over the population. International norms get in the way of that and so they're increasingly banding together so that they can challenge those international norms of democracy and human rights.

AMT: So I'm wondering what you think of Russia's latest actions to destabilize its own region, firing on and seizing three Ukrainian navy vessels, just several days ago. Ukraine has declared a state of martial law. What do you think of this escalation?

BR: So this is yet another example of Russia, the challenge that Russia is posing to the rules based international order. Russia seems to have made a calculation that it will succeed more as a nation if the legacy of 70 years of a rules based international order is slowly dismantled. The territorial integrity of nations, the non-interference in the affairs of other countries, it's certainly not the only country to break those rules and trespass, but it seems to be done in a more systematic basis than a more brazen basis and that's why I think Canada's right to call out the Russians on what they're doing in Ukraine.

AMT: So against what's going on elsewhere, how much of a threat do you see populism posing here in Canada?

BR: It's a threat because it's a playbook for gaining power and staying in power that seems to work in many places. And so it's difficult to see why it wouldn't work in Canada. If there was an aspiring politician that decided that he or she wanted to adapt these same techniques. If a country with such a long and distinguished history of democracy and human rights as Venezuela can fall victim, if we can see inroads in a stable democracy in the United States, we are vulnerable as well.

AMT: Because populism doesn't have to be the bad word that it's become, does it?

BR: Populism, the key to understanding populism is actually the last three letters of the word, not the first five. The first five sound good, it's about the people somehow, but it's an ism, it's an ideology, which means that it's an argument for gaining power on behalf of something. So socialism is on behalf of society, communism is on behalf of the community. Populism is on behalf of the people, but it's never individual citizens. It's about the people as is collective. Populists very rarely care what individual voters and citizens think. They want to treat them as one distinguished mass and then pretend that they embody that people. And that's why they deserve absolute power.

AMT: How well informed do you think Canadians are about what populism really means or looks like and why it can pose such a threat?

BR: I think we're getting there, but we need more citizens engaged in this debate. If ever there was a time that we need Canadian citizens to pay attention to what's happening in the world and to get engaged, it is now. I don't think we faced a threat of this magnitude since the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s, the rise of communism in the 1940s, when there was that threat, both internationally and domestically and the best inoculation we have as a society is an active and engaged citizenry.

AMT: So how are you using technology to try to engage Canadians in more of a dialogue about this?

BR: So a few years ago my partner and I observed in the Arab Spring and other places around the world, that large groups of citizens were now able to self-organize themselves without a party or an organization or an NGO or what have you through technology by bringing large groups of crowds to the streets and also to identify like what each and every individual might be able to contribute. So we built an app to try and reproduce that, but in a much more stable and long lasting way, we call it Better Place. Essentially it's a mobile app that allows you as an individual citizen, to identify what kind of contribution you could make. We often think you know I should be doing more, I'm worried about the direction my country is headed in, my community is headed it in. I want to take action, but I'm not exactly sure, well Better Place kind of tailors the opportunities that are out there to to you as an individual, different from your partner, your husband, your wife, your child, your neighbor. Each one of us has our own individual sets of concerns of issues that we think about of contributions that we might be able to make and Better Place tailors that.

AMT: Give me an example.

BR: So high school students in the United States in this last year were using Better Place to help organize the March For Our Lives. When you organize you know the gun control marches, when you organize a big march like that there's a lot of different actions that need to come together. You need some people that are good at logistics, some people that are good at getting out in front of the media, you need others that are good at managing the money and others negotiating with the police or the municipal authorities. With Better Place they were able to put up all those actions on the app and then their peers, like these high school students who'd just select for themselves, which task meant the most to them and that way they were able to get three times as many people to organize this march.

AMT: As opposed to just signing up to a Facebook group or going on Twitter to gather sort of more of a group, this kind of tailors joining in what they might do?

BR: Yup. You know if you're signing up for an email list or just on a Facebook group, it's usually one action that the NGO or the charity is trying to get like thousands and thousands of people to do, again treating us as like a sort of faceless blob. But each of us are highly unique. Better Place identifies what makes you unique and what might help you to become a more active citizen on the issues that you care about.

AMT: So maybe you're not going to march, but maybe you'll write something. Maybe you'll do something like that.

BR: That's right. If you want to contribute your time, your expertise your voice, your money, there's charitable donations as well. We'll be rolling it out in Canada in January with a group of undergraduates at Ryerson University, working on issues of climate change, of encouraging people to become organ donors, of getting youth to participate in politics, all kinds of different issues.

AMT: It's interesting because when we look at populism and the rise of populism, others have looked at it and said a lot of people feel left behind. They feel that they're not part, they don't feel empowered anymore. And populism, like voting for a populist politician, can make you feel like you belong to something again. But what you're doing with this is maybe empowering people individually in a way that they didn't realize they could? Am I reading that right?

BR: I think that's exactly right. Populists wants you to, want citizens to become followers. They want them to be afraid, they want them to be divided, they want them to be discouraged. So that ultimately they can leverage that for electoral power. What we need to do to combat populists is to help citizens become leaders, to become agents of change to get involved in their community and in their citizens. That's what we're doing with Better Place and that's what CIC also allows us an opportunity to. If you're interested in what's happening in the world, get informed, get engaged, join a CIC chapter. Start coming to some of the events and become a voice in the debate, as opposed to someone who's staying at home angry, maybe ranting on Facebook or Twitter or what have you, for the populists to divide us.

AMT: So this is a growth of the work you were doing as a diplomat. You were doing I guess digital diplomacy. You were doing a lot of online outreach before everybody was.

BR: Yeah. I've been quite interested in the role that citizens can play. In world politics it seems sort of counterintuitive that individual citizens can have a role, but when we were in Afghanistan with the Canadian mission in Kandahar, we were trying to connect the citizens of Kandahar with the governor, so that there could be some kind of exchange between the two. With the Arab Spring we saw how individual citizens sometimes spread around the world would have some kind of role. And in Venezuela we used digital tools to engage with the citizens. The fundamental task of diplomacy is to listen and so what we did was we used Twitter and Facebook and other digital tools to listen to what the Venezuelan people had to say. And in a country where they're trying to control the message and control communications that can be very powerful.

AMT: You did that in Iran too right? Because didn't you, weren't you just about to move to Iran and then Canada closed.

BR: That's right. In 2012 when the Harper government closed the mission, in Afghanistan I was in Farsi language training, since I wasn't given the opportunity to actually go out there and be a diplomat on the ground, the government asked if we could use the Internet in some way to promote human rights inside Iran. And again we used this power of listening, in a very open and transparent manner we established a number of Farsi language websites and then allowed Iranian people to debate with one another about the fate of their country, in a way that was protected from censorship and it received a remarkable response inside Iran.

AMT: So again it's finding the individuals and finding a way to help them find a voice in the midst of when people feel powerless, suddenly they can find a new way to have a voice.

BR: That's right. The internet does give individual citizens this untold opportunity to get informed and to share their voice and to get involved. That can be a little frightening because citizens do disagree with one another and some politicians try to capitalize on that, but ultimately the antidote is not to give up and not to retreat into our own corners, but to help citizens play this new and more powerful role that they have in society by being actively engaged in debate.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

BR: Thank you.

AMT: Ben Rowswell is president of the Canadian International Council. He served as Canada's ambassador to Venezuela from 2014 to 2017. He held various diplomatic posts before that including in Iran and Afghanistan. He is the co-founder of Better Place, a mobile app for civic action and he was here in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award-winning artist, John Legend, is on the program. Finally, we have a sad update to something we just ran on Monday. Harry Leslie Smith, as you've been hearing on the news, has died in a Belleville Ontario Hospital overnight. The anti-poverty activist had gained a worldwide following when he started a podcast and social media feed, both of them called Harry's Last Stand. He was in his 90s and when he started that he was 95. He just died overnight. His son John had taken over his father's Twitter account in recent weeks and he tweeted this morning that even though Harry could not eat or drink while he was in hospital because of possible complications, he was allowed one final beer before he died. Harry was, as he said in our interview, defiant to the end. We rebroadcast my 2017 conversation with Harry Leslie Smith on Monday. If you missed it, you can find it on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Incredible man, Harry Leslie Smith. You go back and listen to him cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening.

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Nov. 28, 2018 episode transcript

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