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The Current Transcript for December 11, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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[Sounds from protests in France]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: In the Twitter sphere, the trending hashtag was #BrexitShambles, while the British Parliament was trending toward chaos. The shouting you just heard was in reaction to an opposition Labour MP who grabbed the ceremonial mace and was heading out the doors of Parliament with it in protest yesterday. It has come to that as the May government's attempt to leave the EU now looks like a broken exit. And across the channel, the French president is now trying to mollify protesters who took to the streets with both a tax revolt and a demand for expanding the welfare state. In a moment, we are looking at the politics of populism when the populace confronts the politicians. And then the statistics point to a racial divide, kill a non-Indigenous woman and you'll likely get a first degree murder conviction. Kill an Indigenous woman and the charge more likely drops to manslaughter.

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VOICE: What I would like to see is that the judge actually take a female Aboriginal woman's case as seriously as he would as if it were not an Aboriginal woman.

AMT: That is First Nations Senator, Lillian Dyck, and she is pushing a bill to make violence against Indigenous women an aggravating factor in sentencing. Not everyone agrees it will do what she thinks it will. Hear the debate, in half an hour. And later, a first world dilemma, to dump your stuff or to collect more stuff?

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VOICE: So when you walk in, the first thing you'll notice is our bookshelves. We've got a lifetime of books on display here. If you've read Marie Kondo, you'll know that books are clutter and you should get rid of them. Obviously, I don't subscribe to that theory.

AMT: An expansive look at minimalism, in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Throwing a wrench in political system led to chaos in Britain and France, says expert

Guests: Simon Usherwood, Yauscha Mounk

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VOICE: It is clear that while there is broad support for many of the key aspects of the deal.[Laughter] On one issue, on one issue, the Northern Ireland backstop, there remains widespread and deep concern. As a result, if we went ahead and held the votes tomorrow, the deal would be rejected by a significant margin. We will therefore defer the vote scheduled for tomorrow and not proceed to divide the House at this time.

AMT: Well that is the British prime minister, Theresa May, in parliament yesterday, explaining to a chorus of booing and heckling. Her decision to delay a crucial vote on her Brexit deal. The prime minister could see the writing on the wall, so she has put off today's vote in the hope of avoiding a defeat and a political crisis of historic proportions. Still, fellow MPs did not mince words.

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VOICE 1: Does she not realize that every time she comes back here with her tail between her legs, she humiliates the British people. And put it to her that she has lost the trust and credibility of the House, lost the trust and credibility of the country and most importantly she's lost the trust and credibility of the European Union.

VOICE 2: Does she not realize how chaotic and ridiculous this make our country look?

VOICE 3: The fiasco today, the government has really lost all authority.

AMT: Well with today's Brexit vote on ice, Prime Minister May finds herself and her government in an increasingly fragile situation, with no easy solution in sight. She is hopscotching through European capitals today looking for more concessions from the EU on the Brexit deal, she negotiated with them. She's not alone in Europe. Across the English Channel and France, her counterpart President Emmanuel Macron is attempting to stave off chaos characterised by colours. He's got the yellow vests and the Black Tuesday protesters and we'll get to that, but staying in the UK for now, we're joined by Simon Usherwood. He is a politics professor at the University of Surrey. He's deputy director of a research program called the UK in a Changing Europe. And we have reached him in Guildford, England. Hello.

SIMON USHERWOOD: Hello. Thank you for having me.

AMT: How would you describe the predicament Theresa may finds herself in?

SU: It's an incredibly obtuse situation and one which I think doesn't make much sense, not only to people in other countries, but also here in the UK that Theresa May for two weeks has been pushing for this vote that was supposed to happen today. And then yesterday changes her mind, but without clearly having a plan and a rationale for that delay. So again I think it speaks to the confusion and uncertainty about this entire process.

AMT: You heard the tape of the MPs there, is anyone leaping to her defense?

SU: Not really, no. It's one of the most striking features is that Theresa May seems to have no vocal support. You know she does have a group of MPs and her party around who quietly will say that they will vote in favour of her deal, but the people who make all the running are her critics, both within her party and in the opposition parties too. And I think that's been one of the things that she's been weakest at is selling the agreement that she reached last month with the EU and trying to build a coalition of support .

AMT: Because it's not tough enough for those who want a Brexit and it's too tough for the others?

SU: Yeah exactly and I think that's the difficulty. From her perspective, she sees criticism from all sides, it's too hard, it's too soft, it's not the right kind of thing, but there isn't a clear alternative consensus view out there and so I think what she has taken from that is that everyone's happy, so everyone's had to get a little bit and therefore it's an appropriate compromise. But from the perspective of her critics, they see that she is weak, that she hasn't got a majority in parliament and I think that's very clear at this stage and so they see an opportunity to push their agenda. But the problem here really is that no one of you has a majority and so none of them are able to force themselves on the other points of view and find a way through this particular blockage.

AMT: So we know that she is going to be in the Hague, Berlin and Brussels, she's already on this trip today looking for concessions from the European Union. Is that likely?

SU: The short answer is no, it's not and that's one of the things that's very odd. The EU has been very, very clear in the last few days that it's not going to renegotiate this deal and remember that the deal was only signed a couple of weeks ago and after much delay and for the EU then to be changing that, doesn't actually make any sense. It has no incentive to change that. It has no capacity to change it. So at best maybe, Theresa May can get a statements of support and perhaps clarification around certain provisions from a meeting of European leaders later this week, but that's not going to be the same as a change to the legal text. And a lot of her critics in Parliament are saying, unless you change the text, we still can't support this. So the whole exercise already seems to me rather doomed.

AMT: So we see the criticism in parliament, what's going on amongst the voters on both sides of the debate on how politicians have handled this?

SU: Yeah well, I think the main view is one of confusion and a pox on both their houses that with both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party looking very divided, a parliament that seems to be unable or unwilling to make a decision, I think voters are not going to come out of this thinking that politicians look like competent, thoughtful people. And for those who haven't been following the ins and outs of this that you know, their view will be well how difficult can this be? We had a referendum two years ago, more than two years ago, and we still haven't actually got to leaving and you know where's the problem? And you know of course clearly there are problems and difficulties, but for the average voter, I think you know this feeds into a sense of disconnection and disillusionment. And as you're talking with your next guest about France, you know that's a general problem. You see it across countries that trust in politicians is declining. The disengagement is increasing and you know that's going to cause all kinds of problems.

AMT: It was in fact the distrust of political institutions and elites that really helped drive that leave vote in the first place, was it not?

SU: Certainly you know, clearly there were some very specific issues, most obviously around immigration that helped drive the votes back in 2016, but also part of it was that the leave campaign with their slogan of "Take Back Control" were able to tap into that disillusionment and that dissatisfaction in a way that I think was very effective. So you know you did have people who voted to leave the EU, not because they particularly cared about the European issue, but because it was a way of sticking two fingers up at the the political class that seemed to have stopped caring about their concerns and their needs as society has changed and developed.

AMT: So how do you, given what's going on in other parts of Europe, how do you think people in the UK are going to respond as this unfolds further? We see this roadblock with the EU saying they don't want to renegotiate, saying that any way. We see Theresa May desperately looking for a new deal and the clock is ticking.

SU: Yeah, the clock is ticking. If we don't have a deal signed and ratified by the 29th of March next year, the UK leaves without a deal and actually, ironically, that's the one thing that parliament is very agreed that it doesn't want. But unless it comes up with a decision of an alternative plan, it has, it can't stop that no deal exit happening. So quite how popular opinion plays out, how that develops I think is very unclear. I don't think we're going to see anything in terms of mobilization on the streets. That's not really the kind of path that we're on in the UK, but certainly I think what you're likely to see in the coming months and years, is a reflection of that disconnection. You might see increased votes for new parties, for challengers, people coming in and saying that you know they want to do things differently because the system isn't working.

AMT: And what would happen if Britain were to leave without a deal. What does that really mean?

SU: Well this is something that has become less and less acceptable in political life because it's clear that the economic costs are going to be very substantial. That all of the trading relations with the EU and actually whereas most of the rest of the world would be thrown into a degree of uncertainty that would be unprecedented. That at borders you'd have checks as border guards try to work out what they were looking for and how they were going to process those things. You'd have uncertainty about supply chains for food, for goods, for medicines and sometimes that sounds rather apocalyptic, but it really reflects the degree to which the UK and the EU have become entangled in the way that they make rules, share procedures, share agencies that regulate day to day kind of things, which might seem trivial and mundane when they work, but when they stop working, the cumulative effect of all of those many thousands of rules suddenly being thrown into uncertainty, I think it is likely to produce a very substantial economic shock.

AMT: Okay well, Simon Usherwood, thanks for your thoughts on this. Lots to watch as this unfolds today.

SU: Thank you.

AMT: That is Simon Usherwood, he's a politics professor at the University of Surrey. He's deputy director of the program in the UK called UK and Changing Europe and he joined us from Guildford, England. Well if you sought to escape the political turmoil in Britain by hopping on the tunnel train to Paris, you'd find yourself stepping right into another chaotic scene. The French president Emmanuel Macron rode to power in May of last year, on a wave of support for a centrist approach to governance. That honeymoon is well and truly over. For weeks the country's been gripped by protests, rioting and looting by the giles jaune, the yellow vests, as they are known. It's a movement without a leader, but the general sentiment is captured by Martine Taquet-Cooper. She is part of a protest camp that has been set up in Senlis, an hour north of Paris. It's been there for three weeks.

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VOICE: Now you have big, very big strikes and revolutions in France. You know why? Because we pay so many taxes. It's impossible now to have a good life for us.

AMT: Well my next guest is following events in France. Yauscha Mounk is a lecturer on government at Harvard University and author of the The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. He is in Washington D.C. Hello

YAUSCHA MOUNK: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: So you've been listening in to my conversation. Do you see parallels in the populist anger that led to Brexit and the protest we're seeing in France?

YM: Yeah absolutely and I mean I think one of the things that's going on is that people feel like the government is not delivering for them. The living standards are stagnating that the world is changing very fast and they're not necessarily going to be the winners of those transformations. And so they're willing to disrupt the system in whichever way they can. So when they're offered a referendum in Britain, they say you know what, perhaps getting out of the EU, perhaps changing things up id somehow going to help me. When they're in France and they see that president that came in with a big majority a year and a half ago, hasn't made life a lot better yet, they say well you know perhaps if we go out in the streets, perhaps if we disrupt the country, we're going to get something out of that.

AMT: So if we look at the yellow vests, I noticed from the pictures they look like they are of the protesters are they have a range of ages. Who are they?

YM: Yeah, so if you think of Emmanuel Macron as the incarnation of optimistic, metropolitan, well educated France. The part of the country that looks forward to the future things, that things are going to get better. I think the yellow vest tend to be the opposite of that. They tend to be in more rural areas. They are often in parts of a country that are rapidly depopulating. They tend to be widely tend to be sometimes a little bit older for protest movement. So they're the people who look into the future and say you know what, I'm don't think my life is better than my parents' was, I think in my kids' life is going to get even worse and so we just got to change something up.

AMT: Okay so we know that this was sparked by fuel tax, but there are also demands to increase help through the welfare state.

YM: Well this is another similarity with the situation in Britain. I mean what you see in the debate about Brexit is that from the very beginning, a lot of the Brexiteers promised things that simply weren't compatible. They said for example that they would be completely free from the rules of the European Union and yet there would be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the island. You simply can't have those two things at the same time. So they wanted to have a cake and eat it too, which is as some British commentators have joked in the last months, a form of cakeism. Well you know the French can compete with the British on anything and so they're now embracing a form of gateauxism. They wanted at the same time to have fewer taxes, some of the demands of the yellow vest is to cut taxes by half and at the same time they're asking for more public services, for more civil servants, for more public expenditures. And I'm sure Emmanuel Macron would be all too happy to give all of those things at the same time, if that was actually possible.

AMT: Well in fact he did address the nation yesterday and he's offered to increase the minimum wage.

SU: Yeah. So I think he walked a relatively interesting line. He started off by condemning the violence of the protestors in very clear terms, but then also giving real empathy to the reasons for why they're frustrated saying this is 30-40 years of economic stagnation, which is animating the protesters. And in the same way in terms of reforms he stayed reliant on some of the economic reforms his government has been putting through. He's making the argument that those reforms will actually help overcome the stagnation, which really is driving the anger. And at the same time he's saying look I'm going to make sure that from the first of January of the next year, you're going to have some concrete improvements, including 100 euro a month increase in the minimum wage, which is quite substantial and some improvements for pensioners as well.

AMT: And he's also asked those employers who can do it to give workers a tax free bonus at this time of year?

SU: Yes so he's promising that it's going to be tax-free and he's hoping that employers will help him out a little bit there. You know it remains to be seen how many employers are willing to spend cash in order to help the president.

AMT: So do you see parallels to what's going on across Europe right now? Try to connect the dots for me on what we the kind of various forms of anger we're seeing in Europe.

SU: Well I mean I really do think that it goes to two things that are going on. The first is a rapid set of cultural and some countries demographic transformations. And the rebellion against by people who are disoriented by it who don't like that. And then the second is simply the fact that in some ways during the period of democratic stability in Europe, especially after World War 2, we really were in an extraordinary situation. We had these incredibly rapid transformations of living standards. When you think about what a Frenchman in 1970-1975 could afford, compared to what kind of life they had in 1950. They had a much higher life expectancy. They probably had a car and central heating, which they hadn't had 25 years ago. So perhaps it was that period that was extraordinary in which people didn't love politics, didn't completely trust politicians, but knew that you know something seems to be working. And now the bottom line feeling that people have is you know what, something is not working. The elite are doing great. You know some people who are very rich, the big companies are thriving, but we are not. And the response to it is a generalised rebellion of saying we don't really have an alternative plan. We don't really know exactly what we want instead, but if we can disrupt what's going on in any way possible, then surely that's going to help. And the second commonality then is that it often doesn't work out. But if you simply throw a wrench in the system, understandable as that may be, you end up with a mess that is Brexit. You end up with the chaos that you're seeing in France today.

AMT: What are the lessons for leaders in North America?

SU: Well I think that they need to show people that the future is going to be better and that has to entail a degree of optimism about the ability of our economy to grow, about the benefits that get from free trade and so on, but it also has to entail a very clear commitment that they're going to ensure that the elites play by the same rules, that the nation is actually going to stand up for ordinary people, that we're going to act against tax evasion, against the ability of large corporations, not to pay their fair share in tax. And so I think if we defend the basic part of the economic system that will help build prosperity, but also show in a much more engaged and clear manner that political leaders are willing to ensure that everybody plays by the same rules. Hopefully people will see that's the most realistically way forward.

AMT: And your book is subtitled, Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It. How optimistic are you that the anger and the concerns that are being expressed will actually be addressed?

SU: Listen I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I think for a long time we were complacent. We fought, but it was obvious that liberal democracies in countries like France or United Kingdom or Canada for that matter would always continue to exist. I think we realize now that there is a settle for return populist leaders from Hungary to Donald Trump in the United States, who really are putting our institutions in danger. But we also started to see a counter reaction against it. The midterms in the United States limited the power of Donald Trump. Just yesterday we had elections in India in which another very dangerous leader Narendra Modi had to suffer huge defeats in some of the key heartland states. So I think we can save our freedom if we do the right thing.

AMT: Okay, Yauscha Mounk,, thank you for your thoughts today.

SU: Thank you so much.

AMT: Yauscha Mounk, lecturer on government at Harvard University, author of The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It. Stay with us the news is next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Bill to curb violence against Indigenous women could hurt those it aims to protect, warns lawyer

Guests: Charles Graeber, Veronique Greenwood, Gregory Feist

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

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AMT: Still to come, with the new year just around the corner, you may already be thinking about getting rid of things, living with less. Minimalism is a mainstream cultural trend. Just look at the clean white surfaces inside the homes of influencers on Instagram, but some say what started as a backlash against conspicuous consumption, has become a form of elitist consumerism. That debate in half an hour. First though, an attempt to rebalance the scales of justice.

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[Music].

VOICE: Well the report itself is not bad. It has very good data, but my concern mainly is the spin that's being put on the report by the media and by the government.

AMT: That's Lillian Dyck, Canada's first female First Nations Senator. You heard her in a clip from February there reacting to the RCMP report on missing and murdered Indigenous women. It is an issue of utmost importance to Senator Dyck and she has introduced a bill in the Senate that would do something potentially controversial. It would change the way those who victimize Indigenous women are dealt with in our courts by changing the requirements judges must consider when they sentence people found guilty of assault against Indigenous women. Here's Manitoba MP Liberal Robert Falcon Ouellette, who has sponsored Bill S-215.

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VOICE: We know that Indigenous women are over represented in violence committed against women. Worse yet, the stereotype of Aboriginal women as loose and sexually available still persists and makes them more vulnerable to unwanted and unfortunately more violent sexual assaults and more gruesome murders. The laws of our nation must reflect our values and the values of all our citizens and Indigenous women need our protection at this time. They need our protection at this time because no one else is giving it to them.

AMT: While the bill is making its way through parliament, the Senate has approved it. Senator Lillian Dyck is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

LILLIAN DYCK: Good morning.

AMT: How would this bill change how judges consider sentencing people who commit violence against Indigenous women?

LD: What it will do is it will require the judge to consider her identity as an Aboriginal woman as an aggravating factor. That means when he's sentencing an offender for assault or murder he then has to consider giving that person a longer sentence.

AMT: And when you use the term violence, what crimes are you talking about?

LD: I'm talking about all the crimes that are in the criminal code listed under assault and that would include sexual assault and all the various categories of murder, first degree, second degree and manslaughter.

AMT: And what change in sentencing would you want to see?

LD: What I would like to see is that the judge actually take the female Aboriginal women's case as seriously as he would as if it were not an Aboriginal woman.

AMT: Well let me ask you a few more questions about that then. First of all, how much more at risk of violence are Indigenous women in this country than non-Indigenous women?

LD: Well the numbers vary, but it's at least three to four times a greater likelihood of being sexually assaulted or murdered or made missing or seven times more likely to be killed by a serial killer.

AMT: And as the bill makes its way through Parliament, you're also working on a study with the University of Saskatchewan on the sentencing of offenders who commit violence against Indigenous women. What have you discovered in the sentencing system as it exists now?

LD: What we've discovered is that if it's an Indigenous victim, the charge is more likely to be manslaughter or second degree, but if it's not an Indigenous woman, the charge is likely to be first degree or second degree. So the charges are less.

AMT: And what are the percentages?

LD: If it's an Indigenous woman, it's 39 percent of the charges would be for manslaughter, but for a non-Indigenous victim, it's 21 percent. So it's about twice as likely that with an Indigenous victim the charge is going to be manslaughter.

AMT: In other words, a lesser charge.

LD: That's right.

AMT: So when it comes to first degree murder, what do your numbers show?

LD: When with first degree murder if it's an Indigenous it's 20 percent. If it's not an Indigenous woman, it's 33 percent. So about one and a half, not quite one and a half times more likely for the murder of a non-Indigenous woman to be charged with first degree. And most Indigenous women are murdered by Indigenous men, it's about two thirds.

AMT: So what concerns you most about what you've discovered with these numbers?

LD: Well it shows again what the families of the missing and murdered Indigenous women have been telling us for years is that with an Indigenous victim, there's less likelihood of getting a fair trial and the charges are likely to be less, the sentence is likely to be less and what would be interesting too would be to go back and look at the numbers to see what the difference might be in terms of how many people or how many offenders were actually acquitted.

AMT: And what message would it send then if sentences were harsher for people who hurt Indigenous women?

LD: Well the courts generally call that a message of deterrence and denouncement. You know if you look at the court cases and you look at the judge's reasoning, they often say they're applying a harsher sentence in order to send a message that this is a particular heinous offense and it's meant to dissuade other people from committing the same thing.

AMT: So if we look at the way the system exists now when it comes to aggravating factors, what examples are there now of aggravating factors that judges need to consider when handing down a sentence?

LD: There is actually quite a few, there's things like it does cover things like race, but it doesn't specify which race. It covers gender, but it doesn't actually say female. It covers age, people who are under 18 years of age, the minors. It also covers elders and not too long ago we amended it to add in gender identity and gender expression.

AMT: And what about like there are also things like murder a police officer.

LD: Yes absolutely, murdering a police officer or murdering a public transit operator, such as the taxi driver.

AMT: So that would be an aggravating factor when a judge is thinking of a sentence. And so you're saying there is a precedent for using ethnicity or race as an aggravating factor in sentencing.

LD: Yeah, it's mostly for hate crimes, but it doesn't actually specify which race and it doesn't take into account any interactions. So because the victims we're talking about are female and Aboriginal and when you have those two factors, I think most people would agree that female Aboriginals are on the bottom rung when it comes to status in Canadian society. We're at the bottom of the heap.

AMT: Do you have any concerns at all about using specific ethnicity or race as an aggravating factor?

AMT: Well you know people in my generation growing up there was always the theory that if you identify as Aboriginal that it will not be in your best interest, that it will increase racism, but in this case we know for sure that female Aboriginals are more likely to be victims of violence and using that as an aggravating factor will I believe, tend to offset that vulnerability.

AMT: Okay well Senator Lillian Dyck, I want to bring someone else into this discussion. Promise Holmes Skinner is an Anishinaabe criminal lawyer and she's with me in our Toronto studio. Welcome.

PROMISE HOLMES SKINNER: Good morning.

AMT: So as you're listening, I'm just wondering, first of all, should violence against an Indigenous woman be an aggravating factor during sentences?

PHS: I agree with the sentiment and the objective of Senator Dyck's action trying to do something to protect Indigenous women. I agree, we need some real action now. We need something that's going to work, but I perceive this as having some unintended consequences that will do the complete opposite, which will not protect Indigenous women.

AMT: Such as?

PHS: So if we're talking about offenses that include assault, simple assault, this is a very common offense that we see in the courts across Canada and we see assault and even assault with a weapon, for example empty water bottle or a Kleenex box being thrown at someone else, these are real assault with a weapon cases that I have seen in courts in Toronto. I wish I was kidding. So we see young Indigenous women engaging with each other and using violence as a form of conflict management because unfortunately, for some people this is all that they've learned and the unintended consequences that I see is that Indigenous women who are going to be charged with assault, that they're going to then receive harsher sentences because the victim in this situation is another Indigenous women.

AMT: Okay and I'm also wondering about how this bill would fit in with the Gladue Principle in sentencing. So maybe first of all, remind us what that is and then tell me your thoughts on that.

PHS: So Gladue says specifically, especially we need to do this for Indigenous people and what that is is consider a, the systemic background factors that are affecting the individual who's before the court when you're considering a fit sentence and then whenever possible, avoid jail because jail is used in a way that's ineffective and it's overused. So trying to get people out of jail, where jail is not the right place for them. And then in one way we see judges applying Gladue in a way not to avoid jail, but to bring in shorter jail sentences because that's sort of the best they can do in that situation. Sometimes jail is required, there might be a mandatory minimum for example or it might just be such a heinous crime that they have to go to jail, but Gladue looks at the moral blameworthiness of the person, understanding the reasons why they're in the situation that they are. So in this case Gladue might be circumvented by the courts and by some crowns. Unfortunately, Gladue is not properly applied across the country. I see another unintended consequences of this being a way for courts to circumvent Gladue or just not apply it.

AMT: Senator Dyck, what do you say to that?

PHS: Yes, well Gladue will still apply and definitely it's true that the Gladue courts are not and Gladue decisions are not evenly applied across the country, but the fact remains that Gladue will still apply in the case of the situation with two young women. The young woman who's the offender will still have Gladue applied to her. But we should also take into account what's happening to the young Indigenous woman who's a victim and what the judge made, he or she will balance those two factors out and he or she may then decide that with assault or something as I guess you could say minor is a Kleenex box, that's not really a serious assault and then he might then consider some kind of programming for the offender to deal with if she has let's say an alcohol problem or if she has any drug problems or if she has any other problems, some kind of programming to address the reason why she was, as you were saying, why she was behaving in the way that she did.

AMT: So if offenders do receive a tougher sentence, where would they go? Are there enough alternative places?

LD: I know there are several healing lodges across the country, likely not enough. And that brings up another point, within the correctional act, there are provisions for communities to take over the imprisonment and the release of offenders into their own communities and that I think is an area that is not well developed and that you know releasing someone to their own community and maybe holding them in a community, such as healing lodge, where they get proper alternative programming, behavioral and cognitive programming healing, you know learning their culture and so on, that's much much better than throwing someone in prison because we know prisons don't work because the person is locked up and they pretty much have to earn their way to in order to get any programming. To me that's backwards. They should be given programming from the get go. They shouldn't have to earn it.

AMT: Promise Holmes Skinner, does that speak to some of your concerns of alternative sentencing that was available in an Indigenous community?

PHS: So we already have these tools and they aren't used properly across the country. We have tools like diversion, where people can instead of being found guilty, they can go in have their case heard by the community members. We have this here in Toronto, we have it elsewhere, but it's up to the courts and the crowns to decide whether that's appropriate. And that's the problem is that there are judges and crowns who don't understand this and they don't apply it properly and so we're relying on judges across the country to do this sort of balancing and they're not doing it right yet. So if we're going to change the law to then create more problems and expect judges who already don't get it to apply properly and protect Indigenous women, I don't see how that is the answer.

AMT: Okay I want to pick up on something you said though, you said that it's not used properly. Are you talking about the fact that judges and crowns don't cause they don't get the law? Is this about education?

PHS: Yes it is about education and it's about folks opening their minds to being educated about it.

AMT: Senator Dyck, what do you say to that?

LD: Well I understand that judges may not get it now, but if they have to then consider an aggravating factor for the victim, that doesn't necessarily mean they are even worse off, it might actually make the situation better because then they will start to have to consider the dynamics involved between the victim and the offender. And I think that in a sense you know, if I was faced with something like that, that I would then try to understand it better. So in a sense I think by shedding new light on it, the judges will then begin to think wider than they normally think.

AMT: Senator Dyck, some critics of this bill believe it could conflict with the Charter of Rights, which guarantees that all Canadians are entitled to equal protection, equal benefit under the law, without discrimination. What do you say to that?

LD: Well in fact actually when we first looked at this, we were thinking that we could launch a Charter challenge under Section 15 because it says every individual is equal before and under the law. It has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and so on and so on with regard to race. Now in fact, we could argue that Indigenous women are not receiving equal protection under the law. They are being discriminated against because in a situation of a male offender in a homicide and 92 percent of the time it's a man that the man is getting special consideration under Gladue, but his female victim is not getting any kind of extra consideration. Also there's Section 1 of the Charter that says that it's subject to reasonable limits prescribed by the law, as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. So during our committee hearing in the Senate, the defence lawyers said it was likely that it would be exempt under Section 1 of the Charter.

AMT: Promise Holmes Skinner, is there a better way do you think to accomplish what Senator Dyck is trying to do with this bill?

PHS: Obviously enormous amounts of research have gone into this, but the biggest issue that I see is that the research supports something to be done about when offenders are murdering women and this is being applied all the way down to simple assault, which is so common. And I think at the very least, if we make this only about murder, if the stats are something about 92 per cent of people murdering Indigenous women are the men, then you're certainly minimizing the issues as it relates to women who are offenders and also the young women who are on a day to day basis finding themselves in conflict with the law because they lack tools and resources and they are the ones who are going to suffer, when they are the ones that we're trying to protect with this bill.

AMT: Senator Dyck what do you say to that?

LD: Well I can understand the provisions about assault, but again I go back to this bill will only balance out what provision theoretically is given to the offender in this case. The other thing with regard to is this the best way to proceed? Amending the criminal code was the same method that was used to protect police, it's the same method that's used to protect taxi drivers. And in this case the vulnerability of Aboriginal women is higher than it is even for the police and taxi drivers. So it's a method that's already been adopted for police and taxi drivers and even correctional officers. Now with regard to is there another way? We did look at the idea of amending the criminal code under the general provisions and actually there was, I've run across a masters thesis who said we could make it an aggravating factor with respect to hate, but that would not work because it's almost impossible to prove a hate crime. The student concluded that we needed something done, but she wasn't sure what and that hate was not the way to go. I did also just recently find another Masters thesis in law, where the person was looking at the Gladue provisions and said a similar provision should be written for victims and she used language that was very similar to what was in the Gladue provision. We have also considered that route, so it would include all women and say especially Aboriginal women. But when I first introduced the bill, I thought I wouldn't go that route because at that time, this is three years, there was very little public knowledge about the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

AMT: I'm just wondering what have you heard from the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, as you worked on this?

LD: Well the families that I've spoken to and I can't say that I spoke to all families, are supportive of it. In fact the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is now actually meeting here in Ottawa this week and there are several of the presenters I hope that will bring up, I shared with them some of our new data. They also know about my bill, so I'm hoping that they will make a recommendation that the National Inquiry support this bill.

AMT: Promise Holmes Skinner, do you think this bill, if passed, would act as a deterrent?

PHS: I don't think that deterrence really works because everybody thinks they're not going to get caught. So they're not factoring that. It's not a rational pros and con process that the person's going through. They don't consider the consequences generally, it's because they think they will not be caught.

AMT: Senator Dyck?

LD: Well deterrence is the standard I think used in the judge's reasoning as the standard, but maybe we could look at it not so much in deterrence in general for someone who hasn't committed the crime, but it could be, if there were proper programming, it could act as a deterrent in the sense that if the person is sentenced to a longer period of some kind of programming, the likelihood that that person is going to recommit, the recidivism is reduced. In other words, a deterrence is there for those who've already been sentenced. So some of the programs like Pathways for example, have found that offenders that have gone through that program are less likely to re-commit.

AMT: And so when does this, where is this now in parliament, Senator Dyck?

LD: It's still in the House of Commons. It's still undergoing second reading, it will come up again for another round of debate, probably somewhere around the end of February.

AMT: Okay. Well thank you for taking us through it. And Promise Holmes Skinner, thank you.

PHS: Thank you.

LD: Thank you.

AMT: Senator Lillian Dyck was in our Ottawa studio. Promise Holmes Skinner is a criminal lawyer in Toronto. Now we did ask the Minister of Justice to comment on Bill S-215. Her office sent a statement and I'll read it in part. Here's the quote. "Our government agrees with the commendable objective of Bill S- 215, which is to denounce and deter violence against Indigenous women and girls. However, the proposed approach may have unintended consequences." That's part of the quote. It goes on to refer to the Gladue Principles that we just discussed and it says, "Combined with Bill S-215, a judge could be under contradictory obligations to both lengthen the sentence for an Indigenous offenders criminal conduct against an Indigenous woman and at the same time to consider alternatives to incarceration." And then it concludes, "Our government will continue to advance a multifaceted approach within and outside of the criminal justice system to meaningfully address this complex issue of violence against Indigenous women and girls."

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AMT: Global leaders are gathered in Poland for the UN's annual Climate Change Conference and they're working under a deadline. Climate scientists have warned that we all need to take drastic action by the year 2030. That gives us 11 years. And on Thursday we will bring you a special edition of The Current. We're calling it 11 years: A Blueprint for Climate Action.

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VOICE 1: I think grown-ups should think that we actually should make an impact and not just sit back and let it happen.

VOICE 2: I think grown-ups should think, not just for themselves, but what the kids, for their kids and the next generation. Because if they only care for themselves and they'll be gone, before the real effects of what they've done is happening.

AMT: Some kids in Vancouver calling for action. The good news is the experts have a pretty good idea what it would take to make that impact.

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VOICE: There's an enormous amount of innovation coming up from all the different professional sectors, the biologists, the foresters, the planners and architects and engineers, they're all thinking about solutions. So there are, I would say, millions of people around the world, a network of people right now, thinking about how we can do this. The thing that people mostly I think don't understand is that it affects them right now and that also that there are things that they can do right now and that their actions count right now.

AMT: You will hear some of the climate solutions that are already underway, what more needs to be done, what you can do to pitch in. It is a race against the clock, but it is a race experts say is still worth running. That's this Thursday. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC and let us know what you're worried about and what more you would be willing to do.

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AMT: And stay with us because coming up, going minimalist is a seemingly popular lifestyle choice. All of those decluttered living rooms make great pictures. In our next half hour, we're going to hear more about what it really means to choose to live like that, including what it looks like inside a minimalist's shoe collection.

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VOICE: I mean I have probably four pairs of shoes that I wear all the time. So I have a pair of boots for kind of the winter. I have a pair of boots for hiking, sandals for the summer. One pair of heels that I wear to all weddings. So that's about it.

AMT: More on the minimalist lifestyle by choice in 90 seconds. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Minimalism: Upper-class luxury or liberating lifestyle?

Guests: Cait Flanders, Colin Wright, Kyle Chayka

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

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VOICE: I spent two years volunteering. During that time, I learned a slogan that has always resonated and meant a lot. Live simply, so others can simply live. I've gotten to the point in my life, where I just have way too much stuff that has become way too material and at this point I'm about to sell everything that I own.

AMT: That's Michael Bowden from Lenox Passage in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia launching an online project that takes de-cluttering about as far as it can go. He says he's selling everything he owns, the house, two cars, everything else, family photo albums, childhood memorabilia. The only things he's going to keep are the cat and a few sets of clothing. Michael Bowden says he's selling it all in an online auction to spread a message.

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VOICE: If I can make one person see that stuff is just that stuff and it's not going to make them happy and maybe it will bring about a change in their life, where they will look to seek their happy. Where they will look to help others, then this whole thing would have been worth it.

AMT: That is Michael Bowden talking to CBC's Maritime Noon. Although he's taking it a bit further than most, Michael Bowden is part of a larger trend of minimalist living, a reaction to conspicuous consumption. There is of course the Japanese de-cluttering guru, Marie Kondo, who preaches that you should only keep what sparks joy in you or Instagram feeds filled with white walled sparsely decorated homes or people who list every object they own, always aiming to go lower with the number of things they own. Living with less, maybe having a moment, it also has its critics who say it's become its own form of consumerism, available only to those who can afford it. Joining me to talk about all of this are Colin Wright, who's an author and a podcast host, who's been traveling the world and living out of a suitcase since giving away most of his things almost a decade ago. Colin Wright is currently visiting his hometown of Columbia, Missouri and that's where we've reached him. Cait Flanders is the author of "The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in A Store." And that title pretty well tells you what her recent project is. Cait Flanders joins us from Vancouver. And Kyle Chayka is a freelance journalist and author of the forthcoming book about minimalism called "The Longing for Less." Kyle Chayka is in Boston. Hello to you all. Hello.

CAIT FLANDERS: Hello. Thank you.

KYLE CHAYKA: Hey.

COLIN WRIGHT: Hey. Thanks For having us.

AMT: Colin Wright, let's start with you. What do you think of Michael Bowden's project of selling his house and almost everything in it?

CW: I think it sounds very interesting. I think it's wonderful that he's seeing it as a step towards something else, as opposed to an end unto itself. I think optimally that's what you have, is you're moving towards something you're not just running away from something.

AMT: Why did you give up all your stuff, Colin?

CW: In my case, I found that I was setting aside all of my supposed priorities. I was not prioritizing my actual priorities and I was living a life out in Los Angeles where I was trying to buy my way to happiness. I was trying to spend a bunch of money in order to fill certain voids that I felt when really what I was doing I was setting aside the change in lifestyle that probably could have gotten me there a whole lot faster. I'd always wanted to see the world and I was making way more money than I'd ever made in my entire life and yet I still had a blank passport. So getting rid of that stuff allowed me to just on a very practical level, free myself up so that I didn't have a bunch of stuff in storage, I didn't have a bunch of bills to pay, but it was also kind of a psychological milestone that allowed me to move on to that more mobile lifestyle and recalibrate toward trying to live for experiences more than for possessions.

AMT: What were you doing at the time?

CW: I was running a branding studio.

AMT: OK. Cait Flanders you began your project with a vow not to buy anything new for a year. Why did you also end up giving away a lot of the stuff you already owned?

CF: Throughout the year I think what I just really realized was that I had spent a lot of money on this person that I wanted to become. So I was always buying things for you know like kind of the smarter version of myself or the more interesting version of myself or just the more grown up or professional version of myself that I thought I should be or thought I wanted to be, but I never ended up using or reading or doing any of those things. And so throughout the year really just realized I had to let go of who I thought that person was supposed to be and just accept myself who I was.

AMT: So what do you have and what don't you have anymore, Cait?

CF: I mean like if you walked into my home it would still look probably like most people's homes in some sense, like I obviously have basic living room furniture and I have a desk that I work at. I guess I just don't really have anything extra, like actually a weird thing that someone came to my house and commented on is I don't have a toaster. I mean that's simply just because I don't eat bread really so I don't need a toaster.

AMT: Are there other things though that you said I'm just not going to have this anymore, like what's your shoe closet look like?

CF: I mean I have the probably four pairs of shoes that I wear all the time. So I have a pair of boots for kind of the winter, I have a pair of boots for hiking, sandals for the summer, one pair of heels that I wear to all weddings, so that's about it.

AMT: OK. Colin, has living with us made you happy.

CW: Absolutely. It's been parts of becoming happier, I would say. I don't think the process itself is inherently negative or positive, it's what you do with it and it's how you do it that's important. I absolutely think that it's totally possible to chuck all of your stuff and be totally unhappy. If you're getting rid of the wrong things, if you're not filling your life with the right things and those things don't necessarily have to be possessions.

AMT: Do you know how many objects you own?

CW: I actually stopped counting several years ago. I was trying to present it as kind of inspiration like hey you don't need so much stuff, you could probably do something similar. Some people took it as a challenge that you are more morally correct and more of a minimalist if you own fewer things and that's absolutely not the case. Everybody has different needs, different priorities, different stuff that will contribute to their happiness and amplify whatever they've got.

AMT: How low did you go though?

CW: Way back in the day I was down into the 50s, but I was also traveling full time. So everything that I own fit into my carry on bag.

AMT: So what do you have and not have now?

CW: I live a very varied lifestyle these days. So sometimes I'll have an apartment. At the moment I am on the verge of going on tour around North America in a 1985 Holiday Rambler Imperial RV. I own a few more things than typically I own because I'm able to flesh out the kitchen in the RV. I've got a mattress that goes in the RV, things like that.

AMT: Are you, did you play the guitar?

CW: I do. Yeah.

AMT: Do you lug your guitar around, what do you do?

CW: At the moment I do and it has been really wonderful for the past year or so having a consistent guitar, but in the past when I've been traveling, I've just bought a cheap guitar and then resold it or given it away.

AMT: So Cait, beyond having more space in your apartment, how has living with fewer things changed your life on a philosophical level?

CF: I think the most core level, what it really has taught me over the past four and a half years now, is just that wanting like wanting more, usually means that there's a lack or like a feeling of lack. Something I've learned personally is how to deal with those feelings as they come up. So if I feel like some part of myself or my life is lacking, then it's about looking at that, rather than just binge consuming on something that I think will make me feel better, but which has only ever provided a very temporary fix. So I found out my parents were getting divorced, my two dogs passed away nine days apart. I went through a pretty, just a sad breakup and in moments like that I always found that I was reaching towards something like it started with drinking when I was quite young. And so I quit drinking when I was 27. And so when I didn't have that to reach to anymore, I think spending sort of just became the next thing that I was doing. So when I couldn't do any of those things, I just had to start feeling the feelings.

AMT: That's interesting because we do have that phrase "retail therapy."

CF: It definitely exists. I also sometimes wonder like who came up with that, like I don't have the answer to that question yet.

AMT: Someone making an excuse, maybe. Kyle Chayka, I know you're there. I've been waiting, I want to bring you in as you listen to our other two guests. You have talked about the "arrogance" of the minimalist movement. Why do you use that word?

KC: I certainly think the philosophy of minimalism has a lot to recommend it, but I do think there's been this kind of lifestyle trend of minimalism, where people compete with the fewest objects or make these lifestyle blogs and kind of identities around being minimalist in a way that like projects it as a solution to everyone's problems. I think choosing what you want in your life and choosing what you want out of it is certainly a good thing, but especially in the kind of broader design trends of minimalism with furniture or the blank white walls that you see in every house lately, it's a way of almost purifying your surroundings and not letting anything else. You feel like you have this blank empty space where the only thing that exists is yourself and that to me, maybe that seems a little arrogant to me.

AMT: Well I want you to hear a clip. We asked one of our producers in Vancouver, Anne Penman, to visit a thrift store where she talked to a shopper about the trend of people choosing to live with less.

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VOICE: So I'm actually looking for a winter coat. Yeah, something like this. This one's $12.99, which is actually really cheap for Value Village. $39.99, I mean you know, I don't know how someone on social assistance would be able to afford that so, you know. I think there's a bit of a class element implied there, so people that often are decluttering I think are people that have an abundance. And so I think that really appeals to someone who is maybe middle class, upper middle class. I think a lot of people have found that more does not necessarily equal better or happier. I grew up very working class. So I'm used to shopping at thrift stores. I've shopped at stores pretty much my whole life. I am part of the generation that has a lot of student debt and is trying to survive in a city that is becoming increasingly unaffordable. So it is out of necessity still, but just in a little bit different way.

AMT: Kyle Chayka what class elements do you see in the trend of minimalism?

KC: I do see it as a middle and upper class thing and I think the design aesthetic is now connected with an idea of luxury, like the most luxurious products are the ones you only ever need to buy one of. And I think I've also found that it does take a certain amount of stability and money to be minimalist. Like Colin was talking about traveling, but even you know buying a new mattress requires an amount of money that not everyone has.

AMT: Colin is living with less something you can only afford to do because you used to have a very well paying job?

KC: Well, I don't have a very well paying job anymore. That said, I mean it's an excellent point and it is something that's a real issue. The preponderance of this Instagramlable minimalism, which in my mind is something very different from minimalism as a philosophy, instead of heuristics. That is something ideally that could apply to anybody because it's really just about reallocating resources, however many you happen to have toward things that serve you better and help you get to where you'd like to be. And so I've seen bloggers and spoken to people directly like Phnom Penh, Cambodia who have far less on average than the average middle class or upper economic class American, but the philosophy as a core, not the Instagramable version where it's all about buying the most expensive Scandinavian designed whatever, but the idea of spending your time and resources and energy on the appropriate things, rather than just spending them. That is something that I think translates really well. That said, I do think that still in this space, a whole lot of the most visible people talking about it in particular, are people of that class.

AMT: Cait Flanders do you see an elitist attitude in minimalism?

CF: Oh my gosh. I mean I've just been nodding along. I think it's really important that we're acknowledging it. That's something that I don't think everyone in this space is willing to do. The problem with things like Instagram are that the way it's being sold is truly just another form of consumerism. That's something I've been really conscious of this whole time to like not share pictures of my home because I don't want anyone to think that they need to aspire to what I have. Like that just doesn't feel good in any way whatsoever to me. Another problem in this space is sort of when there is advice kind of thrown around like oh if you can repurchase something for less than $20 or $30 then go ahead and declutter it. And I'm like well that's not an option for everybody.

AMT: And I'm really struck by you know if you look at, if you look at pictures of anyone fleeing a desperate situation or conflict zone, they're carrying whatever they can. And I remember Joe Schlesinger actually, CBC's legendary foreign correspondent, once saying he used to look at these people and think you know they got stuff, like why. And then he realized it's all they have. And if they don't take it, they have nothing. That's where some of the class differences come into it.

CF: It is, one of the things I want to add to it though is that in anything we're doing in life, we can't speak to everybody. You know I think the reason we're seeing this as a trend is because it has been a problem for a lot of people, at least like in western society that for years that you know it started in the 80s when really like things like credit cards and consumerism became so popular that now you know decades later we're realizing oh it's actually caused a lot of problems to live this way.

AMT: And then the mass production of goods, right?

CF: Yes.

AMT: I mean there's just more stuff available to us at prices that many people can afford.

CF: Absolutely.

AMT: I have another perspective I want you all to hear. Jennifer McCartney is the author of "The Joy of Leaving Your Stuff All Over The Place: The Art of Being Messy. Although I'm saying stuff, she uses another S word, instead of stuff. We got her to take us on a tour of her 700 square foot Brooklyn apartment and as you might guess, it is not pristine. She says it helps make her more creative though.

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VOICE: So when you walk in, the first thing you'll notice is our bookshelves. My husband and I are both readers and writers. So as you can imagine, between the two of us, we've got a lifetime of books on display here. If you've read Marie Kondo and her book, "The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up," you'll know that books are clutter and you should get rid of them. Obviously, I don't subscribe to that theory. I don't think most sane people would and so next we'll go into the kitchen. We've got loads of fridge magnets obviously. Here's one from the Calgary Stampede. That's just a picture of some donuts. And there's one from the Cheers bar in Boston. Down the hall you'll find our knickknack cabinet, which I think is essential for any cluttered apartment. So here's a tongue in cheek crossed stitch my mom did that says, plan ahead and the letter D is all squished. Here's an old tiny candleholder we got in Iceland and a kind of a beat up plastic radio that used to be in the bathroom at my parents place. Now into the bedroom, you'll find an unmade bed, which I think is the reality for most people. Does anyone actually make their beds in the morning? Clothing on the floor of course. My bedside table stacked with books, hand cream and empty water glass. Some dust bunnies I'm noticing, probably cat hair actually. So I mean one of the fun things about visiting someone's home is looking at their stuff and figuring out what kind of person they are. I mean I get anxious when I visit someone's place and it's just completely devoid of things right. Like where do they put all their stuff, what are they hiding? Like I guess if your home is minimalist, people really have to look into your medicine cabinet for more info.

AMT: So there you go. Okay full disclosure, I'm one of those people who makes the bed in the morning. But Colin, would you judge Jennifer McCartney for her messy apartment and for having so much stuff?

CW: No. I mean if anything, positively. I would argue from the way that she talks about it that is something that makes her very happy and minimalism to me is not about owning as few things as possible, it's owning exactly the right things and no more than that. So what I usually tell people, if you are more passionate about unicorns statuettes than anything else on the planet, then you should absolutely have a really killer collection of unicorn statuettes. Like the idea here is not to completely rid your life of stuff, it's to make sure that the stuff that you bring into your life is amplifying the good things in your life.

AMT: She talks about some of the stuff from her childhood that she keeps around. Have you given away all those things?

CW: I've not given away all of them. When I was going through and getting rid of some of those things, some things that I had just been holding onto forever that were essentially just dead weight for me. They were not things that I revisited. They were things I felt compelled to keep because I felt like society was telling me I was supposed to keep these things. Some of them I photographed and then got rid of. Some I gave away to my parents and then a few things I gave away to other people who don't know me.

AMT: So, no teddy bears?

CW: No teddy bears. No. And in some cases too, the physical objects that we hold onto that do connect us to some type of meaning, we can extract that meaning in some way. Recognize that it's in our brains, it's not in the object. And then hand that object off to someone else who might actually get use out of it and maybe build their own memories around it. So you can increase the amount of value that's in the world by being more intentional with this stuff.

AMT: Kyle what would you say to someone who feels guilty about having too much clutter in their lives? What would you say to make them feel better?

KC: I'd probably say there are things they could feel guilty about. I was just thinking about you know the idea that by getting rid of your photographs or teddy bear or something, you're getting rid of material things. Like if you digitize all your photos, you're actually taking up space on a server farm that's like spreading over miles of desert and polluting the environment. There are consequences to throwing out things, just as there are consequences to keeping them. So I think like the idea of clutter to me is not really the issue. It is more of this like wider awareness of how we live now and the desire as the society inculcates in us that you should have the house, you should have the car, you should have more stuff and like interrogating those a little more.

AMT: And you should document your life.

KC: Without giving you anxiety over having less stuff.

AMT: Yeah I know it's interesting because you're pointing out that we're all sort of documenting our lives in a new way too. We think we have to hang on to things in some way or another.

KC: Yeah the internet has created a whole new class of objects, which is just like an excess of digital material. Like I've been on Twitter for eight years or whatever and I have thousands of tweets that represents a lot of like wasted time and energy, probably. I think I feel worse about digital clutter than I feel about the stuff in my house.

AMT: I think a couple of hundred years from now someone's going to have a heyday with all the stuff that they're going to find encrypted that we have all left behind.

KC: If it survives that long.

AMT: Colin what, what one thing did you have the hardest time giving away?

CF: Oh gosh. Honestly I don't think it was even a physical thing. It took me a while. Probably the most difficult thing to get rid of though was the perception that I had of myself as weird as that sounds. This idea that I was represented accurately by the stuff that I had in my life and that I was defined in part by the role that I played in kind of that value creation cycle. The idea that by generating revenue and buying specific things I was defining my life and showing the world who I was. So that's something that I think for a lot of us is a little bit difficult to change over, even if you might have all the reasons in the world to do so, not necessarily just you know to define yourself as a minimalist. I think a lot of the people who are in my mind living as minimalists, do not go around and tell everyone all the time, hey I'm a minimalist. Look here's the minimalist things that I do. But being able to redefine yourself in terms of the stuff that you're actually freeing up all of that time and energy and resources in order to do.

AMT: Well that raises another question Colin. As you did this, did you have, maybe not friends in the sense that your friends might understand what you're up to, but acquaintances who would judge you for what you had or did not have as you started to cull.

CW: Yeah. And actually it wasn't an overt, hey you don't own the right things anymore, but there was a great deal of judgment and even a kind of soft cutting of ties with certain people with whom my relationship with them was predicated entirely on like a business relationship. And so the fact that I was no longer aspiring to the same goals that they were and no longer orienting my life around earning money as the only metric of success, that was something that led to some difficulties initially. It was not something that a lot of people who were in my life up to that point could understand.

AMT: Interesting. Cait, what about you? Did you have one thing that you had the hardest time giving away and how did people react to you?

CF: I had to let go of the value I had placed on the object when I had first purchased it. I think that that's something we do when we're buying for the wrong reason. And those were the toughest things to get rid of because I didn't see it at first.

AMT: Kyle, despite your concerns about minimalism, how do you live?

KC: I live pretty simply, I would say. I live in Brooklyn and I don't have a big apartment because I'm not wealthy. So I don't actually own that much stuff. I do collect art, which definitely brings me a lot of joy and means my walls aren't quite so blank. But I guess I've just been thinking about what social pressures exist that are making us think and live in this different way. And you know gentrification and expensive cities means we live in smaller spaces. More precarious careers and jobs means we can't identify with what we do for work as much anymore. You know minimalism is maybe one solution of a different way to think about yourself, but maybe instead, we should have more sustainable social structures.

AMT: Well that's another whole conversation. So I'll leave it there and maybe we'll pick up on that later. Thank you for making us think, all of you.

CF: Thank you so much for having us.

KC: Thanks for having us.

CW: Yeah thanks for having us.

AMT: Colin Wright, author and podcast host, who gave away most of his things in 2009. He's in Columbia, Missouri. Kate Flanders author of "The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping Gave Away My Belongings and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in A Store." She was in Vancouver and Kyle Chayka is a freelance journalist. His forthcoming book is called, "The Longing For Less. He was in Boston. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. That’s our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Actor Eric McCormack of Will & Grace fame joins Tom to talk about his new sci-fi series, Travellers. Finally, after our discussion of minimalism, we will leave you with some minimalist music. Yes that’s what you’re hearing behind me. It is from the late Canadian composter Ann Southam who penned minimalist music throughout the 20^th century. What we’re hearing is “Glass House No. 5,” arranged for two marimbas by the Toronto percussion group, Cactus Duo. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Music: “Glass Houses No. 5” compsed by Ann Southam]

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CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Dec. 11, 2018 episode transcript

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