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The Current Transcript for January 10, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Police are saying use of the Taser in this incident it was justified. The investigation is continuing. We're told however there are no serviellance feed in this area for police to follow up on.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It was a story of one man's death. Back in October of 2007. Robert Dzieknaski agitated, destructive even after being stuck for hours at Vancouver airport, died after being tasered. Eventually we would find out that there was video of his interaction with four Mounties, and when it went public there was outrage across the country. You might remember that. There was an inquiry, perjury trials and the media public and institutional judgment of the police was unforgiving. All these years later a long-time CBC journalist Kurt Petrovich has followed up on what happened to those officers long after we all moved on. He joins me in an hour. Also today Canada was a nation at war in the 1940s won its first food guide came out.

SOUNDCLIP

Milk, at least one pint each day, and some cheese when available. Meat. One serving a day of meat or fish. And remember never once a week.

AMT: And for years it was old fashioned and even inappropriate, stigmatizing women and immigrants and succumbing to industry pressures. With a brand new food guide about to be released, we're looking at the messy history and uncomfortable conflicts of nutrition science. That's in half an hour. But first:.

SOUNDCLIP

Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall.

AMT: With US President Donald Trump scheduled for a visit at the U.S. Mexico border, we're calling ahead to talk to Americans living along that border. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Trump's border wall will cut through National Butterfly Center, devastating wildlife, says director

Guests: John Ladd, Terry Garrett, Marianna Wright

SOUNDCLIP

Some have suggested a barrier is immoral. Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don't build walls because they hate the people on the outside but because they love the people on the inside.

AMT: President Donald Trump is expected to visit the U.S. Mexican border town of McAllen, Texas today. The visit comes on what is the 26th day of a partial government shutdown caused by an impasse over funding for a border war. Congressional Democrats have vowed not to fund President Trump's long promised big beautiful wall, as he calls it. So the president's looking for a way to fund the war without Congress. One way to do that would be by declaring a state of emergency. Today we're speaking with people who live along that border about the challenges that come with that. And I'm joined first by John Ladd. He is a fourth generation rancher who raises cattle near Bisbee, Arizona. And that's where we've reached him, hello.

JOHN LADD: Hi how are you?

AMT: Well I'm just fine thanks. Can you describe your property to me? Where are you?

JOHN LADD: Well our south fence is the Mexican border. We are South of Bisbee and west of a border town called Naco. There is Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora. We go ten and a half miles along the border in [unintelligible] County.

AMT: And so your property is the border. What is there where the two countries meet?

JOHN LADD: Well since 2006 I've had some kind of steel fence. Right now I have about two and a half miles of 18 foot balloted fence. I have about two and a half miles of a tin foot mesh fence and four miles of a 13 foot mesh fence, steel.

AMT: And who put that up?

JOHN LADD: Homeland security.

AMT: And do they patrol it?

JOHN LADD: No. That that's the problem. We have a border patrol station, probably 300 agents at it. In 10 and a half miles of our ranch, we have about two agents patrolling at the line. That's a problem.

AMT: How often do you see people coming across Mr. Ladd?

JOHN LADD: Every day.

AMT: Every day?

JOHN LADD: Border patrols have got a half a million people out of our ranch in 30 years.

AMT: How do they get across? Do they climb it? What do they do?

JOHN LADD: Yes yes. They climb it. In the past we've had them cut it, when they drive driven full sized pickups, full of marijuana through ropes, ladders. Some of them climb up with their feet. It is a good tool if Border Patrol will patrol it. And down here, they all want to be on the border. They'll put two or three guys up there but they really don't want to be on the border and the stations are different. You know you can lump border patrol into one category. But border patrol haven't done a very good job, part of it is their problem and part of it is our congress’s problem, part of it is the way our immigration laws are.

AMT: So who is coming across? You see them? Who are they? What do they look like?

JOHN LADD: Well in the past, 30 years ago we had family units and most of them were from Mexico. Then for the last four years most have been Guatemalans. And predominately they're young men in full camouflage. They have a cellphone phone, crawl, sneak, however they want to do it. They are in smaller groups, they're one, two or three in a group.

AMT: They are wearing camouflage and crawling, what's up?

JOHN LADD: Well the camouflages is to defeat- Our ranch has four permanent cameras, two portable cameras, a radar unit. The camouflage defeats the cameras and crawling defeats the radar.

AMT: And do you feel at risk? Do you talk to them? What happens?

JOHN LADD: Well the cartel takeover of the human trade about seven years ago, and since then I don't to anybody. I ended up talking to a guy Tuesday morning, [unintelligible], by the house, an illegal. But I don't interact with them.

AMT: Do you feel threatened?

JOHN LADD: Oh. I suppose you could say that but you just pay attention to what you're doing. We don't have a chance to take a break. You got to be aware of what's going on all around you. You look everything up, you get lights on all the time at night. There are dogs, there are security systems. Now you know we're not afraid but we're used to it I guess. But I don't think anybody else would want to put up with it.

AMT: So you have a barrier now. What do you want from Mr. Trump?

JOHN LADD: I support whatever he wants. He's been the best president we've had, trying to fix the illegal immigration problem. I think some of the wall is maybe a little overemphasized. You know I've been involved in this for 25 years probably. We could build a wall wherever we want. But it's going to be expensive and I don'[t think that we need to build the wall the whole southern border. But the bottom line for all the work is you have to give Border Patrol to be there to patrol it and we have to change some of the laws, you know, political asylum. And then you know the bottom line is America has got to get over their humanity about these poor people coming here, because they're coming here as criminals. The majority of what we see are criminals with criminal regular and it's drugs and human trafficking, coming here to become Americans.

AMT: John Ladd it's important to hear your perspective. Thank you for talking with me today.

JOHN LADD: Well thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

AMT: That's John Ladd fourth generation rancher. We reached him near Bisbee, Arizona. His property goes straight to the border. My next guest will be on his way to McAllen to take in the visit of the U.S. president but he has a record of working to stop walls from going up along the border. Terry Garrett it is a professor of public affairs and security studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas which is also a border town. And Terry Garrett joins us from Laguna Vista, Texas. Hello.

TERRY GARRETT: Hello. Good morning.

AMT: What do you think of what John Ladd was just saying?

TERRY GARRETT: Well he's got his perspective. I can say my officers literally, my university office is a five minute walk from Matamoros, Mexico. And it's a more urbanized area than where he's from. And we have of course a fence in Brownsville, Texas, as well as a high volume Border Patrol everywhere. I mean they park their vehicles on our campus and everything. So were pretty well patrolled over there where we are as opposed to what Mr. Ladd was saying.

AMT: What do most people in Brownsville think about what the president wants to do with a wall right across that border?

TERRY GARRETT: Well generally the people in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, first of all you have to understand that we consider it to be one area, one community. So Matamoros is literally just a couple of minutes walk across the Gateway International Bridge or any of the international bridges. There are three in Brownsville. People come back and forth every day. It's like a one month continuous community. So the two cities also have and event every February called Charro Days where they celebrate their heritage. They literally they open up the border and have a parade from Brownsville into Matamoros. So this idea that the fence, or the wall, however you want to term it, put forward it looks to most people out here to be more disruptive of community life and conformity between the two communities.

AMT: Now we heard from Mr. Ladd Homeland Security has actually put up a wall where are his property and where it meets the Mexican border. Are there are there people that you're working with who are expecting that to go on their land near where you are?

TERRY GARRETT: Yes actually I think your next speaker, Ms. Wright, will have The national Butterfly Center which he manages will have the war being put in that, which is private property, will be put on her property through a secure fence act of 2006. I mean this as justification, as well as Bensten State park in McAllen. Basically what you're going to have [unintelligible] county which is the next county over from Brownsville is the entire county border, effectively walled off, with the exception of about a three mile stretch of the St. Anna Wildlife Refuge. So we're looking at like over 50 miles worth of a mostly concrete wall built in [unintelligible] County. There are other sections supposedly going up around El Paso which is much farther west of us.

AMT: Are there legal fights under way over that?

TERRY GARRETT: Well there are legal fights. In fact one of the reasons why I was advised of the United States Senate, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in April 2017 was the talk about eminent domain case. There are about 300, there were 320 case out of 400 possible in the first building of the wall from 2007 to 2009. And out of those 320 there are about approximately 70 or so cases still pending.

AMT: I'll just clarify. Eminent domain essentially expropriation.

TERRY GARRETT: Yes expropriation by the federal government in this case the department homeland security section of individuals private property and build a fence through it, whether the person wants it or not. But under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they're entitled to do process it. So what happens is they give the eminent domain claim. Push forward a build a fence and then a person, if they have a problem, retroactively you can sue the federal government. About 80 percent as evidenced by the last go round of the fence billing wind up suing the federal government.

AMT: So Mr. Garrett the President calls undocumented immigration a humanitarian crisis. Is that what you see?

TERRY GARRETT: Well this crisis is actually artificially generated. I mean the people that are coming from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras affectively, mostly nowadays, within the last four years or so, are coming in family units of some sort: a parent and child... They're seeking asylum. So what's happening is these family units come to the border and they're referred to as the curbing and it's somehow sinister. But i n fact they get together in groups in order to ensure their own safety. So that's why you see groups of several hundred, a few thousand working together, trying to get across the border to the United States from Central America through Mexico.

AMT: Well I will leave it there and speak to my next guest a little more about that border and what she's expecting. Terry Garrett thank you.

TERRY GARRETT: You bet, thank you.

AMT: Terry Garrett Professor of Public Affairs and Security Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas and he's nearby in Laguna Vista, Texas. So west of McAllen Texas is Mission, home to the National Butterfly Center that he was just talking about. The sprawling wildlife reserve in botanical garden lies in the path of the proposed border wall. Marianna Wright is the executive director of the National Butterfly Center. She's in Mission, Texas. Hi.

MARIANNA WRIGHT: Good morning.

AMT: So what's at stake of the border while is built where your national borders butterfly center is?

MARIANNA WRIGHT: Well I first need to inform everyone this is not a proposed wall. The wall that is going to be built next month, through the national butterfly center, was funded in the 2018 omnibus appropriations act. This is not an "if". This is a done deal. They have already serving in our land. The government has done the appraisal and we are informed by the Office of Border Law from all management that the bulldozers will arrive at the end of February, or maybe the 1st of March.

AMT: And it's going to go right through your center?

MARIANNA WRIGHT: It is going to bisect our property as well as every other piece of land that lays on the Rio Grande River.

AMT: So tell me a little bit about your center. First of all, you are you've got a lot of species there.

MARIANNA WRIGHT: Yes we are in one hundred acre native land botanical garden that is planted and host Nektar species to support butterflies. And we are in the Lower Rio Grande Valley because this area has the greatest volume and variety of species in all of North America.

AMT: And the wall, is it is going to be right on the border? Is there a bit of a no man's land there? Where is your land and the land of your center in relation to that?

MARIANNA WRIGHT: The wall will be built in some places more than two miles inland from the actual border, which is the Rio Grande River. On our property, the wall will be built 1.2 miles inland leaving 70 percent of our property in this no man's land.

AMT: So how do you get in there? Or do you get in there?

MARIANNA WRIGHT: The Brilliant plan by the Department of Homeland Security, and this is already in place where there is wall in South Texas, is we hit a gate. And we get to give every visitor and member the gate code to pass through the border wall to the river back and forth as they see fit.

AMT: How would that change the landscape and the ecology of that region. Well first of all there are going to be bulldozing.

MARIANNA WRIGHT: If they get all 33 miles which were funded, about 6000 acres are the remnant of native habitat, habitat that supports all life here, not just the things that can fly over a wall like many birds and butterfly species, but not all of them, but all terrestrial life. We are home to four of North America's wild cat species including in the Ocelot which is an endangered species. Only about 70 of them are alive in the United States. We are also home to threatened and protected species like the Texas Lizard, the Texas Tortoise, the Texas Indigo Snake. And once this wall which will be 18 feet of vertical concrete slab, with 18 feet of steel bollards on top. Once this 36 foot tall wall is in place, all terrestrial life on the other side of the wall will drown in the event of a flood. And we're not a valley. We are a river delta. So flooding occurrences are fairly common.

AMT: Donald Trump says this has to be done because there's a crisis. What he think of that?

MARIANNA WRIGHT: Well I live and work on the river every day. We receive over 6000 schoolchildren a year. Those are unaccompanied minors whose parents signed permission slips for them to go with their teachers to frolic in the wilderness, on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Every year we do a sleepover under the stories with Girl Scouts on the banks of the Rio Grande River. We don't see any danger or any crisis at all.

AMT: Marianna Wright we have to leave it there. Thank you for speaking with me today.

MARIANNA WRIGHT: Thank you.

AMT: Marianna Wright, executive director of the National blotter fly Center she is in Mission, Texas. There you go different perspectives on what is along that border. Let us know what you think as you listen to our three guests. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook, go to our web sites cbc.ca/thecurrent. Interesting to hear what those who are along that border have to say depending on what they see. Stay with us. The CBC News is next. And then there's the Canada Food Guide on way and the usual food fight has ensued. We'll catch up on the controversy in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Should the advice in the Canadian Food Guide be taken with a pinch of salt?

Guests: Jessica Linzey, Ian Mosby, Julia Belluz

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

[Music:Theme]

AMT: Still to come. It has been more than a decade since the Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died at Vancouver's airport after police used a Taser to try to subdue him. And the video that use of the Taser that became so public might lead you to think we know everything about what happened that day. But veteran CBC journalist, Curt Petrovich, says there's much more to the story. He'll join me to explain in half an hour. But first the many lives touched by one bullet.

AMT: If you are like most people in this country, when it comes to gun violence, you watch what's going on south of the border with horror. Maybe you feel lucky to live in a country where you believe you'll never be touched by it. But the latest statistics tell us that gun violence is on the rise in Canada. 2017 was a record year for violent crimes involving a firearm, 7700 of them. The increase has been driven in large part by gun activity in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto which closed out in 2018 with the grimmest numbers Toronto has seen in decades more than 400 shootings. Next week on The Current we're bringing you stories about how a single bullet can affect people in surprising and devastating ways.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My family got affected by it and for me it was just like every time I hear a door knock, right away I'm thinking that it's going to happen again. So for months and even a walk in the street, I walk with fear.

VOICE 2: So my battle began after he was convicted and he got life. Even though he was convicted, he wouldn't say it but he caused her death. He fought me and fought me and fought me for seven years.

VOICE 3: I'll probably never have another one like it, I hope. I really hope, involving a retired RCMP member. I think about it? Yes I think about it.

VOICE 4: It's stuck in my forehead. Another [unintelligible] I guess. It's amazing that that happened. Like I should be dead, I'm thinking, you know what? God spared me for those that are still suffering.

VOICE 5: Honestly, I didn't know what a police headquarters was, when they took me down there.

AMT: Those are just some of the voices you will hear in our series One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country. One Bullet, One Person at a Time. The Current's Jessica Linzey is the co-producer of that series Hi Jessica.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you mean when we're talking about the impact of a single bullet?

JESSICA LINZEY: So that single bullet it doesn't just affect the victim. It touches families, friends, police, surgeons, witnesses, anyone who's been in a court room involving a firearm related case. More people than you think are affected by what maybe we see as simply cold statistics.

AMT: Tell us about some of what we'll be hearing next week.

JESSICA LINZEY: Well we've been looking into a variety of shootings across the country. One of which is an unsolved murder and trial from 18 years ago. So we want to understand how that single act still reverberates all these years later with family and friends, knowing that a killer has never been brought to justice and may never be.

AMT: This is the Justin Sheppard case you're talking about.

JESSICA LINZEY: It is.

AMT: The brother of a celebrated Canadian basketball star. He was playing NBA at the time.

JESSICA LINZEY: That's right. And through our investigation we learned that it's likely there are three people who know exactly what happened that night but they've never spoken. And as you can imagine it's been a festering wound for the people who knew and loved the victim.

AMT: Jessica, we're also going to hear from people we might not always think of when we consider gun violence and its impact.

JESSICA LINZEY: Yeah that's right. You'll be speaking with two people we rarely get access to: Jurors, both of whom were foreman in murder trials involving firearms. And we'll be getting a unique perspective from a couple of trauma surgeons. Interestingly they've both been on hand to treat victims of mass shootings here in Canada, but it's the day the day shootings that wears on them and concerns them when it comes to how much attention they're paying to rising rates of gun violence.

AMT: And domestic violence often turns deadly. I know you're looking at a case at BC.

JESSICA LINZEY: Yes this one is about a former RCMP officer who shot and killed his common law partner. So we are looking, not only at the emotional and psychological impact that that homicide had on family and friends, but also on a lawyer who represented the killer in court. And of course because of the law enforcement connection it inevitably had a lasting impact on the officers who worked that case as well.

AMT: I know that the most likely way that a Canadian dies by firearm is actually by suicide.

JESSICA LINZEY: It is that's right. So we have a story about a prominent Canadian whose name many people will recognize for a very public accident he suffered a number of years ago. But most people won't know is about his later suicide attempt and how miraculously - and I do mean miraculously - he survived. That single bullet is still lodged in his head. And as you might imagine it's changed his life and the life of his family dramatically.

AMT: Are you going to tell me who it is?

JESSICA LINZEY: No. You're going to have to tune in next week.

AMT: I can't look at the notes ahead of time? Nothing. Okay. Well we'll leave it there. It sounds fascinating Jessica.

JESSICA LINZEY: Well before you let me go Anna Maria we also want to hear from our listeners on this. So we are asking people to send us their stories about how they've been affected by gun violence. So what questions do they have as a result. And who would they most want answers from, and we'll collect other stories of the week and try to get those questions answered.

AMT: I've some contact information. I'll give it in a minute. Jessica thank you.

JESSICA LINZEY: You're welcome Anna Maria.

AMT: The Current's Jessica Lindsey, a coproducer for our upcoming series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country. One Bullet, One Person at a Time. That starts Monday and as Jessica said we want to hear your stories too. If your life has been touched by gun violence we want to hear from you what are the questions you want answered and by whom. E-mail us from our Web sitecbc.ca/thecurrent. You can also go to our Facebook page or you can tweet us QtheCurrentCBC.

[Music]

AMT: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This is Rose D. Jones, who is not all she seems to be. Home supplies, as usual, are low and she's doing her food buying for the week. And this is where we find our first clues to the real Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones is emotional about food.

AMT: The emotional Mrs. Jones. That's how we are introduced to the fictitious character in the education film, A Mystery in the Kitchen. The film was produced by what was then known as Canada's Department of National Health and Welfare and Nutrition Division. And Mrs. Jones is portrayed as a bumbling woman who hasn't the faintest idea of how to keep her pantry full and her family healthy, because she's just too emotional about food.

SOUNDCLIP

Cabbages reminded her of poverty. Beans, definitely lower class. Oat meal, too common. Liver was too limp. You'll have real issues in an emotional buyer. And the results?

AMT: The results; Mr. Jones has scurvy, daughter Marilyn is anemic and son Walt world has rickets. The final case against Mrs. Jones's neglect of her family happens in the evening.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Dinner time. You will no longer have cause to be misled by the smiling composure of this woman. Canada's food rules? Heh, ignore them. Enjoy the worst of bad health. [Unintelligible] a crime in your kitchen, too.

AMT: Okay well a crime most foul indeed. You might be forgiven for wondering which crime that would be. In 1958, that film was made and it may have been satirical, but it was meant to educate women on providing nutritious meals for their families. And yes you heard correctly, it was meant to educate the women. All these years later, Canada is still in the business of helping its citizens choose what to eat. Health Canada is getting ready to publish a new edition of the Canada Food Guide. The guide is in its 77 year now. It was last updated in 2007 and the latest revisions are already causing a stir. Ian Mosby is a food historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Arrell food Institute at the University of Guelph. We've reached him in Toronto today. Hello.

IAN MOSBY: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What are you thinking as you listen to those clips of Mrs. Jones?

IAN MOSBY: Well that's one of my favorite educational films, and I say that in scare quotes.

AMT: [Unintelligible] Word scare but keep going.

IAN MOSBY: But for a long time that was the message of Canada's Food guidance. This is a problem of uneducated mothers who don't really understand how to properly feed their family.

AMT: Canada was at war when the first food guide was developed in 1942. What was in it?

IAN MOSBY: Yes so it was a set of six food groups: milk, bread, vegetables, fruit meat, and eggs. And really this was a food guide that was designed at the time to deal with Canada's wartime crisis. And there was a perception at the time that upwards of 60 percent of Canadians were malnourished. There's figures in 1942 that were released that 43 percent of Canada's first 50,000 army volunteers were rejected for medical reasons. And so now nutrition was seen as one of the leading causes of that problem. And so the food guide was sort of an official government response to what was perceived as a wartime emergency.

AMT: And the name changed from Canada Food Rules to Canada Food Guide. In what way is that significant?

IAN MOSBY: Well I think it's significant because the food rules were this idea that this is how you you need to eat and to feed your family, not just to be healthy but also to be Canadian. There is there's a very specific sort of cultural bias that was embedded in the food rules from early on. Whether it was specific recommendations to eat one potato a day, one tomato, half a pint of milk, four to six slices of bread. There is a lot of Canadians who simply did not apply to it all. And so that sort of hectoring message of mystery in the kitchen really was embedded in the food, food rules and later in the food guide itself.

AMT: So there was a cultural bias. There was clearly there's sexism that we heard in some of that as well, huh?

IAN MOSBY: Most definitely you know and from you know from the 1940s that the federal government's message really was that you know malnutrition in Canada was the problem of women, or uneducated women in particular. And so the food guide and the food brought before them were really directed specifically at women. And it was this idea that women were responsible for their family's health and well-being and responsible to become good cooks.

AMT: What changes have we seen in the food guide through the years then?

AMT: Well one of the things that I found surprising when I first started looking at this was for the first few decades how little changed. Canada's official Food Rules from 1940 to looked a lot like Canada's Food Guide from 1961. There were some cosmetic changes and the number of rules went down from 6 to by. But really the biggest change I think came in 1982 when the Food Guide went from being what might be seen as sort of a diet of protective- 'eat foods first because they're healthy' to a total diet model which is this idea that 'you should be eating this number of servings of every one of the sections of food rules per day'. And that was when the Food Rules out really problematic I think.

AMT: Problematic because?

IAN MOSBY: Well, Problematic because it became very difficult to follow. It's one thing to be told to eat a variety of foods, eat a few servings of each of these different food groups. It's another thing to be told you need to eat exactly this many servings of bread per day, especially when a lot of people would be hard pressed to tell you what exactly a serving of meat or a serving of vegetables was. And so the guide went from being the original model of Canada's Special Food Rules which is a few specific piece of advice, 'eat a variety of foods', to Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating in 1982, which really became sort of an impenetrable document.

AMT: What role has the food industry played historically in developing that guide?

IAN MOSBY: Yes. You know when I started doing research I expected the food industry played a big role in the original Food Rules. But in fact that wasn't the case. It was a document developed by scientists on the best research they had on public health. It had a lot of problems, but it was only later that the food industry really started to play a role. Because it became clear that as our knowledge about nutrition and the scientific consensus about nutrition changed, it became very difficult to alter the food rules, particularly to tell people to eat less of anything. You know once something was in the food guide it became really difficult to take it out. And I think you know the 1992 version was probably the most problematic because it was a guide that if you actually followed it you would be eating far more calories than you needed, a whole bunch of different foods that you didn't need to eat. And I think this reflected at the time the fact that there are so many different lobbies were pushing this message of 'Eat More' which you know in 1942 made sense because this was a war and they wanted people to be strong and healthy. But by 1992 or by 2019 that message of 'Eat More' became hugely problematic.

AMT: What changes are you hoping to see in this new food guide?

IAN MOSBY: Well I hope to see it move away from this total diet model, move away from that that's sort of confusing message about servings. I had my students a few years back - as an assignment - try to actually follow the rules and come back and give presentations on the food guide and give presentations on it. And they had a really hard time reordering their diets according to this guide. And so I would like to see a food guide that has a much simpler message but is also a message that remove some of the historical baggage from the old guide particularly the cultural assumptions that come along for instance with having a dairy group, when there is lots of comedians who don't consume dairy for a whole range of reasons, including people who are actually can't or are intolerant to dairy. And so having seen the draft of the new food guide it looks like it is moving in the right direction okay.

AMT: Ian Mosby thanks for your perspective on this.

IAN MOSBY: Thanks so much.

AMT: Ian Mosby is a food historian. He's a postdoctoral fellow at the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph and he joined us from Toronto. Well as you heard the history the Food Guide has been long and often controversial. Players in the food industry have tried to get their piece of the pie when it comes to influencing what Canadians eat. The same is also true for our nutrition advice generally. Over the years fat and sugar have fallen in and out of favor. Julia Belluz is a senior health correspondent for Vox and she has covered what she's called the messy science of nutrition. She joins us from Washington D.C. Hi.

JULIA BELLUZ: Hi good morning.

AMT: Why is nutrition science so messy?

JULIA BELLUZ: Well I think there is a couple reasons. So one is dead. It's just incredibly difficult. Taper research to do to come to the kind of definitive conclusions that people may want to know about the foods that they eat. So in health research what are the types of evidence they can give us conclusive statements - it's called the randomized controlled trial and basically you randomized people to one type of eating or another or a medicine or not. And then the only difference between the two groups is that intervention. And you can say definitively that it was the medicine or the food that caused a certain health outcome. But in nutrition research that's basically impossible to do. You can't people to eat a certain way for decades and follow them up and end me and make sure that they're adhering to a certain died it's just very difficult. And then on top of that we've had this incredible level of meddling by the food industry.

AMT: How so? How has that industry, the food industry, played a role in nutrition science?

JULIA BELLUZ: By the food industry I mean everybody from Coca-Cola to MArs is to Blueberry, to Macadamia nut councils. I guess starting in the early 20th century they started to support research in universities. And really it was all about how to grow crops more effectively and agricultural research. And eventually with the rise in the processed food industry, companies started hiring scientists and funding research and universities to develop new products or understand their products a little bit better. But ultimately the goal was always to cell phone. So at Vox to me we took a look at 100 studies that were funded by the chocolate maker Mars to see whether the conclusions that they were coming to were positive about chocolate in cocoa. And they were overwhelmingly favorable to cocoa and chocolate. And the message that they were helping to promote was this idea that we're all now familiar with cocoa and especially dark chocolate are health food. And so there are many many examples like that of the food industry funding research that eventually trickles down into the public things to the media who have to come with these studies and shapes how we think about food.

AMT: One famous example of influence is around sugar. I'm going to play a clip from the author Gary Taubes who spoke to us about his book The Case Against Sugar. He talked about how the sugar industry used researchers to try to influence the debate around sugar in the 1960s and 1970s.

SOUNDCLIP

Few very influential nutritionist started arguing that sugar was the most likely cause of heart disease and diabetes. And the sugar industry simply paid the equally influential nutritionist to believe that fat was the cause, to write papers arguing that fat was the cause. And so, in 1976-77 when the food and drug administration had to make a decision about whether sugar was generally recognized as safe, they had these documents that had been prepared and led by the very famous Harvard nutritionist that the sugar industry had paid for saying it's not sugar. It's fat. So what I was saying the reason I say nutritional is to blame is because they gave the sugar industry the arguments they needed to defend themselves.

AMT: Julia Belluz how has sugar become such a controversial subject in nutrition science?

JULIA BELLUZ: Well I think what Taubes is getting there is this long history of influence by again by the industry in this in this science. And it's incredibly difficult to look at this and say to come to, depending on what care you're in. There's a low carb camp.There's a camp that thinks that it is the calories that matter and not really the macro nutrients and that we should instead focus so much on the macro nutrients. And you can look at the research and kind of come to whatever conclusion you want to come to because there is so much of this kind of perversion basically in the research base by the food industry.

AMT: I have another clip that I want you to hear. We reached out to a professor in his field about the role of industry in nutrition science. Mary L'Abbé is professor in the Department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto. This is what she says.

SOUNDCLIP

The whole issue is industry funding. I think the biggest issue now is much much more transparency. People can still criticize but the journals research boards are beubg much much more stringent at scientists, that when material and research researchers published said it's clear who funded the research. And people can make their own judgments afterwards if the funding source may or may not have influenced the research.

AMT: What do you think of what she says?

JULIA BELLUZ: I think it's still not always clear who funded the research and who is involved. Sometimes you have to dig deep into a study to find that information. But I think there is a growing awareness that this is a problem and there are discussions, and I think most notably by researchers like Marion Nestle at New York University about how to fix this problem and that it is an issue that we need to address. So I am optimistic that things might eventually start to shift a little bit.

AMT: And so how should consumers try to figure out what to do?

JULIA BELLUZ: I think we should be extremely skeptical about their claims especially when people make miraculous claims about food. We should be skeptical about where those might be coming from then what interests might be shaping those. And I think we should probably just keep in mind that there are a few things we know for sure about how to eat and how to have a healthy life. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, don't eat too much junk food, and don't eat too much, don't drink too much. And the rest is kind of up to you. And people survive on many many different types of diets and have very healthy lives. So I think as long as you adhere to those basic principles you're probably okay.

AMT: Julia Belluz thanks for your time.

JULIA BELLUZ: Thank you.

AMT: Julia Belluz senior health correspondent for Vox. She joined us from Washington D.C. I'm going to play something else for you. It has been over a decade since Robert Dziekanski died after being Tasered by police at Vancouver airport. Curt Petrovich, longtime CBC journalist, has been revisiting the scene, second by second.

SOUNDCLIP

Passport. Going Damascus. Five seconds. The man stares blankly. Six seconds. The man begins to bend down toward his luggage on the floor. 11 seconds. No. Robinson shouts before the man touches his bags. 15 seconds. The man swiftly turns to face the police. There's something in his right hand. It's an office staple he must have grabbed from the counter. He's opened it up. Gripping it in the middle as if he's intending to swing it at something. His other hand is a fist. 21 seconds.

AMT: Curt Petrovich reading from his book Blamed and Broken: The Mountains and the Death of Robert Dziekanski. We'll hear from Curt Petrovich in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Reporter who covered Robert Dziekanski's death says there's more to the story than 'four bad-apple cops'

Guest: Curt Petrovich

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

SOUNDCLIP

How are you, sir?

[Indistinct chatter]

AMT: While It may not seem momentous at first, but a word of warning, what we are hearing is the start of the last moments of Robert Dziekanski life. You may remember this story from more than a decade ago. Mr. Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, newly arriving to Canada, he was moving here in October 2007 to live with his mother. But he started acting erratically at the Vancouver airport smashing things inside the terminal. Police were called and a brief encounter that began with that, "How are you sir?" quickly escalated to police firing a Taser five times and Mr.Dziekanski dying on the floor. A bystander recorded the incident and the video sparked a national conversation about police use of force, and whether the four officers and the RCMP more widely tried to cover up what really happened. Longtime journalist and CBC reporter Curt Petrovich covered Mr. Dziekanski's death from the very beginning, and after more than 11 years of digging into the tragedy and its aftermath. He says the video doesn't tell the whole story and that Mr. Dziekanski was not the only victim. Curt Petrovich as the author of Blamed and Broken: The Mounties and the Death of Robert Dziekanski and he joins us from Vancouver. Hi.

CURT PERTROVICH: Hi.

AMT: Curt. Constable Kwesi Millington was the officer who fired the taser, the first time on the 26 seconds after the four officers first showed up. What did he tell you about his rationale for using it so quickly?

CURT PERTROVICH: What Kwesi said about his use of the Taser was consistent with word of four of the officers understood about what - at that time - what the Taser was to be used for and that was they had been trained that the taser was the least injurious form of control that they could exercise when they were trying to subdue someone. And that the instant Robert Dziekanski, after being directed to a desk in the terminal, turned around and appeared with a stapler in his hand, not just holding a but holding it open as if it were a defensive weapon. That was the point at which Kwesi pulled the Taser out of its holster and fired it the first time. And that was entirely consistent with what they had been trained to do.

AMT: So they didn't try to subdue him physically, you're saying, because that was their belief that's what the Taser would do?

CURT PERTROVICH: It wasn't just their belief, it was training that at the time. Again you have to go back to 2007. The Taser was still a relatively new - they call that a tool but let's be clear. It's a weapon. It was explained and understood at the time that the Taser was something that you could use, that would immediately immobilize somebody, that it would be less injurious than actually physically grappling with someone. When the Taser was initially deployed, Robert Dziekanski did go down to the ground but not immediately. And it wasn't a complete contact and so he wasn't- well he was clearly feeling the effects. He wasn't feeling the full effects of that first Taser stun. And these officers, Kwesi Mellington in particular, saw what was going on and again, according to their training, decided to deploy the Taser again. And when your commanding officer then says, as Monty Robinson did at the time, "Hit him again", that's exactly what he did.

AMT: The police called for medical assistance after subduing Mr. Dziekanski on the floor. They do want to administer first aid themselves despite one of them noticing he's going blue in the face. And the senior officer who you just mentioned, Monty Robinson, initially refuses to take the handcuffs off and even after the paramedics arrived. Why?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well immediately after they had subdued Robert Dziekanski, at least three of the four officers were kind of stunned because they had not expected any of this to happen. They had not expected that this is how this was going to unfold. But also immediately one of the officers called as a matter of course for the ambulance to arrive. And it was after noticing that blue tinge to his lips that constable Bill Bentley upgraded that call which would have required the ambulance to use lights and sirens. And so there was a recognition that there needed to be medical assistance. But at the same time they were also getting information on the scene from people who were taking Robert Dziekanski's pulse. He was said to have been breathing. There didn't seem to be an issue. And in fact when the first responders arrived and asked for the handcuffs to be removed and Corporal Molly Robinson said, "No I am not going to take the cuffs off because he might get up and start swinging again," people have suggested that that is an indication of how I suppose derelict in his duty and how little care and concern he had for four Robert Dziekanski and that is clearly an argument to be made. But the flipside is you don't suggest that somebody needs to be continued to be cuffed, if you have an actual belief that the person is not breathing or dead. In Monty Robinson's mind at least, Robert Dziekanski was still alive and breathing. That's why he suggested that the cuffs should not come off. The incident quickly escalates from possible mischief, on the part of George Kamsky, to a death investigation and the first seeds a potential police cover up are planted. After more than a decade of covering a story, is there any evidence that the four officers conspired to hide what really happened or to justify the use of the taser?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well, no. In a word, no. And certainly there is absolutely not a single shred of evidence to indicate that's how we know they lied. Is no witnesses to anybody saying I lied. There is no recordings. There is no any kind of direct evidence.

AMT: If they didn't, how did the conspiracy theory become so prevalent and powerful so early on?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well, the conspiracy theory, as I explain in the book, it wasn't something that just happened accidentally. You have to also remember that in 2007 the RCMP had several black guys from some notorious incidence of use of force and deaths in police custody. And so when this incident happened it kind of tipped the scales. It also occurred there, just hours after this incident happened, an RCMP spokesperson was on the scene and gave some information about what happened that was wrong.

AMT: Well, I'm going to jump in because we have a clip of that and you’re talking about Pierre Lemaitre, an RCMP spokesperson. He had the job of being the first public statements about this. So let's listen to a little bit of him at that time.

SOUNDCLIP

Only one officer was in possession of the conducted energy weapon. He was an officer that was trained and authorized to carry that. There were two pulses, we call it, delivered to the subject to no avail. So he was tasered twice with the same conducted energy weapon.

AMT: Okay now we now know Mr. Lemaitre was wrong, there. Robert Dziekanski was stunned five times. He also did not mention there was an eye witness video. Much would be made of his inaccuracies, do you think they were intentional?

CURT PERTROVICH: Absolutely not. Again, there is no evidence they were intentional. There was no attempt to try to mislead anyone. It was an unfortunate mistake. Pierre was trying to get out information as quickly as possible. He made some mistakes and when his superiors decided that he'd already said too much, because it was starting to become problematic, that then contributed to the idea that, well, the RCMP is covering something up.

AMT: So he wasn't allowed to correct the inaccurate information.

CURT PERTROVICH: No he wasn't and he tried desperately. It was a mistake. They were mistakes.

AMT: There was an eye witness Paul Pritchard, who shot video of the encounter but police quickly confiscated his camera. When he got it back, a media consortium including CBC purchased that footage. The very first time you saw it, what was your reaction?

CURT PERTROVICH: I was stunned. We knew obviously generally what had happened but it was horrible to watch. And you know I've been a reporter for a long time, but it's still difficult to watch what happens when police use force. And it was very easy frankly to come to a very quick conclusion that that should not have happened.

AMT: And the video is the key to that you are basically pointing out that this had unintended consequences.

CURT PERTROVICH: When the video came out, it was released a number of weeks after the incident, but by the time it came out the RCMP was in denial mode. They had made these, as I say, Pierre had made these mistakes which were immediately picked up on by the media. And then the RCMP played this game about 'well, we're not going to release the video because we we don't want to contaminate potential witnesses that we still haven't gotten to'. And so it became very easy to see that the RCMP was just terribly embarrassed by this video. They would do anything to prevent it from coming out. And so by the time the video came out the public I think was primed to see what everybody was told they would see, which is: four RCMP officers who moved too fast, who killed the man and then tried to cover it up essentially.

AMT: In the book you are quite critical of the media's coverage of Mr. Dziekanski's Death and how it used that video. You were leading the CBC own coverage. As you looked back, what did you think of your own reporting now?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well it easy for me to sit here and say I was impeccable. You know I'm like I did what I could. I fought to be at the inquiry every single day because I thought it was important to hear everything, not just pick up on one thing or another. And so I was no friend of the RCMP or the lawyers who were defending them. But I think even they understood that I was trying to do my best to properly represent what I was hearing, what we were all hearing.

AMT: And before the inquiry, the Crown does make a decision not to proceed with criminal charges against the officers. Why did he make the decision?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well they released a clear statement which was somewhat unusual at the time. They basically decided that there was no evidence, certainly not enough evidence, to successfully prosecute these four officers for anything to do with their use of force. I think in large part because of what the video shows is they didn't just walk in and Taser Robert Diekanski. As much as we can sort of in hindsight say, 'Well, they should have waited. They should have done this. They should have done that', when he picked up the stapler, that, according to the training of the time, was a threat. And, at the time, the use of force training said you use the least amount of force that you can to deal with it. And that's what they did.

AMT: Okay. But there was the inquiry the Braidwood inquiry led by retired Judge Thomas Braidwood. What did you think of the job he did?

CURT PERTROVICH: I thought Tom Braidwood word was incredibly detail oriented. I thought he was careful and thoughtful. I thought that, as witnesses were heard, I thought he allowed a great deal of leeway. There were a couple of no go areas for Tom Braidwood. One of them was, as I recall, it was he was not at all interested in anything Robert Dziekanski may have done to contribute to anything that occurred. He didn't want the inquiry to be turned into an exercise in blaming the victim. And that created a great deal of tension because you had four police officers and there are lawyers, and lawyers for the RCMP, and the federal government all trying to sort of mitigate the level of responsibility for a man's death. And they of course wanted to dig further into how did Robert Dziekanski contributed. And I think the one thing that emerged from the inquiry was that- I think from the very beginning of the inquiry Tom Braidwood made a decision that a man died and somebody is responsible, or some things are responsible and he was going to get to the bottom of it.

AMT: And so the four officers are compelled to testify. How did they fare?

CURT PERTROVICH: I don’t think it's exaggerating to say that I think most of the media were of the same mind, and where's the RCMP officers were defensive. They were evasive. They were obviously nervous. They were trying to minimize their responsibility that might emerge at this inquiry. And I don’t think that served them very well. I think everybody that I was aware of had a belief that the RCMP officers were covering something up. I mean even when my thinking started to shift, I remember having a conversation with a colleague who said to me, "Oh you still covering that case?" I said, "Yes because I think there is more to learn. I still don't know everything." He said, "Yes but there are guilty. Aren't they?" And that's why I wrote the book. It's because I started learning things that were a contradiction to that. [Unintelligible] that you have four bad apple cops who lied and tried to cover something up. And as I heard more that made me question that narrative I felt compelled to actually write it. And the only way I could do that is in something of the scale of a book because that's the only way it makes any sense.

AMT: So let me ask you, at a certain point in this long process - and we are talking years, but I think earlier on - the RCMP's need to protect its officers begins to conflict with the RCMP's need to protect itself.

CURT PERTROVICH: Once they saw the video at headquarters, I think it suddenly dawned on them that this was not going to be good, and that they had to move into damage control. So I think internally it became a matter of not just how do we explain this to the public, but how do we excise this bad publicity. And I think the four officers paid the ultimate price, they were the ones who were essentially - I'm going to use terms like hung out to dry, thrown under the bus.

AMT: For you personally the story shifts from what the officers did to what was being done to them?

CURT PERTROVICH: I want to be absolutely clear. It's tragic that Robert Dziekanski died. He didn't need to die. It shouldn't have happened. I'm not an apologist for the police. I’m not an apologist for anything they did that night. That being the case, I had to ask myself, is it justice that Robert Sharkansky dies? That these four people are held accountable for more than a decade? They are turned into pariahs. Their reputations are inextricably linked with that event. The Braidwood report lives for ever as a condemnation of the actions of these four officers and their credibility and their actions.

AMT: The four officers were struggling to cope in the wake of this tragedy and their public vilification in trying to cope with that as well after the inquiry. Tell us about the fatal car accident involving Monty Robinson.

CURT PERTROVICH: About a year after this incident At YVR, Monty Robinson who was the corporal, now acknowledged to have been an alcoholic, and as he came home from a party after drinking four or five beers, his car struck a motorcyclist just a couple blocks from Monty's house. And Monty, with his kids in the back, got out of the vehicle, took his kids home, then admittedly pounded back a couple shots of vodka. He maintains to steady his nerves after what had just happened, but in his subsequent trial for obstruction of justice in that case, the point was made that there was absolutely no question that what Monty Robinson did was to completely confound any attempt to take a reliable breathalyzer test to find out what his blood alcohol level would have been at the time of the crash.

AMT: Because he leaves the scene and only returns after taking the two shots.

CURT PERTROVICH: You left the scene. It was not something that I think is really defensible and he was ultimately found guilty of obstruction of justice for his actions and in drinking after the accident to try to basically throw off the breathalyzer test.

AMT: He was given a 12 month conditional sentence. He was never directly tried or convicted of the death for the men on the motorcycle, Orion Hutchinson. Was that just?

CURT PERTROVICH: I think if you ask Orion Hutchinson's family they would say, no it's not just. But Orion Hutchinson who had a blood alcohol level that was well over the limit was barreling down on his motorcycle at somewhere around 90 kilometres an hour. There was sort of indisputable evidence that this crash could not be held to be directly the fault of of Monty Robinson.

AMT: And I want to talk about another death too. The four officers were not the only RCMP members struggling in the wake of Mr. Dziekanski's death. We spoke earlier about the RCMP spokesperson, Pierre Lemaitre, and let me through. I think you said because he became entwined in the allegations of a cover-up. And his own career stalls out. He feels abandoned by the RCMP. He sinks into a deep depression. He takes his own life.

CURT PERTROVICH: He did.

AMT: And Then you in your book talk about his widow, also working with the RCMP, Sheila. How was she treated in the aftermath of his death by the RCMP?

CURT PERTROVICH: Pierre's death was seen by the RCMP as a problem because of how he had been treated, because of his notoriety in the media, because he had been essentially sidelined. And what ended up happening was the RCMP and the mind of its institution and its personnel they quickly descended on Sheila and essentially tried to control everything about how the media would have access to information about his death and how it occurred.

AMT: And funeral.

CURT PERTROVICH: And even the funeral right down to the songs that would be allowed to be played at the memorial service for Pierre.

AMT: The eulogies and who could say them.

CURT PERTROVICH: What would be in them? Even in death, Pierre suffered, frankly.

AMT: And again this goes back to one of the unintended consequences of the public reaction to that video. Let's talk about the four officers, then, a little bit more because this goes on for years; the aftermath, the inquiry, then the charges. They are tried separately for perjury. The special prosecutor alleges they each lied at the inquiry as part of a conspiracy to justify use of force and you made the point that it's got to do with what they said at the Braidwood inquiry. Kwesi Millington who operated the taser, Monty Robinson who was involved in that fatal car accident, they are found guilty and they receive sentences. Bill Bentley and Gerry Rundle are acquitted. How could only two of them be convicted of perjury related to a conspiracy that was supposed to involve all four?

CURT PERTROVICH: Well when you find out let me know. I don’t know. It doesn't make any kind of common sense if I can use the term. Legally, it seems to be completely copacetic. The judges themselves are all essentially inoculated themselves from each other’s opinions prefacing their decisions and their verdict and their reasons by saying, 'I am not bound by the decision in any other case'. And that works legally.

AMT: And I should say that worked legally are the way up to the Supreme Court.

CURT PERTROVICH: It did.

AMT: Your book focuses on what happens to those four RCMP officers more than Robert Dziekanski. By focusing on the officers, are you concerned the tragedy of Mr. Dziekanski's death is being minimized or even lost?

CURT PERTROVICH: No, I don’t because I think I reiterate several times in the book how tragic it was and I pointed out where more Braidwood singles out a number of actors, a number of people who contributed to this whole horrible incident and Robert Dziekanski's death. There were any number of points before the officers even arrived. If somebody had done something a little differently, if something had happened a little differently, none of this would have happened. Why I wrote the book was that the punishment that has occurred over time is not just the two that went to prison, is not just the death of Pierre Lemaitre, is not just the death of Orion Hutchinson, is not just the fact that these four people will for ever be known as liars and bad cops. It's all of that taken into consideration and this book is not- I'm not apologizing for anything the police officer is dead. What I'm trying to do is to show that it's not as simple as as many people believe. And once you see all of the details and take it all in context, I think people, I hope, will come to a much more nuanced and maybe even sympathetic view of the police themselves.

AMT: Curt Petrovich, thank you.

CURT PERTROVICH: You're welcome.

AMT: Curt Petrovich. He's the author of Blamed and Broken: The Mountains and the Death of Robert Dziekanski, he joined me from Vancouver. Curt's book is coming out on Saturday. Let us know what you think of what he has said in this and how he's gone back and looked at the file as it moved. And you can email us at The Current at our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or find us on Facebook.

[Music]

AMT: That's our program for today. Stay with radio 1 for Q. Journalist Malcolm Gladwell is on the show to talk about his new music podcast Broken Record. Finally we heard some vintage archival clips earlier in the show about the Canada Food Guide or Canada's Food Rules as they were known at the time. We've got to leave you with a moment from a 1943 National Film Board film about the importance of proper nutrition in your work day. In this scene, at a factory cafeteria, a character named Russell is teased for eating a raw carrot as part of his lunch. Wait for it. Here it is. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hey. Look at that kid, eating a carrot.

VOICE 2: Well what’s the big idea?

VOICE 3: This carrot, my friends, is just packed with vitamins. You people don't know what's good for you that’s all. Come on have a bite.

VOICE 2: No thanks.

VOICE 3: Go on, try it.

VOICE 2: Well. Okay.

VOICE 3: If you eat more of these you will get some colour in your cheecks.

Thursday January 10, 2019 Full Transcript

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