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The Current Transcript for March 1, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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We're at a crisis at the very heart of our democracy the Prime Minister doesn't have the moral authority to continue. He needs to resign.

DUNCAN MCCUE: They called it an emergency debate last night and opposition MPs, like a conservative House leader Candice Bergen there, would certainly describe the unfolding saga of the former attorney general and the PMO as an emergency. Lawmakers remained in Parliament well into the night to vent their outrage. But what about outside the bubble of Ottawa and political Twitter? We're starting today with the question of just how much is this major political story resonating with everyday Canadians and just how tarnishing is it for the Trudeau Liberals brans. Also on today's show the thrill of victory the agony of life as an amateur athlete.

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[Game sounds]

DM: That was the call as Canada's women one hockey gold at the Sochi Olympic Games. Of course Olympic athletes do it for the glory, for their country, for the love of sport. But some amateur athletes including U.S. Olympians are agitating for more. They want to form a union. We'll explore just what that would mean and why the idea is gaining steam in about a half an hour from now. Plus.

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I've had a lot of frustrations when I try to explain why something is difficult. People will say things like 'oh everyone's ADHD today' which is just not true.

DM: What it's like to live with adult ADHD and why it's so important to spread awareness. I'm Duncan McCue. This Friday edition of The Current.

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Opposition parties close in with SNC-Lavalin affair, but Liberals 'haven't lost the election' yet: expert

Guests: Shuchi Kurl, David Moscrop

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No her testimony was not refreshing. It was disturbing. It was sad. It was appalling. We don't need to hear refreshing and wonderful in perspective. We are glad that it is being deceptive, that is not owning up to what they have done and it goes to the very heart of who we are as Canadians in this democracy.

DM: More from Conservative MP Candice Bergen during the late intense session at the House of Commons last night. The former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony has been reverberating through the House and across the country since her appearance before the Justice Committee on Wednesday. Last night's emergency session amplified the opposition's concerns. Here's a bit of how comedians have been reacting on open minds and on the street in Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver.

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VOICE 1: They are telling everybody in Canada that if she doesn't do what we want we we'll remove her and we've put somebody else in there.

VOICE 2: An indigenous woman is speaking her truth using the rule of law. Their law, the colonial law to basically let the world know what goes on in politics and how nasty it can get.

VOICE 3: Very conflicted. I stand behind on a moral ethical basis but I am afraid of what it might do to the government.

VOICE 4: It's coming to light the system, like nature of corruption in the system.

VOICE 5: This calls me to question why in general how politics are done and how the system is just not functional at all. This kind of quote unquote democracy of us electing someone who after does a bit whatever he wants without really listening to what the people are asking of him. If he resigns or not really doesn't change anything really. Someone else is going to take its place. The same thing will continue probably.

DM: This morning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a small shuffle of his cabinet to fill the hall left by Jordy Wilson-Raybould when she resigned as Minister of Veterans Affairs two weeks ago. Lawrence Macaulay will now fill that role leaving his previous position as agricultural minister to Marie Claude Bibeau. Minister for Women and Gender Equality Maryam Monsef will add International Development to her current duties. For more on the impact this week's revelations are having on the Liberal Party brand I'm joined by Shachi Kurl. She is the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute and is in Calgary this morning. Hi Shachi.

SHACHI KURL: Good morning Duncan.

DM: The dust hasn't quite settled yet on this issue Shachi, but what do you see as the extent of the damage to the Liberal Party, The prime minister in terms of them falling out here on the terms of the test morning on Wednesday and the emergency debate last night?

SHACHI KURL: So it's a really dynamic situation. It is already having an impact on the party's fortunes, on the prime minister's personal brand and favorability. And I think we've seen bottom yet. So in terms of who's engaged, definitely people who are already inclined to really not love the prime minister and the liberals are following most closely. But let's make no mistake. This is an issue that is resonating well above average with people who are not necessarily political watchers. It's captured the attention of the country.

DM: What's your most recent polling telling you about the leaders and public opinion?

SHACHI KURL: Well these issues have already started to indicate a widening of a gap that we were starting to see between the Conservatives and the liberals. So they were in a fairly competitive place end of last year. The conservatives have now opened up a seven point lead over the Liberals as a result of this. But here's the key thing that were seeing a real damage to Trudeau's own brand. This is a politician who communicates not in words or in policy but in symbols. And think about what a car crash we've seen in the last few weeks of all of those symbols. This was the guy who was good to talk about a gender balance cabinet and defend the women in his cabinet. He campaigned on the importance of reconciliation. And here is as we heard from one of the comments from one of the people in those streeters, talking about an indigenous woman speaking her truth to Trudeau's power. All of that has affected his favourability and his approval ratings. But it's not as though we've started to see those numbers turning to an advantage for Andrew Scheer, a leader of the conservatives or Jagmeet Singh a leader of the NDP just yet.

DM: Gerald Butts who resigned early last week as the prime minister's Prime Minister Trudeau's principal secretary. Now says he wanted to testify before the Justice Committee. Do you think it's going to help the brand to have the consummate political insider on the stand?

SHACHI KURL: Ooff. I mean I think there probably feels are on the inside at the centre and I'm not speaking for what Mr. Butt's head or anybody's head, but there's probably a strong sense of you know everyone has a side here. Everyone has a vision. Ms. Wilson-Raybould had three hours to talk about her virgin and Mr. Butts gave up, quit his job, was pressured to leave his job, cast it however you want. He's out of a job. So he probably wants to set the record straight from his perspective. But Duncan to your point it only continues the drip drip drip. It only keeps a cloud over this government and this prime minister's head. What they need is a reset. There is a budget coming and so there are some opportunities to actually focus on substance and really strip away any pretense now that Justin Trudeau is somehow a different politician or a new politician or a politician who would do politics differently, and really sort of get down to how do we really coalesce the left of center base. And the budget is an opportunity to do that.

DM: You talk about the drip drip drip. But I want to go back to Gerald Butts, again for a second because I mean what do you make of the [unintelligible] the next few weeks anyway of having a strong indigenous former justice minister versus political operatives in the prime minister's office?

SHACHI KURL: Yes it's not good. It's not good. To an extent it's a situation of Mr. Trudeau's own making again. He said I'm not going to appoint insiders to my inner circle. I am not going to appoint people who are more focused on the way inside or works than they are on the prospective in the experiences that they come from. Well you reap what you sow to an extent. And so you know having Mr. Butt's understand it really depends on what he says. You know for the government they want to focus this on, maybe we made a very strong and vigorous case to the former attorney general but we didn't do anything legally wrong. That is the point that they're trying to make and that may be an important point to make particularly in light of the fact that you now have the opposition calling for the RCMP to get involved. But it doesn't do anything to help clean this from the Liberal government's Center. Remember that again Trudeau has been all about political cleanliness. He will never be politically speaking as squeaky clean after this as he was perceived to be before.

DM: Jody Wilson-Raybould says she has more to say. So has this controversy peaked or is there going to be more damaging testimony to come.

SHACHI KURL: So if she says she has more to say I can't imagine it's going to be plaudits or platitudes. I think it's probably not going to be very good things for the Liberal government presumably. As much as that drip drip drip factor it continues to be a risk for the Trudeau government for the liberals for the party, there's also the other side which is at some point complicated scandals that involve a lot of people and so far we don't have a smoking gun will sort of boiled down to what Miss Wilson Reybold says vs. what the rest of them are saying can sometimes you know turn people off. They may not be as engaged the longer this goes on.

DM: And I think that's the key question here. I mean we heard some voices of Canadians off the top do you think this issue is going to be significant for voters come October'

SHACHI KURL: You know it's the power of suggestion. Talk to me in six months as to whether or not anybody can really articulate what this scandal was about specifically in the totality of time, but what they will remember is that something that happened. Something wrong happened and something happened in a way where Mr. Trudeau did not live up to his promise of transparency, of doing politics differently, of bringing a different kind of governance to Ottawa. That was the promise. It hasn't been kept. If there is something that endures from this it may not be who said what to whom on September 18th there on December 19th, or who called whom. It will simply be that the liberals that Mr. Trudeau turned out not to be the politician he said he was.

DM: Always good to get your insights on this Shachi. Thank you.

SHACHI KURL: It's my pleasure.

DM: Shachi Kurl is the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. She was in Calgary this morning. For more on the potential political fallout of the SNC Lavalin own case David Moscrop is with us from our or our studio. He's a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. Hello.

DAVID MOSCROP: Good morning.

DM: I couldn't help myself. I was glued on Wednesday to watching Jodie Wilson-Raybould’s testimonial how surprised were you by what she had to say?

DAVID MOSCROP: I was very surprised. I think most observers were you know we expected there would be something that it wouldn't be damaging for the government. I don't think many folks expected such a detailed precise and damning step by step walking through of what happened. You know the whole country was talking about it the next day. The whole country really talks about anything together. So it was pretty remarkable.

DM: But there are has always been a tension in politics between politics and the rule of law that's always existed in democracies. So as far as displays of that tension go just how big is this one?

DAVID MOSCROP: I think quite serious. I mean it reveals the sort of routine tension between 'well, we've got these rules everyone better follows them because otherwise the whole thing falls apart' and 'okay but we need to be reelected' or 'we need to be seen as doing good for the country and so we want to push the boundaries here and push them a little bit there'. The problem is when it is exposed when the dirty underbelly of politics is exposed, it undermines a lot of your work because it contributes to cynicism. It contributes to distrust. It leads to people saying 'oh there they go again, all politicians are the same'. And that's especially damaging right now with Justin Trudeau because in effect in 2015 he tried to get the country's hopes up. And today in the last couple of weeks he's let a lot of folks down.

DM: But the prime minister's insisted all along removing Jody Wilson-Raybould from her role as attorney general, that it wasn't a demotion and had nothing to do with the SNC Lavalin case. In the light of her testimony, do you buy that?

DAVID MOSCROP: When I was a kid my mum tried to convince me that vegetables were candy. You know it didn't work there. And this isn't going to work now. You know when people observe and they sort of get a sense that something is off, an intuition, they're usually picking up on something. Now political spinners are going to tell you that it's about 'oh no this is how it works' or 'it was just pressure', 'it was an undue pressure' or 'the ends justify the means because jobs jobs jobs'. But people have a moral center and they can sense when something is off and it's this political spin I don’t think is going to convince them otherwise.

DM: Okay so you talk about political spin. What do you make of how the opposition has responded?

DAVID MOSCROP: Well they've been ridiculous as well. I mean everyone's ridiculous in this. Andrew Scheer has been remarkably melodramatic about the whole thing, jumping the gun and cause for resignation.

DM: Why do you say jumping the gun?

DAVID MOSCROP: Well we don't have all the facts yet. I mean you know you know you've got everyone calling for an investigation which I think is reasonable. You know a deeper perhaps a public inquiry. We want to make sure everyone takes the standard at the Justice Committee. That's great. You can't say that and say 'oh by the way let's also have a resignation as if the case is over and we've proven everything we've got everything we need'. You know it would have been far better and I think the NDP is taking this approach to call for more and more information to drag this out until we get everything and the public, and then we can talk about whether or not the prime minister has to resign but it's still early days.

DM: You mentioned the NDP. Jagmeet Singh he only just won his by-election on Monday. How prepared did he seem and in his response?

DAVID MOSCROP: It's a tough first day at the office. He got to the Hill. He held his event in the morning with broadband and then it’s okay, well, off to prepare for this testimony. You know I think he can be forgiven for taking it in and preparing to move on from there. But I actually think he did quite well. He pressed I think calmly and strategically and in an reasonably forward and you know he could end up being the beneficiary of a lot of this. He's had a rough year but he's got plenty of time to turn things around and this might be the opportunity to get that started.

DM: You heard Shachi Kurl talk about the Liberals branding and how this prime minister promised a new approach particularly with regard to women's issues and indigenous reconciliation. How does all that look in the light of Miss Wilson-Raybould's testimony?

DAVID MOSCROP: Well sunny ways isn't going to work in 2019 but governments really get re-elected done on the sort of campaign of openness and ethics. It's tough, it's easy when you're the third party of the opposition to talk about how you're going to be different, how you're going to be open and transparent and inclusive and positive and all those nice things. But then you've got to govern and governing is difficult and governing is choosing. And so then of course you start to pick up a lot of baggage. So I don't think they can go back to that well. The whole thing reminds me a little bit of Pierre Trudeau in 1968 who rides into Ottawa in Trudeau mania and the open society the just society and then by 1972 is reduced to minority and [unintelligible] turned on him. You know what it's hard to govern this country because you end up having to make very difficult choices and often you end up betraying your ideals.

DM: There are reports coming out that Canada will announce today that it's going to proceed against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, how - with regards to extradition hearings - how will the SNC Lavalin controversy impact that case?

DAVID MOSCROP: I wrote about this a little while ago arguing that Canada in effect or at least in appearance giving up the moral high ground on this case. And today were getting reports that China has sort of indicated that they feel indeed that is the case. It's irritating because you know they are separate matters. Canada is not China. There are different countries. We have different standards. We have different historical track records and different current practices. But it certainly makes us look like hypocrites and that's a great line for China to use. And it's a reminder that if you are going to play the liberal democracy card, if you're going to play decide to get up on your high horse you'd better double down your efforts to make sure that you can live up to those ideals, because if not you look like a giant hypocrite and you let everyone down and nobody likes the hypocrite.

DM: So looking ahead, David Moscrop, I mean what kind of crisis Cantor are you expecting to see from government?

DAVID MOSCROP: Oh I don't know. You know I think back to the sponsorship scandal just like everyone else. The sponsorship scandal played out after the liberals had been in power for something like a decade. It was in the news for months and months and months and months and months and ended up costing them their majority during Paul Martin's time. I would imagine the liberals don't want that. They're going to want to get this in and out of the news cycle as fast as possible and then try to do four or five months of damage control because they haven't lost this election yet, not by a long shot. So again you know if I were them I would try to get everything out from everyone right away, hold folks accountable which would mean no doubt resignations, get the team together and try to change the channel come spring, come later spring.

DM: Had that Justice Committee, you could almost see the opposition MPs you know just having a hard time not breaking out and dancing. What kind of opportunity does this present for the conservatives, the NDP, even the Green Party?

DAVID MOSCROP: Well in Canada we sort of look at leaders and we say 'oh that guy's lousy, he's got the personality of a wet mop' et cetera et cetera. And then you know a couple of months later that person is in the running or the prime minister right. Folks said those things about Stephen Harper. Government's defeat themselves we like say in Canada and that's pretty true. So there is an opportunity here for the opposition if they can play a tight game to offer an alternative to Canadians. I think it'll be a little bit difficult for the conservatives. They're still on their timeout after folks got tired of Stephen Harper. The NDP is going to have to find a way to sort of capture not just the left but the center which is always a challenge for them. I think there's a big opportunity for the Greens and Elizabeth May. May is known as - there's a recent some recent numbers on this - the most ethical leader. They can play the high horse cart I think because they don't have the baggage that other parties have. I wouldn't be surprised to see their numbers go up in the next election.

DM: It is shaping up to be an interesting election year. David Moscrop thank you so much for joining us.

DAVID MOSCROP: My pleasure.

DM: David Moscrop is post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He's also got a book coming out next week. It's called Too Dumb for Democracy, Why we Make Bad Political Decisions and how we can Make Better Ones. And if you want to share your opinion on this topic, the SNC Lavalin affair, tune into Cross Country Checkup this Sunday. You can join me and we want to know what you think about it all. Well the CBC News is next and then amateur athletes both in Canada and the U.S. agree they need a louder voice. One solution being mauled by the U.S. Olympic athletes is forming a union. More on what it could mean after the break. I'm Duncan McCue. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Amateur athletes deserve a say in how competitions are run, says Benoit Huot

Guests: Benoit Huot, Morgan Campbell

DM: Hi I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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DM: Still percale ADHD isn't just for kids but in the medical community doesn't fully understand how to diagnose and treat adult ADHD. Those who live with say It ravages their lives and the fact that many others don't take it seriously makes it all that much harder. Coming up in half an hour I'll speak with journalist Yashar Ali who touched a nerve online by sharing his story of living with adult ADHD. But first, athletes of the world, unite.

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DM: Olympic athletes give it everything they've for not a lot in return. They train their whole lives for that one fleeting shot at glory every four years. But some of them feel like all that glory doesn't actually result in a lot to say about how amateur competitions are run and how their athletes are rewarded. Last week athlete representatives of the U.S. Olympic movement met with the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee. The meeting took place at a time when U.S. gymnastics sex abuse scandal is still looming alarge in amateur sport. And on the agenda where new strategies for putting athletes first including possible unionization. We spoke to a former U.S. shot-putter August Wolf about the idea. He speaks for a group called Olympians rising which has been lobbying Congress for more oversight of the U.S. Olympic Committee and he supports unionization.

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What you really need to move the needle on athletes rights or any rights of any organization is representation that’s professional the USOC down here and probably the IOC has tried to prevent professional representation of Olympic sport and that has been quite successful in that a very small percentage of the revenues of these organizations end up directly going to athletes so I hope that congress is actually going to force some change by putting up some legislation to enforce accountability to provide some hard metrics about what happens with the money and to provide some mechanisms for whistle blowing. If for instance there are coaches being protected who have done bad things including sexual abuse and people are protecting them that whistle blowers can come and pull the curtain away from that and get the stuff rectified.

DM: And last month an organization called Global athlete was also launched headed up by a Canadian Raabe caller a former official from the World Anti Doping Agency. It's envisioned as a quad "athlete led movement for change". Benoit Huot is one of the athletes taking part. He is a recently retired Canadian Paralympic swimmer and he's in Montreal. Hello.

BENOIT HUOT: Thank you. Thank you for sharing the good news.

DC: Glad you could join us. You say it's good news. I mean what went through your head when you heard that some Olympians in the U.S. are considering a union?

BENOIT HUOT: I think it's just the beginning of some discussion and to have an open mind and hopefully make sure that the athletes are always in the center. And the reason behind dollars major international rendezvous, does it need to be a union? I don't Know. But I think it's a great idea because there's been so many challenges and issues in sports over the past couple months and years. I think they need to be addressed.

DM: So it is a start. But what is driving that effort to try to consider something like a union?

BENOIT HUOT: Well talking and thinking about everything that happened over the past months whether it was there the doping scandal for us in Paralympic sport the classification system for [unintelligible] disability which is a big question mark in a lot of sports, whether it's the prize money which is not offered for athletes participating at the Olympics or Paralympics. So those are concerns that we've had for years, but unfortunately there is no real place for the athletes to have their say in this sporting system compared to professional sport whether it's the NHL the, NFL, they have associations where they feel they have a little bit of leverage. And I wish - I'm not the only one - I believe a lot of us wish that we have an opportunity where we can actually say what we really think.

DM: You mentioned doping and you mentioned pay. I want to ask you about both of those things. But you say that athletes aren't getting a say in the decision making. That Olympic and Paralympic athletes are left out of the decisions. Can you give me a few examples of where athletes are getting their say - Olympic athletes are getting their say?

BENOIT HUOT: Yes. Well a few months back the international Paraolympic Committe reintegrated the Russians Committee into the sports system for the next major event and the next Para0lympic Games in 2020. We unfortunately have to accept and we understand why they did it but we didn't have a say in the way they did it. So if athletes would be involved in those decision maybe we would be more firm in the way of making those major decisions. Another good example on the swimming side and people might not remember, but back in 2000 they made the Olympic Committee put forward the idea of doing the preliminary, the qualification for swimming in the evening in Beijing and the finals in the morning the next day which never happens in the sport of swimming. They change the whole schedule to make sure that the television was going to be prime time in the United States for the viewers to watch Michael Phelps win a gold medal. So that said there was hundreds of athletes signing a petition saying there's no way we are going to accept this. And FINA, which is the international federation for acquatic, didn't care. They followed what NBC required and they went on with changing the whole schedule. And they are doing it again for 2020 in Tokyo because of the same time zone.

DM: What kind of impact does that have on a swimmer when their schedule gets a flipped around and clearly they weren't listened to?

BENOIT HUOT: Well let's say you always work at a specific time, let's say you are in the morning show from six to nine on radio. And suddenly your boss the next day he says, okay, now you not work at this time, you'll work from six to nine p.m. It's the same thing for 20 somehow years you get to the biggest competition of your life and change the way you used to be competing to get to that big moment. Those details make a big difference.

DM: So Ben like all workers in a mine or factory workers, I mean you're essentially asking for improved working conditions or at least a say in your working conditions. But like workers in those industries you're looking for more pay I assume as well. You'd like to improve your compensation. Is that right?

BENOIT HUOT: Well you know why Duncan? Because there is none. It's crazy when you think about it. Like 100 years ago I understand we call it amateur sport, but now it's driven by billions of dollars. Olympics or Olympics. So the actors of the show the reason why we watch the Olympics and the Paralympics is because we want to see [unintelligible]. We wanted to both women winning those medal. Don't get me wrong these athletes are not poor. You know they're making a good living but they're not earning any money winning those Olympic and Paraolympic medals.

DM: There have been changes so that Olympic athletes, amateur athletes can collect advertising contracts, sponsorships for example.

BENOIT HUOT: Yes. Outside of the competition.

DM: So what effect does it have then on the moral out of Paraolympians and Olympic athletes when they're facing these kinds of challenges in their workplace?

BENOIT HUOT: It makes no sense to me. It's the same thing. If the athletes at Wimbledon are not earning enough, they won't be happy and they'll probably something will happen and change. It's the same thing why we have those strikes in different major sports. So I think it's just, again, we don't do it for the dollar. I think we all started this adventure in sport because we're passionate but it needs to be a balance somewhere.

DM: You mentioned the strikes in some of the major sports. Fans in the NFL the Major League Baseball NHL NBA they're all going to be familiar with the lockouts over the years, strikes over the years that have meant that they can't watch their favorite sports their favorite athletes are sitting at home. Should we, could we expect something like that could happen at an Olympics?

BENOIT HUOT: Well it won't be easy because if the lifetime of an athlete is quite limited. It's short. On average an Olympian or Para Olympian he will go just one game. So you don't want to miss your opportunity. So it's difficult for the athletes and especially when you're an athlete you're often young. You're 18 to 24 years old so you don't need to understand the whole politics and the whole thing behind it. And it is the reason I believe in 2019 that it's still not fixed because it's difficult to really unite and make sure that every athlete are aligned behind these issues. So what would help is having a big name saying, wait a second, this doesn't work, and he try to have a voice.

DM: If Usain Bolt said I'm not running the 100. Do you think that would make a difference?

BENOIT HUOT: Someone like Bolt or [unintelligible] word but they're required now. So they don't have any leverage or have any impact anymore. But if it's not one individual it might make 10,000 of us that goes and have that open discussion and really just talk about these issues.

DM: I want to read you something Benoit that was said by former U.S. Olympic kayaker Norm Bellingham about this unionization conversation that's happening right now. He said this: "It feels almost like there's an Arab Spring taking place waiting for the people in power to implement appropriate changes. It's something athletes are less and less willing to tolerate". It almost sounds like he's comparing it to an emancipation of some kind. What do you think of that statement?

BENOIT HUOT: Well it's not going to change overnight but I'm just so happy. Like retiring from sports and hearing these things because there's been lots of frustrations over the years. But if us, someone like myself that is outside the sport that can just help the next generation of Champions, next generation of athletes having the ability and the opportunity to live in a better sporting system, I think all of us will gain from this and the sport will benefit.

DM: Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. Merci beaucoup.

BENOIT HUOT: Oh thank you. Thank you Duncan.

DM: Benoit Huot is a recently retired Canadian paroling swimmer. We reached him in Montreal. Well the issue of amateur hour led raids goes well beyond the Olympics. A push for payment and autonomy of amateur athletes as playing out in other arenas too, including college sports and Junior Harkey. Joining me to discuss how athletes are trying to level the playing field is Morgan Campbell. He's a sports business writer at The Toronto Star and he's in the studio with me this morning. Hi.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Hey Duncan. You know my parents almost named me Duncan? We could have a Duncan and Duncan, not both my parents, my mother.

DM: It's not a common name. It's not uncommon name.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: No.

DM: What did you think listening to Benoit Huot about this new organization he's part of pushing for more athletes rights?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: When I speak with Olympic athletes just in informal settings - this is like for the last decade - one of the things that I always ask them is why don't you guys have a union, because you guys could use a union. Because a lot of these guys, men and women, have agents to represent the athlete in their negotiations with these various sponsors. But no in really to represent them in negotiations with Canadian Olympic Committee, USOC, IOC, whoever. All of these organizations have a stake in the performance of Olympic athletes and in monetizing these athletes talents, but the athletes can't monetize it directly. They can only do it indirectly through sponsorships that come with exposure that comes from doing well in the state, but that a lot of steps you got to clear before you can make money where the IOC just gets their money upfront through broadcast fees and sponsorships period.

DM: You say you guys could use union talking to Olympic athletes. There are other amateur athletes right now who are organizing unions or union like bodies. Can you give us a sense of what's happening?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: We've seen like several attempts to organize major junior hockey players in Canada, OHL, QMJHL etc. Those have never really gotten off the ground but it is an issue that keeps coming up. Like last fall we had this issue. OHL said we don't want to pay players minimum wage. Doug Ford said we're with you, OHL.

DM: It's a class action lawsuit now.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Yes it's been when everything is it's tough to imagine any other business saying, well, if we had to pay people minimum wage we couldn't afford to do business. Therefore we should have a waiver from paying people minimum wage. Any other business will say, well if you can afford to pay people what they're worth, what they deserve, what the law says they deserve, then you deserve to be a business. You need to find a better business model if your business model necessarily involves underpaying people. Yet, major junior hockey here, minor league baseball in the U.S. college sports - big time sports for sure - this type of systematic under compensation is built into the system. There are a lot of people that don't question and then when athletes say, well, where is our cut, we tell the athletes that they're greedy.

DM: You imagined U.S. College basketball in particular. I mean NCAA what's the issue playing out there in terms of compensation?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: The current one? What's happening now and this has kind of got pushed to the side but there's a class action suit that was in the core it's in Oakland. A decision was expected in the first 60 days of 2019. And again this is another of these-- the plaintiff's name is Austin, he used to play running back at West Virginia University. This is one of these cases that could result in a judge lifting this restriction against paying college athletes cash. But this is one of these things.

DM: The industry is playing a role too. The shoe companies are cording the players what are the rules around advertising and sponsorship for and NCAA?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: It's a lot more than we can get into in this interview right here. Well we go with the concrete example right. What we all saw last week when Duke University played University of North Carolina a high stakes basketball game, both these schools spotted by Nike. The players outfitted in Nike gear head to toe. Every player every team they all wear Nike. The money that schools get from Nike also help us find these exorbitant salaries that these coaches make. And what happens a minute and a half into the game is that the biggest star in Duke's team. Zion Williams, whose like one and one A with Toronto's buried in terms of college basketball prospects who should be NBA stars next season. He hits the ground. His shoe explodes. His show literally explodes, falls apart. And then you know he winds up spraining his knee. So here we have this guy who doesn't have a choice about which shoes he gets to wear. He wears what Nike tells him to wear. And he is also a guy that has probably two million Instagram followers somewhere around there is not allowed to monetize that Instagram file because NCAA says you have to be an amateur. So his school gets money for his talent. Nike pays the school indirectly the coaching money for [unintelligible] cannot monetise his talent this year at all. Yet he is allowed to go out and risk injury.

DM: The pushback when it when it comes to put a paying amateur athletes, I mean whether it's OHL Hockey players whether it's Olympians, I mean the pushback is particularly with Olympians. Is that they're amateur athletes and it hurts the integrity of the sport particularly when it comes to the Olympics. What do you make of that argument?

MORGAN CAMPBELL: No, that is a fallacy for a couple of reasons. First one being that in terms of elite sport there is no such thing as an amateur athlete. Every single elite raw class athlete you see is already a professional. The question is whether or not they get a salary or prize money for what they do. Even if they don't, they are still professionals because the sport is their job. It's the thing they do more than anything else. It's a craft that they go out and they work and they try to perfect. That makes you a professional regardless of whether or not you get a salary. Now in terms of integrity there have been enough scandals around the Olympics and around these various Olympic sports that the last people's integrity I need to worry about the last threat to integrity is paying the athlete a salary or prize. When you know what the Olympics has set up is the greatest exposure hustle ever. We in the journalism industry, you run the same hustle. I can't pay you for this five thousand word story more again, but we have a large circulation, you get a lot of exposure and you could further your career goals. So the IOC gets I think seven point eight billion - with a B - billion dollars from NBC for broadcast rights, the Olympic game. So what the IOC is saying is that your talent, your performances are worth money. We just don't feel like paying it to you but go ahead and monetize your exposure if you can.

DM: You and I better not start talking about how we pay interns or don't pay interns and freelancers and journalism. We will be here for a lot, quite a while. Thank you very much. I appreciate your joining us.

MORGAN CAMPBELL: Any time Duncan.

DM: Morgan Campbell is a sports business writer at The Toronto Star and he joined me here in torana. We did request a comment from the International Olympic Committee. We didn't hear back. And now we've got some response to a story we brought you earlier this week.

SOUNDCLIP

The terror suspects in Guantanamo, they use the repetition of music. There was one song as opposed to say four five six seven 10. But the principles are the same. No I'm not suggesting that working at Applebee's is the same as being at Guantanamo but the principles are the same.

DM: That is writer and podcaster Adam Johnson speaking on this program on Monday. He was making his point but poorly chosen then repetitious music in the workplace should be considered a serious mental health hazard to workers. In that segment we also heard how the wrong music in public spaces like restaurants can be hard on customers as well. Conversation struck a chord with our listeners who responded in droves with their own experiences. Current producer Geoff Turner is here with some of that feedback. Hello.

GEOFF TURNER: Hey Duncan.

DM: What did people have to say about this, Geoff?

GEOFF TURNER: Well there is definitely a current of humor in many of the responses, but I have to say also I get the sense that a lot of Canadians are actually scarred by the way music is used in the workplace and in public. You get the idea that Adam Johnson was speaking for a lot of people on this subject, and you'll recall that he himself was speaking from personal experience too. The song Centerfield by John Fogarty handsome to this--

DM: Not John Fogarty that's tragic.

GEOFF TURNER: That very same John Fogarty and it was fascinating though to learn how so many people have very specific piece of music that triggers bad memories. Laura Jones of Vancouver wrote us to say: "I was so happy to hear this piece. I've been working in retail over 10 years and there are songs I used to love that I now hate. Songs they hate that I now feel anxiety when I hear the opening bars. If I have to hear Afternoon Delight one more time I may throw away. I don't think employers have given this near enough thought."

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Afternoon Delight]

DM: And that's talking about some employees. But I know there is a certain mall that I go to. It's like Drake is always playing and I'm not hating on Drake.

GEOFF TURNER: It's better than Afternoon Delight.

DM: It's not just the workers who feel put upon by the music in the workplace.

GEOFF TURNER: Exactly. And I don’t think I'll ever go so far as to create playlists for restaurants like one of our guests did but I don't know about you. I've had meals ruined by music that's too loud or just wrong for the mood.

DM: You're not alone Andrew Shaw from B.C wrote to say: "Almost 30 years ago I visited a toy store well on a road trip with some friends. The store had It's a Small World After All oncontinious repeat. And even though we only made it two visits of less than half an hour each, I remember running to escape the acoustic assault and wondering how anyone could work there without being driven crazy. All these years later it's still seared into my mind."

GEOFF TURNER: Yes. For people who have to work with music on all day that lack of control seems to be a big part of the problem for them. Jessica Chapman of Alberta wrote: "I totally agree with the speaker who argue that music at work can constitute a health hazard. Retail and restaurant workers have so little control over their work and wages as it is and music is an easy thing to change. Better and more diverse playlists will also benefit the customers and business owners."

DM: We got an e-mail from J Caldwell too, that address that question of control. He wrote: "I owned a cafe in London for many years and one of the things I did for my staff was to let them create their own playlists. This was great for morale introduced everyone to a wide variety of musical styles and genres and was a wonderful boost to a staff member who perhaps not feeling so happy so pappy upon arrival to their shift got to hear their personal choice was played. The only caveat was that they had to keep the customer in mind when creating their playlist. But it gave them a great sense of autonomy in an industry where folks often feel quite put upon. We also never played holiday music. I believe that people who work for me also work with me and treat them with respect."

GEOFF TURNER: The holiday music could be a whole episode. But I save my favorite letter and this for last, Duncan. This one just has so much going on it's from Katherine Jackson in rainy Bay in beautiful Barkeley Sound, B.C. She writes: "Many many years ago I worked in the refugee camps on the border of Thailand and Burma. For security reasons we were forced to spend hours and hours in the car travelling to and from the camps and our driver was obsessed with the Eagles' Hotel California. As you can imagine our stress levels were high in general and to hear his cassette tape for the thousandth time drove my colleagues and I over the edge. On one particularly sunny day traveling along a jungle ravine with the windows open to catch a breath of cool air. The cassette accidentally fell out flying in a beautiful spiraling arc into the valley. The team doctor said 'oops'. I still cannot hear that sign with my shoulders tensing up.

DM: You can check out any time you want but you never leave.

GEOFF TURNER: You just had to go there.

DM: I did. I had to. Geoff thank you so much.

GEOFF TURNER: Thank you Duncan.

DM: Geoff Turner is the senior producer with The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Hotel California]

GEOFF TURNER: I don't think I could ever get sick of that song. Coming up in just a few minutes. Living with the challenges of adult ADHD. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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ADHD is the most common mental health disorder in kids but can 'ravage' adult life, says reporter

Guests: Yashar Ali, Russell Barkley, Heidi Bernhardt

DM: I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. Just hearing the name likely carders up images of children squirming in their desks at school. ADHD Is the most prevalent childhood psychiatric disorder in Canada, according to the Center for ADHD awareness Canada. But it's not only a disorder that affects children and for adult sufferers of ADHD that misconception can make the disorder even more difficult to live with. Adult ADHD is less well understood by the people who have it, the people close to them and even the medical professionals. It's also much less talked about. But when Yashsar Ali took to Twitter recently to talk about his adult ADHD his posts went viral. Yashar Ali is a reporter for The New York magazine and Huff Post. Hello.

YASHAR ALI: Hello, nice to be with you.

DM: Glad you could join us. In your Twitter thread. You said you'd been thinking about speaking out like this about ADHD for months. Why now?

YASHAR ALI: You know I've become so much more aware of the impact that ADHD has on my life. I was diagnosed when I was 13, but in particular in the past few months I've really been consumed with the fact that ADHD impacts every single part of my life and impacts every day of my life. And so I start like if I was more aware of it I should make other people more aware of the nuances of this disorder which you know I have to live with and millions of others have taught.

DM: You talked about being embarrassing to come out and be that public about having ADHD. Why was it embarrassing?

YASHAR ALI: The diagnosis itself isn't embarrassing. It's the impact it has on one's life that creates some shame with folks that have ADHD. You know others there's things that we find to be very difficult that are quite simple to most people, but very difficult for us that, you know for, adults it's kind of embarrassing. I I have a hard time staying organized and you want to feel like that's something that you should move past once you're in your 30s like I am.

DM: I will ask you about the impact as an adult, but you said you were diagnosed as at age 13. Why was ADHD for you like then and what was it like being diagnosed?

YASHAR ALI: I don't just remember exactly how I felt being diagnosed, because at 13 you don't really understand the impact that a diagnosis has, but I was one of those kids like most kids with ADHD that you know the teacher would say to my parents in report cards and parent teacher conferences 'Gosh he's really smart but you know if he only applies himself. He knows all the answers when I call in class but his test scores are poor and his grades aren't very good'. You know I was always sitting in the front row of class. I would always raise my hand to answer questions and ask questions. But when it came time to do my homework I would wait until the night before it was due, or the morning it was due. Sometimes I would leave my homework at home, I would forget it at home. Often times is as silly as this sounds by my backpack was so disorganized that I couldn't find my homework.

DM: Not so much as in the cleanliness in the backpack department.

YASHAR ALI: Absolutely not.

DM: What did your parents say and when they found out that you had ADHD?

YASHAR ALI: You know if it was a relief for them. You know we're talking about the early 90s. There still wasn't-- There still isn't an understanding of the issue. I think that's why my thread went viral. But there really wasn't that much standing outside of medication which is an important factor. But my parents didn't put me on medication but you know I think it offered them a sense of relief.

DM: I think many people understand or connect ADHD to children but now it's continued for you as an adult. So you mentioned a couple examples of challenges that you have starting things. How else does it affect you now as an adult living with ADHD?

YASHAR ALI: You know I say to people that I believe that I usually work, in terms of what I'm able to accomplish, at 25 percent of my capacity. What I have in my head does not get reflected in my activity in day to day life. So meaning like- I'll give you an example this thread that I posted. I had it in my head for three weeks. It was virtually impossible for me to get started. It only took me 20 minutes to type that. It's not like it was an arduous task.

DM: So explain to me. Take me into your head then. When you have troubles starting something. What's going on for you inside your head?

YASHAR ALI: Imagine that I'm in the office, or at home and I'm thinking about 'I really want to do that thread. I really got do it' and then I just hit take the next step. The reason I was able to post is I've convinced myself because I actually tweeted several hours before I am going to be posting a thread about ADHD tonight. I'm tweeting to hold myself accountable.

DM: You mentioned as an example of your ADHD that you have a lot of towels. Explain to me the towels. Why does why does that impact and how has that affected by your ADHD?

YASHAR ALI: It's because I gloried over the years that I can't put a towel back in its place so that it can dry properly. I always drop it on the floor and instead of finding that, instead of trying to fix something that is the way my brain works, I came up with the system to deal with it. That is I have a stack full of towels on my countertop. I use a towel and I throw it in to a bin to be washed. If I dont do that that creeps into the rest of my life. Meaning if there is a pile of towels on the floor, then there are clothes on the floor and then there is papers everywhere. And is sort of like a virus that spreads in my life. So I have to keep tidy. Otherwise it impacts my work life and my personal life.

DM: You mention your work life. Have you raised this with your employers that you have these challenges?

YASHAR ALI: I have. I talk about it with my editors at Huff Post and New York magazine. Last year there was another news organization that was trying to recruit me. I was very honest with them and the interview and said I have ADD, ADHD. I can't always work in an open environment. I need to be able to lock myself away in a conference room or an office. It helps an employer understand what challenges one has and also you know which systems can be put in place. We're there yet. It's still a privilege to be able to discuss this with a prospective employer. I had nothing to lose. Many people have, you know children, and their livelihoods that they have to maintain. So I hope people can do in the future.

DM: You took that step. Have there been other steps that you've taken for treatment?

YASHAR ALI: Well I'm on medication. I've been on medication since 2011. It changed my life. It allowed me to organise my life in a better way and a more efficient way and also the most important thing is I'm very mindful of my ADHD. I think about it constantly and how it impacts my life so I can make adjustments. That's the most important steps, that you're aware of it.

DM: How do people respond to you as an adult with ADHD?

YASHAR ALI: Well I mean certainly this thread people have responded you know overwhelmingly in a kind and empathetic and supportive way. In terms of day to day exchanges I've had a lot of frustrations from friends to people that I've worked with when I tried to explain why something is difficult. People will say things like 'oh well, everyone's ADHD these days' which is just not true. And, or people will say oh you're procrastinating. And people with ADHD don't procrastinate, as I said in the thread, it has a connotation and intention. One big reason I posted this was to teach people what we go through.

DM: But you said that people get frustrated with you. Has it impacted your relationships?

YASHAR ALI: It has impacted romantic relationships and it sort of is something that people don't understand until you explain to them that it has a huge impact on marriages. As I understood from the past couple years, just talking to people but also the response to the spread, I had so many people message me and say I now get why my husband or my wife does X.

DM: And you did say at times it is treated almost like a joke. I mean people laugh about it and use it as a synonym for being distracted. I mean the journalists, we kind of joke about being ADHD at times. What do you think when you hear people joke about it that way?

YASHAR ALI: Well I know most people don't do it with any malice. They just don't understand the diagnosis and the impact that it has. So when people say to me: "Oh I'm so ADD today, or I'm so ADHD today'. Well, I'm that way every day. That's another thing I hope to change is that people understand how hurtful it can be when people sort of deal with things flippantly.

DM: There has been such an outpouring of response to your Twitter thread. I mean women saying 'thank you for pointing this out, it's aften overlooked in young girls' other adults saying you know 'me too'. How do you know that speaking out changes people's perceptions of ADHD?

YASHAR ALI: Well it's really threefold. I really hope that people will ADHD understand what their diagnosis means. The second thing is for people to understand how serious ADHD is. It can ravage your lives if it goes unchecked. And the third thing is for people to learn how to support people in their lives that have ADHD. Especially when we talk about employers, it's really should be a selfish thing on behalf of employers who get more productivity out of your staff that have each day you understand how they work.

DM: Yashar Ali thank you for sharing your story.

YASHAR ALI: A pleasure. Thank you so much.

DM: Yashar Ali is a reporter for New York magazine and Huff Post who's been tweeting about living with ADHD. For more than 40 years Russell Barkley has been at the forefront of research on ADHD as it affects both children and adults. Russell Barkley is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center. We've reached him in Richmond, Virginia. Hello.

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Hello.

DM: What Yashar Ali just described for us, how common is it for adults living with ADHD to experience what he's experienced?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Well actually that's a very typical profile. I thought it was a brilliant synopsis of the difficulties. I think two key points that he made that are worth emphasizing is, first of all, ADHD is a disorder of performance. It's not a disorder of knowledge. So they don't have trouble with knowing what to do. They have trouble doing what they know and what they know they need to do, and that because ADHD is really a disorder of the brain's executive functions. The part of the brain that allows us to self-regulate. So it's not an attention disorder. It's an executive disorder but we keep calling it an attention disorder which I think trivializes it. The second thing is that ADHD is the worst disorder you can have and have to deal with time and time management. Time escapes them. They're really kind of adrift in life, and when he says that it can be very disruptive, if not terrifying, part of what adults say causes that is this disability with time. Imagine as an adult your life is so time sensitive to everything you've committed to do: work, deadlines, schedules, promises, contracts, bills. Now imagine that you can't sense time and even if you could, you couldn't use it to regulate your behavior. And you can begin to see how difficult this disorder can really be. So I thought it was absolutely brilliant summary of the condition.

DM: And something that clearly has so many impacts. I mean at adult ADHD largely went unrecognized until the early 1990s. Why?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Well that's correct. I think first of all it started out being described as a childhood limited disorder. And that's true back into the 1950s and 60s and so on. It was principally child mental health people who were studying it. And when I came into the profession the belief was widespread back in the 70s, that nobody had ADHD after adolescence. And that got overturned by the 1990s thanks to large scale follow up studies, one of which was being done in Montreal by Gabrielle Weiss and Lily Hechtman, two very prominent Canadian child psychiatrists, and they had followed their ADHD children up into adulthood and were reporting all of the difficulties their kids were having and that well over half of them were still diagnosable as adults. That figure actually is even higher now.

DM: How surprised were people to find out that this wasn't something that just faded away once the child grew up?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Well those of us who worked with these individuals were surprised because we followed them on our clinical practices and we knew it wasn't going away. It was the adult mental health community; psychiatry, psychology and so on that just could not seem to accept this idea that this trivial little hyperactivity and attention problem was, first of all, very serious, and second, very persistent over time. But you know that happened with autism, that happened with learning disabilities and other disorders. People didn't accept it. When they did they blamed parents for it. They didn't think that it was going to last. It wasn't serious. And of course we now know that those disorders which are in many ways more serious than ADHD - autism that is - are now lifelong disorders for many people.

DM: In the public discussion about ADHD it seems like it's often spoken about as a mental health issue, but one of the things that you're writing about is that there are all kinds of physical health consequences for adults who are living with ADHD. What are some of those physical health consequences?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Well you know for decades we've known that it's a mental health disorder that impacts education, occupational functioning, your social life and your emotional life. But beginning about a decade or more ago we started to see papers that were appearing from the larger [unintelligible] studies but other showing that there were health consequences. That people with ADHD not only smoked tobacco more often, drink more alcohol, eat a high-carb Western junk diet more than other people. We started seeing that at more than double the rate of obesity by late adolescence through adulthood. Then we started seeing that women with ADHD were prone to bulimia or binge eating pathology. Then 40 percent of ADHD kids and then later adults were found to have sleep difficulties. Then we began to find out that of course they were prone to cardiac disease because of all the things I've just mentioned. And then about three to five years ago a couple of papers appeared that showed a higher rate of deaths in childhood and then a subsequent paper done in Denmark using a population show that it was in adulthood.

DM: So what kind of life expectancy then can an adult living with ADHD expect compared to someone who doesn't?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: You talk about a gut punch. We were astounded at the result we got. I mean we knew there was going to be trouble because of all the earlier research but nobody had calculated life expectancy in ADHD until this paper which is-- here what we found. If you were diagnosed in childhood, regardless of whether you grew out of it or not, it was going to take on average about 9 years off your life and about a third of the kids it was going to be about 17 years, which was dramatic. But we also then split out the kid whose ADHD did persist into adulthood which is about two thirds of the kids. And when we did that we found that their average loss of life was 13 years on average. And again if you look for the upper third of that are at another 9 years and you're looking at 22 years for at least a third of these kids. Now let me put that in context so you understand that. Smoking reduces your life expectancy by six years and that assumes you're smoking 20 cigarettes a day or more. Obesity reduces it by a couple of years. Lack of exercise by a couple of years and so on. ADHD is worse than the top four health concerns that we have in our countries today combined.

DM: Let's talk about intervention then. I mean what needs to happen if we're going to improve that?

RUSSELL BARKLEY: Well I think the first thing is the patients themselves need to be aware of that. They need to know that because right now they focus on the occupation or the education or the social aspects of it. They need to broaden their lense to these health outcomes. How's your diet? How is your exercise? How's your sleep? How different your smoking and your use of other potential harmful substances? And we need to get those documented and under control. The second thing is that my colleagues in the mental health community do not know this. I've been speaking out for the last six months, thanks to our charitable organization and other organizations that promote awareness of ADHD, we've been talking about the ADHD as a public health disorder, not that just a mental health disorder. And I think our colleagues in mental health need to know that so that they can help our patients to again broaden the lens to look at your entire lifestyle. Let's look at your activities and so on so that we can begin to intervene and these life reducing risk factors that you have. And then I think for me step three is we need to go beyond that. And the primary care physicians who deal with these health consequences, you know, family practice, internal medicine, GPs, cardiologists. These Guys are dealing with the obesity, with the smoking, with the alcoholism, with the sleep problems and so on. But they don't know they're behind that curtain, the elephant in that room is adult ADHD. So they when the patient they're dealing with doesn't change the way they tell them to; doesn't lose weight, can't quit smoking, they blame the victim. 'Ah you're just motivated' or 'You just don't care' when what they should do is to immediately screen that patient for it all ADHD and treat the ADHD first. The treatment has life altering consequences but you're not going to be able to change your health and lifestyle if you don't get control of your ADHD.

DM: Russell Barkley thank you so much for sharing this with us.

RUSSELL BARKLEY: My pleasure Duncan and thanks for having me on the show.

DM: Russell Barkley is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and the author of numerous books including Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. He was in Richmond, Virginia.

SOUNDCLIP

I got the diagnosis around the year 2000, I was like, uh. This. Everything makes sense. Suddenly you realise why you are really good at starting stuff not finishing. Why you have so much on the go. Why you tune out. What happened then was I got such resistance from people around me. What are talking about? Your successful. You're a natural [unintelligible] You don't have ADHD. I was like Richard Branson owns an airline he's got ADHD. So I was so dismissed and kind of humiliated and angry. So the relief the anger the why didn't I know sooner. It's a toxic mix.

DM: That's the Canadian comedian Rick Green talking about being diagnosed with ADT when he was 47 years old. He's one of the many well-known Canadians who have been sharing their experiences as part of a campaign for the Center for ADHD awareness in Canada, Quebec. Heidi Bernhardt is the founder and president of that organization and has with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

HEIDI BERNHARDT: Hello.

DM: What does it mean to you to hear people like Rick Green, to hear Yashar Ali talking so openly about living with ADHD?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: It's phenomenal. Actually I know Rick well. We've known each other for years so he and Patrick McKenna were happy to help us out with this campaign but when we found out about this Twitter feed we were very very excited. Because our awareness campaign, ADHD Speaks, is all about trying to get people with ADHD, adults with ADHD and also parents of children with ADHD to start speaking out about it.

DM: You see 'trying' why is it so hard to get them to speak?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: You know what? It is surprising there still a huge stigma around ADHD. There's so much misinformation, mis-understanding. You know parents of children with ADHD will tell you they are afraid to share their diagnosis with schools, with friends, with family because of the response they get that 'Oh everybody's got ADHD' and 'Oh my gosh you know dragging these kids, are you?' That kind of thing. So the difficulty is when people don't speak out, it is also hampering our advocacy efforts.

DM: What do we know about how many Canadians have ADHD?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: We generally use worldwide statistics. So five percent of children, four percent of adults. The way we treat and understand ADHD is generally more synonymous about how it is done sort of world wide.

DM: Well you talk about treatment. I wonder how difficult is it for children or adults to get the help that they need once they determine that there's an issue there.

HEIDI BERNHARDT: Well you know for children being able - I mean obviously there's wait list for mental health - but for them to see a medical professional in ADHD and get a diagnosis is hugely difficult. For adults it is. We we've got a real lack of adult psychiatrist who are trained in ADHD or family physicians who have that training. But here's the other thing. We always say treatment has to be multi-modal, which means medication is one aspect, one possibility and it can be hugely beneficial but it should be education about ADHD; things like coaching, mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, all of those things are out of pocket costs.

DM: You mentioned the GPs might not necessarily have the training to be able to diagnose it. Why is that?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: They're not trained in medical school about ADHD. Actually adult psychiatrist even today give them very little training about adult ADHD. We're starting to change that. But if you have a psychiatrist who is trained 20 years ago he will know nothing about adult ADHD unless he's taken specific courses.

DM: So if you are a patient and think I've got something that I know is a problem that's impacting my life. You go to your doctor and it's not recognized. You go to your psychiatrist is not recognized. There's a stigma involved in telling people. I mean what's that like for someone who is trying to seek help.

DM: It's hugely frustrating. We have had a dance and a wait list for a year to see an adult psychiatrist only for that psychiatrist tell them I don't believe an idiot. I mean how frustrating is that end their entire life. As frustrating as people don’t understand. Where are these impairments come from. Most people just do it just do it right. Well they can't do it. That's the problem.

DM: So when we hear stories like Yashar Ali's, Rick Green's what needs to change to help people like them?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: I think people need to start speaking out about their ADHD, how impairing they find it in their life, in their relationships, in their workplace and basically in their functioning for people to become more aware of it. Now you know the parents of the kids with autism have done a great job at speaking out about it. Society is starting to understand that disorder more, and a huge Impact. Were not there yet with ADHD which is so sad because it is one of them most easily treated disorders out there.

DM: Yet you and your organization have been working at this very hard. What are the challenges that you face?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: A lot of the challenge is lack of understanding. When we tied to the politicians and they say, 'well, my constituents never talked to me about ADHD. We have parents come talk to me about autism so why should we care'. So our entire message on this ADHD speaks campaign where we're asking people to send us video clips or their stories or get on our Facebook page to share their stories. You need to start letting people know. It matters to you.

DM: It matters to you not just professionally. This isn't just your work. It's impacting you because your husband has ADHD, your sons have ADHD.

HEIDI BERNHARDT: Yes.

DM: How has it impacted you?

HEIDI BERNHARDT: My boys are grown and have their education successful working all that kind of thing. But when we were going through it, barely 30 years ago, when you know we started looking at this there was nothing. The support was not there for parents. When we talk about blaming parents that was there big time at that point. So that spurred me on and obviously [unintelligible] has my passion.

DM: Thank you very much for sharing it with us.

HEIDI BERNHARDT: Thank you for having me.

DM: Heidi Barnhart is the founder and president of the Center for ADHD awareness in Canada. She's with me in Toronto. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today Rock musician Hawksley Workman will be performing from his new album Median Age Wasteland. Finally today after hearing about the efforts of amateur athletes to gain a louder voice, let's end things or find some music selected by a Canadian Olympian. Last winter CBC Sports asked a number of Olympians to share their favorite songs for getting pumped up. Sebastien Toutan who went on to win gold in men's big air snowboarding picked their song. It's God's Plan by Drake. I'm Duncan McCue. Chi Miigwech. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: God's Plan by Drake]

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