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The Current Transcript for March 5, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Jane Philpott's resignation from cabinet clearly demonstrates a government in total chaos, led by a disgraced Prime Minister consumed with scandal and focused only on his political survival.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Opposition leader Andrew Scheer already laser focused on the ethics and leadership of the prime minister in relation to the SNC-Lavalin scandal was handed yet another powerful piece of political ammunition yesterday with the resignation of Jane Philpott from Treasury Board. Citing her core values and ethical responsibilities, saying it was untenable to continue, the rising star of the Liberal cabinet sent yet another shock through Ottawa, just as the opposition was preparing for more hearings into allegations of political interference in the justice system. In a moment we're looking at the implications. And then we bring you the story of five women jailed by the Chinese government for more than a month for their feminism.

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VOICE: All of them wanted their real names to be used because inside China the official government, the official media is just erasing and silencing them.

AMT: As the guards screamed at them and threatened them inside jail, the outrage grew outside China. Their detention became a cause celebre. What happened to them back in 2015 has catalysed the feminist movement and some believe it now has the potential to transform Chinese society. We will tell you more in half an hour. Also today when Tatijana met Brendan, it did not take long for them to agree they wanted to start a family together.

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VOICE: I've always known that I wanted to have two children. I explored all my options. It wasn't that I was determined to find a platonic co-parenting partner, it happened that my path stumbled across Brendan.

AMT: You heard that, they are platonic parents or elective co-parents, part of a growing group, but don't call theirs a loveless relationship. They will tell you their little family is all about love. Meet them both in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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SNC Lavalin affair: Philpott and Wilson-Raybould aren't lifelong Liberals, and some say that's the problem

Guests: Jason Markusoff, Susan Delacourt, Maureen Mancuso

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VOICE: I want my kids Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien to live in a country where they want to play outside and explore, where it's safe for them to do so because enjoying our natural world is a huge part of our Canadian identity.

AMT: Well the prime minister was really trying to change the subject last night, appearing at a rally in Toronto with a battery of supportive cabinet ministers and an earnest message on climate change. But the real story was the fact that hours earlier, one of his most influential cabinet ministers, the president of the Treasury Board, Jane Philpott had resigned, calling her continued service in his cabinet untenable. He couldn't avoid it.

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VOICE: I want to thank her for her service. In a democracy like ours and in a space where we value our diversity so strongly, we're allowed to have disagreements and debate. We even encourage it.

AMT: And he couldn't escape the hecklers.

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VOICE: But we have people who come here to engage in the democratic process. People here to listen, people here to support.

AMT: Well Jane Philpott had tweeted support for former justice minister and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould when she resigned three weeks ago. Ms. Wilson-Raybould cited undue political interference in the pending criminal prosecution of the engineering giant SNC-Lavalin when she resigned. Yesterday in her resignation letter, Ms. Philpott echoed those concerns writing, "I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one's principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them." Last week Prime Minister Trudeau announced Canada was heading for the moon. This week he underlined he wants to save the planet. Conservative opposition leader Andrew Scheer questions whether he can save himself.

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VOICE: Is this what you got into politics for? To prop up a prime minister who will subvert the law to win elections and benefit his friends. If not, it's time for them to stand up and be heard like Jane Philpott did today.

AMT: So let's get into this. Susan Delacourt is a national columnist and Ottawa Bureau Chief for The Toronto Star. She's in our Ottawa studio. Hi Susan.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What are you thinking?

SD: Oh another quiet day in Ottawa. You know I've been trying to think. I think you and I worked here quite awhile ago, but I've been trying to think whether I've seen anything like this before. We saw Lucien Bouchard leave Brian Mulroney's Cabinet back in 1990 and that was explosive. We saw Paul Martin leave Jean Chretien's cabinet. That too was explosive. But it's the two of these together, the the way in which they're leaving, the fact the way they've described the situation as being intolerable and the way they've taken down the prime minister along with them. I think it's been a long time or maybe never that I've seen anything like this.

AMT: Well Jane Philpott wrote in her resignation letter and I'm quoting here, "I've lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter." What is she referring to exactly do you think?

SD: Well it's interesting she's using the same words as Julie Wilson-Raybould, we'll remember that was last week. She's using the same words about confidence and what she is talking about apparently and we dont know the full story yet and I think you know we should all keep the brakes on, as much as possible to put the brakes on, she is talking about the way the prime minister's office was trying to get what we've been using a shorthand, a plea deal for SNC-Lavalin so that they could continue. They could plead guilty for crimes of fraud and corruption, but still get government contracts and not put 9000 people out of work. I guess that's the shortest way of saying it. It's called a deferred prosecution agreement. Up until February 7th of this year, we had no idea these conversations were going on. No idea that the cabinet was obviously at odds about it. No idea that Jody Wilson-Raybould felt that it was the reason for her cabinet demotion, but it's been going on six months. The more this story comes out, the more it is being portrayed and I want to like put a star or an asterisk on that, it is being portrayed as a concerted bullying effort by the prime minister against a woman minister and possibly illegal pressure against a minister. Again we are still in the early stages of getting people to talk about what went on behind the scenes. So far only two have.

AMT: And Gerald Butts of course.

SD: Tomorrow will be Gerald Butts, but we are now hearing that two ministers at least found this intolerable.

AMT: Jane Philpott has been considered one of the most widely respected ministers. She you know when she took that portfolio, Treasury Board, she was moved into it because of her ability to get things done. She was seen as someone who is senior who could really take that over when Scott Brison left. What does her loss mean for this government?

SD: It's huge reputational loss too. It's interesting in the case of these two women Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott are not longtime Liberals. They were not working in the trenches back in the day and they sent a signal that Trudeau wanted the best and the brightest from outside the world of politics. He has very much put those kind of people inside his government too. This is not a government of long time Liberals longtime liberals will tell you. Now you're seeing the problem of that. She excelled, Jane Philpott excelled at whatever she did. She started at health, she handled the assisted dying law with Jody Wilson-Raybould injustice. She then went on when Indigenous, Trudeau's relationship with Indigenous people needed boosting, she went into Indigenous services, a new ministry and when Scott Brison, she had been the vice chair of Treasury Board and so they moved her into that spot. Treasury Board is an important position. A lot of people don't hear about, it doesnt make headlines, but it basically decides a lot how the government spends money.

AMT: Inner gears of the government.

SD: Exactly.

AMT: Go through the Treasury Board. Susan, hang on there I want to bring in Jason Markusoff, he's the Alberta correspondent from Maclean's magazine. Hes in Calgary. Hi Jason.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Good morning.

AMT: How's it looking from Calgary?

JM: Well this is the problem when you get, when you have all these reports about about the Trudeau government and his senior allies bending over backwards it seems to aid a Quebec engineering company. When they tried to seem to not break the rules, but apply pressure to get the rules to go toward their favor potentially. You know disobeying rule of law. You see a lot of people out west saying well why can't they bend the rules and push the limits to get pipelines. There was a remarkable cartoon I saw in the Hamilton Spectator, where Trudeau and Gerry Butts and Finance Minister Bill Morneau are over a baby crib with SNC-Lavalin and in the corner are a desiccated cribs of the oil sands, the steel companies and auto sector. People are angry. I mean of course out west people already predisposed to disliking Trudeau. This only exaggerates that.

AMT: And you know the NDP MP Charlie Angus is calling it a watershed moment. What do you think Jason?

JM: You know I think it was Susan who said in her column in The Star this morning that old Oscar Wilde thing that to lose one minister seems unfortunate, to lose two seems careless. When this is an internal spreading disease or a problem within your caucus and your government, this is surely going to create some level of discomfort in the Trudeau team. It seems like most cabinet ministers are staying, but we could see some caucus members leave. We've already seen the the MP leaving. You know we could see more damage and it's not quite clear how or whether the Trudeau government wants to starch the bleeding in a way that may work with public.

AMT: Katie Simpson was reporting last night on CBC News that the remaining 33 members of cabinet are behind the prime minister. We saw some of them show up with him last night. What do you make of that rally last night, Jason?

JM: The rally I was watching it and Trudeau, he was in his classic campaign mode. It reminded me of the Trudeau we saw at rallies in 2015. It seems like one of his strategies will be to use that old campaign adage, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And he seems very content to put his energy and his attitudes and his prospectives towards climate change against that of Andrew Scheer. But how it doesn't seem like he can put his ethics up for you know for a great scrutiny against another politician.

AMT: Susan what do you make of that rally and the efforts to sort of change the subject?

SD: Yeah, Jason's right, it did look like a campaign rally minus the slogan from 2015, which is better is always possible because it's taken on a whole new light in this. Last week when it was only Jody Wilson-Raybould he had to worry about, I actually went around and made it my mission to talk to Liberals and see where things were headed and I was told that right now the caucas is split about 30-30-30. I believe actually the ministers are behind Trudeau, but I was told that it was a third are supposed Jody Wilson-Raybould and believing that she is saying some truth that has been evident to other people inside the caucas. That this PMO is way too tight, that it has its own rules and if you are not part of that group, you're out. Another third apparently was looking for both sides of this story, waiting to hear from Gerald Butts and you see a little bit of that on on Twitter and social media as well. And the other third are angry at Julie Wilson-Raybould and I would assume now Jane Philpott for wrecking their chances of re-election and they are very, very nervous about re-election and I think they should be.

AMT: I want to bring a third person into this conversation with an even wider view. Maureen Mancuso is the professor of political science at the University of Guelph. She's the co-author of the book, A Question of Ethics: Canadians Speak Out and she joins us from Guelph, Ontario. Hello.

MAUREEN MANCUSO: Hi Anna Maria. Good morning.

AMT: So I'm wondering, first of all, I want to start asking you as we watch this unfold, Susan made the point we've seen big resignations in the past. This one following on the heels of another resignation over ethical issues. Have we seen that?

MM: No necessarily in the same way. I would say that you know if you look at the history of scandals in Canada, they really fall into a number of areas and the ones that really have stuck are those that involves the misuse of public funds. So I would still argue that today the biggest and most impactful scandal in Canada has been the sponsorship scandal, which was just very organized and elaborate scheme of misusing public funds for both personal and political gain. I think that we definitely have seen where ministers have resigned from the federal cabinet. Take a look at Jean Charest. Remember in 1990 he was found to have improperly spoken to a judge about a case under his department of responsibility. So in essence, he was attempting to apply political pressure to a legal proceeding. He was kicked out of cabinet, but actually made his way back in a more senior role and then of course he went on to be the premier of Quebec for almost a decade.

AMT: Of course he was kicked out over ethical issues as opposed to leaving because there were ethical issues on the inside.

MM: Right. So I don't think we've seen anything exactly like what we're watching unfold right now, but what I would say is that it definitely is a scandal. And I think that there is a distinction between scandal and an act of corruption, I think scandal begins with a shocked public response to information that's revealed. And I think when you talk about scandal or you look at scandals, I think it really ends up being a question of how it's managed and what I would say right now is we're not seeing the prime minister doing a really great job of managing scandals.

AMT: So Maureen what questions do you have? As somebody who looks at ethics and you're watching this outside of Ottawa, what questions do you have?

MM: I would want to know what is it about cabinet's position that Jane Philpott felt that she couldn't support. Cabinet solidarity means that she can't tell us. I would want to know what explicitly was said to the Attorney General in a couple of key meetings, the first one with the prime minister. What was the actual facts of the discussion? I think we've seen some of that, but we haven't heard, we've heard from Wilson-Raybould, but we have not heard explicitly in a detailed way from the prime minister. I think that we've heard it and what has probably been the most forceful sort of testimony to date was from the clerk of the Privy Council and we've heard his version of events and tomorrow we'll hear from Gerald Butt. But it needs to be I think a complete public airing of what was explicitly told to Wilson-Raybould in those key meetings.

AMT: Susan we will also hear again from the clerk of the Privy Council tomorrow, will we not?

SD: Yes. I think that you know Michael Wernick stood up and gave what you know seems like a lifetime ago the most detailed presentation of what had happened, but it still had gaps in it and I think tomorrow the marquee event is hearing from Gerald Butts, the prime minister's principal secretary, old friend. A lot of people have never seen Gerald Butts in action. He operates behind the scenes. So for many Canadians that in itself is going to be interesting.

AMT: I just want to ask, Jason, I'm wondering, I'm guessing Gerald Butts wasn't expecting Jane Philpott's resignation to just go the day before.

JM: I would imagine it was a surprise, but he might have circled her as the most likely minister to resign given her affinity for Jody Wilson-Raybouldand their longtime alliance. It'll be interesting. We don't know Gerald Butts in public mode, except on his Twitter account. He's been remarkably active on Twitter and pugnacious for behind the scenes aid and if that gives a hint of where he's going with his testimony, if he's going to having taken the fall, throw punches from the ground and further inflames the situation when it seems like some humility from Mr. Trudeau may be in order, given that some of his most principled members of cabinet are resigning. It could further inflame things and make things more toxic. He may rally the troop.s The Liberals may be giddy that Gerry Butts giving a full throated defence and maybe casting aspersions on Jody Wilson-Raybould, but I'm not sure the public mood is for pugnacity, it might be more for humility at this point.

AMT: Susan you wrote that about a week ago I think that you know this is the end of sunny ways. Sunny ways are kind of gone now from that famous phrase from the prime minister. I'm wondering how you have seen Justin Trudeau change over, since those sunny ways, sunny days statements when he was first elected. What do you see changing in him?

SD: You know it's funny I was thinking of exactly that when Jason was just takling is that I covered Trudeau quite a bit before he became Liberal leader and then became prime minister. What I'm very much struck by is how little he says in public now. He was elected on authenticity and it wasn't just the sunny ways. I think he is a sunny person, but I think it was the authenticity that Canadians liked and I have been struck in the last few years by his retreating behind talking points. His ability to just step right in and be a politician who seems a tiny bit insincere and that's what came out last night. I want to hear the real Justin Trudeau and I've been struck by the ways in which I'm not and I think that's what is touching people inside who knew him as well too is, it's not just the seamy side of politics as usual, it's the crass and cynical talking and point inauthentic kind of politics that people are worried he's embraced.

AMT: And before I let you all go, Maureen what do you think of what Susan just said?

MM: I would totally agree and I think that's what the public is feeling as well. In the studies that we've done, we found that Canadians tend to give politicians a surprising amount of latitude for some types of issues, especially those involving their private lives or involving complicated rules of political behavior as long as no public funds were misused. But the one area where Canadians are especially upset is when politicians seem to have broken a promise. And I think Trudeau more or less promised that he would not be the sort of guy who would play this kind of politics.

AMT: Okay we'll leave it there and we'll all be watching as things unfold today. Thank you all of you.

MM: Thank you.

JM: Plesaure.

SD: Thanks.

AMT: That Is Susan Delacourt, national columnist and Ottawa bureau chief for The Toronto Star. She is in Ottawa. Jason Markusoff is the Alberta correspondent from Maclean's magazine. He's in Calgary. And Maureen Mancuso is a professor of political science at the University of Guelph and the co-author of A Question of Ethics: Canadians Speak Out. She's in Guelph, Ontario. We did request an interview with Jane Philpott. We were told she was not available today. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. Right after the news, standing up to patriarchal power can have some serious repercussions inside China. We'll hear from, we'll hear the story of five women arrested for their feminism and remain defiant. This is The Current.

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How the arrest of 5 Chinese women galvanized the country's feminist movement

Guests: Leta Hong Fincher

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

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AMT: Still to come, there are plenty of reasons why more and more people in non-romantic relationships are coming together to raise children. They call it platonic parenting. In half an hour, two co-parents and their son Milo join me to talk about what it's like in their very modern family. But first hearing women in China roar.

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[Sounds of women singing in Mandarin]

AMT: The words they're singing are do you also believe the world should be equal. This is a song that spreads equality and dignity, a song for all women.

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[Singing continued]

Let's break free they sing from the shackles and reclaim women's strength. You may recognize the tune of that song from the musical Les Miserables, but the new lyrics have become an anthem for feminist activists in China and the voices singing that song belong to the so-called feminist five. Five women who were rounded up and jailed by the Chinese government for 37 days in 2015. And as they sat in detention separated from one another, they sing that song, so each could hear they were not alone. Even as the guards screamed at them for betraying their parents and demanded they reveal the mastermind of their latest protest against sexual harassment. Their detention became an international cause celebre and a catalyzing moment for the feminist movement that had already started to make waves in China. It is a movement that my next guest argues has the potential to dramatically transform Chinese society and challenge the country's authoritarian government. Leta Hong Fincher is a journalist and a scholar. She tracks these fearless feminists in her book, Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China and she joins me from New York. Hello.

LETA HONG FINCHER: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Who are the Feminist Five? Tell me a bit about these women.

LHF: Well in 2015 there was a fairly large group of feminist activists in China in different cities. And the women were planning to celebrate International Women's Day by handing out ante's sexual harassment stickers on subways and buses in various cities. But before they were even able to carry out the activity. Chinese police in a lot of different cities rounded up feminist activists and detained them and ended up focusing on these five young women and bringing out all the women to the same detention center in Beijing where they were held for thirty seven days and it looked as though they were going to be criminally prosecuted for disturbing the social order and they became known as the Feminist Five.

AMT: What was it that had turned them into feminist activists in the first place?

LHF: Well this feminist movement had been active really since 2012. There were about 100 feminist activists who were carrying out different kinds of what they called performance art in different cities just to raise awareness about various problems with gender equality like the epidemic of domestic violence for example or gender discrimination in university admissions or. Sexual harassment in the work force and they hadn't really gotten in to trouble with the authorities before. I mean some of them had been questioned for a few hours but it was really a huge shock when these five young women were thrown in basically thrown into jail in 2015 out of nowhere.

AMT: Talk to us a little bit more about the kinds of protest they would hold because they were very creative. They had a sense of humor.

LHF: Yes well this was one of the hallmarks of their activism is that they were very witty. They chose topics that were they thought were not confrontational against the ruling Communist Party. So for example one of the actions that received a lot of even positive media attention inside China from the official in one news agency was an action they called Occupy Men's Toilets where they took over a men's public toilet for an hour and asked the men to leave and let women use the vacated men's stalls just to show that there are never enough toilets for women in public and that women need more toilets. Another thing that they did was protest mandatory gynecological exams for women applying for civil service jobs. And so a group of women in one city danced outside this civil service office wearing these giant paper underpants with the Chinese character for exam written and then crossed out with a big red X to protest this really invasive procedure that was only required of women and not of men for example.

AMT: So what prompted authorities like the decision to pick them all up and detain them at once?

LHF: I mean obviously there is no way to know for sure. We don't know what's going on you know in these internal conversations among elite Communist Party leaders, but I think that it had simply gotten to the point where this women's rights movement had become to be perceived as a potential threat by the Communist Party. And I think the authorities believed that in jailing just five of the women and that would send a message to the rest of the feminists that you'd better stop your activities or you're all going to wind up in jail. But that may have actually radically backfired because that because the women received so much media attention globally. What kinds of conditions did they face once they were detained they were subjected to various forms of pretty severe mistreatment and attention. Well to me was really striking was that on the first day when these feminist activists were detained that was in the middle of winter and they were held in this these rooms in a police station that had no no heat their coats were confiscated. There's no boots were confiscated and four of the five women the feminist five wore glasses and one of the first things security agents did was to confiscate their glasses. So that was extremely disorienting particularly for one of the activists who basically was blind without her glasses she couldn't see anything. And she described just being overcome by that sense of terror and extreme disorientation. I mean that's where the title of my book comes from betraying Big Brother because when this this woman started to hear the voices of other feminist activists around her through the walls of the isolation cell then she started singing out to let the others know that she was in there and they weren't alone and she describes just discovering the joy of betraying Big Brother.

AMT: And operative phrase there, isolation cell for handing out stickers.

Well that was the first day of detention where they were held in these isolation cells, but then after the first day the rest of the feminist activists were released for various reasons and the authorities focused on these young women, brought them to a formal detention center in Beijing.

AMT: Well let's listen to a little bit of that because I've got a clip from one of the women. She spoke in 2016 about what the guards did to her during her detention. Here she is.

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VOICE: They insult my sexual orientation just because they know Theresa is my girlfriend. If you go detention, what about your parents? Yes I worried about my parents because they're old, they are labor worker industries. So, but they insult my sexual orientation, it doesn't work, that's it. Because I am a lesbian. What's wrong? What's up?

AMT: Well she sounds matter of fact about things there, but you get a sense of how they're going after her family and you interviewed all of them since that time. How scared were they in detention?

LHF: Well I mean all of them were really terrified, particularly after the first few days because they were constantly being interrogated and intimidated and threatened by these security agents who were very skillful at getting inside the heads of these women. You know digging up extremely invasive intimate personal details. In one case, one of the women had a young child and the agents actually threatened to beat her young child.

AMT: You make the point that the status of women in China was deteriorating at this point. Tell me what's going on.

LHF: Yes well certainly the backdrop to the growth of this new feminist movement in recent years has been just soaring in gender inequality over the last 15 years in particular. So China was founded on the principle of gender equality and in that early communist era, the party would uphold these images of women being in working in these very traditionally masculine roles such as you know driving a bulldozer or being a welder and Mao Zedong said famously women hold up half the sky in the party assigned women jobs on Maussa. So China had this astronomically high female labor force participation but then with the onset of market reforms then the government began dismantling the planned economy at the end of the 1980s into the 90s and that accelerated even in in the 2000s. And so in recent years in particular we've just seen are dramatically rising gender wealth gap and plummeting female labor force participation rates increasing gender discrimination in hiring and then just on the broader population planning policy level or you used to have this for over 35 years the so-called one child policy but then a couple of years ago the government finally acted on falling birth rates in China and then just did a 180 degree turn around it implemented a new policy, the two child policy and so for the last two years we've seen just a huge barrage of aggressive propaganda, particularly aimed at educated young Chinese women urging them to get married and have babies before they turn 30.

AMT: And eventually the Feminist Five are released, but as you point out they became a cause celebre. Did their detention in a way become a catalyst for more activism, more feminist activism in China?

LHF: Well certainly, I mean that was one of the things that the Chinese authorities did not foresee. But it just galvanized so many women and men in the feminist community inside China and beyond the feminist community, so many people were outraged that these young women were jailed. So the government began a really systematic crack down on feminist activism starting with the jailing of the feminist five in 2015. So they're persecuting individual feminist activists. They're also banning some really prominent feminist social media accounts just stepping up their censorship of the word feminism on social media. But at the same time you've seen this remarkable growth in the numbers of people participating in a broader women's rights movement all across China. How are they communicating. Well even though there is this great firewall there's very aggressive Internet censorship there. It's not a total blackout. So there still are indeed a lot of individual feminists with individual social media accounts. And so even though they're subjected to a lot of censorship, they still are able to find ways to get around the censorship sometimes coming up with emoji, instead of hashtags that are censored.

AMT: And they came up with to get around the hashtag, instead of the hashtag Metoo, what did they use?

LHF: Right. When there was a big wave of censorship blocking out the hashtag MeToo one young feminist came up with the idea of using emojis. She came up with a Chinese that sounds like MeToo, but means rice and bunny rabbit. And then she said let's use the emoji for a rice ball and a bunny rabbit to get around the censorship and so that was pretty popular for a while, but again the Internet censors in China always catch on and after a while they caught on to that as well.

AMT: To what extent though has China had its own MeToo movement protesting sexual harassment and assault?

LHF: Well this was something that really surprised me because I thought that it would be impossible for MeToo to take off in China because of the intense internet censorship that because of the fact that there is no press freedom in China. So you don't have people you know institutions like the New York Times and The New Yorker are doing these big exposes of you know sexual harassment committed by powerful men like Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood that just doesn't exist it can't exist in China which is a very hostile political environment. But in spite of that I was really amazed that so first of all on the night of International Women's Day in 2018 last year the most popular feminist social media account called feminist voices was banned and then the next day the way to account for feminist voices was also about so that was a really heavy blow to the feminist movement inside China an end and it was a huge hindrance to the conduit and the distribution of feminist essays and messages. But even after that account was banned there was a big wave of universities students at dozens of campuses across China who signs these me to petitions calling on their universities to set up proper procedures to deal with sexual assaulters and sexual harassers on campus and there were thousands of university students and recent graduates of universities using their real names, signing these MeToo petitions.

AMT: I want to ask about you too because as you continue to research this and talk to the people you're talking to and really looking at this movement, you describe how it actually revived some long buried memories of your own. What can you tell us?

LHF: Well like so many other women around the world, I too was sexually assaulted in a real kind of gang assaulted when I was 15-years-old and it was just a memory that I had just pushed off to the side and I hadn't really confronted it. But then in the course of writing this book and conducting all these interviews with young women in China and talking about their experiences, it did revive my own personal memories and so it was very powerful and I thought that it was important to write a little bit about the fact that well you know I'm not just some detached academic observer, I'm also you know a woman, a survivor of pretty brutal sexual assault myself. Because this is such a personal experience so many millions of women can relate to it. That is part of the power of the women's rights movement in China that is unique about this movement in China which which explains its popularity and the fact that so many ordinary young women across the country in China are still keep popping up and are determined to come forward and tell their own stories of sexual harassment or sexual violence and this is partly why it's so difficult for the Chinese government to completely quash this movement.

AMT: I have another song I want to play here.

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[Clip of viral song about Chinese President Xi Jinping]

AMT: So this is a song about Chinese President Xi Jinping that went viral and the lyrics are, if you want to marry, marry someone like Xi Dada, a man full of heroism with an unyielding spirit. You talked a little bit above the pressure on young women to marry and have children. Talk to us a little bit more about the positioning of the president as the ultimate heroic man.

LHF: This part of what I describe as China's patriarchal authoritarianism. So part of it is that in addition to just the government wanting to relegate women to very docile subservient roles of dutiful wife and mother there is this very hyper masculine macho personality cult around the president Xi Jinping as part of this personality cults. There are a lot of videos and songs emerging around this label. He was called for a few years Xi Dada, which roughly translates to Big Daddy Xi. And so that song that you played it just shows these images of Xi Jinping in these really macho roles, showing that he is the man to defend China against these perceived threats coming from what they call so-called hostile foreign forces, seeking to undermine the Communist Party in China.

AMT: So how big a threat to the Chinese government is the feminist movement?

LHF: Well I mean the feminists themselves never come out and say anything remotely like you know we want to overthrow the Communist Party. That's not what they're about. Their power lies in you know raising awareness about issues that relate to women's daily lives. They described themselves as being politically subversive in any way but they are perceived by the government as a threat because well first of all under siege in pink there has been a general more aggressive assault on civil society across the board. So so anybody who shows themselves to be an effective organizer who can organize people around a cause is going to be seen as a threat. But in addition to that just the fundamental message of feminism is also completely contrary to what the Chinese government is very aggressively pushing now because it's trying to push women in to these traditional "feminine roles," but that message of feminism is completely the opposite of that. You should be free to do what you want. You should have control over your body and your life. And so that is also part of the perceived threat posed by feminism in China.

AMT: You know I'm really struck by the fact that when we look at China in lots of different contexts journalistically, we know China plays a political long game and in so many ways that is the feminist movement as well. They've captured the imagination of young girls and young women. That's a long game.

LHF: Well it really is and this is what gives me hope. There's so much very very grim news coming out of China, increasing repression just across and just a broad swath of the population, particularly ethnic minorities and also on women overall. But I really derive a lot of hope and inspiration when I look at these young women who you know these young women are living in an environment where they don't, they're in a police state. There are no elections for their leaders. They now have a president who could be their ruler for for a life. So they have very little chance of real lising their hopes and dreams within their lifetimes. But that does not deter them. They're so idealistic and I just think it's so inspiring for for the rest of us around the world when we're seeing the rise of authoritarianism in many ways globally and in the United States. I mean this is where I live now I am a US citizen. We're seeing a real assault on our democratic institutions but me. In so many ways you're still enjoying this so many freedoms we can choose our leaders you know we have the freedom to go out on the streets and protest. But if these young women you know are able to continue struggling and coming up with new ways to fight back in this most authoritarian powerful regime in the world then that really is fuel, that should be fuel for the rest of us, who are fighting our own battles wherever we are in the world.

AMT: Leta Hong Fincher, this is a fascinating story of these women. Thank you for going back and looking at this and tracking them and bringing us this story. Thank you.

LHF: Well thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Leta Hong Fincher's book is called Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China. She joined me from New York City. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us, coming up, bringing up baby outside the traditional nuclear family. A lot of people are doing that. In our next half hour we're going to look at the world of platonic parenting specifically. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current. And no, platonic parenting is not what you're joking about when you're just too tired because you're taking care of the kids.

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How 2 strangers struck up a platonic relationship online to have a child together

Guests: Brendan Schulz, Tatijana Busic, Rachel Hope, Andrea O’Reilly

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

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VOICE: Today we're going to see a story about one family and how they live together. About Tony and his sister Nancy. About mother who takes good care of the whole family and about father, who works hard for his family.

AMT: That was the 1940s. This is now.

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VOICE: Hi, I'm Melanie and this is little Lucy. I'm raising her with my coparenting partner Paul, whom I met through Modamily, an online community for finding a coparent or known sperm or egg donor. Modamily works a lot like a dating site, but instead of looking for a date, members are looking for someone to have and raise a child together without romantic involvement.

AMT: Modamily is one way to meet a coparent. Also called elective coparent or platonic parenting partner. It's how this family came to be.

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VOICE: M-I-L-O. I am Milo. I got it. Press that button.

Milo is two and a half.

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Sounds of Milo playing with a toy piano.

AMT: That's his big sister, Isadora.

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Probably the song that he likes the best and that he like jumps up and down and dances to when I play it on the piano. My mom says it's cause when my mom was pregnant with him, I was playing that song and like still likes it now.

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VOICE 1: I press a button.

VOICE 2: You did?

AMT: And mom, Tatijana Busic.

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VOICE 1: You like your music, huh?

VOICE 2: And mummy and Milo.

AMT: And they're also playing with Milo's dad, Brendan Schulz.

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VOICE 1: What's that?

VOICE 2: What is that?

VOICE 1: Really big tower.

VOICE 2: So right now we're at Milo and dad's house. All four of us are here building some blocks and jumping on the bed and having some fun play before dinner time.

AMT: Tatijana and Brendan's family started out as a match made online, as many do, but they were never looking to meet a romantic partner. They were looking to meet a stranger who would coparent a child. That's what they're doing and they're with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

TATIJANA BUSIC: Good morning.

BRENDAN SCHULZ: Hi there.

AMT: I was watching you listening to the kids. You're really proud.

BS: Yeah.

TB: Yeah.

AMT: So let's talk about this. Why did you choose what we call platonic parenting as a way to have a child? Tatijana why don't you start.

TB: Well for me there ws a bit of an organic process to it. I was in my mid to late 30s and I was single and I've always known that I wanted to have two children. At the time my daughter was about seven. And so I explored all my options. It wasn't that I was determined to find a platonic coparenting partner. It happened that through that organic kind of exploratory learning process, my path stumbled across Brendon.

AMT: And Brendan, what made you want to pursue this?

BS: Yeah, parenting was always part of my plan as well. As a gay man, I knew that I would not be going a traditional route for that and coparenting was always my first choice. I don't know, I think that the connection with my child's mother was important to me, but also the desire to form a family and not just have a child.

AMT: Well I want to hear how you two ended up choosing each other and we know it all started with that website, Modamily. So Brendan, what's it like to set up a profile to find a match for a coparentt?

BS: I wanted to make it very clear that I was only interested in a 50-50 coparenting kind of set up, but you know it's really just a starting point. It's a starting point to hopefully connect with people and then go from there.

TB: Our first encounter very similar to what you can do online dating is we met for a quick coffee. What I thought was going to be a quick coffee turned into a coffee over several hours on a Sunday afternoon on a beautiful fall day and we realized very quickly that we had good friendship chemistry. We liked each other instantly and we knew that we wanted a second "date.".

AMT: And so you end up going on platonic dates, you keep meeting up.

TB: Brendan spent time with my daughter, met each other's families, we vacationed together to Europe. We really committed to get to know each other, build trust and learn about what our vision was in terms of the kind of family we wanted to cocreate.

AMT: So as you go through this and you talk and you see each other in different settings and you meet each others friends. When do you each say yup I could have a child with this person? I could coparent with this person? How does that process take place?

BS: Well for me it was certainly we had a sort of a significant moment that came together. I don't know how long it had been, eight, nine months kind of into our knowing each other. And Tatijana had suggested that we sort of share a list of things that was important to us.

TB: I called it the magical wishlist. Anything goes on that list.

BS: Mine turned into sort of a letter essentially that I wrote her kind of thing and the whole thing just why I wanted to be a parent and where it stemmed from and what was important to me and it just kind of flowed out and Tatijana saw my letter and her mom was taking care of her daughter, she called her said we're going to need some more time. I think we ordered some more wine and we just talked. I mean we just shared, we really it's just we dropped to a deeper level at that point. For me I realized then this was it. Tatijana was who I wanted to have a child with.

TB: Brendan's letter was like beautiful. Then it was a matter of okay now let's see how much time do we need in terms of our career. I was in graduate school at the time. So there were some planning that needed to go into when would be the right time to start trying.

AMT: You did something else I think it's interesting, I want to talk about it. You actually, you're platonic dating, but you agreed that you weren't going to do any kind of romantic dating on the side with other people, you were really going to concentrate on this for yourselves.

TB: The idea was that ideally, neither of us would have a significant significant other during Milo's first year of life. It's not that we weren't allowed to date or live our lives and do our thing, but you know there were some talk around just the investment in each other and really having the emotional energy for one another for this time frame.

BS: Yeah it's really just making us and our family the priority.

AMT: How did your friends and family react when you told them that this is what you guys were doing?

BS: For me friends were not surprised because I talked about having a child for 20 years. So that was not a surprise. People had questions because the coparenting model was new to a lot of people. I told my parents you know about Tatijana and it was sort of the next morning my mum said you know I've been thinking about this all night and this just sounds so smart. She said and thought you know this might be the way of the future she figured. So it went over very well in concept and then it was really locked in once they met Tatijana and it all became quite real.

AMT: And Tatijana what about your friends and family?

TB: There was some diversity in terms of how people respond. I think for me because I'm not queer it was a little bit outside the box. You know the expectation would be that if I was to have another child it would be in a more hetero-normative context. And so some folks you know my life like oh well what does that mean. And so is there some sort of educating and demystifying that I had to do. Of what are called parenting family partnership looked like.

AMT: Did you draw up a contract of any kind?

TB: Our letters that night that we wrote to each other became the contract.

AMT: Not a legal thing, but a real understanding between the two of you.

TB: Correct.

BS: We wrote this prior to to her even being pregnant and so we had things around scheduling, things around finances, we had things around culture, around visiting family, about vacations and it kind of just gives character to sort of the hopes that we have for how we raise our son.

AMT: And so how has that been working since Milo was born?

TB: From the moment that I was pregnant I haven't looked back. It's just one of the smartest decisions I've made in my life. It's not that cold parenting is the smartest decision I've made it's who I've chosen to father my child and create a modern family with.

AMT: Isadora, how did she react to all this?

TB: I gave Isadora, I was cognizant of giving her the time to form her own relationship with Brandon and not putting any expectations on her in terms of whether Brendan would be more of an uncle role or it's up to her and him, so I also have a coparenting relationship with my ex-husband who's her father and he also lives close to us and he and Brendan actually get along and we see each other at children's birthdays and everyone's together.

AMT: It's interesting because I was going to ask you what's the difference between what you guys are doing and what somebody might be doing who's divorced or out of a relationship and sharing custody where they're not fighting over custody. What's the difference?

BS: Tatijana and I are actively continuing to build our relationship together and maybe that's the difference although others could do that same thing certainly.

AMT: And you don't have the breakup baggage.

BS: Yeah, there's none of that. You know sometimes when people learn that I'm coparenting and that we're in two homes they got this look on their face like oh you know there's been a failure kind of thing. There's been no failure here. This is actually bydesign exactly what we wanted and in fact it's better than either of us imagined it.

AMT: And is there anything you worry about for the future, anything you're being mindful of as you go forward?

BS: I think we have all the same worries that any parent has. I've had somebody asked me one time well you know will you tell Milo or how will you tell Milo and I kind of that, what will we have to tell him. Like he'll grow up knowing that he's in two homes and that both of his parents love him and his parents love each other. He'll eventually discover that it's not as traditional that there isn't sort of a big reveal moment for him. It's how his family works.

AMT: Well this is wonderful. Congratulations.

BS: Thank you.

TB: Thank you.

AMT: Thanks for sharing your story.

BS: Thanks so much for having us.

TB: Our pleasure.

AMT: Brendan Schulz and Tatijana Busic are coparents of their son Milo and they were in our Toronto studio. Well there is now an app for it. Platonic parenting isn't entirely new. Our next guest was a pioneer in so-called elective coparenting, where she had her first child almost 30 years ago. Rachel Hope is the author of Family by Choice. She has two children who were conceived and raised through platonic parenting arrangements. She joins us from Los Angeles. Hello.

RACHEL HOPE: Hello.

AMT: What did you think of my last two guests?

RH: I'm tearing. Tears of joy because they are incredible role models for the way to do this model, beautifully with love, with intention with clarity. I'm very impressed. I would love to meet them.

AMT: Well you're the pioneer. So tell me about your family.

RH: Well you know I was an environmental activist and cared very passionately about raising family who are committed to their vision and values, I love that. But I had no confidence whatsoever in the normal plan. 50 percent of families were falling apart. My grandparents even got divorced. So I was not going to go down that road and I had to sort of socially innovate is solution. So a colleague of mine we came up with this idea like well why don't we have a child based on what's the best interest of the child. We just decided do this bold thing and it worked. That was a long time ago.

AMT: So the father of your first child is you have a son, right?

RH: Yes.

AMT: 28-year-old and it was a co-worker.

RH: Well yeah. He was the finest person I had ever met. He had incredible vision. We had the same values system and I loved with Tatijana said. She said I chose the best father for my child. That's what I did. He didn't want anything to do with marriage and neither did I. We were real cause people.

AMT: And so this was 28 years ago when a lot of people you know families were not as diverse as they are today or at least if they were, we didn't always hear about it. Did you ever have doubts?

RH: Oh yeah. We were shaking our boots, like oh my gosh are people going to shun us, is our kid going to be teased? I mean back then we never even heard of such a thing we just thought we were doing this radical thing mostly to avoid the pain that we had growing up in a broken home where there is contention and anger and hostility. Neither one of us wanted to take a chance that that would ever happen to our child.

AMT: And what kind of reaction do you get when you tell people what you were doing?

RH: Well we kind of just kept to ourselves initially. Some of our closest friends knew about it but we packed up when I was pregnant and moved to Hawaii and started a fresh start and then little by little kind of revealed the true nature of our unique family. But initially we cannot just cover it up. And I actually lied to my grandmother, which I regret to this day. She never forgave me. So I recommend that nobody cover up what they're doing and really really be honest and open like Brendan and Tatijana did.

AMT: And so how did you deal with shared custody when your son was a baby? Were you living together, were you living side by side? What did you do?

RH: We made an agreement that while he was still really little we would live in the same house and same property, which we did. We ended up living on the same probably for almost his whole life. Side by side houses.

AMT: So you have a 28-year-old son and you have a 10-year-old daughter?

RH: Yeah.

AMT: So when you decided you wanted a second child, did you coparent with the same father?

RH: I really wish. My son's dad, he was like a zero population guy. He wanted to when and done, replace himself and he's older too and he's in his 60s now and he wasn't up for doing it all over again. So I had to find a new person to have another child with. And it was tough to find a parenting partner I had to look within my community or friends of friends and that's kind of an awkward and sometimes embarrassing thing. Hey you know anybody who might want to have a child with me? I mean that's why it took me so long. I couldn't find anybody who really wanted to agree to a parenting partnership. And finally I talked our son's godfather into it.

AMT: And so what's the difference between this time and last time in terms of how you coparent?

RH: The first time was really clean and organized. It was us and this time is way more complicated. We started out as just he was going to be a known donor with very hands off. Didn't want to be really involved in parenting. He felt you know he was older, heading towards retirement and I said fine. All that changed radically. He and his beautiful daughter completely, they bonded. They couldn't help it. It wasn't going to be this uncle thing, it wasn't going to last.

AMT: There has been a lot of formal study of children raised by parents in a platonic arrangement, but you let us talk to your daughter. Let's listen to what she had to say about her family.

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VOICE: My name is Mary-Grace Hope. I am 10-years-old. My mom never married my dad. They never had a real relationship. Basically they gave the genetics to a scientist I think and like I was made in a lab or something. That's what I remember. My mom has her own house, a separate house and my dad has his own little cottage house. It's quite different. It might be like really different, but I don't know because I mean I've never been in a regular family. I don't know the differences, but like I've been wondering these questions maybe like my whole life. Is it funner? Is it better? Do they give you more stuff or something? Do you think it would be easier? Like just those kind of questions. A lot of my friends, they always ask me if my parents are divorced because I always say they're not in a love relationship. So like and they're always like are they divorced? And I'm like no they never dated, they never get married and they're like what? But if I tell them once, they never really ask me and they don't care.

AMT: Rachel Hope, what do you think about that?

RH: Oh, she's so cute. Yeah she's been talking more about it because we have, her really close friend, her parents are getting divorced now and she's making these comparisons like wow that's never going to happen to me right. So I'm glad that she doesn't know the pain of a breakup in her family.

AMT: She says my parents never had a real relationship.

RH: I know that kind of made me a little bit sad, but really what counts is am I getting my needs met? Am I wanted? Am I loved? Can I count on my mom and dad? That's the thing that's really going to stay with a child and she's going to figure out all these things as she gets older. Every kid does.

AMT: It's interesting what else she asked, is it funner, do they get more stuff.

RH: That's what she wants to know. Can I get more stuff?

AMT: So your son is 28. What has he said to you about being raised by coparents as he looks back now?

RH: He says you know I have always just taken it for granted that I had this intact family and I could count on you mom and dad. And in some ways I was privileged. Wow okay. Thinking I was so scared when I had him I was pregnant with him you know praying that he wouldn't feel like we heard alienated or an outsider because of his unique family. He went to school and we sat him down at the family meetings said is anybody seething to you tell you your definer is a really rare that we're not married we just live in the house we raise you together like that and he said yeah and everyone's fine with it. I don't know why you're trippin. You know he's looked at us, it's you know why are you even asking me this? You know obviously people respect our family and I'm proud of my family.

AMT: Rachel Hope it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

RH: Yeah. I really hope that everybody follows that wonderful family's example. I'm really impressed to see it working just beautifully.

AMT: Rachel Hope chronicles her experiences in Family by Choice: Platonic Partnered Parenting. She joined us from Los Angeles. While statistics on the prevalence of coparenting are still emerging or not really available, Andrea O'Reilly has studied the evolution of marriage and families. She's a professor at York University's School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies. She's in Bradford, Ontario. Hello.

ANDREA O'REILLY: Hello.

AMT: How new is the idea of what we're calling platonic coparenting?

AO: Well I think in naming it, I think it's quite new. Having said that your previous guest was doing it 30 years ago. Families have always taken new forms depending on circumstances. Certainly 200-300 years ago in rural societies around the globe it would have been far more common to have more flexibility more ambiguity on what counts as family. What's different now is that it is deliberately chosen so I think in the past it would have been because of circumstances so let's say you know a woman died and the and might have you know raised the child with the remaining sister, but not a romantic context. And I think what's new today is that people want to have children and they are saying why do I have to do it through marriage.

AMT: To what extent is addressing a failure of the traditional nuclear family?

AO: Oh I think it is. You know there's so much research that has shown that the nuclear family is a relatively recent historical formation. You know it only came about maybe you know in the 1800s you know in 30s, 40s, 50s with you know when societies moved to urban environments and families became smaller and they lived in cities as opposed to rural. And I don't think it's been successful at speak loudly and you know divorce rates hover and they were higher you know in the 80s and 90s but they're still hovering around 30-40 percent. I mean I'm not against, obviously you know monogamous marriages or partnerships, but with such a high rate of failure, I think that forces us as a society to think Is this really the best way to partner? Is this really the best way to raise children? So people are doing it all kinds of ways now. There's blended families. There's common law relationships. There's queer partnering. There is non-custodial parenting. So I think people who want children are thinking maybe there's a different better way to do it.

AMT: How do you think the division of labor and responsibility between parents compares between traditional parents and platonic coparents?

AO: We really dont know. I mean there hasn't been to my knowledge is to you know substantive research on what core parenting looks like in practice. I suspect it would be far more egalitarian. We know that traditional marriages are not and that really hasn't changed despite feminism and despite women's increased numbers in the paid labor force women are still doing the bulk of domestic labor homemaking and child rearing. And I think traditional marriage is based on love and romance fall very quickly into gendered patronage and trajectories. And I think if you're consciously choosing parenting you're doing it as partners, you're not doing it as husband and wife.

AMT: You know there are people who believe that those who believe in traditional marriage who have been critical of coparenting who have said that the psychological effects in the children have not yet been studied in this family model. How do you respond to that kind of concern?

AO: Well fair enough it should be done, but you know we've had this conversation every time there's a new family formation. You know people get hysterical and say oh the children. And I'm in a common law relationship and have been for close to 37 years and even then you know common law you know I was getting 30 some years ago when I broke the children in their psychological and I'm like you know children need love. They need commitment. They need care and whatever formation that becomes possible is good for children.

AMT: How do you see the family model evolving in the future?

AO: I think it's evolving as we heard in exciting new ways that respect and reflect what is going on in our larger society. You know people you know what's romantic or reminisce about the 19 you know 50s family with the wife at home in you know the husband after work that family existed for about 10 years in our human history. That was an anomaly. It was an exception it was post-war. So I think were our families or adapting to the changes that they were experiencing. And I think related to that is what we're calling you know delayed adulthood. We are having families later. And so I think women are saying well I want to have a child why do I have to wait to find the right partner. So I really think separating marriage and motherhood or fatherhood apart allows that possibility for people to plan families without having sort of a deadline.

AMT: Okay well Andrea O'Reilly, thanks for your thoughts on all of this.

AO: Well thank you for having me.

AMT: Andrea O'Reilly, professor at York University's School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies. She joined us from Bradford, Ontario. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. The Vancouver band Said The Whale is going to be on the show. Now there was news yesterday that the actor Luke Perry died. He was 52-years-old. He had a massive stroke. We're going to leave you today with part of a story about him from the CBC podcast, Love Me. Renee Brown Chang was a big fan of the TV show Beverly Hills 90210 and its star Luke Perry back in the 1990s. She was also a socially awkward 13-year-old at the time and felt even more out of place because of a golf ball sized benign tumour on her face. After she won a contest in Seventeen magazine to visit the set of Beverly Hills 90210, she fantasized that it would be the beginning of a new life with her crush Luke Perry. We'll leave you with what happened next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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VOICE: Luke introduced himself as if he needed an introduction. Here we go. Cue the music. This was the beginning of our wild romance. This was the beginning of my new life and then it happened. I started to sob uncontrollably and snot gushed out of my nose all over Luke's shirt. I think I even peed my pants a little. It was as if all my body fluids were fighting to be closer to Luke. I started hyperventilating. This wasn't going according to plan. Why was God letting this happen? Didn't I already pay my dues with the golf ball eye and a limp? It seemed everyone on set was now looking at me. I was just staring at Luke with tears streaming down my face and snot pouring out of my nose. And then he leaned over and kissed my forehead. Luke Perry wrapped his arms around me. I couldn't breathe. More snot and tears gushed out of me. Luke just held me and patted my hair. I couldn't stop beaming. Luke Perry kissed me. Me. He saw past the tears, snot, braces, larger than life glasses and kissed me and I wasn't perfect, but that was okay. No need to escape this time. No need to hide.

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Mar. 5, 2019 episode transcript

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