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The Current Transcript for September 29, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: There's a good chance that some of our audience won't be able to come back. We can do a smaller show with a smaller house and do a longer run.

MATT GALLOWAY: The cliche is that the show must go on. The cliche perhaps did not meet the coronavirus. In the midst of this pandemic, theatres remain dark across Canada. Seasons cancelled and those who work on the stage and behind the scenes scrambling to make ends meet. In 30 minutes, a look at what's ahead for the performing arts in this country. Also this morning, there are 34 days until the U.S. election. How it's going to unfold is anyone's guess, but Peter Strzok has some clues.

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VOICE: That government is actively involved right now and their head of that government, Vladimir Putin, working as we speak to get Donald Trump re-elected. And we know that because his own administration is telling us that.

MG: The former FBI agent helped lead the investigation into the possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. In an hour, he explains why he's worried about what Russia is capable of this time and why the revelations about the president's financial situation are cause for alarm. With COVID cases surging in Canada's two largest provinces though, we begin with the effect of a second lockdown on already stretched small businesses and why it's so difficult to trace who's been infected with the virus. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Canada’s contact tracing ability is lagging – leaving us vulnerable to more lockdowns

Guests: David Ferguson, Carl-Etienne Juneau

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VOICE: Today's numbers are deeply concerning and our health officials are telling us that Ontario is now in the second wave of COVID-19. It'll be worse than the first wave we faced earlier this year. The reality is it's up to each of us. Together, our collective actions will decide if we face a wave or tsunami.

MG: Ontario's premier Doug Ford announcing what most already suspected, COVID's second wave with 700 new cases yesterday. Quebec is faring no better. 750 new cases were announced in that province, prompting this announcement from premier of Francois Legault.

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VOICE: I'm announcing that the region of Montreal, the Capitale-Nationale and the region of Chaudiere-Appalaches are switching to red alert. Bars, dining rooms and restaurants will be closed starting October 1st. Theatres, cinema and other gathering places will also be closed. And we're working on measures to compensate the owners. We're announcing new measures for the red zones, but we also need to reduce our contacts everywhere in Quebec. We cannot wait for the red alert to act.

MG: The red zone also means that home gatherings are banned. Masks must be worn during demonstrations. No more than 25 people in houses of worship and people have to stay two metres apart. Those measures directly affect restaurant owners like David Ferguson. He's the chef and owner of Restaurant Gus and a partner in the takeout restaurant, Lou. He's in Montreal. David, good morning.

DAVID FERGUSON: Good morning.

MG: How did you react when you heard those new restrictions yesterday?

DAVID FERGUSON: It was almost a relief. We'd been sort of sitting with the sort of damocles above our head for the last two, three weeks. We were never sure what was going to happen. So it's kind of nice to know. It's like now we can plan. And also, at the end of the day, you know, we want to make sure our citizens and, you know, we're citizens first, then business owners after.

MG: Your business is now closed though, right?

DAVID FERGUSON: One business is closed. The other one's for takeout. But the first business, yeah. My principal business is closed right now.

MG: And do you, I mean, as you say, your citizens first, do you think it's a difficult decision to close down a restaurant, but do you think that it's necessary in the larger scheme of things?

DAVID FERGUSON: Well, let me unpack that a bit. The last month, the Legault government came out with this colour scheme. And as we went from green to yellow, yellow to orange, every week, the business went down. Every time the colour changed, the business went down. So regardless of whether we are opposed or not in red, we would've been effectively being put out of business anyways. So now, did we need to be closed? That's up for debate a bit. The problem is, is that we haven't had any strong regulations that have been enforced. So there wasn't any good consumer confidence in restaurants, even though there should have been because we are doing a very good job.

MG: What is this going to mean for you? I mean, this is 28 days. It may extend longer than that, but you've already been through a first wave. So what is this going to mean for you?

DAVID FERGUSON: Well, the good thing is, is that we've been through the first wave and when it first happened back in March, we had no idea what was going to happen. So we've been sort of keeping our staff just at the core level so that we weren't overextending ourselves leading up to this. We were keeping our inventories low. Yeah, it's frozen. It's like you're, but the good thing about being frozen is that 40 percent of a restaurant's operating costs is labour. So if the labour stops, the bleeding kind of stops. And the fact that we know that's only for 28 days sort of gives us a way to plan. And, you know, we can talk to our suppliers, we can talk to our banks and this and that, and we can have a strategy. The other, when we locked down in the in the spring and it was just constant speculation of when we're going to reopen, that was much more difficult.

MG: If it continues beyond 28 days though, I'll use your language, how long can you stay frozen for without the restaurant collapsing?

DAVID FERGUSON: Talk to my landlord.

MG: Well, that's it right? I mean bills are still due, right?

DAVID FERGUSON: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the government with the wage subsidy, I mean, I'm in a better position than maybe others because I have a small operation. I think that's an individual business dilemma. Like, some will be fine, some will not. Some didn't even come back the first wave. I know a few restaurants that just reopened two weeks ago for them. I think that's going to be more difficult. I think there's two issues, though. There's there's a short term and then there's a long term. And the short term we have to our government leaders and particularly our cities have to come up with health plans that give consumers confidence in the restaurants again. And I'll look to I'll point to a city like Toronto that has in the front of the windows those health codes. And if you're green, you're good. And people know that you've been inspected and everything and everything's functional. I think we have to have a sort of a covert certification where the city comes by, cheques you out and says, hey. You're you're okay. You're functioning properly. You're doing the right things to protect the clients because we're gonna be living with this for a long time. And the point is, we have to live with it and we can't just fight against it. It's like winter. You have to live with winter. You can't fight winter. So for us to come back strong, I think the city has to give us a clear definition of what we're doing, how we're doing it, and give the consumers the confidence that these businesses are operating to the best of their ability.

MG: Let me just ask you two quick questions in the last minute or so that we have. One is we hear these apocalyptic predictions of what's going to happen. The hospitality industry or huge parts of it could be wiped out. Do you worry about that? That the restaurants that, you know, helped bring life to the cities that we love could be facing this existential threat?

DAVID FERGUSON: Absolutely. What I think is any trend that was in play jumped ahead 10 years. So the whole working from home, the Zoom meetings, if you think about the typical hop business meeting between Toronto and Montreal, person flies in, they have lunch after the business meetings over, they go out for dinner and then they fly back to Toronto. That's not going to happen anymore. People now know they can do Zoom and they'll get it all done. That businesses are going to save lots of money. But when you think of that person travelling throughout their day, they're eating and they're going out and they're spending money as they go through the day. That's all going to change. And, you know, one of the amazing things, if I just want to say, is that like with the environment, the whole world's shutting down, cleaned up the environment like nothing else. And restaurants for the longest time focused on how we bought our goods and trying to buy local. This and that. But we never looked at where our clients were coming from. And when our clients started coming local, then the environment was really changed and really cleaned up.

MG: I was going to say.

DAVID FERGUSON: Sure, go ahead.

MG: Well, and part of that is also just seeing how this affects you. I mean, in just a couple of seconds, you throw yourself into a business like this. I just wonder, what you know, the last six months or so have been like for you personally?

DAVID FERGUSON: Personally, it's been amazing. I mean, it's really made me rethink about my life and how I'm looking at things and what's more important to me. And I realize my kids being in school is much more important to me than my own personal business. Businesses come and go and it's tragic and I've already lost the business before my career and it's really hard to go through. This one was more of giving it up to the fates and we'll get through, but yeah, it's been really eye opening. It's really been culturally eye opening as well, hust how how we embrace what we are.

MG: I wish you the best of luck, David. It's good to talk to you.

DAVID FERGUSON: Thank you, Matt. That's great. Thank you.

MG: David Ferguson, chef and owner of Restaurant Gus and a partner in the takeout restaurant, Lou. He was in Montreal. Trace, test and isolate. As numbers spike in Quebec, those are the strategies that public health officials are turning to in order to stop the spread. But that province and the rest of the country may not be tracing cases well enough to make any sort of difference, according to a study from University de Montreal this summer. It's part of a problem that in a province has been sounding the red alert, as we've been hearing. Carl-Etienne Juneau is a public health PhD, co-author of a recent study on contact tracing with Université de Montreal researchers. Carl-Etienne, good morning to you.

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Thanks for having me, Matt. Good morning.

MG: If you take a look at the situation just in your home province, are the steps that were announced yesterday, do you think, enough to help slow the increase in the number of cases in Quebec?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Yes, I think they will slow it down. I think they would probably be even enough to bring them back down.

MG: What's next, people say, is that you need to be able to, as I said, trace and test and isolate. Figure out where those cases are spreading, figure out how that's spreading. You've been studying the impact of contact tracing on controlling the virus. In a best case scenario, how efficient does it need to be to really make an impact? We talk about contact tracing a lot, but how does it need to work at its at its best?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Absolutely. So the main conclusion and we looked at all the studies that have been done for contact tracing for COVID-19 and contact tracing alone could stop the pandemic. If you do it quickly enough, so that's less than three days from the moment someone has symptoms, you test the person, you find the contacts, you quarantine at least 80 percent. And this is the other big part of the equation. You have to reach enough people. So you have less than three days to reach each percent of people and quarantine them with no further transmission.

MG: It could stop the pandemic?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: It could stop the pandemic. And we have examples for countries who have done it.

MG: Is Quebec anywhere near that level of efficiency?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Well, I don't believe so. Just looking at new cases going up than we can see, it's it's probably too slow and we're probably not contacting enough people. And perhaps people are not staying home enough or still passing on the virus after we call them.

MG: There are questions as to whether it's too late to get on to that programme to be able to make a real difference. Jean Nicolas Aube is a spokesperson for Montreal Public Health. We spoke with him on Friday. Listen to what he had to say.

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VOICE: We do face some challenges. We face some challenges with folks that don't answer the phone. Sadly, folks that don't want to give us information about their contacts, because if you are ashamed. Some people see the number of public health and they are afraid to answer. We even develop new strategies, noise of contacting them. So over the course of last week, we started to use a bike courier service to send letters to people that don't answer their phone. We're trying all the strategies that we can use to reach the population. People really have to answer the phone when we call them, because if you answer the phone to one of our tracing teams, it's an opportunity to stop the spread of the virus. And it's the most important thing that we have to do as a province right now.

MG: Carl-Etienne Juneau, aside from telling people to answer the phone, how do you go about fixing contact tracing?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: We could do the test and give people test results fast. This summer, there were people in the news who say who said they waited up to a week to get their results back. And I haven't heard from that lately. But I know that people around me, some people got their results in one day. Some people got their results in three to four days. If you get just your results back in four days, then it's some too slow to stop the pandemic as you have to do the whole process of testing and tracing. In less than three days.

MG: Dr. David Fisman, who is a public health professor in Toronto, says it's too late to fix contact tracing. The numbers, he says, are too high, and that, as the phrase says, the horse is out of the barn already. Do you agree?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Yes. Yes. I would say that's true for now. There is still room for improvement. And I wonder how long it will be until this process is done well. We've been in this pandemic for six months and the test results are still coming in in four days. In Montreal last week, it was in the news that they would only trace the risk, the contacts at the highest risk. So basically, they're not calling everyone anymore. I wonder why they're doing that and what it's going to take before we can do this whole process well and not have to close down businesses like we're doing now.

MG: If you think of the average person, if the phone rings, I'm not going to answer the phone, if I don't recognize this number. Why are we relying on people to answer the phone? There is an app, a federal government app that is not being taken up in the way that perhaps people wanted to. It hasn't been adopted all across the country. Last night in the media conference, the public health director in Quebec promised a contact tracing app is coming in the next week or so. Why isn't there mandatory pickup on one app across this country to make sure that we don't rely on somebody answering the phone to figure out where they've been and who their contacts are?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: That's a great question. And personally, I would like us to use it more. So I'm with you on that. I know that many people raised the issue of privacy, and I think these concerns may be a bit overblown. I know that the apps have been created with, for example, Canada's high commissioner for privacy. So I think that the creatures of the app have done their job on that site. The other part of the equation, I think, is Rochester, a very democratic and free society. And we just we don't want to force people to use apps like those.

MG: How does that compare to other jurisdictions? You said that there are places where contact tracing has worked.

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Yes. Well, South Korea as we get into freedom, I think it will be interesting. South Korea is probably the world champion of contact tracing. They had the largest outbreak of COVID-19 after China, and they got it under control and they've been keeping it under control with contact tracing and without any lockdown and nationwide lockdown like we've had here. And the way they do it, they do it very quickly and they do it very thoroughly, which is what we should do, too. But they have means to do it. As you say, they they don't only rely on people answering the phone. Public health teams have access to your phone records, to your credit card records and to CCTV. And they can bring all this information together, including would you tell them that, you know, two, to find everyone you've been in touch with and to quarantine these people quickly? And it's itjust not it's not just a matter of of giving public health information about your contacts, but there are some contacts you may not remember that you may not have information for people at the grocery store and in the waiting room for a doctor's office on public transport. You may have been close to someone who is at risk of being infected. And right now and Kobach in Canada, we have no way of of getting in touch with these people.

MG: How do you think Canadians would react to the idea of having government, having access to your credit card records, to your phone records, to all your movements?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Absolutely. That's the issue. Since we're so used to our freedom, I don't think it would go well. And that's sadly that's a problem. And I don't know if we'll have to start to think about that, because I can understand and for one, I don't want my freedom to be limited. I think no one wants that. But at this time, with businesses being closed and restrictions on gathering and the way everyone's freedom is being limited.

MG: Is there an answer though that's between the two? Where I mean there's an app, but you don't have access to my entire life?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Right. Well, absolutely. And these apps, the way they're done, again, the app doesn't even know who you are. So, you don't tell them your name. You don't tell them where you live. You know, you don't do any of that. It's 100 percent anonymous and it's on a voluntary basis. You can download it if you want. And once you have it, if you get tested positive, you are the one entering your results in the app. If you want to again, you can even use it just to be notified of people who have gotten positive results around you and not give the app your own positive results if you don't want to. So it's definitely on the cautious side.

MG: Just a few seconds left. We see these numbers going up, case numbers in your province and in provinces across the country. Are you confident as those numbers go up that we will figure out a way, whether it's through an app or other means, like getting somebody to answer the phone, to get a better handle on how this virus is spreading?

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Yes, I think we will. The question is what the costs will be. Contact tracing or if we can make an app like this work is a lot less costly than closing down businesses and having to support people financially and socially with these tough times. So there are a couple of solutions on the table. I know we'll make at least one work. I hope it's the ones that's the most economical.

MG: Carl-Etienne Juneau, good to speak with you. Thank you.

CARL-ETIENNE JUNEAU: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Carl-Etienne Juneau is a PhD in public health who recently completed a study with colleagues at Université de Montreal on contact tracing. We did request interviews with Quebec's health minister and public health officers for the province and for the city of Montreal, but they were not made available. The CBC News is next and then, what is the future of the performing arts in this country in the midst of a pandemic? We'll try to get a look at the road ahead. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current and CBC Radio One.

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Canadian performing artists are adapting to a unique time

Guests: Weyni Mengesha, Ellen David, Shay Kuebler

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, the former deputy of the FBI counterintelligence division, Peter Strzok on Donald Trump's tax returns and how Russia could influence next month's presidential election. But first, pandemic performer.

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[Clip from perfromance by National Ballet of Canada]

MG: Written by Mary Elizabeth Frye, that poem is part of a special performance from the National Ballet of Canada. Not a traditional in theatre performance. This one, like so much of our lives these days, is online and like arts groups across the country, the National Ballet is adapting by creating a series of short films showcasing their dancers. In this piece, the principal dancer, Heather Ogden, parks a convertible on an empty country road at sunset. Looks like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. All alone, she twirls and leaps figures out a way to dance. It is a fitting metaphor in many ways for my next guests who all agree pandemic or not physically distanced and masked the show has to figure out a way to go on. Weyni Mengesha is artistic director of Soul Pepper Theatre in Toronto. Ellen David is an actor, director and executive artistic director of Theatre Lac Brome and artistic producer of Infinite Theatre in Montreal. And Shay Kuebler is a dancer and choreographer and artistic director of Radical System Art in British Columbia. Good morning to you all.

WEYNI MENGESHA: Good morning, Matt.

ELLEN DAVID: Good morning.

SHAY KUEBLER: Good morning.

MG: Ellen, one of the things you're doing right now is rehearsing for a play with one other actor for Infinite Theatre. This is a company in Montreal. And as we've been hearing, Quebec just announced that theatres will have to close. How are you feeling about that news?

ELLEN DAVID: I'm feeling sad. And, you know, we had a flurry of conversations last night with our production manager, our stage manager, the artistic director and director, and we're headed to rehearsals. We have a virtual 9 a.m. just after this. We have until Thursday to figure it out. One of the possibilities was that we were going to film the performance. It was intended anyway and livestream it. So we're going to see if that's still an option. Otherwise, I think we'll have to postpone. We'll have to see if these two weeks, if the if until the twenty eighth gives us is a finite moment so we can then regroup and we postpone it or we just look at bringing it into another season later on down the line.

MG: What's it been like to rehearse a play during a pandemic? In that sense of uncertainty, not knowing whether what you're in right now is going to last for a month, three, four, six months. Nobody knows.

ELLEN DAVID: No, nobody knows. I never thought I'd be called a pandemic performer. The title is sort of daunting. It's challenging. It really makes you rethink every relationship that you have onstage. Things you take for granted with another actor, with the audience within the space. We have allowed only 20 people to be present in the performance venue, which is a large open art gallery. And, you know, we'll we have we've placed the chairs around the room. And if we get too close, then our stage manager will tell us, no, you can't perform there, you can't go here. You can't do this. And wearing masks, of course. And so it's and I'm playing 30 characters. The play is called King of Canada. It's about William Lyon Mackenzie King. A seance and I sort of summon all these individuals in his life, politicians and his mother and his dogs. And so there's a lot of physical activity and movement and and tons of text and just having a mask on, it's just very challenging to breathe actually. So every now and then, you have to regroup and move to the side and catch your breath, have a glass of water and get back, back into the game. So it's you know, it's a moment in time where we're really asked to dig deep and look at what the and take nothing for granted, basically.

MG: Weyni Mengesha, let me ask you about digging deep. It seemed like everything stopped all at once in March and so much of the things that we took for granted were suddenly we've been saying kind of put on the shelf and we don't know when we'll be able to take them back off. What was that like for Soulpepper Theatre?

WEYNI MENGESHA: Oh, it was quite heartbreaking. It's also my very first season. We were just into the first two shows of my first season and we were about to go on stage with The Seagull. And we made the call. So, yeah, walking to work every day with that set on the stage was hard. But we you know, we had to keep creative, keep your creative juices going and we got online within a week to just continue to figure out the next steps and how to keep engaged, our audiences engaged.

MG: What was the hardest part of it? You say was heartbreaking. We had conversations in March and April about this idea of grief and loss and that we as a society, I mean, we've lost something. What was most difficult for you in that?

WEYNI MENGESHA: Oh, just you know, it's such a thrill to be able to provide the space like this for, you know, access to this kind of work. I mean, I had just watched the final dress rehearsal of The Seagull and I was just so excited for audiences to see it. It's such a moving production. And for it to just dissipate like that, you know, I mean, this is the thing, we work in theatre. Everything is you have to be there. You have to experience it live. And for, yeah, for all of that energy, to not go towards being witnessed was just hard to, yeah it was hard to really accept. It took a while.

MG: Shay, you were, what, just a couple of weeks away from a European tour?

SHAY KUEBLER: Yeah, the company that, my company, Radical System Art, we were about two weeks away from a European tour. We were really fortunate, we we did one of the last performances in Vancouver right before everything kind of got shut down. Our last performance was on March 8th. We were a part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival. So, yeah, we we had to regroup quite quickly to try and figure out how we could financially take care of ourselves. Found a way to offer the artists compensation for for cancelling last notice, late notice. And, you know, it was yeah it was quick and it was challenging to to kind of regroup so fast. Yeah, we were lucky though. I mean, in the end, after everything happened, we were, you know, kind of locked down. We were able to start research on a piece that specifically was about social isolation and loneliness. We'd start researching it in 2019 and, you know, we were all basically doing Zoom rehearsals and Zoom research. So in some ways the new work that we were developing became even more relevant in a lot of ways.

MG: What is that like? I mean instead of performing in front of an audience, everybody is now performing in front of, you know, the camera on the top of their laptop and trying to figure out, you know, how their gestures will relate to the people who are watching it as a performer. What has that been like?

SHAY KUEBLER: Well it's definitely a reframing of how you perform and how you work. I mean, I always talk to my light designer about how for me, you know, I look at light design on stage is how we frame the camera for the audience. You know, the way we frame what the performer is doing with lighting is kind of like the camera angles. So, you know, now we're really legitimately putting the camera at a specific angle to, you know, figure out what what kind of creates the emotive content we want or the way that we would like the performance to come across the audience. But I think a lot of ways it feels like we're missing this kind of exchange between the audience and and us in live performance. And I think that's the one thing that we feel like we're really missing. My company hadn't performed live for about four months and we came back to do the first live performance in the theatre is a very distant theatre performance. But we did a performance of this new work that we're researching called Moments of Isolation and what everybody notices after the performance. How exhausted they were, because there really is this energetic exchange between the audience and the performers. And, you know, it's definitely different when you're working with the camera. It's kind of a beautiful thing. It's something different, you can really curate you know what you're showing the audience, but there's something about that like performance element that you just can't recreate. There's that exchange between you and the audience.

MG: Ellen David, what kind of energy do you get from the audience? What's that exchange like for you?

ELLEN DAVID: Oh, there's nothing like it. Nothing like live performance. That's why when we're talking about doing a film version without an audience there, it's a little bit, I feel it will be lacking because you don't get that immediate sort of fuelling from the audience to, you know, the laughs and the and the you know, the reactions. So as an artistic director of theatre like Brome, we just did. We had three concerts over the month of. We had to cancel everything, you know, plays, et cetera. But we brought in three live music performances and we and we safe distance. Everybody just, you know, Shea thing was just exhausting to do the maths. And, you know, I had a little stick where I had two metres and I placed everybody, you know, far apart and and actually ask them questions before they came in as if they were going through customs so we could trace anybody if anything happened. But the sense of them being in the room or even outdoors, our first concert was outdoor and there was nothing like they were so grateful to be a part of the live experience. And everyone was on their feet and, you know, responding to the music just to to be in the room was so it's so palpable what the arts what a live arts performance can do. And just witnessing that, as someone had put it together, I just saw the value in it. And it made me weep because, you know, there's nothing like it and it's irreplaceable.

MG: Weyni, you had an outdoor show that was planned that you ended up having to cance,. How difficult was that to cancel that, knowing what you'd already gone through?

WEYNI MENGESHA: Yeah, it was really hard, you know, especially because it was this last weekend. And, you know, I was thinking at least it could rain. My goodness. It was beautiful, perfect weather. I just kept imagining us all being there together. And, you know, just knowing that we're coming to the end of sunny days and the chance for us all to be together and just how powerful a gathering could be right now for everyone.

MG: People have been scrambling to try to figure out what to do. I mean, what's that experience like Weyni? I mean, it's it's a different muscle that you have to draw on in some ways.

WEYNI MENGESHA: It absolutely is. Yeah and it's not the way we think theatre makers normally, you know, so it does take new skills as well, so we've been really leaning into collaboration and hiring with a bunch of different organizations this fall. And we're partnering with CBC Radio and in television. So just to bring what we bring and also to work with other folks who have skills in the departments that we're moving into digital content. But, yes, it's it's taking innovation and we're just leaning on artists and commissioning worked to come up with creative solutions.

MG: This is a little bit from the Transform Cabaret Festival. It's a festival in Vancouver that brings indigenous and non-indigenous artists together, and they are trying to figure out how to do something in an online space. Have a listen.

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[Clip from performance Transform Cabaret Festival]

MG: Shay Kuebler, is there some degree of freedom and creativity, a different kind of creativity that can come with with having to rethink how you present your work and being able to go and into a virtual space?

SHAY KUEBLER: I mean, I think, you know, for me, I've been, I kind of look at it is like we're artists intrinsically are, you know, we're creative beings, we're creative people. Everybody's creative. I mean, human beings are just creative beings. And I guess in a lot of ways, it's forced us to rely on that creativity, to find a way to get out of this problem that we're in, that we cannot gather, we cannot rehearse in the same way, we cannot research in the same way. So I think, you know, it pulls on us to find these creative solutions, you know, and. With the challenges, you know, comes these new these new methods to approach and to find a way to move forward. So in some ways, yeah, I guess there is. What I don't know if there's a I guess there wouldn't be a liberty, but there's happily to discover some new skills and some new tools and to to diversify your your ability to to make and create. I know for me that that that will always be there. Some I'm I'm just continuing to try and find those outlets for myself moving into you know, I've been doing music production for my company. And creative writing is another aspect of something that I've really been interested in developing further and, you know, and finding a way to also work with artists in a different method, which is more one on one and more kind of directed improvization and building the material hand-in-hand together. So, yeah, I think creative solutions and being creative and finding that those tools to move forward is kind of part of this.

MG: This is also, Weyni, been a summer of turmoil in terms of how people are thinking about race and culture and the intersection of the two and this is something that you've explored in in your work throughout your career. What is, if you take a look at, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement right now, the conversations around institutional racism, how do you go about addressing those issues when you can't have actors on the stage?

WEYNI MENGESHA: Conversation. Yeah, we're still you know, that's one thing about the virtual world is you can you can move internationally quite quickly. And so just holding conversation with artists, you know, artists see whether or not we we know all the skills for all the different mediums. We we always we can see around corners. We are you know, whether we be we we've be looking at problems in society. That is what we do. We look at at how to make bridges, how to make how to create empathy. So I think we're continuing to look at that in the work that we're commissioning. Some of the products that are coming up are dealing directly with that. So it's just becoming it's what's what's current right now. And it's what the artists are thinking about, what we're thinking about. It's all pepper and the time that allowed us to reflect more and to really, you know, when I when we got here, when I thought when I became a director last year, our strategic plan are the first things we places that we were going to be committed to being a radically inclusive institution. And so now we have the time to really look at that holistically through all parts of how we produce work. So that's what we've had time to do.

MG: For those of us in in the seats, Ellen, I mean, we use art and we rely on art to help process what's going on around us right now. The fact that we can't do that, we can't go to a concert, we can't be at the ballet, we can't go to the theatre, what impact do you think that has on us as a society in the midst of this this really difficult moment, a moment that has thrown everything that we, you know, kind of took for granted up in the air?

ELLEN DAVID: Well, I think, you know, the arts were one of the first to shut down and will probably be the last. There was a, you know, a slow opening now, but we'll probably be one of the last to open. And I think as a society, people are recognizing the value of of what it is to be, to be entertained, to be educated, to be part of that cultural landscape. And so I would say that for individuals, there is so much to see online. We can also dig deep within ourselves. We can read we have the time now to to find our own material and to, you know, to support the arts as well. All of the theatres. I just applaud everyone on this call and every one of us across Canada and internationally who are striving and struggling with this reality that we're facing and those of us who are still sticking with it, we want to be ready for when the time comes that the doors can open and things can be maybe not as they were, but certainly that we can progress and and bring back that, you know, culture and arts to to the patrons. And so I think support of the theatre is really, really important and support of our fellow artists who are really having a tough time. I think what Wanee said is so valuable as as people who are programming these seasons. We also have to look at what kind of shows we're bringing. It's really forced us at incident and at you to like Brome to look at the kind of plays and the kind of material that we were going to do before and, you know, perhaps pivot, which is such a big word now and look at, you know, what we really want to say. What stories do we want to tell? What do we want to move forward with? And I think that's very key.

MG: Do you worry about viability and do you worry about, you know, what you're going to be returning to? We've been talking about, you know, other parts of the cultural sector and restaurants and nightclubs, and they are facing a very dark future and a lot of them won't reopen. Do you worry about that?

ELLEN DAVID: Yes, definitely. I mean, you know, theatres in general, you know, they have a tough time. And I see the granting bodies are making an effort to to support and digital platforms as Shay said are certainly something that's really coming alive right now. But, yeah, it's a challenge. And where people are, you know, are struggling in general financially, and so that we would be asking people to support the theatres. So it's not just a given that that's going to happen, so we really have to kind of pull up our bootstraps. And I was just thinking of this this cartoon that the Margaret Wise Brown book, Goodnight Moon, I've seen something recently that's a little adapted version of it that says little bunnies in bed and usually names everything in the room and says Goodnight Moon, Good night Zoom, Good night sense of impending doom, which is sort of like hanging over our heads. And I think that we can allow ourselves those moments to really to mourn, but at the same time, we then I think have to regroup and try to just, you know, come alive again in any way we can.

MG: How do you do that, Shay? I mean, again, you're two weeks out from a tour. There are financial implications to not being able to go and perform. So how do you, do you worry about, you know, this being a viable career for you, whenever we get out of this?

SHAY KUEBLER: Yeah, I mean, of course. You know I live in Vancouver, which is, you know, economically a very intense city. It's a bit of a vice grip of time. You feel the cost of living weighing down on you and as an artist, you know, you're independently kind of moving forward in this life, you don't have the same securities as a certain other, you know, careers. This is definitely shaken things quite a bit. I travelled a lot for my career. That has obviously shifted dramatically. It's definitely made me question how I could move forward in this kind of expression of myself as an artist. So, yeah, it's definitely forced me to rethink and to reconsider how I can, you know, continue to support my creativity and the things that I'm interested in. And just different avenues in some ways. You know, we've considered obviously, you know, moving forward with obviously more online and digital ways of presenting our works, scaling down works. The show that we've just worked on with the company, we basically gave everybody a six by nine mini stage that they performed on so that everybody was still distant and we just worked topically with the show. So, yeah, it's a precarious time. I think that's a word that I'm using a lot because I don't want to go too far into the doom and try to find the silver lining. We're all trying to move forward and find ways to use this time for benefit in any way we can, you know. But it's precarious. Yeah, it does make you it does make you doubt how you could move forward and how you could be a provider for your family and to take care of somebody that you know you love because you're everything is just so uncertain.

MG: Yeah. Weyni Mengesha, in the last minute that we have what is, if you don't go down that that road of doom, what's the future for performing arts in this country when we get out of this?

WEYNI MENGESHA: You know, I think theatre has survived a pandemic before. You know, theatres been around a long, long time and it will be here for a long time. And more than ever, we're going to need the power of people and gathering and it's going to be such a precious commodity. And we're gonna need the time. You know, I think social media been where we've been sort of now and it doesn't have the time and the space to be as nuanced as as some as long form art and we need it. So I believe we have to continue to work hard to keep it alive and to manifest it however we can, you know.

MG: I wish you all the best of luck. It's important. And yes, these are precarious times. So we need the arts perhaps more than ever. Thank you all and good luck.

WEYNI MENGESHA: Thank you.

ELLEN DAVID: Thank you so much.

SHAY KUEBLER: Thanks.

MG: Weyni Mengesha, artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto. Ellen David, director, actor and executive artistic director of Theatre Lac Brome and artistic producer of Infinite Theatre in Montreal, Shay Kuebler, dancer and choreographer and artistic director of Radical System Art in Vancouver. The Banff Centre has also gone virtual for their International String Quartet Festival. The Attacca Quartet took to the stage, masked, but still able to serenade. Here they are.

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[Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge" performed by Attacca Quartet at the International String Quartet Festival]

MG: The Attacca Quartet performing Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. Your regional update is next and then a conversation about Donald Trump's taxes and round two of Russian election meddling from the former deputy of the FBI's counterintelligence division. I'm Matt Galloway. The Current is back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

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Trump debts make U.S. 'vulnerable' to Russian influence ahead of election, says former FBI deputy

Guests: Peter Strzok

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Tonight, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will square off in the first U.S. presidential debate. And there's one thing that almost certainly will come up.

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VOICE: With The New York Times publishing major revelations about the president's personal tax liability. According to The Times, the president paid just $750 in personal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, and that the president is personally liable for hundreds of millions of dollars of loans that come due over the next few years, during the potential second term in the White House.

MG: For my next guest, these revelations are a roadmap of some of the ways that President Trump has compromised. Peter Strzok is the former deputy of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and was at the centre of investigations into the U.S. president and Russian interference since the start. His new book is Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Peter Strzok, good morning,.

PETER STRZOK: Matt. Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thank you for joining us. When you look at this tax information that continues to be revealed by The New York Times, where does that road map take you?

PETER STRZOK: Well, I think the road map takes you directly to any number of foreign countries that have payments and or debts going directly to the president. And because of the concealed nature of those financial transactions, give them leverage over him. That was not seen to the American public until The New York Times published it.

MG: What is, I mean if you take a look at it from an investigative perspective, what is the word compromised mean?

PETER STRZOK: I think compromise is a it's a straightforward idea that manifests itself in many different ways. I mean, as an intelligence service, you're going to look for vulnerabilities in people in a number of ways. You know, it can be money, it can be ideological. It can be, you know, sort of compromising material like blackmail type stuff. And it can be, you know, ego and an appeal to any of those things. And, you know, sadly for President Trump, he he manifests vulnerabilities in all those areas, but particularly in the financial realm. And it's certainly backed up by The New York Times data. He has any number of things out there which are hidden and because of their hidden and the potential to embarrass him can be used as leverage by any competent foreign intelligence service to influence his actions or anybody's actions. But in this case, President Trump's.

MG: You said on Twitter that our country and its national security can't afford Trump's greed. In the worst case scenario, what could this leverage lead to?

PETER STRZOK: Well, I think we're already seeing what it's leading to. In the worst case, it is causing him to take actions which are placing his interests ahead of those of the United States. And that for a variety of reasons, that his ability to make decisions based in what is best for the national security of the United States is not what is motivating him. And instead, you've got these hidden forces, which people, you know, countries like Russia are certainly very adept at exploiting through their intelligence services, to get him to make decisions which are not only not in the US national interests, but are very much in Russia's national interest. And that's deeply concerning.

MG: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and I mean, there's no small element of politics in this, but she says that the amount of money that the president owes, more than $400 million, which is set to come due, that this is a national security question. Is iit that severe?

PETER STRZOK: It is. And I'd also point out that, you know, certainly there are some partisan voices, but you also have to look to the own to Trump's own administration. I mean, this concern is coming from both sides of the aisle. You had Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence, who was a Republican senator for in from Indiana for 16 years, selected by Trump to be as DNI, who is saying I think the Russians have something over Trump. You have Trump selected current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, who is testifying before Congress that Russia right now is actively working to re-elect Donald Trump. So this isn't I understand there are partisan voices there, but this concern is a bipartisan issue. This concern is a national security issue, not a political one.

MG: Is there specific tax information that you've read that relates to Russia?

PETER STRZOK: So I can't get into things that I may or may not have come across in an investigative context, but I think, you know, that what we're seeing now between the material that The New York Times obtained, what we're seeing now through both the Mueller report as well as the bipartisan Senate Intel Committee report, you know, nearly a thousand pages coming out of began. A Republican controlled committee lay out just this broad's broad swath of counterintelligence concerns that there's certainly, I guess, what I can say is certainly very consistent to things that I've seen which are not public.

MG: Presidential debate tonight. This is from the debate in 2016. Donald Trump up against Hillary Clinton. Have a listen.

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VOICE: They think they're trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know, I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of russia, I don't deal there. I have no businesses there, I have no loans from Russia.

MG: When you hear that, what goes through your mind?

PETER STRZOK: That he's lying, and that when he is lying at that moment, Vladimir Putin knew that. I mean, think back to what we know now. At the time, he's saying that Michael Cohen is pursuing a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow where they were proposing to give the entire top floor to Vladimir Putin. His son Eric in 2014 said, we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. So it's clearly a lie. And as soon as he says that if Russia were to release the truth, that would be enormously politically damaging to then candidate Trump. And so that gives them instant leverage. And they're certainly the Russians are competent enough to understand that they're competent enough to wield that influence in a way that's going to advance Russian national interests over the person who became the president of the United States.

MG: This book details a number of fascinating cases that you've been involved in. I want to get back to Russia in a moment, but one of the cases, there's a connexion here that made headlines was called Mid-year Exam. What was Mid-year Exam?

PETER STRZOK: So Mid-year Exam was the codename for the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Some classified information appeared in some of the unclassified emails she sent. And so the investigation was set out to understand how that came to be, whether or not it was intentional, and whether or not any laws had been broken in the course of her use of that server.

MG: The Democrats, as you will well know, were incredibly critical that the FBI was very publicly investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mails during the campaign while keeping secret and investigation into the possible collaboration between Russia and the Trump campaign. Didn't the Democrats have a point, all things considered?

PETER STRZOK: I understand the criticism, but I don't think it's merited. When you look at the two cases, they were very different. You know, in the case of the e-mail server admin, mid-year exam, it was a criminal case. It was something that had an extraordinary amount of public attention. And frankly, it was a case that was closed in July. So that's very different, and then was subjected to any number of Freedom of Information Act requests for information, as well as requests from Congress. And we were returning over just mountains and mountains of investigative material from that case. Contrast that with the investigation into the Russian offer of assistance to members of the Trump campaign. I mean, A, that was an ongoing investigation. It was a counterintelligence investigation, which necessarily which meant that it had a lot of classified information that was, you know, would have been very damaging had it been released. And so I understand the disparate impact and the concern, but the reality was that they were very, very different cases. And I don't know that we could or should have handled them differently than what occurred.

MG: The point that the Democrats would make is that the thumb really went on the scale 11 days before the election, when James Comey sent the letter to Congress saying that the FBI had uncovered new information pertinent to the Clinton email investigation. It's 11 days out from this election. Where did you come down on that?

PETER STRZOK: Well, it was a very stressful time. I mean, we went through just some deep, deep soul searching and very charged debate about whether or not to do it. You know, eventually I came out, you know, as we're sitting around the table that morning. The director coming made his final decision. I had given an update on where we stood with the investigation. And then he asked what we thought. And I, you know, kind of kept the floor, as it were, and said, I didn't think we should. That there was too much we didn't know. And then, you know, an attorney, a senior attorney within our office's general counsel, you know, came came next to me and, you know, explained much more particular way why she thought that doing so was the wrong idea and including her concern that, you know, whether or not we would throw, this would throw the election to Trump. And that gave rise to me somewhat well known, you know, kind of thought about, you know, if we consider political considerations like that, they're down that path lies the ruin of the FBI because we can't become a political organisation. And he laid out very eloquently how he thought about it and the difficulty that, you know, facing two neither good options. And by the end, I was persuaded that it was the right decision to notify Congress that we were reopening the case, specifically because he had assured Congress that it was closed. And the implication was that if that changed, he would let them know. But it was it was a very, very hard discussion. There's a very, very hard several days that went intthat decision.

MG: Using your language, do you think it through the election to Trump?

PETER STRZOK: I do. You know, and that's kind of looking back, hindsight is always 20/20 and it's kind of always a little unfair to sit there and and make assessments based on perfect knowledge of the future. But look, I think that it did the number of votes to sway the U.S. Electoral College between Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It was about 80000 people that would fit in one football stadium. And so, you know, people say, well, it doesn't you know, it's hard to move the needle one way or the other. But when you're talking 80000 out of a population of three hundred and fifty million, it doesn't take much. And so, you know, I do think it did sway the election results. I frankly think Russia swayed the election results that had either of those things not taken place that we would have ended up with a different electoral outcome.

MG: Is that a hard thing for you to live with? I mean, it's a people ask that question, how do you sleep? I mean, is it difficult for you knowing and you write this, you talk about moving the needle. Is that a difficult thing for you to live with?

PETER STRZOK: Yeah, of course it is. I mean, I think, you know, the one thing is you sit there. What I can't say and what gives me some cold comfort is that, you know, all of us, everybody in the room from the director on down. I think we're very thoughtful. We're motivated by what truly was a sense of obligation and duty to the American people and to our Constitution and to our oath of office. But, you know, particularly as time goes on and, you know, watching the impact of this presidency, watching the destruction of our rule of law, watching the tearing down of our government institutions, it's hard to watch knowing that we, in my opinion, likely played a role. And so, you know, people say, well, if you do things, do the right thing, try to do the right thing for the right reasons. It's good enough. Well, maybe so, but that hasn't caused me peace yet.

MG: Some of this is the fodder for this new TV mini series, The Comey Rule and you're one of the characters played by Steven Pasquale. Have you watched this?

PETER STRZOK: No, I haven't.

MG: Will you?

PETER STRZOK: I don't think so. I mean, I don't you know, it's one of those things I think, you know, I don't need to, having lived it, I don't need to see it dramatized and certainly don't want to relive that experience or some on screen depiction of it.

MG: Did you feel like you were living in some sort of made for TV drama as all of this was unfolding?

PETER STRZOK: Not from an entertainment sense. I mean, look, there were there were certainly times I mean, between the decision in October to reopen the case. And absolutely during the period of the week and a half between the time Director Comey, who's fired, and Special Counsel Mueller was appointed. And we were just so uncertain of what was coming, so uncertain of the motivations behind Trump's decision to fire Comey. And just scrambling to make sure the work we had done would be preserved from sort of illegal interference, tampering. And I remember really late nights and, you know, sitting there and scanning in Comey's memos that he had written about his interactions with President Trump to make sure they were in our case file in a way that couldn't be destroyed and feeling very much the kind of the long eye of history on us. Because, you know, you're in the moment. You don't that you don't have time, frankly, to kind of step back and think about that. But that was the one moment that I just I do remember having a tangible sense of, you know, the eye of history, both looking into our past as well as what would be the future, sort of looking at all of us.

MG: You were involved in setting up that special counsel team led by Robert Mueller, but you were forced to leave early. What happened?

PETER STRZOK: That's right. And so I had written during the inspector general was looking initially at the work we had done on the Clinton case and came across a series of text messages that I had written, private messages that were critical frequently and very frank and sometimes coarse language about the president. But it was a personal opinion. But notwithstanding that the scrutiny on the special counsel's office was such that I think all of us from Director Mueller on down, including myself, understood that that could be potentially used by partisan players to discredit his work. And so the decision Director Mueller asked me to return to the to the FBI. I understood that and I agreed.

MG: Why did you write those text messages?

PETER STRZOK: Because as a, again, as a private citizen, you know, looking at the events that were unfolding, these were kind of a personal expression of my personal belief of what was going on. And it was, you know, in a private context, these weren't said at some, you know, unit meeting or broadcast out on Facebook or Twitter. This was very much a private conversation. You know, look, in retrospect, I regret sending those absolutely. Because of the way they were used to hammer all the good work we were doing. But on the other hand, you know, agents have opinions and agents are entitled to political opinions and they say them in private every day. But, you know, my experience both with myself and everybody I worked with, you know, when you walk in the door in the morning, all this could set aside and you just focus on the task at hand.

MG: I mean, ultimately, though, you end up getting fired. These texts come out. It's revealed that you're having an affair with one of your colleagues. Is there not an argument to be made if we're talking about being compromised, is there not an argument to be made that in that role you were compromised?

PETER STRZOK: You can make that argument, but I don't think it holds water. I mean, look, I know what my mental boundaries are. I know that this is something that nothing I've ever done could be used by a foreign power or anybody to coerce me to do something. And so I'm very confident that, you know, I was not compromised. You know, the release you know, I'm suing right now that the DOJ illegally released those kind of calling the media and to DOJ headquarters in the middle of the night and swearing them to secrecy that they couldn't say they got from DOJ. And then those were immediately seised upon by partisan actors to start hammering the work we're doing. And then also that my firing was illegal based on improper political considerations. So, you know, I can understand that concern, but I can assure you and know myself that that was not anything that could have been used to to cause me to do something improper.

MG: You've used the word hammering a couple of times. The president continues to hammer you. And there's a long list in your book of the things that he has called you incompetent, corrupt, horrible, hatefilled, totally biased, low, terrible, disgusting, stupid, a bad person. He also says that you're treasonous. What is it like to have the president come at you personally like that?

PETER STRZOK: It's shocking. It's jarring. I mean, you know, this is something that, you know, every every U.S. kid from the time you're in elementary school, you know, you talk about the president being the leader of our nation. When I was in the army and he was the commander in chief, and then certainly he sits top the executive branch. And so for something that, you know, outrageously one, it's a lie. And was I am not, in fact, treasonous. But when you hear the president throwing that around and I think was the first person who actually accused the treason, which is a dubious honour, but it shocks you. It angered me. I mean, it made me furious. And then, frankly, it was scary because, you know, this is the leader of the United States. We're still the the the most powerful of our one of the most powerful nations in the world. And so to have these kind of reckless and accurate accusations being made by a man with such power in such a personal way is beyond disconcerting. It's surreal and it's nothing I have gotten used to yet.

MG: How does it impact your family life and your personal life?

PETER STRZOK: Well, It's certainly the concern is one, you know, it places them into a discussion in a way that is troubling, you know, and particularly because there are certain percentage of people that follow everything that the president says and hangs on hang on his every words. And so, as he says these things, it inevitably brings out the crazies. And sometimes, you know, fine, you get a Twitter or main email or something. But the harder part is, you know, people showing up at the house or people sending threatening mailings and making death threats because that, again, is not just me. It's, you know, the family who lives in the same house. And so, you know, I think that that cruelty is unfortunately part of the point. I mean, this is designed to stifle voices who might speak out as same sort of behaviour you see them engaging in against Colonel Binmen within the Department of Defence or ambassador within our State Department, all the people who testified during the impeachment investigation. It's designed to stifle anybody who might speak the truth about him and and his behaviour.

MG: Let's talk about what happens in the remaining weeks before this election. You said last week that the Russian government and Vladimir Putin is working, these are your words, as we speak to get Donald Trump re-elected. What does the FBI know that you can tell us about what Putin and the Russians are doing in the lead up to the election?

PETER STRZOK: Well, we certainly do know and again, to the point being, yes, these are my words, but they're also my words buttressed by what I hear the director of the FBI and administration officials saying themselves. We clearly knew that the Russians were very active in the 2016 elections. And when we were watching at that time, we knew that there were certain both techniques and information that they had that we expected them to use and they didn't. Now, there are a number of explanations for that. The most likely in my mind is that like everybody else, every pollster and most Americans, they expected Clinton to win and had things lined up for that. But when the candidate they wanted won, then they didn't have to use them. So what they did is, you know, certainly, in my opinion, return them to their quiver, as it were, and hone them over the intervening four years to use this time. So with specificity, I can't get into a lot because it's classified. But I can point to some of the things that have been noted in the public arena through statements by the government. And Microsoft published a great deal of information. The Russians have become much better at hiding their hand when they want to do that. So in other words, being able to attribute something back to say, okay, we know we can attribute this to, for instance, the you know, the IRA in St. Petersburg or a group of Russian contractors. They've gotten better at hiding that. That's not to say they're always hiding it. Part of what Microsoft showed was that, you know, the GRU Russian military intelligence was kind of getting to very not ham fisted, but very overt sort of ways of trying to hack in. And they're not trying to hide what they're doing. And again, there could be any number of reasons for that, but they're still coming at us. They're doing it in a very robust, broad manner and I think we're very vulnerable, you know certainly going into November.

MG: A piece in The New York Times couple of days ago talking about ransomware attacks and that the ransomware attacks that have been increasing in the United States are meant to sow the impression of chaos. That you don't know on Election Day whether your vote is going to matter, whether it's going to count, whether it will be counted. If you're able to sow that sort of chaos from your perspective, what happens?

PETER STRZOK: Well, I think you if you're able to do it, you achieve their goals. But Russia, at the end of the day, Russia doesn't much care who's leading America. What Russia wants is America divided amongst us or the United States amongst itself, us fighting each other, us withdrawing from NATO, withdrawing from the global environment, us no longer supporting nascent democracies around the world, or promoting Western democratic ideals that provides splits and schisms and rebalancing amongst alliances all over the place around the globe, which provides opportunities for Russia everywhere, whether it's Syria, Eastern Europe, you know, the China just across the board, our retrenchment provides them opportunity. And what's most concerning is, you know, Russia is doing this into a U.S. environment where the same things they are claiming on the disinformation side are the same things being, you know, sort of spoken about by our president, by our attorney general saying the same things. You know, mail in balloting isn't secure. Well, of course it's secure. You know, there is going to be massive voter fraud. There's no data to support that. But so when you have Trump himself saying the same thing coming out through Russian disinformation, it's kind of a force multiplier in a horrible way. And so, you know, I am worried, given the domestic environment in the US in 2020, which is far worse than it was in 2016, that this is an extraordinarily ripe environment for Russian mischief.

MG: Just two things before we let you go. One is, do you think that what you know and what you've been talking about will at all sway the supporters of the president? When he says this is a hoax, this is fake, none of this is real and this is the Democrats worried about losing the election and so they're cooking something up. How do you think that lands with his supporters?

PETER STRZOK: Well, I think what will land with the supporters is some of the things that it points to about the president's behaviour with regard to Russia. And specifically what, you know, examples like this. When we find out that Russian, again, the GRU is placing bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan and the president says absolutely nothing. Now, the president's supporters may not care about Russian support of Trump, but by God, they care about their sons, their daughters, their brothers, their sisters, their spouses who are serving in the military. And when they watch those servicemen and servicewomen get no support from their president, if this helps highlight that problem, then I think it can make a difference. So, you know, I am hopeful that this will help kind of highlight some of the just absurd, you know, frankly, anti-U.S. actions that Trump is engaged in,.

MG: In a word or two. What do you think he'll wake up to on the fourth of November?

PETER STRZOK: An unsettled result. I think it's going to take probably a few days to count on the votes, and particularly in the U.S., we're used to having an idea when we go to bed on the election night of who won. I think there's a good chance that we won't or that it will be litigated and it's going to need calm heads and calm nerves to see us through the process until we get to the final result.

MG: Peter Strzok, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

PETER STRZOK: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I enjoyed it.

MG: Peter Strzok, the deputy of the FBI's counterintelligence Division in years past. His new book is called Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Of course, the first presidential election happens this evening. You can listen to it on CBC Radio, watch it on CBC Television, stream it at cbcnews.ca. That's it for The Current four today. Q is up next. Tom Power speaking with John Cleese, Monty Python, got a new book out called Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. Always interesting to hear from John Cleese and you'll hear him coming up on CBC Radio One. We've been talking about the challenges that performers are facing in these pandemic times. There are creative ways that people have figured out to stay connected and share their music and their talents. It's been six months since the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra performed for a crowd in the Centennial Concert Hall. Later this week, a smaller and socially distanced audience will sit down to hear Beethoven and Bach. Big step from earlier this summer when the symphony had to cancel their performance at Manitoba's 150 celebrations, not to let the pandemic ruin things completely, they instead recorded a performance to celebrate Manitoba and recognized our diverse cultures and unite as one voice. Here's a bit of that recording. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra performing "One Voice" by Ruth Moody. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: "One Voice" performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra]

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Sept. 29, 2020 episode transcript

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