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The AIH Transcript for November 25, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is “As It Happens”.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Begging to differ. Ontario's Auditor General finds delay, conflict and confusion in the province's response to COVID-19. But Health Minister Christine Elliott takes issue with the just-issued report.

CH: Injustice laid bare. Toronto Police finally make changes to when, how and how often strip searches are conducted. Changes former Mayor John Sewell has been demanding for years.

CO: Clearing the ice. The late Fred Sasakamoose had a short NHL career with a huge impact — smoothing a path for other indigenous hockey players with a shot at the big leagues.

CH: If you make it, you've got it made. The Prime Minister admits Canadians won't be first in line for a COVID vaccine, in part because we won't be the ones producing it.

CO: Wake up and smell the trophy. Justin Bieber and The Weeknd both have gripes with this year's Grammy nominations — apparently forgetting that the big music awards are always tone-deaf.

CH: And sticking point. Of all the memorable moments in our interview with a Florida man who rescued his dog from an alligator, you latched on to one in particular: the part where he treated his injuries with superglue.

CH: “As It Happens”, the Wednesday edition. Radio that now understands the importance of bonding.

Part one: Christine Elliott, Vaccine manufacturing, Fred Sasakamoose obit

Christine Elliott

Guest: Christine Elliott

CE: Well, the Auditor General has suggested to me that we were delayed in our response to COVID-19 compared to other jurisdictions. That is simply not so. In fact, we acted very quickly. We were the first jurisdiction to declare that coronavirus was a required disease that had to be phoned in and had to be reported. And that put into place a situation such that local medical officers of health could then start their testing, tracing and contact management. We were also the second to declare a state of emergency, just narrowly behind Quebec. And the first jurisdiction to close our schools in order to be able to protect our children. So we acted very quickly. We were not delayed in our response. And as to any suggestion that Dr. Williams did not use all of his directive powers, Dr. Williams has said himself if he had to do that, he would not have been doing his job properly because those are directives. What Dr. Williams did was be in contact with the local medical officers of health to understand what they were doing. If they wanted to have more stringent provisions in their areas, he was in contact with them and he coordinated their response to that. So Dr. Williams was front and centre. He did take all of the steps that he needed to take. And his recommendations have been key to the difficult decisions that we've had to make during this pandemic.

CO: You have heard, as we have, so many medical professionals in Ontario say, that they believe Dr. Williams is not effective. Why do you why is Dr. Williams still in that position?

CE: Because he's doing his job properly. We can see that in the numbers. They speak for themselves. And Dr. Williams has over 30 years experience in public health. There is no one else in Ontario, I believe, that could step into this position right now in the middle of a pandemic and do a better job than Dr. Williams.

CO: When you say you have confidence because Ontario, you say, is doing better than other jurisdictions in North America and other countries, you're the Deputy Premier of Canada's richest province, what message does that send, do you think, to people who have lost loved ones that it could have been worse? That Ontario did better than others, but it could have been worse. People saw their loved ones die by the thousands here.

CE: Well, I certainly recognize what you're saying. This isn't something that we want to brag about because there is a lot more work that needs to be done. And I am very, very sorry for the families that have lost loved ones. But I would say that we have done our best. There is no rulebook for this. There is no single jurisdiction anywhere in the world that has done a perfect job at this. But I am confident that we have done everything within our power to protect the health and well-being of the people of Ontario. And Dr. Williams and all of the medical officers, the public health people who have provided their recommendations. They have been sound. And we have always followed them and will continue to follow them.

CO: So you reject the findings of the Auditor General's report, and you feel that you did everything properly?

CE: No, I don't reject all of the findings of the Auditor General's report. I think that the Auditor General made some recommendations with respect to some systemic concerns that existed long before we became government. But there are other areas where there are some factual inaccuracies that we tried to point out before this report was released and resolve. But unfortunately, the Auditor General was not prepared to do that.

CO: Minister Elliott, we'll leave it there. Thank you.

CE: Thank you, Carol.

CH: Christine Elliott is Ontario's Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. She spoke to us from Toronto.

[Music: Indie rock]

Vaccine manufacturing

Guest: Andrew Casey

CH: When COVID-19 vaccines get delivered, Canadians will not be at the front of the global line. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany will get the shots first. That's because they're able to make the vaccine on home soil. Canada cannot. The prime minister could not say exactly when Canadians would be able to get a vaccine — only that it will be early next year. That prompted this response today from NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

JAGMEET SINGH: There needs to be a plan. Canadians need to know just very simply, when will we expect a vaccine to be delivered in Canada, and what is a plan to make sure everyone has access to it? We've said it should be free and accessible to all, and we need to hear that plan. There's no clear indication of when we’ll receive that. And that's something important. Canadians need to know that. And Justin Trudeau did not answer that question. But secondly, the question was about the production. I am angry at the idea that Liberal and Conservative governments allowed the final production facilities to shut down, never thinking that that would put our country into a severe problem. The fact that we are the tenth largest economy in the world and can't produce vaccines? Like, there is something deeply problematic about that. And that is something that previous Liberal and Conservative governments allowed to happen that put us in this position. And we've known about the importance of a vaccine for months now. Why was this issue of production not raised earlier? These are very important questions that have not been answered and cause me great concern.

CH: NDP leader Jagmeet Singh speaking today in Ottawa. Andrew Casey is the president of BIOTECanada, which represents the biotech industry, including vaccine makers. We reached him in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Casey, you just heard Mr. Singh there. He is not the only one who is impatient to see Canadians get the vaccine. How long do you expect people here will have to wait?

ANDREW CASEY: Yeah. Clearly, we've got some light at the end of the tunnel and everybody wants to get there as quickly as possible. So I fully understand wanting to get some answers there. But of course, you think about how quickly we got to where we are, that's kind of a miracle in itself. Now we have to figure out how to distribute the vaccines that are going to be available. And that's going to be critical to the criticism about Canada and its manufacturing capacity. I'm not aware of any vaccine manufacturing that has left the country. Indeed, we do have two very significant facilities in GlaxoSmithKline in Quebec City and the Sanofi plant in Toronto, both of which manufacture vaccines now. We also have Medicago in Quebec City, which is one of our newer companies in Canada, and there's the VIDO-InterVac facility in Saskatchewan.

CO: Are these facilities that could be producing the vaccine?

AC: No, that is where the challenge lies. So we have manufacturing capacity. The issue that is here now is the two leading vaccines that are emerging, The Fizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine, are mRNA type of vaccines. And we do not manufacture that type of vaccine in Canada. In fact, all the plants that will manufacture them are also new. The Pfizer one, for instance, is in Michigan. It was an expansion that was announced two years ago. So nobody was really prepared for the mRNA vaccine. And you can't take an existing facility that’s doing a traditional protein-based vaccine and switch it over to mRNA. They’re two completely different technologies.

CO: OK, so why are other people, other countries so far ahead? Not just the United States. You said two years ago they started to develop it, but the United Kingdom and Germany. Did they already have facilities to make mRNA vaccines?

AC: Well, the companies did. So let's separate the companies from the countries. The companies are the ones that are developing the vaccines. They have facilities, research facilities and manufacturing facilities that they invest in. And they happen to be in some of those countries. The contracts that are being signed are between the companies and the countries. And that's a completely different issue in terms of accessibility to the vaccines as they come out. So each country is now signing contracts with the companies that are going to be producing vaccines. How those get rolled out depends on regulatory approval and then the plans that are going to be put in place for distribution of the vaccines into the population.

CO: Was it not possible that Canada could have been sort of ramping this up? We've heard in the summer the prime minister in Montreal announcing a bio-manufacturing facility at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, also saying that even if that was not up to construction in time, another investment on upgrades to a current facility that would be able to assist at the time, manufacture the vaccine, some doses of it by November. So what happened there?

AC: Well, indeed, they did invest in a lot of the companies. They invested in Medicago, the one in Quebec City. They invested in VIDO-InterVac and an immuno vaccine in Halifax. All received significant government investments. But these are technologies that are very early, and they're still yet to be proven efficacious. And so you still have to sort of go through the full scientific testing of them, and they will come out at some point in time. I think the bigger challenge is how do you sort of say, OK, this is going to be the vaccine? We did not know in April or May that it was going to be the mRNA-based vaccine, so we could have taken a bet and built facilities. In fact, Bill Gates did exactly that. His foundation invested billions in about seven facilities in the U.S., knowing that three or four of them would never produce anything because they were sort of trying to cover the spectrum of possible vaccines. And some of their facilities will be ready to produce the mRNA vaccines, which are the Pfizer and the Moderna ones that are being talked about. But even those facilities won't be able to produce for probably another year. I think what the Canadian government did was very smart. They got out front, and they negotiated contracts with the companies that would be producing the vaccines and secured the supply. In fact, I think they've secured enough supply for many times over for the Canadian population in a number of the different vaccines, including the Pfizer in the and the Modena vaccine.

CO: Should Canada now be looking ahead beyond this? And to say we should be producing vaccines at home or going to get into that production. Is that where Canada should go?

AC: No question. Look, we know that there's going to be a COVID-22, 28. You can pick a year, you can pick your virus. They're going to be more of these types of challenges that we're going to face. Indeed, Bill Gates predicted this many years before COVID arrived. We knew that these types of things were going to come. We do have to prepare for those. So if there's a case to be made, I think it is that we should certainly look at what the future looks like, where should we invest? And we should be doing that in partnership. As an industry, we want to partner with government to sort of identify where the needs are going to be. We've got some fantastic companies in this country that are developing these responses, the innovations, the technologies, the science. We can build on that. We can grow some capacity here to respond to the next health care challenge and crisis like this one.

CO: But you have also pointed out that you think that Ottawa has to reconsider its plans to drive down drug prices in Canada in order to attract investment from the pharmaceutical industry? Are you suggesting there should be a quid pro quo?

AC: No, I'm suggesting there actually should be a more holistic public policy put in place that recognizes that these companies, you can't just sort of slice and dice them and say that's the part I want to work with. And that's the other part I don't want to work with. These companies need to be working here in this country, working with the government and public policy will create the environment that wants them to come and invest in this country. And I think that's the important part. So if we want to have that kind of a capacity to respond not only in the vaccine space but in other therapies in other disease space, I think we need to work collectively.

CO: Going back to the beginning and the light at the end of the tunnel that you said should give us encouragement, do you think it's possible that we will begin to see vaccines, people getting vaccines before the new year?

AC: Before the new year? It's possible. It's very possible. It depends, again, on the regulatory process and, of course, the rollout plan. So it is possible we could be ahead of the other countries if that is all there, just like the U.S. and the U.K. and other places. I think that is a very distinct possibility. But I think we have to be prepared for the possibility that it won't be until the new year.

CO: We’ll leave it there. Mr. Casey, thank you.

AC: Thank you, Carol.

CH: Andrew Casey is the head of BIOTECanada, which represents the vaccine industry. He was in Ottawa. For more on this story, tune in to "The Current" tomorrow morning on CBC Radio One.

LR: Superglue your wounds

[Music: Jazz]

CO: Did he ever explain to you why he left after only 11 games with the NHL?

RL: One story that I heard was that he wanted to live closer to home. And I heard that they send him back to Calgary, I guess, to play in the semi-pros there or whatever the league was at that time. The story I heard with him is that he got so lonely one that one day he hired a cab to go from Calgary to Sandy Lake, to his reserve, which is about an eight-hour cab ride. His wife lived there, and he missed her so much, he went there. And his wife told them that she wasn't moving off the First Nation community. So I think that's how Freddie just said, OK, I'm a staying home too.

CO: Wow!

RL: My feeling is I don't think they were married yet. I think he went there to ask her to marry him and move with him. And I think she decided that he would just stay home.

CO: What does that tell you about Fred’s character that he would give up a dream job in the NHL to be with his hometown sweetheart?

RL: I think Freddie put his First Nation and his family ahead of playing in the National Hockey League. And that's the way he is. You know, he was so much into culture and his First Nation roots that, you know, that's why he became such a great man.

CO: He only played eleven games, but he was an inspiration to many people, including yourself. What did he mean to you?

RL: You know what? Playing those 11 games is like playing 11 hundred games because he's the one that broke the barrier for us. He's was the first one that made it to the National Hockey League. Then young guys like myself, you know, 16, 17-year-olds, hear about this guy, First Nation guy played the National Hockey League. And it felt so good to know that he was First Nation. And it makes you try harder. You want to be like him. You want to be like Fred Sasakamoose. You want to play in the National Hockey League.

CO: And lots of other NHL players are saying that today, Theo Fleury, Carey Price, Jordan Tootoo. They're all pointing to Fred as the person who inspired them, as he inspired you.

RL: You have different generations of First Nation players that played in the National Hockey League. Like, for myself, there was Freddie, and then there was Jimmy Neilson. And then I came along. And then after that it was, you know, Trottier, and, you know, Carrey Price, and most of us came from poor families. Most of us didn't have any money. It's a hard, hard journey for us. You know, we're behind the eight ball right now because we're First Nation.

CO: And do you think that it's changed at all, or do you think that's still the case for First Nations players?

RL: I still think it's is the case today. We're always looked at second instead of first. And you know, it's not going to change.

CO: What did Fred do after he returned to his home?

RL: You know, I really don't know. I know he became chief later on in life. And always involved with a lot of the First Nation communities in Saskatchewan. And I got very lucky because we did a Zoom meeting about three weeks ago, and that was the last time I seen him and spoke to him. So but it was nice to see him and hear his voice. It just gave me chills when you played that clip a while ago of how he speaks and everything else. And, you know, you never forget that, you know, he passed, but he will always live on.

CO: Reggie, thank you so much for talking about your friend.

RL: Thank you very much for having me. And thank you for doing a great tribute to him.

CO: You bet. Bye-bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

CH: Reggie Leach played 13 seasons in the NHL, including with the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers. He was talking about his friend, Fred Sasakamoose, who died yesterday, at the age of 86. We reached Mr. Leach on Manitoulin Island, in Aundeck Omni First Nation.

Part two: Toronto strip search, David Dinkins obit

CO: Mr. Sewell, what was it like for you to finally hear Toronto's police chief admit that the forces’ strip-search policy needed to change?

JOHN SEWELL: Well, at last, [chuckle] better late than never. And it was in 2004 that we went to the board and say, you know, you guys are strip-searching way too many people. You're strip-searching a third of all the people you're arresting. And the Supreme Court of Canada has said that's too much. They should only happen rarely, you know. So that was 2004. Chief Bill Blair did nothing for the next ten years until he left. And then Cheif Saunders did nothing. The board did nothing. So to actually find the change, I was delighted.

CO: And how is it that in Toronto, four out of every ten arrests between 2014 and 2016, they looked at, four out of ten arrests end in a strip-search, or have a strip-search as part of it?

JS: Well, and I mean, that's compared to all other large police forces in Ontario, which strip-search one per cent of those they arrest rather than 40 per cent. I think it just became a systemic thing to Toronto Police. That's what you do. I mean, the way that police culture seems to happen is that you get in there and you do what everybody expects you to do. So if you have to discriminate against Black people or Indigenous people, you discriminate against Blacks or Indigenous. If you have to strip-search too many people, you strip-search them. So I think it just became a systemic practice.

CO: What effect does it have? From your research, what effect does it have on people to be strip-searched?

JS: Oh, I think they're just devastated. We know that certain women it's happened to, they're beside themselves, as you or I would be too. You know, particularly if you haven't done very much that wrong. Now, if you're somebody who's heavily involved in drugs, or if you happen to be somebody who's carrying a gun, OK, that's a different arrangement. But, you know, that's very, you know, that's only eight or nine per cent of all the people who are arrested. So many of the people who are being strip-searched are, you know, maybe they're accused of fraud or something. So it's devastating. It's devastating to be put in that position. That's why the Supreme Court said demeaning and degrading. Yup, they were right.

CO: What do you think will now change?

JS: Well, what they've required now is what the Supreme Court decided in 2001, that before you do a strip-search, you have to do a pat-down search. And that has to reveal that there's reasonable grounds for thinking the person is trying to hide something. So this will be a very significant change to people in Toronto.

CO: There also will have to be a recording of the search?

JS: As often as they can do it, they will. Now, not of the strip-search itself, you know, that gets into privacy issues, but a recording of the previous searches. Because it's a graded thing. You start with what they call a protective search, which is just a little pat-down. And then there's the frisk-search, which is a bit more serious. You might have to take off a sweater for that or a coat or something like that. They would have to be videotaped if they could do that.

CO: Toronto Police say they cut the number of strip-searches from over 250 a week earlier this year to under 40 a week currently. What exactly was that because of COVID-19? Is it because of proximity, or?

JS: No, no, because of the policy. They brought in the policy. The policy's been in place now for about a month. So that's why the number of searches has gone way, way down.

CO: Okay, if the searches have gone down, have there been any consequences of that? Are more people being found smuggling in weapons or drugs into facilities?

JS: Nope, not that we've heard of. And the point is that it doesn't happen in other large police forces. You go to Ottawa as an example, or Kingston. They don't have any problems that way. So there's no reason it should be a problem here in Toronto.

CO: So that just shows that there really was no reason for all those strip-searches.

JS: I think you're right, yup. Which is why we asked the board. I mean, this has a lot to say about how awful police boards are in bringing real civilian oversight to the police forces that they're responsible for because the board literally did nothing for 16 or 17 years. And there were a lot of court cases too, 40 court cases in Toronto where the judges complained about the strip-searches and the board's did nothing. So this will be a very significant change, yup.

CO: What would you like the force, the Toronto force, to say to those thousands of people who have been subjected to this humiliation over the years?

JS: Well, I'd like them to say we apologize. We were wrong. Now, the chief has said, this new interim chief, and I got to hand it to him, He’s made the changes that other chiefs have refused to make. He has said that you know, we've got it wrong. We've been doing too many of them. Well, that's a start. I think we should get a serious apology. It's not hard to do to say, by the way, we've made a really bad mistake here. We want to make sure we don't ever make it. You know, I'd like to see that happen.

CO: If this is so deeply into the culture of policing, is it possible for them to make really significant changes?

JS: Well, I hope so. I hope so. You know, the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and then the three that happened in Canada, Chantel Moore and Rodney Levi, both in New Brunswick, and the man who was in mental crisis in and Mississauga, Ahmed Choudry. I think that that has sort of changed a lot of people's attitudes to police. And therefore, the police are now beginning to realize that their culture is way, way, way out of step. So I think that there's a lot of pressure for some change. That's not going to be easy. They're going to have to do it. I mean, we've seen that with the extraordinary report about the RCMP last week, about how it's a toxic environment. So there's a lot of work that's going to be done. It's going to have to be done by, I think, elected officials having exercise over the police this year.

CO: MR. Sewell, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

JS: Thanks, Carol. I appreciate it.

CH: John Sewell is the former mayor of Toronto and a member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition. We reached him in Collingwood, Ontario.

[Music: Electronica]

CO: And of course, you were there in 1989 when David Dinkins was elected mayor. You just heard what Bill Tatum had to say about that time. What do you remember about the moment?

PG: So that was, of course, an exceptional moment. We had just made history. We were galvanized and seized by that. But there was the reality of what Bill Tatum said, that the polls had indicated it would be an easier victory. And so it was really astonishing to see somebody who had a long career in public service barely win against someone who at that point was only known as a kind of flashy prosecutor.

CO: And so as a Mayor Dinkins became mayor, it was in New York, a time of a crime wave, high unemployment and a lot of racial tension already. So what was it like for Mr. Dinkins as mayor?

PG: The mayor liked to say that he had a honeymoon of about a day, where he was able to just kind of soak in the power of it all. And then very immediately, was hit with the urgent emergencies of the day. We were in the midst of a fiscal crisis. Crime had spiralled out of control over the many years prior to his having assumed the role. And there were many, many people in the city who did not feel as if they were central to the solutions that were being offered for the future. So in that period, somebody who was known, David Dinkins, for his dignity and grace, also became really known for his work ethic. And he rolled up his sleeve. And despite the endless indignities that he suffered in that time, he still managed to transform the way law enforcement works in New York by creating a safe streets, safe city program that grounded officers in the community and led to the first decline in crime in New York over many years since the ‘60s. And was really proud of the investments that he made that created greater access to knowledge for young people. For the first time since 1947, all of the libraries in New York City were open six days a week. He just kind of dug in quickly and had a clear sense of the things that he wanted to be held accountable to and deliver on, and I think was rightly proud of those accomplishments.

CO: He was up against a lot, though, wasn't he? And there he faced a lot of criticism for the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, the clashes between the Hasidic Jewish community and the Black community, and tragic deaths in the course of that. What regrets do you think he had about how he handled the Crown Heights riots?

PG: You know, God, that was just a complicated time. I was there every step of the way with the mayor during the Crown Heights riots, both in city hall while he was deliberating, gathering intelligence, making the decisions. But also, I was on the ground with him when rocks were being thrown, and one could just sense the proximity of danger. So I would say this, the mayor himself often said that he wished that his police department had acted with greater resolve and quicker conviction. He believes that he should have pushed his police commissioner harder and faster. I also want to say, Carol, that so much of Crown Heights was just exploited by cheap opportunists and politicians who were trying to score points. David Dinkins is somebody who always reached out, tried to build community and politicians like Rudy Giuliani accused him of organizing a program against the Jewish community. It was reprehensible then and shocking when one looks back on it. There's also a way that what occurred in Crown Heights has been overdramatized in the history of David Dinkins and has been lifted up as the reason why he lost re-election. We won our election by less than 50 thousand votes. We lost re-election by less than 50 thousand votes.

CO: The first, and never since a Black mayor of New York City.

PG: That’s right.

CO: One term sandwiched between the mayorship of two legendary characters in New York, Ed Koch and then Rudy Giuliani. How different was he from them?

PG: Ed Koch, in his first term, was a real cheerleader for the city, outsized personality. But by the time he turned the corner on his second and third term, the challenge of corruption had overwhelmed his administration. And there was a sense that there was a lack of integrity there. Rudy Giuliani, who followed us, I have no apologies, saying that during the campaign and subsequent to it, he was a racial arsonist. And he is somebody who has never really operated with a sense of clarity about truth and honesty. And we're seeing that right now in the way he's representing Donald Trump in the election. David Dinkins was a much more low-key personality, but he had a fierceness to him that the public didn't often see. As the first African-American, he was always guarding himself, always trying not to show flashes of anger because he thought there was an important example that he had to set for others, and he knew he would be judged differently.

CO: At the time, though, he was considered to be, as one Washington Post headline said, “Is David Dinkins Too Nice for New York? [PG chuckles warmly] Was there some truth to that.

PG: No, David Dinkins wasn't too nice for New York. If I had to criticize the mayor, I think that he was not good at sounding his own trumpet. I remember when David Dinkins helped to create the first all-civilian review board for New York City Police Department and really brought in powerful reforms. He undersold those reforms. He even sounded as if he was apologizing for them when he announced them. When we had two consecutive years of crime drops, the mayor didn't even want to be in front of his police commissioner in announcing that. So he didn't toot his own horn. So he wasn't too nice, but he was a little too self-effacing, I'd say.

CO: He was defeated four years later. Did he believe that he lost because he's Black?

PG: David Dinkins believed that there was an element of racial animosity that drove some of that. But at the same time, he would be the first to say there's a way he could have communicated differently that could have led to different outcomes.

CO: Mr. Gaspard, I appreciate speaking with you. And having you share your memories of your friend. Thank you.

PG: Thank you so kindly for having me on about that great man.

CH: Patrick Gaspard was an aide to former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. Mr. Dinkins died Monday. He was 93.

[Music: “Heartless” by The Weeknd/R&B]

CH: A former Quebec judge is blaming Catholic officials for putting the reputation of a priest ahead of the children he abused. The Catholic Church commissioned Pepita Capriolo to investigate how Brian Boucher's crimes went undetected for so long. The former priest is serving an 8-year sentence for sexually abusing boys for more than 20 years as he served in a series of Montreal churches. Ms. Capriolo delivered her report today. It finds that responsibility lies with Catholic leaders in Montreal who either failed to respond to accusations against Brian Boucher — or actively worked to sweep them under the carpet. Reporters asked Pepita Capriolo what part of her investigation had the greatest impact on her.

PEPITA CAPRIOLO: I have to tell you, I was broken-hearted several times. Francis Smith, testimony of what happened to him and how he was basically forgotten, how what happened to Armando was heartbreaking, but what struck me the most was the passing of the buck from person-to-person, how even though everyone said this is a terrible, you know, there should not be any abuse, that this is terrible, this is not how it should happen, no decisions were made. And the need to protect the reputation of Boucher seemed to be paramount.

REPORTER: What's going through your mind when you were doing your investigation and you saw the apparent lack of accountability from the Catholic Church and you were preparing your report? What was going through your mind during this?

PC: I was upset.

REPORTER: Can you expand on that?

PC: What can I say I was very upset?

REPORTER: Were you surprised to see so much of it sort of, like you said, it seemed like the protecting Boucher seemed to be paramount. Were you surprised by this as you're doing your investigation?

PC: Well, there have been issues with the Catholic Church and other churches and other institutions in the past 20 years, and these problems have come up over and over again. So I was not surprised by the existence of the problem, maybe by the fact that it was spread over such a long period of time and so many people were involved. That surprised me.

CH: That was former Quebec Superior Court Judge Pepita Capriolo speaking on a press call today, about her investigation into the Catholic Church's handling of former priest Brian Boucher. Mr. Boucher is serving an eight-year sentence for abusing boys over more than 20 years.

[Music: Horns!]

Egypt human rights arrests

Guest: Jessica Kelly

CH: It was a routine meeting between foreign diplomats and a human rights organization in Cairo. But Egypt's security forces viewed it as terrorism. Last week, three prominent human rights activists in Egypt were arrested. They're part of a group called the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Days before their arrests, the E-I-P-R had given a human rights briefing to diplomats and representatives from Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany, among other countries. Karim Ennarah works at E-I-P-R. He attended that meeting. And he was vacationing in Dahab, in Egypt's South Sinai, when agents arrested him. Jessica Kelly is a documentary filmmaker and Mr. Ennarah's wife. They just got married in September. We reached her in London, England.

CO: Jessica, when we first learned that your husband had been arrested, it wasn't clear where he had been taken. Do you know where he is now?

JESSICA KELLY: So he's currently in Tora Prison. It's a horrible place to be. It's been described as inhumane and a cruel environment. He's been there since Thursday, accused for belonging to a terrorist organization and spreading false news, which are totally baseless accusations for his work as a human rights defender.

CO: He was arrested among the three leading people in the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Your husband and the other two are very high-ranking human rights defenders. What can you tell us about the timing of these arrests?

JK: So the arrest happened straight after a meeting on the 3rd of November, in which 13 foreign diplomats, including the UK, Canada, France, asked to meet with E-I-P-R for them to brief them on the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. Karim is the director of the Criminal Justice Unit, and therefore, his work is all about arbitrary detention, torture and prison, police brutality and mass executions. So this was the sort of thing that Karim and his colleagues at E-I-P-R were discussing with these foreign diplomats. I also believe that the timing is connected to the new Biden administration being about to come in. And I think that it's maybe a message from Sisi that Biden should lower his expectations in terms of what Egypt is expected to do regarding its human rights record.

CO: And when you say Sisi, it’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. Can you tell us a bit more why you are quite convinced that it was this meeting with the diplomats, including Canada, that may have been the trigger for these three men to be arrested?

JK: Well, two things. E-I-P-R has been operating for at least 15 years in Egypt. It's one of the last few remaining human rights organizations there. They've sort of been left to get on with their work, even though the kinds of human rights abuses that they're exposing is something that angers the regime. The second point is that when Mohamed Bashir was first arrested, we know from the lawyers that he was asked about this meeting on the 3rd of November.

CO: And he was asked about it in a way that, from what I've read, is that it really did seem the focus of the arrest, that that was what was the purpose of that meeting and that that was what he was being interrogated for. What is it about that meeting that has spooked this U.S. government?

JK: I can only imagine that they've seen this meeting, as, you know, sort of E-I-P-R acting as an almost alternative government, being so bold as to meet with these Western countries. And I can only assume that it annoyed someone very high up and led to them asking for the arrests of these very high-profile people.

CO: Have you had any contact with Karim Ennarah, your husband?

JK: Two days a days, a-day-and-a-half before he was arrested, when I knew it was very likely he would be arrested because he wasn't home when they came to arrest him, he was able to call me that night and tell me he loved me and that he knew that we would get through this together. But it was very, yeah, it was very hard. And it was something that we always thought could happen, but naively thought we could avoid. And since he was arrested, I've not been allowed a single phone call, let alone a visit.

CO: Do you have any idea what conditions are that he's being held in?

JK: Well, yesterday, when Gasser appeared for another hearing --

CO: This is Gasser Abdul Razak. This is a man we've had on our program a number of times as a prominent human rights defender.

JK: Gasser is one of the bravest people you'll ever meet. And he's been a father figure to Karim. And yesterday, he appeared for another interrogation. And he told his lawyers that he's been kept in solitary confinement. He's sleeping on a metal bed without a mattress, and he's freezing cold because they haven't given him proper clothes. And he had his head forcibly shaven. And I'm very worried and concerned that Karim could be subjected to the same conditions.

CO: But there are tens of thousands of opposition leaders and human rights defenders who have been treated in this way by the Sisi government. You thought maybe it wouldn't happen to your husband. Why do you think that they have reached as high as they have to take these probably the most best-known human rights defenders into custody?

JK: I think it goes back to a point earlier about the timing of this just ahead of Biden taking up office. Sisi has been allowed to continue increasing the numbers of political prisoners. It's estimated there are 60 thousand. And I can only imagine that this is a message to the new administration to say don't expect us to kind of clean up our act.

CO: The countries that were part of that group that met, those diplomats, those leaders have condemned the arrest of your husband and the other two men. Do you know if Canada has said anything at all about the arrest of these leaders?

JK: I've been in touch with the Canadian embassy, and they assure me that they're doing as much as they can. But, to be honest, I would expect something from higher up. These diplomats who met with E-I-P-R are there, you know, with the invitation of the Egyptian government, and the fact that the people they met with have now been arrested should be taken as a direct insult. We should be hearing more from Canada. And I hope that in the coming days, we will see a much stronger reaction.

CO: Just tell us a bit about why he is so important to people? Tell us a bit about Karim?

JK: Karim is really an unforgettable person. He's the kind of guy who will light up any room and make you feel interesting and interested. that He's very curious and playful. And he downplays it, but he has a real strong sense of justice and a moral compass that I always try to follow. And I think it's that that even people who he worked with years and years ago, they are now kind of working full-time on trying to secure Karim's release. And I wasn't aware of just how many people love and support him really until now. And I've just been overwhelmed by the support.

CO: Jessica, I hope you're able to make contact with your husband soon, and I appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

JK: Thanks for having me.

CH: Jessica Kelly is a documentary filmmaker based in London. She's married to Karim Ennarah, a prominent Egyptian human rights activist who, along with two colleagues, was arrested by Egyptian authorities earlier this month.

CH: Monica Lennon says if toilet paper is freely available to the public, pads and tampons should be too. And thanks her newly-minted Period Products Act, Scottish law now agrees. Yesterday, Scotland became the first country in the world to commit to providing free period products to anyone who needs them. For Ms. Lennon, it's the culmination of a long fight that's helped put menstruation on the political map — not just in Scotland, but globally. We spoke with the Scottish Labour Party MP about her bill earlier this year, when it first obtained cross-party support. Here's part of Carol's February conversation with Monica Lennon.

MONICA LENNON: It's an issue in Scotland because we know that period poverty exists. Too many women in ghettos are not able to afford period products when they need them. And many have used alternatives, which are not safe or hygienic.

Of course, toilet roll, toilet paper and hand towels are already in public bathrooms. So why not period products?

CO: Right. Now, It's going to cost though about 31-million dollars U.S. — 24-million pounds — and so you say that you're trying to address the issue of poverty, people who cannot afford them. So was it not possible to try and make it available to those who can't afford them without making it universal?

ML: So in 2016, when I was first elected to the Scottish Parliament, I investigated what period poverty is and who that affects. And we heard about women in ghettos who were forced to go to food banks and homeless shelters to get period products. And they told us that they felt really embarrassed and really ashamed. And the Scottish government took that on board, and they ran a pilot scheme in Aberdeen. And that was really well-received. But what women told the government was that they didn't want to be tested or asked to lots of personal questions about their income or how many products they need and how heavy their period is? How long their period lasts? So we've come up with a system which we believe is free and universal to access. But in reality, most women have said they would only use it if it really had to use it. Some MSPs have had questions about the practicalities, about the cost, but they also recognize there’s a cost of not doing this. We talked about women who have experienced toxic shock syndrome. People who have had to keep the workplace because they had blood on their clothing, on their uniform, because they couldn't get products in the workplace. So people realize that that is a benefit to doing this. A little benefit to a health service as well. So I’ll go back to the chamber later this year. And I hope by the end of 2020, the period products Scotland Bill will have passed, and will become law. And you know maybe in ten, 20 years’ time, we’ll wonder what all the fuss was about?

CH: Monica Lennon is a Scottish Labour Party member of parliament. She spoke with Carol this past February. Yesterday, her Period Products Act became law in Scotland.

CH: As if the pandemic hadn't changed enough in our lives, it's now changing the sound kids hear while they're walking to school. In Ottawa, they've been noticing that masks were making it harder for crossing guards to get the attention of drivers in school zones. So this week, the guards got new whistles. Because of the masks, those whistles are electronic. They're as loud as a car horn and they come with simple instructions. Get ready. The guards deliver one big blast to get cars to stop.

CH: And they deliver two shorter ones once they've stepped out into the crosswalk to let the kids cross

[Two shorter shrill electronic whistles]

CH: The sound of new electronic whistles given to Ottawa crossing guards — whistles you probably don't want to wet. Those were our Sounds of the Day.

[Music: Guitar noodling]

Darwin notebooks

Guest: Mark Purcell

CH: The Cambridge University Library is big. Very, very big. We're talking 130 kilometres' worth of shelving, and millions of books, maps and manuscripts. So things go missing every now and then. But a new investigation has determined that some very special books aren't just shelved in the wrong place. They've likely been stolen. They're known as the "Transmutation Notebooks", and they were written by Charles Darwin in the 1830s. Now, the Cambridge University Library is doing everything it can to get to the bottom of their apparent theft — some twenty years ago. Mark Purcell is its Deputy Director for Research Collections. We reached him in Cambridge, England

CO: Mr. Purcell, why did it take the library two decades to figure out that these notebooks were not shelved, but probably stolen?

MARK PURCELL: It's a very difficult situation to be in. And having spent my entire career working with rare books and manuscripts, it's not a situation anybody wants to be in. As far as I can tell, the situation was reviewed carefully at the time in the winter of 2001. The manuscripts were last seen in the library's photographic studio for a routine order in November 2000, and they were noted as not being present in 2001. And our predecessors then followed up and concluded that the items were missing.

CO: So they said there are missing, but missing in this in terms of being misplaced as opposed to being gone, right?

MP: Precisely. It's not a common problem, but in a very, very large library, and we're dealing with a library with about 130 linear kilometres’ of shelving, of which probably about 30 miles of that is in high-security strong rooms. So it is not it is rare, but it's not unknown for things to be misplaced, to be put in the wrong place and to come to light. And that is clearly what our predecessors thought is what had happened. We've reviewed it. I should add that we, the senior team of the library, are all fairly new in post. We've reviewed it recently, and we've come to the same conclusion that we do not believe the items were misplaced, that they were stolen.

CO: Wow! And just tell us a bit about these notebooks. I presume these were in that high-security area. Just describe what they are and why they're so important?

MP: They’re each about the size of a small postcard, and they’re about of an eighth of an inch thick and they were in Victorian leather bindings. They when you open them up, will contain Darwin's very Victorian, difficult to read handwriting. And one of them contains the first, the very first of a series of Tree of Life diagrams, which are key to the evolution, if I can use that word of Darwin's thinking. So these are items at the highest possible importance, which is why we are launching an international public appeal for any help we can muster to find any leads here, because at the moment, we don't have any.

CO: OK, are these notebooks that he would have had with him in the field, he would have taken them to the Galapagos Islands?

MP: They're written after he gets back from the voyage, but we do have elsewhere in the collection, we do have field notebooks.

CO: but again, this drawing, this kind of spindly picture of the tree, which was the first time that he was sketching out his ideas, you say the evolution of his ideas. That this is kind of the origin of the origin. Wow!

MP: Yeah, exactly, the beginning of the ideas about that. The notebooks are known as the Transmutation Notebooks. And they are the beginnings that the of the exploration by Darwin and the diagram of the visualization of the fact that species change. They are not fixed. And when you handle items of the Darwin collection, you do get a sense of being close to the mind to the individual of one of the great figures in the history of science, the handwriting, the impression of the pen nibb on the paper, the fact that with some of the items in the Darwin collection, there are drawings done by Darwin's children on the back of the notes. It's a sense of intimacy and closeness to, you know, a figure who is by any standards one of the great figures in the history of science.

CO: Are they filmed? Are they digitized? Do you have copies of them?

MP: Yes, we do. They are available on Cambridge Digital Library on our website. I should say nothing for us replaces the originals. We are desperately concerned about their absence from our shelves and we desperately want to get them back. But it is some consolation to us that they were digitized just before they went missing 20 years ago. So in one sense, the content survived. But, for us, that isn't the point. These are iconic items of global significance, and we desperately want to get back.

CO: Who would be interested in stealing them? I mean, they couldn't be sold, right? They’re not something that you could put up on the market.

MP: We have really no idea of how or by whom they could have been stolen. But you are absolutely right. These items are not salable in any conventional way. They are too famous. They have iconic significance. Anyone with even the slightest interest in Darwin would very quickly trace them back to Cambridge and would recognize they were handling stolen property, there can be no two ways about that. So where they are, what has happened to them? I don't know. What we do know is that there is precedent, some of it quite recent for items like this being stolen and then turning up again decades later. So about ten days ago, here, a set of manuscripts associated with Alan Turing, the Enigma machine, the great computing pioneer will return to an archive in the U.K. from the U.S., having apparently been stolen by a visitor in the early 1980s. So we are hopeful that by launching an appeal and bringing us out into the open, that this may, may uncover where these items are. And if someone has them or knows where they are, then we would appeal for help in returning them to Cambridge.

CO: Twenty years is a long time, though. I mean, this is as cold cases go, had the police been called, or had this been recognized as stolen at the beginning, would you think it would be a better chance of actually being able to find them?

MP: It's very difficult to speculate about what happened or what might have happened 20 years ago, but clearly you are right that after 20 years, there are no active leads at the moment. We're working with the Cambridge Police, with the U.K. specialist police in London. And we hope that by making this appeal, we may open up some leads. At the moment, there aren't any.

CO: All right. We'll leave it there. Mr. Purcell, thank you.

MP: Thank you very much.

CH: Mark Purcell is the Deputy Director for Research Collections at the Cambridge University Library. We reached him in Cambridge. As Mr. Purcell mentioned, the kind of recovery he's hoping for isn't completely unheard of. Just last week, officials in the U.S. and the U.K. reached a deal that will see several items belonging to Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing returned to England. The memorabilia went missing in the 1980s, and was re-discovered earlier this year in the home of one Julia Turing. No relation. At the time, Carol spoke with reporter Kieren McCarthy about the find.

KIEREN MCCARTHY: So they were looking for possessions of Alan Turing that went missing from his school in the UK over 30 years ago. And the reason they felt that they were there is that she had turned up at the University of Colorado several months earlier with photocopies of his Ph.D. and various other things, his knighthood and so on. And said, oh, I think you should display these. She said that she was Alan Turing's daughter, Alan Turing never had a daughter. And looked into it, thought it sounds suspicious, and contacted the police, well, Homeland Security, as it turned out. And they turned up looking for these possessions at her house. And in the course of that search, they found hidden behind a dresser various items that seemingly belong to Alan Turing. And then they searched in her bathroom and found a false wall in her bathroom. And inside the false wall, found a leather briefcase. And inside the leather briefcase was over 200 items that belonged to Alan Turing.

CO: Good Heaves! There is quite a story about how she even managed to get these items. Can you tell us that?

KM: Yes. So it turns out that she visited the UK back in, I think it was 1984, and she went to two universities, to Alan Turing was at Manchester and Cambridge, and she also visited his school. But it turns out at the school, she was left unattended for a while and they came back. The sort of school bursar sort of came back to this collection of his memorabilia found that a big chunk of it was missing and underneath a box with a letter saying, oh, please forgive me, I promise I'll look after these items. And she basically, just according to the court documents, just stolen them and ran back to the United States with them.

CH: Part of Carol's February conversation with reporter Kieren McCarthy — about the strange recovery of some 250 stolen pieces of Alan Turing memorabilia earlier this year.

Diego Maradona obit

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November 25, 2020 Episode Transcript

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