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The Current Transcript for December 8, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: NHS staff around the country have been working tirelessly to make sure that we are prepared to commence vaccination on Tuesday.

MATT GALLOWAY: They're calling it the V-day. Vaccines for COVID-19 went into the arms of UK citizens earlier today, the first in the world to get the much anticipated jab. In a moment, a conversation with one of the first in line who already got the shot. And a look at the campaign here to convince those on the fence that, yes, indeed, that vaccine is safe. Also this morning, are you a fan of the wildly popular, very funny humorist and essayist David Sedaris? Well, he misses you.

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VOICE: There are a number of things that I've written since the pandemic started, but I don't know if they're good or not. I haven't had a chance to read them out loud in front of an audience.

MG: In 30 minutes, David Sedaris is here to talk about keeping busy during COVID and what he's learnt in writing about his family for many years. Plus, it is one of the most visited sites on the Internet. Its roots are in Montreal. And in a powerful piece in The New York Times, the writer Nicholas Kristof accused the website PornHub of hosting videos depicting sexual exploitation and assault. In an hour, Christoph explains why he wants Justin Trudeau to take action. And we'll get response from the federal government. We begin though with the race for the vaccine, those already across the finish line and the work underway to get more people there. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Getting COVID-19 vaccine is my duty as a citizen, says 87-year-old U.K. man among first to get the shot

Guests: Hari Shukla, Noni MacDonald

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[Clip of first COVID-19 vaccination]

VOICE: It was fine. It was fine. I wasn't nervous at all. Hopefully it'll help other people come along and do as I did, try and do the best to get rid of this terrible thing.

MG: Today in Coventry in the United Kingdom, history in the making, as 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the very first person in the world to offer up her arm and get vaccinated against COVID-19. The British government has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNth vaccine thus far, enough to vaccinate 20 million people or a third of the UK population. And hospitals across the country are starting with people over the age of 80, home care workers and other front line workers. My next guest was also amongst the first to get the vaccine. Hari Shukla is 87 years old. He spent much of his life in Newcastle, England, as a campaigner for racial equality. Mr Shukla, hello.

HARI SHUKLA: Hello.

MG: How are you feeling today?

HARI SHUKLA: You know, I had my injection at half past eight this morning, but I feel much better. There is absolutely no change in it and I'm OK.

MG: How does your arm feel?

HARI SHUKLA: Oh, Ino I don't feel anything. You know, as if nothing has happened, you know. So at the moment everything is fine.

MG: Describe the scene to me this morning. You go to get the vaccine, what was that like?

HARI SHUKLA: Although I had a lot of confidence, I didn't have any concern about this because I was very, very sure you know that the way this has been prepared and all that is one of the best in the world. So I was not worried about that, but when I went there and and the staff were absolutely wonderful people and they made me very comfortable and made sure, you know, that I didn't have any worry or any concern and just took five minutes, you know, to give me the injection. And everything went well with the dose. So we feel very happy about it.

MG: Just five minutes. Did you have a sense of the history that you were part of?

HARI SHUKLA: Yeah, actually, I received this call from one of our hospitals two days ago saying that, you know, we are actually starting this campaign and would you like to help? And I straightaway said, I want to get involved. I want to help because I think it's a wonderful, wonderful service that our country is providing to us. And again, you know, the vaccine has come at the right time because we've been waiting for it for some time.And our scientists have worked day and night, you know, to produce this. And so it is our duty now to take advantage of it. And that is what we are doing. I encourage all our friends, you know, not to hesitate, but to take injection, because that's going to be very, very useful indeed.

MG: Tell me more about that. You say it was your duty. What do you mean by that?

HARI SHUKLA: Duty mean because I'm a citizen of this country and I worked in this area for 45 years as director of racial equality council, I had established a very strong relationship with all the institutions in this area and also with health authority. We worked very, very closely with them. And we are actually saying as a citizen, it is our duty to join hands with everybody else who's working it and make it happen, because there are some people, some people have concerned, you know. They're not quite sure whether they should take it or not. So my duty is look, I said I've done it and you go and get injection yourself as well.

MG: And so you think you'll be able to provide sort of a positive example to other people who might be who might have those concerns.

HARI SHUKLA: Absolutely. Lots and lots of people have actually telephoned me and said we saw this on television and we heard, you know, that you are you've being asked to take the injection, you know, we are very pleased about it. And so I tell them, I said, you know, don't waste time. Whenever you actually get a chance to get it. And it doesn't do any harm, but is very, very useful indeed. And not to take because I think it's a, the virus is a very serious and dangerous one and we got to take proper precaution. So we got now, we got vaccine now. Take it. So that means encourage people because people who are frightened, sometimes they say, no, we don't want to do it because it might have sort of an adverse effect or whatever. And I'm actually saying that, no, it's not that. You know, it's a wonderful idea and wonderful thing and so you go and do it.

MG: Tell me about the last few months. It's been difficult for all of us. But you're in the north, in northeast England and that area has been particularly hit hard by the virus. You're 87 years old yourself. Were you worried about catching COVID-19?

HARI SHUKLA: Actually, not really, because I took proper precaution and the lockdown because, you know, we actually we're not allowed to go out, you know, and I didn't go out and mix with people. I stayed indoors because although I have always led a very active life, you know, meeting every day, meeting and so it was difficult for me, but I had to do it because sometimes a little carelessness can do a lot of damage. And so I was very careful, but it was difficult to stay indoors all the time. I've never spent a couple of days at home without any meeting or anything, and I had to do that. But it was important that I do.

MG: I was going to say, I mean, you're so busy. You're active on a number of different committees and you're so well known in the community that it must have been difficult to be shut in at home.

HARI SHUKLA: It was very difficult. I'm on 27 committees.

MG: Wow.

HARI SHUKLA: And so that means, you know, there is always a meeting somewhere. And I had to stop that because all our meetings, you know, actually are cancelled or postponed until situation gets better and therefore it was very difficult, a person who has never spent a day at home had to do this, you know,. But then, you know, again, you know, we got to take precaution and we've got to be careful and anything can happen at any. So that means I never took any chances and stayed in, but it was difficult, you know. Yes.

MG: So you now have one shot. You have to go back in, what, 21 days to get the second shot?

HARI SHUKLA: That's right. The 5th of January, we've beem asked to go.

MG: Having gone through this, when do you think you'll be able to get back to that busy life that you've had that you love so much?

HARI SHUKLA: Well, I think it was soon after the second what you call injection. Things should be, well, by that time, you know, things will get slightly better and that is the time, you know, I will then start slowly getting involved in the life of the community.

MG: You're a great inspiration and it's a real pleasure to talk to you on an important day like this. Mr. Shukla, thank you.

HARI SHUKLA: Thank you. I mean, you know, I've been to Toronto a number of times when I was director of Racial Equality Council and we met, you know, lots of friends, you know, who are actually involved in race and equality work. So I know I learned a great deal from Canada. So there is a good partnership there.

MG: Well, you're welcome back any time. And I wish you the best of health. And it's a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

HARI SHUKLA: Hey, thank you very much. Thank you for your time.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

HARI SHUKLA: Bye bye.

MG: Hari Shukla, one of the first vaccine recipients in the U.K. Spent much of his life as a community activist and a campaigner for Racial Equality in Newcastle, England. In the next few weeks, the first Canadians could be getting vaccinated. The federal government announced yesterday that almost 250,000 vaccine doses are expected here by year's end, with approval from Health Canada expected within days. The prime minister, Justin Trudeau says the approval process has been stringent.

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VOICE: Yes, there is significant unknowns in terms of manufacturing capacity for various vaccines. They have never been made at this scale before at this speed before. That's why, first of all, the regulatory process needs to be as rigorous as it always is. There are no corners cut by Health Canada in terms of approving a vaccine for safe use by Canadians.

MG: While many Canadians cheered that announcement, there are still many cautious about whether to get the shot. Recent polls suggest as many as 60 percent of Canadians have some sort of hesitancy over the vaccine. Dr. Noni MacDonald is a professor of paediatrics and infectious diseases at Dalhousie University in Halifax and with the IWK Health Centre. She's also an expert on vaccine hesitancy. Doctor, good morning.

NONI MACDONALD: Good morning.

MG: Hari Shukla has no qualms about taking the vaccine. What do we know about how Canadians are feeling about getting the shot?

NONI MACDONALD: Well, there have been polls that have been going on both in Canada and many countries around the world, and it's fairly similar in most countries. We're seeing 25 to 30 percent of people are hesitant about receiving it. And in the group who said they will receive it, even amongst them, there are some who would just like to wait a little bit longer and maybe see what's going to happen. And that's not surprising. When people know that the amount of information out there is limited and that this has not been used widely, some people want to just wait and see it used widely. So and actually, because we don't have a lot of vaccine, most of us are going to have to wait anyways. And the amount of information that will be available by the time most of us are going to be able to receive these vaccines is going to be considerably greater.

MG: What have you learnt in your work about why somebody would be hesitant around a vaccine? You sort of hinted at this, but more broadly, this is a phrase that we're using a lot more now, vaccine hesitancy. What's at the root of that?

NONI MACDONALD: Right. It's about having confidence in the system, confidence in the vaccine and feeling confident about when you go and get it that you're not going to catch covid amongst all the other people that are going to be around you when you get it. And those are amongst the biggest reasons that people have put forward. So safety has been a big concern. You know, we have only been given to 60, 70000 people. That's not a ton of people. By the time most of us would have an opportunity to get this year vaccine, probably a million people will have got it, not all in Canada, but in other countries. So the amount of information on its safety will be much, much, much bigger. Now, if there were safety concerns about this, you know, and they were common safety concerns, this wouldn't have been approved for use in the U.K. and will not get approved here in Canada. But to date, there have been none of those kinds of concerns. So one of the problems we have is that negative information and concerns about safety stick much better than positive information. So we get much more concerned about that type of thing. So it's not a surprise that people are hesitant about this. Let me give you a quick example. I mean, if I wanted to sell you a car and I said this car is really safe and this car has excellent mileage, would you buy it or would you want some more information?

MG: You probably, I mean, if you say it, you think the people would buy it, but then you can imagine that now we have the Internet and you might go and scrounge around for other information as well.

NONI MACDONALD: Exactly. And there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation floating around the Internet, and I think that's one of the reasons why hesitancy has become much more of a concern.

MG: Why is it important for you to understand the roots of that hesitancy? Because you could imagine, and we're seeing this already, it's easy for people to dismiss that and say if somebody is hesitant, they're just and the phrase that gets used is they're an anti-vaxxer.

NONI MACDONALD: Yeah, well, let me be very clear. Anti-vaxxers are very, very specific people, and many of them are maliciously putting disinformation up on the Internet because they want to sell you an alternative. They want to make money off of you. They want to, you know, sell you essential oils or a lifestyle or something, or they want political gain or attention about this. It's not because they have your best interests out there. There are people who have misinformation up on the Internet, but they're not malicious. They're just repeating other things that they've heard. And we need to be very careful in sorting that out and teaching people to be able to discriminate and where to find good information.

MG: So what has to happen now in terms of communication of, you know, legitimate, valid information, scientific information around these vaccines? How do you go about communicating that?

NONI MACDONALD: Well, actually, Hari Shukla said some really important things that we know are evidence based. He's a leader in his community. So Harry, standing up to get the vaccine will mean many people who see him as a leader as well, this is the right thing for me to do. The other thing is we're much influenced by what we see others around us doing. And so seeing these people come forward to get immunised, I should be doing that, too. It's the same thing as why we put political signs on our lawns. It's telling people this is what I'm doing and you want to convince other people around you to do the same thing. We need really good leaders from all across the spectrum in communities to come forward to help make it make it known that the immunisation is really important to the community. What Hari did not say and what needs to be said is we need 70 percent of the people in Canada to take the vaccine. And for the ones that need two doses, we need them to take the two doses. We don't want dropouts after the first dose. We need to get that if we're really going to control the virus in our country. And that's a big ask.

MG: Do you have to change the message depending on who you're speaking to? I mean, you're talking about, you know, having individuals or having leaders in the community, but do you need to change the message in four different communities or for different age groups?

NONI MACDONALD: Absolutely. So I don't know a lot of seniors that are on TikTok, OK, or WhatsApp. All right. So putting out lots of stuff on social media, using those tools isn't going to help get us seniors immunized and vice versa. A lot of seniors, they want different kinds of information than people in their 20s and 30s may want. But what I want to see is we need the business community standing up because this is how we're going to get our economy going again is by controlling this virus so we can go back to doing all the things we really like to do. We need religious leaders standing up because for some groups, what your religious leader says about this very much influence is what you want to do. And that may be your social network is your religious community. We need teachers to educate about the students because they're going to be growing up to be adults, to be able to sort out misinformation and disinformation and why this is how do you find trusted sources of information and the critical thinking that goes with it. So we need a wide range of messages out there, very much targeting different subgroups because they're going to hear those messages differently. I mean, if you're over 80 like Harry and you've got somebody who's 25 who's trying to sell you something, you're not going to listen in quite the same way as you've got a call. Er like Harry, who is like you, who says this is why I've made this decision.

MG: How likely is it that if somebody has an idea about a vaccine in their mind that the scientific explanation is going to change their mind?

NONI MACDONALD: Well, one of the things that we do know is it's not about a knowledge dump, just telling you everything you need to know about the vaccine. What we absolutely have to do is tailor the message to fit what you want to know. And there's two parts to that tailoring. First of all, I mean, if you've got disinformation that's there, I need to correct that disinformation. And I need to teach you how to protect yourself against disinformation and there's evidence to show that when I do that, it really does work and it helps for you to make a better decision. But the other thing I need to do is that some people want a whole lot of information and we call this the difference between bites, snacks and lunch. Some people just need the bite, as Harry said. They said, come and get this. And I said, yes, I want to go and do this. I want to do this for myself and my community. But all he wanted to know, he knew enough. Other people want to have a snack. They want to know. Well, tell me a bit more about the vaccine. Tell me about the safety. Tell me about how effective it is. And that's what they want. And then some people want the full. For lunch, they want to know everything that's known about it and what we always have to do is make sure we're giving the right amount of information in the right way, using the right tools for the people that we're talking to. And we need to listen well to what their concerns are, so the information I'm giving addresses their concerns. There's got to be two way. It's not a one way communication.

MG: Just in the remaining time that we have. Are there jurisdictions, countries that have dealt with similar campaigns that we could learn from?

NONI MACDONALD: Oh, there are lots of places that have done mass campaigns for different vaccines to do catch-up, and there's a ton we can learn from them. So, for example, Kazakhstan did a big measles campaign roll out for young people and it ended up being a big flop because they did not address the stress and anxiety about getting an immunization. So kids were fainting and having other immunization stress related responses. They didn't make it appealing for them to be immunized. And it shut the whole programme down because it was all over television. You saw the problems that we had in Denmark with the HPV vaccine and the problems in Colombia. Same thing because people got very anxious about it. We need to address pain. We need to make the experience as positive as we can make it. And we need to make sure that we're addressing the concerns of the different subgroups that we're dealing with.

MG: And if you do that, I mean, again, from other jurisdictions, what are the positives? Where have you seen this work where a community has said this is important and the information that we're getting convinces us that it's important?

NONI MACDONALD: Right. So if we compare it with the H1N1 pandemic and the flu vaccine, then Sweden got a 60 percent uptake of their flu vaccine, which is pretty good for the H1N1. Australia only got less than 20 percent. And those countries are very similar in terms of their usual routine immunization rates. But the big difference between Australia and Sweden for that is Sweden framed their campaign in a very positive fashion, How you're helping your community, how you're helping yourself. This is a safe and effective vaccine.

MG: A bit of what Hari was saying.

NONI MACDONALD: It didn't dwell on the negatives. Australia dwelt on the negatives and bam, it didn't work for them.

MG: We're almost out of time, but are you confident that we will get this right? People say that getting the vaccine is one thing. Getting it into the arms of Canadians is another matter entirely.

NONI MACDONALD: Yep, that's the big thing. And what we need to do is hopefully have everyone come together to understand that the only way you can protect yourself and your family is by all of us stepping up to do this. And we need our communities to step up. We need everybody in our region to step up. We need to pay attention to this if we're really going to climb out of this pit that we're in that COVID has pushed this into.

MG: Dr MacDonald, it's good to speak with you. Thank you.

NONI MACDONALD: You're welcome.

MG: Dr Noni MacDonald, a professor of paediatrics and infectious diseases at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Your CBC News is up next. And then the author, very funny man, David Sedaris, is here for a writer who really does live to test his work out on live audiences, that's what he does. He'd kind of road test some of his stories and then is able to figure out what works and what doesn't. This pandemic has been particularly strange and difficult. As you can imagine, he's writing about it and we'll hear how he's working through it. Coming up in about six minutes time when David Sedaris joins us. I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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David Sedaris on deciding not to cut his family out of his life — at age 11 — and writing without an audience

Guests: David Sedaris

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

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, a new report from The New York Times on the alleged non-consensual and underage material that has appeared on the Canadian based website PornHub. That is in 30 minutes. But first, the author, David Sedaris.

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[Clip of the Kookaburra song]

MG: That's the Kookaburra song. Pretty catchy little tune, The Kookaburra, as you may know, is an Australian bird and anyone who reads David Sedaris's new collection of stories will never hear that song the same way again. David Sedaris is one of America's best essayists and humorists, a chronicler of his very interesting family. His new collection is called The Best of Me. David, good morning.

DAVID SEDARIS: Good morning. Thanks for having me. Gosh, I haven't heard that song in forever. That's probably the definitive recording.

MG: The definitive recording of the Kookaburra song. You actually I mean, I think most of us perhaps have not had an encounter with a kookaburra. You had one. What was that like?

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I was in Australia and I have a friend who lives there, and she took me to this little town called Dalesford, you know, a little adorable place that has a lot of fun shops. And we went out to lunch and I saw this bird on the railing on the deck of the restaurant, and I asked the waiter what on earth? And he said, it's a kookaburra. He said, you want to feed it. And so he gave me some more duck meat and sent me outside to feed this bird. And it just brought back a memory of that song and I'm singing that song. And it was just one of those moments when sort of your life feels like a story. And I was flying back to the United States the next day and our plane got delayed, delayed late. Anyway, I just I wrote the whole thing in the airport. I mean, I had to rewrite it, you know, two dozen times. But I mean, it just, you know, spilled four, which doesn't happen too often.

MG: You mention the memory of the song. What happened with that song? I mean, you write in the story about singing it with your sister.

DAVID SEDARIS: We learned it in school, but we learnt a bunch of Australian songs. But the words never made any sense to us. And I was just singing it in bed with my sister and for some reason, nothing irritated my father like the sound of his children's laughter. Awful quality for a parent. I mean our crying was OK with him, but our merriment just nothing made him angrier than that. And he just kind of kept bursting into the room and then it ended with, you know, a beating.

MG: A beating?

DAVID SEDARIS: Isn't that charming? Even as a child, I thought that. I thought, like, this is one of those moments. It is a parent like you're supposed to treasure. I would never say I was abused, but I mean, it was just a different time and it just sort of all stitched together in a nice way.

MG: After you were beaten up by your father for singing with your sister, you said that you were going to cut your family out of your life and you didn't do that.

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, that was a reference to my friend who lives in Australia, had just attended a seminar where the person leading it said that imagine your life as a stovetop with four burners. Each one represents a different aspect of your life. And in order to be successful, you had to cut off two of the burners and one of the burners was family. Another one was friends, one was work. And she said she had cut out family. And so it made perfect sense to me, her little explanation, because you can't really focus if you've got all these different aspects of your life yanking on you. But I remember as a child, I thought, OK, that's it, I'm done with my family. But I don't know. It's a most satisfying relationship in my life. I mean I can't imagine a life without my family.

MG: Can you tell me more about this? So much of your writing in this collection is bookended in many ways by the relationships that you have with your family. How would you describe your family?

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I just always thought that my family was better than everybody else's family. I mean, even when I was a child and I would go over to people's houses, I would realize that they didn't have any artwork in their house that was ugly, you know? I mean, we did most of our artwork is ugly. I don't mean artwork that we had made, but just artwork that my parents had bought. It was like paintings of depressed people and just other people just seemed sort of square to me. Or you could sort of guess what they were going to say about any given subject. Whereas my family, I don't know, I just felt like I was quite often surprised by the things they'd come out with and I still feel that way. I had two of my sisters for Thanksgiving. You know, we finished the meal and my sister Amy said to my boyfriend, you who had spent all day cooking, I would pay thirty six dollars for that meal. And you wouldn't, that you would say to somebody. Like my sister, gretchen pulled out her phone to show us she has a friend who has a giant snail as a pet, and the snail lives in a shell the size of like a conk shell. And this one was cuddling with the snail and Gretchen showed us the picture. And it would just be so disgusting to cuddle with the snail. You know, I don't understand pet wise what it has to offer. I'm just constantly kind of surprised and delighted and, you know if the rest of my family had been here, it just would have been more surprising to me. It just would have multiplied the light that I would have taken.

MG: In the collection, one of the stories and people may have read this before, it's such a great story, but it's so hard to read is Now We Are Five, which is about your sister, Tiffany. Can you tell us about that story?

DAVID SEDARIS: I have a sister and she was always troubled and she committed suicide just before her 50th birthday. So I wrote an essay about how her suicide affected my family because we had plans to get together at a beach house. We had to plan for months. And she was very specific in her will that she didn't want anyone in my family attending her memorial service and we weren't allowed to have her ashes and she didn't want us anywhere near any of it. So we'd already made this plan. So we got together anyway on Emerald Isle, which is a beach my family has been vacationing at since we were children. So it was a story about that week at the beach house and sort of how my family was navigating this. I mean, so many people, when you have a suicide in your family, people always assume that you're consumed by guilt, but most people don't, you know, just kill themselves. So most people who actually commit suicide have something else going on. I mean, my sister was mentally ill and she wouldn't take her medication and none of us could make her take her medication. There's nothing we could have done or said that would have changed anything. You know, we all feel horrible, but guilt doesn't really come into it because we couldn't have changed anything.

MG: There are really funny bits in that story, which I think will if people have never read it before or if they're reading it again, it might surprise people. As a writer, how do you do that? How do you try to tell that story, write that essay about what this means to your family, but also do what you normally do, which is comment on the strange observations that you have about life around you?

DAVID SEDARIS: I don't know. It's just not my way to get up in front of an audience and read something that's 25 minutes long. That's just about somebody committing suicide, because, I mean, I want there to be laughs and I'm not going to get the last one making fun of her suicide. When I think of that week that I spent with my family, I just think of us laughing. There were times when we weren't laughing, but I wanted to put those parts in the essay as sort of windows to kind of let some light in. You know, one of the last bits in that essay is I was at the grocery store, we were at the grocery store and my brother, we were in the produce aisle. And at this grocery store, they, you know, they missed the produce. And my brother snuck up behind me with a bouquet of parsley and he whipped it through the air and he went ah-choo and I just felt this spray on the back of my neck and I thought a stranger had sneezed on me. That is such a good trick to do now, you know, with the pandemic. This is the moment for that trick.

MG: You mentioned reading for people. I want to ask you about the pandemic, but you mentioned reading for people. And I can't read your writing without hearing your voice in my head, whether it's from the work that you've done on the radio or from having seen you in person. Would you mind reading a couple of things for us?

DAVID SEDARIS: Sure. This is something one of the very first things I ever wrote in The New Yorker. It was in the mid 90s and they had called in one day and invited me to write some things for the Shouts and Marmaris column, which is like a short humour column that they have. And it started with a quote from The Independent. Now, even the greeting card industry is getting in on the Massage Therapy Act by signing cards for people who have something delicate to communicate to their partner, but somehow cannot find the words or more likely, the courage to say it out loud. So I invented some cards. Locksmith's slash vans and drinking. Good morning Vallentine. When you lost your job as a locksmith, I'm afraid I wasn't very understanding I was wrong asking you to use your talents to break into my stepmother's van. Call me sentimental, but I'll arrange for your bail as soon as possible. And I'm looking forward to spending a quiet afternoon, just the two of us with the six pack we found in my stepmother's van. Puncture wounds. I'm sorry about the puncture wound, which started off as play became what I'm hoping the courts will define as roughhousing. I know you need a new kidney under different circumstances. I'd really love to help. Perhaps this Valentine's Day we can sit quietly for a change. Maybe you can redraft your will and withdraw the charges, friends.

MG: That's David Sedaris.

DAVID SEDARIS: I just was thinking how many people how many people would need that particular card, you know? So I just tried to come up with ridiculous. Also, I was out of school the day they taught you to read poetry, you know, and I've never written poems in my life, but there you go.

MG: What is it like, this is a collection of I mean, it's called The Best of Me. It's a collection from across your career. What is it like going back through the things you've written over time?

DAVID SEDARIS: I chose stories and essays, I guess, that I always looked forward to reading. It wasn't the audience reaction so much as the pleasure I would take and reading them that marked them as successful to me because there were things that the audience has enjoyed in the past and they have requested me to read. But I didn't put any of those in the book just because I don't like them.

MG: Because you don't like them?

DAVID SEDARIS: Yeah. I mean, I like them when I wrote them, but then I don't know, maybe I just grew out of them.

MG: What about nasty reactions? I mean, I know that that a story like Motherless Bear has wound people up. Why do you think that is?

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I think part of it is that the Internet has made it free to complain. I think in the days of yore, you would say that you were offended by something and then you would reach for your stamps and you would see that you only had three stamps left. And you would think, is this really worth 35 cents? I mean, how offended was I really? But for some reason, out of everything, it's a story, a fictional story that I wrote called The Motherless Bear. And it's about a bear whose mother dies and she won't shut up about it. And eventually she winds up in the circus and she's kind of put it in a costume and she kind of staggers around like dancing in front of people. And for some reason, I've never gotten more angry mails. And for that. And a British woman wrote and she said, how dare you mock these intelligent and sentient creatures? And then she demanded that I donate money to a bear rescue. And I wrote back and I said, it's made up. The bear talks. Like, I don't think I owe bears an apology. I don't think bears even know. I'm not, A, I'm not making fun of them. But even if I was making fun of a bear in print, a bear doesn't know. That's what separates us from animals. But I think a lot of people who were angry about that fictional story, it was the only story in a book of short fable like stories. All of them are violent, but it's the only story in which the violence is committed by a human instead of by another animal. So maybe that's what set people off.

MG: Do you miss travel? You travel a lot. And whether it's for work or whether it's for pleasure, we've all been kind of stuck in one place. Do you miss travel?

DAVID SEDARIS: Oh I hate not travelling. I actually travel a little bit during the pandemic. Like I went to North Carolina a few times and I had to go to Indiana and I had to go to Kentucky. And I was very happy to be back in the airport. But it kills me because all my tours were cancelled. And so what I would do that save my tours just got cancelled, I don't know, for some other reason I would be tried would travel non-stop. So it's so frustrating not to be on tour then not being able to travel. You know, when I have a friend who lives in Paris and every December we pick a different country to go to and like we're so far on the list, you know, we're like Moldova, you know, the countries and Bosnia. I mean, we've covered everywhere else. And it kills me that I have no trip planned with my friend.

MG: What have you been doing while you're forced to be in one place?

DAVID SEDARIS: I have a book that's coming out, and it's I released a collection of diary entries a couple of years ago, and it was like 1977 to 2002. And so the second volume is coming out. So I've just been poring through old diaries and looking for a bit that I'll extract and put into the book and that's been really time consuming. And gosh, I mean, I have a little bubble of people in New York. I'm fortunate my sister Amy lives here, so I see her a lot. And I have a Fitbit and I'm really a slave to my Fitbit. I mean, it rules my life right. And I would never not meet my goal. It just not a question of that. So I walk 15 miles a day.

MG: 15 miles a day?

DAVID SEDARIS: In New York, yeah. If I'm back in England, I walk 18 to 20 miles a day. But in New York, it's 15. But when you're out in the street in New York, you have to wear a mask. So I go out after midnight because there's nobody out. And then I think I can lower my mask if I'm not even seeing anybody. The other night, night before last, I'm walking on 72nd Street at 1:30 in the morning between 1st and 2nd Avenue and there's a raccoon. I mean, I'd heard they were in Central Park, but I'd never seen one. It's a raccoon walking down 72nd Street.

MG: It's a sign that they're coming.

DAVID SEDARIS: And I realized it had a mask. Even the racoon had a mask on, but it covered his eyes instead of his mouth.

MG: Have you been doing Zoom readings or online readings for the audience that can't see you face to face?

DAVID SEDARIS: I made up my mind at the beginning of the pandemic that I was never going to get Zoom or Skype. And I'm telling you, it got me out of so many things. So I did one virtual thing in a college, right? It was a reading and a Q&A. And so I went to somebody else's house and they had zoom and they set me up. But it was so unsatisfying. I had absolutely no idea how it went over, because sometimes if you're being asked questions, you know, you go to a college and the audience tells you that you're spending too much time answering your questions. They cough, they fidget. You think, oh, good to know. I'll cut these answers in half. But over the zoom, I had no idea. I had no idea how the reading went over. None of it.

MG: Do you miss that? I mean, as a performer, do you miss the reaction from the crowd? There are some people who I mean, that's and to your point, you get a sense as to what works and what doesn't. But do you miss that, not having that now?

DAVID SEDARIS: Oh there's nothing I've ever missed more in my entire life. I hate it. And there are a number of things that I've written since the pandemic started, but I don't know if they're good or not, I haven't had a chance to read them out loud in front of an audience. And to me that let's say I write something like eight or nine times, right, then I take it with me and I go on tour and I read it out loud and I think, wow, oh, that's actually not funny at all. Or boy, that went over better than I thought. And I go back to the room and I rewrite it and I read it and I rewrite it. And then at the end of the tour I give it to my editor, like at The New Yorker, and my editor will sometimes say, oh, I think we can cut this. And I love being able to say that's actually the biggest laugh in the entire essay, right. Because I know it because I've been reading it out loud for six weeks, so I don't know about any of the things that I've written. And one of them was published, I mean, a couple of them have been published and I just don't know and I feel like I'm going to read these things out loud as soon as I'm able to, and then I'll probably just slap my forehead and say, I can't believe I let that be published. That just not, you know, it's close, but it's nowhere near where I wanted it to be.

MG: Has there been any sort of silver lining through this period for you? A lot of people are kind of re-prioritizing things and figuring out what matters and what doesn't and jettisoning certain things and embracing other things. Is there anything positive that's come out of this weird time for you?

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, Hugh and I, my boyfriend and I, we just had our 30th anniversary. And I don't think we've ever spent this much time together. Because normally I'm gone like, I don't know, sometimes I'm gone half a year and it's always been I think that's always been good for us, I think to. We work well apart, you know, and so I was afraid that this would expose something really rotten, and it hasn't at all. I have to say, we've never gotten along better.

MG: Did you, you're engaged, but you never got married, right? Did you ever get married?

DAVID SEDARIS: No.

MG: And is it true you asked him to marry you like 18 times or something?

DAVID SEDARIS: Yeah, but I only because it was, my accountant told me it would save us a bunch of money because before that I didn't, it didn't mean anything to me to be married. Like, I don't feel like, I mean, I know a lot of people don't like the word boyfriend. And they say, oh, you're too old to have a boyfriend. I have no, I'd rather say boyfriend than husband. I just choke on that word. So, no, we're not married. And, you know, it's not like if I say we're engaged, it's not like we gave each other rings or would wear a ring or anything, you know? Well, no, I'm happy with how we are.

MG: And the pandemic has been good for that?

DAVID SEDARIS: Actually, yeah, I mean, I do think I mean, I'm fortunate that we don't live in like a tiny apartment. I think that would be that's a different story, you know, like living in a studio apartment. But I can't really think of I mean, neither of us has spent the night in the guest room or. I can't think of a door being slammed or no, really, it's like we seem fake. You know, like if you came over or something, you'd think oh drop the act.

MG: One of the things, just finally, about writing a collection of work or pulling together a collection of work is that you see sort of how some of your writing has changed or maybe even what you're interested in writing about has changed. What are the things that are interesting to you to write about as you get older?

DAVID SEDARIS: Well, one thing I noticed is I think when I very was much younger, the things that I wrote were about big things, right, like my mother dying or, you know, hitchhiking across the country with a quadriplegic. You know, there was a sort of things that if you were getting to know somebody, they were the sorts of stories you would tell. And then as I got older, I just started writing about, you know, just tiny events. But I think that they're much better essays. It's more of a challenge to write about, you know, drowning a mouse in a bucket than it is to write about, you know, a parent dying. So I think it's the size of the things that I'm writing about. It's harder, but it's so much more rewarding, I think, and I couldn't have done it earlier. Like I just started as, last year I started as a commentator for CBS Sunday Morning. Right? And the commentaries can't be overtly political. And, you know, of course, I can't use any of my favourite language, and they're two minutes long. And that's something that I couldn't have done when I was younger. I couldn't have written something that's two minutes long, that has a point and has an ending in some ways, refining kind of what you're able to do here. Yeah, no, I mean, I do think I'm a much better writer than. I mean, there's only one thing and the best of me that was from my book Naked, which was from my second book. You really couldn't pay me to read the book. I mean, it's just somebody who's trying way too hard to be funny and kind of waving his arms and, you know, elbowing you in the ribs. And it's awful. It's just obnoxious to me. I just, when I signed copies of that book, I'm like, don't, please don't read it. You know, you can buy it, sure. But don't read it.

MG: David, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

DAVID SEDARIS: Oh, thank you. The pleasure was all mine.

MG: David Sedaris. His new book is called The Best of Me. And if you would like to read his story, Laugh Kookaburra, the story that almost made David Sedaris want to cut ties with his family, you can find it on our website. Go to cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up after your regional update, a New York Times report is alleging there is nonconsensual underage material on the Canadian based website PornHub. In 90 seconds, we'll speak with a columnist Nicholas Kristof about this story and hear from the federal government about what they are going to do to address these allegations. My name is Matt Galloway. The Current is back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

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Canada vows to tackle online exploitation amid abuse allegations against Pornhub

Guests: Nicholas Kristof, Signy Arnason, Steven Guilbeault

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Perhaps it is not a surprise that the world of online pornography has a dark side, but for the website PornHub, it goes against the image that that site has tried to cultivate. PornHub is described as the YouTube of pornography, where people can post their own videos. It is wildly popular with three and a half billion visits a month. A new report in the New York Times alleges the site is also host to horrific and illegal content, including sexual assault and underage victims. And just a warning, we will talk about some of that content in this next segment. Nicholas Kristof is a columnist with The New York Times. His in-depth reporting is prompting the Canadian government to promise a crackdown on these sites. Nick Kristof, good morning.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Good morning.

MG: Just how widespread are those sorts of images and videos on this website, PornHub?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, you know, I say that the majority, probably the great majority of material involves consenting adults, but there is so much material on Pornhub that there is also a great deal that either involves assaults on adults, such as rapes of unconscious women with the rapist touching the eyeballs of the women to show that they are completely non-responsive or people who are underage. And in fact, you know, because there is no effort to authenticate the ages of those people in the videos, neither Pornhub or anybody else really has much idea whether, you know, somebody, whether a girl is 15 or whether she's 18. And so it's very hard to gauge the number of those videos. But there are some that certainly seem underage. Pornhub has had playlists with names like underage or less than 18. It has had users post videos with names like 13 year old boy teen. And there are also, you know, victims who I spoke to who had been trafficked and had had videos of themselves being raped at very young ages, posted on Pornhub for the company to monetize.

MG: What do those survivors, in the conversations that you'd had with them, what do those survivors tell you about what they want PornHub to do about this content?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: So there is a you know, a great variation among them. Some simply want the company shut down. They're really angry. Others simply don't want their videos on it. They want a better mechanism to have those videos removed, make clear that they can't be ever go back. And one of the constant frustrations, I think, of many of the survivors is that Pornhub allows downloads of videos. So, you know, if there is a problematic video on YouTube, then, and it's removed, then people aren't normally downloading those videos from YouTube. It's a little more difficult to download it onto your own computer. In the case of PornHub, that's very easy. And so once a video gets on PornHub, it's downloaded on thousands of computers and then shared. So even if it is eventually removed, it's forever.

MG: I said in the introduction that what you're talking about and what you describe in this article goes against the image that Pornhub has tried to cultivate. What sort of image does this website present for itself?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: So I think it has quite successfully cultivated two kinds of images, one of exceptional technological expertise, which I think is justified. It really does have excellent tech, excellent search engine optimization and and so on. And the other is of this kind of mischievious, sort of naughty company that is socially responsible, that donates to social causes, that provides snowploughs to help clear up streets in Boston during a snowstorm, that stands up for racial equality. And that is just completely at odds with much of the content on Pornhub.

MG: How profitable is this site? I mean, I mentioned that it has three and a half billion visits a month. How profitable is it?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: So it's a private company, so we don't exactly know the ownership of the company. They're the two key executives clearly own a stake, but it's unclear how much of the company they own. And we don't exactly know the profitability, but every day it gets almost PornHub itself, gets almost three billion ad impressions. And it's the, Pornhub is the 10th ranking, 10th most visited website in the world. It gets more visitors than Amazon or Netflix. So it's certainly raking in an awful lot of money and it certainly could use that money to do an awful lot more to protect the girls and boys whose videos end up on that site. I was told by one of the moderators working for the company that it has 80 moderators worldwide trying to, you know, root out the problem videos. In contrast, Facebook has 15,000.

MG: You talked to the people who are involved in moderating this, and again, PornHub has said that it works to employ these risk words, works to employ extensive measures to protect the platform from such content. You spoke with the moderator. What did the moderator tell you about how these videos are actually monitored?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: So the moderator said that they are they look a little bit more rigorously at videos from countries like the U.S. or Canada where they think people may, you know, be more litigious or they're more likely to get in trouble. They're much less concerned with videos from Asia. And so, for example, there is a video whose title is a junior high school girl in Indonesia, a sex video of her or another from China. And the title is that the girl is a high school girl is raped. And so and the you know, the moderators say that they try, but that it's a soul destroying job and there is just way more video content than they can adequately monitor. And, you know, you mentioned that Pornhub says that they really try to deal with the content. They have improved over the last year under pressure. I think they're nervous about litigation and about criminal investigation. But, you know, at the at the time I wrote my piece, for example, it was still possible to search 13 year old on Pornhub and it returned 155,000 hits. Now, since my article came out, they did disable that search. But, you know, if if I as a journalist can rapidly find a zillion problematic videos, then Pornhub could certainly do that itself and root out those videos.

MG: Just finally, you directly in your piece called out the Canadian government and the prime minister. Why did you do that?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: You know, look, I have a lot of admiration for Canada, and I've written about that and I admire the way Prime Minister Trudeau has stood up for women's rights around the world, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. And in this case, I see a company that is based in Montreal that is inflicting rape videos on the world. And, you know, the U.S. can do better in investigating, other countries can do better. Obviously there's broad responsibility to be shared, but I do think that Canada, as host for this company, has a special responsibility and that it hasn't fully lived up to that.

MG: Nick Kristof, it's good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Thank you.

MG: Nicholas Kristof is a columnist at The New York Times. In response to this, PornHub provided us with a statement which reads, in part: "Any assertion that we allow child sexual abuse material is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue. We have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material. PornHub has actively worked to employ extensive measures to protect the platform from such content. These measures include a vast team of human moderators dedicated to manually reviewing every single upload, a thorough system for flagging, reviewing and removing illegal material, robust parental controls and a variety of automated detection technologies. Their statement can be read in full on the website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Signy Arnason is an associate executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Her organization has been tracking the prevalence of child sexual abuse material online. She is in Winnipeg this morning. Signy, good morning to you.

SIGNY ARNASON: Good morning.

MG: Your organization, as I mentioned, scans the Internet for child sexual abuse material. It flags it to websites such as PornHub or others. How often are you flagging that material? How often are you finding that sort of material?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well, you know, we're really looking for the needle in the haystack. So we've been operating I mean, first and foremost, we operate Canada's national tip line to report the online sexual exploitation of children. So that's cybertip.ca. And then in 2017, we launched what's now known as Project Arachnid, which is essentially our crawler that goes out and searches for known images of child sexual abuse material for the purpose of then issuing notices directly to providers. It's a victim-centric solution. It really is about providing survivors with some relief that there is a tool seeking out this type of content to notify providers, you know, when this appears online. So we've in about three and a half years, we've analyzed over 126 billion images. We have issued about 6.5 million takedown notices to providers worldwide. And we have a backlog of over 20 million suspect media that we still have to comb through. So essentially, arachnid is finding child sexual abuse material online faster than, you know, we can keep up with it.

MG: What happens when you flag something like that to a site like PornHub?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Well, yeah, I think what's interesting about this story is, is that we, you know, we've sent some notices certainly to Pornhub, but this is where part of the problem lies. It's that a lot of what exists within databases, with policing databases, a database like ours, are hash values of child sexual abuse material often involving prepubescent children. The reason that is, is because that's an easier thing to assess. So if you see an image, you go, yeah, that child's underage, it's pretty clear cut. Nobody's going to debate that. Where the problem comes into play, which is what we're now seeing with PornHub and in fact with the entire adult industry, is that in the teenage space, unless the victim has come forward to, you know, a hotline to police, they're really left policing this on their own. And there's no way when you're looking at an image of a 16 year old that you can, in fact, tell that they are underage. It's absolutely impossible. So I think the assertions, you know, with PornHub that, you know, they don't have any of this material is is false and it's false on plenty of adult. Anyone who intersects with user generated content and allows adult pornography is going to intersect with child sexual abuse material.

MG: So what's the response then? I mean, if you say that when PornHub says it has zero tolerance for this sort of material, that that for you doesn't hold water in terms of the investigation that you're doing. What more would you like to see?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well, I think at the end of the day, if we're to get some control over this, there has to be regulation. So regulation, I mean, we decided to do that with the CRTC, cable television, radio. These institutions are regulated. We decided, I think, in 1995 that we weren't going to touch the Internet. And children are the ones who have paid the price for that. We've essentially set up a playground where adults and children get to intermix and we've really said, OK, we're going to trust that the companies are going to ensure that kids are properly protected on their platforms. And this is just not the case. So, for example, if you've got 80 people and the problem is much more vast than PornHub, I mean, there's Xvideo, there's XHamster, even Twitter has the problem. But if you've got 80 people moderating 1.36 million hours of video each year that gets uploaded, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math and say that doesn't compute.

MG: What would that regulation look like?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well, it would be age verification for sure. So you have individuals intersecting with your site, you would need to verify that the person actually hitting your site, consuming the material is of age. And in that particular instance, then you're preventing this issue where we've got teens, whether willingly or through extortion or being groomed or lured online, where their material then lands on these types of sites. And the site has a responsibility to know whether the individuals within the video that is being uploaded are of age. We do this with the adult industry in all other spaces, but somehow online, what we've decided is we've just left it to be a free for all. And children are paying the price for this.

MG: In just a moment, I'm going to speak with the heritage minister for this country. Are you confident, in the wake of Nick Kristof's piece, there has been a lot of attention. People have been writing about this site in particular for some time, but there's been a lot more attention in the last couple of days. Are you confident that the government will take action in the wake of what you've been talking about and what you've been calling for, but also the renewed attention generated by that piece in The Times?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well, we're pleased that the government is looking at this. And this is something that we do need to take very seriously. We are facing an epidemic. We're facing an epidemic on two sides. We're facing an epidemic with prepubescent children and the sharing of this material online. And then we're starting to face the repercussions of really not tending to things like what we're talking about on this show with the teenage space, because these are the individuals. Kids do not come forward. They don't want a criminal justice response. They don't want to tell their parents what's gone down and they're left to manage it on their own. And then these sites are basically ignoring their pleas to have the material removed. So they're starting to come in to us to beg for some type of response and to have arachnid trigger some notices out to these platforms. But, you know, it's pretty clear we do need to be doing something. So we're pleased that the heritage minister is looking at this and we'd like to be very involved in that conversation.

MG: Signy Arnason, it's good to speak with you. Thank you.

SIGNY ARNASON: Thank you.

MG: Signy Arnason, associate executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

SIGNY ARNASON: The prime minister said on Friday that his government is always concerned about reports of the exploitation of minors and gender-based violence. On Monday, the Heritage Minister, Stephen Guilbeault promised new regulations for content sharing platforms to stop sexual exploitation. The minister joins me now. Minister, good morning to you.

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I want to quote from Nicholas Kristof's article in The New York Times. He writes, "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government's efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians. Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?" Why does Canada host this company?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: S Well, the first thing I'd like to say is that a year ago, just a little over a year ago, when the prime minister named me Heritage Minister, one of the things he asked me to do is to work specifically on that, to put in place new regulation to remove within 24 hours content that would be found on platforms that are illegal, so hate speech, obviously, child pornography, incitement to violence. And despite going through the worst pandemic that we've seen in the last 100 years, my team and I would, in collaboration with many other ministries, we've been working on this for the last six months.

MG: But if these allegations, again, in this piece are true, this site is hosting, you know, as I mentioned, sexual violence, sexual exploitation. Why is this site still allowed to be hosted here in Canada?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Well, we don't have the regulatory tools that we need, just like the previous speaker was saying, to be able to tackle that, which is why new legislation needs to be to be introduced and it will be introduced at the beginning of 2021 when the House comes back. I'm working with the justice minister, with public safety minister, with the minister, so that this legislation is is tabled. And frankly, you know, I mean, we're talking about this particular site right now, but it's a general problem with platforms. It's not just one site. So that the legislation we're bringing forward does not, it's not going to tackle the issue with that particular site. And it's a global problem, which is why we've started working with Australia, with France, with Germany. Together, we have a first meeting beginning of 2021, because all of these countries, including Canada, have decided to tackle a number of issues regarding online platforms of the bill, on the cultural aspect of of their impact. I'm working on this bill, on child pornography and hate speech, and then on another bill regarding media sector and Facebook and Google. So that's what the prime minister asked me to do a year ago, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

MG: Well, as you mentioned, your mandate letter asks you to create new regulations for social media platforms, starting with a requirement that all platforms remove illegal content, including hate speech within 24 hours or face significant penalties. What are significant penalties?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Fines, and very hefty fines. I think that unfortunately for many of these companies, they may not listen to morality, but they will listen to money. And we've seen countries that have started putting in place similar regulations. And the way to get companies to comply is by imposing fines when they do not comply. And that's one thing we can't do yet in Canada, but that's one thing we will be able to do in the very near future.

MG: How would you plan on enforcing something like that?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Well, as I said, we will we're looking, as your previous speaker was talking about, we're looking at creating either mandating an existing regulator or creating a new regulator to impose fines on on these platforms. And one thing I mean, the challenges is that we don't know how they do the surveillance, we don't know what criteria to be used and we're talking about Pornhub, but we could be talking about Facebook. We could be talking about Instagram. Wedon't know what the criteria is to take down material. We don't know how they do it. There's no transparency. So we want the rules to be the same for everyone. And then if they don't comply with those rules, then we will impose fines.

MG: But as Signy Arnason and Nick Kristof have said, both said, those videos apparently are still on those sites. And Nick Kristof talked about how he could search for a certain term and find hundreds of thousands of results. He publishes his piece and that disappears. But Signy Arneson has been working on this for years as well and says that it's not just to your point, those sites, it's other sites as well. Is it possible to enforce that to ensure that none of that material appears on those sites, especially if those sites are based here in Canada?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Well, when company starts being fined hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, I think they're going to get furious.

MG: And that's what you're looking at, millions of dollars in fines?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Well, in the bill, we just table under the Broadcasting Act, and I know it's not the same issue, but if companies, online platforms don't comply with Canadian laws and regulations, they could be fined up to several million dollars. So, yes, that's what we're talking about.

MG: Signy Arnason was saying that she wants groups like hers to be involved in the conversation around those laws. Would groups like hers be included in this?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Of course, we have started this consultation over the course of the summer, which were held largely by the by the Justice Department, but we were also involved. And we will seek the advice of people like them who have expertise in this field. I mean, it is complicated and pretty much every country on this planet is trying to deal with this. And only a handful have actually introduced legislation. And even those that have, it's tricky. You know, we probably won't get it right the first time. We'll have to readjust it as we go to ensure that that legislation or the regulation really ahchieves the purpose that we wish for.

MG: Are you also, just finally, are you also caught in some ways because of jurisdiction that the servers for this site are in Luxembourg. Its headquarters are in Montreal. So does that create an issue for you?

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Well, I mean, you know that these platforms are very immaterial, which is a challenge, hence the necessity to start working internationally with different countries. And, you know, you could tell me, well, it's only a handful of countries that you'll be meeting with at the beginning of the year. It is. That's true. But my belief is that as we continue working on this, there'll be more and more countries joining us. And eventually the fact that the company is in Canada or registered in Luxembourg won't matter because we will have been able to put in place global legislation to tackle this problem.

MG: We'll follow this along. In the meantime, Minister, it's good to have you on the program this morning. Thank you.

STEVEN GUILBEAULT: Thank you very much.

MG: Stephen Guilbeault is the Minister of Canadian Heritage. That is The Current for today. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. Before we gom today marks a sad anniversary. For music fans certainly, but for so many of us.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of 1980 news report of John Lennon's death]

MG: It was 40 years ago today that Howard Cosell broke into the middle of a football game to tell viewers that John Lennon had been killed. And many of us remember exactly where we were when we heard that news. Around the world people threw open their windows. They filled the streets with his music, whether it's the Beatles or his solo career. It's hard pressed to find somebody who has not been moved by the work of John Lennon. How do you pick a song to remember him with? We picked this. This is John Lennon and "Instant Karma!" I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Song: "Instant Karma!" by John Lennon]

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Dec. 8, 2020 episode transcript

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