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The AIH Transcript for March 15, 2021

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: No small part. The president of Canada's Auto Parts Manufacturers Association says if the feds don't share their plans for reopening the U.S. border, his members will start losing orders to competitors in the United States.

CH: War torn. It's been 10 years since the beginning of the Syrian war. And this week we begin special coverage looking back and looking ahead to what's next for the country and its people.

CO: Matters of life and death. A foreign correspondent recalls how the early hope of protesters in Syria turned into a brutal conflict that has shaped so many lives, including her own.

CH: Trip of the iceberg. Hard to tell who was more surprised? The Irish father and daughter who spotted a walrus on their local beach, or the walrus itself, which may have floated there after falling asleep on a hunk of ice.

CO: Extremely northern exposure. After a tough year for tourism, the small Icelandic community of Húsavík is rejoicing because a song that sings its praises has been nominated for an Oscar.

CH: And abandoned sheep. A Thunder Bay cyclist is alone on a country road when suddenly he realises he's being chased by nature's most relentless predator, an extremely woolly black ram. As It Happens, the Monday edition, radio that brings you certain stories apropos of mutton.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Canada/US border: Auto Industry

Canada/US border: Auto Industry

Guest: Flavio Volpe

CH: Until a year ago, Flavio Volpe would have been hard pressed to imagine the closure of the Canada/U.S. border. Now, the president of Canada's Auto Parts Manufacturers Association says it's time the Trudeau government gave his members some idea of how it imagines opening things back up. Mr. Volpe has been demanding a meeting with Bill Blair, the minister of public safety. That meeting is now set for tomorrow. They're expected to talk about everything from vaccines to the free flow of the people who make the auto parts business work. We reached Flavio Volpe in Toronto.

CO: Mr. Volpe, going into this meeting with Bill Blair. What do you need to hear from him?

FLAVIO VOLPE: Well, I think we're past informing each other about each other's positions. I think we all know what's at stake, both from a public health point of view and from a movement of goods and business. I think we'd like to see a working plan. Working forward with the CBSA and with the department, with industry officials for a reasoned and reasonable plan that helps move critical, essential business travel forward without compromising the country's public health priorities.

CO: OK, so how detailed I guess saying there's light at the end of the tunnel is not a plan. So do you want an exact date? Do you want a series of dates? What would you want from Mr. Blair?

FV: Well, you know, I think we have reasonable expectations of how quickly things can move in a health emergency. What we'd like to see is a working plan for the types of definitions that will provide instruction, clear instruction to border guards on how to decide whether somebody is on essential travelling or not. Our experience with this government and with those similar groups of officials on those definitions for the new NAFTA, the CUSMA, we spent six to 12 months working on those definitions but they are on the books and we can use them. We'd like to see a resolution to this to help ease the movement over the next couple of weeks.

CO: All right, just maybe, just explain to people what that's about, why that matters. You need to be able to see the executives who can cross over the border and be declared, be called essential workers. Why do you need that?

FV: It isn't just executives. It's also technical specialists. For example, you may run a parts supplier that's headquartered in Canada, has operations in all three countries of North America that supplies a specific part to an automaker that assembles cars in all these three countries. If your line that needs updating, if you're launching a new product for a new car, those technical specialist teams, you usually don't have three one each different country. You have one for all three countries. And they're usually if you're headquartered in Canada and a lot of the bigger companies are. Their head technical specialists, their engineers. The line engineers need to be able to move back and forth. The executives are important in as much as they're responsible for those programme launches or the continuation of business. So you supply the infotainment system to the Ford F 150. If the new F 150 is up for bid, that's going to start being produced in two years. Those meetings are happening right now. If you're not having those meetings face to face in Dearborn, then your competition from Indiana or Alabama or Tennessee or Michigan is. And we risk the future business. We don't need.

CO: Sorry, what's happening right now with those technical specialists, those staffs and executives?

FV: So for the first six months of the pandemic, I think that they were going back and forth with the proper documentation, with the letters that explain that the work that they did and they were coming back in with very little expectation of quarantine. Of course, we were all practising good isolation protocols. But now, since that second wave in the last four months when it peaked and came back down, there has been an inconsistent application of the quarantine decisions on those same executives and specialists. Some that would have travelled week to week, got to the same border access point with a different guard and got a different determination. And you have to be able to confidently send your specialists and your staff there and back. We do not have, you know, a very big bullpen where you can afford to send three people over and hope to get one or two of them back into the office or back into the shop the next day.

CO: Is that something you want to raise with Mr. Blair, the fact that there are these inconsistent applications of those, whatever protocols they have in place at the border?

FV: Yes, we've raised that. We've raised that with his office. We raised that with the CBSA officials. We've asked for clarity, you know, going back months now to say, look, I think what's missing is clear instructions from the centre to the border guards who are just doing their jobs, but they have a delegated authority. And I think this government, like lots of governments before and I'm sure after it, hesitate to get involved with that delegated authority. But I think in this extraordinary circumstance, everybody from the border guards, to the automotive people, to the government, if we all worked from the same song sheet and we would know what's acceptable and what isn't and we can plan accordingly.

CO: We're about to see, we're told, that the economies of Canada and the United States, especially the United States, are about to take off, that they're going to be very strong. There's a lot of talk about the importance of the electric car, that industry getting a piece of that for Canadian companies. What's at stake if you can't get more free flow across the border for your industry?

FV: Great question. Right now, all the companies making cars in North America have made commitments in the last three to six months on electric vehicles, we saw a bunch of them for Canada, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Stellantis and Toyota, and those sourcing decisions are being made right now. The cadence of business and automotive is that you're about two or three years ahead of the actual model year in the pitch for components. The new NAFTA, the CUSMA came into effect or enforcement on January 1st. Within it, there's a great new rule that requires battery technology, 75 percent of it in a vehicle comes from one of the three jurisdictions, the first time ever. So all of those first conversations are happening right now and almost all of them are happening south of the border. And we need to be there for those conversations. If you miss them, you won't feel the effects today, but you'll feel them in two or three years when somebody else is making those batteries or battery packs or those zero emissions vehicles while we play second place.

CO: It's bad timing to have a pandemic while this is going on, then?

FV: Correct. And the government did a great job during the NAFTA renegotiations. You know, it deserves all the credit for getting us to where we are here. And unfortunately, we're in this place right now. We'd just like to work together with them to fine tune what's happening at the border. We're not advocating for a full border opening. This is maybe one percent of our industry that may need to get across at any given point.

CO: We'll leave it there. We'll be watching when you have this meeting and get the news. And Mr. Volpe, thank you.

FV: Thank you. We're very hopeful.

CH: Flavio Volpe is the president of Canada's Auto Parts Manufacturers Association. He's in Toronto.

[Music: Chimes instrumental]

Iceland Town Oscar Nomination

Guest: Hinrik Wӧhlers

CH: The nominations for this year's Oscars were announced this morning, which, for one thing means there were movies over the past year and for another that Húsavík, Iceland is celebrating. Up for the award for Best Original Song is a tune from the Netflix movie Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, which stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as a musical duo representing Iceland at Eurovision.

[Sound Clip: Song from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga]

CH: That's the song "Húsavík, my hometown", which is up for an Oscar, and as you'd imagine, no one is as excited about today's nomination as the people who really make Húsavík their hometown. Like Hinrik Wӧhlers, he's the director of the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism in Húsavík, a town of just over 2000 people on Iceland's north coast. Today, he's in Reykjavik and that's where we reached him.

CO: Hinrik, how does it feel to have Húsavík in the Hollywood spotlight today?

HINRIK WOHLERS: Yeah, I'm speechless. It has been absolutely. Yeah, it has been a rollercoaster since October 2019 when the Netflix crew came to Húsavík. So, yeah, I'm delighted.

CO: And when this movie was made and put up on Netflix did everyone in Húsavík watch it?

HW: Yeah of course we were very, very excited for the 26 of June, 2020. We counted down to the days and I think almost everyone has seen the movie. So there's I think, roughly 2000 people who live in Húsavík, 2300 and I think, yeah, 95 percent of the population has seen the movie and some people more than one time and more than two times.

CO: The movie is called Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. How did this town Húsavík in Iceland, how did it end up being the subject of this movie?

HW: Yeah, that's the big question, I think. I think first and foremost, Will Ferrell and the producers want to have Iceland as a film setting, to have this underdog story. We have participated in Eurovision since 1986 and never won. But it's going to happen someday, I believe. So they decided to do it in Iceland and be Icelandic in the movie. Yeah. Then they wanted to be in some small town or village. And the reason they choose Húsavík, I want to believe it’s because we are not too small and you're not too large. But we have this infrastructure. We can accommodate a Netflix film crew. I think there were around 250 people who came those four days in October 2019. And so we can accommodate those people. And of course, we have a... I may be biased, but I mean, it's a stunning, stunning nature and beautiful scenery. So I think it was a mix of those factors, practicality and of course, I mean, just the nature and the landscape in north, Iceland and Húsavík.

CO: And did local people get to be part of the movie?

HW: Yeah, you can see... You can see some familiar faces. I did not get a role, unfortunately, but maybe I'll get it in the next movie. But yeah, you can see some locals in the background.

CO: And were there any of your elves in the movie?

HW: I can't say. I can't say. That's a secret.

CO: Well, we know there's elves there, so they must have shown up somehow in the film.

HW: Somehow. I don't know how the elves work, but they always show up somehow.

CO: And were there any earthquakes during the movie?

HW: I don't think so at this time. But now it has been, I don't know. I think I saw three thousand earthquakes this week and especially in the south west region. But up north in Húsavík we don't feel the earthquakes as much as in the capital area, which is Reykjavik and and the surrounding in the southwest.

CO: I guess getting this Oscar nomination for a song about your town is a kind of earthquake, isn't it?

HW: Yeah, you can say that. You can say that. I mean, small town. And I'm the only one who works for the tourism office. So, I mean, yeah, it has been very enjoyable. I mean, answering all the enquiries and all the questions from media and fans all around the world, I mean from Canada and to Australia. I mean. Yeah, I mean it's very enjoyable.

CO: What do you think? And I know that Húsavík tourism is really important. I'm sure Húsavík, like every other place in the world has been suffering because of the pandemic. Do you expect that this film and this nomination might improve your tourism possibilities?

HW: Yeah, I think we are optimistic, of course. But yeah, we need to beat the pandemic. But after that, I think. Yeah, at least, yeah, we're optimistic. And this has put us on the global map for sure.

CO: How will you take advantage of that?

HW: Now in the coming weeks and months? Hopefully we can, we can open a Eurovision museum. That's a process which is ongoing now and that's where we are going to portray the town as some kind of Eurovision town. I think that's definitely something that we want to do. To remind people that this was the film setting and so on. Yeah, we are going to do our best to get opportunity from this movie.

CO: What did you think of the movie?

HW: Personally, I thought it was fun. I thought it was fun. Funny thing I think when I saw the movie, OK, I thought it was great, but I don't think it's going to win any awards. I said that somewhere, but I've been proven wrong and I'm very glad to be proven wrong. It's a happy day today.

CO: Right. But you know that. There is a lot of criticism of this film that one reviewer for BBC said that the movie was, quote, "a depiction of Icelanders in their culture as an unsophisticated bunch of beer drinking, whale watching, knitted jumper wearing innocence, which is tiresome and ignorant". What do you say to that?

HW: That's one way to look at it. I don't agree to, I don't agree to that. But I think the movie was of course, it was in some way, it made fun of Icelanders and and locals in Húsavík. But I think, yeah, in general, the movie was... Just a good, good feel good comedy movie. And I'm very happy to see that the song Húsavík is getting a nomination.

CO: All right. Hinrik, we'll leave it there. Thank you.

HW: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye.

HW: Bye. Bye.

CH: Hinrik Wohlers is the director of Húsavík Chamber of Commerce and Tourism, we reached him in Reykjavik.

[Music: electronic instrumental]

Irish Walrus

Guest: Alan and Mimi Houlihan

CH: Alan Houlihan and his five year old daughter, Mimi, often go for walks on the beach near their home on Valentia Island, Ireland. There's lots of wildlife to discover and they never know what treasures might wash up on the shore. But yesterday, they spotted something very strange that they've never seen before, and it's left them and local marine biologists with more questions than answers. We reached Alan Houlihan and his daughter Mimi on Valentia Island, Ireland.

CO: Alan, can you take us back to yesterday morning when you and your daughter Mimi, you were out for a walk on the beach? What did you encounter?

ALAN HOULIHAN: So me and Mimi were out adventuring near a beach. Actually, we were near some rocks and in a little wood, and Mimi spotted something in the water. So we went down to investigate it. It looked like a seal. But when we got closer, we just saw that it was bigger than a seal, wasn't it, Mimi? It was ginormous. And it reached up out of the water and it jumped up on the rock and we could see its big tusks. And what did it do? [Mimi answers her dad] It did a party Mimi said. It did a little dance for us.

CO: What was it?

AH: It was a giant walrus. And they're just not seen in Ireland ever. So we, I think, were the first positive sighting of a walrus in Ireland. [Mimi interrupts to correct her dad's pronunciation of walrus].

CO: Mimi, What was it? What does it look like?

MIMI: It looked big.

CO: When you first saw it? What did you think it was?

MIMI: I think it was a dolphin.

CO: Oh, ok.

AH: A dolphin. She thought it was a dolphin and she's seen dolphins before.

CO: OK, you didn't think it was you didn't think it was a sea monster?

MIMI: No, they're not even real.

CO: OK. Did you see its tusks?

AH: What was its teeth like?

MIMI: Really long and pointy at the end.

CO: And how big was it, do you think?

MIMI: It was bigger than a giraffe.

AH: Bigger than a giraffe. Wow.

CO: Was it bigger than a cow?

MIMI: Yeah.

CO: Oh my gosh. Were you scared?

MIMI: No. [laughter]

CO: And you watched the Walrus do a little dance. What else did the Walrus do, Mimi?

MIMI: He was relaxing and having a sunbathe, I think.

AH: So, he was relaxing and having a sunbathe.

CO: Did he see you?

MIMI: Yeah, he looked over but he went scared. He just kept lying there. He's covering his eyes and his mouth.

CO: Wow. Do you think that anybody, nobody else has seen a walrus on your part of Ireland? Did you know that?

MIMI: Yeah.

CO: What do you think of that?

MIMI: Good.

CO: Alan, I'll ask you what have you heard about this, about why the walrus was there? Was it in some kind of distress?

AH: So this morning I was on a radio interview with a marine biologist, and his theory was, is that the walrus fell asleep in an iceberg and obviously made its way down to Valencia Island, which is and woke up and kind of where am I?

CO: And any idea how long it would take? Because. Well, first of all, where does the biologist think the Walrus came from?

AH: So you're looking... I just can't imagine how long it would take because, like, it came from the Arctic Circle somewhere or over from Russia. So, like, it's quite a distance. Like this is quite unique to have a walrus. Like, my father is a fisherman. I spent most of my young life fishing and diving and swimming, and I've never come across anything like it.

CO: Well, if it's all the way from the Arctic Circle, that was quite a long nap the Walrus had on that ice flow.

AH: Yeah, I mean, if it was a flight, it would be a long flight.

CO: Mimi, did the walrus... was he there for very long? Did you see him for a long time or did he go back in the water?

MIMI: He was in there for a long time. Like, maybe 2 hours or something.

CO: Did you get up close?

AH: Because of where he was, he was kind of in like a peninsula rock. But we stayed. We stayed on the other side of it. And just it was only about 50 metres, if even, away from him.

CO: And you made a video.

AH: I made a video. I called... When I was there, I called my wife and to bring down the other children and I called three of my friends that would be interested in wildlife. [Mimi interrupts] Well, then my phone kept ringing, didn't it? Everyone wanted to know where it was, so one of the friends brought some teenagers and they started posting on social media and it just went viral.

CO: So lots of people got to see the Walrus before he went back in the water.

AH: I believe yeah, we left after about two hours, but it landed at about 4:00 and it reached out to the water and did a little party and it relaxed in a rock for a while, soaking up the rays. I'd say it was just exhausted.

CO: Just Allen one, kind of a kind of darker, I guess question is that we know that lots of habitats of Arctic animals are affected by climate change. And is it possible that this is a result of that?

AH: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of theories going on. There's another one that there's a Russian fleet just off the coast at the moment, a factory ship. This walrus could have followed them and being fed whatever they were throwing overboard. So that's one theory. And, yeah, I mean, it's having an effect and everything, isn't it?

CO: And where do you think the walrus is now?

AH: From talking to different wildlife people? They reckon it's in the harbour. We have a good sheltered harbour on Valencia and we have a lot of Kingscote up here and they are absolutely beautiful. And I hope he's tucking into a good feed of them, now, and getting his strength back to make his way back up to the Arctic Circle.

CO: Oh, yeah. Mimi, thank you for telling us about the walrus. [Mimi says thanks] And you're very lucky.

MIMI: Yeah

CO: To see a walrus.

MIMI: Yeah.

CO: Thanks, Mimi.

MIMI: You're welcome.

CO: And thank you, Alan.

AH: No bother at all. That was great.

CO: Take care. Bye bye.

AH: OK, bye bye.

CH: We reached Alan Houlihan and his daughter Mimi on Valentia Island, Ireland.

[Music: percussion instrumental]

The chasing ram

CH: In Steven Spielberg's classic first film, Duel, a mysterious driver in a tanker truck chases a regular guy in a car on a business trip. We never see the truck driver. We don't know why he's evil. All we know is that he is terrorising our hero. Despite the fact that the two men have never met. Keith Ailey, Thunder Bay will never know why his real life tormentor targeted him. All he knows is he was cycling down a country road. He saw a guy, he looked at the guy and suddenly the guy was chasing him on foot. "As soon as I went past him, he did a full on sprint", Mr. Ailey told the CBC. And somehow, in the midst of his terrifying ordeal, he managed to take some video.

Syria 10 Years: Journalist

Guest: Lindsey Hilsum

[Sound Clip: protesters chanting]

CH: It's surreal to think those were the sounds of hopeful protesters in Syria nearly 10 years ago today, they were chanting, "get out, Bashir" in the Syrian city of Hama, north of Damascus. In the footage, the protesters are linked arm in arm. Syrians felt like change was around the corner. Syrians like Wissam Tarif, who spoke to As It Happens in March of 2011.

WISSAM TARIF: President al-Assad has to understand what's going on. He has to start listening to his own people. I think there is a chance to stop this bloodshed. This is the time to speak. This is the time to stand up. Syria is a [inaudible]. The freedom has a price. Everyone in Syria, I would say, is willing to pay this price, but the price does not have to be blood.

CH: It is ominous hearing Mr. Tarif's words now. More than 400,000 Syrians would end up being killed in the conflict. More than five and a half million Syrians would flee their country for safety. Inside Syria, there were moments that shocked the world, from chemical attacks, to Islamic State atrocities, to cities under siege. In 2014, Aleppo was the centre of a fierce battle between the Syrian regime and rebel factions. And as Channel four journalist Lindsey Hilsum reported, civilians were inevitably caught in the middle.

LINDSEY HILSUM: A stopped clock in the centre of Aleppo, a symbol of all that could have been but wasn't because of war. The governor wants to show me how he's helping civilians. But what of civilians in rebel held territory hit by barrel bombs rolled out of government aircraft. Dropping a barrel bomb? It's an indiscriminate weapon. It kills everybody. It's not a weapon that is targeted on rebels. And the aim surely is to force the civilians out of the east. That's why you dropped the barrel bombs, isn't it?

TRANSLATOR: I think the opposite, the rebels are in areas where there are no longer any civilians. The people left because the rebels forced them to flee to safer places.

LH: Safe ish. The people of Aleppo have grown used to walking where mortars frequently fall.

CH: That was Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4's International editor, reporting from Aleppo in 2014. This week, As It Happens, is marking 10 years since the start of the Syrian war. We begin our coverage with Ms. Hilsum, who spoke with Carol from London.

CO: Linsey, what is it like to hear yourself back in 2014? What was going through your mind at that time?

LH: I think what was going through my mind was the extraordinary cruelty of the war and specifically of the government and how they were just denying everything. So I was asking the governor, why are you using barrel bombs, this indiscriminate weapon that just kills anybody and he's just denying. He says there's no people, there are no civilians in the rebel held parts of Aleppo. That's just a straight lie.

CO: And you were there and the world was watching. And it was a time when these kinds of horrible attacks, barrel bombs on civilians, a sense that, well this can't go on for much longer, the world will step in. This has to end. And yet 10 years later, the world has sort of forgotten Syria and there were so many consequences, right?

LH: Absolutely. But I think that you can argue for a long time about whether the West, whether the Americans should have intervened or not, intervened. Obviously, America in particular was very stung by the intervention in Iraq, which had been disastrous. But, you know, there are consequences of not intervening just as there are consequences of intervening. And one of the consequences of not intervening in Syria, was that a vacuum, a geopolitical vacuum was created which was felt by the Russians and the Turks.

CO: And do you have a sense that the world was watching then, but no longer cares now?

LH: Yeah, I think the world was watching, but I think that the world knew what to do. But, you know, when we talk about the world, what are we talking about? Are we talking about America and Europe or are we talking about Russia and Turkey? Those are governments who knew exactly what to do. The Russians intervened on the side of Assad and the government and the Turks intervened on the side of their chosen rebels in different parts of northern Syria. And, you know, their calculations were entirely in their own perceived interest, not in the interests of Syrians. So now Russia and Turkey, they are the people who will decide the fate of Syria and of Syrians. The West is just a bystander and the Syrians are just the victims. And that's what has happened in the time since I did that interview with the governor.

CO: What is the reality on the ground today? What has the war in Syria done to that country?

LH: It's tore it apart, it's a broken country of broken people, and so millions are displaced within Syria and millions have fled. About six million have fled. And there is now an economic crisis in the bits of Syria, which Assad has regained control of most of Syria with his Russian allies and backers and he couldn't have done it without them, he would have been overthrown. But it's the Russians who ensure that he remains in power. But, you know, it's an economic meltdown. You know, there's an old phrase from Tacitus, you know, in Agricola, he wrote, they created a desolation and called it peace. That's what Syria is now. It's a desolation.

CO: I know you can't read President Assad's mind or anyone in the regime, but what do you think they believe they accomplished in these 10 years?

LH: They survived. The regime survived. That's it. There's nothing else. Survival.

CO: We heard in that clip, Wissam Tarif at the beginning, this is in March 2011, just before all of these things that you covered took part. And he is saying President Assad has to understand what is happening, to his own people. And there was a sense from him and so many others that if he understood what was happening, if he understood that civilians were here, then this wouldn't continue. How misled was he? I mean, was it already the intention, do you think, to have carried on as the regime did?

LH: Well, I think you have to remember, this is happening around the time of the Arab Spring and so, you have a regime that falls in Libya and initially falls in Egypt as well and falls in Tunisia. So President Bashir al-Assad looks at what's happening in the region. He says, well, that's not going to happen to me. Now, why did they fall? And they fell, I think he concluded because they didn't clamp down hard enough and weren't brutal enough with the young people who were rebelling. And so the lesson was clear. If you want to survive, you just have to imprison people and you have to stop demonstrations with violence and you have to bring all of your military power into stopping this rebellion. But then after that doesn't work. That's when you need friends. That's when you need the Russians. So that was what happened. In a sense, Bashir al-Assad benefited from being able to see what had happened in the rest of the region.

CO: But people like Wissam Tarif, he is in the midst of that thinking that Arab Spring brought to the region, that he believes that somehow the regime could listen to people's demands, that there could be reform. Did you share any of the hope that he seemed to have had?

LH: Well, I mean, when Bashir Assad first came to power on the death of his father, he was widely regarded as a potential reformer. And I think that that was because he was young and it was because he'd been partly educated in the U.K. and because he was interested in computers. He was the head of the Syrian Computer Society. And so I think that that gave people a very sort of false sense of security, as it were. And I think that many of us on the outside, we just got that all wrong. And we thought that a Western sensibility, as we understood it from having an education outside, would triumph over family and over the ties that bind and, over the need for a family or a group to keep power. And that was incredibly naive. And it is extremely hard not to be optimistic when you see young people who want some kind of freedom and want an end to a gulag and to torture, it's very hard not to go with them to say, yes, you know, this is great. This could make things so much better. But, you know, maybe we should know better. I mean, I've seen enough... I've seen enough revolutions now to know that they very rarely end well.

CO: When you were following what you thought was perhaps a revolution that might end in a change being part of that spirit of Arab Spring, at what point did you realise that this was not going to happen, that you were covering a full scale war?

LH: I think the point at which the revolution morphed into war was early in 2012, and that was brought home to me very brutally when my friend, the war correspondent Marie Colvin, was killed in Homs because this was when Homs had been one of the towns where the rebellion against the government had been at its most intense. And there were many thousands of young people marching in the streets and then the government attacked and then the young protesters picked up weapons and then Gulf countries started to send in weapons. And it began to be more Gulf countries versus Iran and Syria. You know, the region got involved. And then this area, Baba Amr, became a rebel held area and it was besieged. And Marie managed to sneak into that area. And the siege was incredibly brutal. Syrian government mortars attacking all the time, attacking women and children and people as well as rebels in that area. And that was when Marie and a young French photographer, Remi Ochlik, were killed by Syrian mortars. And that was when I realised there was no chance for a peaceful and successful rebellion. This was war at its most brutal.

CO: What effect did that? The death of your friend and death of such an extraordinary reporter? What effect did that have on you?

LH: It had a profound effect, I mean, I didn't go to Syria for another year afterwards, I just couldn't quite face it. You know, I think that, you know, Marie believed very much that that being an eyewitness was what we do. And I agreed with her and I agree with her. I think that, you know, that's what journalists should do, that we should be eyewitnesses and we should be there and see what... See with our own eyes, what happens to people in war. But obviously, when one of your best friends dies, doing that, gives you pause. And then when things got very violent on the other side, on the rebel side, when Islamic State started to move in on the rebel side, and then James Foley, the American journalist and others were kidnapped and he was eventually murdered. Well, at this point, you begin to ask yourself, you know, is this... This is insane. Just continuing to go into these places is insane because, you know, the whole point is you have to come out in order to tell the tale. And I thought a lot about all of that stuff. And I think that all of us did. But I did go back, of course, but I went in more largely on the government side and with the Kurds, which was less dangerous.

CO: You've talked about how important it is to be an eyewitness, but there were some moments in Syria where being on the ground was virtually impossible for a reporter. And I'm thinking of Ghouta, where in 2013 there were 14 hundred people killed in a chemical weapons attack, all civilians. How were you able to cover a story like that?

LH: You know, I have to... I think I went through every frame of every picture of every child dying. And in a strange way, I think it's more traumatic when you look at the pictures and you're far away, because when you're there, you are filled with this whole kind of, you know, need to tell the story. And obviously, you know, there's an adrenaline that comes from being in those situations, you know, when you're in a war. But when you're back in London just going through the pictures, it is just unbelievably miserable and brutal. And, of course, in how we told the story of the Syrian war because it was too dangerous for many foreign correspondents to go in. But Syrians became reporters and we at Channel 4 News in London. We employed a Lebanese journalist who's become a real expert on looking at those pictures and whether those pictures are real or not real and whether they're faked or not faked. That, you know, sometimes I think about what he goes through. You know, there was a time when, you know, day after day he'd be going through these images of people being killed. And it's not good for you.

CO: When those kinds of images are what you're reporting on. And there is a sense that if people see these things, if people could know this is happening, they will do... They will do something. The world will stop this. This is the essence of reporting in these situations all the time. But at the same time, what pressures were there on your newsroom to say, we can't show people this, this is too much?

LH: You know, you can't show the worst of it, even though you feel, you're screaming inside, you know, you have to see this. But having said that, I mean, I think that one of the most effective and interesting things... We started to work with a young journalist in rebel held Aleppo, Waad al-Kateab, who was at the beginning she was recording her own life. And she later on became very famous with the film For Sama, which was a film that she made for her daughter, who was born in rebel held Aleppo. And when you look at a film like that, I mean, there you see that the bombing is constant. And she's in the hospital because her husband's doctor and hospital, it never stops. But then they get married. They have a baby. That tells people much more about what it's really like, just people's ordinary lives and how you struggle on despite everything. I mean, Waad always says that the act of getting married and the act of having a baby, that was an act of rebellion, you're not going to stop us from living. And that, I think, is you know, in some ways people understand that more and it says much more then more, more bodies and more violence.

CO: You are listening to As It Happens, I'm speaking with Lindsey Hilsum. She's Channel 4's International editor. She spent much of the past decade reporting on the war in Syria. And we're speaking to her on the anniversary of 10 years since that war in Syria began.

CO: Lindsey, in the fall of 2013. I spoke to you when Turkey was attacking Kurdish rebels in northeastern Syria. And let's listen to some of what you were telling me then.

LH: There was a Turkish mortar which came into Qamishli, the Town of Qamishli on the first day I was there, it just came in randomly into a neighbourhood and it hit two children who were playing in the street. They happened to be Arab children, not Kurdish children. So what? They were just children. And I went to see the little girl in hospital. She had, had to have her right leg amputated and her left leg was full of shrapnel. She was eight years old. Her name was Sarah. And I don't know if they had told her that her older brother Mohammed was killed.

CO: That was you in 2019, the fall, talking about what you saw there. Do you remember that?

LH: Oh, that's not one I'm ever going to forget. This was the point where the Kurds were holding part of northeast Syria, which they call Rojava, and some American troops were there. And that kept Turkish forces out and it kept Syrian forces out. And of course, the Kurds are the ones who had fought Islamic State on our behalf, if I may say. But then President Trump decided that he would just pull the American forces out. Boom off we go, and that meant that it was open season for the Turks and they could just start to attack, which they did. Sarah and her brother, were the casualties of all of that. And I have to say that going to see that little girl in that hospital, she didn't know that she lost her leg yet. Just seeing her mother and her sister, I mean, it was, it was pretty awful. But the good thing is that Sarah was then taken to Iraqi Kurdistan and the government there has looked after her. And I get regular pictures of her. She's got a prosthetic leg, they are looking after her. They have paid for that. She is able to walk and I got a lovely picture a couple of months back of her walking and smiling. It was a terrible thing, but at least she survived. At least somebody is looking after her.

CO: What effect did it have on you seeing what happened to children in Syria during this war?

LH: Look, this stuff always has an effect on you. You can't deny that. But, you know, that's sort of, that's neither here nor there, is it compared to the effect that it's had on Syrians. And obviously, the main effect was that so many chose to leave. So much in the summer of 2015 when Turkey opened the borders and let people cross into Greece. So then we had that wave upon wave, upon wave of Syrians leaving. And, you know, the extraordinary thing was how they travelled in hope because they had been in the most terrible situation. And they really did believe that they could start new lives in Europe. And I think that many of them have done and that, you know, they want to go home, of course everybody wants to go home. But there is a generation of Syrians that have come to Europe, particularly to Germany, and have learnt the language and some of these people are extremely well educated. I mean, I've met so many engineers or partly educated engineers, people who are in their second year doing engineering at Aleppo University or whatever. And, you know, these people are able to make a new life. And maybe one day things will change in Syria and they will have skills and they will have abilities and they will be able to go in and build their country.

CO: The people that you left behind, the people who were in places like Aleppo that you covered, beautiful city, destroyed, living wherever they could. And then you have to go, right. You can't stay there. Do you think about where some of them ended up? Are there any particular people you think I wonder what happened to them?

LH: Oh, yeah, no you always do that. I always... I remember there was a half built building in Aleppo, which was, it was like a doll's house, you know, that you could see into it because it had the floors and it had the pillars, but it didn't have walls. And people were living there. And I went, we went up and we were filming with them. And there was a particular family, very nice family. Had two little girls, Kousser and Sarah, who I think was six and ten. And they were just such sweet girls. And they were very, they very much wanted to show me how they could count. And the little one could count up to ten in Arabic and the old one could count up to ten in English. And so they did that for me and for the camera. And do you think about them? Because the older one had been taken out of school. They'd been displaced, I think, three times. The younger one had never been to school. And you just know that chances are that they would never get to school. And I found that when I was in Europe, that was in 2014 when I was in Europe amongst refugees. I was always looking for them. I was always looking for them. But of course, I didn't find them. I once sent somebody back to that building to try and find out what happened to them. But of course, they'd gone. So, you know that they’re hopefully there somewhere. But, yeah, it's difficult. And then you and then you see all the kids coming through Europe. And, you know, I do remember one thing on a train. I was on a train going through Macedonia and looking in the carriage. You know, all the adults were just fast asleep, exhausted. You know, they'd been walking for days and there was a little girl. She must've been about nine. And she was standing on, you know, how the little table ledge comes out on the side of a train window. And she was standing on there watching the world go by. And she was very... You could just see this was so exciting for her, I think. Well, you know, think about some of some of those kids as well for whom the world is... The world is new and exciting.

CO: Lindsey, on that note, on that image of that nine year old looking out the window and having a future that she was just excited to be part of that, we will leave it there. And I appreciate talking to you again. Thank you.

LH: It's my pleasure.

CO: Bye bye.

LH: Good bye.

CH: Lindsey Hilsum is the international editor for Channel 4 News in London, England, that's where we reached her. This week, As It Happens, is marking 10 years since the start of the war in Syria. Tomorrow and later this week, we'll have more interviews and revisit some of the pivotal moments of the conflict. And you can find today's coverage on our website, CBC.ca/aih.

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Part 3: QC Cannonball Tree

QC Cannonball Tree

Guest: David Mandel

CH: Quebec City's Cannonball Tree is filled with lore and mystery. It's also filled with a literal cannonball or something like one anyway. The approximately century old tree is a frequent stop for tourists and locals. And its precise age and the story behind it are still topics of debate. But in the years to come, the tree itself will be nothing more than a story. Local authorities say the tree now poses a safety risk and unfortunately it has to come down. David Mandel is a historian in Quebec. We reached him in Quebec City.

CO: David, first of all, for people who have not seen it, can you describe the so-called Cannonball Tree?

DAVID MANDEL: Yes, if you go down St.Louis Street through the St. Louis gate, as you enter the city on your way to the Chateau Frontenac, you come to one of the largest houses from the days of New France, built in the 1720s, called the Pean House. And right beside it is a tree with, between its roots, a large metal ball, which people have always identified as being a cannon ball. And so it's called the cannonball tree.

CO: This is a big elm tree, right?

DM: Exactly. Yeah. And it's about 80 years old. And it’s apparently on its last legs because the city has been inspecting it over the last few years and now it's only about, only about 27 percent of it apparently is still healthy. And so they're afraid that it may fall.

CO: Alright but there's a fair bit of lore around this so-called Cannonball Tree. What are some of the stories that people get told about it, especially the tourists?

DM: Yeah, well, it is certainly true that thousands of cannonballs and incendiary bombs were fired on the city during the siege of 1759 preceding the battle of the Plains of Abraham. So the city was indeed very badly damaged by fire bombs and cannonballs. And so this legend has drawn up that one of those cannonballs landed on that site and then the tree grew around it. So that intrigues people a lot. It's a romantic, romantic story which is linked to what actually happened, that there was this huge bombardment.

CO: But would this cannonball would it have been sitting there from 1759 until this tree started to grow 80 years ago.

DM: Yes, but that's not... Exactly, but that's not what happened. Two historians wrote a book, published a book a few years ago. And I have right in front of me the photograph that they show of that 18th century house. And right beside it is a laneway leading up to a, what is called the Windmill Cavalier, a gun platform, sort of independent fortress that was part of an earlier line of fortifications. And in the photograph, you see no tree but two round objects. These are these two bombs that were placed there to stop wagons or horse drawn vehicles from striking the buildings on either side of that narrow lane. And then the tree simply grew around one of those round projectiles.

CO: OK, so if this is a bomb, not a cannonball... Is this an active bomb?

DM: Well, that's the thing. This one is certainly not expected to be an active one because that house was purchased by the British military in 1811. And no doubt the military placed those two empty, I would say bombs on the site to try to act as wheel guards. But I can tell you that, for example, in 2017, right in front of my house, roadwork was being done and a bomb that was feared to be active was actually found underground there and which we believe was fired in 1750, 1759. And the Canadian armed forces were brought in. A bomb disposal specialist was brought in and they were concerned that it could still explode, even though it's that ancient.

CO: Now, this bomb that looks like a cannonball, this would have been lobbed into the city, right?

DM: The one that was in front of my house. Yes. Lobbed into the city. I would expect that the two that were placed by the British were probably some of their own ammunition. And, you know, it's dangerous if you put the... These big round balls have a hole in them and you would insert explosive material, kind of gunpowder in them. And then when they were fired, they would strike a building, explode and create fires. But the British had their own munitions like that. So I assume they took two empty bombs and placed them there to stop vehicles from striking the walls of the buildings on either side of the lane.

CO: So they would be the bombs, like in the cartoons where the fuse and....

DM: Similar to that, yeah

CO: What would they do? So this thing would blow up and cause a fair bit of damage. Then when it, after it was hurled into the city.

DM: Oh, absolutely. The city was destroyed. Thousands and thousands of bombs and cannonballs struck the city and caused all kinds of fires. So the British military officer, Richard Short, did sketches on the site and then sent those to London where he had them made into print and which we still have today, and they show the incredible destruction.

CO: OK, so this tree has to come down and that's going to start tomorrow, is that right?

DM: Even today, apparently, I haven't been over there today, but it's supposed to start today. It's a three day process and they're going to take the tree down, but they're going to make a mould of the base of the trunk. And an artist is going to make a bronze work of art, which is going to... We don't know the details of this, but the idea is that they're going to put that bomb back in the same location. And as part of this work of art, there will be a reproduction in bronze of the base of the tree.

CO: So the tree gets destroyed, stump and all is going to be completely cleared out of there?

DM: Yes, unfortunately. But guess that's the way they have to do it. They're afraid that, you know, if a branch were to fall on a passer by or something could be dangerous.

CO: But even the stump can't survive?

DM: Unfortunately, at least that's the decision that the city has made.

CO: Well, now what's this going to do to tour operators when they take people past the cannonball tree and tell the stories?

DM: Good question. I think the story is likely to continue on whether they and I don't know, you know, probably most tour guides, at least until recently, didn't realise that it was actually a bomb and that it was placed there as a wheel guard. But I suspect that the legend will continue on. That it's a bomb that landed in 1759 as far as... It's a good story. So these good stories tend to continue on.

CO: And will the bomb disposal unit be standing by just in case?

DM: That's what I've read in an article in the newspaper. Yeah, it's highly unlikely that there is any explosive material inside. In the case of this one, because it was deliberately placed there. But they're going to have someone there just in case.

CO: All right, David, it's a great story, even if much of it isn't true. So thanks for telling it to us.

DM: Thank you very much. Bye bye.

CO: Bye.

CH: David Mandel is a historian in Quebec. We reached him in Quebec City.

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WE Charity

CH: Craig and Marc Kielburger had some explaining to do today. The brothers had been subpoenaed to appear before the House Commons Ethics Committee investigating their WE charity group. But if the brothers gave any actual explanations, it was hard to make out between interruptions from frustrated MPs. Politicians, including the NDP's Charlie Angus who asked about the US broadcaster Reed Cowan. Mr. Cowan raised money so that the WE charity could build a hospital in Kenya that would be dedicated to his late son. Mr. Angus wanted to know how long it had taken WE to switch the plaque honouring Mr. Cowan's son with a dedication for another donor. Here's Craig Kielburger's response.

CRAIG KIELBURGER: Mr. Angus. This is the one thing that we do agree with you on and fully. It should never have happened.

CHARLIE ANGUS: So how soon after?

CK: Fifteen years ago, people are looking at the records. I don't know the answer to that question. We have our standing committee to find the answer and we should have that answer and he is owed that answer. We are looking into that.

CA: You know that answer, because the issue is you didn't take the plaque down once. You took it down twice because he went back in 2008 and wanted to see the building. We have the TV footage and your staff did everything they could to keep them from getting to that building. And finally, he insisted because it was his son's school and he went back and it was a different plaque. You’ve thrown the first plaque out and you put a second plaque up. So then you took that plaque down and put somebody else's plaque up. How do you justify that?

CK: Firstly, what you describe was not accurate. But here's where I agree with you.

CA: That was accurate. He has footage of it. We've seen the pictures of the plaque. I know you've got one hundred and some things about all the wrong stuff. I've said it's actually quite the... I love it. I'm reposting your gaslighting, but I have the photos of the plaques you put. You had to go out and buy a cheap knockoff plaque because you threw the first one out. That's two plaques. These are the allegations that are against you and you need to answer that.

CK: And that's why we are looking into them. I am with you on this. I'm not fighting you on this alright, I agree with you. This is serious. This is why even though it's years ago...

CA: I spoke to many of your former staff who say that you guys put on a show for donors. It was about selling them on that emotional tag. That they taught these jokes about donor velcro plaques.

CH: That was Charlie Angus questioning Craig Kielburger of the WE charity. Mr. Kielburger eventually got a chance to offer this response.

CK: Mr. Cowan gave to help children in Kenya, exactly what he did. That school continues to operate, all those schools. Thousands of children have graduated. We are deeply grateful to him. We're looking through records from 15 years ago to find out what happened. You are absolutely right, sir. And Mr. Cowan is absolutely right. It never should have happened. We are upset, frankly more than you, Mr. Angus, we're upset about this because it should not have happened, we agree with you.

CH: That was WE charities' Craig Kielburger testifying before the House of Commons Ethics Committee today.

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NL Election Covid Modelling

Guest: Ches Crosbie

CH: In Newfoundland and Labrador, it feels like the election that will never end. What started as a four week long campaign is now in its ninth week due to rising covid cases, in-person voting was scrapped. Voters now have until the end of the month to mail in their ballots. Liberal leader Andrew Furey is taking a lot of heat for calling the election at all. And today that heat was turned up even more. After the government refused to release the covid modelling data that Mr. Furey said he relied on to make the election call. Ches Crosbie is the leader of the progressive conservatives. We reached him in St. John's.

CO: Mr. Crosbie, why do you want to see this covid modelling data that Mr. Furey says he based the election call on?

CHES CROSBIE: Well, look, Mr. Furey says that he had data that showed the call was a safe call to make back in January, when he made it for February, for an election date in February, everything fell apart for us. And now we've got an election which is three times as long as it should have been, and the government in a state of paralysis as to decision making. So everyone is very perturbed and upset about the situation. And when CBC asked to see the data on which Mr. Furey decided he would make his election call, that it was safe to do so, it got refused.

CO: What do you think is in that data that you want to see?

CC: First of all, the question is, is there any such data? Because I think that he could not get a go ahead of the chief medical officer here. Dr. Fitzgerald, who is well respected here, he couldn't get a go ahead to do this. And he looked around behind her back to get information on which he could base an election call decision. And so either that information exists or there's no such information. Either way, we need him to come clear because this has gone beyond an accountability issue. It's become a matter of trust.

CO: It seems to be when the CBC went after this through an access to information request, they are told that the documents were being withheld. And so that would indicate if documents are being withheld it's that there are documents to withhold, right?

CC: You know, this is sort of angels dancing on the head of a pin. You could as well say that since they were used for an election call, the premier has said that's his call and his alone. So what were they doing being sent to cabinet? How can there be a claim of cabinet privilege when it was his call alone, not cabinet's?

CO: OK, Mr. Furey says that, quote, No one could have predicted the covid outbreak that occurred when he called the election. It seemed, as he calls it, a probabilistic possibility. So when did it become less so, do you think?

CC: What I will say is this, he chose without the support of Dr. Fitzgerald, the chief medical officer of health, as to the public safety of doing so to call an election in the middle of winter in the middle of a pandemic. It was not a question of what was probably going to happen. It was a question of what might happen. He chose to roll the dice with public health. He could have waited until the summer. He could have waited until the fall, as we asked him to. When people were vaccinated, when all of us were much safer. Instead, he chose to roll the dice and public health was the loser.

CO: But three other provinces have held elections during this pandemic and did so successfully. So why couldn't Newfoundland be the fourth?

CC: Well, perhaps we could have, but the other provinces prepared for it. We took no prep. We know we took no preparations whatsoever.

CO: Can you just bring people outside of Newfoundland, Labrador, up to date as to when you might actually have a conclusion to your election?

CC: Well, Mr. Chuck, the chief electoral officer, is talking about early April.

CO: OK, and what and where are things at this point in the voting?

CC: Well, we had the right to vote in person, to vote at a poll cancelled and everyone's had to do it by... Those who didn't do in advance polls, had to do it by special balloting. And that has made for endless problems. Many classes of people, including seniors and people without good access to the Internet have and whole areas of the province, rural areas in particular, have had insuperable barriers to getting a ballot by mail. And even when they got it, there are technical difficulties in filling it out properly so that it's not going to be disqualified and struck out. This is an election in complete disarray. It'll go down in Canadian history. As, you know, it'll be in the history books. I used to think that being in the history books was something, you know, something good, but not this way.

CO: I think already it's in the history books as being the strangest election, provincial election Canada has seen. And it's... Are you still campaigning? Are you still having to actually seek votes?

CC: Well, we've got almost two weeks left in the balloting process. So yesterday I was still on the phone calling around numbers in my district, trying to unearth people who perhaps had laid their special ballot on the mail table and, you know, forgotten to do something with it. In fact, one of my fellow candidates said she unearthed somebody who had a couple of special ballots in the fire box because they thought the deadline was already passed. Well, it hasn't. You can still get that in for the next 10 days.

CO: Do you think that there will be at some point a demand for this election to be re-held?

CC: I'm not going to make any confident prediction about what's going to happen. I think it will very likely be contested election proceedings afterwards. And beyond that, it's hard to say what's going to happen.

CO: Do you plan to contest this election in the courts after it's done?

CC: Well, you know, there are multiple, there are lots of grounds to do it. Just give you a quick one. For example, you could apply for a special ballot, your mail in ballot, either online or by telephone. Online you had to show ID, which is what the legislation seems to require. But if you called in by telephone, you didn't. And in fact, third parties could call in and get dozens of ballots for people.

CO: OK, so yes or no, do you plan to contest this, the election results in the courts?

CC: I have to see the results first.

CO: But if you lose, will you contest it?

CC: Well, obviously, the temptation will be strongly there because of all the improprieties that have occurred during the course of this election.

CO: All right. We'll be watching. Mr. Crosbie, thank you.

CC: Thank you. Wish us luck.

CH: Ches Crosbie is the leader of the Newfoundland and Labrador progressive conservatives. We reached him in St. John's.

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Syria 10 Years: Doctor

Guest: Mahmoud Hariri

CH: Syrian President Bashir al-Assad may claim the war in his country is over, but for Dr. Mahmoud Hariri and his colleagues, the threats and the dangers of the 10 year conflict are still very real. Dr. Hariri is one of many doctors in Syria, As It Happens, has spoken to over the years. And as we mark 10 years since the war in Syria began, we called Dr. Hariri back. He reminded us that in 2012, the Syrian regime passed a law that made it illegal for medical workers to provide care to patients. But as Dr. Hariri tells Carol, that didn't stop him from doing his job.

MAHMOUD HARIRI: If I'm a doctor and being captured in the regime and Assad regime area, I will be jailed, maybe life or being killed because I help such patients. This is my crime.

CO: What effect has this, these 10 years. What effect has it had on your own life, Dr. Hariri?

MH: It's affect my life from different aspects. I have my children now living in freedom. And many times when I was telling my children how I live in Syria, they used to say, oh, daddy, how are you living there? How did you live in such a situation? How do you accept this for your life? But in the same time, they felt that this is the right decision that we made, me and their mother that we were joining this revolution. Of course, there is a negative impact that I'm still dreaming to see my father and my mother unable to see them. They are living in the other side, but it's the price of the freedom.

CO: I can imagine that when you close your eyes, you see so many images, so many things, is there a particular image? Is there a particular moment that stays with you as your kind of signature moment of these past 10 years?

MH: The one of the important moment when the... when I survived one of the kids, he has injury to his shoulder and he was about to die. And when he got out of the hospital, discharged from the hospital, he tried to hug me and crying and said, thank you, doctor, I love you. And the other unforgotten day when the little boy also is 10 years old, is a basketball player whose shoulder amputated and he died in my hand. This is too... I'm sorry, this is one of the two difficult situation I lived in my life. Kids, children the most type of people who affected me.

CH: You can hear Carol's entire conversation with Syrian surgeon Dr. Mahmoud Hariri on tomorrow's program.

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AI Brain Processing

Guest: Gabe Goh

CH: About 15 years ago, researchers in California observed something they described as a Halle Berry neuron, a brain cell that appeared to fire in response to a particular person. An Oscar winning actor, for instance, but not just in response to that actual person. Also images of the person, the text of their name, drawings depicting them, and even "the concept, the abstract entity of Halle Berry" unquote. Now, a group of scientists at Open A.I. has observed a similar phenomenon in an artificial intelligence called Clip. The trouble is, Clip still has some learning to do. Gabe Goh is a machine learning researcher at Open A.I. and a co-author of the study. We reached him in San Francisco.

CO: Gabe, first of all, what was Clip designed to do?

GABE GOH: The idea is very simple. It just is trained on the set of images and captions and it's supposed to associate these images with the captions. And, you know, it worked extremely well. In fact, you know, it worked so well that, you know, I was sort of inspired by this project to dig deeper into it, to actually understand what was going on inside.

CO: And what could you see? What was Clip, what is Clip able to identify?

GG: You know, it can recognise common objects in scenes. And one of the most interesting things Clip can do is that it can read and that was one of the big surprises that came out of the model because it was not explicitly trained to read it was... It just sort of arose naturally out of this training objective.

CO: Its ability to read, though, has created some interesting problems. Right. Can you describe what else you noticed Clip was doing?

GG: So we were trying to understand what the building blocks of Clip were. And as we did this, we discovered that, you know, there were these neurons that would respond to the same concept as well as a written representation of the concept. So, for example, one of the first discoveries we made was a Spider-Man neuron and the Spider-Man neuron would be sort of responding to faces of Spider-Man and also the word Spider-Man. And what we did was we looked at the images that caused this neuron to fire the most. And as it turned out, the images that caused it to fire the most were often text. So from that, we got the idea, you know, maybe we can use this property that we discovered to transform the neural network.

CO: OK, so Clip likes to read so, maybe give us a really concrete example of what you discovered. That Clip got things wrong because Clip reads.

GG: Yeah. So one of the earliest examples we found was there was a piggy bank neuron and this piggy bank neuron was also fired for things related to finance. So the word, cheap, for example, or, you know, dollar signs. So it somehow has learnt to associate these concepts. So we thought, you know, perhaps we can try and fool this model into thinking there was a piggy bank just by giving it symbols related to finance. And so we took an image of a dog and then we overlaid the dollar signs. And surprisingly, that worked.

CO: Clip thought that clip was looking at it, it was looking at an image of a piggy bank and it was looking at an image of a dog because there are dollar signs on it that got confused.

GG: Yeah. So when we discovered this, we were pretty excited. So I had Chelsea really dig a little bit deeper into this experiment. And Chelsea is a member of the team. So she came up with this really delightful idea, I think. So in principle, all you need to do is take a pen and paper and write, you know, the word piggy bank, for example, or laptop on a piece of paper and just put it in front of the true object that you're trying to classify and Clip will pick up on it and classify it as a wrong class. So she wrote laptop on a coffee cup and coffee cup on a laptop. And to our surprise, that worked pretty well, too.

CO: What happened? What did Clip do?

GG: So if you put the word laptop in front of a coffee cup and you gave it the caption, this is a photo of a... And then you give it a thousand choices of all the common words, laptop would be the thing that comes up as number one.

CO: So Clip got it wrong?

GG: Yes. Yes. So is the same. I guess there's been kind of a tradition in computer vision for the past eight years to come up with ways to fool or to trick computer vision models into doing things it's not supposed to. So we were thinking along these lines and we realised this was an attack of some kind. And, you know, it had the ability to fool Clip into thinking, I guess in this case, a coffee cup was a laptop.

CO: There's another image that has been posted that writing the word iPod and putting it on an Apple. That clip thinks it's looking at an iPod.

GG: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we tried to refine those experiments and it worked pretty well, more or less.

CO: OK, it worked pretty well to show that Clip can get confused, but that's pretty serious, right? I mean, if this artificial intelligence is supposed to be applied to something, I mean, the fact that you can fool it so easily, doesn't that concern you?

GG: Yeah, it does concern me, although one of the interesting kind of metaphors we came up with to try and understand this effect was the Stroop effect. It's a very common kind of like fun online quiz that you can take. And basically you are given a bunch of words. And these are words of colours, but the colour of the word is a different colour from the word that is being rendered on the screen. And, you know, you just meant to quickly say what the colour of the word is rather than the word itself.

CO: So this we're talking about humans looking at this. Right. So you have the word blue written in red and then the human gets it wrong?

GG: Yes, exactly. Strangely enough, humans also kind of defer to the written text itself. So you would say blue, even though the colour of the text is red. And this only happens if you ask the human to be fast at this task. So, you know, you do this as fast as you can. So my suspicion is that this is part of the growing pains of artificial intelligence, if you will, because right now the model doesn't have the ability to sort of reflect very deeply on the task it's being asked. And my suspicion is, as we give our models more capacity to to really contemplate this problem will kind of go away.

CO: All right, Gabe, we'll leave you to it. And sounds like quite a challenge. Good to talk to you. Thanks.

GG: All right.

CO: Bye.

GG: Bye.

CH: Gabe Goh is a machine learning researcher at Open A.I. We reached him in San Francisco. And you can find more on that story on our website, CBC.ca/aih.

[Music: Drum instrumental]

Outro

CH: That brings us to the end of As It Happens for this Monday, March 15th.

CO: We will be back again tomorrow. But until then, you can find us on the CBC listen app. It's a free download. I'm Carol Off. Have a good evening.

CH: I'm Chris Howden. The news is next, followed by Ideas where they will be discussing one of the oldest pieces of creative writing in the English language. Have a good night.

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March 15, 2021 Episode Transcript

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