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The Current Transcript for October 5, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Former Facebook employee says whistleblower allegations could be ‘watershed’ moment

Guest: Yael Eisenstat

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Canadians overwhelmingly called on us to do more, and in response to their generosity and welcoming spirit, we have now committed to welcoming 40,000 Afghan refugees.

MATT GALLOWAY: As Afghanistan fell. Canada was criticised for not getting more of the people who helped this country out before the Taliban took over. Now, Canadian officials have doubled how many Afghan refugees will welcome coming up, how to make sure they're given the tools to thrive when they arrive. Also this morning, money in money out what the latest revelations tell us about where the wealthy are stashing their cash and why it's so hard to catch up with them. Plus.

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I went out into the streets of St. John's holding this book in front of me as if it was a bomb that needed to be defused. I tossed the book into a dumpster so that it would be out of my life forever.

MG: Wayne Johnston is one of Canada's most successful writers. For decades, though, he has been carrying a heavy secret in 30 minutes. The story of the novel he never wanted to write and the harrowing family tale it exposes. We begin, though, with Facebook, where yesterday's temporary outage could just be a sign of things to come. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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MG: It has been a rough couple of weeks for those in charge at Facebook. Yesterday, of course, the service was down four hours. Late last month, the Wall Street Journal started publishing stories based on internal company memos and private research. In a series called The Facebook Files, they expose the inner workings of the social media giant, including the fact that the company had been fully aware of some of the harm it has been causing and the hate it is fuelling. Now, a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, has owned up to being the whistleblower behind it all. Here is what she told 60 Minutes.

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That is optimising for content that gets engagement a reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive and is polarising. It's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions. Facebook has realised that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site. They'll click on less ads, they'll make less money. It is subsidising is paying for its profits with our safety.

MG: Yael Eisenstat has been warning about the consequences of Facebook ever since she left her job as its election integrity head in 2018. She's currently a future of democracy fellow at the Gruen Institute, a think tank that aims to reshape political and social institutions. Yael Eisenstat, Good morning.

YAEL EISENSTAT: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here. As somebody who has been a vocal critic of Facebook for many years, what to you do these documents and the allegations made by Frances Hogan say?

YAEL EISENSTAT: So what's really interesting is these documents, and of course, I haven't seen them all. But what has been reported out about the documents so far really validates what so many researchers and journalists and even the few former employees who have spoken up over the years have said. I mean, if you haven't read the whole series, the main allegations are some of the more damning than others. I mean, one that made a lot of headlines is that they know that Instagram has unhealthy, dangerous effects on some teenage, mostly girls that use the platform that they know. And when I say they know, I mean, their executives know based on their own internal research that crimes such as human trafficking and drug cartel activity is happening around the world on the platform, and they're not investing enough in in solving that problem, that they know that their algorithm tweaks that happened in 2018 actually ended up causing more salacious and polarising content to surface. And so the allegation and the one that I was most interested in just from my previous role is that they know that their system of basically giving certain people, not just political actors but influencers an extra layer of protection in their content moderation practises has actually led to a lot of high reach individuals on Facebook skating around their own roles. And so before, when people like myself and others would comment on these issues and try to warn what's happening, Facebook could counter that talking point with either we were just disgruntled or we have an axe to grind, or we're not basing this on the actual data. But now these documents prove that even their own internal researchers were trying to tell their own leadership that these things were happening.

MG: When you walked into Facebook, did you think that you could change things internally? I mean, you talk about the polarisation we hear about it being an outrage generator that it's, and this is what Francis Haugen has been saying that it is profiting off of the fact that people get worked up by the things that they see, did you think that you could change that internally?

YAEL EISENSTAT: So when I first got the role, of course, I thought very critically before taking it. I mean, I had a whole eighteen year career in the foreign policy national security world. I didn't take this job lightly, and I did not believe I would go in and single handedly change what was happening at the company. But I did think and I was very clear with them before signing the contract. If you hire someone like me, you're hiring me because I'm going to ask a very tough, critical questions about why the platform is so ripe for manipulation and abuse. So I didn't think I would single handedly change the company, but I thought I would at least be able to contribute to trying to fix some of these. And that the really important point there is I took the role because I don't hate Facebook. I want to see Facebook be a more positive platform and contributor to the world, and I really wanted to help protect the public against some of the worst abuses happening. But unfortunately, they never empowered me and what you know. Francis Haugen's reports show, is they didn't empower their own researchers, either.

MG: You said that your work and the work of others who were working on those issues bumped up against the leadership's other priorities. What are those other priorities again? This is what Francis Haugen has been has been laying out in her documents and with The Wall Street Journal really took on as well.

YAEL EISENSTAT: Sure. So I mean, on the one hand, any any company's priorities are always going to be growth and maximising profit. That's not a secret. We know this, but at the same time, you have to ask at what expense? And so I mean, one very small example. I mean, I don't think it's small, but from my time there, which I've written about, is when my team put together a whole plan ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections to ensure that no ads were engaging in like. About voting in voter suppression. The plan was next, and the reason why is because in my opinion, it wasn't something it was something that could possibly bump up against Mark Zuckerberg's decision already to not get on the wrong side of the current U.S. administration at the time, who could possibly regulate the company. So it's more than just about profit. Yes, a lot of what Haugen exposed shows a lot of the times that there were real plans to protect the platform and protect the public. Executives didn't want to use those plans because they might slow down growth. But I think a secondary thing is also if they put them in the path of possibly angering the former U.S. president, I think that's not coming out enough. But I suspect we might see some of that when those documents are really sifted through.

MG: But as you've said, I mean, and you said this in your TED talk, which was even before the 2020 election, people are using your tools. You're talking about Facebook. People are using your tools exactly as they were designed to sow hatred, division and distrust. This isn't the first time that these sorts of allegations have been made, but they're landing now in a different environment. What do you think the impact of that is? I mean, when you take a look at what's happened in the last couple of weeks, but but it stretches beyond that. What do you make of of of how these allegations are landing?

YAEL EISENSTAT: Sure. So they're definitely being taken more seriously, and I think that's for several reasons. One is for years, people have been pointing this out, but unfortunately they couldn't point to actual proof since Facebook doesn't allow outside researchers or even really the government to have access to actually audit the data that they like to make their claims based on. People like me, people like journalists, people like researchers were always discounted. And I mean, Facebook would call people like me just disgruntled. And so now the difference is, in addition to an appetite has been growing in the public because of so much groundwork that was laid by activists, academics and journalists, this person has thousands of pages of documents that prove that Facebook cannot dispute. They can dispute some of the ways, I'll be honest, that some people are portraying the documents, but they can't dispute the documents themselves. And so this is a, I think, a watershed moment, but it's only a watershed moment if we decide to do something about it.

MG: Facebook is responding. I mean, we asked Facebook Canada for a comment on the allegations made by Francis Haugen and the statement that they sent us reads in part, "We spent more than two years preparing for the 2020 election with massive investments in phasing in and then adjusting additional emergency measures before, during and after the election. We took into account specific on platform signals and information from our ongoing regular engagement with law enforcement. It is wrong to claim that these steps were the reason for January six. The measures we need remained in place through February". What do you make of that? Because they're saying that they've been trying to deal with the issue of misinformation disinformation? The anger generated on the platform that they're working on that.

YAEL EISENSTAT: So I'm really glad you read that particular statement because this is the area I worked most closely on. Now I agree that Facebook has taken some steps to try. I mean, it is not in Facebook's interest to very clearly not do anything to protect elections. So it is true they've taken some steps. But there's a difference between tinkering around the margins and building in certain steps to ensure that you are not fully completely allowing something like what happened in 2016 with foreign government, with Russian trolls, Russian, the IRA, all of them very clearly engaging in voter manipulation in the U.S. elections and actually doing something other than tinkering around the margins. And what I mean by that is the one thing they've never addressed is their actual business model and the actual way that they are monetising some of these problems. But for this specific case, like the January sixth allegation, which is really what they're trying to refer to here, you know, first of all, a lot of the things and a lot of the actions that they claim they put in place ahead of the 2020 elections was because of outside groups of people who worked very hard to shake the company to understanding how dangerous this situation was. But by that point, you alluded to my TED talk after that quote you read. I also specifically warned of violence to come after the elections, and it's because they had allowed for years the amount of distrust they allowed mis and disinformation about stop the steal about, you know, voter fraud, about all these claims that spread for so long, and then they allowed hate groups to rally on the platform and plan an insurrection. And let's be clear, I don't blame Facebook for all of the anger that is out there in groups like the Proud Boys in groups that launched the insurrection. I don't blame Facebook for the fact that we had a president in the United States who helped inspire these people to do what they did. I do blame Facebook for allowing that much hatred and division and distress to be spread on their platform, unchecked by certain people who they were giving a pass from their rules, and that they allowed groups that many outside organisations were flagging to them to continue to plan this insurrection. So they're not the only force in society that is causing some of this. But that doesn't change the fact that they are absolutely complicit and not taking the steps that they could have taken to make sure that these groups can't use their platform to commit crimes.

MG: When she speaks in front of U.S. lawmakers today, Frances Haugen will read an opening statement, and the opening statement includes this line, "When we realised the tobacco companies were hiding the harm that they caused, we took action". Do you think it's fair to compare Facebook to the big tobacco of years past and the fact that Big Tobacco knew what its products were doing, that that research was kept back from the public and that ultimately consequences were taken?

YAEL EISENSTAT: Sure. I think some of the comparisons are absolutely clear. I like a different comparison better and I'll say that in a second. But the idea, the way that Big Tobacco is most resonating right now is exactly what you just read. Their own internal research shows that the harms they are creating, by the way, that they have designed and monetise their platform, and they are not sharing that with the public, and they are sharing alternative talking points when they tried to speak publicly about the platform. And let's be clear, I get that there are a lot of research done at Facebook, and I get that there will be all sides of every issue researched at Facebook. But they do not let the public see that research, and then they use self-selected data points to counter it. So that is very much out of the big tobacco playbook. However, I think the auto industry is a better comparison because the one difference here is, I think it's pretty indisputable that tobacco is not in any way a net positive for society, right? If Big Tobacco went away tomorrow, I don't think we could say that was a terrible thing for society.

MG: So you look at you like seatbelt, the seatbelt comparison with you.

YAEL EISENSTAT: I mean, I do think there's a lot of benefit to having social media, just not the way it is currently designed, operated and monetised. So with the auto industry, we put in speed bumps where autos could possibly harm society. And I think it's time to do the same to help realign social media to better serve the public. And so that's where that's the only place where the tobacco analogy falls a little flat for me. But in terms of how the company is currently operating and engaging with the public and engaging with lawmakers, I think the tobacco comparison is spot on.

MG: So let's use the remaining few minutes that we have to talk about what happens now? What do the speed bumps look like for Facebook? What could be put in place to reign the company in?

YAEL EISENSTAT: So this is where obviously it's very complicated because I and others might have our ideas for what needs to happen in the U.S. but obviously this is a global company, and the biggest problem is what might in one country could actually have the exact opposite consequence in a different country. So I think this is part of what we really have to struggle with. Do we want national laws? Do we want something that can be applied globally? I think for the US context, we have so incredibly let the internet industry regulate itself in every way possible for far too long. I mean, we are behind Europe in terms of an even behind, you know, we're behind much of the world in terms of how to start thinking about this. I think there's a number of things we can do. I mean, the fact that we don't have a federal privacy law is, I mean, at this point, I think people understand that has to happen. And why that matters is because their entire business model is predicated on gathering as much data about us through some manipulative practises so that they can continue to personalise it the our entire experience and service ads. And that might be great if I want a sneaker ad that matches my style. I think it is a very different consequence when you use those same tools to decide what political opinions and speech to put in front of me. So privacy is one of them. You know, the idea of whether they're too big and whether to break them. That becomes this binary argument. I think we do need to think about the consequence of one company having a monopoly over the human behavioural data of the entire world. And I think we do need to start building an actual transparency mandates in terms of letting outside auditors, whether that's regulators, whether that's outside academics, truly study what is happening and being able to finally hold a company accountable, not for the speech that people post. There is no room for the government to say what should or should not be posted online, but for how those tools that the company uses targets individuals with that speech.

MG: Just in the last few seconds that we have, one of the things that you've said in past is that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, his deputy, should resign and that there should be a new board in Facebook. Does it take a housecleaning at the top to make those changes?

YAEL EISENSTAT: I think at this point, absolutely. I don't see. It's part of the problem is Mark Zuckerberg can't be fired because of the way their board is structured. A lot of people like to say that he's responsible to shareholders, but actually, he's not really. He's more of a king than a CEO because he has the majority of the shares and therefore can't be fired by the board at this point there. Especially with all these documents that we've just seen, there's no excuse for this leadership to continue to say, I'm sorry, we know we have to do better. I think it needs a complete housecleaning at the top, and that means Mark and Sheryl and the needs to finally set up a board structure where there's at least some accountability, at least to the shareholders, if not to the larger public. And right now, none of that exists.

MG: Let's see what happens. Yael, good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

YAEL EISENSTAT: Thank you.

MG: Yael Eisenstat is a future of democracy fellow at the Berggren Institute. She worked in elections integrity at Facebook in 2018. Your thoughts welcome. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Look ahead to something coming up on The Current in the days ahead, I'm going to speak with Laurent Duvernay-Tardif spoke with him in January. He was working as an orderly in a care home near Montreal, using his degree in medicine to help care for the elderly during COVID. You might think that name sounds familiar and not just from the interview. That's because he put his other job on pause to be there. He was a starting lineman in the NFL. He won the Super Bowl with Kansas City. Now he's getting back to the gridiron and he's going to tell us what he took away from the experience during COVID. Here's a sneak peek of our conversation.

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I think it gives you like a bigger perspective on on life, and I know it sounds cheesy, but that's really are feeling, you know, and when you go back in Kansas City and you play football and you try to get a spot as a starter and so on, you like at the end of the day, it's football, you know, and then I'm not giving myself 100 percent to the team and trying to, you know, perform at the highest level. But you're like, there's also something else there's something after, and that's a that's really a powerful feeling, but I don't think I could have gone through, you know, balancing football with medicine for the past eight years if if I didn't love what I was doing on both sides, you know, and yes, I'm excited, but I'm also, you know, medicine. I know I'm going to be able to practise it for the next 30 or 40 years. Football, when it's over, it's over, you know, and I was privileged enough to to be able to step away from the game and getting back into it. And that's probably one of the reason why I embraced it so much now. It, you know, I saw what it was a life without football, and I know that some football left in me because when you, you know, hang your cleats, it's over.

MG: Such an interesting man. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, football player obsessed with public health as well. And you'll hear about all of that in our conversation coming up on The Current in the days to come. You're CBC news is next. And then Wayne Johnston familiar voice in the world of Canadian literature. His new book shines a light on a lot of dark corners his own secrets, secrets of his wife and her entire family, all laid bare through the lens of poetry and fiction. He'll be here in six minutes to talk about a book he says has been decades in the making. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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The dark family secret behind the book that took author Wayne Johnston 3 decades to write

Guest: Wayne Johnston

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

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MG: Still to come, the federal government has promised that Canada will be home to 40,000 Afghan refugees. We're still waiting on the details of how they will get here and be set up for success. So in a little over 30 minutes, the task ahead, the lives at stake and the people trying to help. But first dragging family secrets out of the darkness.

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MG: Wayne Johnston is one of Canada's most celebrated writers. His breakthrough novel was The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, telling the story of a fictionalised Joey Smallwood, the great Newfoundland politician. Since then, Wayne Johnston's books have been nominated for a raft of prestigious awards, including the Giller Prize and the Writers Trust, but there is one book that he has kept to himself until now. It is The Mystery of Right and Wrong. It's fiction, but its inspiration is drawn from life. And just to warn you the story involves sexual abuse. Wayne Johnston, good morning.

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Good morning.

MG: How does it feel? I mean, it's always exciting, I'm sure, as an author, when a book is launched into the world, but this book, how does it feel that this book is about?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Well, this book came to be called the third book in our family years ago. When we, my wife and I moved back to St. John's from New Brunswick after having been away for a few years, our notion was that after my first novel, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, was published and did pretty well that we could now go back home and probably stay there. This whole plan was derailed one strange afternoon when a very distraught young man came to my door, rang the doorbell while I was working, I went down. I hadn't seen him in my life. He was screaming tears from his eyes. And he introduced himself as my brother in law. And over the next two and a half hours, he told me a tale that completely changed my notion of where my life was going, where my wife's life was going and had been. And that's really where the seed of this book was planted. It took me a while to recover from the shock of the things he told me. But I knew that one day I would write a book about it. You mentioned sexual abuse, and that's what he came to tell me. He came to tell me that his wife, whom he had just married, had, a kind of broke down and was in hospital and had told him that she had been sexually assaulted by her father chronically over many years. And he looked at me and he said, Do you understand what I'm saying? And I said, yeah, I'm very sorry to hear it, but I do understand what you're saying and he said, I don't think you do. He said, what is the chance that a man who has four daughters and no sons, would only sexually assault one of his daughters and leave the other three alone? And then it hit me, then my world was completely knocked out of the taxes because what he was saying was, I'm talking about your wife as well.

MG: You said that your life was divided into two parts before his visit and then after his visit?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Yeah, that's that's how it seemed to me then and it still seems to me that way. My whole world went spinning around at the speed as if I had been struck by a car. And although the speed of that sort of spinning car has slowed down over the years, the spending continues.

MG: You talk to your wife Rose about this and I mean this. I can't imagine having come out of that conversation, but then having to go into a conversation with your wife about this. I mean, what did she say?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Well, I attempted to go into a conversation with Rose about it, and Rose's reaction was not what I expected because it was a complete non reaction. It might seem hard to believe, but she didn't say a single word. She sat down in a chair in the kitchen of the apartment, folded her arms across her chest and just sort of stared off into the middle distance and didn't say a word. And. If I talked about anything else, she talked back, but if I talked about the assault on her by her father, she didn't say yes, it happened, no, it happened or anything about it, she simply maintained an absolute silence and I was not ready for that, to say the least. I didn't know how to [unintelligible] her I didn't want to make things worse for her, but on the other hand, I was in shock myself this this kind of thing went on for quite some time, became something that was always there in the air between us, even though we weren't talking about it.

MG: How do you think she lived with that silently for so long?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: She lived with it, as far as I can tell, exactly as her sisters did and as they were basically trained to do by her father, which is to say that they were kind of brainwashed into getting to a point where they didn't know right from wrong, truth from lies, fiction from non-fiction. He would tell them stories at bedtime in which he related his supposed heroism as a member of the Dutch resistance in the war. He would do that one night and then the next night he would switch and say that he was the person who infamously turned in Anne Frank and her family to the Gestapo. But then the next night, he would talk about something else. There was a culture in that house that there was the house by day that was relatively normal. And then there was the house by night when Rose's mother looked the other way, when Rose's father, the girls would lie in bed and wait for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. And this went on for years, but no one when the next day came, no one spoke of that. They didn't speak a bit to each other. They didn't speak to their parents. It was two entirely parallel lives going on in one household.

MG: Was there a part of you as a writer that hesitated in telling this story? I mean, this isn't, in some ways, this isn't your story. The abuse is something that happened to your wife and to her sisters. So did you at all hesitated telling the story?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: I thought a great deal about it. I actually wrote two versions of it previous to the one that has been just published and wound up - there's no other way to put it - destroying both of them.

MG: I'd heard that you tried to throw the manuscript out.

WAYNE JOHNSTON: I literally did. I am. I went out into the streets of St. John's holding this book in front of me as if it was a bomb that needed to be defused. And I tossed the book into a dumpster, went back to my apartment. Basically prayed that I would be able to wait long enough for that dumpster to be empty. So that book would be out of my life forever. I went back to the dumpster. I literally crawled into it and find that it was empty. And the book was gone. Ten years later, I did the same thing. It's almost exactly the same thing, except now it was in Toronto. I finished the book. Didn't think it was good enough, didn't think it had the right tone, went down to Young Street and walked the street looking for a place to dump it so that I would never be able to go back to because I thought that if it was around the house, if it was in the house, I would definitely go back and try to protect it, and I knew it was imperceptible.

MG: Why do you think the book haunted you in that way?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: It came down to me to a question that I struggled with for a while, but one of the things that I saw close up in Rose's family, but I started to see it everywhere, it's one of those things, you know you, you don't see something. But once you see it for the first time, it seems to be everywhere. And that's what sexual abuse and sexual assault became for me. I started noticing newspapers and I was a court reporter for a long time, and I remember things that now took on a different importance for me, things about sexual assault and rape cases and the way women were treated by the courts and in the courts. And then I thought, What if I don't write about this? And it occurred to me that for a writer not to write about this, even though knowing so much about it would be almost exactly tantamount to sweeping it under the rug exactly the way that society does with sexual assault. We can't expect the victims of sexual assault to be loquacious and eloquent about it, but all around the victims of sexual assault are the people who committed it. And there are almost there are almost always known to the victims and even slightly outside that circle. There are friends, relatives, people know. They really do. They know or they suspect, but they turn away, they look away. They pretend that their suspicions are unfounded and they become sort of social enablers of sexual assault. I did not want to be an enabler of sexual assault by living the life of a writer and never tackling in a book the most profound thing that had ever happened to me. And the thing that I had lived with for the longest and probably knew more about it than any other thing I considered and ever considered writing. So my third attempt, 30 years after that young man arrived at my door, I was finally able to find a structure and a voice and some literary devices that allowed me to get into the minds of the characters. And be inspired by the real events, but spend less effort at actually trying to imagine what it really happened and instead create a work of art inspired by what had happened.

MG: How much off this story, do you think I mean, in the 30 years between when you get the knock on the door and when this book comes out, you've published other books. So how much of this story do you think shows up in the other books that you've written?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Oh, quite a lot. The books that you mentioned at the outset, the colony of unrequited dreams has in a character named Sheila Fielding, who was a newspaper reporter as I was, sleeps by day and works by night as I do, has an obsessive compulsive disorder, even though it's not diagnosed as such, anyone now reading that book will read it through the lens of the mystery of right and wrong. And I think that's the case to some degree in all the books I wrote subsequent to that fateful, to me fateful, visit of that young man that day.

MG: And was this always going to be fiction? I mean, you talk about the other iterations of it. Is there something that you can do in fiction in telling this story that you wouldn't be able to do if you told it through memoir?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Yes. This particular story, what happened after the accusations were first made was that they were withdrawn by the sister who had made them, then they were made again and ultimately every one of the sisters in one way or another admitted that it had happened. I had a bizarre meeting with Rose's father with Rose. We met them in a motel room. We rented a room for the day so that Rose could confront her father about this. This was about five years after the revelations first came out. We wanted to meet on neutral ground, not have him have any advantage. And he came into the hotel room sort of on the offensive, denying the accusations and then, almost, it was hard it's hard to describe how quickly he changed to a kind of tone of serenity and kind of smugness and said, But, you know - and he didn't look at me when he said it, he looked at Rose - and said, But you know, if these accusations are true. So what? The four girls are my daughters, and I can do anything I want with them. And that stopped me in my tracks so much that I actually considered some kind of, you know, physical confrontation. The clincher was still to come. After this kind of thing went on for about 20 minutes, we all agreed that we weren't going to get any further. And the meeting was over. However, instead of saying goodbye or something like goodbye. He looked at Rose and said, So where are we all going for dinner? He believed that nothing had changed. It's hard to describe the feeling you have when you confront for the first time something that is either evil or completely psychopathologic.

MG: How do you put your mind into the mind as a novelist, into the mind of someone like that? Because, the book, the father is a character in the book and the father is of a fully fleshed out character in which we learn about motivation and we learn about who he thinks he is, so how do you get there as a writer?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: I imagined my way into him by kind of doing the opposite of what I had done in the first two books. I thought of him as being someone else, then the man I knew and I invented certain literary devices that allowed me to get into his mind without being drawn into it so much that I was drawn into his world and started to see things the way he did. And one of those things was the ballad that he writes for the girls. This ballad of indoctrination.

MG: Which runs through the whole book

WAYNE JOHNSTON: and runs through the whole book, and it's a kind of history of his life, as he sees it through very distorted lenses. But it allowed me a tone of voice that wasn't the usual kind of narrative and. I also create for the character of Rachel, who would be the fictional counterpart of the real life Rose, a kind of counter ballot to his ballot except hers, instead of being written in a kind of singsong, mesmerising, hypnotic verse is actual poetry. Her reaction to having been sexually assaulted over so many years is to create an imaginary world in which she's not exactly safe, but it is her world and a world of her creation. The problem is that she starts to lose herself in that world to the point that she's unsure that she will ever come out.

MG: How does your wife Rose and how do her sisters feel about this book coming out now? I mean, again, you referred to it and you said the family referred to it as 'the book'. The book is now out, and at the end of the book is an author's note, that, as we've been talking about, sort of reveals just how close to life parts of the novel are. So how do they feel about that?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Well, you know, I've been on pins and needles about this, let me tell you. Just the other day, Barbara texted Rose and me she we had sent her a copy of the finished book, and she must have read it in pretty much in one sitting. And she wrote back. And she said this works as a work of fiction because of the manner in which it's told, because of the language that's used, because of Rachel's poetry, because and she paid me a huge compliment by by saying, you know, because of Wayne's compassion for the characters. The other sisters are reading now. I don't know exactly how they will react, but you know what I have told them? What's important to keep in mind is that this book, though inspired by the lives of my wife and her sisters, is not directly about them. That is not a coy way of hiding behind fiction. Anyone who reads the book will know that it's a work of fiction because of the many ways I imagine myself into the minds of the characters, but anybody who knows the families specifically will see that many, many, many things have been changed.

MG: So much of this is about the secrets that we keep and what we come to tolerate. This is a secret, as you've been saying, that you kept and it took a great toll on you over the years. Do you feel unburdened now that it's out?

WAYNE JOHNSTON: In some ways, yes, I feel that great piano weight is off my back simply because it's the book is something that I've been trying to write for so long and at least I don't have to keep on trying to write it. My OCD that I was first diagnosed with when I was in my early 20s worsened considerably after these revelations were made. It did take quite a toll on me. I think the greatest toll that it took on me was the effort that it takes to hide and [unintelligible]. This book is an act of solidarity with the sisters in real life. In that I make a disclosure about myself in the afterword. That is my great secret and one that I've been hiding ever since I literally had a breakdown in all the raw wound up in Ottawa Civic Hospital, convinced that I was the only person who had ever had OCD. You know, I didn't even know there was a name for it.

MG: So you say this book is you're coming out in some ways.

WAYNE JOHNSTON: Yeah, it is. I felt like an act of something like that was needed to to demonstrate my integrity as a writer and my sincerity as a person in writing about these things, but very much to finally, be able to stop making excuses for my Night-Time habit of writing all night, sleeping by day. I customarily would make jokes about it and say, you know, I must be a vampire, and everybody thought that was hilarious. And a lot of the other symptoms of OCD as well, not just typographic but hyper alexia. I would find ways to explain away. And my hope is that I don't have to do that anymore, but my fear is that the world is such that or, you know, at least a part of the world will want such things to always hide in the dark corners and never be acknowledged, even when a book about them is staring them straight in the face.

MG: It's a tremendous book, and I'm really glad that, yes, I know it ended up in the dumpster a couple of times, but that this third incarnation did not. And I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you and thank you very much.

WAYNE JOHNSTON: It was a pleasure, Matt. Thank you.

MG: Wayne Johnston's new novel is called The Mystery of Right and Wrong. Well, coming up after a regional update five years ago, it was the Panama Papers. Next, it was the Paradise Papers. Now, the Pandora papers are the third in a series of leaks that reveal how the world's rich and powerful stash their cash away from prying eyes. What those papers say and why they matter. Coming up in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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The financial secrets of the Pandora Papers; and helping Afghan refugees resettle in Canada

Guests: James Cohen, Chris Friesen, Mona ElShayal

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. There is, I think, a vague understanding that the world's wealthiest are sidestepping their share of taxes. What has not been common knowledge is exactly how they're doing it and who they are. Well, now that's clearer than ever before. The Kenyan president, Canadian figure skater Elvis Stojko, pop singer Shakira, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a leak of financial records called the Pandora papers, shows how hundreds of prominent people stash their money in or through tax havens. It is the third such leak in five years, documented by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including our colleagues here at the CBC. James Cohen is executive director of the Canadian branch of Transparency Transparency International. James, good morning.

JAMES COHEN: Hello, good morning.

MG: How big of an exposé is this from your perspective?

JAMES COHEN: It's a pretty big exposé, the third in five years. It's the largest data leak that the ICG has put out, and as usual, we're just starting to find out the tip of the iceberg of the revelations. So I'm sure more will be coming out than we saw Sunday. But yeah, it's pretty big.

MG: These leaks are coming from 14 firms that provide offshore services. What exactly do we learn about the companies that help enable, as I mentioned in the introduction, the wealthiest around the world to stash their cash?

JAMES COHEN: I think that's an important point. What we learnt about the companies because when the tender papers first came out on Sunday, it was a lot of who are the celebrities and who are the top officials, which is very important. But we have to look into who are the enablers that help out this global illicit financial system. So at the heart of this, you have a number of companies that do do legitimate work, but also can turn a blind eye to certain clients and help them disguise where they got their money from and where it goes through series of shell companies or through things like nominee directors. So between the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and now the Pandora Papers, the public is seeing more and more of the revelation of how this global illicit financial flows system work.

MG: And these companies, I mean, go to extraordinary lengths to keep this quiet. I mean, using code names, for example.

JAMES COHEN: Yeah, exactly. We saw that the King of Jordan was called, you know who that the president of Kenya and his family were for his clients three, one, three or something to that extent. So these little tricks to get around compliance that is used by some of these companies,.

MG: It isn't illegal to store your money offshore in a shell company, is it?

JAMES COHEN: No. Just because somebody sets up a shell company or uses an offshore haven does not necessarily mean what they're doing is illegal. So when we look at the Pandora Papers or any of these leaks, you have to make that distinction that there's kind of two conversations going on. There's one about things like tax avoidance, which means that everything is documented. It's just and the authorities know, like tax authorities know what's being done, but it's referred to as aggressive tax avoidance or not being in the spirit of the law. And that's a conversation Canadians have to have about how do we want to arrange these loopholes, and do we want them? Then there's tax avoidance, which is the authorities don't even know. And within tax avoidance, you even have money laundering that someone is hiding, say the theft. The kleptocrats are hiding money that they've stolen from some of the most destitute countries in the world or crime organisations are using, or sanction busters are using. So there's two conversations one kind of morally questionable and then one definitely illegal.

MG: And the illegal one is tax evasion, not tax avoidance.

JAMES COHEN: Exactly.

MG: How do you figure out? Where the line is and how do you prove when something goes from tax avoidance, which is legal to tax evasion, which is, as you said, illegal?

JAMES COHEN: Well, one, if the tax authorities or law enforcement authorities had absolutely zero clue if there was if somebody was concealing their tax rebate or their revenue, that should be taxable. That's avoidance. If they can prove that it was all documented or that's taxable. And if that's if it can't be proven, that's documented, that's tax evasion. But then of course, beyond that, you have actual money laundering, which is beyond even taxes. And that's, you know, padding or layering the money of theft and crime.

MG: How is this done? I mean, people think of offshore tax havens and you know, you might have this idea of a bank or some sort of, you know, anonymous business that doesn't really exist, on a tropical island somewhere. But that's a bit of an outdated notion, right? So how does this unfold?

JAMES COHEN: Yeah. So typically we we've had the idea of offshoring and you wind up thinking about a tropical island, as you say or say, the European Alps. But really what's happening now is that we have to look at this as a global system, that even Canada is a node in that system. And you have intermediaries spread out across the world, within the financial sector, within the legal sector, accounting and so on. Even luxury goods in the arts and high-end vehicle sector. And either wilfully or wilful blindness. As the book by Sam Cooper, reporter at Global News or, you know, they know what's going on. They help people move money through numbered companies. So say you start off with your finances and put them into company ABC. Then they go into Company XYZ, and Company QWR, whatever. And that goes between different countries. So as law enforcement finally picks up on a suspicious transaction report from a real estate sale, they go searching for that company QRW that bought it and then have to go to, say, the British Virgin Islands to find information, only to find out that company is owned by ABC, to then try and find it further and so on and so forth. And then you have nominee directors. So it's an elaborate system all to hide at the end, who's Bob?, At the end of the day, who started off with that illicit money.

MG: What's the harm to Canadians when this is done?

JAMES COHEN: There is a lot of harm, and I think that's really important to know, because people can become apathetic or become normalized about all of this: ''Some wealthy person abused the system for millions of dollars. That doesn't affect me. So what?" We have to tackle that apathy and cynicism because it does affect Canadians. So if we look at, say, the housing market, I would never say that money laundering is the reason that housing prices have gone up, but it's definitely one of the most nefarious reasons. And the British Columbia government commissioned a study looking at the impact of money laundering on housing prices and found there was an impact of five to seven per cent increase on average in British Columbia. And that's not even specifying the Lower Mainland. So we have an impact on the prices plus on supply when you see, you know, condos that just sit empty and no lights on in the night. These are essentially safety deposit boxes in the sky for some of the worst money, and then it facilitates crime within Canada: the fentanyl trade, the opioid crisis. It depletes the resources for government to pay for services we need, especially coming out of the COVID pandemic. It can hide businesses, who they're doing business with, people who have criminal pasts, maybe. And then finally, even Canadians sending foreign aid overseas do so with good intentions. And then we find out, say, like the family of President Kenyatta — Canada has spent about $75 million or so over the last few years to Kenya, only to find out his family is putting money in Swiss accounts. That's not to say we shouldn't be giving aid, there's definitely people on the ground who need it. But without addressing these illicit financial flows, we're only hitting part of the problem of global income inequality and and the needs of foreign aid.

MG: How then do you go about closing the loopholes? You'll often hear, I mean, it becomes a political rallying cry: tax the rich. And part of that is, you know, looking at tax avoidance, but also the legal side of it, tax evasion. So how do you close those loopholes?

JAMES COHEN: So within this global system, even if you as you said, if you have a tax rate here in Canada, there are the loopholes. So we do have to close them and there's a couple of things that can be done and are being done. There's negotiations between tax information, but between countries. But a big thing we need to do, and that's actually happening right now, is creating transparency around corporate registries and who the beneficial owners are. That is to say, as I said, you know who is Bob behind company ABC? So a number of countries around the world are already creating beneficial ownership registries that are transparent to the public. The U.K. was the first to do it in 2016. The European Union has an anti-money laundering directive saying all their countries need to have transparent registries, and this year, Canada, we pledged to establish a transparent registry by 2025 — that was in the budget. So that's a really promising sign that now that we have that, we can put pressure on other countries, say some of the most nefarious spots like Cyprus or Malta, that they also have to do this. And there are changes being negotiated right now in global standards, done by a global body, the Financial Action Task Force. They're negotiating right now, if all their members should have a beneficial ownership, transparent or transparent beneficial ownership registry.

MG: So just before I let you go, we just have a few seconds left is your sense that those moves, but also the continued slow drip of these sorts of papers with the information inside, are actually going to lead to changes where those moneies will stay in the countries that could benefit from the tax revenue.

JAMES COHEN: There's a lot to still be done, but by making these registries, better enforcing financial intelligence units, it does start to close the avenues for people to hide their dirty money. And it becomes easier to find it. So a lot of work still to do, no silver bullets, but progress is starting to move. We just have to keep the pressure up, and these kind of leaks help keep that pressure up.

MG: James, thank you.

JAMES COHEN: Thank you for having me.

MG: James Cohen, executive director of the Canadian branch of Transparency International.

[Music]

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio one, my name is Matt Galloway. In the days following the Taliban sweeping into Kabul, there were stunning images of crowds mobbing planes on the tarmac as they took off. These were Afghans terrified for their safety and wanting nothing more than to be somewhere else. Well, nearly two months later, some of those desperate people are still there. Last week, Canada stood before the world and promised to double the number of Afghan refugees it initially promised to accept.

SOUNDCLIP

Faced with a heart wrenching situation in Afghanistan, Canadians have once again shown their openness to those who do not wish to live under the Taliban rule. And in response to their generosity and welcoming spirit, we have now committed to welcoming 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada.

MG: as Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, speaking at the U.N. General Assembly last week. Bringing 40000 people to Canada and helping them start new lives is no simple task. Chris Friesen is Chief Operating Officer of Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia. Mona ElShayal is a grassroots resettlement refugee, volunteer and organiser. She's in Toronto. Good morning to you, both.

CHRIS FRIESEN: Good morning.

MONA ELSHAYAL: Good morning, Matt.

CHRIS FRIESEN: Chris, we'll start with you. Just briefly, what did you make of the announcement from Marc Garneau at the U.N. General Assembly, doubling the promise in terms of the number of Afghan refugees that would be resettled in this country?

Speaker 4: I think given the public outcry and support to Afghans, I think it was inevitable that the government was going to have to increase it, that the, you know, the public enquiries, the number of Afghans here in Canada that are looking to help immediate and extended family only met that the number would have to increase beyond the 20000 initial commitment.

MG: Has anything changed on the ground either there or here? Have you seen since his announcement, correct?

CHRIS FRIESEN: No. These are early days, and the government hasn't clarified exactly the timeframe of that. 40,000 have the initial commitment. Back in August on the 20,000 was only to the end of December of 2023. But we're still awaiting the time frame for this new commitment.

MG: I want to ask you, what does the time frame? We'll get to that in a moment. Say to you just about the commitment itself. 40,000 is more than what was initially promised, and given the criticism that Chris was talking about, is that an appropriate number in terms of the number of refugees we should be welcoming in this country?

MONA ELSHAYAL: I think it's a fair number, there's a lot of families, a lot of interpreters and their families who are still stuck on the ground in Afghanistan and are unsure of how they are going to come. They've followed the instructions on the government's website about emailing and calling in and are still awaiting response. Unfortunately, their lives are at risk and they're moving from house to house waiting for safety and timeline is very important for them.

MG: You were involved in the resettling of Syrian refugees in 2015. What difference are you seeing this time around, Mona?

MONA ELSHAYAL: This time around, I don't think well, for one, the processing of the refugees, when Syrians arrived in Canada, things were pretty much in place and in order for them, their processing of biometrics and setting up our cards, and that was ready for them when they arrived at the airport. But because of the urgency of how these refugees were transported out of Afghanistan, none of that was possible. So these are - also covid makes a big impact as well. So when they arrived here, they need to quarantine hotels for at least two weeks and then they have to wait for processing to be completed before they can start the settlement process.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, for the people who have arrived, what's their living situation? Where are they now?

MONA ELSHAYAL: There are at hotels around the Toronto airport, and it's quite difficult, the families are quite large. On average, there is maybe five kids or the families with children and extended families and large families and small rooms waiting for information on when they will receive some of this documentation where they're going to go. As you can imagine, being stuck in a hotel room with many children after the trauma that they've been through, it's quite difficult and not having clear communication on what the next steps are. It's a very stressful and traumatic for them.

MG: How's that playing out in Vancouver, Chris?

CHRIS FRIESEN: Well, we have received to date since the first flights that landed in British Columbia on the 23rd of August, just over 82 families. 306 individuals. Once they left Toronto and quarantine and arrived here at B.C. in Vancouver. Are placed once again in temporary housing. And the biggest hurdle and challenge is it's probably not unlike most parts of Canada that are involved in this operation is finding permanent housing. These Afghans are all coming currently, all coming in as government assisted refugees, so they're placed on income support for one year by the government of Canada. And these income support rates, mere provincial income support. So, you know, for example, when we're talking about family sizes, 68 percent of families that have arrived in B.C. or have families of between five and eight members. Family of five would require or would receive about $1100 for rent money a month. That's the biggest challenge in this next phase is it's securing permanent housing so that they can get on with their lives.

MG: Where are they going to live? I mean, there's a housing crisis that's unfolding across the country. Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities to live, not just in this country, but but around the world. So where are those families going to end up?

CHRIS FRIESEN: So we have a, you know, we have a team of four working full time just looking for permanent housing and within the Metro Vancouver region, they're not living in Vancouver proper, but they are. We are finding some places in in Surrey, Burnaby, Newest Minster, further east in Metro Vancouver. But it is. It is tough. But this is, as I said, our greatest challenge, Mona.

MG: Is that being reflected in Toronto? I mean, I know that there is a community here that those refugees may want to stay close with so that there is the familiarity of home. But at the same time, in a city where there is a housing crisis and where housing is very expensive, is that a real pressure point for the work that you're doing as well?

MONA ELSHAYAL: Oh, for sure. This is a huge problem here in the GTA. As you know, with the housing crisis, it's difficult for everybody to find housing. So to have all of these families huge numbers, so a lot of them. I think the plan was to move them across country to smaller communities to make housing easier. But the fact is that these families either have family here in the GTA or close ties, so they would like to stay and those people are offering to help. But the reality is that with the housing crisis going to be very difficult to find housing for families of seven to 11 people.

MG: You mentioned the trauma that they are arriving with. What are you hearing from the refugees you're working with in terms of what they've gone through?

MONA ELSHAYAL: Oh, just many, many different touching stories like we have a young girl who arrived at the airport with her family, and unfortunately, due to the process that she needed to follow to fill out the application, she had to leave her family client. And she's here on her own, terrified of what's going to happen to her family, moving from house to house, trying to keep safe until they find a way out. And there's a lot of stress and just just the how they were caught at the airport and the people who were there when the bombing happened and standing for days with their children and coming with no clothing and then arriving here and, you know, with their proper clothing and not sharing what's- not being given information about what's happening next. And it's very traumatic. They don't know how their families plan to make it a family that are there. Some families have travelled to Pakistan. How are they going to come? They're just worried on all fronts, worried about their children here. When will they be able to enter school? When will I find housing? And it's very difficult to give them answers on that.

MG: What are you able to provide for them in terms of support for the mental health needs that they might be presenting with, given everything that they've gone through?

MONA ELSHAYAL: Well, for our group, we're a little bit unique because, like I said, our our volunteers have been involved in refugee settlement for quite a long time and the families a lot of the ones that we've been in touch with. We work with the Afghan Canadian interpreters who have had relationships with some of these families for five years. So because of those relationships, they trust us so that they feel free to talk to us. So they have somebody to just offered their worries and we reassure them that they're not alone. For people who are out of quarantine, we have been organising just, you know, events or trips to the park with their children. Because as you can imagine, the children are stuck in the hotels with no place to play, and for them it's even more traumatic. They don't know where they are or what's going on. So just having that really close, trusting relationships with us, that's been very helpful.

MG: Chris, that speaks to the timeline issue. What is talking about as well? We've spoken with a number of refugees who are really concerned. I mean, they're desperate when it comes to getting their family members out of Afghanistan. Canada isn't anywhere near the 20000 mark, let alone the 40000 mark of Afghan refugees. So what has to happen to speed up the process to ensure that that people get here sooner rather than later?

CHRIS FRIESEN: Well, I think one of the, you know, one of the things that we're all waiting for details on an announcement by the government of Canada is how Canada's private refugee sponsorship programme is going to be used and leverage to support this. This is private sponsorship, you know, that goes back to the Vietnamese boat people and Canada's Canadians for sports and reaching out and supporting privately sponsored refugees. It was used over time and many emergency refugee resettlement movements, most recently with Operation Syrian refugee. This programme has garnered a lot of intense interest from from military veterans who have spent time in Afghanistan. Those Afghanis living in Canada and general public faith communities and so forth. This amazing programme is oversubscribed. There are over 65,000 privately sponsored refugees approved, with permanent residents awaiting overseas to come to Canada. The processing time currently takes up to two years if you when you submit an application that is received and approved initially by IRCC. So this is a this is a programme that Canadians are asking us lots of questions about that. They want to get involved. They want to take on the roles and responsibilities, in private sponsorship, but no details are forthcoming. And this is part, I think, of the increased tension and stress within the Afghan community. Those family members that are in a country outside of Afghanistan, how quickly can they get to this country now? And that's what I think everyone is waiting for. You know, what are the necessary resources that the government is going to invest in order to expedite this process?

MG: Mona, what do you see as the role of private sponsorship, which to Chris's point, we saw so successfully, most recently with Syrian refugees? What's what's the opportunity here?

MONA ELSHAYAL: Oh, the opportunity is this great, like with the Syrian refugees. Part of the number, a large number that they brought in were privately sponsored refugees, which is actually a benefit because those refugees come with the support system. So when you do private sponsorship, you've got a group of Canadians who are committed to helping them settle for the first year. So we would like to question whether families that are in the process who have completed their applications for sponsorship, who are Afghans, will they be considered in the 40,000? Personally, myself and friends, we have applications in process for Afghan Hazaras, who have been detained in Indonesia for the past seven or eight years. Will the government be considering those people as part of the 40,000? And if they're going to use private sponsorship, is it going to be put on fast track somehow, as Chris mentioned, it takes two years, sometimes more than that, especially because of cocaine processing has slowed down.

MG: Is your understanding? We just have about a minute or so left Mona, but is your understanding that the government is cognisant of that urgency the way that you're describing it?

MONA ELSHAYAL: I'm not sure that they are. There is there is a huge backlog, there is people who have been waiting for years, especially people like the the Afghans who are detained have been detained for eight years there. They came as young children. They're 15 years old and they're now on average like 22 years old, haven't had a life and there's no opportunity to be resettled in a safe country, except for Canada. They have teams of people who are here, who have committed to them, raise the money and are waiting for them. So if they could be included in the 40,000, it would be great. And the people who have arrived and have family back home, it's it's urgent for them. They are literally moving from place to place seeking safety, so they would need to be put on some sort of fast track and

MG: we will follow this along. In the meantime, I really appreciate you both talking about the work that you are involved in right now. Thank you very much.

CHRIS FRIESEN: Thank you,

MG: Chris Friesen, chief operating officer of Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia. He was in Vancouver. Mona ElShayal is a grassroots refugee resettlement volunteer and organiser. She was in Toronto. We did ask to speak with the Immigration Minister, Marc Medicino. His office said that he was unavailable. They did provide a statement that reads in part Since the conclusion of the allied evacuation effort, we have been working with our allies, neighbouring countries and other organisations to find new routes to help Afghan refugees get to safety. Later this week on The Current, we will speak with a successful lawyer from Afghanistan who was forced to drop everything and flee. He's now living in a hotel in Toronto. That's coming up in days ahead on the programme. In the meantime, that'll do it for The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One. It's Q The very funny Eddie Izzard is touring Canada this November. Her latest stand up show is called Wunderbar. Wunderbar. I suppose Eddie will be talking to Tom Power about the new show and performing in foreign languages, even languages that she is not fluent in. Stay tuned for that. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

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