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The Current Transcript for January 24, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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I want the Canadian government first to act according to the law and according to Canadian values, and to give someone who could well be innocent the chance to prove that.

MATT GALLOWAY: For years Canadian citizens have been held in detention camps in northern Syria, accused of being supporters of the terrorist group Icis. Last week, the federal government agreed to repatriate 19 women and children from those camps. Then a judge ordered that four men must also be brought back to Canada. There are many questions from national security concerns to the reintegration process. In 30 minutes, what happens next? And the story of one British detainee who is being prevented from returning home. Also this morning, are you a dog person, confident in canine superiority, disdainful of cats? Well, think again.

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Cats recognise us. They can communicate with us in a way that's actually adaptive. They can change their miaows, for example, to more effectively communicate with their owner.

MG: It turns out that compared with their arch enemies, cats have largely been under-researched. And now new studies are suggesting that cats may be more interesting than we thought. In an hour, The Secret Life of Mr. Whiskers. We begin, though, with a call to take back health care in Canada. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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New report makes call to 'take back health care' in Canada

Guests: Dr. Jane Philpott, Dr. Alika Lafontaine

MG: Six million Canadians can't find a family doctor. Many end up in emergency rooms because they don't have primary care. Health care professionals are stretched beyond the limit. The federal and provincial governments say they are close to a deal on funding health care, hoping to resurrect a system in crisis. Today, the Public Policy Forum is releasing a new report called Taking Back Health Care. It's authored by some of Canada's leading experts on health care, and it has ideas on how we fix the system. One of those authors is Dr. Jane Philpott, former federal health minister and now dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen's University. Dr. Jane Philpott, good morning.

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Good morning.

MG: Who are we taking health care back from?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: We are taking health care back for the people. It does not belong to government or policymakers. It belongs to the people of Canada, the people who call Canada home. And we need to make it clear what we expect. And I think you'll see in this report that there's a bit of a sense that enough is enough. Let's fix this health care system so that people will get what they need.

MG: Can I ask about those expectations in the report you write: We, instead of rightly insisting that our health care system could be all things to all people, we need to arrive at a new understanding of what the system could be. What should that new understanding be about? What the system is? What should our expectations be of what the health care system in this country can offer?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I think the report suggests and I would agree with it, that we actually have not had expectations that are high enough. The fact that you said 6 million Canadians don't have access to a family doctor or a primary care provider is simply not acceptable. Imagine of 6 million children didn't have access to public schools in this country. There would be an outcry, and we couldn't imagine that a country like Canada couldn't figure that out.

MG: And do you see do you see a direct comparison there in terms of access?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Absolutely. See that we we understand when we look at public schools that it's possible to deliver a system that makes sure that you move to a new community and your child will have a public school. And that's what we should expect for health care in the form of primary care providers. The report makes it very clear that Canadians should be able to expect that it's actually better value for money than what we're getting right now, and we believe it's completely doable.

MG: You have many different hats that you could wear. One is a former or recovering politician. The other is a family doctor, now an academic leader in those various roles. How do you understand the process that we got to a point where 6 million Canadians don't have a GP?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, that is a fantastic question. And as you know, our health systems have struggled over a very long time now and have not been up to par. And we've had this kind of collective national myth that we've got the the the best health care system in the world when in fact we pay more than most countries in the world per capita for our health system. And we we rank well down the ranks in terms of the outcomes that Canadians are getting for that. I think the pandemic has put us into a realisation of how broken things were, and now there's an urgency that is greater than ever to get things fixed. And let's take advantage of that crisis that we're in to make sure that everybody works together to fix it.

MG: But let me go back to that specific question again. When you say the solution can't just be more dollars, that's precisely what the premiers want. How is it that that 6 million Canadians don't have a GP? What led to that, to that reality? Because the Canadians who don't have a GP, we hear from them on a on a daily basis. It seems like on this program they are in crisis and they're ending up in the emergency department which furthers the crisis down the line.

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, it's multifactorial, as these problems always are. So there has been a decline over many years now of the number of our medical students that go into family medicine. And there are lots of reasons for that. And we're trying to reverse those trends. We haven't designed our primary care systems, though, in the most efficient way. And one of the things the report speaks to is the fact that everyone, every Canadian, should have a what we call a primary care home. That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to see a family doctor, but you should be able to on any given day, based on the urgency of your need, be able to get access to that primary care home. And it may be that you should see that day a nurse practitioner or a social worker or a pharmacist or a family doctor, whoever is the right provider. And if we organise our systems that way, which we can, we can actually do so in a way that's more affordable than what we're doing now. And people will be less frustrated and actually get their ailments treated in a much more timely fashion.

MG: Do you think the system now is broken?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: It is broken.

MG: The health care system is broken.

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I like to say health care systems. Because we don't have a single system across the country, but the systems are not providing what Canadians need. And it is time to take back those systems to make it clear what our expectations are, and so that if there is more money going into those systems, the Canadians need to say this is what we expect. We expect every Canadian to have a primary care home. We expect to see team based care. We expect to see investments in the fact that health is wealth is, as has been said for some time, and that if people are not healthy, then they can't enjoy the wonders of our of our beautiful country.

MG: So let's talk more about those solutions, particularly around primary care. Doctor Alika Lafontaine is joining us. He's the president of the Canadian Medical Association, another co-author of this report. He's in Grand Prairie, Alberta. Doctor LaFontaine, good morning to you.

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: Good morning.

MG: How does team based care work in Alberta?

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: You know, I think Dr. Philippot was explaining a bit about how this works. You know, team based care is an opportunity for governments to fund more than just a doctor, more than just a nurse practitioner operating together to make sure that patients have the problems, that they come to the team based care model and solved. So it's not about connecting with a specific person. It's about connecting with the person who can solve your problem.

MG: How is that different, I mean, than the traditional way that we would look at? You know, you have a concern. You go to the family doctor.

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: You know, I think the best way to understand it is understanding what patients go through right now. You know, instead of having team based care, what we really have is patients trying to navigate several different silos to eventually get what they need. You know, you try and show up to a family medicine clinic and you can't get what you need. So then you go to a walk in clinic. So then you go to virtual care. So then you go to emergency room and you hope that eventually you overlap with the person who can actually solve your needs. Sometimes it's the family physician that needs to see you, but other times it can be another provider. And sometimes it's not a traditional provider that you need at all. It could be a social worker, it could be, you know, a physical therapist. And so in a team based model, you have people working together to help you navigate the system instead of just leaving it to the patient to try and figure it out themselves.

MG: Do you think that that is a solution, a way out of this crisis? Dr. Philpott says that the systems are broken in part because so many Canadians can't have access to that primary point of care.

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: You know, I think team based care recognises two things. The first is that what patients want from their health provider has shifted. You know, it's not just getting someone to, you know, check whether or not your chest pain is something that you need to worry about. It's also making sure that the things that influence your life that fall within the social determinants of health are also addressed. The other part of it is that our our system currently has a set number of people that is unlikely to shift. So we need to change the way that we work together. And, you know, changing the way that team dynamics work is one of the more effective ways to stretch people beyond what they can, they can do by themselves. And so, you know, the model has a lot of promise.

MG: Dr. Philpott I would say full disclosure, I'm part of a family health team in Ontario and I love how it works. But I know that funding for these networks is not secure. And in many ways it stopped. You were in government. Why did the funding for these sorts of networks, if they are so promising, why did they stop?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, you'd have to ask the provincial folks who were in place during the time that those teams stopped. And I believe that there was some concern about the sustainability of those teams there. You're absolutely right that they are fabulous for those who have access to them, but the access is inequitable. So we need to go back to looking at how that they can be rolled out in a sustainable way so that we don't have the haves and the have nots of people who have that wonderful experience of a family health team. But so many that don't.

MG: But in some ways it's rethinking. I mean, it's not just about funding. It's about rethinking what that access point to health care looks like.

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, it's rethinking and it's also the will of the people, and some would say the political will so that, you know, this is a perfect time when the federal government and the provinces are talking to say, okay, we're going to put a whole bunch more money into into health care. But here's what we expect and here's the timeline by when we expect it. And I think this is the perfect chance for us to say which province is going to step up and and show how that can be done. There are many of us who have designed the models for what that looks like. And I think setting that that view and hearing from Canadians to say that's what we want, we want to make sure everyone has access to team based primary care.

MG: Doctor, I was going to say, Dr. Lafontaine, when you hear about those, you know, some provinces are stepping up in British Columbia. That's happening right now. There is a new payment structure which will create a pay raise for doctors that comes into effect on the 1st of February. This, in part is meant to address the doctor shortage. Is that a way out of what we're seeing right now? What do you make of that strategy?

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: So, you know, there's things that we're used to as far as the way that we practice as physicians and, you know, other providers like nurses, etcetera. And, you know, there has to be funding and coaching in place in order to help transition us into other models. You know, a really important thing to remember in all of this is that although the provinces decide whether or not the programs continue, the federal government actually had funding that was put in place that triggered, you know, the creation of primary care networks, that triggered the creation of family health care teams. And, you know, if we can guide funding in that direction, if we can focus on, you know, patients experiences and make sure we fund what works well for patients instead of dismantling those programs because of higher siloed costs. I think there's a lot of promise to to models like B.C. and elsewhere.

MG: Is that part of what Dr. Philpott was speaking about when she talks about taking back the health care system, that the health care system needs to be in? In many ways people talk about patient focus, but that's that that's where the spotlight needs to be on what the patients need and what the patients what will help the patients the most.

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: I think it's really where priorities meet. You know, a government has to sit there and ask the question, you know, patients having great experience are providers having a great experience. But this is quite costly. Are we going to continue to go on with this? And I think in the past, especially the recent past, when those two things have collided, it's always been on this side of funding that we've made these decisions. And so, you know, taking back health care and making sure that we focus on health outcomes helps us to make different decisions that aren't framed by how much things cost, but instead framed by the health and investment that that we get out from the programs that that we fund.

MG: Dr. Philpott, just I guess the last point briefly on this. You mentioned, you know, who is going into family practice. Do you worry that stories like this a crisis in care people hear, but how burnt out family physicians are that that would scare people away from going into family practice?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I'm delighted to report that, in fact, we see the opposite at the post-secondary level, that we've never had more applications to our programs in medicine, in nursing and elsewhere, despite the crisis. So our young people, as usual, are the most optimistic and hopeful among the population and and some would argue idealistic. But that's that's a good thing. These are people who really believe in their country. They want to serve their community. And we are not seeing any shortage of people who want to go into these programs. And then we just need to make sure that that they have a reasonable level of well-being so that they'll stay in the system.

MG: Aside from the HR issue, one of the things we talked about on this program yesterday when it came to this deal between the federal government and the provinces and territories on the horizon, is this issue over data? Jane Philpott, why is sharing health data so important?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Oh, my goodness. It's it's one of the most important pieces. And we talk about it a lot in this report. But I mean, Canadians understand this. They understand how frustrating it is when they've had a lab test done or perhaps an imaging test done in one part of the health system, and then they're referred to another part and the provider there doesn't have access. And so often they end up ordering the same test all over again, which of course costs more money, frustrates people, and that this is really unacceptable. There are there are huge amounts of health data in the system and everyone is now convinced that we have to be able to make it interoperable, shareable by default, recognising, of course, patients privacy and the security issues that are necessary. But having a seamless access to data systems will improve patient care and definitely save money in the end.

MG: Dr. Alika Lafontaine What needs to change? I mean, again, we talk so much about our own personal data outside of health care. We talk about it when we're online, social media, how, you know, companies might be hoovering up our data and how we need to keep hold of it when it comes to our personal health data, what needs to change so that we as patients, again, are at the centre of this conversation?

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: You know, I think it goes back to something that Dr. Philpott just said by default, we need to have this sharing mentality and to have this protection mentality. You know, our big challenge isn't necessarily we don't collect things is that we absolutely don't share them and as a result, we don't have a clear idea of the state of play. Currently, as we plan for things in the future, we kind of do things and then we hope that they work out. And so, you know, having that data shared across the country, having that data shared to patients when they wanted at the time that they want it, you know, these are all very important changes that we have to make in the way of what we what we accept as normal right now in health care.

MG: Who has to make those changes?

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: So I think it's really driven by patients identifying to politicians what they want, but then it requires politicians to make a stand and say, you know, this data is going to become available and we are going to set this new tone for government. You know, our health systems are a reflection of what we want and who we elect. And what this report is trying to do is help people know that if we call on governments to do things and we're consistent and we're unified in doing. Governments will respond.

MG: Jane Philpott This report also talks about updating the language that we use to talk about public versus private. This is obviously a flashpoint perhaps. You know, right now people are having that heated conversation. What are we missing in that?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, thanks for asking that. And as you said, particularly here in Ontario, we're hearing a lot of discussion around public versus private. And one of the things that report speaks to is the fact that, first of all, everyone has to understand what we're talking about and perhaps change the tone of the conversation, because, in fact, we have an enormous amount of our health systems that are already privately delivered. The important piece, of course, is the fact that we have a commitment to making sure that people have access to care based on their health needs and not based on their their ability to pay for those health needs. But public and private delivery have always been mixed in this country. We speaks of the fact that that's not necessarily the challenge, but ensuring that the systems work together so that in Ontario, for example, as as potentially new types of health facilities might be made available, we need to recognise that it has to work with other parts of the system, the hospitals that are already in place. And I will just always say that that health systems are about people in the end, so you can open more facilities, but if you don't have the health workers to be able to, to provide the care, all the new facilities in the world will not will not improve our systems.

MG: Alex Lafontaine, do you worry that that conversation about public versus private is a distraction from the larger issue at play?

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: I think it does repeatedly get into ideological comparisons instead of what people are actually asking for, which is access. You know, I think there's two questions that are really important. If you do open up a private facility, does that actually provide equitable access, just like Dr. Philpott was saying, not dependent on the ability for someone to pay out of pocket, but instead based on on your need. The second part is if if these private facilities are having less of a problem recruiting people, what are we not doing in the public system to create healthy working environments? And I think that's a part of the conversation that gets lost once we get trapped in these ideological conversations.

MG: So in the last couple of minutes, then we'll go back to the beginning, which is that there are millions of Canadians who are frustrated with the state of the health care system and tired of people talking about the state of that health care system. What has to change and do you see change on the immediate horizon? I'll start with you, Alika Lafontaine.

DR. ALIKA LAFONTAINE: So I think you can definitely hear from the tone of the government represented. And it just that something's probably cooking, I think leading health care transfer discussions and that change might be around the corner. Now, if money gets invested in the right areas, you know, places that this report talks about, team based, connected, collaborative care, you know, data sharing, making sure that we enter into conversations that actually focus on the problems that we need in that we support those programs that really do provide that excellent patient experience and those healthy working environments for providers. We really could save the system. And I think it's really that refocus that needs to happen. And we do have I do have a lot of hope that things are going to change.

MG: Dr. Jane Philpott, last minute to you. Why should Canadians who are frustrated right now believe that this crisis is any different when it comes to changing and saving that system?

DR. JANE PHILPOTT: Well, I think speaking to people on the front lines is something that is absolutely essential to be able to improve systems. And so one of the things we're happy about in this report is that people like Alec and myself who have worked on the frontlines of care are able to inform the expectations of what should happen. And as much as possible, we will continue to encourage policymakers, politicians to speak to the people who are actually delivering the care on a day to day basis because they've been thinking for a long time about how they can do better to serve the people that show up every day looking for care. And we're seeing that happen more than ever now.

MG: It feels like an issue of our times and we will continue to talk more about it. There's a lot in this report to think about and hopefully to act upon. Thank you both for being here. Thank you. Dr. Jane Philpott, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen's University, was the federal health minister from 2015 through 2017. She was in Kingston, Ontario. Dr. Alika Lafontaine is president of the Canadian Medical Association. He was in Grand Prairie, Alberta. And we will indeed continue our coverage of health care in this country in the days to come, including a special public forum that I'll be hosting in Victoria, B.C. on the 6th of February will be talking about access to primary care and speaking with some of those many millions of Canadians who can't get primary care. More details on that in Victoria on the 6th of February as we get closer to that date. Your CBC News is next. And then a court ruling that several suspected ISIS fighters currently held in Syria are going to be repatriated to Canada. What happens next? We'll talk about that coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Canadians to be repatriated from detention camps for suspected ISIS members

Guests: Leah West, Josh Baker

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

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MG: Still to come, a cat owner finds out her cat goes to school to church, and sleeps in other people's beds. Turns out cats are way more social than their aloof reputation might suggest. But first, a complicated repatriation.

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MG: Some Canadians who are being held in northern Syria may soon be coming home. The federal government has agreed to repatriate 19 women and children. Shortly after that announcement, a federal court justice ordered the repatriation of four Canadian men. They are all being held at detention camps for suspected ISIS members in northern Syria. One of those men is Jack Letts, dubbed "Jihadi Jack" by the British media. He was raised in England, but his father is Canadian, so he had citizenship to both countries.

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I'm not asking any- it's not like I'm appealing to the British public to give me a second chance. And it's not something anyone would do. If I was a member British family, I wouldn't I wouldn't give me a second chance. Probably haven't tried to make myself innocent. I did what I did. I made a big mistake.

MG: And for what he did, the UK stripped him of his British citizenship. Leah West visited the camps where Jack Letts and other Canadians are being held. She is an assistant professor of international affairs, national security law, counterterrorism and cyber operations at the Norman Patterson School for International Affairs at Carleton University. Leah, good morning.

LEAH WEST: Good morning.

MG: Just briefly describe the conditions at these camps in northern Syria. As I mentioned, you've been there.

LEAH WEST: Yeah. I've been to the camps. Jack and the men are actually held in prisons, which are even worse. But The camps themselves are overcrowded. They're, they're made of tents. The tents are not, you know, all weather. They're not for all season. There's literally nothing but the tents and whatever people kind of came in with them on their backs or could afford to purchase since they've been there, which is not very much. Kids, tiny kids underfoot everywhere and violence, lots and lots of violence inside these camps. Rioting, fires, stabbings, shootings. And there continues to be a strong ISIS presence inside the camps.

MG: And so after much discussion, I was going to say lobbying, but there has been strong efforts to try to repatriate these women and children. That decision has been made by the federal government. What do you make of that decision?

LEAH WEST: I think it's the right one. I've long been one of those people having those discussions and lobbying, but essentially the government implemented a policy in January of 2021 about extending what they called extraordinary consular assistance. So the baseline position of the government was we will not repatriate, but there were three criteria on which they would reconsider that, which would be a fundamental change in circumstances. We found out in December that those 19 women and children you mentioned had qualified under that. And it's my assessment that based on that policy and based on the current conditions in the camps and the successful repatriation, as we've already seen, there was really no way that a decision could be made that would not seat those women and their children coming home.

MG: What about the four men that the court has ordered Canada to repatriate? What do we know about them?

LEAH WEST: So we all know that they travelled abroad, three of them from Canada, Jack Letts from the United Kingdom. From what we understand, the early years of crisis. And whether or not they actually intended to join ISIS or other terrorist organisations at the time is an individualised thing. But they have various roles in the organisation. One of the men, as far as I know, has never actually spoken to the media. We don't actually know his condition. One man, we suspect is very mentally ill. And another one has spoken to the media. He's spoken to Stewart Bell from Global News, for example. And so we know a bit about what he did. And he at the time in 2018, sorry, Yeah, 2018 said, you know, I expect if I come home, I'll be I'll be prosecuted. So I think we should expect to see charges against these men as soon as they arrive home. At the very least, peace bonds being issued against them.

MG: Why is Canada being ordered to bring them back?

LEAH WEST: So, Justice Brown Laurence Greenspon represented the 19 women and children and four men before the court. Ultimately, the order only deals with the men because the issues with the women and children was resolved before the decision of the court came out. So the judge found that under the Charter of Rights, Section six protects the rights for Canadians to enter and enter and remain in Canada. And he found that these individuals, obviously, they have those rights. They're Canadian citizens, but they couldn't exercise that right because the other detention and that always needed all that was needed from the government in order for them to be able to exercise that detention was for the Canadian government to ask the administration that's holding them to repatriate them and to literally facilitate that by showing up at the border and helping them cross back over.

MG: Do you think that do you think they will actually come back because Global Affairs Canada has said they're going to review this decision?

LEAH WEST: Yeah, I do, actually, I do. I think I'm not surprised. And it's is a novel decision. It's a novel interpretation of what Section six requires. It does place an element of a positive obligation on the Government of Canada to help people exercise their Section six rights. I think it's important also to note that the court did say that the government had violated their Section six rights. He said that this was required in order to allow people to exercise them, just like issuing somebody a passport, for example. So I think it's natural for GAC to say they'll review it. I could see them still wanting to even maybe challenge this idea of a positive right. But I suspect that they will take steps to bring them home.

MG: And what happens then? I mean, aside from from the kids, all of the people that we're talking about are suspected of being involved with ISIS. So what happens to them when they re-enter Canada?

LEAH WEST: Well, we have great examples of this already because we have three adult women who have already returned to Canada from these detention camps. And in two cases, they were placed on peace bond. A terrorism peace bond essentially is, it's law enforcement or prosecutors will go to the court and say, we have a fear that this individual may commit a terrorism offence And that's what the standard is here? They don't need to have proof. They don't need to have reasonable grounds to suspect it's fear and they'll ask them to place them under a recognises for a year, for example, and there's often pretty strict conditions that go with that. And in both of their cases of the women, they didn't even challenge the passport, they didn't challenge the conditions and they accepted them. And if they violate those the terms of their cognisance, they can go to jail for up to four years. In the third womans case, we saw her come back and be charged with four terrorism offences. She was arrested. She was forced to undergo a bail hearing in which, you know, there was a serious conditions placed on her ability to leave custody. And I suspect that that's what we'll see, a combination — depending on who these individuals are — of either a peace bond or charges and then bail conditions for those who are charged. And then, you know, whether or not those that leads to a prosecution and in a trial or some sort of plea bargain that'll play out after they arrive.

MG: A former CCIS officer said they weren't on a sunwing vacation that went wrong. They travelled to Syria. They joined a terrorist group. Global Affairs says it's concerned about the security of Canadians and that's its top priority. You've said this is the right decision. What do you say to Canadians who think that these individuals relinquished their rights when they went to Syria to support a terrorist organisation?

LEAH WEST: You don't get to relinquish your life as the Prime Minister. Trudeau has said in the past that Canadians is the Canadians, the Canadians. What I am sympathetic to the security question, obviously I am also a former security personnel person and there are ways of mitigating this threat. I think people forget that we heard in 2019 that there were 60 people who had returned to fight with ISIS who were in Canada. We've not seen any of those individuals engage in terrorist activity that led to violence or charges since then. There are ways to mitigate the threats. We have fantastic security personnel who will be tasked with that upon their return, but more importantly, leaving them abroad where they're being detained in inhumane conditions without charge, without trial, is not justice. If these people did commit acts of terror on behalf of terrorists, they deserve to stand trial. They deserve to be found guilty. They deserve to be denounced in a court for what they did for their their victims to see that happen and for Canada to uphold the rule of law. We need to be better than ISIS by by accepting our responsibility to the international community to charge and prosecute these individuals. By just allowing them to languish indefinitely, as if the rule of law doesn't matter. I mean, we are better than that. And we need to show the world that we are better that and hold up our end of the responsibility so that there is actual justice.

MG: What about being better than ISIS, better than the U.K.? If you think of Jack Letts. He's never lived here. The understanding is and the British government said that that he's not going back there, that they have stripped him of his citizenship in that nation. What is our obligation to him, do you think?

LEAH WEST: Well, he's still a citizen, right? Just like anyone else. We don't we don't divide rights to citizenship based on whether or not anyone's lived here or not. There are a lot of Canadians around the world who have never lived here. And when the government of Canada is called on to assist them, the government of Canada doesn't ask whether they've lived here before. We saw this, for example, with COVID evacuations. Right. People across the world being evacuated back to Canada. Nobody asked whether or not they've lived here before. They just asked if they had a passport. And so the fact that UK government did what it did doesn't mean that we, again, right, should be to that level. We used to have a similar law that would strip individuals of their citizenship if they, you know, they had to have another citizenship like in the case of Jack Letts. We used to have that law on the books. That's what prompted Justin Trudeau to say a Canadian is a Canadian, is a Canadian. It was in response to the Stephen Harper government stripping somebody of their citizenship after engaging in terrorist activity. We no longer have that law on the books. That was one of the very first things the Liberal government did in 2015. So the fact that the UK did it, I mean, is not an excuse for us to similarly abandon him.

MG: Leah is great to talk to you as always. Thank you very much.

LEAH WEST: Thanks for having me .

MG: Leah West, an assistant professor at the Norman Patterson School for International Affairs at Carleton University.

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VOICE 1: When they think of ISIS, they think of me because I've been put on the media so much.

VOICE 2: But they only did that because you chose to go to ISIS.

VOICE 1: But what was there to obsess over? We went to ISIS. That was it. It was over. It was over and done with. What more is there to say? Like, they just wanted to continue the story because it was a story. It was the big story.

VOICE 2: But you do accept that you did join a terrorist group.

VOICE 1: Yes. I did.

MG: That's Shamima Begum, speaking with BBC journalist Josh Baker. Shamima Begum is well-known in Britain for being one of three teenage girls who went to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS. And she is the subject of Josh Baker's fascinating new podcast, The Shamima Begum Story. It's season two of his series I Am Not a Monster. Josh Baker, hello to you. Hello. Where did that interview with Shamima Begum take place?

JOSH BAKER: So that interview took place. I mean, it's one of several interviews I've done with her, but it took place in a detention camp in northeastern Syria called Camp Roj, where indeed citizens from across the world are held, including Canadians.

MG: Why did you want to tell her story now?

JOSH BAKER: So bizarrely, I came to this story in quite an odd way. So I was actually making a completely separate piece of work in a place called East London Mosque, and it was about one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. Now, I was there filming and while I was filming it became apparent that three girls from the local community had gone missing. This was back in 2015, and it turned out one of those girls was Shamima Begum. So at that point I sort of found myself front and centre to a story of of three girls travelling to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria. The mosque became a focal point for authorities, for the press and indeed for their families. Fast forward-

MG: Yeah.

JOSH BAKER: Let's fast forward Seven years later, I get a chance to sit down with Jamima and for the first time she gave me what she says is her full account of everything that happened. So we sort of been testing and investigating that account.

MG: In the first episode of the podcast, I was just going to say, I mean, there's so much detail about those three teenage girls leaving and what happened and the the fear that kind of kicks off as the press learns about this. But then you meet with her. What did she say about why she wanted to join ISIS?

JOSH BAKER: Well, it's fascinating because you find yourself thinking, you know, how did a seemingly bright, intelligent schoolgirl end up thinking that a terror group known for genocide is the right decision? And we sort of go into this a lot in episode four of the podcast. But in essence, she she believed that she was heading to a utopia, if you will. She was being persuaded to go there by a friend of hers and indeed other members to the extent that she was fed very detailed instructions about how to get there. You know, she did have agency of her own, and that's important to note. But in essence, she believed that she was going to a state that had been created for her. And it was it was this utopian Islamic state that she should be part of.

MG: What does she say now about being part of the caliphate? I mean, she says some some very shocking things in the past, including I mean, this is grisly, that she felt indifferent to seeing a severed head because it belonged to an enemy of the Islamic State. How does she. How does she explain what she did and where she was?

JOSH BAKER: Well, the thing is about Shamima Begum is you're kind of dealing with three people in your conversations with her. You're dealing with the 15 year old girl who left and took Monteiro chocolate with her because she thought it was important, had no idea the severity of what she was going to. Then you're dealing with somebody that has quite a single mindedness because she's had her formative years inside the IS caliphate and says statements like you have have highlighted, but then you're also dealing with somebody that's now been in detention for four years and has had, well, a lot of time to reflect upon the decisions that she made. And I think what's interesting about the Shamima Begum story is, you know, this is possibly globally the one that has had the most attention yet, so little is really known about how this happened. Connections to Canada, what she did when she was there, and as you say, what she thinks about now. She would say that she has a lot of regret for the decisions that she made.

MG: You mentioned connections to Canada. I want to play something else from the podcast. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

JOSH BAKER: I mentioned Shamima Begum, smuggler Rasheed, and show him a picture. His mood changes.

INTERPRETER: He says like you want to be talking about it. You've got to get cashed talking, basically.

JOSH BAKER: We smile back and try to ignore his request for money?

INTERPRETER: He says like you can speak openly to us. Like I'm answering your questions. You know, like, if we take you in opposite directions, no one would know.

JOSH BAKER: What does that mean?

INTERPRETER: I don't know. He was saying like no one would know what been saying for, you know, take you somewhere. I'll thank him?

JOSH BAKER: Thank you. He's just offered to make us disappear.

MG: This is a very tense scene. What's going on? What's the backstory here?

JOSH BAKER: So after Shamima Begum and her friends fled Britain, they arrived in Istanbul, in Turkey. And this was sort of the starting point of their journey through Turkey, to Syria. And they were essentially a lot of people know that Shamima ended up in Syria, but they don't really know how. So we decided we're going to go and retrace a route and we discovered a sort of highly organised IS people trafficking network that was moving men, women and children into I.S. controlled Syria. Now, throughout that journey, I sort of would try and get close to smugglers in this particular scene. I've just walked into a hotel in a city in Turkey, and there is a man there who is now moving people instead of across Turkey into Syria, out of Syria and back into Europe. So going the other way. And it becomes clear that he has a lot of information about Shamima Begum, smuggler. The man called Mohammed Rashid, but he doesn't want to give it to me and he gets nervous the more I ask and essentially threatens to do me harm.

MG: What was Mohammed Rashid's connection to Canada?

JOSH BAKER: So through the course of that investigation, I end up it became bizarre how little people wanted to talk to me about this man and how frightened they were to talk to me. I find myself in an underground car park, almost like a Hollywood movie, being handed hundreds of pages of secretive information gathered by law enforcement, intelligence, so and so forth. And what it revealed is that Mohammed Rashid was indeed a Canadian asset who had been recruited to gather information on ISIS Now. Somewhere along the way, he sort of graduated into being a sort of people smuggler, if you will, And he facilitated the travel of Shamima Begum and indeed others, potentially from as many as 15 nations into ISIS controlled Syria, while also gathering information for Canadian intelligence.

MG: Given that, what responsibility do you think the Canadian government bears for these three then teenage girls who wound up in the hands of ISIS?

JOSH BAKER: Well, the thing is, you know, we've not just got these classified documents. We've also spoken to serving intelligence officers and indeed former SIS officers as well. Now, what they would say is that this was an operation that went wrong. It's not that it was wrong to try and use Mohammed Rashid to gather information about a very dangerous enemy. But at a point, to quote somebody, a line was crossed. And that is a line that is, in essence, put at risk the lives of young children.

MG: There were three teenage girls who went to Syria. What happened to the other two?

JOSH BAKER: The other two are believed to, well, one is certainly dead and the other one is also believed to be dead. But there are many other people that this man facilitated the travel of, including basically a newborn baby.

MG: As you said, the story of Shamima Begum is perhaps one of the best known around the world, in part because of the response of the UK government. Why has that government thus far not allowed her back into the country?

JOSH BAKER: So I think it touches upon similar things that many Canadians will feel. So in essence, they would say that Shamima Begum is a threat. She poses a threat to British people and she may well be a victim of something like trafficking. But that doesn't mean that she's not a threat. So we did is it is wrong to bring her home because there's a sort of greater good argument of where the greatest number of people safer. Now, I have spoken to intelligence professionals who would counter that argument, and they would say, look, when we talk about the notion of somebody being a threat, undoubtedly if you bring somebody home, they can pose a threat. But at the same time, you have to recognise that we are leaving these people in detention facilities that are insecure. They do escape, they do make it back to ISIS. So the idea that there is also not a consideration of the notion of threat when you leave them in in Syria is something that we also need to factor into that conversation.

MG: There was a long piece in the Sunday Times this weekend saying that Shamima Begum is a manipulator, that her remorse is a scam. And people have said that she has used your podcast in some ways to launder her reputation to make it easier for her to come back to Britain. What do you say to those accusations?

JOSH BAKER: Well, I would also point to the Sunday Times giving it five stars and calling it incredible journalism or the Telegraph doing the same thing or The Guardian. We've had a number of five star reviews, which I'm very honoured to. But what I would also say on top of that is this is not Shamima Begum's podcast. This is the first time that Shamima Begum has given her definitive account of everything that's happened. Then myself and a team of investigators are piecing together when she's telling me the truth. And sometimes she's not. Sometimes she is honest to her detriment. Sometimes she is trying to deceive me. And what we do throughout the course of this podcast is we piece together what really happened here. And and in essence, my job is not to buy to emotional, personal feeling, but it's to just follow the facts and tell the story as it unfolded.

MG: I guess just in the last minute or so that we have, what is that that response tell you about about the story? We were just having this conversation about these Canadians being ordered to be returned back to Canada and the decision by the federal government to bring 19 women and children back to Canada. What does that response tell you about how complex the feelings around this issue are?

JOSH BAKER: Well, what I would say about the Shamima Begum story is, in a way, it's one of the most contemporary British stories of our time embodies elements of security, race, gender, what it's like to be a migrant. And you know, how we deal with with a massive security threat like ISIS. There is a lot of difficult topics that generates a lot of fear in that. Also within this country, we have never really been able to to to to hold up somebody for being a member of a group, a group that attacked us and and killed people in things like the Manchester Arena bombing. So there is a lot of anger that exists around her. What we're trying to do at a time when she is fighting to come back to the UK, is examine her story forensically and reveal the truth of what happened. And I think your listeners will be particularly interested tomorrow when the next episode drops, because that is all about the man who facilitated her journey to Syria.

MG: It's been fascinating listening so far. Josh, thank you very much. Thank you. Josh Baker, BBC journalist. His new podcast series is called I Am Not a Monster The Shamima Begum Story. We did contact CCIS about its relationship with Mohammed Rashid. A spokesperson said CCIS couldn't comment on CCIS investigations, methodologies or activities. This is the current. My name is Matt Galloway. Coming up after your regional update, dogs may be man's best friend, but the oft maligned cat is finally getting its due. Coming up, why our feline pals actually love us and care about us more than we think. Are we in the pocket of Big Cat? Here you'll find out coming up in 90 seconds. This is the Current. Stick around.

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Why we know less about cats than dogs

Guests: Bruce Kornreich, Jennifer Parrucci

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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ADDY FRENCH: My very first call about her was from the Dal Security office because she had followed some students home one night from, I'm assuming, AAA, the pizza shop on the corner there. And she was trying to break into Risley residence. She wanted to get right in there.

MG: This is Addy French in Halifax. She is an engineering student at Dalhousie University. And the she that Addy is describing there is Sharty.

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ADDY FRENCH: So she's a calico. I would also probably call her a turtle shell just based off the markings on her back. So she's black, orange and white, and she has almost a complete like split right down her face where half of it is orange and half of it's black on her nose there. She's got little white toes and her belly is a little white and a little white piece on her chest.

MG: We have had pet cats for more than 10,000 years.

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ADDY FRENCH: Want some treats?

MG: And though a video of a kitty playing a keyboard might hook 70 million viewers on YouTube, it has been only in the last decade or so that scientists have begun to learn a lot more about those cats. Much more is known about their chief rival, the dog.

SOUNDCLIP

ADDY FRENCH: Sharty.

MG: Addy French tried to keep her cat inside, but Sharty always managed to escape. And soon after Sharty’s run in with the university's security, Addy started noticing she wasn't the only person in Sharty’s life.

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ADDY FRENCH: One day, I was walking to practice and a bunch of girls were walking opposite me and Sharty was following me. And they go, Oh my God, Sharty. And I had no idea that all these random people just living in my area knew who she was.

MG: And so Addy started an Instagram page, Sharty on the block, where people could send photos of their encounters with her cat.

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ADDY FRENCH: Whenever I get treats for her, she thinks I'm going to make a comeback inside.

MG: Still, Addy had no idea what she was about to discover about the animal that shares her bed.

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ADDY FRENCH: The amount of photos I got especially when I first started It was insane. I was so surprised at how much people were seeing Sharty around campus, and that she was going into classrooms and just like res buildings and she was getting cuddled up on people's beds. It was amazing. It was so amazing to see. And yeah, she just loves going to campus. And so I get all these pictures from all the students and even profs. And I had one of the professors who was actually, he probably doesn't know this, but he was my physics prof in first year because we were all online. And she had attended his lecture. She has no idea. She doesn’t know what's going on. But, you know, she's a little famous. Sharty, she loves to go to the King's Chapel. And then she also attended one of the Carolyn's they did over the holidays, I'm pretty sure, or right before then. She just sat, right? There's pictures of her sitting next to someone as they were attending this event. And she just sat there and she's listening the whole time. So yeah, she loves to attend church. So doors open, she'll go in.

WOMAN: You've even seen photographs of her in other people's beds.

ADDY FRENCH: Yes. So when I first moved in here, and especially on moving day, everyone had their doors open, obviously, because everyone's moving in. And that's how I kind of got a little sneak peek into the fact that Sharty was entering everybody's homes. And yeah, she also loves going into the res rooms. So the students at King's in Cochran Bay, that's her favourite place to go. She'll go in there most nights. If I can't find her, I'll put a little message on my Instagram. I’ll be like, has anyone seen her? And they're like, She's in here. And I'm like, Great, I'll come pick her up. She's just sleeping on my bed or she's hiding in my suitcase. I'm like, Amazing. I'll just come grab her.

MG: A cat who loves to attend both lectures and church. Who to thank? Bruce Kornreich is a long time veterinarian, director of the Cornell Feline Health Centre, and he joins us from Ithaca, New York. Bruce, good morning.

BRUCE KORNREICH: Good morning. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

MG: Thanks for being here. What do you make of what we just heard about Sharty?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Well, aside from being hysterical, you know, a cat attending church and a cat attending lectures, it's kind of consistent with some of the things that we're learning about cats. There was actually a project in I believe it was 2012 in Athens, Georgia, where I believe it was 55 cats. They put GoPros on these cats that were indoor outdoor cats to kind of see what they were doing. And the focus at that point was conservation, really. They wanted to know if these cats were preying on native species and if so, what were they preying upon? What they learned, however, was that a significant proportion of the cats were actually kind of living double lives. So owners would have videos of their cats leaving their home, going to another home, you know, sleeping with the children, being fed and then coming back. So it's very consistent with this notion that cats are opportunists. We're learning that cats are much more in tune with us than perhaps we gave them credit for in the past.

MG: Opportunist is interesting. I mean, just from my own personal experience, once I was sitting at my desk working and looked over the corner of my shoulder and oh, there's a nice cat that's sleeping on the bed. We don't have a cat. And why is that cat sleeping on the bed? And it had just come in through the back door, sound asleep and was very happy and would have stayed there until we ushered it out. I think there's this idea that we have that cats are aloof, that they don't care about us, that they use us for food and to clean the leather box. And beyond that, they're not particularly interested in us. What are we learning about the connection between cats and humans?

BRUCE KORNREICH: We are learning in a more controlled fashion that cats do appear to be much more in tune with us with respect to their desire to be with us, their communications with us, whether they recognize their name, for example, being spoken by their owner compared to other people. What they choose to do when given the opportunity to freely associate with people versus going somewhere else. So there is some burgeoning and emerging data that suggests that cats are really socially much more in tune with us than we had given them credit for previously.

MG: Why don't we know as much about cats as dogs? I mean, the assumption again is that the dog is man's best friend, as people have long said, that the dog is far more interested in us. And we know from research that that might be true, but we don't have as much research on cats. Why is that?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Dogs are by their very nature social. So they live in a pack. They communicate perhaps in some ways that are more similar to the ways that people communicate. So for example, recognition of facial expressions. And dogs have likely evolved to do this. One hypothesis, for example, is dogs can do this because they live in close proximity with other dogs where they're close enough to see changes in facial expression for example. Cats by their nature other than lions I guess, are more solitary. So the recognition of changes in facial expression is more difficult. And they rely more, for example, on marking pheromones, body position, body language. So that might be part of it, is that dogs are, by their very nature, kind of more social as we are. But again, we are learning that cats can be and are quite social in the right environment.

MG: What have you learned that surprised you about cat behaviour?

BRUCE KORNREICH: What we're learning in the literature is I think really interesting things are the notion that cats choose to be with us. In the past, I might have thought, well, a cat is not really going to choose to do this if given the opportunity to go outside to check out other things. But there is good evidence now to suggest that cats recognize us. They can communicate with us in a way that's actually adaptive. They can change their miaows, for example, to more effectively communicate with their owners. So they're very intuitive. They really communicate with us well. And in many cases, they really do want to be with us and kind of can sense what we're feeling.

MG: How did they first come into our lives as pets? I mentioned that people have had pet cats for more than 10,000 years. How did this start?

BRUCE KORNREICH: That's a great question. It's believed that cats first started associating or well, the transition from when humans were hunter gatherers, when probably dogs were perhaps more useful in that endeavour, to when we became agrarian, stayed in one place, an agriculture developed and we stored food. That storage of food prompted vermin, mice and rodents and things to kind of come in close approximation to try to get to this food. So cats by the fact that they preyed upon this vermin, it was sort of a mutually beneficial situation. So cats would get food in the form of the vermin that they preying upon. The humans have their food protected. Almost as if cats sort of domesticated themselves because they were partaking in a natural behaviour that was mutually beneficial.

MG: How different are they now from those wild cats of, you know, thousands of years ago?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Not that different. Genetically, not very different. There have been some, for example, there has been some selective breeding that has resulted in changes in colour patterns and things like that. And in some cases, selective breeding for behavioural traits. But cats are generally much closer to their wild ancestors than are dogs.

MG: Can I ask you about some of those behaviours of cats? One is just about hunting. What is it that makes the cat such a great hunter?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Evolution. Natural selection over time. So cats have evolved some very unique physical and behavioural traits that really made them apex predators in the ecosystems in which they live. So for example, their vision, excellent night vision. They have something in the back of their eyes called the tapetum lucidum, which is a layer of cells that actually reflects light and which is great in low light conditions. They generally hunt at dawn and at dusk. So this gives them an advantage. Their retractable claws, which makes it so that they can walk quietly and stalk their prey. Their ears, their auditory range is quite large. Their extreme athleticism and musculature and reflexes. All these things have conspired to physically prepare them to be apex predators.

MG: They also have this wild ability. And it's not just about, you know, slinking out of a harness that you might put it on when you take the cat outside, but to be able to, it seems like, almost flat in themselves and squeeze through very tiny little openings. How do they do that?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Yeah. Well, they do that. And it's believed that whiskers, for example, give them a gauge for what they can fit through.

MG: So that's true. I mean, that's always been kind of, you know, urban myth. That's actually true.

BRUCE KORNREICH: We believe that that is likely true. But again, they're just so amazingly nimble. If you're talking about fitting through things, their clavicles or their collarbones are not anchored the way that they are in, for example, dogs and in people. So this gives them an ability to kind of slip through things quite easily.

MG: We've talked on this program about the huge decrease in biodiversity, particularly among the bird populations, that cats that are outside are killing wild birds. And this is a huge concern for people who are worried about the preservation of biodiversity. So should cats if we want them be kept indoors?

BRUCE KORNREICH: We believe that they should. This is important. And you know, I'm a huge cat enthusiast. And I think it's incumbent upon people who love cats and care for cats to be good stewards. And part of that is assuring that they minimize the impact on these ecosystems. So we do believe that cats should be indoors at all times for a variety of reasons. That's one of them. So also cats that are outside are exposed to infectious diseases, predators, automobile accidents. So there are a lot of reasons to keep your cat indoors.

MG: So when it comes to those dangers, I mean, we met Sharty the Cat earlier. I want to introduce you to Oscar the cat. Three years ago, Oscar was hit by a car and survived. Here is his owner Ann Mann describing to CBC Halifax his double life at a hospice.

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ANN MANN: He was a little bit aloof, a typical cat prior to that. And then when he got hit by the car, it was really literally a near-death experience for him, 100%. And he just became so affectionate and sort of almost thankful and very loving, and really became a different cat after that and quickly became the neighbourhood cat. So he often would go missing for days upon days, and we would put posters up. And he was a source of concern because he would always be missing. He at one point was missing for a couple of weeks, and we got very, very worried. And he showed up with a little note on his collar that said, you know, we love your cat. We hope he has a good home. Your friends at the hospice Halifax, with their phone number. So I popped over the next day with some flowers and some cat treats, and they were quite excited to see me and said, Oh my gosh, Oscar's like a celebrity over here. He comes all the time visiting the patients that were residing at the hospice, and that there was a specific gentleman named Tom who was very close to Oscar and had been feeding him treats and called him guardian. And they told me the story about Tom and that Oscar had sat with Tom until he passed away. And that made us very, very happy, of course. And so now we worry a lot less when Oscar goes missing because we assume that he is out being a very effective therapy cat and doing his good deeds. You know, I think, I don't know. Read what you want into it, but his near-death experience, I think, did change him. And now he's helping other people who, you know, are near death. So I think that's pretty cool.

MG: Oscar The therapy cat. What do you make of that, Bruce?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Well, I mean, there is, you know, growing evidence that cats can have beneficial effects on people. So for example, effects on blood pressure, feelings of well-being, this sort of thing. So this is very consistent with what we're learning. That's a beautiful story. We actually have a program that we've started here at Cornell University called the Cats for Comfort Program, where we try to facilitate adoptions by seniors at senior living facilities of cats from local shelters, something that we're trying to grow right now. But I think it's a beautiful story. And I think that cats really can have a tremendous benefit for people and vice versa.

MG: What would you say to the dog owners whose eyebrows kind of shot off their head when they heard the cats doing good things because they think that dogs are the animal, it's not about cats?

BRUCE KORNREICH: They're both beautiful and wonderful in their own ways. They both help us and enrich our lives in different ways. Hopefully, it's a very positive and encouraging and eye opening for those dog owners.

MG: Is there a cat in your home right now?

BRUCE KORNREICH: Unfortunately, I recently lost my 22-year-old Einstein.

MG: I’m sorry, 22 years old though?

BRUCE KORNREICH: 22. he passed away during COVID. But on the docket in the near future.

MG: That's what I'd like to hear. Bruce, thank you very much.

BRUCE KORNREICH: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

MG: Bruce Kornreich is director of the Cornell Feline Health Centre.

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[Music]

MAN: The New York Times, September 30th, 1880. A cat's fearful leap.

[Music fades up and out]

MAN: An adventurous and patriotic Cat ascended the Washington Monument the night before last by the stairs which are within the shaft. Yesterday morning, when the men went up to work, her feline majesty took fright. And springing to the edge, took a flyer of 160 feet. In the descent, the cat spread herself like a flying squirrel and lit on the ground on all fours. After looking around a little while, it proceeded to leave the place, and had almost gotten beyond the shadow of the monument when a dog that stays around the base started for it. And the cat, not being in her best running trim, was easily made a victim and killed. Had it lived and not been so shy, the workmen say that they would have bought it a collar and given it the freedom of the monument. As it is, the cat will be stuffed and placed in the Smithsonian with a large card over it which will bear the legend, this cat jumped on September 23rd, 1880, from Washington Monument and lived.

[Music]

MG: There is perhaps no better trove of remarkable and often very funny cat tales than the so-called morgue of the New York Times. Jennifer Parrucci is an archivist at the paper. A few years ago, she compiled a book of the best cat stories that the Times published in the past. It turns out The New York Times has been covering cats since pretty much the newspaper's inception in the 1850s. There are stories of cats with jobs, cats on journeys, even cats solving murders. Jennifer Parrucci is in Portland, Oregon, where she works remotely. Jennifer, good morning.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Good morning.

MG: We're going to get to the cats solving murders in a moment. But broadly, when you look at the cat stories in the archives of the past, what stands out to you?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: So many things. Cats have many fascinating facets, but I think one of my favourite kind of themes is cats as agents of chaos, as I like to call it. They're constantly interrupting things or just causing problems. I do like this story from 1926. So there is a production of Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, and a black cat just in the middle of Production wandered on the stage and very leisurely walked around. Apparently, one of the actors was supposed to be pretending to be asleep. And the cat investigated him, sniffed him, was kind of unimpressed. So walked over to the conductor, kind of checked that out, also unimpressed. Went back to the actor. And this whole time they're trying to keep the opera going, and the actors and the conductor are just laughing and cracking up. But the orchestra doesn't know what's happening. They're in the pit. They're not looking. So they're just trying to keep it on. And then eventually, the cat just left and everything went back to normal. But no one knows where the cat came from or where the cat went. It just made an appearance.

MG: The cat did not stay for the rest of the opera, but the show continued.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Exactly.

MG: This is odd that The New York Times perhaps would cover so many cat stories. But as the introduction says to this book, they fall into that grey area between truth and entertainment.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Mm hmm. Yes.

MG: Tell me some more. I mean, another one of your favourite stories.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Sure. I think in the intro, you mentioned Cats with Jobs. So there's this one story from 1876 about a push for what they're calling postal cats.

MG: Postal cats?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Yes. So in Belgium, there is a society created called the Belgian Society for the elevation of the domestic cat. And they took on the task of training cats to be like carrier pigeons. So what they did was they took cats, they put them in bags and just left them in random places. They opened the bag, obviously. And then the cats would then be tasked with getting back to where they came from. And surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, the majority of them did. They were all able to find their way home. And they were kind of nonplussed about the whole thing. So the success of that experiment led to a proposal in Belgium for the establishment of this kind of postal communication system between neighbouring villages where they would fasten messages to the cats and then they would be delivered, hence postal cats.

MG: This is not April 1st fodder, is it?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: No.

MG: Okay. Just checking that you're actually telling the truth.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Yes. As I understand it.

MG: As far as you understand it. The cat that solved the murder. I mean, maybe there are different stories. The one that I read in the book is about the undertaker.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: So the one that I think you're referring to, perhaps, is there's one in 1907. There's a cat who was just running through a hotel, the Park Hotel, and the watchman was just doing his job trying to get this cat out of hotel. And the cat ran under a piano. So poking around, he's, you know, trying to get the cat out from the piano. And he kind of feels an object there. Turns out it's a furnace shaker, which I think is like a poker.

MG: Mm hmm.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: And it had been covered in blood and hair. So days earlier, there had been a murder in the hotel, and they hadn't found the murder weapon. Apparently, the police were supposed to look at all the rooms that the deceased was in. But they later admitted they had not checked that part because they thought it was unlikely the weapon would be there. So if not for this cat running under the piano, they may not have found the murder weapon.

MG: There were a lot of cats in New York City. And then at some point in time, the population of cats decreased significantly. What was going on there? What was the speculation as reported by The New York Times?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Yes. So this is an interesting one. In 1883, there was this kind of musing about, you know, what could be causing this decrease. So it was noted that Manhattan, Brooklyn had lost about 50% of the cats. I don't know if that's a scientific number, but that was what they were positing. So there is some musings on that. The first theory was that it could have been due to the building of elevated train platforms because they figured the cats would be confused by this thinking it's some sort of fence or tree that they would climb to like, you know, get birds or just hang out on. They also thought maybe the vibrations from the trains were waking the cats, scaring them, also scaring the prey, the mice and things that they would normally hunt. But the ultimate theory that they settled on was that it was because of the popularity of playing cornets, which is a type of horn.

MG: Yeah.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: By amateurs on every street corner. Apparently, there was a musician, Jules Levy, who had made the cornet very popular, and his quote and unquote disciples were playing it all over the city and causing a racket. So that must have scared the cats away.

MG: The cats didn't like the horns.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Apparently not.

MG: And so they left. And I mean, again, this is important because there are stories of travelling cats on ships and trains. Hobo cats that rides the rails is one of the headlines in the paper. What did you learn about Cats on Journeys?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Apparently, there were many train cats. You could probably cite, you know, several stories from the book about cats liking to ride trains. One I really enjoyed was from 1904. There is a cat named Hank, and he lives at Grand Central Station and kind of became a pet of the railway men who worked there. But what he liked to do is regularly board the trains and just ride out for a mile or so, and then jump on a train back and just kind of go back and forth all day. But one day, he fell asleep and he managed to make it to Danbury, Connecticut, farther than he’d ever gone. And they tried to shoo him away. And, you know, I guess the people in Danbury didn't really know who he was. But he managed to get back on the correct train and made it back to Grand Central despite all of that.

MG: So does doing a project like this make you think differently about cats?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: So I am an avid cat lover, avid animal lover. So I've always thought cats were fascinating and worthy of attention. It made me think differently about the coverage of cats, you know, and how they would have been covered in the newspaper for sure. And perhaps I didn't really know that there was then this obsession about cats that came pre-Internet. It seems like people were interested in cats many years ago and not just for social media.

MG: I don't recall seeing a lot of cat stories in The New York Times these days.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Yes. So one interesting fact about these is in the time before we had computerized typesetting, you know, you would handset all the typesetting for the paper, you'd have these kind of strange holes or spots you need to fill. So a lot of these stories are pretty short. And as you said, kind of in that place of putting entertainment over maybe absolute truth. So it's like these kind of tidbit entertaining stories that a lot of times were used as filler. But it was very much showing the fact that animal stories have been popular for a long time.

MG: Did you hear from the dog lobby, having put a book like this together, saying, where are our great dog stories? Where are stories of dogs solving murders or taking, you know, long distance train trips?

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Yes. So we did hear a little bit from mostly, you know, in a fun way about where are the dog stories? I love the book, but I'm a dog person. Where's my dog book? So we did come out with a dog book. We do have a companion book about dogs as well. So that is available for all the dog lovers out there.

MG: Balance is important in journalism.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Of course.

MG: Jennifer, thank you very much.

JENNIFER PARRUCCI: Thank you.

MG: Jennifer Parrucci. How do you follow that? Perhaps with another story. We'll get to that in a moment. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We do have one more cat tail for you. Have a listen and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

MAN: The New York Times, April 14th, 1895. The Strange Tale of a Resentful Cat. Blossom is a big grey cat. She's been in the family for seven years, and her mistress thinks she was fully 10 when she came uninvited. Her charms made her welcome, and visitors, as a rule, pet her to her heart satisfaction. One day, a young man came for a short visit. He was a tease. He took Blossom in hand. Her ears were greeted with strange terms, old rascal and tramp. She fled and disappeared and hid whenever he would come in the house. One morning, she was missing for some hours and was not to be found in any of her regular hiding spots. A loud cry from the chamber maid revealed her whereabouts. Blossom had revenged herself on the visitors nightshirt which lay in tatters on the floor. Pussy was scolded and everyone cautioned to keep the door closed in vain. The cat would find her way in and the claws would go to work. And the visitor cut short his visit. Blossom quickly recovered her usual demeanour and has never been known to destroy anything. From that day to this.

[Music]

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Tuesday January 24, 2023 Full Transcript

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