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The Current Transcript for April 18, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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MARIA SHEPHERD: Once you're wrongly convicted, it's a life sentence. You constantly live with post-traumatic stress disorder. You never quite move away from the psychological damage that it causes you and your family members.

MATT GALLOWAY: In 1992, Maria Shepherd pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her stepdaughter. Maria had young children at home, was pregnant with another, and was sentenced to two years less a day in prison. 14 years later, that conviction was quashed and her name was cleared. Her story is just one in a new book about wrongful convictions in this country. In 30 minutes, how someone ends up behind bars for a crime they didn't commit, and the steps now being taken by the Canadian government to address miscarriages of justice. Also this morning.

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MICHAEL J. FOX: Parkinson’s is the gift that keeps on taking. Once I became engaged in learning about the disease, every interaction, every new piece of information that I gathered, every researcher I talked to all confirmed the science was ahead of the money.

MG: Michael J. Fox has been one of the most prominent people with Parkinson's disease. Now, his foundation has backed research that is being called a game changer. Coming up, how early detection of some of the disease's markers could improve treatment and more. Plus, fears of a civil war are spreading through Sudan. The capital Khartoum erupted in violence this weekend, leaving residents in hiding. In an hour, the view from the ground and from the diaspora here. But we start with the banks that are funding the fossil fuel industry. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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BANKING FOSSIL FUELS

Guests: Matt Price, Warren Mabee

MG: A new report shows that a Canadian bank is now the world's largest investor in fossil fuels. According to this year's Banking on Climate Chaos Report produced by a coalition of environmental groups, RBC has overtaken JPMorgan Chase for the top spot. Several other Canadian banks are also in the top 20. Environmentalists warn that these investments are causing climate disasters. And now, some are taking action as investors. Matt Price is with the shareholder advocacy group Investors for Paris Compliance, and he's with me in studio. Matt, good morning.

MATT PRICE: Thanks. Good to be here.

MG: Good to have you here. Your organization put out a report card in the fall of last year, the Net zero policy report card, and it showed that banks in this country have billions of dollars invested in fossil fuels. RBC Fossil fuel lending and underwriting in 2021 was 48 and a half billion dollars. 38 billion from Scotiabank. 26 and a half from TD. 23 and a half billion from BMO. And all of these investments have gone up since the year before this report came out. Why are Canadian banks so heavily invested in the fossil fuel sector?

MATT PRICE: Yeah, that's a good question. And it's due to the nature of the Canadian economy itself. You know, almost up to 20% of the TSX is energy stocks. And so, of course, the Canadian banks are going to be heavily invested in fossil fuels. The good news is that each one of them at least on paper has a net zero commitment, which means that they've all pledged to reduce what's known as their financed emissions to net zero by 2050. And a financed emissions is so if you have a power plant and I lend you money, your emissions from the power plant become my financed emissions as the bank. And so the banks have pledged to reduce those to net zero by 2050. But the report card really was about are they following through with action?

MG: And so you said at least on paper they have these policies. That seems to be a key phrase. Are they following through on that action?

MATT PRICE: Well, they're not. And that's why we're filing resolutions with some of the banks this year, trying to get more disclosure and more details about what their plans are. There's a lot of talk about governance and data and these kinds of stepping stones towards action at some point in time. And what we're not really seeing is the steps and the policies that the banks are going to implement to actually change their practices on a day to day basis.

MG: So you're here in Toronto to attend the annual general meetings of two of Canada's big banks. BMO, that one happens this morning, and TD. At the AGMs, what are you sort of looking for from those banks?

MATT PRICE: So with BMO, we filed a proposal with them. And we ultimately did come to an agreement with them and we settled and we withdrew the proposal. So that's not going to a vote today. And BMO, to its credit, you know, they committed to more dialogue and some of the policy issues that we've been raising. And so we're cautiously optimistic in a wait and see kind of mode with that bank to see if they'll follow through. Things like, you know, can they improve their core policy so that they're not lending to the worst fossil fuel? With TD, we do have a resolution which is going to a vote on Thursday. We didn't come to an agreement with them. And again, it's really to do with the lack of specificity in their plans. They have a lot of these 2050 goals, which sound really good. But we're looking for, you know, where's the action?

MG: What's different in being in the room at the AGM then and taking a financial position in this, then perhaps agitating for change from the outside, which a lot of people have done?

MATT PRICE: I think both are ultimately needed. And even, you know, most Canadians will probably have a bank account with one of the big banks. And so they themselves can play a role in this debate if they choose to. They can talk to their bank manager about the bank. And there are people who demonstrate at the AGMs. So the RBC AGM was two weeks ago and there were a lot of Indigenous leaders who went to that in Saskatoon to try and make their point directly. And we represent investors and sometimes we take a position in the company ourselves. And that sort of gets you a seat at the table I think in some ways to raise these issues in front of other investors. And so when we file proposals, we'll talk to other big pension funds and other big bank investors about how the banks are doing. You know, these big pension funds, sometimes they have 2000 or more stocks. And so they don't have time to sort of do a deep dive into the banks. And so that's where we come in. We do the research and sort of help them figure out whether the companies they’re invested in are really serious about their net zero claims.

MG: Do you feel like you're being listened to?

MATT PRICE: Sometimes. You know, there's a lot of inertia in the system. You know, the banks have made a lot of money off of oil and gas companies and continue to do so. And so you're fighting that kind of short term, quarter to quarter basis of trying to make profits. And what we're trying to I think encourages a longer term horizon where even the banks themselves are at large risk in the system should things begin to go sideways. You know, the economy is not separated from the laws of physics and chemistry. And so climate change will have economic impacts too. And, you know, we see that in B.C. where I'm from.

MG: Yeah.

MATT PRICE: With highways getting washed out and the entire town of Lytton getting burned down, right? So these will have economic implications and that will affect the banks. And so ultimately, it's in their own self-interest to move forwards.

MG: We did ask for interviews from all the Canadian banks named in this Banking on Climate Chaos report, and none of them would come on this program. Some of them did send us statements. RBC, for example, said that they are, in RBC’s words, actively working with our clients, governments and many stakeholders toward net zero economy, and the report does not measure the progress in meeting our climate goals. What do you make of that?

MATT PRICE: The math is the math. You know, ultimately, the numbers don't lie. So if RBC is serious about what it said, I think that this will begin to show up in the numbers over time. And that's just what we're not seeing.

MG: I want to come back to that issue of the horizon and what we should be measuring, short term gains versus long term gains in just a moment. But let me bring one other guest into this conversation. Warren Mabee is director of the Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Warren, good morning to you.

WARREN MABEE: Good morning.

MG: Do you share the concerns of Matt Price and many others that Canadian banks I guess aren't doing enough to get out of the financing game for not even existing fossil fuel development, but for new fossil fuel development?

WARREN MABEE: I'm concerned that the banks, you know, they have a set of targets that they're working towards, but those targets may not be as aggressive as the targets that we need. So, you know, it's encouraging banks to put money into fossil fuel, either new investments, as you say, new developments or into upgrading and improving existing investments. And that's partly because their targets are less stringent, particularly in the short term, working towards 2030. They're looking for some reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but not a 100% drop. And so it's easier to justify those investments.

MG: Matt Price talked about claims that are made that exist on paper, perhaps that don't exist in reality. We know that banks have signed on to the U.N. Net-zero Banking Alliance. This is an initiative that was championed in part by the former governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney. There are environmentalists who will say that these pledges are just greenwashing because the banks threatened to pull out of this alliance, and so the alliance had to back off on promises that would hold the banks to the targets. Do you think that pledges like this are just greenwashing?

WARREN MABEE: I think that it's not so much greenwashing as it's pushing the problem back. You know, if you read what they're intending to do, there's definitely an attempt to bring those emissions down, particularly greenhouse gas intensity. But there is a real kind of lack of urgency in those targets. And I think that the targets need to be more urgent if we want to get there.

MG: Is that feasible? Is that feasible? From your perspective, is it feasible for banks to bring in policies that would be very strict, that would hold the banks to account when it comes to financing new oil and gas developments?

WARREN MABEE: I think it's possible to be more aggressive than they've been. And in fact, if you look at the ways that they invest different funds, RBC, Scotiabank, TD, they all have green investment funds, and those investment funds have done well without the fossil fuel piece. So it is possible, I think, for them to fine tune their investment strategy to move things along faster than what we're seeing.

MG: The question I suppose is asked in part because there are investment advisers who say that given the amount of money that's at play, and Matt was talking about, you know, the size of the oil and gas sector within the Canadian economy, the resource sector within the Canadian economy when it comes to what banks hold, that it’s difficult to separate yourself from those investments. Have a listen to Martin Pelletier. He's an investment adviser based in Calgary. And he thinks banks are doing the right thing when it comes to investing in fossil fuel companies.

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MARTIN PELLETIER: There needs to be capital being provided to the sector to help them reduce their total carbon emissions. And so as other banks are reducing their funding, it provides an opportunity for our banks to fill that role, in my opinion. If you cut off funding, the supply situation will get worse and with it overall energy affordability. We need to be realistic here. The world still consumes 100 million barrels a day of oil. That's not something that can easily go away overnight.

MG: Matt Price, do Canadian banks need to be funding fossil fuel oil and gas companies, energy companies to fund their energy transition away from fossil fuels?

MATT PRICE: Yes, if those transitions are real. And this is not what we're seeing from the gas sector either. We also have some resolutions in front of oil and gas companies. This year, the International Energy Agency modelled a net zero pathway for the world and found that oil use drops by 75%. And so it's not about sort of having a slightly better barrel of oil, which is where the Canadian conversation is at about how do you do carbon capture. It's about the fact that this whole industry is going to shrink quite dramatically. And we don't see that reality sort of hitting home in Calgary in any way. And there's no companies who actually have a credible plan to transition into new product lines and those kinds of things. And their capital expenditures are going into the expansion of oil and gas. And so, again, there's just a mismatch between where the climate scenarios need to go and the reality of what we're seeing in corporate boardrooms.

MG: What about the funding of carbon capture, for example? We've had oil and gas companies on this program saying this is the future. And for us to get there, we're going to need, these are companies that make billions of dollars, we're going to need whether it's public money or other investments to help us get there.

MATT PRICE: And so far, it's been a whole lot of public money, right? So it's a bunch of we want the taxpayers to pay for our pollution, which doesn't seem to me to be very fair. You know, I think that that's just the cost of doing business these days. It should be that the companies themselves who are, as you pointed out, making billions of profits, they should be investing themselves, I think, in carbon capture. At the same time, that doesn't address the fact that there's going to be less oil in the world. And carbon capture adds more cost to what's already a high cost industry in Canada compared to other places in the world. And I think the reality that we're not grappling with is that, you know, we're going to see a lot less oil produced in Canada economically as the net zero transition occurs. And that's going to drive risk in the sector. And it's also going to have knock on risk in the financial sector and the banks.

MG: Martin Pelletier’s point is that that oil and gas is still being consumed. Now what do you see? 100 million barrels a day, and that if you cut off financing, you could drive the price even higher. Is that fair?

MATT PRICE: I think it's fair. And I think we're sort of experiencing right now with the Ukraine war, sort of a bit of a false set of market signals. I think if that wasn't happening, there'd be I think a much more robust conversation about the fact that oil demand is actually now plateauing in the world and will soon start to drop. And when that happens, then the cost of oil production really becomes a huge factor in who's going to be sort of producing the last barrel.

MG: Should that be Canada?

MATT PRICE: Cost wise, probably not.

MG: Warren, what about from your perspective? Again, the Canadian Bankers Association says that by financing the climate transition, banks are helping Canada meet its net zero ambitions while also helping to meet, as we were saying, the interim energy demands in a volatile global context. What is the role of Canadian banks in that? There are a couple of different things there. One is the transition. The other is the situation that we're in right now.

WARREN MABEE: Yeah. And I think that one of the things that we've got to remember is that the technologies that the oil and gas companies have to work with, the carbon capture technologies, the energy efficiency technologies, they're evolving very rapidly. You know, I'm not so sure that an investment in carbon capture isn't a good thing. It could be a very good thing if it works properly and if it allows us to bring down emissions to where we need to get to, which is essentially net zero, you know, no emissions. If we can make that technology work, that is a huge step forward. And I think that the banks are probably right to invest in some of that technology. I think that really one of the concerns that's come up is is that technology working as well as we would like it to? And is it being rolled out as fast as it needs to be rolled out? Because it's not clear if there will be a last barrel of oil. It's not clear if fossil fuels will completely disappear. What we do know is that the way we use fossil fuels and the emissions that are associated with them need to be addressed and it will change going forward. I think the banks are trying to be involved in that change.

MG: To hedge their bets in some ways.

WARREN MABEE: Partly to hedge their bets. Sure. But it's partly to see if they can be in front of an energy transition. I think that the energy transition is not perfectly clear. There are people out there that totally believe that it's all electrification. And that may or may not be true. That may be what we see in 30 years and it may not be. There are people that believe that fossil fuels will always be part of the energy mix. That may or may not be true. I think that the Canadian banks are, as you say, hedging their bets to some extent and investing in the companies that are trying to make some changes.

MG: These are companies that have made record profits. And we know that banks and individual Canadians have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders. Shareholders could be people who have retirement funds that are rolled into this, people who perhaps are worried about returns. Would returns be lower, do you think? And this is that question about the horizon. Would returns be lower if those banks weren't invested in those companies that are making money hand over fist?

MATT PRICE: And this is where the Ukraine war factors in and that you would have done pretty well investing in oil and gas stocks last year. But it's an incredibly volatile industry over time, right? So that if you're a pension fund owner, your horizon is by definition much longer. So I mean, my pension, for example, I'm not cashing that in for another 20 years. And so that's the time horizon I'm looking at in terms of like are these investments going to be a good thing over that period?

MG: And so what would that look like when you think about that longer? Where's the dissonance between the long term and what the returns would be now?

MATT PRICE: Yeah. So I mean, if I'm a day trader and I'm looking to make a quick buck, then, you know, oil and gas looks pretty attractive right now. But if I'm a pension fund owner and I need to manage this for decades in advance, then I'm going to be looking at these net zero numbers and thinking maybe oil and gas isn't the best investment in the long term and so I should reduce my exposure to it.

MG: Because there could be a transition or will be a transition at some point in time, that there is more volatility, there's more risk in that long term?

MATT PRICE: Yeah. And, you know, as Warren just said, I think there's going to be not a linear progression here. And I think we're going to have lots of twists and turns before we get to where the finish line is, including the fact that climate impacts themselves I think are going to become more severe and are going to be very disruptive to the economy. So yeah, you know, I think banks themselves would be wise to do what they said they were going to do, which is to reach net zero, to put good policies out into the public, to tell investors exactly what their actual plans are and to be I think more honest about the risks they face in this transition.

MG: Warren, what do you make of that, the difference in the horizons when it comes to risk, but also what those profits from those energy companies would mean to, for example, people who have their retirement funds wrapped up in those investments?

WARREN MABEE: I think that… Sorry, it's gotten very loud here all of a sudden. I think that it is really important to remember that it's the speed of the transition that has become critical. And reinvesting right now in technologies that can actually get us down to net zero, whether it is cleaning up oil and gas or whether it is reinvestment in different technologies, I think that that's kind of the critical measure. And if we look at real reductions in emissions, bringing down emissions overall and we look at the investment portfolio that gets us there, that's I think where we want to go and that's where I think our banks have not really delivered yet.

MG: Just finally, Matt, what would you want to see from those banks? What would you want to see from individual investors? I mean, what is our role in this? You're going, you know, to these AGMs representing investors. But for us individuals, what is our place in this?

MATT PRICE: Well, as I said before, you may have a bank account with one of the big banks. And so, you know, if this is a concern to you, you can make your voice heard. You know, I switched my bank account to a credit union I think because I wasn't comfortable with where my money was going. And then you as an individual also I think have mutual funds and those kinds of things. And I think you can ask your investment adviser where the money is going. And so I think everybody has a role to play. And especially if you're concerned about climate change and you're concerned about long term returns, then this is a conversation you really need to be having.

MG: And to call on those banks for more transparency, to find out what's actually being done when it comes to those commitments on paper.

MATT PRICE: Yeah. And that's our job this week. And this is what we talk to the large institutional investors about because they're trying to manage the risk in their portfolio on a much larger scale. And so yeah, we need much more disclosure from the banks about what they're actually doing.

MG: We’ll see whether you get it. Matt, thank you very much.

MATT PRICE: Thank you.

MG: And Warren, thank you.

WARREN MABEE: Thank you for having me.

MG: Matt Price is executive director of Investors for Paris Compliance. He was here in our Toronto studio. Warren Mabee is director of the Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University. He's in Kingston, Ontario. You're CBC News is next. And then, there is a registry of wrongful convictions in Canada, 83 cases on that registry thus far.

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KENT ROACH: It's the tip of the iceberg because, you know, for most people that are wrongfully convicted, they don't have access to innocence lawyers. They don't have the will or even the faith in the system to try to remedy the wrong that's been done to them.

MG: What is it like to spend time behind bars for a crime you didn't commit? And how can we address wrongful convictions in Canada? We'll talk about that in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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WRONGFULLY CONVICTED

Guests: Kent Roach, Maria Shepherd

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

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MG: Still to come, a scientific breakthrough in early detection of Parkinson's and what it could mean for slowing the progression of that disease. Plus, two warring factions have plunged Sudan into violence, stalling hopes for democracy in that country. Those stories coming up in just under 30 minutes. But first, a life spent fighting for the innocent.

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MARIA SHEPHERD: As a family, we’re elated. But this didn't come without 25 years of a lot of quiet tears and anguish at home.

MG: That was Maria Shepherd the day her conviction was overturned in February of 2016. Maria Shepherd had pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her stepdaughter, Kasandra.

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MARIA SHEPHERD: We miss Kasandra very, very much. And it's also great to know that I'm finally acquitted and I'm free and I can be a mom to my kids without this being hanging over me anymore.

MG: It was a crime that never happened. A wrongful conviction obtained through faulty evidence. In another case, Richard Catcheway, an indigenous man who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and Attention Deficit disorder, pleaded guilty to stealing from a home in Winnipeg in 2017. It turns out that at the time of that incident, he was in another prison in Brandon, Manitoba, 200 kilometres from the crime scene. He served time for a crime he didn't commit. And these are just two of the dozens of cases profiled in a new book released today. “Wrongfully Convicted, Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice”. Kent Roach is the author. He's a professor of law at the University of Toronto, and he has been teaching students about wrongful convictions for a good part of the past two decades. Kent Roach is with me in studio. Good morning.

KENT ROACH: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How common are wrongful convictions in Canada?

KENT ROACH: Well, we'll never know because most will go without remedies. But we've worked on a Canadian registry of wrongful convictions. We released it and there's 83 in February. We're working on three more that we will add to the registry, including another guilty plea wrongful conviction like Maria's.

MG: But in this book, you say that that 83 is just really the tip of the iceberg.

KENT ROACH: It's the tip of the iceberg because, you know, for most people that are wrongfully convicted, they don't have access to innocence lawyers. They don't have the will or even the faith in the system to try to remedy the wrong that's been done to them.

MG: Why is it that most of these cases aren't widely known?

KENT ROACH: Well, I mean, very few cases get a public inquiry. The last public inquiry we had was in 2008. There's a wrongful conviction amnesia I think in part because investigative journalism is struggling. And I think that people often look to kind of the perfect case. So someone like Mr. Catcheway has difficulties talking about it and I think doesn't attract as much attention as some. One of the reasons behind the registry is that every story matters.

MG: One of the stories you tell is of Lawrence Brazeau. Who's he?

KENT ROACH: Lawrence Brazeau was a Cree man with a grade two education. We don't know. He might have been a residential school survivor, and he pled guilty to non-capital murder in the 60s, probably on bad legal advice because he did so to avoid the death penalty. But there was a moratorium on the death penalty, and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his guilty plea in 1968. And, you know, for me, that's right up with cases like Christie versus York or the Japanese internment cases as cases that make me ashamed to be Canadian, and that I think the Supreme Court should overrule and repudiate at the very first instance.

MG: One of the other cases you mentioned in this book is that of Donald Marshall Jr. You say in the book that even after 30 years, you still get angry in discussing his case. What is it that still infuriates you about his case?

KENT ROACH: It's the denial right up to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal that acquitted him as a Mi'kmaq man but blamed him for his wrongful conviction. It's when the powerful, the judges, the prosecutors turn away from injustice or kind of blame it on the disadvantage. And that just, you know, I think it makes everyone angry.

MG: As I said, the majority of these cases aren't known. If people know of one of them, it's of the case of David Milgaard, lionized in song. And more people may not know this. The story of his mother, Joyce Milgaard who was a lion, a champion for the wrongfully convicted, button holing the former prime minister Brian Mulroney in a hotel lobby in Winnipeg. Why was that moment important?

KENT ROACH: Well, once your appeals are exhausted, and it's still the case in Canada, the federal minister of justice decides whether you get a new trial or a new appeal. And Kim Campbell had denied David a new appeal. And Joyce, probably like all mothers out there, just would not give up on her son. And she buttonhole Prime Minister Mulroney. And I think to his credit, he talked to her. Kim Campbell, when she was minister of justice, brushed aside and said, oh, it would be improper. But it's this kind of discretionary almost mercy system that we have that the wrongfully convicted have to go through once they're out of appeals. And so, you know, now there's legislation or a bill before parliament that will replace that system, that very human system that worked in Milgaard’s case, but only really because of Joyce and a lobby that led to the reference that eventually let David out in 1992.

MG: She was criticized for that by the inquiry. People said that she was taking his case to the court of public opinion. In some ways.

KENT ROACH: Absolutely. I mean, the inquiry criticized her, criticized some of David's lawyers. I think that they were doing something that was very human. But now if this bill goes forward, it won't be a Kim Campbell or a David Lametti that makes the decision. It will be a commission and hopefully a commission with people that have expertise in the causes and consequences of wrongful convictions.

MG: Let me ask you a little bit… We'll get to that bill and what might change in a moment, but let me ask you a little bit about how these things happen. There are a couple of things that you point to that would lead to a wrongful conviction. And one is this idea of thinking dirty. What is that?

KENT ROACH: Well, thinking dirty is probably associated with Charles Smith who saw deliberate baby deaths where there were not, but the stereotypes and suspicions that we all have. And of the 83 in the registry, a third are crimes that never happened. So, you know, I understand that people are concerned about crimes and they might be suspicious of people that talk about wrongful convictions. But why are the police and the prosecutors spending time on crimes that never happened? Too often what we see are stereotypes, sometimes racist, sometimes others that then get translated into imagining crimes that didn't happen.

MG: You say in Canada, unlike the United States, we hide our racism and our mistakes. What does that mean in light of that idea of thinking dirty?

KENT ROACH: In the United States, 60% of exonerees are black. In Canada, I don't think we know that 16% of exonerees are indigenous. Of course, that's only measuring the ones that were lucky enough to get remedies. And so I think that, you know, even with Marshall, the royal commission did a lot of good work, but it didn't examine or acknowledge that at least one of the jurors that convicted Donald Marshall explained the verdict later to a reporter in a way that was probably illegal because it's illegal to talk to jurors about their deliberation in a way that preyed on stereotypes about Marshall as a Mi'kmaq man and Sandy Seale as a black man.

MG: Do you think juries should be able to reveal the deliberations in this country? Would we have a better understanding of what is happening if we were able to, as they are in the United States, kind of peer into those rooms?

KENT ROACH: Absolutely.

MG: Absolutely.

KENT ROACH: You know, I wrote a book about the Gerald Stanley Colten Boushie case. I would love to know how the jurors reached the decision that Mr. Stanley was not guilty of both manslaughter and murder.

MG: What's preventing us from doing that?

KENT ROACH: In Canada, we value the privacy of jurors over the free press. We also value the reputations of people. Writing in this area can be a worrying because our libel laws are fairly restrictive. So, you know, Canada, we're kind of a polite society that too often protects the powerful.

MG: And that can come at the expense of people who are caught up in that system.

KENT ROACH: Absolutely.

MG: One of those people is Maria Shepherd. We heard her on the day of her release. She's now a paralegal. She's on the board of Innocence Canada and she is on the line from Phoenix. Maria, good morning to you.

MARIA SHEPHERD: Good morning.

MG: Can you take me back to 1991 when everything changed for you? What happened?

MARIA SHEPHERD: You know, Kasandra my stepdaughter had gotten sick and we were seeking some medical assistance and guidance. And notwithstanding the medical background that we had provided the professionals in the hospital about Kasandra's maternal family having seizures, nobody paid attention to that. And Kasandra had spent about a month in the hospital. And even at discharge, there were still no concrete answers as to why she was so ill for so long. One of the neurologists that we actually were sent to see Post-discharge had indicated to us that one of her CAT scans indicated that there was a little more space between her brain and her skull, but that it was normal. And he didn't do any follow up. After Kasandra had passed away, a focus became on me because I was the stepmother. And I later learned that the narrative was commenced by Charles Smith to the police department. I was brought in for questioning, and it was very clear at this point that their focus was on me and not elsewhere.

MG: Charles Smith was the forensic pathologist on this case. He has subsequently been found to have provided testimony that resulted in a number of wrongful convictions. The testimony that he provided led to charges being filed against you. You pleaded guilty. What was it that led you to believe that that was the right approach, to plead guilty?

MARIA SHEPHERD: Well, the circumstances that I faced at the time. Charles Smith was viewed as a god-like figure, both, in my view, in the medical community as well as the legal community. And there weren't many other experts that were willing to challenge his opinion in my case. And I was also pregnant at the time. I had to consider keeping my family together. And the only way to do that when offered a shorter sentence with a false guilty plea would be the only way that I could keep my family together and I'll still hopefully deliver my child out of custody.

MG: What was that process like, pleading guilty to a crime that didn't happen, knowing, as you said, that that was the way for you to keep your family together?

MARIA SHEPHERD: It was one of the most difficult decisions in my life, having to give up my own freedom, as well as realizing that nobody was listening to my profession of innocence was very painful. It's still difficult to talk about, but unfortunately, I faced dire circumstances and that was really the only choice that I had at the time.

MG: That had you not pleaded guilty to that, you could have faced a longer sentence.

MARIA SHEPHERD: That's correct. So the crown had offered a guilty plea earlier to the trial phase, and I would receive a sentence of two years less a day with three years of probation and in a minimum security prison where I would be able to touch my children during the visits versus five years at the Kingston Penitentiary. And I certainly could not be that far away from my children or my family. It was just not an option for me. I needed to be close to them until I could possibly get out as soon as possible.

MG: Kent Roach, you write about this, about the idea of false guilty pleas. From your experience, why is it that somebody would plead guilty to something that they didn't do?

KENT ROACH: Well, I mean, you know, if they're charged with murder, they face automatic life imprisonment. And so that's a huge driver. In Richard Catcheway’s Case, when he pled guilty because he was denied bail, he got time served. So he made a perfectly rational decision to plead guilty because he got out of jail immediately as a result.

MG: What does it say about the system that we have that that is the best worst option?

KENT ROACH: That the system doesn't work and it doesn't work for the disadvantaged. And, you know, I know bail is a big issue now, but people need to think that it wasn't just a Richard Catcheway. We also talk about Clayton Boushie, a Métis man who also pled guilty to drugs that turned out to be baking soda. And he knew it, but he just kind of gave up. His wife had died and he just wanted out of prison. And I think that that probably occurs almost every day in Canadian courtrooms, but they never get a remedy.

MG: When you look back, Maria, at that decision now, do you think that it was the right decision?

MARIA SHEPHERD: I absolutely do think that it was the right decision back then, but I would rethink my decision now if the circumstances were the same.

MG: But in that moment, you didn't have that information in front of you and you're facing that knife edge of a dilemma.

MARIA SHEPHERD: Absolutely. I absolutely had no other choice back in the 1990s.

MG: Charles Smith provided this flawed testimony in hundreds of child deaths over some 20 years. The Court of Appeal heard from medical experts when it came to Maria's case that he was relying on pseudoscience. But as Maria said, he was looked at as a god-like figure. That's why this travesty of justice and others happened. Are there guardrails in place now to ensure that something like that doesn't happen again?

KENT ROACH: I would like to say yes, but I honestly can't say. The three cases that are not up on our website, that we're working on all involve forensic pathology. And obviously, it's not Charles Smith. And one of those cases, like Maria's, was a guilty plea. Forensic pathology is not a perfect science. There really is no perfect science. But sometimes, lawyers and judges and juries don't appreciate that there is no perfect science.

MG: That people hold those who are delivering the science in an infallible kind of regard in some ways, that they can't be questioned?

KENT ROACH: Yeah. I mean, you know, people that testify as to science are to an extent professional witnesses. Like you and me, They talk for a living. They're often very convincing. They're often very bright. But even if they're wrong in only a small amount of the cases as we all are, the results can be catastrophic.

MG: Maria, what has that wrongful conviction meant to you in your life? What is the cost that you have paid for that?

MARIA SHEPHERD: I would think the best description that I often indicate is that regardless of the amount of years or days in a sentence or months, anybody that's wrongly convicted will suffer for the rest of their life. So in my thoughts, once you're wrongly convicted, it's a life sentence. You constantly live with post-traumatic stress disorder. You never quite move away from the psychological damage that it causes you and your family members. And you do get flashbacks of many things. And the day to day challenges are still present.

MG: The court cleared you, but it didn't apologize to you. Is that right?

MARIA SHEPHERD: I did not receive an apology from the bench. However, I was just grateful to have been acquitted after 25 years.

MG: What would that have meant to you, an apology to say, listen, we got this wrong and we're sorry?

MARIA SHEPHERD: It would have meant quite a bit to hear it coming from the bench. But I think in hindsight, just being grateful and having the gratitude to be cleared meant that much more.

MG: And this is now your work, right? You're a paralegal. I had mentioned you're also on the board of Innocence Canada. Tell me about that and what that gives you given what you've gone through.

MARIA SHEPHERD: Being a licensed paralegal is something that I had tried for some time. I'm very proud to be a member of the Law Society. I chose to stay as a paralegal rather than going back to law school because I thought that this would be an area that I could perhaps enhance what paralegals could do in support of defence counsel or criminal defence work. In terms of being nominated to the Board of Innocence Canada, it's one of the greatest achievements I've had in my life and an honour to be working with such exceptional justice champions. And it allows me to work now with international groups around the world and again and honour working with all of them. So it is my hope that the work that I do will prevent someone from walking what I call the line of a wrongful conviction and preventing that suffering from happening in the future.

MG: Kent, there have been what, seven provincial inquiries into wrongful convictions. You say in the book that the federal government doesn't feel any obligation to implement the recommendations from those inquiries. What's going wrong in terms of addressing this issue, do you think?

KENT ROACH: Part of it is the federalism game, is the provinces call the inquiries because it's provincial jurisdiction, they often recommend that the criminal code be amended. The criminal code, of course, is amended sometimes, you know, five, six, seven times a year. But it's not politically popular to do something because the other thing you have to remember is that the wrongfully convicted, until they are exonerated, are thought of mistakenly as often dangerous criminals. And there's no ready constituency for that.

MG: How do you deal with that in terms of the current climate? You mentioned bail earlier. There is a very lively conversation in this country right now about bail reform based on specific incidents, but a broader issue that people believe the bail system is wrong. There's this idea, the phrase that's often used is it’s some sort of revolving door. Catch and release is another phrase that's used. When you hear that, based on the work that you have done, what goes through your mind?

KENT ROACH: Well, I mean, two things. We have to look at the risk of wrongful convictions. We're never going to get rid of them unless we get rid of having convictions or having pre-trial detention at all. I think we need to pay attention to that. But regardless of where you come out on what the balance is there, we need to have better ways, quicker ways to remedy and compensate people because we know that these mistakes are inevitable. And it's not just me that said that. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that.

MG: But I mean, in a tough on crime environment, you talk about mandatory minimums in here and say the mandatory minimums are one way for wrongful convictions to be expedited in some ways. Do you worry in a tough on crime environment that there will be more wrongful convictions because people are scared of crime, of what's going on, some people want a tougher response and that that could lead to more people being held behind bars when they didn't do what they are accused of doing?

KENT ROACH: Absolutely. I worry about that and I worry about that not only in the current environment, but wrongful convictions are sometimes the result of good intentions. And one of the things I talk about in the book are we don't know the people that have been wrongfully convicted of sexual assault. And I know that that's a touchy subject for some, but I really felt like I had to deal with that as well. And so we have to realize that as a by-product of our criminal justice system, wherever we set the balance, we are going to harm people that never should have been charged, never should have been convicted.

MG: How do you address that issue of sexual assault and due process, the need for due process?

KENT ROACH: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I think what we need is a quicker system where someone who is wrongfully convicted can get access to DNA, can get access to new evidence. And our courts have to not value finality as much as they do. You need a good lawyer to get some of the evidence that's essential in some sexual assault cases. We just got rid of preliminary inquiries in sexual assault cases for efficiency. We’ve got to realize that if we did that, then even if only one, two, 3% of cases result in wrongful convictions, that's a non-trivial suffering for the wrongfully convicted and also for their families.

MG: David Lametti the Justice Minister was on this program not so long ago. And he talked about a new independent commission that would probe miscarriage of justice claims. And he said that he was committed to this and he was committed to it because he made a promise to David Milgaard who we talked about earlier. Given the concerns that you have, you say in the book you're disillusioned that you're seeing the same mistakes happen again and again. Is this a different moment? Do you believe in what David Lametti is trying to do here?

KENT ROACH: Yeah. I mean, I believe David is absolutely sincere, but it's not just him. And so problems with the bill are there's less commissioners. There could be a minimum of five commissioners, which is not enough. David has fought hard to get a $19 million budget approved, and that's good. But you can't know what the budget has to be because you don't know how many applications are going to come in. You don't know how many tests have to be funded. You don't know how many applicants need to be provided with money so that they can keep themselves together during this process of exoneration and correction of their wrongful conviction. And of course, we don't know whether the bill will be passed. And even if it is, there's always a danger that under future governments, it will be underfunded.

MG: Maria, let me end with you. To Canadians, what would you say about why this matters, that wrongful convictions are addressed in as forceful a way as possible?

MARIA SHEPHERD: Oh, it's very important in the fact that, you know, I always say that it's so much quicker to convict somebody than it is to overturn a conviction, which is very sad. My hope is that the commission comes to fruition. And if it comes to a point where budgeting becomes a problem, this is where staunch advocacy has to continue. And that's where my work will come into play and the work of Innocence Canada. We are just at the tip of the iceberg of wrongful convictions. And I'm so glad that we're now opening up Pandora's box and realizing all the systemic problems that have attributed to it.

MG: Maria, I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you about what you've been through, but also the work that you're doing now. It's forceful work and important. So thank you very much.

MARIA SHEPHERD: Thank you so much for having me.

MG: And Kent, thank you very much.

KENT ROACH: Thank you very much.

MG: Kent Roach is the author of “Wrongfully Convicted, Guilty Pleas, Imagined Crimes and What Canada Must Do to Safeguard Justice”. He's also a professor of law at the University of Toronto. And Maria Sheppard was wrongfully convicted in 1992 after the death of her stepdaughter. She was acquitted of those charges in 2016, and she's now a paralegal and member of the board at Innocence Canada. Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL J. FOX: Patients let me know that if I could push, they’d put their weight behind me and they'd push alongside me. This was the impetus for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease. I didn't want to call it that. I wanted to call it PD Cure. And I told Tracy and she said, pedicure?

[audience laughing]

MG: Michael J. Fox, of course, did not call his organization PD Cure or pedicure. The Michael J. Fox Foundation has contributed millions of dollars to the research around Parkinson's disease. The latest finding is being hailed as a breakthrough. We'll tell you about what needs to be done before it leads to early detection and better treatment. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I’m Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stick around.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

PARKINSON’S BREAKTHROUGH

Guest: Dr. Ronald Postuma

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

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL J. FOX: It has struck me that everything I've been given, success, my life with Tracy, my family had prepared me for this profound opportunity and responsibility. It was a gift. I refer to it as a gift. Parkinson's is the gift that keeps on taking. The gift that keeps on taking.

MG: Michael J. Fox describes his Parkinson's disease as the gift that keeps on taking. Parkinson's is a condition that affects more than 100,000 Canadians. The Michael J. Fox Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into research so that doctors could better understand the causes of this brain disease. The medical journal The Lancet has just published a new finding that has come out of this investment, one that could eventually lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Ronald Postuma is a neurologist with the Neuro, also known as the Montreal Neurological Institute Hospital at McGill University. Dr. Postuma, good morning.

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: Good morning.

MG: As you understand it, what is this new finding that was published in The Lancet?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: There's a couple of new findings that are in this. Let's start with the paper itself then. So we understand that Parkinson's disease is like an ageing of the brain. And this particular type of ageing is related to this protein called synuclein. And in fact, every ageing disease of the brain kind of has its own protein. So Alzheimer's is amyloid. Parkinson's is synuclein. And we've never really been able to measure this during life before. This current paper, which is I guess confirmation that a breakthrough has occurred, probably is the best way to describe it, is understanding that we're now able to directly measure this protein in a person while they're still alive, as opposed to just on an autopsy in the brain. And so we're now able to get a biological diagnosis of the underlying process rather than just the clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, which actually is quite good. But it's a different question. It's a new question. Can we sort of figure out what's going on in the patient's brain and the body while they’re still alive?

MG: Medical breakthroughs are often attached to hyperbole. The editorial in The Lancet called this a game changer. Do you think that language is appropriate?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: It will be a game changer. It is not yet a game changer. So where it's going to change the game is research. So right now, I have patients in my clinic. I saw nine patients yesterday who all have Parkinson's disease. They do not need this test. I would rather spend my time rather than doing a lumbar puncture, which is what this requires. And so it's really quite intense. I'd rather spend my time talking to them, talking about their manifestations, trying to find medications that can help them because we've got great treatments. But what's coming, what's really exciting is that we have treatments that are going to ultimately go into research studies where we're trying to fix the underlying process. Now, that's going to be a completely different kind of treatment because what it's going to do is slow down the underlying ageing. We hope it works. And when that happens, you can't feel it. It's not like the medications they give for Parkinson's that we try, we say, how are you doing? Oh, you're much better. Wonderful. Let's go on the dose. Nothing like this. It's slowing down the underlying process of ageing, and you're probably going to need to take it for 10, 15 or 20 years. So we better be sure if we're going to give you these sorts of agents that you have it, that you have the underlying protein, that you're not another sub form of Parkinson's that doesn't have the protein, for example. And in research studies, if we're going to test these agents, we can also really use these tests, the lumbar puncture tests or some of these skin biopsy tests that are coming out in the future to make sure that we got the right patients for the therapy.

MG: Do we have a sense as to how much earlier Parkinson's could be detected? Again, if you are able, and this is following this research down the line, but if you're able to pinpoint those markers, how much earlier are we talking about?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: Yeah, this is where things get really, really interesting. And so part of the PPMI study, PPMI, Paul, Peter, Mary I study is trying to understand the early stages of Parkinson's as well, the early, early stages. So we think of Parkinson's disease as being oh, a tremor or I walk slowly, I'm shuffled, my face is flat, but it in fact turns out that this ageing process, this synuclein process has already been there in your brain for 10 to 15, 20 years before you ever show up in a doctor's office. And what we're trying to do now is find people in these early stages, and there's fascinating ways to do it. So the first is family history, a strong family history. Okay, that's kind of obvious. But what isn't so obvious are two. One is the loss of the sense of smell. So this is not COVID. This is a gradual loss of smell sort of over a period of several years, most of the time not even aware of the problem. People with that loss of smell have a five-fold increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. In other words, that loss of smell was the first stage of their Parkinson's disease. The second, which is even more interesting, if you will, is something called REM sleep behaviour disorder. And so basically to explain it is when you or Matt or I are dreaming, we're actually paralyzed, we're not able to move. Like we might twitch a little bit, we might make a few moaning motions and of course we can breathe and our eyes move, but that's it. And what happens in Parkinson's disease is that the system that keeps us paralyzed stops working. And people in their fifties, sixties, not sleepwalkers from childhood, people in their later age start to act out their dreams. So they might, you know, if they're having a dream that I'm giving a radio interview, my wife will hear me giving a radio interview in the middle of the night, clear voice just like this. Or we might be fighting or punching or kicking or who knows what's going on in our dream? Well, people with this disorder don't have a five-fold increased risk of Parkinson's. They have a 50-fold increased risk of Parkinson's disease. In other words, most people with this condition actually have Parkinson's in its early stages already. And so the world is waking up to this. And we're really start of trying to get serious about identifying these people earlier, hopefully, because maybe we'll be able to do something about it eventually.

MG: You said, and this is fascinating, partially this is about trying to figure out those early signs, but you also said that rather than focus on some of the headlines coming out of this research right now, that you would rather talk to those patients that were in your office, the seven people that were there about the treatments that are available. What are the treatments that are available right now for Parkinson's that will make a difference in people's lives?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: Right. We actually have pretty terrific treatments for a lot of the manifestations. So, for example, the tremor and the slowness and the stiffness are caused by not enough dopamine in your brain. So we give you the dopamine back and those problems actually go away completely in many cases for some time. The list of symptoms of Parkinson's related to the synuclein all over the brain is so long we could spend an hour. But, you know, constipation drops and blood pressure, you can't do anything about the sense of smell, but sleep problems, hallucinations, memory problems, the list goes on and on. And each one of these we try to target. But each of these treatments has a very specific limitation in that they're replacing or fixing a problem that's already there and they're not going to the underlying cause. They're not slowing down that underlying ageing process of Parkinson's disease. And that's what we really want to be doing with the rest of our time because eventually, the disease takes over. Eventually, it wins. We keep you going for 10, 20 years sometimes, but it ultimately wins if you live long enough. And so I want it to stop winning.

MG: How optimistic are you that this is possible? It’s interesting. Michael J. Fox did an interview. It’s his foundation that funded this research, and he did an interview with STAT the medical website, talking about how he hoped, as somebody who had lived with this, but also was helping to fund it, that there would be meaningful changes and significant developments, I think the phrase was before he caught the bus to the next parking lot. What is your sense of optimism and hope in the face of this disease?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: A cautious optimism over the intermediate term, I would have to say. And so we're trying to find people with this problem. And we are doing it in our centre, but the PPMI study is doing it. Anyone can sign up. And what we're trying to do is test these new treatments that are just being developed now. They're in early stages of treatments. Some of them are coming out into people with Parkinson's already. They may or may not work. It might be too late. But really in the next two years or so, the studies are going to launch trying to get rid of that abnormal protein synuclein or decrease it or stop it from aggregating and killing neurons. This sort of thing is going to happen. The trials are going to start in a couple of years. And I have a feeling, before I retire I hope, we'll have something. Not in the next couple of years, but maybe in five years, maybe in 10, hopefully not in 20, but I really hope we will.

MG: Is that exhilarating for somebody who's been doing this work for a couple of decades?

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: You know, it kind of is. Yeah. I feel like things are changing now. So, you know, we sort of temporarily lose hope sometimes. But then Alzheimer's, for example, has just, you know, there's a new treatment in Alzheimer's and it really probably does slow down the disease. And Alzheimer's disease has always been 10 to 15 years ahead of Parkinson's in many ways. It's a big field and I feel like we're on the same bus. We're catching up. We're on the same route. And maybe I think that might mean we might have a similar breakthrough in a similar amount of time.

MG: That is fascinating. It's really great to talk to you about this and to hear that cautious optimism. Doctor, thank you very much.

DR. RONALD POSTUMA: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Dr. Ronald Postuma is a neurologist with the Montreal Neurological Institute Hospital at McGill University.

[music]

SUDAN

Guests: Dr. Alaaeldin Nogoud, Khalid Medani

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

[rockets, gunfire]

MG: That's the sound of rockets and gunfire in the streets of Khartoum. Over the weekend, a nationwide conflict broke out in Sudan between paramilitary and military forces with two different would be leaders jostling for control. More than 185 people have died in the days since. And this comes as the country was preparing for a transition to democracy after years of authoritarian rule. Arabic language media is now reporting that the two sides have agreed to a 24-hour ceasefire starting at 6 p.m. Khartoum time. That's about noon Eastern time. Dr. Alaaeldin Nogoud is a surgeon. He lives and works in Khartoum. We spoke with him earlier this morning. Here's our conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

MG: Can you describe what life is like in Khartoum this morning? What is happening in the city right now?

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: The city right now is in a miserable situation. The sounds of the gunfire and shooting and bombing and aircraft attack. This is actually the fourth day of conflict. And still, many areas in Khartoum the capital are experiencing this separated attacks of bombing and shooting with concentration in certain areas where there is much of their military bases or the most sensitive areas. Like for example, where I reside, there is big military area. So there is much of bombing here with the aircraft.

MG: We've heard that people are essentially trapped in their homes. Have you been able to see what's happening on the streets? Have you been able to leave your house?

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: No. No. I tried. I tried to reach the hospital, but I couldn't because of the heavy bombing and the heavy presence of tanks in the streets. I tried to reach the hospital, but I couldn't. I always try to reach there every day, but it seems very much difficult. The first day, some of the people bring to my house an injured guy with a gunshot, but I couldn't do anything. I said, guys, this is a house. I haven’t anything. Even I tried to reach for any I.V. fluids, but I couldn't find it in my house. So I asked them just to go to the hospital if they could.

MG: That must be really difficult. I mean, you know that people are hurting and need your help, but you're not able to help them.

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: Yeah. Yeah. It's very difficult because throughout the four years of the revolution, I usually used to be in the hospitals with the protesters in the days of the processions. But this time, I couldn't get there. It's very difficult.

MG: What do you know about the scale of the injuries? You mentioned people coming to your house with gunshot wounds. For people who are out on the streets, what have you heard about how people have been impacted by the fighting?

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: Yeah, they are very much impacted. I'm following with the guys with my groups in the hospitals because we have a big social media group, WhatsApp group. We used to follow the injuries with and we used to call for the help or like have some consultations. There’s many who are injured who couldn't reach the hospital. There are many dead who couldn't reach the hospital also. People even they cannot bury the dead in the villages or in the houses. So for example, there’s university students, engineering college students who are trapped since the first day in the University of Khartoum that is in the middle of Khartoum, near to the headquarters of the army. They are trapped there for the fourth day. They have one injured, one of their colleagues, and they have one dead and they couldn't bury him. They just buried him in the yard of the university yesterday after they called his family and they got the permission. So they just buried him in the yard of the university. So you can imagine how difficult it is.

MG: How are people getting food and water and supplies? We'd heard that food and water in particular were running low. You're trapped in your house. A lot of people are trapped in their houses. So how are people getting the supplies that they need?

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: Yeah, it's difficult. Many, many neighbourhoods in Khartoum are out of electricity and water. Fortunately enough, my neighbourhood is having some supply, but there is cities or neighbourhoods that have off electricity for more than 24 hours, off of water supply for more than 24 hours. Sudanese people are a very strong community, so there's many social media groups where the people said, put your number, that we have water supply in our neighbourhood. You can come if you can come there and you can get some water. And they put their phone numbers and we used to help each other. But the problem with the electricity cannot be solved because even who have generators, they would have a problem with the gasoline supply. So it's a difficult issue.

MG: Just before I let you go, what are you looking for? What do you want to see to try to bring this fighting to an end? Who do you think needs to step in and step up to try to stop the situation?

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: I think the whole international community should step up and with strong action, knowing that the essence or the cause of the conflict is quite important. It's not like simple as in the report that two leaders are looking for control. It's a conflict between an old regime, Muslim Brotherhood regime wants to come back to control in the power and people are fighting against that. I think people should know more the details of the conflict. I am one of the activists for democracy beside my work as a doctor, and I was one of the signatory of the framework agreement and in the political process that was seeking for ending of the coup and restoring the democratic transition. But what's happened from the Army and the Muslim Brotherhood inside the army in escalating this war cut all the ways to reach for a democratic transition. So it's not simple as the two leaders just looking for control. It's more than that.

MG: Dr. Nogoud, stay safe and thank you for talking to us.

DR. ALAAELDIN NOGOUD: Thank you. Thank you so much.

MG: Dr. Alaaeldin Nogoud is a surgeon. He was in Khartoum, Sudan. Khalid Medani is from Sudan. He lives in Canada now. He's chair of African studies and an associate professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal. Khalid, hello to you.

KHALID MEDANI: Hello. Thank you for having me on your show.

MG: Thank you for being here. What are you thinking as you watch this unfold? You have family that is still in Sudan.

KHALID MEDANI: Yes. You know, like all Sudanese, I have immediate family in a particular neighbourhood in Khartoum, but also throughout the city. So I think what I'm thinking is very similar to Dr. Nogoud who you just spoke to. It's very distressing to see such violence in the capital city. It's always been distressing to see violence throughout the country. This is the first time really we've seen this kind of unprecedented violence. Not only are people short of food supplies, medicine, now we're hearing that people are being kicked out of their homes, used as human shields. And so the strategy of war, particularly on the part of the militia, the paramilitary militia here, is very, very concerning. The humanitarian crisis is increasing in addition to the loss of lives. I think maybe 180 deaths that you quoted and the media is quoting is probably an underestimation. Our feeling is that it's much more. And the fact that people can’t bury their dead, of course, in Islamic tradition or all traditions, is particularly distressing and demoralizing for a lot of us. So we're all very concerned.

MG: Dr. Nogoud said that we need to understand the complicated roots of this conflict. As you understand it, what has caused what began this weekend?

KHALID MEDANI: What began I think is, you know, on one hand, it's a power struggle between these two generals. But I think that at the heart of it is two factions that are really opposed to any kind of transition to democracy. This is essentially a coup within the coercive and security apparatus, but it really begins on October 2021 when both of these leaders, General Burhan of the Army and General Hemedti who is the head of the paramilitary militia, conspire together to wage a military coup against a very fragile government that was a coalition between civilian and military leaders that was supposed to see or oversee a transition to a civilian democracy and elections, you know, brokered by the international community. And the likelihood of that happening led these two men to conspire to wage that coup in October of 2021. Now, they failed to understand that the Sudanese people's will without, with very little exception in civil societies for democracy and a complete civilian democracy. And so protests continued after the coup on a daily basis. And essentially, once again, they were forced to negotiate and get around the table over what Dr. Nogoud mentioned, and that is something called the Framework Agreement. The framework agreement had a number of stipulations we can discuss, but the central one for our purposes today in terms of being the catalyst for the conflict, there’s a stipulation for the integration of this paramilitary militia into the army. That really catalyzed this kind of conflict. As the negotiations were going on, you saw increasing deployment on the part of the paramilitary militia not only in the northern state where the Medowie Capital is where some of the conflict is the most severe, but also distressingly in the capital itself in Khartoum. And so already you begin to see the beginning of this conflict occurring. And so that's really the spark, this kind of a disagreement over the integration of the paramilitary militia. The general of the army, Burhan, wanted it to happen quickly over one year. Obviously, he wanted to have and consolidate his power over the military. And the head of the militia, General Dagalo, known as Hemedti, wanted it to be over a very long period of time, 10 years. Essentially, he refused to integrate his paramilitary militia into the army. And so this is what we have today, this struggle over a consolidating power over the military establishment. And in our view and the general view is that that is the primary means that they see to actually rule the country.

MG: This has, as you've said and as the doctor has said, interrupted that transition toward democracy this month. You've met with the leaders of that democratic movement, right?

KHALID MEDANI: I have met with them many times and I write about them and research about them. I've also met with the resistance committees who are the ones who continue to protest and were protesting on a daily basis. Yes, absolutely.

MG: What has to be done to ensure that that process towards democracy resumes?

KHALID MEDANI: There has to be number one, an understanding that the will of the Sudanese people is quite strong with respect and unanimous in terms of understanding that the only solution for a peaceful transition and stability in Sudan would be a civilian democracy and understanding on the part of the international community that actually there is no option. In some historical cases, in some cases for a short time, there is always an option of a strong military to stabilize the situation. But what this conflict really has crystallized is the understanding that both of these generals, both of these military forces or militia forces are not capable of actually administering this large country in a stable fashion. Whether you're with democracy or not, Democracy views differ in the African continent for a variety of reasons. In the case of Sudan, we now are clear that there is no option for stabilizing this very diverse country with different factions with respect to the security apparatus without really pushing for democracy.

MG: And so what is the role of the international community in this? Again, the Arab language media is reporting that there will be a 24-hour ceasefire that would start at 6 p.m. local time. This is something that the U.N. secretary general called for. The Security Council met yesterday about this. What's the role of the international community here?

KHALID MEDANI: The first role, of course, is the humanitarian one. And it's not surprising that not only Secretary Blinken in the U.S., the U.K., the Arab League, the African Union, the entire international community is insisting on a ceasefire. And from there, hopefully, well, first is the cessation of hostilities and then a ceasefire that would last longer, and to really pressure these two gentlemen or these two generals, rather, to get back and to resume negotiations with the forces that are intent on the transition to civilian democracy. Now, having said that, I think that if this continues, there should be much more vigorous diplomacy. And I would argue because of the lack of support for either leader, that the discussion over sanctioning these individuals has to come into play. But overall, there has to be a much more rigorous diplomatic kind of effort that was not and has not been utilized in the past with the understanding that there is a great threat that this would spill over into one of the most volatile and strategic regions in the entire world.

MG: Through the Horn of Africa.

KHALID MEDANI: Through the Horn of Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea. You know, we have Ethiopia very fragile to the east, Libya and around the Darfur area to the west. So a number of actors, the Gulf countries. We're talking about the U.S. interest. And Russia is interested, of course, in the Red Sea area. I'm not being sensationalist here, but what I'm trying to say is that the volatility and the spill-over effect would really be important. But first and foremost, I know the international community is concerned about the deep humanitarian crisis in Khartoum and in Darfur in the north that is spilling over into Sudan throughout the country. And now we see it, of course, in the capital city. So that's the priority, but then we have to look at the larger picture.

MG: Just in the last minute or so that we have, you started in talking about just your close ties and the fact that you, like many Sudanese, still have family, close family there. There has to be a part of your heart that hurts in seeing this.

KHALID MEDANI: Well, it's not just a part of my heart, of course, all of my heart hurts. I was saying that this is, you know, no population deserves to be held hostage by the venal kind of greed and power hungry ambitions of two groups, one that is military, that historically has been an Islamist fundamentalist, one at least at the top level, the Security Intelligence Committee that is guiding much of this fighting and one that actually created and spawned this paramilitary militia in order to put down this insurgency in Darfur, killing over 200,000 innocent people. These are the kind of generals we're talking about that have no concern for human life in this case, much more concerned with their, you know, political and ambition and also their ambition to continue to amass wealth from the resources of the Sudanese people.

MG: It is a very difficult situation, and we are grateful to have the chance to talk to you and perhaps we'll talk again as it continues to unfold. In the meantime, Khalid, thank you very much.

KHALID MEDANI: Thank you very much for having me.

MG: Khalid Medani is chair of African studies and associate professor of political science at McGill University. He was in Montreal. And of course, you can find the latest on the story through the CBC News website. That is The Current. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. Tom Power speaking with Nicholas Braun, actor, also known as Cousin Greg from Succession. It's been a dandy of a fourth season of Succession. And if you haven't seen the episode that aired on Sunday, Cousin Greg has a starring role. Tune in to hear him coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio and through the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. Thank you for listening to The Current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Tuesday April 18, 2023 Episode Transcript

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