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The AIH Transcript for January 28, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight:

CO: No way out. A Canadian family went to Wuhan, China for the Lunar New Year. Now the roads out are barricaded and they fear that, without help from Ottawa, they won't be able to get home.

CH: Outbreak of suspicion. Some Chinese-Canadians are speaking out about racism they say is spreading with coronavirus. It's a stigma our guest says is the legacy of SARS.

CO: Swarm surge. Locusts are taking over huge swaths of land in the Horn of Africa. There are hundreds of millions of insects — and now real fears they could devour food needed by millions of people.

CH: Last call. Joyce Pottinger is shutting down the only taxi company in Smithers, B.C. But she says her work goes far beyond giving lifts — and she can't find drivers to deal with the emotional heavy lifting.

CO: Looking for answers. Last week, a young woman was killed in a Quebec hotel room. The man charged with her murder was out on parole, after killing his wife. Now many people are asking why he was released at all.

CH: And... Profile of a thief. After dozens of cellphones are stolen at a Sum 41 concert in Antwerp, police in Amsterdam bust a pickpocket — a man with 30 phones crammed into his spandex bike shorts.

CHG: As It Happens, the Tuesday edition. Radio that guesses he did not look good in that number.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Coronavirus: stranded Canadians, coronavirus: stigma, Smithers taxi

Coronavirus: stranded Canadians

Guests: Megan Millward, Lie Zhang

CH: It's supposed to be a time of celebration. But this Lunar New Year, people in Wuhan, China are stuck at home, under lockdown, as the coronavirus continues to spread. And they may not be able to gather — but they're finding a way to come together anyway. On Monday night, people in the city took to the windows and balconies of their apartments to sing and shout messages of encouragement. Here's what that sounded like, for the record.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: A loud group singing session]

CH: But while some in Hubei province are stuck at home, others want to go home. Megan Millward and Lie Zhang arrived in Wuhan on January 20th with their two young children. A few days later, they headed to the countryside. They were only supposed to stay a few days, but now, they're stranded — as Chinese officials block the roads, in hope of containing the virus. Today, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the government will assess the needs of Canadians in Hubei province, and offer them consular services on a case-by-case basis, looking at all options, including repatriation. But first, it will have to reach them. Which Ms. Millward and Mr. Zhang say hasn't happened yet. We reached the couple earlier today, in Hubei province.

CO: Megan and Lie, how are you doing?

MEGAN MILLWARD: We are hanging in there.

CO: How are your kids doing , Lie?

LIE ZHANG: They're doing well. They don't really aware what's going on here.

CO: And, Megan, any symptoms, anything that worries you about the health of your family at this point?

MM: Absolutely none. So we're grateful for that.

CO: You were in Wuhan, and now you're still in the province, but you're outside of the city. What are the restrictions on your ability to get yourselves out at this point?

LZ: So all the ramps of the major road are blocked. and only the people with the special permit can go. And we can’t get the permits. So basically, we want to get out of Hubei province so we can drive to Shanghai, and then we can our tickets this weekend back to Montreal.

MM: So basically, it's road closures. There are barricades. So the space we have to move in is getting progressively smaller.

CO: Of course, there is a reason for that, right? I mean, they're doing it in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus. So what would you have to do in order to get a permit, Megan?

MM: We don't know if it is possible to get one. The ones that are mentioned — vans transporting medical supplies or perhaps local government officials would have. We don't know if it's possible for…

LZ: Foreigners.

MM: Foreigners or citizens to get such permits.

CO: You went to China to see family and to celebrate the Lunar New Year, is that right?

MM: Yes.

LZ: Right.

CO: When did you start to worry that this trip is not going as planned?

MM: [slight chuckle] When we started seeing many people wearing masks. And when we started hearing news about the situation not being as under control as people had previously been led to believe it was.

CO: How concerned are you that you're not going to be able to get out?

LZ: Extremely concerned. I think there is low chance we can get out was out to the Canadian government’s help right now.

MM: Short of walking, I don't see how we could get back to Shanghai.

CO: What contact have you had, what connections have you had, with the Canadian government or its consular officials?

MM: We called the embassy in Beijing and the consulate in Shanghai. The consulate in Shanghai is closed for the holidays. The embassy in Beijing, the first time I called, I was put on hold and then eventually, it hung up on me. And we've called the Emergency Watch and Response Centre — which is in Ottawa — a number of times. And the advice that we are given is just to keep abreast of the news and follow the instructions of local officials.

CO: We're talking to you, well, early day here in Canada. It's late at night for you in China. So things may develop overnight. But at this point, what we're hearing from Canada is that the foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is saying there is at this point no plan to evacuate. That they are doing things on a case-by-case basis, is that what you're hearing?

MM: We've heard that there is no plan to evacuate. I hadn't heard about the case-by-case basis. We're not asking for you know an airlift or a chartered plane. While we would be very happy to take a seat if a plane is planned, all we need is just access to the highway. We have a car. We can drive ourselves to Shanghai. We are asymptomatic. We are absolutely willing to enter quarantine as soon as we arrive in Canada and undergo any tests. We just need to be able to get out of the province.

CO: Do you know if your flight is still taking off on the weekend?

MM: It should be.

CO: You just have to get there?

MM: Exactly.

CO: And as far as you know, the only way you could do that is with the help of the Canadian government?

MM: Yes.

CO: At this point in the day, there are a number of countries that are arranging the evacuation of their nationals. France has a very robust program. So does Japan. Spain is working on it. The U.S. State Department is evacuating its government personnel — plans to expand that. Britain is talking about it. Russia has closed its borders. So Canada's response, do you look at how that compares with what other countries are doing?

LZ: I don't feel very good about their answer about this because the situation here is quite worse. And I got a friend who works for the hospital. And they just told me and the patients their for days they won't be able to see them because it's just full, full, full. And that the new hospital is still allowed five, six days to be finished. And if let's see we were unlucky, we get infected…

MM: We'll probably be turned away, and just…

LZ: Yeah.

MM: From what we've read and heard on a WeChat, even with those additional hospitals, they still might not have capacity to handle all of the cases that are coming.

LZ: Yeah, and we don't know how worse it could get.

MM: How much worse, yeah.

LZ: Yeah.

CO: What's your greatest concern at this point? Of many concerns, what's the greatest one?

LZ: We’ll get in infected.

MM: And not having access to appropriate medical care. Canada has said that it's fully prepared to meet and deal with an outbreak. Well, right now, we don't think we are infected. I know that there's a 14-day period where you can be asymptomatic, but be a carrier. But if we're going to be quarantined, we would really prefer it to be on Canadian soil with sufficient medical staff and support.

CO: How old are your kids?

MM: One is six, and one is going to be two next week.

CO: Megan and Lie, I hope you get home. And for your kids. And for your health. And we will continue to cover this, see what we can learn ourselves. Thank you for speaking with us tonight.

MM: Thank you very much.

LZ: Thank you.

CO: Take care.

CH: Megan Millward, Lie Zhang and their two kids are stranded in China, and can't travel home because of the coronavirus outbreak. We reached them earlier today in the countryside in Hubei province.

Coronavirus: stigma

Guest: Avvy Go

CH: Since then, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has said that 126 of the 250 Canadians have now requested consular assistance. He promised to help, but won't commit to flying people home. When it comes to the coronavirus, comparisons to the 2003 SARS outbreak are hard to avoid. And there are a lot of similarities. Both viruses appear to have originated in animals. Both have the ability to jump from human to human. And both — for what it's worth — are still far less deadly than plain old influenza. But Avvy Go is hoping that when all is said and done, there will be at least one key difference between the two: how Canada's Chinese community is affected. Ms. Go is the director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto, and the author of a post-SARS report called "Yellow Peril Revisited," which looked at the racist undercurrent of the response to that outbreak. We reached her in Toronto.

CO: Ms. Go, as a public health issue, coronavirus is still a long way from being the SARS outbreak. But how does what you're seeing and hearing right now. How does it compare to what Chinese-Canadians faced in Toronto in 2003?

AVVY GO: Yeah, I mean this is still an early day of the coronavirus. And already, we're hearing reports about, for instance, one of the petitions by a number of parents groups in York Region calling on the York Region school board to basically quarantine any students who just came from China. We're hearing like on WhatApp, social media, telling people not to go to T&T — which is a very large Chinese supermarket. So this is already happening, and we don't even have an outbreak yet, you know? [chuckling] So like we have two cases confirmed, and yet, we are already seeing this.

CO: I wonder if you see any evidence that authorities are getting on top of this racism earlier? You mentioned the school board in north Toronto — a region where there are a lot of Chinese-Canadians who live there. You mentioned 8,000 people so far last count signed this petition that the school board should be treating kids who may have been in China trying to have them quarantined. School board has already said that, hey, this is racism. This is xenophobia. So are they getting on top of it earlier?

AG: I think in the case of the York Region school board, they are doing the right thing by pointing out the racism behind this petition. However, others than the York region school board, I don't see any other officials coming out, first of all, to calm the panic. And certainly, I don't think anyone other than the community groups themselves naming the issue of racial profiling right now. So in that sense, I think that we might be repeating the same mistake that we made during the SARS. And that is not to address the issue of racism within that crisis.

CO: I want to play a clip from that that that school board, the chair who is Juanita Nathan, who spoke with CBC Radio Morning Show, Piya Chattopadhyay. So here's Ms. Nathan.

SOUNDCLIP

JUANITA NATHAN: What we're trying really to get at is not giving rise to any inadvertent racism or in any of those things that we could single out a community at this time.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: And so are you allowing educators, or encouraging them to have those conversations with their students about you know the xenophobia, the racism that could or in some cases we're already seeing along with this coronavirus?

JN: We are when needed. But right now, what we're doing is like wearing a mask clearly singles out some kids in the classroom, and they don't need to. And that's what we're addressing at the moment. Just having those conversations to give knowledge to the parents why they don't need to at this moment.

CO: All right, that is Janita Nathan. And one of the suggestions is that students not wear masks to school in order to avoid becoming targets of racism. What do you make of that?

AG: Well, I don't think wearing a mask or not wearing a mask really addresses the issue of racism. I think if you're a Chinese kid now in the school, you will be afraid of being singled out because you're Chinese, not because you wear a mask. But I do take the point that she made about the issue the need to address racism head-on. We should be focusing on why people are making these assumptions about Chinese-Canadians who have nothing to do with the virus in China and talking about the racism that has long existed in Canada. And this crisis is just allowing those who share those views to make their view public through the social media, through petition, or through some other ways.

CO: We saw that in 2003, some political figures, public figures tried to counter this. Jean Chretien went out and said, hey, let’s go to eat in a Chinese restaurant.

AG: Yeah.

CO: Let's not be afraid. Let's not play into this racism. So what do you want to see public figures be doing now to try and stem this racism?

AG: Yeah. And now I think what Mr. Chretien did was the right thing because at that time, a lot of the Chinese businesses were affected. And certainly, I would love to see the mayor of Toronto or the premier or even the prime minister making public statements supporting the community, and calling out people who make racist comments and assumptions about Chinese-Canadians.

CO: We saw the Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu say that the media has a role to play in trying to stem any kind of xenophobia or racism. What do you think? Are we doing our job? Are we doing what we should in order to avoid that?

AG: I believe the media are doing a much better work than they did last time during the SARS crisis. But you know, media, just like anybody else, need to be reminded that there is racism in Canada. But I also think the government needs to play a role as well. The SARS commission inquiry final report did not address the issue of racism, did not make any recommendations on how to address that issue. Which is why I think in part that today our healthcare system is much better prepared to deal with a outbreak like this. But our society as a whole, and our government institution as a whole, is still not ready to deal with the racism outbreak.

CO: And could it even be worse given the fact that in 2003, we didn't have the social media we have now. And a lot of these racist messages, a lot of this kind of xenophobia is channeled through those Facebook posts of what was it, one video of a woman eating a bat with chopsticks, and things like that. So no matter what anybody does, how do you counter the kind of racism that's being channeled through social media?

AG: Right. I think what we can do is to continue to send out a message that is based on science. That helps and reminds people how to protect themselves. But also, at the same time, remind people that Canada is a multicultural society. Chinese-Canadians have been and continue to be an important part of Canadian society. And just keep sending that positive message out there.

CO: We will leave it there. Ms. Go, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

AG: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

AG: Bye.

CH: Avvy Go is the director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto. That's where we reached her today.

[Music: Indie rock]

Smithers taxi

Guest: Joyce Pottinger

CH: For nearly 15 years, Joyce Pottinger has run the only taxi company in Smithers, British Columbia. But at the end of this week, she's shutting B.V. Taxi Service down. Ms. Pottinger says taxis are an essential service. But running her business has become too much for her to handle. And the kind of calls she receives make it hard to get other drivers behind the wheel. We reached Joyce Pottinger in her cab in Smithers, British Columbia earlier today. And a warning, there are some graphic descriptions of violence in this interview.

CO: Joyce, we have reached you I think in your taxi right now. How busy have you been today?

JOYCE POTTINGER: I've been hair straight back since 5:00 this morning, just calls coming in rates steady for the airport, people going to work, kids going to school. And I'm on by myself. So it's been an interesting morning.

CO: How many more hours do you think you’ll put in?

JP: Today, I've got to work until 2:00. And tomorrow, I'm doing a 12-hour shift. Thursday 12 hours. And Friday 12 hours. And then we shut ‘er down.

CO: You don't have anybody else that you can hand this over to for during the day?

JP: So it's just me and Ian. I've got two drivers, me and Ian.

CO: Why is it so difficult for you to get people to come and drive taxi for you?

JP: The question of the day. Every one of my drivers over the last 13-and-a-half years, there's very few that stay with the job. It's not an easy job to do, long hours, and you're dealing with customers of all different kinds. Most of them are good, but some are really not nice. [CO chuckles]So gotta have that special personality to be able to deal with everybody with no judgment, with safety in mind and a good conversation. And yeah, most of the customers are good like I say. But there's that handful that it's a little testy.

CO: Well, I understand that you're not just a taxi company, you’re almost like a social service for people in difficult situations. What have you encountered?

JP: Oh, we've encountered everything from suicidal teenagers, to pregnant ladies with their water breaking, to people that are so intoxicated they just get them in the cab, fall down and we usually end up taking them ones to the police station to have them removed from the cab. I always say to my drivers, be aware of the pukers, poopers and the domestic disputes. Because my one driver actually, he described it really good, he says every call is like a box of chocolates. You don't know which one you're going to pull out of that box.

CO: What kinds of calls have you had from women who were in some kind of urgency?

JP: Everybody knows me. So they'll say Joyce, come and get me. Help, you know, they're crying, screaming on the phone and I'm asking them to please phone 9-1-1, cause we're not equipped to deal with this. And you know and then I lose that connection. I don't even know where they're at. You sit in your cab thinking okay, what kind of situation was that poor woman really in? And I've had them get in my cab, a man and a woman. And he ends up just punching and punching her. And I stopped the van, and I got him out, and raced off with her and he was trying to break the windows as I was leaving. And she's really bleeding. He's broke her nose. And you put a few situations around people that don't know how to deal with them kind of situations mentally, and they just refuse to do the job.

CO: If they’re calling and asking for Joyce, asking for you, it's because they know you will help them, is that right?

JP: They know that I'm gonna be the one that's in the cab. I’m in every day, seven days a week. And quite often will just call me by name. And could you pick me up at home? And I know exactly where they live because you do this long enough, pretty soon you know your regulars. You know the people.

CO: But a lot of these are calls that should go to the police, or to social workers, or to emergency medical workers. Have you talked to them about the fact that how much of their work you're doing?

JP: No, I had a paramedic that actually worked for me. She drove ambulance here in Smithers too. And she realized that on some of her calls, it doesn't happen all the time, but she wanted rubber gloves put in all my vans because as a paramedic, and somebody was in distress, she had to treat them. But yeah, it's a whole new box of chocolates with every phone call.

CO: And you've been taking chocolates from these boxes for 15 years now. What kind of toll has that taken on you?

JP: Oh, I'm good. I'm getting a little bit older. I don't have the get-up-and-go I used to have. I'm 59 years old, and I've still got a few good years to have a Christmas finally. And be able to see my grandkids. And go camping, go picking berries, go for a ride in my canoe. That's what I'm looking forward to.

CO: But you're the only company in town in Smithers.

JP: Yep, we're the only company between Terrace, British Columbia and Prince George — which is about a 700, 800 kilometre stretch.

CO: And sounds like there's a huge demand for what you do. So what are people going to do come Friday?

JP: Well, they'll be depending on the services that Smithers provides. And the hospital, well, there's the ambulance. They can phone the ambulance if it's an emergency. And I'm hoping doesn't stay too long without a cab service and Smithers. I mean, I'm being approached by a few people now that are willing to take it over it. And I've been approached in the last five years. And after they find out what it entails, they usually say no.

CO: When was the last time you had a day off?

JP: I don't know [laughing]. A few of my daughters got married over the last 13 years. I usually take my birthday off, at least a half a day off.

CO: What about Christmas?

JP: We get twice as busy. So I'm working twice as hard. My phone is ringing. [laughing]

CO: Okay. You know what? I wish you well with your canoe and your berry picking. You've earned it. And thanks for speaking with us.

JP: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

CO: Bye, Joyce.

JP: Bye-bye.

CH: Joyce Pittinger is the owner of BV Taxi Service in Smithers, BC, which is where we reached her.

[Music: Snare drum]

Sum 41 phones

CH: He could have worn a trenchcoat. But maybe that's too conspicuous. So let's say: cargo pants, or a jacket with pockets. Look, he was at a Sum 41 concert: he could have bought a hoodie, with pockets, from the merchandise stand. I'm not advocating theft. I'm just saying: if you're going to be a pickpocket, you yourself should probably pick an outfit with pockets. Maybe the thief didn't know that police in Amsterdam were going to be out in force at the Sum 41 concert last week. Maybe he didn't know those police had been tipped off by their colleagues in Belgium that a "roving gang of thieves" had stolen 50 mobile phones at a previous Sum 41 concert in Antwerp. So maybe he was not aware that there would be extra security. But there's such a thing as common sense. Which says: if you're going to be stealing dozens of cellphones, you don't wear cycling shorts. But this pickpocket did. And despite the bulges in his shorts when those Dutch police stopped him, he was not glad to see them. For good reason. He had stolen 30 mobile phones from people in the crowd — and stuffed them all into his skin-tight shorts. Just imagine how the police responded when he attempted to stroll nonchalantly past them, with dozens of phones clacking around in his tiny pants. They wouldn't even have had to frisk him. They could count them on sight through the fabric. So, obviously, they arrested him. Pretty clear-cut case of letting the punishment fit the cram.

[Music: Electronica]

Part two: East Africa locusts, Quebec parolee

East Africa locusts

Guest: Keith Cressman

CH: In parts of East Africa, the ground comes alive as you walk across it — and flies away. Swarms of bright yellow desert locusts are destroying thousands of acres of crops. It's the worst infestation Ethiopia and Somalia have seen in 25 years — and for Kenya, the worst in 70 years. And this unimaginably bad situation could get unimaginably worse: the United Nations says locust numbers could multiply 500 times by June — which is why the UN says action has to be taken now, and fast, to prevent further damage to food security, and to farmers' livelihoods. Keith Cressman is the Senior Locust Forecasting Officer with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. We reached him in Nairobi.

CO: Mr. Cressman, you are in Nairobi on this emergency locust mission. Can you describe what you have been seeing?

KEITH CRESSMAN: Well, we've just come back from the field, from central areas of Kenya north of Mount Kenya. These are quite wide plains, very few people, a couple of small villages, quite remote. However, locust swarms are in this area. We saw one swarm early in the morning. It was yellow-coloured — which means that it's a mature swarm ready to copulate, reproduce and lay eggs. And as the temperatures warmed up, within an hour or two, that swarm began to take to the air and move as a kind of a single cloud of insects away from the area where we were.

CO: What is that like? What is the experience of watching that?

KC: It's impressive. It makes you really appreciate nature. I'm an entomologist by profession. But just from kind of a very human standpoint, it really makes you realize the power and the forces of nature.

CO: And what is the effect though of this swarm?

KC: Swarms contain hundreds of millions of insects. And each insect weighs about two-and-a-half grams. And so they eat their own weight of food in a single day. So in about a square kilometre-sized swarm, that swarm could potentially eat the same amount of food in one day as about 35-thousand people. So the potential for these swarms to have a significant and devastating impact on food security, on crop production, on pastures and on people's livelihoods should not be underestimated.

CO: So what is causing this? Because every country is talking about swarms that they have not seen in decades or a generation, what's causing it?

KC: Well, it's a combination of very unusual weather events that have occurred consistently for about the past year-and-a-half. It started with a couple of cyclones that developed in the Indian Ocean at the beginning of the summer of 2018, and then again at the end of the summer. Both of these cyclones dropped very heavy rain in desert areas of the Arabian Peninsula — in very remote areas called the Empty Quarter — where were the locust infestations could not be found. They could not be treated, so the locusts were basically on a nine-month holiday. And they kept increasing and increasing. There was three generations of breeding. And remember, that with each generation, the locusts increased 20 times. So, as a result of these cyclones, it gave fabulous breeding conditions in a very inaccessible place. Once those conditions dried out, the swarms that were there, they started to move out of the area into other countries and invading other regions.

CO: So most of it is based on these weather patterns — these unusual weather patterns. There's others who are saying that another contributing factors geopolitics. And that these swarms, some of them came from Iran, which is under sanctions. So didn't have the right pesticides. It was crossing the border between Pakistan and India — which are under a lot of tensions because of Kashmir. And then it goes to war-torn Yemen — where no one's taking action because it's a war. And so it goes. In each region, there is some reason why there is no one there to deal with this before it becomes the crisis, right?

KC: What you said is entirely correct. They can get into extremely poor countries that really don't have a strong infrastructure or ability or capacity to respond. The locusts seem to have this inherent nature. And this year is very interesting because they were in areas as you say in Iran that is suffering from sanctions. And that, in fact, had very heavy floods about a year ago. So that contributed to the increase. They’re along both sides of the India-Pakistan border in a year in which tensions were incredibly high. But despite this, for example, taking India and Pakistan example, both countries managed every month to meet on the border to discuss about the situation and what they're doing about it, face-to-face. So it shows you the importance that the affected countries attribute to locusts. It is really a serious pest problem in their countries.

CO: These cyclones that created the conditions for locusts, they followed years of a very prolonged drought in the region. It was very difficult to produce enough food to feed people. Now what's going to happen with this?

KC: Well, of course, you know the Horn of Africa is extremely vulnerable. It has, as you mentioned, gone through a number of very dry years. And then they get some very wet years that has floods and these things. So the livelihoods kind of the vulnerabilities of the inhabitants of this part of Africa is already extremely fragile. At the moment, there's nearly twelve million people that are severely food insecure in the three countries that are affected by locusts now. So this is really the last thing that they need.

CO: And just finally, we haven't used the phrase climate change or climate crisis yet, but can there be any doubt that at the root of this is the climate crisis?

KC: It's very difficult to say that you know, let's say with certainty because you know the time frame that we're looking at is extremely short. We're early kind of looking at climatic events in the last maybe three or four years where we see this this trend of increased cyclone activity. Whether that's you know attributed to climate change or something else, it can be difficult to say with certainty. But what can be said certainly is if this trend does continue in the future, we are likely to see more outbreaks of this nature in the Horn of Africa.

CO: We will leave it there for now. Mr. Cressman, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

KC: Thank you.

CH: Keith Cressman is the Senior Locust Forecasting Officer with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. We reached him in Nairobi. And you can find more on that story — including photos of those oddly beautiful locusts — on the As It Happens website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Vancouver properties motion

CH: City Councillor Marcus Wong lives in the upscale British Properties neighbourhood of West Vancouver. Nowadays, it's pretty diverse. But not that long ago, Councillor Wong would have been prohibited from living there — unless he was a "servant of the occupier of the premises". In fact, there were still land title documents in that neighbourhood with what are called "covenants", saying people of colour who aren't servants cannot, quote, "reside or be allowed to remain on the premises." Unquote. Now, those rules may be vestigial. But Councillor Wong wanted them gone. So he introduced a motion to remove any remaining covenants in the district that discriminate based on race, gender, ancestry, or religion. And last night, it passed unanimously. Last week, Marcus Wong talked to CBC Vancouver's On the Coast about his efforts. And he started by reading from some of those racist land titles.

SOUNDCLIP

MARCUS WONG: So there's two parts. So the first part says that the grantee shall not sign a sign or transfer the set lands to anybody of African or Asiatic race or descent. And as well, no person of either African or Asiatic race or descent shall reside on this on the premises — except as servants.

GLORIA MACARENKO: What did you think when you saw those phrases?

MW: Well, I grew up in the British Properties, and I still live there. And when I was growing up, I always sort of knew in the back of my mind that in its history community that its history had this unfortunate part. And sort of always dangled above my head. And there's always urban myths about you know why somebody of my skin colour could live there. And so now that as a city councillor in West Vancouver, I thought it was really important to do something about it. You know, a lot of these clauses have been cancelled by homeowners through the Land Titles Survey Authority. But there are still some out there that have survived. And so you know, given that it's the Asian Lunar New Year coming up, and it's a time for renewal, a time for turning a new leaf, I thought was very important to do that at this time.

GM: Okay, well how about the conversations that you've had with your community, with your parents, with your family about all of this? I mean, how did they feel when they found out that these documents still exist?

MW: Well, it's always very awkward — especially for I think new Canadians that I speak to who come to Canada looking and hoping for a better life — where it’s somewhere safe that they can raise their children and grandchildren and really put down roots. And to buy a home, to have a covenant like that, that says actually, you know back in the day, you weren't welcome. Just it puts a very bad taste in my mouth.

CH: That was West Vancouver Councillor Marcus Wong, speaking with Gloria Macarenko, host of On the Coast. Yesterday, the municipality of West Vancouver passed a motion to void land covenants that discriminated against people of colour in the district's British Properties neighbourhood.

[Music: Ambient]

Quebec parolee

Guest: Jean-Claude Boyer

CH: The Trudeau government has ordered both the Parole Board of Canada and Correction Services to investigate the death of Marylene Levesque. The 22-year-old sex worker was found murdered in a Quebec City hotel room last week. A man named Eustachio Gallese has been charged with her murder. Mr. Gallese was out on day parole — allowed out of prison, after serving time for the murder of his wife. At a September hearing about the conditions of Mr Gallese's release, the board heard his parole officer describe a strategy that allowed Mr. Gallese to be with women, but only to address his, quote, "sexual needs." The board found that strategy to be troubling — but continued to allow Mr Gallese's parole. Jean-Claude Boyer is a former member of the parole board. We reached him in Montreal.

CO: Mr. Boyer, have you ever heard of someone on parole, with a history of violence towards women, being told by a parole officer that he could meet with women, but only to satisfy his sexual needs?

JEAN-CLAUDE BOYER: No. And I've been asking a lot of board members if that ever happened in their memory? And they all said no, it's impossible. We've never seen that before.

CO: It seems to be, in the conditional release report, it says that this is for risk management. What strategy of risk management could this be for?

JCB: It couldn’t be risk management. When you authorize a criminal who has a problem with woman to go meet with the most vulnerable women in the society who are prostitutes, it's not a risk management. it increases this risk. So I don't really understand what the Correctional Services did. And I don't understand what the board members who saw him in September were notified that it was an important risk for him to do that. Not to apply any rules.

CO: Right. Not to apply rules. Now, you reviewed the case, what were the limitations on Mr. Gallese’s ability to have contact with women?

JCB: If I was on the board, I would immediately suspend his freedom. Because he’s committing a criminal infraction, and you cannot let a person commit criminal infraction. Even if the Correctional Services say, oh, we planned this. No, it's not acceptable.

CO: He's breaking the law because he is paying for the services of a sex worker.

JCB: Yes. And now the law is clear that if a person soliciting sexual services from a person for money, then he’s committing a criminal infraction. You cannot authorize that as a board member, and as a Correctional Services officer.

CO: So who authorized that? How did that come about?

JCB: Correctional Services has a team who supervise. They have one agent and they have a team who supervise every case. And I don't understand how come the team came to that conclusion that having sexual relations for a man who has problem with woman would be correct, while they should know that it's a criminal crime when they do it, first. And then, it's a problem when you realize that the board member who should be the one to say, hey, stop right there. It's not normal what's going on here. And they didn’t do it.

CO: The understanding was is that he was a man who was not ready for a serious relationship with a woman, though he knew what his needs were. He had problems. He was impulsive. He had low tolerance. He was aggressive. But they decided that the best way to manage him was to allow him to meet his sexual needs. What responsibility did those parole workers have to the woman, to any sex workers that he encountered or he used?

JCB: Well, if a man has a problem with one specific problem — which in this case was relationship with woman — then everything was made to avoid it. And that was not the case. They said that a man who is very impulsive, who had a problem with a woman, who wanted a lot of control on woman, could have relationship with woman — which is not understandable.

CO: Does it suggest a double standard that a sex worker is less entitled to protection than women in the general population?

JCB: We don't see too many of those cases, but when you have a man who has a problem dealing with woman, you must be very careful. And in this case, they were not very careful.

CO: Mr. Boyer, thank you for speaking with us.

JCB: Oh thank you, Ms.

CO: Bye-bye.

JCB: Have a good evening.

CH: Jean-Claude Boyer is a former parole board member. We reached him in Montreal. Eustachio Gallese has been charged with murdering Marylene Levesque while he was on parole.

[Music: Sad instrumental]

NL storm mother

JANELLE KELLY: When people clear out their fire hydrants in honour of Carter, they are putting out blue ribbons on them.

LA: Yes.

JK: Have you seen many blue ribbons around?

LA: There's a fire hydrant right in front of my house, and someone has a blue ribbon tied on it. When I got home from his funeral yesterday, it was there. It made me smile to see that he touched so many people in his short, short life. And there's people doing multiple hydrants, not just one. There's people, you know, going up and down their whole street, and making sure everything in their neighbourhood is done.

JK: Did the firefighters tell you the fire hydrants… they weren't able to get to them that night?

LA: I'm not sure of what happened, but I know that there was a struggle with the fire hydrant. I'm not sure of the exact details.

JK: Since this has all happened, it seems like there's been a huge community outpouring of support.

LA: Oh my gosh, yes.

JK: Can you tell me about your mom's car? I saw on Twitter.

LA: Oh, my goodness. I had tweeted out the day before, the first day of my son's wake, so that would have been Thursday, I tweeted out at 11:45 a.m. that my mom's car was still encapsulated in snow and ice, and she needed help digging it out so that she could come and see Carter, next day, at the funeral home. And within one hour of me sending that tweet, her car was dug out, her vents were cleared and her hydrant was cleared. Just complete strangers showed up at her house and she. The support is just it’s so overwhelming, I can't. I'm so proud that he touched so many people like that. My nine-year-old, Jude, I was telling him about the group. And he said, well, Mommy, that's good because Carter might save a life.

JK: Is there anything you want to say about Carter? Anything else you'd like to add or about his grandparents? Anything at all? Pauline and Jim took me in as one of their own from the day they met me. They were my parents too. They were absolutely the best grandparents that you could have asked for. The bond that they had with their grandchildren, you'd never see anything like that ever again.

CH: That was Lindsay Anthony of Conception Bay South, speaking with the CBC's Janelle Kelly yesterday. The Carter Anthony Fire Hydrant Recovery Operation was launched in memory of her five-year-old son, who died in a house fire along with his grandparents earlier this month.

[Music: Horns!]

Part three: Jail phones, Angola corruption, Toy Story 3 stop motion, live action

Jail phones

Guest: Michael Spratt

CH: Tomorrow is Bell Canada's annual #BellLetsTalk day — when the telecommunications giant raises money for mental health causes. And, as always, there are those who want to talk about Bell. This year, inmates in Ontario jails are at the front of that line. They say that, for years, Bell's agreement to provide phone services to the province's Ministry of Correctional Services has been anything but beneficial to prisoners' mental health — making it much too difficult for them to reach family, legal representation, social service agencies, and more. Michael Spratt is a criminal defence lawyer based in Ottawa, who's been fighting for change to Bell's arrangement with Ontario jails since 2016. We reached him in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Spratt, just run us through this, if you're an inmate in an Ontario jail and you need to make a phone call, what do you have to do?

MICHAEL SPRATT: Well, the first step is not being in segregation or solitary confinement, and that's something that we're seeing more and more in jails. But when inmates are actually able to access the phone, the first thing they have to do is be able to call someone who can accept a collect call. Because that's the only way you can make calls from jail — to someone, ultimately, the inmates family or the inmate themselves — that can afford very high collect call rates.

CO: Okay. And that person has to be on a landline themselves, right, the person outside?

MS: Yeah, so you have to call someone on a landline. They have to be able to be there to accept the charges. And that person then can't forward you on to a cell phone or a three-way call. So there's no way to even sort of get around the requirements that it has to be to a landline.

CO: Okay. So besides the inconvenience of all this, what does it actually cost — that phone call?

MS: Well, this is the real rub. These phone prices are very expensive, and their prices that no one else in actuality pays. We're talking at least a dollar a call for local calls, and up to 30 dollars for a 20-minute long-distance call. And because inmates are often transferred away from their supports or away from where they live, phone bills can reach thousands of dollars a month.

CO: Who's making the profit from this?

MS: Well, it's Bell Canada who's making the profits, and the Ontario government. We know from the last contract that was released under a Freedom of Information Act in 2017 that it's an exclusive contract with Bell. And they provide a certain percentage of their profits back to the Ontario government.

CO: And we know how much that is?

MS: We don't. The amount or the percentage was redacted in that contract. But it's not out of the realm of possibility that we're talking about millions of dollars here.

CO: So I guess the public might think, well geez, I mean it's not a country club. I mean, let’s leave the profit side. Just put that aside for a moment. Just say, well, they have to have control over where those phone calls are going and who they're going to. They don't want any people directing criminal activity from inside. So what's wrong with having that kind of control over who they call and when they call?

MS: Well, there's a few problems with that. The first is that mostly these calls are being made to treatment centres, to addiction counselors, to mental health supports, to friends and family and to community supports like jobs and places for people to live when they get out of jail. And by cutting them off from those supports, we're setting them up for failure. And, in the end, study after study has shown that when we cut people off like this, there's a higher likelihood that people who aren't treated and are cut off and are treated humanely are at a higher risk of reoffending. And no one I think in our communities want to see that.

CO: There's a particular case of a man, Cleve Geddes, can you tell us about that?

MS: Yeah, so this is a very tragic case that was a subject of a coroner's inquest there. He took his own life in jail. He was in solitary confinement and in segregation and cut off from friends and family for a long time while in custody. And his mental health deteriorated. And one of the recommendations from that inquest was to change the way we deal with the phone system in jail.

CO: Wait a second, that coroner's inquest, this was three years ago. So if that was the recommendation, what has become of that?

MS: There's been no action. No action at all. And this is consistent with what we see in our jail system. Just in December, a Toronto judge of the Superior Court made some damning findings against the Ministry of Correctional Services and the Toronto South Detention Centre. And so it's not surprising that there's been no action on this. It's quite disappointing, but not surprising just.

CO: We should just remind people that we’re talking about jails here, not prison, right? How many of those people have not actually been convicted of anything?

MS: We're looking at rates as high as 75 per cent or more in Ontario of people who are in jail, that have not been convicted of anything and are waiting for their trial. And we know from the auditor general's report that was released last month that 33 per cent of these inmates suffer from mental health issues. And our institutions are not sufficiently funded, staffed, or programs to deal with those issues.

CO: You wrote an article in Canadian Lawyer Magazine pointing out the irony that Bell Canada is making these profits, while at the same time, it's running a program called “BellLetsTalk in order to raise awareness of mental health. What do you make of that?

MS: Well, I think that we need to take a hard look at sort of this corporate charity that's sprung up. It's good that corporations talk about these important issues. But Bell is profiting. They’re a billion dollar company. And through this #BellLetsTalk campaign, they receive incredible social media engagement for a fraction — a percentage of a percent of their profit.

CO: So where are we with this plan then? I mean, if they're still making the money on this, is there any movement on this or any thing that could persuade the government to think, well, this may be it's in the it's in the public interest to actually stop the system and make it easier and less expensive for people to make phone calls from jail?

MS: It certainly is the most humane thing to do. It's the most cost-effective thing to do. Because by saving a few dollars on phone calls, you actually can reduce recidivism, increase community safety and decrease the cost of incarceration. So there's every incentive to do it. But I don't have any confidence that this government will do it. We know the contract is up for renewal, but we need to have a government who is fully engaged and wants to make things better.

CO: Mr. Spratt, we'll leave it there. I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MS: No problem. Thanks so much.

CH: Michael Spratt is a criminal defence lawyer in Ottawa. That's where we reached him today. In a statement, Bell Canada said, quote, "rates for operator-assisted collect calls from Ontario correctional facilities are the same as Bell's public rates." Unquote.

[Music: Bright acoustic guitar]

FOA: Joe Exotic

CH: He goes by the cute nickname "Joe Exotic". But he is not cute. His real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage. And last week, he was sentenced to twenty-two years in a U.S. federal prison for, among other things, taking out a hit on someone. Mr. Maldonado-Passage is a former wildlife park owner who bred tiger cubs and charged people in malls to pet them. His intended target was an activist who repeatedly called him out for abusing animals.That activist is Carole Baskin. She spoke to As It Happens in 2018, after charges were laid against Mr. Maldonado-Passage.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: What kinds of threats have you had? What has alarmed you the most about what's been posted online about you?

CB: The threats that Joe Exotic has made online have included shooting a blow-up doll dressed to look like me. He's posted pictures holding a gun to the head of a mannequin dressed like me that was hanging. Frequently he loves to post video of himself blowing things up and would frequently say ‘This is for that expletive in Florida,’ I don't know if I can say what he says on your show. So I've been dealing with that since 2010 from him and for the last 20 years from others like him. And I’ve had, over the years, a number of people have contacted me saying that he had tried to hire them to kill me. And every time that happens I turn it over to law enforcement. I tried to get a restraining order here in Florida, but in our county you have to have been physically struck by the person twice before they’ll issue a restraining order. So even though I had these images of him blowing up the doll and he had a show where he had a glass jar sitting on his desk with what looked to be my head in the jar. But they said until he actually hit me twice then they wouldn't be able to issue a restraining order.

CO: Must be extremely difficult to live with these kinds of threats, not just from this man but from others. What was what drives you in the efforts to try and protect these animals?

CB: These cubs that they ripped from their mothers and deprive of the food and the sleep and nutrition that they need and then they pimp them out to people that will pay $20 to have their pictures made with them — those cubs are absolute innocents in this scheme and nobody is willing to get out there and take the risk that I've been willing to take to show what's going on behind the scenes and how those cubs are being punched and shaken and treated with such abject cruelty. And as long as we don't speak out they continue to do those abusive things to these animals.

CH: That was animal rights activist Carole Baskin speaking to Carol in September 2018. Last week, Joseph Maldonado-Passage was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for taking out a hit on Ms. Baskin — and for killing five tigers at his wildlife park because he, quote, "needed the empty cages." Unquote.

[Music: Industrial hum]

Angola corruption

Guest: Rafael Marquez de Morais

CH: Isabel dos Santos's empire is crumbling. The daughter of Angola's former president and the richest woman in Africa is the subject of a recently-released trove of documents. They show how Ms. Dos Santos amassed her wealth — through business dealings that often came at the expense of the Angolan economy — and the Angolan people. Since those leaks were published, the Angolan government has charged her with embezzlement and money laundering. And companies she had links with are severing their ties. The revelations around Ms. dos Santos's wealth are nothing new to Rafael Marquez de Morais. He's an investigative journalist in Angola, who spent years digging for the truth about her personal fortune. We reached him in Frankfurt, Germany.

CO: Rafael, as an Angolan investigative journalist, you broke this story years ago. What's it like to see Isabel dos Santos exposed finally in this way?

RAFAEL MARQUEZ DE MORAIS: On one hand, it's a vindication for all the years that I have been exposing her. On the other hand, it's sad that we in Africa continue to rely exclusively on the credibility of Western outlets and Western voices to address our own problems.

CO: What was this story? So let's go back to what you did, because when you did this story, you exposed this woman as having had this wealth by having taken it and broken a number of laws. What did you report?

RMM: I reported on how Isabel dos Santos amassed her wealth through presidential decrees — that the father would issue a presidential decree assigning her a particular stake in a state business or sovereign guarantee for loans that the state took to provide businesses for her. And, on the other hand, I also exposed her, how she used the national oil company, Sonangol, as her own private bank. And after all that exposure, I was harassed. I went through hell because of the information I brought out. And in 2013, I — in collaboration with the Forbes magazine — myself and the editor Kerry Dolan wrote a big story on Isabel dos Santos. And what happened? Weeks later, she bought the rights to publish Forbes in Portuguese.

CO: [chuckling] The very newspaper you had been working for in order to do the expose/

RMM: Forbes, the fortune magazine, the U.S. fortune magazine, revered in the business world. And she bought the rights to publish this media outlet in Portuguese, by way of basically stopping Forbes of further collaborations with me. So the way the Angolan elite was awash in money enabled them to buy international recognition, to buy international respectability, to buy international PR. These same international respectability, this credibility that they used to rob their own people that has turned on them. And that is the difference with Luanda Leaks. Essentially, it's the whole world that clapped Isabel dos Santos as the richest woman in Africa, as a savvy businesswoman turning on her. When for many years, anyone who dared to defy her was seen as an activist, as an antigovernment person and so forth.

CO: And you were you were ultimately jailed for reporting you were doing, is that right?

RMM: I was jailed for exposing her father as corrupt. But I suffered at the hands of these individuals. I had my life turned upside down by the corrupt officials I investigated in the country. And yet, I stood the ground because I believe, as an Angolan citizen, that my people deserve better. And it's my duty as a journalist to seek the truth.

CO: Now the president — her father is no longer the president — is that why you think that these leaks that have emerged about her, about the holding she had, about how she went about becoming the richest woman in Africa, is the fact that her father is no longer president that's allowed for that?

RMM: Absolutely. Because while her father was president, be it the West, be it China, we’re pitted against each other in the race for Angolan resources — particularly oil. So no one I remember going to many Western countries and having meetings with officials, and being told, look, we're friends with President dos Santos and with his government. So don't come to bad mouth your own government. And I said I'm not badmouthing anyone, but the levels of corruption in the country are unbearable and unsustainable. But no one would listen. Very few would listen because it was profitable for Western companies mainly that have benefited greatly from that plundering.

CO: And you've pointed out that Angola should be a country of wealth for everybody. It's the second biggest oil producer in all of Africa. It's a major producer of diamonds. And yet, you have a third of the population lives in dire poverty. So what has it meant having this wealth transferred into the hands of family members of the president? What effect did that have over these years on the people of Angola?

RMM: Corruption in Angola killed, literally killed. In 2015-2016, we had an outbreak of yellow fever that killed many, many, many Angolans for lack of basic medicine and basic health care. And in those years, what did Isabel dos Santos and others do? They would take pictures with Hollywood stars, throw lavish parties at Cannes, travel to Hollywood, showcase what the money stolen from Angola could do in the glittery world — the world with people like Paris Hilton and so forth — when Angolans were dying.

CO: What are the chances are there that she's actually going to be prosecuted and found guilty of any of these charges?

RMM: It's most likely that she will be if justice takes its course. The chances of getting convicted are very high. But it's most likely that she will not set foot in the country to face the charges against her in the country. And that will mean a trial in absentia.

CO: Rafael, it’s an amazing story. I appreciate all the work you have done to try and expose it over these years. And thank you for talking to us tonight.

RMM: Thank you very much, bye.

CH: Rafael Marquez de Morais is an investigative journalist in Angola. Today, he was in Frankfurt, Germany.

[Music: Sad piano and guitar]

Toy Story 3 animation/ live action

Guest: Morgan McGrew

CH: For fans of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Rex, this may sound familiar.

SOUNDCLIP

WOODY: Now, come on guys. We all knew this day was coming.

REX: We're getting thrown away!

WOOD: No, no one’s getting thrown away.

STINKY PETE: We ain't ever again played with.

BUZZ: Hold on, this is no time to be hysterical.

CH: That's a clip from the emotionally harrowing "Toy Story 3". Sort of. It sounds exactly like the 2010 animated movie — but it looks a lot different. That's because, for the last eight years, brothers Morgan and Mason McGrew have been working on a shot-for-shot recreation of the movie. And on Saturday, they released it on YouTube. We reached Morgan McGrew in Des Moines, Iowa.

CO: Morgan, what's it like to finally get your version of “Toy Story 3” out?

MORGAN MCGREW: It feels really nice. It's a lot of weight off of both my brother Mason and I's shoulders. And it also feels a little weird because it's been so long off and on working on kind of a tedious project. [CO chuckles] And it feels a little different not having that weight there either.

CO: Okay. This is a weight that you and your brother put on your own shoulders when Mason was around twelve and you were around 15. So what inspired you to do your own version of this movie?

MM: Well, we never set out to make it I guess like our own thing. We always wanted it to very much be a tribute to the great work that is Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” and it was it was very much their work and Disney's work that inspired us. We’ve always have been really inspired by the world that Pixar creates through their films — and especially to the Toy Story films. And we kind of wanted to bring that to our world and kind of explore that.

CO: Okay, lots of kids do that. So they go and see the film. [laughing] They don’t make their own.

MM: Yeah, I think we are also very interested in filmmaking. And I think it was a kind of an interesting opportunity to hop on while we are crazy enough as kids to begin something that allowed us to develop our filmmaking skills.

CO: Can you just tell us what yours looks like that's different from how the original “Toy Story 3” is?

MM: Sure. So the title of the film is “Toy Story 3 in Real Life”. So it's supposed to look like what “Toy Story 3” would look like if it wasn't animated and it was in our real world. But ironically, we did have to use animation — stop motion animation. Which is a process where you take a puppet, or a clay figure, or what have you, and move it a little bit, take a photo and then another photo and then another photo and put them all together and then that creates the illusion of movement. So it's a shot-for-shot remake of “Toy Story 3” using puppets and stop motion animation.

CO: And using toys.

MM: Yes, yeah, using toys.

CO: There's a lot of toys in what I've seen of it. So where did you get them from?

MM: Yeah, there are a ton of toys — more than you could probably imagine [chuckling]. Some of them we had to search online for. They were very specific things. Like there's a sequence in “Toy Story 3” where Ken does a fashion show for Barbie and has a whole bunch of outfits [CO laughs]. And we had to locate all of those. EBay helped a lot with that.

CO: And how time-consuming was it to do that stop motion animation?

MM: It could get pretty crazy some of them like a second shot could sometimes work out nicely, and be a couple hours of work — even that's quite a bit. But then some could get really crazy, and three seconds or whatever a film would be like eight hours straight of shooting.

CO: You and your brother just in your bedroom doing this every Saturday morning or something?

MM: Yeah, that's a crazy thing too. Well, it would be whatever time we could find. You know, whether we weren’t at a job, or on a freelance job, or whatever. It would be whatever time we could find.

CO: This is over eight years.

MM: Yeah.

CO: That's a big chunk of your life [chuckling] when you're young.

MM: It is. And the interesting thing about that is it's not like it was eight years straight. There were periods, of course, where we'd be at school and we couldn't really work on it. But then again, we’d also kind of work on scenes at school too. But yeah, the biggest thing is that it's been a part of our lives for that long.

CO: You have people starring it, including you and your brother, right?

MM: Yes, and our cousin, and family friends.

CO: [laughing] Okay. And so how much support, how much help did you get from your parents?

MM: A ton. We've been so incredibly grateful for all of us all of the support that they've given us, always there whenever we wanted to give up [short breath] or feel like maybe it wasn't worth it. Our dad is also very crafty. He's a really talented woodworker. So we'd always kind get help from him to build certain props and things. And that was actually very fun getting to work on those things with him.

CO: What is it about this movie? What is it you liked so much about the story of Toy Story?

MM: [chuckling] I feel like it's very deep. It can get kind of dark at times. It's just very real and it's very emotional. That last bit just kind of makes you feel like you are Andy, giving your childhood away.

CO: The scene of the conclusion, Andy going away to college, growing up. So that kind of follows the lives of you and your brother, right?

MM: It does. Yeah, it does pretty close, yeah. When I played Andy, I was very much around that same age when I would have been headed off to college. So yeah, it always felt kind of right, I guess.

Just finally, what's been the reaction on the part of Disney? Because we know the corporation is notorious for being very protective of its copyright. The big multinational foot comes down pretty hard on those who take their intellectual property. Have they responded to your film?

MM: When we finally ended up uploading it to YouTube, it was blocked. And we were expecting that. It was blocked worldwide due to a copyright from Disney. But we filed the statement, and then they lifted it.

CO: And your argument is that it's not imitation, it’s a celebration?

MM: Yes.

CO: Morgan, congratulations. And thank you.

MM: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

CH: Morgan McGrew of Des Moines, Iowa, and his brother Mason, created their own version of "Toy Story 3" over eight years. They just released it on YouTube.

January 28, 2020 episode transcript

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