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The Current Transcript for June 19, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We're seeing across Canada the numbers are dropping, and so people may be feeling less anxious because there's simply less worried about getting COVID-19.

MATT GALLOWAY: Three months into this pandemic, how are you feeling? This is a question we were all asking each other in March and April and as the abnormal becomes a new normal, we'll check back in on our anxiety and some of the best ways to deal with the stress of the moment. That's coming up. In 30 minutes the two Michaels. It has been 557 days of captivity and interrogation in a Chinese prison for Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Today, the Canadians were charged by Chinese authorities with espionage and could face life in prison if convicted. The latest from Beijing in half an hour. And then who wants to lead Canada's official opposition?

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VOICE: A lot of Canadians are getting tired of a prime minister who's all about socks and selfies. That doesn't help a small business owner. That doesn't help a student with increasing debt and now with high unemployment rates as a result of COVID-19.

MG: After two debates, is the landscape any clearer on who could lead the Conservative Party? Our national affairs panel is here in an hour. But we begin on a day celebrating black freedom and the echoes of the past and the protests of today. Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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On Juneteenth, Bakari Sellers reflects on struggle for Black freedom through generations of his own family

Guests: Bakari Sellers

MG: Today is Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day. It's the day when, in 1865, slavery officially ended in the United States. But more than 150 years on, we know that racism and violence against African-Americans didn't end that day.

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VOICE: Guns went off. They shot for eight seconds. They shot 22 students. 80 percent of them was shot in the back of the head. The back, the ball of their feet. Three of them, including one high school, a 16-year-old high school student, Middleton, was killed. I was shot.

MG: That's Cleveland Sellers remembering the deadly Orangeburg Massacre. On the 8th of February, 1968, in the span of 8 seconds, South Carolina Highway Patrol opened fire on protesters, killing three and injuring many more. Bakari Sellers, Cleveland's son, wasn't born yet, but that day shaped his life and his politics. Bakari was the youngest person ever elected to the South Carolina legislature. He's now a political analyst for CNN and the author of a new book, My Vanishing Country: A Memoir. Bakari Sellers is in Columbia, South Carolina. Bakari, good morning.

BAKARI SELLERS: Thank you so much for having me. Good morning. Especially on this amazing holiday. I'm glad to be here with you.

MG: People may not know the full details around Juneteenth. What is the significance of today in an African-American history?

BAKARI SELLERS: So it's amazing that this day has moved to the forefront of consciousness, not just in America, but around the world, because this is the day that the final slaves were notified in Texas that we were free for a long period of time for more than a year. You had individuals in Texas who remained enslaved, who had no knowledge of the emancipation. And on this day, union soldiers notified them that they were free. And this is the day that we document that all of us were free. There is a saying that we can't be free until we all are free. Harkens back to this moment. What does the day mean to you? The day means to me a rebirth and rejuvenation. But I also am so prideful because four hundred and one years ago we came to this country and were stripped of absolutely everything in bondage. I think about the millions of individuals who did not make the trip, make the voyage. They were tossed into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I think about all of those my ancestors who were beat and sold, you know, for me to have my vanishing country, which is a New York Times bestseller. So people often that even when people asked me for an autograph or to sign the book, I'm reminded that I'm signing a name that's not mine. Because when my family came off the coast of Sierra Leone onto the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, the brothers were sold one to the sellers family and one to the Milhouse family. And so even when I signed my name on what is one of the pinnacles of highlights of my life, I'm signing a name that harkens back to those days when we were enslaved, a name that's not mine.

MG: We just heard at the beginning of our conversation that clip of your dad talking about that day 52 years ago. What's it like for you to hear him speak about that moment?

BAKARI SELLERS: Well you snuck that clip up on me. I didn't know you were going to play that one. I get really emotional, because my father's my hero and my father is 75. I'm 35. And the problem we have in our country is that we're still sharing many of the same experiences. But, you know, I hear the pain in his voice. I hear I see when I see him, I see that his eyes don't pop like they used to from shedding so many tears from so many loved ones lost through the struggle. I see that his shoulders don't stand as upright as they once did from carrying the burdens of a generation. And it's hard because like I like I write that February 8th is the most important day of my life, even though it was, you know, 16 years before I was born. I'm the blood of my family literally runs to the soil of our great country. But you still have to push it to be a more perfect union. All those lives lost, all those lives shattered uniquely enough. My sister was actually born while my father was in prison. We had this picture. Both of them had these big afro and my mom and dad and there on the prison yard and they get another inmate to take a Polaroid. I'm only thirty five, so I don't really know what a Polaroid really picture. You got to wave and shake a little bit. And he's given my sister a bottle. That was the first time that he met his oldest child, my big sister. So the pain and trauma from the movement, it still lives on and you heard that in his voice.

MG: What happened on the 8th of February, 1962?

BAKARI SELLERS: The students at South Carolina State, they were protesting what the history books called the last vestige of discrimination. It was a small whites only bowling alley. Thing about that, all of this carnage because black kids wanted to bowl in South Carolina. My father was on campus. He had been leading protest. He was a member of Snik. He was he was promoting Africana studies, which was an African-American studies curriculum at South Carolina State. And they went down. They protested. They went back to their campus. And I have to stress this. Imagine on a college campus, they were on their campus, they built this huge bonfire. State troopers lined up along the embankment in front of their campus and for eight seconds, they fired shots. My father was shot in the shoulder that night. Three young men were killed. Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond and Delanoe Middleton. And my father went to the infirmary. They told him there was nothing they could do for him there. He had to go to the hospital. And he was pointed out when he got to the hospital, ironically, by the only black sheriff's deputy in Orangeburg County at the time and he was arrested. They arrested my father and charged with five felony counts, looking at a maximum of 75 years in prison. They deemed him to be an outside agitator. And all nine officers who fired shots into the group of students, killing three and wounding so many were charged, tried, and they were all found not guilty. They backdated my father's indictment from February 8th to February 6th. They charged him, tried him and convicted him of writing. He became the first and only one man right in the history of this country. And you know that pain. We still live with it. That trauma, we still live with it because people just they just compartmentalise the day. Well, my father actually went to trial. He actually went to prison and then he had a felony on his record until he was pardoned. Twenty five years later. And so just imagine a black man in the south with a felony on his record. How difficult that was for my family and how difficult that was for my mother and my older siblings. But my parents did everything they could to to raise their children and to make ends meet. And for that, I'm very, very thankful. You say it was the most important day in your life. Why? Because I think that that day and thinking about all of those individuals, I live for Henry, Samuel and Delanoe. I live for those three young men who paid the ultimate price. I think about the struggle of my father and that struggle defines me today because that struggle continues. And even as we celebrate Juneteenth and we celebrate our freedom from slavery, we realise that we still are not free. And I am always on this journey, too, as you you may hear my twins in the background to make sure that they can be free, free to achieve the ideals, not just life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but the ideals of love, truth, justice and peace. And, you know, we still have we made progress. I don't ever want anyone to believe or to say that. Boukhari Sellar says we haven't done anything because we've made progress. My father's work, his generation's work was not in vain, but we still have yet a ways to go.

MG: You see now, scenes to a lot of people who were around during the movement in the 60s, scenes that are reminiscent of then huge crowds of people out protesting on the streets. What does your father think of the Black Lives Matter protests that are happening today?

BAKARI SELLERS: My father appreciates them. You know, protesting is not meant for everyone. Everyone doesn't have to be a social justice warrior or advocate. But my father find some solace in that he's created a path where his son and my, I have a 15-year-old daughter and 17 month old twins and my 15-yearold daughter, there is a joy and an innate sadness. And let me explain that. And she went out and she protested in the streets. My my father was so thrilled about that. She made her Black Lives Matter signs. She had her mask on in two of her. Her other black girlfriends went out there and they just marched in. They were exhausted. They said, Daddy, I didn't know that marching was this tiring. I said, yes, it it is. But it was so much pride. But then the sadness comes in like, why does my 15 year old black daughter have to write Black Lives Matter on a sign and go out and yell it at the top of her lungs? Why? Why does she have to reaffirm who she is? You know, why can't she be like just for. For the purposes of this example, why can't she be like Barron Trump or why can't she be like any other, you know, white kid in this country where their life matters? We know that and they don't have to advocate or push for people to recognise their humanity.

MG: The President Trump tweeted during these protests, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. What do we know about the history of that rhetoric and that phrase?

BAKARI SELLERS: Oh, it's racist. That's what we know. It harkens back to 1967 where there was a Southern segregationist mayor from South Florida who utilised that same phrase. The phrase was meant to say, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, meaning they were going to shoot protesters. And coming from a family where actually, no, a protester who was shot. I take that extremely serious. It goes to a few things with this president in this moment. This moment requires someone to have some sense of history, but even more importantly, emotionally, they have to be compassionate, have to have empathy and have to have some notion of what justice is. These are things that evade our leadership today and it was disappointing because not only was he ignorant of that fact, but he said it aloud only to heighten and inflame tensions and create more culture wars, which he views as the way that he could be successful.

MG: He also talked about, I mean, this was the plan to hold a rally, a huge rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, today. That's since been postponed, but what did you think when you heard of those plans?

BAKARI SELLERS: I was very clear on CNN one morning. I said, you never want an arsonist next to a burning house. And that's the way I feel about it. You don't want someone who's ill equipped to talk about issues of race. Just for your listeners, who some you know, this is not a partisan statement at all. Some may have an affinity for the president of the United States. But even with that affinity, you have to understand that his biggest blind spot is the issue of race. So on a day where we're celebrating freedom from slavery, on a day that has these these racial, it's not even an undertone overturned. It's not a day for him to utilize that for his rhetoric.

MG: Also also in Tulsa, which has I mean, this is the 99th anniversary of the race riots in Tulsa.

BAKARI SELLERS: Do you know the song You dropped a bomb on me, baby? That's a song about Tulsa, Oklahoma. Many people don't know that and pardon me for singing this morning.

MG: People who may not know the song or the history, what's the history of what happened in Tulsa?

BAKARI SELLERS: So Tulsa, is what was known as Black Wall Street. And 99 years ago, Black Wall Street was a place where black folk had banks, wealth, access to resources, capital, small businesses, large businesses. I mean, it was just this epicentre for black economic mobility, upward mobility. And there was a race riot there where the United States government literally dropped a bomb on Tulsa and it blew up black Wall Street. And so it was history defines it as the largest incident of racial carnage in the streets that we've had. It's also a story that's not that well known. It's a lot like the Orangeburg Massacre. And so then you had, I believe, it was a Gap band who did, "You dropped a bomb on me." And it was a tribute or ode to that time in our history. And yes, that's so the president was going to Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth and was not aware of either. He was not aware of Juneteenth, per Brad Pascoe, who's his campaign manager and he was not aware of the history of Tulsa, which is president, for me, that level of ignorance is just astounding.

MG: You know those stories because you grew up in this movement and you grew up surrounded by this. One of the things you write about in the book is how your father talked, not about the heroes of the civil rights movement being people who had died years before or been involved in the movement years before, but the people who were around you and the civil rights heroes still walk amongst us. Why is that important for you to think about?

BAKARI SELLERS: That's I mean, I'm. Glad you asked that question. One of the best lines. You know, when you're writing a book and you go back and read it, one of the lines that jumped off the pages of that when I was reading it was my father teaching us that heroes walk amongst us. He didn't want us to believe that the only heroes we had in the movement were Martin, Malcolm and Rosa. He rejected that notion. And he also made sure that all of us knew that we were a product of the proverb it takes a village to raise a child. And so I grew up with Marion Barry and Julian Bond and Stokely Carmichael and Kathleen Cleaver. I grew up learning from Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. A lot of the things that I learnt about my history, a lot of the things that I write about are not things that are taught in American schools or any schools, for that matter. And those are things I passed on to my children. So it gives you an innate sense of pride, but also when folks read it, and I hope that that everyone listening will pick up a copy. It gives you a sense of understanding of what it means to be black or a person of colour, not just in the United States, but throughout the diaspora. And that pain and trauma that goes along with it. And that lesson that my father taught me is something that I hold very, very close to my heart.

MG: You speak about carrying the torch and how your father has passed the torch on to you. What's the weight of carrying that torch?

BAKARI SELLERS: Sometimes it gets more heavy than others. The weight is is making people proud and living for others. And let me be clear, my father was a part of the initio generation. In 1955, Emmett Till was a 13 year old boy who was brutally beaten and thrown in the bottom of the Mississippi River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. And the white woman on her deathbed admitted that she made the story up. But he, as my father lived for Emmett Till, I lived for Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond and Delanoe Middleton, who were killed in the Arthur massacre. But see, now I also live for George Floyd and Brianna Taylor in a Marlboro and all of those individuals who we see who've been murdered at the hands of state violence. And that just gets heart and that that burden gets heavy. But it's one that I will drink a little. Jamison, go to sleep, wake up and be excited to go out and tackle with the world again tomorrow.

MG: You'll see people protesting on the streets and you'll hear people say the protests are fine, but what really is going to change the channel, what will move this forward is in November. You need to register, you need to get out and you need to vote. What would you say to people who say that voting doesn't matter? We've heard promises before and nothing's going to change. What would you say to those people?

BAKARI SELLERS: I think that especially with the handling of coronavirus, it's not far fetched to say that your life depends on this.

MG: A virus that that has been in the United States, but elsewhere disproportionately affected black folk.

BAKARI SELLERS: Exactly. But I will tell you that there are people who we continue to have to say and then give them a reason to vote and that's that's the difference. It's not about who you're running against us, about what you standing for.

MG: Do you think when it comes to politics and you write about Obama. You write about initially being a little reluctant to endorse him as president. You eventually did. Do you think he was too tepid on the issue of race?

BAKARI SELLERS: Very much so. I think that in a lot of it had to do with the fact he had to walk a very thin line. Now, you, on a bigger Obama fan than myself, but on the issue of race, I say in the book that he was tepid. And I describe the reasons why. I mean, he was going to be vilified for taking any position on race. And so the meat, mediocre position he took on race. You know, he would have been vilified regardless. So, you know, I don't it's kind of like have you ever met anybody who's halfway pregnant? The answer is no. Either you are or you aren't. And so he should have just delved right into the issues of race instead of trying to to just reach in slightly, because when he reached in slightly, he was still vilified nonetheless.

MG: I guess that just speaks to the cynicism that some people might have. That it doesn't matter who you put in office, if you're really trying to tackle these issues in a big way, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

BAKARI SELLERS: Yes, and that's why I'm a huge fan of 44 of Barack Obama, because I think outside of a few issues on the edges, including the issue of race, he was he was one of the better presidents we've ever had. But I'm encouraging everyone, I mean, when you run for office, there's some issues that you have a be full throated and go all the way in and that nuance in that line that Barack Obama chose to walk, I think is something that even in hindsight, he wishes he would have just ignored and just chosen a side.

MG: Just finally, this moment to so many people, people used the word unprecedented. People feel as though things are happening and you're seeing change when it comes to policing already, but people are looking for for greater change for, for more than just a moment. What will show you that this moment is more than than a blip, that it becomes a movement, that it has lasting impact?

BAKARI SELLERS: Well, I am, I'm taking it day by day before I start handing out participation trophies. You know, I think about Mitt Romney who got so much praise simply because he said Black Lives Matter. He didn't put up a policy proposal. He didn't try to implement any change. He just literally said the words. It's going to take more than that. I'm really happy though, of what he said. I'm happy of the stance that Roger Goodell and the NFL took. I'm happy of Taylor Swift speaking out. I'm happy that all of these people are speaking out. I'm happy that Netflix is stepping up and Ben and Jerry's is stepping up and Pelleton. All of these corporations are stepping up. But we've had moments this before, whether or not it was with Emmett Till in 1955 or when protesters were beaten coming across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and in the 60s, or whether or not it was a Charleston massacre, which we remembered five years ago this week. I am optimistic, but in the words of politicians of yesteryear, you always have to trust, but verify.

MG: Bakari Sellers, it's a real pleasure to talk to you.

BAKARI SELLERS: Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to joining you again one day soon.

MG: Yeah, in person. Thank you very much.

BAKARI SELLERS: All good. Thank you. Have a great day.

MG: Bakari Sellers is a political analyst with CNN. His new book is called My Vanishing Country: A Memoir. The CBC News is next. And then two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been detained in China for 557 days. Now they've been formally charged with espionage. I'll speak with the Globe and Mail's Beijing correspondent about what that means for the two men for Canada coming up in six minutes. And also, jobs cuts, schools out, loved ones lost. This pandemic has hit Canadians hard. In a moment, COVID's impact on our mental health. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor face a Chinese justice system with a 99% conviction rate

Guests: Nathan Vanderklippe

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

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MG: Still to come, our national affairs panel weighs in on the Conservative Party leadership race. But first, tensions heat up even further between Canada and China.

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MG: They've been in jail in China for 557 days, reportedly with the lights on at all times, often interrogated for several hours a day. Now, Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig have been formally charged with espionage. This, three weeks after a B.C. court ruled that Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's extradition case in Canada, could go ahead. Nathan Vanderklippe is the Beijing based correspondent for the Globe and Mail, and he is in Beijing. Nathan, hello.

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Hello.

MG: What exactly are these charges against the two Michaels?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Well, they're both being charged with illegally sort of obtaining state secrets and espionage and transmitting those two parties outside of the country to foreign parties. And the foreign ministry today in China made a point of saying that these are considered serious charges and that's, in fact, a legal term because, you know, under the Chinese criminal law, that would suggest that the minimum sentence that's being contemplated for them is 10 years and the maximum sentence is life in prison.

MG: Do we have any sense as to what the basis of these charges are?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: None. The two michaels will no doubt have some sense of what the evidence against them is because they have been interrogated at some length. I'm told their lawyers have been presented with some of that evidence. But because this is considered a state secrets case, it is kept very, very secret from the public. That includes sort of not a lot of insight into what might be in the indictment. I asked today at the foreign ministry whether they could give us some sense of what they're actually accused of doing and got nothing in response. China says that the evidence is solid in the case is solid. But beyond that, we know absolutely nothing.

MG: What happens now when it comes to a trial? What sort of trial would the Micheals get?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Likely a trial that doesn't last more than a day and a trial from their part that they might have little notice about. We know this in part because of what has happened to other Canadians who've been in similar situations, who've described that the length of time before a trial could be lengthy. I mean, we could be looking at another year or more before a trial takes place. And then after that, there could be another lengthy delay before there's an actual sentencing. And we've seen other cases where where people wait numerous years after a trial before sentencing comes down. So what lies ahead is sort of a very uncertain timeline. What's more certain is that the two Michaels will remain in detention conditions that are, you know, very different from what we might expect in Canada.

MG: Is the sense that they would be charged that it was inevitable that they would be charged, having been held for 557 days? Was the momentum moving always in this direction?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Not necessarily. So they spent the first six months being interrogated by the minister of state security here. And after that, they were handed over to the more formal justice system, in which case there was more questioning. And then there is a formal back and forth between the police to do the questioning and the prosecutors who have to decide whether or not to accept the case. That case was sent back a few times. That mechanism is typically used as a delay mechanism to sort of leave in this case. It seems as if there was a window that was left open before formally charging these two men. There was a window left open to not charge them, because one of the decisions open to prosecutors in China, as they considered the evidence brought before them, is to say there's no case here, but there are procedural timelines which are not completely fixed. But in Chinese law, those procedural timelines suggested that by this weekend there had to be a decision to charge or not to charge. So there was it seems as if that decision was left unmade until the decision was made on the Canadian side with regard to the first hearing and the extradition case against Meng Wanzhou when she was denied in that hearing. We've now got this result in China.

MG: So is the sense that if Meng Wanzhou, if that extradition case did not move forward, then these two men may not have been charged?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Had she been released, which I think most people would say was a fairly low probability, given the fact that there, you know, there had been the ability to appeal any sentence. But had you know, China has made very clear, whenever it's asked about the two Micheal's, they say release Meng Wanzhou.And there is a fairly widespread expectation that if she is released, then perhaps things can change for them. But she wasn't released. And so now they've been sort of placed into this justice system, which moves towards sort of a 99.9 plus percent conviction rate.

MG: What can Canada do about this and what support would Canada get in whatever it can do from other countries around the world?

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: Well, I think this has been a question that has that has concern not just Canada, but other other countries that have had their citizens taken in the midst of in the midst of sort of political disputes with China and that's a difficult question. I mean, there are measures that are that are harder measures in terms of trying to exact reprisals by in trade and other ways. But all of those, I think, for the Canadian government have to be sort of measured against this sort of action that a government in Canada wants to take. And, of course, the sort of action that a government China is willing to take, one would expect to be different from what a what a Western democracy would take, which which I think is at the heart of the issue here. You have a government in China that is willing to exact trade retaliation and other things where you have a sort of Western governments that try in some ways to be principled in terms of how they govern. And there is there's a mismatch there. And so what the Canadian government has tried to do is to work with other Western democracies to apply pressure that way, to make the argument that if it could happen to our people, it could happen to your people. This is not just a Canadian concern. This is a global concern. But, of course, you know, trying to get another country to really go to bat for your people is a difficult thing because every country has its own interests in China.

MG: Nathan, good to speak with you about this. I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE: You're welcome.

MG: Nathan Vannerklippe is The Globe and Mail's Beijing based correspondent.

Mental heath in the post-pandemic life

Guests: Roger McIntyre, Eva Holland

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

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VOICE 1: How are you doing with everything?

VOICE 2: I don't know. As good as anybody else, I guess. It's just, it's tough. It's the like the virus part doesn't really bother me. Like if I get sick, I get sick. You know, I'm relatively healthy, should be fine, but I think I would be fine. I have a super healthy. She's also younger than me. She'll be fine. Kids will be fine. So the virus part doesn't bother me. It's just it's the more the stress of the money. I mean, you go from having some kind of income to having zero income.

VOICE 1: Zero, yeah.

MG: Anxiety about jobs, the future and physical well-being have become all too common during the COVID-19 pandemic. That conversation you just heard first aired on an episode of the CBC podcast, Other People's Problems. But no doubt you, your friends and family have raised similar concerns. While thousands of people have died in Canada from COVID-19, some doctors are warning another health crisis is on the horizon. A mental health crisis. Dr Roger McIntyre is professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the head of the University Health Network's Mood Disorders Pharmacology Unit. Doctor, good morning.

ROGER MCINTYRE: Good morning, Matt. Nice to be with you.

MG: Great to have you. We just heard that little clip of a patient and a therapist talking about the pandemic. What are you hearing? I mean, does that sound familiar in terms of what you're hearing from patients?

ROGER MCINTYRE: It does sound familiar. I think what's really important to highlight is the way you preface the story that we for good reason, are faced with a physical threat with respect to the virus. Well, we're also faced with as a mental health threat. And I have and so I've been quite struck by the degree of replication of research findings that have sought to evaluate quantitatively the distress that our population is experiencing. You know, we have a crisis in science, one being we have difficulty replicating things. And that's something that is a longer conversation. This is highly replicated, whether we're looking at countries of the OECD, whether we're looking at low and middle income countries, it doesn't matter which age group we're looking at. We are seeing surreal levels of depression, anxiety and distress probably hurt. Just two days ago, Oxfam just released their report, which included fifteen hundred plus Canadians who took part in that survey of five countries. 7 out of 10 Canadians who responded say they have high levels of distress and society and fatigue and isolation. And this is the preface to what will be I think, unfortunately, unless we get ahead of this, the second curve and the second curve of suicide and mental illnesses that are linked to suicide like depression.

MG: You said you described this as surreal levels?

ROGER MCINTYRE: It truly is. In terms of the percentage of our population that are reporting levels of distress. For example, last week, you know, we heard from the University of Chicago, the National Opinion Research Centre, that Americans are reporting a striking low level of feeling happy. Only 14 percent of Americans self happy. But the other part of that survey, which didn't receive as much attention as adults, 55 to 60 percent of the population reporting significant degrees of anxiety and depression. One other aspect though Matt, which I think really informs the discussion, is the importance for granularity. For example, what we've learnt in the last three months with COVIDis that details matter. There are subgroups in our population that are most at risk. We've heard a lot about our elderly population or people with pre-existing conditions. When we look at the distress, I think it would be inaccurate to say that, you know, 10 of the 10 or 100 of 100 people in our society are very distressed. What I would say is that there are subgroups that are really emerging as particularly reporting high levels of distress are replicated, finding as women that came out of the Oxfam study. But at the Nanos poll study here in Canada, women reporting higher levels of depression and anxiety. Also from the Oxfam study is people of minority people who have less economic advantage in people with pre-existing mental illness. We just completed a study in China. People who have pre-existing depression reporting higher levels of depression and anxiety this time to those who don't.

MG: You raised the issue of suicide and I know you've been doing some work and looking specifically at suicide. Briefly, what is your sense as to what we might see when it comes to rates in the months ahead?

ROGER MCINTYRE: Well, you're right. We're doing a lot of work on this in U.S. and Canada. And I would say that we have a call to action here now in the sense that one of the most replicated observations in suicide research for a population health perspective is the association, not the causation, the association between unemployment, which creates economic insecurity and suicide in some populations most affected. And we have to take a history as lessons approach. We've learnt from the Great Recession, the Asian financial crisis. We can go through many different situations where this has been borne out, where an increase in unemployment resulted in an increase in suicide. Matt, you know, we've lost 15 years of job growth in three months and people are unemployed, particularly people in the face to face economy. Our projection analysis indicated that here in Canada, where we're hearing that arts and stats can. That our unemployment rate is just shy of 14 percent. That's a significant increase. That, in fact, will result in economic insecurity. And that will, for some people, be a vulnerability factor for developing mental illness. And as well, engaging in suicidal behaviour isn't what we've learned.

MG: Is it about not having a job or is it about not going to work? What does going to work give us?Because there's obviously, you know, you're making an income, but if you're leaving the house to go to work, what does that provide us?

ROGER MCINTYRE: You know, that way you disambiguate it is so well put because it's not just a job, it's the economics. We need economic security. We need you know, we need food security, being home security. Those are the basics. But there's something else that you spoke to which I really, really like and that is what is it going to work? Well going to work is, yes, getting a paycheque, that's critical, but for many people, this is an important part of social connectedness. Vivek Murthy or Dr. Vivek Murthy was the 19th surgeon general of the United States under the Obama administration. He actually had identified the changing work environment where people were leaving the workplace. Working from home is contributing to the loneliness epidemic. And what he conjectured was, is that people are no longer having the same degree of off line connexion with people and that's exacerbating a global epidemic of loneliness. So there's structure, there's a sense of identity. There's a sense of being connected. Yes, it's also a paycheque. So going to work for many people is not just a paycheque.

MG: We heard from the Centre for Addiction Mental Health that this week released results from their own survey of 2000 Canadians and they found that overall Canadians are under a lot of stress, but also found a drop in anxiety that occurred between the start of May and the end of that month. Listen to Samantha Well, senior director at CAMH.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: People do adapt. It's amazing. Humans are very resilient. This may reflect that people have become a little bit less anxious about the pandemic. They may be a little bit less anxious about going out, putting on a mask, navigating public spaces, going to a grocery store, for example, perhaps less worried about contracting the virus. We did find a reduction in that measure.

MG: Roger McIntyre, are you heartened by that? Just before I let you go, I mean that maybe people aren't experiencing that acute moment of anxiety that we were all feeling at the beginning of March and into April and people now are seeing a bit of a drop in anxiety.

ROGER MCINTYRE: Well, I think, again, the details matter, Matt. I think that there's no doubt about it that there are some people who, by their very nature, are more resilient and by their social circumstances because they've got financial security and they've got strong social supports and they have the finance. To pay for technology, to access interconnectedness and have home support. There's no question that there are people who are much more resilient for personal and social reasons. But you know what I was particularly concerned about, Matt, is the report that came out two weeks ago from the Society of Actuaries, the United States, showing that for mental health, you're going to see a slow, insidious rise in mental illness because many of the people in the face to face economy who've lost their jobs, who don't have the economic privilege, they're, in fact going to be experiencing more and more distress over the next six to 18 months. We've got a lot to learn from people who are resilient. But I think we're talking about subpopulations who don't have the luxury of financial security right now and I suspect that they're feeling just as if not more anxious.

MG: Sounds like a warning bell that people need to be aware of. Doctor, good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

ROGER MCINTYRE: Thanks for having me, Matt. Thanks for covering this important topic.

MG: Dr. Roger McIntyre, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He heads the University Health Network's Mood Disorders Pharmacology Unit. These are, as the doctor was saying, frightening times for a lot of people. Eva Holland is a science writer based in Whitehorse, Yukon, who has looked into the science of fear for her latest book is called Nerve. Lately, she's been writing about the power of what the doctor was just talking about, that issue of resilience in times like this. Good morning.

EVA HOLLAND: Good morning.

MG: When you hear the doctor talk about a mental health crisis that's simmering away in the background, what goes through your mind?

EVA HOLLAND: Well, you know, it's scary, it's it's an alarming prospect to think that we're all sort of trapped in this pandemic for a year or two with our mental health kind of withering away.

MG: Is this is something, I mean, one of the things we heard is that maybe the anxiety that people were feeling at the beginning of this pandemic has eased somewhat. Are you noticing that?

EVA HOLLAND: That's certainly been my experience. I felt incredibly anxious in March and and April and much less so now as I start to maybe understand the parameters of of this of this disease better and adapt to the changes in, you know, the you know, the plexiglass at the grocery store doesn't make my heart rate accelerate anymore. We do adapt and we do adjust. I think I don't want to, you know, under undermine the seriousness of what Dr. McIntyre was talking about, but I do think we have the capacity to adjust and to and to get through this in lots of ways.

MG: People will say that we adjust because we're resilient. What does that word mean in the context of mental health and a pandemic?

EVA HOLLAND: It's about the capacity to sort of navigate crisis situations and tend to bounce back, really, whether that means on a day to day basis to bounce back or it in sort of a bigger picture to weather the crisis. And in my understanding, it's not something you either have or you don't. It's something that can be practised and cultivated and that you can improve on.

MG: Like a muscle.

EVA HOLLAND: Like a muscle. Yeah.

MG: How do you do that? How do you cultivate resilience?

EVA HOLLAND: It's about shifts in mindset and actions, small shifts that add up to to overall greater resilience. You know, one thing I think a lot of people have been doing, maybe unconsciously, is the whole pandemic puppy phenomenon. You know, research shows that some of the most at risk people are single people who live alone without a pet. And and I'm one of them. All kinds of us have been going out and getting pets. That's something you could do to sort of to to feel less alone. Even smaller things. Just figuring out one small thing you can do every day to feel some sense of agency. You know, so much of this is out of our control, but imposing some order on your environment or choosing to find something to be grateful for. It's these things sound kind of sound kind of goofy. But but they do they do add up to a greater sense of sort of calm and control in the middle of the storm.

MG: So for somebody who I'll use your word might think that it sounds kind of goofy and they're in the midst of this. I mean, maybe they've lost work, maybe they're not going to work and work was a huge part of the community that they had, what can those steps do to actually ease some of the anxiety that they're feeling?

EVA HOLLAND: In that case, maybe it's a matter of, you know, I'm in that situation myself, having lost a fair bit of freelance writing work. I have been, you know, doing things like making lists of my skills and looking online at, you know, retraining programmes I could take some day if I needed to. And I may not need to, but feeling like I have options provides a sense of calm and control and lets me sleep better at night. So that would be one thing. The other piece of this is it's easier to be resilient and Dr. McIntyre gesture of this as well and easier to be resilient when you have structural supports around you. It's easy to put this all on individuals and say, oh, just, you know, buck up, but the more support we can give as a society and as individuals to people who are who are struggling, the better they will do.

MG: We're going to be in this for a while and I think for a lot of people, that's difficult to wrap their heads around. And they'll hear, you know, well, there's this development around a vaccine and they start to feel optimistic. How do you balance that optimism with realism and why is that important?

EVA HOLLAND: That's really important. It's called the Stockdale Paradox in resilience circles. And Admiral Stockdale or Vice Admiral Stockdale, who was a U.S. Navy officer who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for an extended period of time. And so the paradox named for him is the idea that in a crisis, you you cultivate resilience by being brutally honest about how bad the situation is, but also maintaining a degree of faith or optimism that you'll come through the other side, which is it's a hard thing.

MG: I was going to say that sounds tricky.

EVA HOLLAND: Yeah, iit is tricky, but it makes a lot of sense. So I think it means not grasping on to the latest, you know, possible drug solution or counting on a vaccine by by Christmas. It's it's about saying, OK, we're in this, you know, maybe for two years, that's tough, that's horrible, but like, let's accept that reality and move through it.

MG: We're getting into the summer period and whether this is, you know, fatigue with the alarms going off or we're just being able to get outside of the small space that we're in. It feels as though there's a little sliver of normal life coming back into people's lives. Is your sense that that that will allow our fears and anxieties to change, at least in this moment?

EVA HOLLAND: I hope so. I hope so for people. I mean, it varies so much regionally in terms of what we are and aren't allowed to do. You know, I'm I'm sitting up here in the Yukon and I'm I'm pretty privileged to have you know, I can look out at trails through the forest right now from my window. But so I do hope that this summer can bring some relief to people. I am more concerned, I guess I would say, about the winter at this point.

MG: And what are you doing to mitigate that? I mean, are you working on that balance between optimism and realism?

EVA HOLLAND: I'm trying to. Yeah, I'm trying to put the pieces in place to maybe feel more financially stable by next winter, if I can, maybe to be in a position where, you know, if I if I feel if we're in another lock down next winter and and and I feel sort of trapped in the dark in the Yukon, you know, if I need to if I need to be depressed for a while, hopefully I have the financial elbow room to to be depressed for a while. That's also part of it, too, right. Is not all of this is gonna be fixable. But but finding room to not be OK is part of it, too.

MG: And it feels just briefly that this is what the doctor was talking about. That we have to acknowledge is. There are real physical concerns around our health, but we need to acknowledge the mental aspect of this as well.

EVA HOLLAND: Absolutely. It's a huge piece of the puzzle, and I think looking at it means not not sort of despairing or saying, you know, these lockdown measures are too much, but but finding the ways to support people through it so that we can have both the public health measures and the mental health supports that we need.

MG: Eva, take care of yourself. It's great to talk to you.

EVA HOLLAND: Thank you. You too, Matt.

MG: Eva Holland is a science writer based in Whitehorse, Yukon. Her latest book is called Nerve: A Personal Journey Through the Science of Fear. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, there's help. It's just a phone call away. The Canadian Suicide Prevention Service will connect you with help 24 hours a day. And their number is 1-833-456-4566. We should mention as well the number for Kids Help Phone. That's 1-800-668-6868. Coming up in 90 seconds, our national affairs panel is here. After two nights of debate, where does the federal Conservative leadership race stand? We'll find out. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current CBC Radio One.

[Music]

National affairs panel discusses Conservative leadership race

Guests: Roger McIntyre, Eva Holland

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. This week marked a turning point in the race to lead the Conservative Party of Canada. The four candidates faced off in two live debates in Toronto, one in French and last night, one in English. There was heated debate as well in the House of Commons over how to address systemic racism. Lots to talk about with our national affairs panel. Althia Raj is Ottawa bureau chief for Huff Post Canada. Erica Ifill is an economist and a columnist with the Hill Times, as well as the co-host of the Bad + Bitchy podcast. And Jason Markusoff, western correspondent for Maclean's magazine. Good morning to you all.

ALTHIA RAJ: Good morning.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Good morning.

ERICA IFILL: Morning.

MG: Let's have a listen to the four candidates from last night's Conservative leadership debate.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I think we have to acknowledge that systemic racism exists. It exists in our institutions. It exists in our communities across this country. I grew up in a small town in New Glasgow that has the the shame of having excluded Viola Desmond from the theatre. And this was an issue that I was always aware of my entire life.

VOICE 2: Making sure that we can reach out to new immigrants, that we can reach out to people of colour, and that we can bring them into the party. I'm the person that can do that. I feel that we also have to focus on our environment because many people I have heard did not warm up to our party because of our environmental policies.

VOICE 3: Young people and a lot of Canadians are getting tired of a prime minister who's all about socks and selfies. That doesn't help a small business owner in Brampton or Surrey who didn't qualify for some of the COVID plans the Trudeau government was late with and are now struggling on the edge of bankruptcy.

VOICE 4: I know our relationship with the United States will be restored. And I'll go so far as to say I am confident that Donald Trump will defy the odds again and be the next administration and when I am leader of the Conservative Party, I will give him a call and congratulate him.

MG: Some bold statements there from Derek Sloan. We also heard Peter MacKay, Leslyn Lewis and Erin O'Toole. Althia Raj, what did you make of how the leadership hopefuls performed?

ALTHIA RAJ: Well, I think they performed well. It wasn't as if I can be so bold, as interesting perhaps, as Wednesday French debates where Erin O'Toole and Peter MacKay really went at each other hard. In fact, it was kind of like you were watching, you know, that the two solitudes really play out in terms of the debates between the candidates. On Thursday, what you did have was actually the full participation of Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis because they don't speak French, were really shut out Wednesday debate. But there's not that many points of demarcation between the candidates. So it does make things a little bit more dull than perhaps you would if you had somebody who was, you know, pushing in favour of the carbon tax that we saw in 2017 with Michael Chong. For every, well, for the main front runners, perceived front runners, Erin O'Toole and Peter MacKay. I think they did what they both thought they needed to do. Mr MacKay believes that he has sold enough memberships to possibly win on the first ballot, but at least that's their strategy. And he seems to play the classic front runner offer in terms of not really engaging with anybody offering kind of platitudes to answers to most questions, but there were no knock downs, there were no punches. Erin O'Toole tried his best to unsettle Peter Mackay at times, but it didn't work. And he did what he needed to do, which is try to reach out to Dr. Leslyn Lewis's followers. I think he said he agreed with her five times during the debate. We will see if that helps catapult him over Peter Mackay on a second ballot if it goes to that.

MG: Jason Markusoff is there a clear winner last night from your perspective?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Amongst the candidates, I wouldn't say so. I think the Conservative Party is coming out happy or at least relieved out of last night's debate.

MG: Relieved?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Relieved that there wasn't anything embarrassing, that there wasn't a disastrous, exciting show. A lot of veteran Conservatives actually dread these debates when they have leadership contests. This is not going to change votes within people. This is not, you know, unless somebody really falls on their, flat on their face or does exceedingly well, I don't think anybody did last night. What these are are opportunities for the opposition parties, particularly Liberals to clip, clip say O'Toole disparaging Peter Mackay to attack and that didn't, that sort of stuff didn't happen. It happened a lot in the French debate. Normally these intra party debates are very tame affairs. They don't have exciting jabs. These are not like general election debates because these are all people in the same party, so they agree. The French debate was this unusual anomaly where you had Mackay attacking O'Toole as Aaron Crudo and O'Toole attacking Mackay as a Jill, a weather vane. It was sort of things that the Liberal Party would love to use as attack ads to define those candidates. This time they played it meek. They'll probably be lobbing attacks through candidate letters, membership grabs in the future. But right now they stayed muted, which will probably help the frontrunner in Mackay.

MG: Eric Ifill, anyone to press you on that stage last night?

ERICA IFILL: No.

MG: Oh.

ERICA IFILL: The Conservatives have proven that they don't have any sort of plan to grow this economy beyond resource extraction. Like tat's their economic plan and we're moving in to quite uncertain territory right now. And they're promoting oil and gas when oil is at the price that it is. I mean I mean, this sounds like the same debate I've heard over and over and over from the Conservative Party.

MG: So would you have expected, Erica, I mean, the Conservatives in the last election, Andrew Scheer in particular, took a lot of attacks for not having what people believed was a more developed and coherent policy around climate change. Would you have expected to hear more about that last night?

ERICA IFILL: Well, I heard the words climate change and I heard Derek Sloan talk about, you know, exiting the Paris agreement. If that's the kind of innovation they're talking about, I don't know how that's going to help them. Here's another thing, I also saw Derek Sloan bring up some far right conspiracy theories and the Conservative Party just platformed them last night. I mean from the conspiracy with the WHO and China. First of all, there was a lot of we hate China last night. And so I what I see is a Conservative party that really isn't ready to add substance to the words that they think that they need to say to become more palatable.

MG: Jason Markusoff, I'm just picking up on the issue around climate policy and Erica's suggesting that the parties were, you know, trying to promote the resource sector. Where do you see the points of distinction between the candidates on the issue of climate? Is there any point?

JASON MARKUSOFF: I mean there's a limited point. I think a lot of Conservative voters would have picked up on any points of it. It's important to remember that the Conservatives are having different conversation than the rest of the country is having on on climate change. Look to the last debate where basically what much of what they were saying was pillored as the outlier position on climate change and carbon policy that deeped sixed Andrews Scheer's campaign. And a lot of the people on that stage seems to agree with it and yet we have Peter Mackay attacking O'Toole's idea of having an industrial carbon policy, which puts him to the right of Alberta Premier Jason Kenny and Ontario's Doug Ford on this. That's because they're not talked to the general public on this. They not talking to the whole electorate, they're talking to the Conservative base, which has been bread for years and fed for years to believe that any kind of carbon tax is a disaster. This is going to require the conservatives probably to pivot away from this strategy now, but the further they go into entrenching their feet into this, the harder it is to get out.

MG: Althia, what's the difference or the danger in, as Jason says, a party that seems to be out of step with how many Canadians, if not the majority of Canadians feel around things like carbon pricing, for example?

ALTHIA RAJ: Well, I think they don't need to change. And they point to Doug Ford's election in Ontario as an example of that. But Mr. Ford campaigned to scrap the carbon tax, and he was re-elected with a massive majority mandate. What we saw yesterday actually were words. They said that they acknowledged that they needed a better environmental plan. We heard that from Dr. Leslyn Lewis, we heard that from Erin O'Toole, we heard that from Peter Mackay. But there's suggestions for a new offering in the next election, very much resembles the last offering. But just in the words of Derek Sloan, with a better marketing plan around it. The differentiation markers between the candidate at the moment are, as Jason noted, the fact that Peter Mackay is criticising Erin O' Toole for putting a price on carbon in industry. And Mr MacKay is criticising Erin O'Toole also for wanting to basically ran down pipelines through the throat of Quebecers and basically give that as the reason the federal government not have consultation or not allow the provinces to say no I think would be a better way of phrasing than there. There's no real substantive discussion. You wouldn't expect real substantive discussion, to Jason's earlier point, in a debate that is basically speaking to people who are already party members and who's who already feel a certain way about this. I am not convinced that what we see at the moment is really what is going to end up being a Conservative party platform in the next election.

MG: Part of this is about trying to figure out what the party is. I mean, it wasn't just around climate policy, it was also last time the Conservatives came under attack for Andrew Scheer's stance on social issues like gay marriage and abortion and how open he was to the social conservative side of that party. I'll start with you, Althiaa. Is it possible to keep the social conservatives onside without alienating moderates both within the party and in the general election?

ALTHIA RAJ: Well if Peter MacKay, will be very interesting to win. It will be very interesting to see where the social conservatives go because none of the big, quite powerful groups of that wing are backing Mr. MacKay. And that's basically why Mr. MacKay strategy is to win on the first ballot. Now, these are longtime party members, longtime party volunteers, the doorknockers you rely on during an election, the guys who will go out and make and fundraise and get you some money. If they feel that their core issues are being ignored and they might walk away, but Mr. MacKay has tried to say, you know, there that there is middle ground on which I agree on some things. For example, with medically assisted dying, you might see Mr McKay to get a sense that it is less expensive than a liberal stance on. He has said that he would allow the backbench to introduce legislation. He has said that he would whip his cabinet, but then on Wednesday, actually, in a response to Dr. Lewis, said that he would not whip his cabinet, but he would expect them to abide by as a party platform, as a party rulebook, which basically says that a government would not introduce any anti-abortion legislation.

MG: Erica, I hear you in the background. What do you see as that balancing act and how is the party going to make that?

ERICA IFILL: The Conservatives already have a problem with women. So if you looked at the some of the polling that's going around, they have lost women's support by, I think something like 30 points or something like that. And given that we are looking at as she-cession with this COVID crisis, the what I notice is that the Conservatives said nothing about things like national day-care or child care. They were talking about a national dementia strategy before they talked about childcare and it just goes to show how removed they are from A, the the changing composition of the country, who needs what, and B, just that are like the world is changing beneath our feet. OK. We don't know where it's going to end up, but to hold on to these old ideas of what ex-law and security, law and order, economic progress and even merit. Like Peter MacKay yesterday was was poetic about merit, as though we live in a meritocracy. We do not. So I think that the Conservatives really, I understand that this is for their base, but all of these, given all of these pieces, give an impression.

MG: Jason, just in the last, I want to talk about the issue of race in a moment, but just very briefly, how does the party try to figure out if Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis have some constituency that they're speaking to, how does the party try to figure out how to incorporate that constituency without alienating the moderates?

JASON MARKUSOFF: If if the moderates, if the moderate, especially if Peter MacKay winds up winning this, I think this creates a real division between people who are values voters, who will vote primarily on this and will be very disillusionment the party, if they don't act on things like abortion and LGBTQ rights and those who are socially conservative, but want to win first and foremost and have other issues. I think that Peter MacKay is going to be relying on a lot of those people to be the majority and that the values augur as well. If we lose a few, that's OK.

MG: We heard at the beginning of this the candidates asked the question around the issue of race and systemic racism. This was an issue that happened in the House of Commons when we saw scenes of the NDP trying to pass a motion about systemic racism, particularly in the RCMP. This is the leader of the NDP Jagmeet Singh describing what happened next from his perspective.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Kind of shocked that anyone would say no to this motion. Federal jurisdiction, clear path to do something about systemic racism in a moment where everyone is demanding action. And I looked back and I saw that MP not only say no, but make eye contact with me and just kind of brush his hand, dismiss it. And in that moment, I got angry. I'll be honest, I got angry.

MG: Erica Ifill, Jagmeet Singh called a Bloc Quebecois MP, a racist, refused to apologized, was ultimately ejected from the House. We only have a couple of minutes to talk about this, so briefly, tell me what you thought when you saw that.

ERICA IFILL: I honestly, this is what, you know, many Canadians of colour go through every day. I think casual racism in Canada is so acceptable that we don't even see it as racism. So I think what, you know, Jagmeet Singh was responding to was a racial microaggression. And so it's no wonder that I Stand With Jagmeet was trending the next day. You know what I mean? He has galvanized or has the potential to galvanize a mood amongst people who have been previously left out, by both, the establishment.

MG: Althia Raj, what do you see as this moment and to Erica's point, the opportunity for a leader to galvanize a mood?

ALTHIA RAJ: I think he's very good at that and I think that he has touched something, touched on something that is taking a life of its own, and it's going to make it very difficult for him to apologize. He has no plans to apologise. But on the other hand, I think that no matter what you think of why the Bloc did not support that motion or the dismissive hand gesture that the MP gave Mr. Singh, it is not a responsible and mature thing to do to call somebody a racist when you have no evidence that they actually are racist. And personally, I don't think it is responsible for members of parliament to go on tarring each other with a label like that, which really means something. And I have no evidence to suggest that the MP is actually a racist.

MG: Just Jason, we're almost out of time here. So what do you see as, it seems as though the conversation has changed? Maybe that's why what we saw yesterday or what we saw over the course of the last couple of days was different.

JASON MARKUSOFF: The conversation has changed. And I think that's why Jagmeet Singh was so upset to see that, you know, we're still at this point where we can't even agree on what systemic racism means. You know, I've been hearing a lot of people say that they're sick and tired of being sick and tired and I get that.

MG: We'll hear more about this certainly in days ahead. We'll have to leave it there. We are out of time, unfortunately for this, but I do appreciate all three of you speaking about this this morning and we'll come back to it. Thank you.

ALTHIA RAJ: Thank you.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Thank you.

ERICA IFILL: Thank you.

MG: Althia Raj is Ottawa bureau chief for Huff Post Canada. Erica Iffil, an economist and columnist with The Hill Times, also co-host of the Bad + Bitchy podcast. And Jason Markusoff off Western correspondent for Macleans magazine. Certainly more on this to come in days ahead.

New CBC podcast explores wild fires from around the world

Guests: Clare Bonnyman

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio one. I'm Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: What can we do but filter the air and stay away from it.

VOICE 2: He was saying grandpa please, you've got to come and help us, the fire's at the back door.

VOICE 3: Flames that were, you know, 100 feet high.

VOICE 4: Every time she says this is mine, just until the next fire comes. Right?

VOICE 5: I think we have to be prepared for the worst while we hope for the best.

VOICE 6: Flames you can run away from, but when you get a lung full of smoke, it completely knocks you out.

MG: That's a taste of the new CBC podcast, World on Fire, from our colleagues in Edmonton. A look at wildfires and bushfires from the front lines. Clare Bonnyman is one of the producers on the project. Clare, good morning.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Seems like all the news is happening right now and because of that, maybe it's easy to forget what big news wildfires have been in recent years.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Definitely. They were front of the headlines until COVID came along.

MG: What is your podcast about? It's about, as I said, wildfires and bushfires, but tell me more about that.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Yeah, I mean, it's really about the push-pull of our relationship with fire. It's tricky because, of course, we need it in our environment, but it's also becoming more difficult to escape the damage. I mean, now we're seeing fires from the Arctic to the Amazon.

MG: And obviously we've seen them here in Canada as well. Tell us where we go in this podcast.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Truthfully, all over. Honestly. We have stories from Australia, California, BC, Alberta and eastern Canada as well. We have first person accounts from the people who've survived these fire, the firefighters who battled them and from reporters who've covered these stories for years. Kim Brunhuber is now an anchor for CNN in Atlanta. But just before that, he was the CBC national reporter in California where he covered some of the worst wildfires ever seen.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The tick fire was caused by Santa Ana winds in Los Angeles County last fall. The villas in the hills more closely resembled Roman ruins. Plastic garbage cans bubble into unrecognizable almost Daliesque objects. In one long stretch, littles left standing except a row of chimneys.

VOICE 2: Get ready to go. Get all your belongings ready. Have it in the car. We're evacuating Richmond.

VOICE 1: Sometimes residents find out their houses burned down from neighbours. Sometimes they're forced to watch from their doorbell cameras as the flames inch inexorably closer. And once in Ventura County, Ralph and Suzanne Flores, well, they found out from me. Yeah, I think what you would say a small little house and then a bigger house next to it. Both of those have burned. Yeah. Those yours?

VOICE 3: Yeah.

VOICE 1: Oh sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

VOICE 3: It's okay. Yeah.

VOICE 1: Yeah, it was was behind us and it was in front of us, so we were trapped in it. So we had to get out. We took our dogs and left. We left everything behind thinking our home would still be there, but I guess we thought wrong.

MG: I was in California last summer and you can still see the effects of some of those wildfires there. It's impossible, I think, to imagine that you would learn that your house is burned down by watching a fire through your doorbell camera.

CLARE BONNYMAN: It's not the only story like that out there. Australia, too, was in the news for its record breaking season at the end of 2019 and then into 2020.

MG: We talked a lot about the Australian wildfires on this program. What was it that made this fire season so different there?

CLARE BONNYMAN: Well, people may be familiar that the season was so brutal. Of course, people called it the black summer. Temperatures were up to 40 degrees Celsius with winds of more than 100 kilometres per hour. And that makes her some really intense conditions. Yeah, and the fires even created their own weather systems. And experts had warned that the season was going to be devastating, but the government didn't act on those warnings. And that left residents to have to just watch as their communities burned. Katrina and Ken Walsh live in the seaside town of Conjola Park on the New South Wales coast. It was New Year's Eve when they heard the fires were heading their way. They also learnt of the loss of their house by seeing it on the news.

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VOICE: They had allowed media in without allowing the residents back in and that was really difficult. And then we got to the start of the street and just saw it was wiped out by two houses, three houses. And I said he couldn't breathe. He was you know taking in, sucking deep breaths of air and I said, it's okay. We know it's gone. Just keep driving to the end of the street and we'll stop and we'll just try and breathe. And it was really like the air had gone. It was awful. Absolutely awful. That's my daughter's bedroom, but the kitchen fell on top of it. That fibreglass was our spa that we had on everand or underneath and then we had a full veranda running along the top of it. It's just I mean, how do you even describe this? A bomb site.

MG: A bomb site.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Yeah. Unbelievable, right? But at the same time, that kind of description is something that those of us here in northern Alberta can relate to.

MG: In Fort McMurray.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Exactly. Almost 100,000 people rushed to escape the fire in Fort Mac four years ago. I was living in northern Ontario at the time, but I remember watching those cars driving through embers, smoke and flame out on that single highway to the city. Right? The footage was nuts. I had never seen anything like it. The wall of fire was right up against the road and my colleagues here in Edmonton can't forget the calls that they were getting that night.

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VOICE 1: I stayed for the last minutes and then I hear stuff exploding. When they start going up, I know I don't have a hope with a garden hose.

VOICE 2: I'm afraid that huge parts of my hometown of over 50 years may burn tonight and more of it will burn tomorrow.

VOICE 3: Just want to let you know, Andy and Leo, God misses ya. I love you guys. He'll be okay. Don't worry, we'll make it out of here. Okay?

MG: Even years later, it's still really hard to hear that and this is a fire that was started by somebody.

CLARE BONNYMAN: And that's not unusual, unfortunately. The podcast is co-hosted by a wildfire expert Mike Flannigan and he says that most wildfires are human caused. And of course, now you also can't ignore the role of global warming. They might be started by people accidentally or sometimes not, but warmer temperatures mean that these fires are bigger and more intense.

MG: Now we hear about the devastation, what's going on to try to mitigate the risks of fires like this?

CLARE BONNYMAN: There's so much research going on. Mike Flannigan, for example, is working with a team on an artificial intelligence project. And their machine will look at massive amounts of data to see if there are patterns to help predict extreme weather conditions in the future. In the states, there's new radar research that's will allow scientists to actually get inside of a fire and see how they work. And then there's zombie fires.

MG: A zombie fire?

CLARE BONNYMAN: Yeah. Crazy name, but they show up and things like bogs and wetlands, places you might not expect a fire to burn quite well. And they kind of lie in wait until the right conditions are present and then they leap to life.

MG: That's wild.

CLARE BONNYMAN: It's yeah, it's unbelievable. And there's so much more information that we're hunting for. In Sault Saint Marie, Ontario, josh Johnston is working on a $50 million project called Wildfire Sat. It's about the size of a dishwasher and it will detect wildfires from space. And Josh has 15 family members in the fire service, including his parents and his wife.

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VOICE: This is very important. We are staring down a radically changing world in terms of fire. And I think what really adds to all of that drive to get it done and the whole team feels this is that for a lot of us. For everyone in my family who fought fire, it was scary. It was dangerous, but it was always fun. I've got two sons. It won't be long before they are doomed to repeat history and enjoying that path. And I can tell you right now that if they choose that path, by the time they're ready for it, I'm not sure how much fun it's going to be anymore. We need to make sure that we are ahead of the game.

MG: How are we doing in that regard? Are we staying ahead of the game?

CLARE BONNYMAN: We definitely are in some ways, but so many things need to change. Our habits, for one, how and where we live and even in how we fight these fires. But at the same time, there is hope. I want to make sure people understand, there definitely is. We talked to so many people who are so resilient after terrible losses. They return and rebuild and work together to recover from wildfire and really, when it comes to tomorrow, it's up to the next generation. We can't eliminate fire from our lives, but there are lots of people working on ways to cope and adapt to this new age of fire that we're in.

MG: Clare, we'll listen to the podcast. Thank you.

CLARE BONNYMAN: Thank you so much.

MG: Clare Bonnyman is one of the producers of a new CBC podcast called World on Fire. It comes from our colleagues in Edmonton. You can find the podcast on the CBC Listen app. That is it for The Current for today and for this week. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q with Tom Power. If you missed anything from this week, including the two great grad programs that we did celebrating the classes of 20/20, you can find those on the CBC Listen App. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. Take care. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you Monday.

[Music: theme]

June 19, 2020 episode transcript

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