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The Current Transcript for February 10, 2020

Host: Rosemary Barton

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Will you be tweeting differently once you board the Air Force One?

VOICE 2: No, that's other people that do that. I don't. I'm very consistent. I'm a very stable genius.

ROSEMARY BARTON: That could only be one U.S. president Donald Trump. Journalists Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig have been chronicling the Trump era inside and out. They'll join me in about half an hour with their book, A Very Stable Genius. Plus, a different political story closer to home.

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VOICE: When you're sitting in that chemotherapy chair or when you're in an isolation room at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital, you want to get back your normal life. And what does that mean? That means spending time with your family, obviously, but it also includes work.

RB: I sat down with New Brunswick MP and Cabinet Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who's finally back in the House after a months long battle with cancer. But first, checking in on a new chapter in a decades long war. Good morning. I'm Rosemary Barton, in for Matt Galloway today, and this is The Current.

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‘An absolutely desperate situation’: Syria facing one of the biggest waves of displacement since war started

Guests: Farida Almouslem, Mark Cutts, Kareem Shaheen

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[Sounds from attacks in Syria]

RB: That's the sound of what hundreds of thousands of Syrians are currently fleeing. Government forces backed by Russian warplanes are advancing on the last opposition strongholds in Idlib province and around Aleppo, which has civilians running for their lives. Joining me to talk about what life is like right now in north eastern Syria is Dr. Farida Almouslem doctor. Almouslem is a surgeon and gynaecological obstetrician. And we have reached her in Idlib. Hello.

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: Hello. How are you?

RB: What is the situation in Idlib province right now?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: I see the people just crowded on the streets because all the people, all that area, a thousand area of Idlib and western rural Aleppo is now just a crowded in this area next to the borders. You can see in the streets many vans and many lorries and just cars and motorcycles, just full of people, maybe families, maybe you can see just four or five persons on motorcycles. And they're just they hold what they can from their houses and just escaping from the bombardment, and the forces and the militias of Assad and Iranian forces.

RB: Well, that's what I was going to ask. What about the government forces, the planes, the bombing? What can you tell us about what you're seeing or hearing of that?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: Yesterday, I had a night shift at the hospital and the hospital is in rural Aleppo, western Aleppo. But the situation was very bad because there was a huge bombardment, not directly on the hospital, but there was about 500 meters between the bombing barrel and the hospital. We had to, we evacuated the hospital that's what happened yesterday and luckily there was no injuries between the medical staff. And that's still happening until now. For tomorrow, until tomorrow, I don't know what will happen in my hospital, where we can go? How can we complete our job? Because the people here need doctors and need hospitals. But in this situation, we can't open this hospital again. Now we closed the hospital.

RB: The people that that need medical help, what kinds of things do they - what kinds of things are you treating them for?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: I'm OBGYN and I help women during labour and caesarians and any other kind of medical assistance that they need. But for these days, we just stop all that. The people now don't have, they don't have any place to go else because the hospitals that remains next to the Turkish borders are not enough for all these millions of people escaping from the bombardment. So you can go to the hospital and find the at the same bed, two patients at the same bed, because there is no beds for these patients. And also sometimes there is no place, they just on a chair or on the ground. We can't treat them on the chair or on the ground during labour and delivery.

RB: So what are you doing then? If the hospital is closed and the situation is that bad, what are you doing?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: Well, there is a plan just to to move the hospital, maybe to another village. But we don't know where. There is a big danger for the medical staff to stay at that area.

RB: Yeah. Hospitals have been have been targeted, of course, in Syria. What about how cold it is right now? Are people being treated for that? How worried are you about them and their health?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: No. The degree is 7 under 0. And yesterday there is a newborn that died. He just lives in a tent. And there's no fuel to get warm. No food. His mother is also in a bad nutrition and she can't help just holding her baby and then she finds him died. And that happens many times. Since one month there was another case of a girl, she was one and a half months and she died because of cold, cold weather, because they also live in a tent. There's no walls. There's no roof. They just live in the streets. Also, the people here just lost and sometimes when there is a child is dead, that is the normal because they accommodate with death. It's normal. It's our normal life just to die. So people here are depressed and when anyone dies, just put him in his grave and that's enough. No one talk about.

RB: Dr. Almouslem, we're going to be speaking with the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. What would you like to say to him? I mean, if he was going to hear these stories, what would you like him to know?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: I just want those people who have lost their houses, they need shelters. There is not enough space and not enough tents and there is no houses for all these people, not enough clothing for them and there is no fuel. And if they find fuel, they don't have money to buy this fuel. It's so expensive. Just tell them to go back to their houses. Maybe it's better for them to die in their houses.

RB: Are you worried, are you are you fearful for your own safety and that of your family?

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: Of course. Because from this morning, there is many war planes in my area. Many war planes had just they just go through the sky, but I don't know where they are now making their air strikes. But of course, my daughter is at the school. I'm afraid. I'm waiting for her to go back to the house because I'm just crying that if anything has happened to her, it will be my mistake because I didn't escape from the beginning.

RB: Dr. Almouslem, thank you for speaking with us today.

FARIDA ALMOUSLEM: Thank you. Thank you lots.

RB: Dr. Farida Almouslem is a surgeon and gynaecological obstetrician and she was in Idlib, Syria. All those civilians fleeing are winding up at the border with Turkey, where refugee camps are already overwhelmed after nine years of war. Joining me now from Gaziantep, Turkey, is Mark Cutts. He is the United Nations Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria crisis. I'll start, Mark Cutts by just getting a reaction to what the doctor was saying there.

MARK CUTTS: Well, what she's been saying is what we're hearing from everybody we talked to, it's an absolutely desperate situation on the ground at the moment, and no one there feels safe. It's correct that there's lots of cars on the road. All the roads are clogged. As you know, people are moving in all directions, trying to seek safety and refuge and keep their family warm. But it's so difficult because the place is already so overcrowded with displaced people. And this has just been a huge influx of newly displaced people. Five days ago, we were telling the world that there were 600,000 people who had fled their homes in the last two months. Just in the last five days, that figure has gone up and it's now nearly 700,000 people. The figures are just going up every day. It's subzero temperatures. As the previous speaker was saying, we're getting lots of reports of babies dying, people suffering from hypothermia — it's really a horrific situation at the moment.

RB: And is there anywhere for these people to go or are they all sort of just amassing in Idlib near the border and andgetting stuck there in some way?

MARK CUTTS: Well, they're being squeezed into a smaller and smaller area. And humanitarian organizations are providing them with tents and plastic sheeting and shelter, but it's so cold and so difficult to cope with these kind of numbers. And there's not enough heating fuel. What we're seeing is some of them in there, they don't have fuel, so they're burning car tires or plastic bottles there. They're even burning clothes and shoes to stay warm. And then we also get reports of people dying because they've been inhaling toxic fumes. So, you know, the stories we hear are just, you know, worse and worse all the time.

RB: You say the numbers are growing, obviously, as people come into Idlib, but how does this wave of displacement of people compare to others that we've seen over the course of the nine years of the conflict?

MARK CUTTS: Well, this war has led to, you know, a huge displacement. More than 12 million people have fled their homes. About half of them are now refugees outside of the country, and half of them are displaced within the borders of the country. But this is one of the biggest waves of displacement that we've seen in the entire war. And, you know, just at the time when we were thinking we might be reaching the, you know, towards the end of this war, what we're seeing is a huge catastrophe in this area. People had already fled to this area because this was the one place they thought they would be safe and now they're all fleeing in all directions because the bombs keep following them wherever they move to.

RB: And what is the capacity of the United Nations at this stage to be able to care for these people? I know you're, you know, people are providing basics, but when you've got that large amount of people coming into a restricted space, what's your capacity to look after them?

MARK CUTTS: Well, everything is stretched to the limit and there are thousands of Syrian humanitarian workers in the Idlib area. They're being supported by the United Nations and by other international organizations. But they're, you know, being tested as well at the moment, because we've had three of our humanitarian colleagues who were killed in the last 10 days. Many of our humanitarian workers there have had to flee from frontline areas with their families. So they're trying to look after their families, never mind, you know, do their work in hospitals and health centres. And so everything is really stretched to the limit. We are trying desperately to scale up this response. We've just appealed for $336 million in new funding. We need to get more tents into the area. We need to build more camps. We need to get more emergency relief supplies in. There's already a big aid operation going on. We sent more than 1000 trucks of food into the area, cross border from Turkey in January alone. But it's just not enough. With these kind of numbers, we need a lot more support. But what people are asking for more than anything else is for the bombing to stop, for civilians to be protected. They're saying, you know, of course, that they're freezing, they do need shelter and blankets and other assistance, but what they're calling for more than anything else is for this bombardment to stop.

RB: And if that's the message from the people on the ground and from you as well, what do you think is the likelihood of that happening, given that this is the last stronghold, the last rebel held stronghold?

MARK CUTTS: Well, unfortunately, it hasn't been looking good over the last year because despite repeated calls by the Secretary-General for a cessation of hostilities, what we've seen is a temporary pauses and then the fighting starts again. And then there's a ceasefire for a few days or few weeks, and then it breaks down and it begins again. So the record over the last year has been appalling, but we continue to call for an immediate and comprehensive cessation of hostilities. And we just hope that will come soon.

RB: Do you have the impression that the world has looked away from this conflict because it's gone on so long or because it's so difficult to digest the amount of suffering?

MARK CUTTS: I think it's it's and, you know, the nature of things that a war that has gone on for so long, you know, this is nearly nine years now that this conflict has been going on and so that the media does, you know, they've been focussing on the coronavirus. They've been focussing on other things. But we really want the whole world to understand that this is now a crisis on a huge scale and we do need to mobilise a lot more support to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable people anywhere in the world.

RB: You know, Canada took in a large number of Syrian refugees. Do you foresee that that call will come again, that more refugees will need another place to go?

MARK CUTTS: Well, you know, these are people who are trapped in a war zone, they're not able to cross into Turkey. They're not able to get further afield to other countries. A lot of them would love to be able to get out of the country, get to a place where they can really be safe. But for the time being, the challenge is that while the border is closed, Turkey already hosts more than three and a half million refugees. It doesn't want any more refugees crossing into its own territory. And so the challenge then, if the border remains closed, is to protect these people inside Syria and that's what's not happening at the moment. These people need to be protected, either inside Syria where they are, or they must be allowed to go to some other place where they can be safe.

RB: Mark Cutts, thank you for your time today, sir.

MARK CUTTS: Thank you very much.

RB: Mark Cutts is the United Nations Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria crisis. In recent years, the war in Syria has taken, as we talked about there, a backstage to other international news. Critics say this has allowed the Assad regime to continue attacking civilians largely unchecked. Kareem Shaheen is the former correspondent for The Guardian Middle East, and he is now based in Montreal. And that's where we've reached him this morning. Hello.

KAREEM SHAHEEN: Hi. Thank you for having me.

RB: So what are you thinking about when you hear those voices, both the doctor directly in Syria and the U.N. worker just on the other side of the border in Turkey?

KAREEM SHAHEEN: You know, I remember interviewing Dr. Farida a couple of years ago when she was besieged in another part of the country in Aleppo. And, you know, fortunately, we were so happy at the time to find out that she had managed to leave with her daughter and reach safety in Idlib. And now safety in Idlib is no more. I think the crisis in Idlib shows us once again that human life in the region has no value, that the international community is always willing to stand by and wring its hands watching as these conflicts unfold and do nothing while the suffering continues. I mean, we're talking about three quarters of a million people who have had to pick up their lives and leave their homes and move and try to find safety in subzero temperatures, in tents out in the open. The scenes we're seeing from there are truly apocalyptic. We're talking about three quarters of a million people. Out of three million, you know, 1.2 million of them are children. The vast majority of them are women and children. They're extremely vulnerable. They've been displaced. Some of them have been displaced more than 10 times so far. The targeting of civilian infrastructure, I mean, the hospitals being attacked. We don't quite, you know, when we look at the big picture, there is such a systematic assault on health care. You know, we're talking about over 70 attacks on hospitals in the last year alone.

RB: And as I was talking there with the U.N. coordinator and I know you believe this too, that that as the world has sort of turned away because, you know, for all sorts of reasons, news cycle included, what has that done to President Assad's power, to his ability to bomb hospitals and go after civilians?

KAREEM SHAHEEN: I think more so than the international media attention, I think the inaction of the international community that has allowed, you know, this behaviour to go unchecked for so many years has just slowly eroded the international norms that we had going into the conflict. You know, in 2017, I went to Idlib to cover the chemical attacks that took place there, and more than 80 people had been killed. We never knew how many exactly because you know they were buried all over the place. But, you know, the response to it was basically a slap on the wrist. You know, bombing on a military base that they had been told in advance was going to be bombed. You know, Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons. He has never faced any serious consequences for that. Hundreds of attacks on health care facilities from 2012 onwards that took place with impunity and nothing happened. Half a million people have died over the course of the conflict and nobody has paid for it.

RB: Well, I mean, it makes you think of the former President Obama's infamous red line and that red line is I guess it's long been erased, has it?

KAREEM SHAHEEN: Absolutely. And, you know, the important thing to look at is the legacy of the Syria conflict is, you know, the red line, you know, the red line statement ensured that, I mean, before it was, before the regime used chemical weapons, it saw that it was able to use every other method of killing to win back power. After the chemical attack happened and in 2013 and no real response took place, they realized that they could use chemical weapons as well with impunity. Over the course of the conflict in nine years, you know, enough hospitals have been bombed and chemical attacks have taken place, enough bakeries and markets have been destroyed, that these norms that we took for granted in the prosecution of war are gone now. We're fighting more you know the way we used to fight it, you know, decades ago. It's we no longer have those those norms in place to protect the things that we agreed upon our civilized conduct in warfare.

RB: Now, I know this is a, you know, Canada doesn't play a huge role in this region. Obviously, we would need the support of the United States and other allies. Is there anything that Canada could or should be doing?

KAREEM SHAHEEN: I think there is. I mean, like you said, Canada does not, is not present on the ground. So the countries that have forces on the ground, like Turkey, like Russia, like Iran, are the ones who are determining, you know, what happens on a day to day basis and whether there's a ceasefire or not. But I think Canada can play a role in mediating, in supporting peace building activities, in you know, Canada is not involved in arming the rebels or supporting the government. So Canada can play a mediation role. They can contribute to ongoing sideshow peace talks that the U.N. is brokering. There's an ongoing process that's meant to draft a new constitution for Syria after the war, and that involves representatives from the government and from the opposition, from civil society. Canada can play an important role in supporting these efforts, but I think Canada also needs to look at the potential for hosting more refugees, quite frankly. I mean, Canada has been more generous than a lot of Western European countries and with the exception of Germany and Sweden, but look at Turkey. I mean, Turkey is a neighbouring country to Syria. They're hosting close to 4 million refugees. They've actually lost elections or turned elections on the question of refugees and it's no longer viable for them to have anymore. Four million people out of 80 million. That's like Canada taking in two million refugees. You know Lebanon next door at the height of the crisis had, you know, four million people and one million refugees. So one out of five people you met was a Syrian refugee. So I think Canada can look you know into expanding its support for the refugee resettlement in the next year or so.

RB: OK. Kareem Shaheen, I wish I had more time. Thank you for coming in. I appreciate your time today.

KAREEM SHAHEEN: Thank you so much.

RB: Kareem Shaheen is a journalist, columnist, former editor for The Guardian in the Middle East. The CBC News is next. Then.

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VOICE: Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote, Wile E. Coyote. Genius.

RB: Wile E. isn't the only self-proclaimed genius, of course. After the break, two Pulitzer prize winning Washington journalists join me to talk about their new book on Donald J. Trump, A Very Stable Genius. I'm Rosemary Barton, in for Matt Galloway today and you are listening to The Current.

Two Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winners look back at three years of a most unusual presidency

Guests: Phil Rucker, Carol Leonnig, Jeff Sharlet

RB: Hello. I'm Rosemary Barton, in for Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

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RB: Still to come, signs of life and signs of hope in Australia. Plus, my conversation with New Brunswick MP and Cabinet Minister Dominic LeBlanc on returning to the House after a battle with cancer. But first, three years in Donald Trump's Washington.

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VOICE: We've been going through this now for over three years. It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cups. It was leakers and liars. And this should never, ever happen to another president ever. I don't know that other presidents would have been able to take it. Some people said, no, they wouldn't have.

RB: A milestone moment in Donald Trump's presidency last Thursday, after the Republican controlled Senate voted to acquit him on two articles of impeachment. The three years leading up to that moment have been, it's safe to say, unlike any other three years in U.S. presidential history. And my next guests haven't just covered those years closely as reporters, they have won Pulitzer Prizes for their work. Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post now have a new book out about that time. It's called, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America. And they're with me now. Hello.

PHIL RUCKER: Hi.

CAROL LEONNIG: Hello Rosemary.

RB: Carol, let me start with you. What did you think of President Trump's take there on the last three years of his presidency?

CAROL LEONNIG: To me, it felt as though the reporting that we did for our book, A Very Stable Genius, foreshadowed this moment. The trajectory of the president that we, the presidency that we found in our work was one edging ever further away from any guardrails. Those guardrails are gone, advisers who tried to guide this novice president and increasingly towards a president emboldened, unchained and believing that the only people he needs around him are those that say yes.

RB: And Phil Rucker, when those people were there initially, those guardrails and there were a number of them, credible, smart people trying to help him, if they had remained in place, would we be dealing with a different presidency or was this sort of the inevitable outcome for Donald Trump?

PHIL RUCKER: You know, it probably was the inevitable outcome for Donald Trump. The people we call guardrails, while effective in, you know, trying to restrain him in some cases, they were not able to really put a leash on Donald Trump or shackle him in any regard. In fact, one of the reasons that they either resigned or got fired or were pushed out, it's because they were not able to have enough influence with him. And he wanted to do what he wanted to do. And we've seen over the last four years an evolution where he's become much more confident in his power. He's a presidency of one and the people around him are there to enable him.

RB: Carol Leonnig, did the president speak to you at all on the record for this book or even off the record?

CAROL LEONNIG: You know, the president promised Phil that he wanted to participate in our book and do an interview with us. And he told Phil, you know, you're a serious reporter. I need a serious book done. I want to have you guys come in. I want to, I really want to do it. But as the media war escalated, meaning his incredible tensions with the media generally and with The Washington Post's specifically, he basically declined through a series of aides and his entire White House operation essentially declined to even fact check elements of the book. So we were very sad about it because we would have loved to hear his perspective and his answers.

RB: Sure. Why did the people, the many people that that spoke to both of you, why did they talk to you? I mean, it you know, there's there's some incidents where it's only a handful of people in a room. It wouldn't be impossible for the president at least to figure out who it may have been that was talking to you. So why do you think these people wanted to talk to you in the first place, Phil?

PHIL RUCKER: Well, we don't identify our sources. Most of the people who shared these accounts did so on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from the president or because they felt honour bound, duty bound, not to criticise him while he's still in office. But we found that most of them were willing to talk to us and share their accounts, share their truth for the benefit of history. You know, they saw this as a serious historical project, a book that would capture the full scope of this presidency and of this man, this character, this president, Donald Trump. And they wanted to contribute their thoughts. They wanted to shape that history and we're so fortunate that so many of them did. We talked to more than 200 senior administration officials and advisers to the president and other confidantes of his.

RB: And Carol Leonnig, I mean, you both done a lot of extensive reporting and both use sources, you know, as do I, did it surprise you though, that so many people did want to speak to you even anonymously?

CAROL LEONNIG: It absolutely did, Rosemary. I remember feeling as though we were going to be hitting a mountain of resistance in the form of people who generally run from reporters, their DNA, if they're in the intelligence, national security worlds, they're public servants. They're not interested. In talking to reporters, because that's not part of their milieu. They feel a duty to country and a duty actually many times to keep private those confidences they learn as a result of their service to the president. But we found the floodgates starting to break and open for us in understanding this historic presidency when the president crossed some red lines for those folks, when they felt that he was threatening parts of our democracy that are supposed to be apolitical, objective fact based. When he started threatening to take away security clearances of intelligence officials who were criticizing him, former CIA director John Brennan, for example, when that happened, a lot of people started to say, you know what? I think I need to tell Carol and Phil what really happened in the room.

RB: So obviously, we've had sort of, we're doing this on the heels of a sort of strange week with both the impeachment process now over, the State of the Union speech and these sort of strange moments, ongoing moments between the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has become a real embodiment of President Trump's anger and frustration. Phil Rucker, how would you describe that relationship? And in light of that now meme move that Nancy Pelosi did of tearing up the speech behind his back, what does that tell us about the state of things there?

PHIL RUCKER: Well, it's an incredibly acrimonious relationship, more so now than at any point in the three years that President Trump has been in office. And it's in part because they're both such strong political tacticians and performers. And Trump fears Pelosi to a certain degree, according to our reporting. There's a pretty vivid scene in A Very Stable Genius in our book, early on, it's a few days after the inauguration and the president's having a reception at the White House for congressional leaders and he's boasting about having 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast in California. He believes he would have won the popular vote were it not for that voter fraud. He, of course, was not true. There's no record of that sort of voter fraud. And Nancy Pelosi stood up to confront him on that and and tell him it's not true. And when she did so, Steve Bannon, the chief strategist of the White House, whispered to some other administration officials, she's going to get us. She's a total assassin. And, you know, that just, I think epitomizes the kind of role Pelosi has played as a foil to Trump and as the one leader in Congress who's trying to hold him accountable for, in her view, his misconduct.

RB: But she has also, Phil, expressed concerns about how people, you know, maybe in out to get her. That there's actual retribution against her and other Democrats. Is she right to be concerned or is that just sort of political rhetoric on her part?

PHIL RUCKER: Well, it's partly political rhetoric. I mean, I don't think she has any any risk of losing re-election in San Francisco, a very liberal district, one of the most liberal in the country. But certainly Trump is attacking her, is demeaning her. He said the other day at the National Prayer Breakfast that he didn't think that Pelosi actually prayed. Pelosi is a devout Catholic and has been her whole life. And in fact, she says repeatedly that she hopes or that she prays for Trump frequently and I think that really gets to the president.

RB: She was sitting right there when he said that I believe.

PHIL RUCKER: She was. She was.

RB: Carol Leonnig, what was, there was many detailed episodes in here that were shocking and surprising. What was the most surprising for you?

CAROL LEONNIG: You know, even though we've talked about it a bit in the past, I still feel like the most shocking thing was the president not being aware of the basic American story in the form of the battle in Pearl Harbour, the attack at Pearl Harbour that propelled the United States into World War 2. This is something most middle schoolers know about and learn about, a day that will live in infamy, but when the president was travelling for his first trip to Asia in 2017, on his way, his aides decided that he and his wife should take a stop in Hawaii. It's such a long trip to Asia. And in that stop to Hawaii, they were going to tour the USS Arizona memorial to those people killed at the base. And the president gets aboard this little flotilla that's going to head out to the memorial with his wife and with his chief of staff, John Kelly and according to our sources, he turns to John Kelly and says, John, what's this? What's this all about this? What are we looking at? Kelly was absolutely floored and had to explain to the president, you know, this battle, this epic moment, again, a day that will live in infamy, but if that were true, in his education, this lesson did not pierce Donald Trump.

RB: And why do think it is, Carol, that he can be remain that ignorant about some vital parts of American history and even world history and still have people loyal to him? I mean, certainly people have left, but there are still people that believe in him and his presidency.

CAROL LEONNIG: Remember, a lot of the people who rally to to Donald Trump's side, despite many of his policies not actually benefiting them, despite the fact that he gets things wrong, even despite all of these things, his supporters are like, yeah, so what? He's our fighter. He's our champion. There's some things we don't know either, but we've been dismissed and disdained by the political establishment of the Republican and the Democratic Party to a certain extent and this man speaks for us. He is punching all for us.

RB: And Phil Rucker, is that sort of why some of the people that were critics of President Trump, people like Lindsey Graham, Senator Marco Rubio, are now defenders of him? And does it mean that there is really no one around him, maybe Mitt Romney's one now, but no one around him who will say no or you're not right or why are you saying that?

PHIL RUCKER: Yeah, well, I think Mitt Romney's not going to be spending a lot of time around President Trump anymore.

RB: Fair enough.

PHIL RUCKER: They clearly don't want to be in the same room with each other. But to get to your your question here, and it's an important one. You know, Trump's popularity with the Republican base is his Teflon quality and that's the reason why Lindsey Graham is so onboard to the point that he's derided by critics as a complete sycophant. And that's why Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who, you know, has been in the Senate for years and years and years and has a deep understanding of the power of the legislative branch in our country and what the founding fathers set up. That's why he has deferred so often to what Trump wants and has tried to protect Trump and it's because of Trump's power over the Republican electorate.

RB: Well, in a recent Gallup poll puts his overall job approval at 49 percent. So it's not just Republicans. Do you, I'll ask this question to both of you, after this week where he gets off the impeachment, he sees those kinds of approval ratings, does he, is this the kind of president who is now emboldened? And what would you think that might mean going into the election, Carol?

CAROL LEONNIG: We absolutely, as I say, predicted a certain trajectory of a president increasingly emboldened. But keep in mind again, he has essentially viewed several elements of our government, the different branches of our government, as tools to his own end, tools that should be serving him rather than providing a check on him. He's looked at several different agencies of our government as his own apparatchik, which is not the case. Our Justice Department is an independent agency with blindfold on to serve justice. That's not how Donald Trump sees it. I would imagine we're going to see other ways in which he wants to enlist the parts of our government to his benefit to burnish his self image, which is his north star.

RB: So would that be your concern too, Phil Rucker, that this would just sort of carry on even more particularly if he gets the sense that he's going to win?

PHIL RUCKER: I think so. And I can tell you, there's a lot of concern among top Democrats that we've been talking to this week, that not only is he well positioned at this point to win re-election, but that if he does win re-election, you know, what will that look like? How much of a mandate will he feel he has from the American people to pursue what he wants done with even greater force than he is today?

RB: The title of the book, it's a statement that the president has made of himself, "a very stable genius." So, Phil Rucker, it is not to him in any way derogatory then. If he's looked at the book or seen the cover, he wouldn't take that as anything insulting or pejorative.

PHIL RUCKER: You know, I don't know what he thinks of the book other than the couple of comments he's made on Twitter about us as authors. But you're right that the title is his own words. That's what he's called himself, a very stable genius. He actually first used that phrase in January of 2018, a year into his presidency, when there was a national discussion under way about his mental health and psychological fitness for the office. And he has used that phrase at least four times since then, which we documented in the book. And, you know, we chose it as the title because this book is not only a history, but it's a character study and sort of hold it up as a mirror to him and stress test it based on our interviews with more than 200 administration officials and other advisers.

RB: The thing that sort of occurs to you as you're looking at the book and listening to many interviews with both of you, is real concern for potentially irreparable damage to some of America's institutions. And I wonder whether that is, whether you are hopeful in any way that those things can live beyond Donald Trump or whether you think that that is the case, that things have been harmed and the bar has been so lowered, that you might not get that back. Carol, maybe you first.

CAROL LEONNIG: What sort of put the hair on the back of my neck up when one of our sources was speaking to me and to Phil, it was a person deep in the, I hate using the word deep because people will say deep state, but deep in the government and absolutely a patriot in every way. A person that put themselves in harm's way, took amazing risks, kept a lot of secrets and confidences, so we can all sleep well and dear at night. And that person said, I fear the bar has been lowered by this president and I worry about what's going to happen with the next president. Will that next president feel it's OK to attack, I'm paraphrasing here, to attack people who are public servants, who don't look at party, who simply want to deliver facts that help a president make good decisions. Will we start having to tailor our facts to the world view and the personal wishes of a president? And that is a huge fear for that community that facts should drive decision making.

PHIL RUCKER: You know, I'm an optimist about our institutions too and a number of them have held, including the free press. I've no doubt that that will continue no matter how long Trump is president. Five years, he'd love to be nine years, it could go on longer than that. He jokes about a third term. Who knows? But anyhow.

RB: Well listen, congratulations on the book to both of you. It's an extraordinary bit of reporting. And I thank you both for your time.

CAROL LEONNIG: Thank you.

PHIL RUCKER: Thank you.

RB: Phil Rucker is a White House bureau chief at The Washington Post. Carol Leonnig is a investigative reporter. She's also at The Washington Post. And their new book, New York Times bestseller, is called A Very Stable Genius. Now about last week's National Prayer Breakfast, where the president raised eyebrows with his remarks. Here's just a bit of what he had to say there.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say I pray for you when they know that that's not so.

RB: For a better idea of what the prayer breakfast is, I'm joined by Jeff Sharlet. He teaches journalism at Dartmouth College and he's also the executive producer of a Netflix documentary called The Family, based on that book. Jeff Sharlet, hello.

JEFF SHARLET: Hi. Good to be with you.

RB: Good to have you here this morning. So what did you think when you heard Presidents Trump's comments at the breakfast?

JEFF SHARLET: You know, there's been a lot of talk about Trump's sort of desecrating this bipartisan, peaceful place in Washington. I'm not a fan of Trump, but I thought that speech at the National Prayer Breakfast was right in tune with the spirit of the event, which is in fact, about power politics. He was using the prayer breakfast the way it was invented to be used as a way of consolidating power.

RB: It's funny because you think prayer breakfast and you think everyone's going to get along and there's no politics at all. So tell me a little bit about the organization behind that breakfast and why Donald Trump might understand it better than the rest of us.

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah. It's the oldest and most influential Christian conservative organization in Washington. It's called the Fellowship, internally, they call themselves the family. They created the National Prayer Breakfast back in 1953 with a specific goal, which they've never left of consecrating the nation to Jesus. And their idea and they were open about this is, look, prayer is something no one can speak against. And if they could get that thing rolling and they could get that political presence there, it becomes a form of dealmaking. They once considered registering as a lobby, but decided not to because they thought they could have more influence off the books, which is true, which is why we have lobbying laws that kind of flout.

RB: And what's your relationship with the so-called family?

JEFF SHARLET: Well, we made a Netflix documentary about them based on a book of mine called The Family that I wrote years ago. I'm, as a reporter, I'm interested in the varieties of religious experience. And I ended up sort of stumbling into this movement and spending time with them for a while. They believe that if you're there, it's because God wanted you to be there. So I suppose they would say God sent me to tell their story, although they weren't too happy about it. One of their sayings is the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it can have. And they really do. I mean, they have a number. Senator Chuck Grassley, I mean, a lot of American right wing senators who your listeners might not know, but a real roster of power, including Mike Pence, who in my 2010 book, I said in 2016, you know, we might want to look at a little known Indiana congressman named Mike Pence. And I think he was really the deal for Donald Trump with that faction of the Christian right.

RB: They really didn't like your documentary. This is what they had to say about it, that it, "attempts to portray people of faith in a bad light." It does seem as though they're using faith as a shield of some kind. Is that fair to say?

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah, absolutely, given that all the critics that we interviewed, the critics of this organization that we interviewed for the documentary were people of faith. When they say people of faith, they mean it like Donald Trump. Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast talked about all that he's doing for religious freedom and then he listed only things he's doing for evangelicals. That's his idea of religious freedom. It doesn't extend to the wrong religions.

RB: So how critical is this breakfast? I mean, as I said there on the other interview with Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig. Donald Trump was there. Nancy Pelosi was there too. Do you have to attend this breakfast?

JEFF SHARLET: You sort of do. I mean, and that was sort of the genius, the marketing genius of this thing, who, what politician is going to say they're against prayer? It doesn't look good. Although I noted that Amy Klobuchar, who used to be actually sort of lent her name to the letterhead of the event, due to someone reporting, no longer does that. I mean there was a big scandal that Russians were using the National Prayer Breakfast through the Russian spy Maria Butina, which is something we show in the documentary. And you know, the longtime organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast, Doug Burley, likes to joke about collusion between Trump, Russia and Jesus, which to his mind, is the way the prayer breakfast is supposed to work. It's supposed to be bringing these strong man figures. The fellowship sort of looks for strong man leaders. They're not interested in democracy.

RB: So if you didn't show up for the breakfast and you were a presidential contender or the president or House leader, what would be the opinion then of, what would be the consequence of that?

JEFF SHARLET: I mean, it's you know, it's the way power politics works. It's through influence. There's no, there's no sort of kibosh that comes down on you, there's no lightning bolt, I don't think. I think there's something going on with the way Trump is using it sort of more garishly than others have used in the past, but what you really want to look at actually is not the name of the breakfast itself. It's the centre of sort of a week long lobbying festival where defence contractors are hosting events. There's events on the oil industry and God and how they can work together. And when you look at the delegations of other nations that are being sent there, it's typically led by, you know, a minister of defence, someone who's going to be doing business. And those people will be quite transparent about why they're there. This is the best sort of off the books, access to Washington power you can get and the Fellowship markets it as such to them.

RB: I must say, it's one of those instances that where Canada and the U.S. really differ. We don't, religion is not present like that in our political system, at least not in any real overt way. And I wonder if the way Donald Trump displays it, being maybe more transparent about it than others isn't sort of a credit to him that he uses it for the political reason it's there for.

JEFF SHARLET: Yeah. You know, it's this odd thing, you know, the incredible candour of a dishonest man, you know, he is so utterly self interested in winning lines up for an event that is as cynical as the National Prayer Breakfast is. And it really is an exploitation of faith. It's an abuse of faith. It's, to say so is not anti-faith at all. It's to say, I mean, here's an organization that when they talk about their doctrine, how do you understand Jesus? And this is going to sound crazy, but they say, well, look at strong man leaders. They'll say Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Well, they're not fascists. They're not communists. What they admire is authoritarian strength, what they call the Wolf King. That's what they say jesus is seeking, a wolf king among men. And so when you get someone like Donald Trump who really resonates with that kind of idea, the strong man theology, you have a marriage of like minds.

RB: Alright. Got to leave it there. Jeff Sharlet, thank you. Appreciate it. Jeff Sharlet's documentary is The Family. It's on Netflix. Coming up in our next half hour, we'll talk to a photographer who's found sounds of life in Australia.

[Music: Theme]

An update from Matt Galloway in Vancouver

Guests: Matt Galloway

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton, sitting in for Matt Galloway, and this is The Current. If you're wondering where the wonderful Mr. Galloway is today, well he's in Vancouver working on some special programming coming up later this week. But he's taking a quick break now to fill us in on what to expect. Hey, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Hey, Rosie. So, yeah, I landed in a beautiful Vancouver last night. There is a lot to do here. This evening I'm hosting a public forum from Chinatown. We're looking at what the future will be for this community, which is in the midst of downtown real estate boom. This is a story that's playing out right across the country in Chinatowns across Canada. The tickets for tonight's event are all gone. They got snapped up pretty quickly, but you will be able to hear the forum on our program later on this week. The Current will come out of Vancouver Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And among the many things I'm going to be doing is something that terrifies me. I'm going to be learning about wrestling and learning how to wrestle, wrestle in the WWE variety. It does not sound like the safest idea. Your host is a willing participant though. Vancouver has become a bit of a hub for WWE wrestling and the sport is looking in some ways to change its image away from some of the racist and misogynist tropes of past into something more inclusive. So we'll see that and hear me get squashed. We'll also be talking to the president of UBC. He's involved in spearheading efforts to improve mental health on the university campus. This is an issue that's close to his heart because of his own struggles as a student in the past. And again, a story that people will be able to relate to right across the country. We'll also hear from somebody from Kitimat, B.C., who used to deal with their own addiction issues is now helping people struggling on Vancouver's downtown east side. And we'll hear from forestry workers on Vancouver Island. They've been on strike for eight months with no end in sight. So as I say, a lot to talk about out here in B.C. as The Current comes from Vancouver over the next week.

RB: OK. Thanks Matt. Matt does not have the physique of a wrestler, so I look forward to hearing more of that. And as Matt said, you can hear the special programming later this week, right here on The Current. That starts on Wednesday.

Australian photographer’s photos are a symbol of hope

Guests: Murray Lowe

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds of rain pouring in Australia]

RB: That is a welcome sound for people in Australia. Rain streaming down through the burnt out trees. All in all, more than 10 million hectares and thousands of homes have been torched by fire over the past several months. 33 people lost their lives, but this weekend there were torrential downpours in the state of New South Wales. It's a glimmer of hope in what has been a very bleak year so far. Photographer Murray Lowe has seen other signs of hope too. A few weeks ago he went out in the bush around Sydney and the surprising photos he took ended up travelling around the world. Murray Lowe joins me now. Hello.

MURRAY LOWE: Hello Rosemary. How are you?

RB: I'm good. What's the weather like there?

MURRAY LOWE: Well, we've had a little bit of a break in the rain at the moment, and we've actually had a real saturation. All the dams have filled up. All the farmers' water reservoirs have all topped up and most of the fires are now out.

RB: Amazing.

MURRAY LOWE: Which is great news.

RB: Yes, for sure. So tell me what happened when you went out in the bush there near your home over the past number of days?

MURRAY LOWE: Okay. It was back early January actually, and it had been three weeks since the fires had gone through this area. And we're about an hour north of Sydney up on what we call the Central Coast. And a friend of mine and myself went up into the fire ground area and we parked vehicle and wandered off into what used to be beautiful, lush bush. And it was just blackened tree trunks and sky and ash and everything all over the ground. And every footstep you took it was just this ash dust rose around you and it was deathly silent. And we both sort of stopped and looked at each other and thought, well, this is quite incredible. There's not a bird. There's no rustling of leaves. Absolutely nothing. It was very, very noticeable and we looked around.

RB: How badly affected was that area by the fires? Was it just wiped out or give us a sense.

MURRAY LOWE: It was pretty much wiped out. To anyone looking from the outside, yes, there was just nothing alive there. Nothing at all. But then as we looked around, we spotted a little pop of colour here and there, coming out of the trunks of the trees. So this being three weeks afterwards, but still no rain at that point. We were quite surprised at this. So we wandered off in different directions and I took a series of photographs, as did my friend and that night we posted those photographs and they went viral.

RB: They sure did.

MURRAY LOWE: That was amazing.

RB: Cause we're on the radio, I went and Googled and maybe people will as well, but for now, can you try and describe, paint a picture of what maybe one of those, two of those photos looked like?

MURRAY LOWE: Yeah, sure. I actually, my number two photo on my post was the hero shot, as I call it. It was just simply a blackened trunk of a tree and pushing its way through was just these little bursts of new growth, which were a soft, pink and very soft greens all turning together. And it was just beautiful to see, just small clumps like small floral arrangements just bursting through the burnt back. And this is, of course, the reaction we get with the bush over here in Australia, because a lot of it generally needs fire to regenerate. So it's not an uncommon thing.

RB: Yeah, that's the exact photo I was thinking of. The contrast of colours and sort of death and life is stunning.

MURRAY LOWE: It is. It's quite beautiful actually. Quite beautiful. And it certainly caught the imagination of the world and everyone kept commenting on this is a sign of hope. And so we picked up and ran with that and we thought, well, that's marvellous, because it really does give their view of hope. Yes.

RB: So you said the photos went viral. Give me a sense of how quickly they went viral. You posted them at night?

MURRAY LOWE: I posted them about 10:00 at night and seven of the photos were in this group and soon as it finished posting, there were comments started flowing in. And I started responding to comments, as I normally do and all of a sudden, the queue got so long that I thought, well no way in the world I'm going to catch up with this. So I had a quick look at the bottom of the post and the amount of shares that it had at that point of time was something like about 495. And I thought, oh, crikey, that's huge. So I thought no, I'll pull the plug now. So I shut the computer down and went to bed and got up in the morning and turned the computer back on and then went straight basically to that figure at the bottom of the post again and it was up to 8000. I thought, cripes, this is really gone berserk. So over the next two or three days, the logs stopped, well stalled basically, because it was on my personal side. It stalled at around about 43,000 shares around the world. And by this time, I'd been contacted by the likes of Kennedy Media, who offered me a contract to handle the images for me. So I did sign up with them, in actual fact and so all the media around the world actually purchased him off Kenned Media to have in news items around the world. And I know it's been seen all around the world. And at that time, I modified the post and said that I was offering images of various sizes in print form and canvases and donating a large amount of that to fire victims.

RB: That's very nice.

MURRAY LOWE: So that took off in itself. So I was very, very busy for the next two or three days trying to establish printing processes and mailing processes and getting all these images out to people and finally donating this money through Red Cross.

RB: Yeah. The photos were gave people hope, obviously, with a sign that things were growing back already very quickly, but what is your sense of how hopeful Australians are in the overall ability to recover with wildlife, with flora, given that the fire season isn't really over yet.

MURRAY LOWE: Yeah, sure. Look, the fire season certainly isn't over, but that said, the rain we've had has been such that we won't get too much fire problems for a while now. In fact, I don't think we'll see anything of this magnitude again for quite some time. But the hope is for the future that the bush will return to its natural self and a lot of species will be helped back into the bush again, and we'll over time recover. But it's going to take a long time for a lot of the species.

RB: Sure. It did, of course, as you would expect, spark a conversation about climate change and whether Australia is doing enough to fight climate change. Now that you've been out and seen the devastation and the hope, did you take a moment to think about that yourself and whether more should be done?

MURRAY LOWE: I did. I did. And this, of course, there's been a lot of noise made about climate change. Sadly, I'm not completely sold on it. This set of circumstances that we faced came from a long period of drought, but also a lack of controlling the fuel loads in our bush, which is a normal process that we do go through on a yearly basis. Normally during the winter periods when it's suitable to actually burn, burn out the fuel load that existed this time around. But this has been going on for probably the last 20 years and it came to such a point that once a fire started, it just took off and it was just horrendous. There was nothing ever going to stop these fires, other than a huge downpour of rain and that was pretty much it.

RB: Are you going to go back out Murray Lowe? Are you going to go back out and take more photos?

MURRAY LOWE: I actually went back out a couple of days ago.

RB: Good.

MURRAY LOWE: And I've posted some more photos and the regrowth is quite amazing. The soft pinks and so on aren't so noticeable. It's more green now, but coming back to the more olive greens, which are part of the Australian bush colour and yes, it's looking very much greener than it was and it's surging ahead very, very well.

RB: Well, that is the encouraging news for us here in Canada too. We watched all that very closely. Murray Lowe. Thank you for chatting with us today. I appreciate it.

MURRAY LOWE: You're most welcome.

RB: Murray Lowe is a photographer. He's based in New South Wales, Australia.

Dominic LeBlanc’s fight with cancer and return to Parliament

Guests: Dominic LeBlanc

RB: And I'm Rosemary Barton. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[French introduction]

VOICE: The Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, president of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.

RB: That's a big moment in the career of any politician being sworn in as a cabinet minister. And for Dominic LeBlanc, that moment last November was even more special because just months earlier in April, he'd been diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. The diagnosis kept the veteran Liberal politician off the campaign trail last fall, though he easily won re-election in his New Brunswick riding. Dominic LeBlanc was recently returned to the House of Commons for the, has recently returned rather, for the first time since his diagnosis. Last week, I sat down with him in his office on Parliament Hill. How are you?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: I'm well, thank you.

RB: Yes, you seem in good spirits.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah, I feel great. I feel great.

RB: I guess let's start when you were diagnosed, it was last spring? What went through your head that point?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: One of the things that was unusual, it was a very rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is a fairly frequent or a reasonably common type of blood cancer, I think. But the particular kind I had there been around 500 people in the world who've been diagnosed with it since the 1980s. The doctors in New Brunswick had never seen one case. The doctors at the large oncology centre Maisonneuve-Rosemont in Montreal, where I had further treatments, had seen maybe 10 cases in the last 20 years. Same thing for Princess Margaret in Toronto. So getting the diagnosis was key to finding the chemotherapy treatments that was going to hopefully put it into remission and make me eligible for the bone marrow transplant.

RB: At what point did you say oh geez, I don't think I can keep working?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: It was probably I'd talked to the prime minister about this in February and March. Once we got the diagnosis and the doctors were looking at treatment options, it became clear that I couldn't do a treatment on Thursday, Friday and come to work on Monday. So I remember calling the prime minister, I think, the beginning of April. So he was very, very, very generous throughout the whole thing.

RB: He is one of your closest friends though.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah, but he's also my boss and he's also the prime minister who has a responsibility to have a functioning government. And he can't be in a position where somebody has cabinet responsibilities and they're being neglected or not prosecuted in the right way. So he looked after that part of it and then would check in with me as a friend would. How are you doing? Anything I can do? Geez it would be fun if you could join the cabinet meeting next week by phone. He was very encouraging, including the time I was hospitalized in Montreal. He came to visit me. He was very, very attentive. It was, it's quite moving.

RB: How difficult was that for you? Because how would you describe yourself before that diagnosis? Like what kind of politician were you? I have some choice words, but give me yours.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Go ahead. No go ahead. I'm more interested in yours. I'm obviously biased. I'm obviously biased. Extraordinary. Fantastic.

RB: Very outgoing, very friendly, very, very keen on your job, I would say. Very engaged.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Well yeah Rosemary, I love my job. I worked hard to get the job. I waited 15 years to have a chance to serve in the cabinet. So, yeah, every month, every week, you're lucky enough to have a job like I have. You always have the sense you're borrowing the chair for the person coming after. I actually believe that. And sometimes I sit in House of Commons and look around or sit in the cabinet room and you're struck by how temporary is the chance you have to do that job. So when you're forced to take six months, eight months, basically disappear through the floorboards, it was tough. And we had an election coming up and you wonder if you're going to win. So you go through those difficult medical treatments, encouraged by your boss saying, geez, you know, it would be great when you're back and I'm looking forward to it. So it motivated you just to plough through it and come out the other end.

RB: The reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because there's something that I really don't understand about public service and people that are that committed to public service. I think I would have said, OK, well, I have this. I'm not going to run in the next election. This is my wakeup call. I'm going to devote more time to myself. I've given enough of my life to my country. And I'm just wondering, did that ever occur to you?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah it did. It did. And in fact, I remember one discussion one night in a hospital room in Moncton with Dr. Finn, who was the treating haematologist. And he basically said, you know, you can forget about the idea of campaigning in the fall. So then I thought to myself after he left, well, does that mean that I can't still be a candidate? Because you can still be a candidate, even if for medical reasons, you can't campaign in the traditional sense of being at every activity and every large public gathering. To be honest, Rosemary, I never contemplated not running again. I had been renominated already as the Liberal candidate in my constituency. I thought the government was going to be re-elected and I don't think I'm finished doing what I want to do as a member of parliament or a cabinet minister, I don't think one has these jobs in perpetuity, as I said a minute ago, but I wasn't going to let a difficult medical situation cut off something that I loved doing and something where I thought I was making, all jokes aside, a positive contribution.

RB: But do you recognise that as something that is unusual? That other people on the Hill may have that feeling, but that it's unusual to be that committed?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: I'm not sure it's committed is the kind word. I was 51 years old last year, so I didn't think I was finished working. So if I didn't run again or if I was unsuccessful, I would find another job. And the other thing that hits you and I've talked to other patients that one meets in these chemotherapy treatment rooms and at various points along the cycle, you meet all kinds of fascinating people and some, frankly, who weren't as lucky as I was. Everybody wants to go back to their normal life. So when you're sitting in that chemotherapy chair or when you're in an isolation room at the hospital you want to get back your normal life. And what does that mean? That means spending time with your family obviously, doing things with my wife, who I adore. But it also includes work, the people you work with that you like. It's you want to have a normal life again. So jettisoning your job didn't feel like the way to sort of maintain or return to a normal routine.

RB: Although these jobs are more demanding than a lot of jobs in terms of travel and time and you know.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: You know what I've always, I never accepted that argument, to be honest. Long distance truck drivers are away way. A lot of people in New Brunswick went and still go out to work in Labrador, in northern Quebec or in the oil patch in Alberta. They're away from their families. I get to go back as often as I want as I can. I always thought there's something, you ask the voters to give you a job. It's not sincere to complain about how hard it is or oh my God, I'm always away. I've been very serene about that. I'm desperately, desperately fortunate to have had the job and I adore it every day of it. So I've never thought that way.

RB: So you went into isolation before?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Oh, yeah, I left New Brunswick on Labour Day weekend. Jolene and I drove to Montreal. We wanted to have our car there. I went into hospital the days after Labour Day weekend and I left at the beginning of November, the hospital. So I was there 56 nights.

RB: And was that a painful experience?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Being in the isolation room?

RB: No. Like what you were going through physically, medically.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: The transplant itself, the stem cell transplant is absolutely painless. I got 570 million stem cells from an unrelated donor who doesn't live in Canada, who was a ten out of ten perfect genetic match with me and the same blood type and a younger male. So I had a perfect donor, somebody I don't know who he is and he doesn't know who I am. Apparently after a year, they'll tell you. So the transplant itself is painless. And you're so excited to get it because it constitutes a cure. If it works, it's a cure.

RB: The hardest thing you've done, you think?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah, I found looking after my father in the last years of his life, he had very severe dementia and was at home and I was the primary caregiver who was trying to organise his home care. I found that difficult. But this time you're forced to contemplate your own mortality at 51 years old.

RB: When you were isolated like that, you said you had a visitor at a time. The prime minister came by. Your wife is obviously there. But what?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: The prime minister was kind of fun. When the prime minister came in.

RB: So I guess security had to stay out.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of activity in the hall, but he came in and we spent an hour and a half. We had, it was one of the nicest moments of that period.

RB: Was that part though difficult because you're such a social person that you were so cut off from people? I wonder was that?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: You're so sick from the chemotherapy that seeing people actually becomes a big burden.

RB: Right.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Sometimes you're literally too tired to read your iPad, to look at your iPad. I mean, some nights I was too tired, imagine, to stay up and watch the CBC National.

RB: Oh my God. That's terrible.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: I know. That's how bad it was.

RB: When you showed up for the cabinet swearing in and you were completely bald at the time.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: That's not true. I had like a little kiwi, I had a tiny.

RB: It's hard to see on TV.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yeah, no, but it was there. I was kind of proud.

RB: And you were wearing a mask, I think too, right?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Yes. The doctors told me, I asked the doctors if I could go to some event at Rideau Hall. So I probably broke the confidence of the cabinet swearing in. They laughed and they said, yeah, but don't go to the reception afterwards. Don't shake everybody's hand. Use a lot of Purell and wear a mask, which I did because I had literally been out of the hospital for two weeks. But the mask was the awkward part. I certainly got text messages and emails from my friends teasing me about you know halitosis and bad breath and why you wearing a mask and stuff.

RB: Did you ever think I'm not sure this is going to work out? Were you positive?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: The election or the medical?

RB: No, the medical stuff.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: I never doubted the election. Yeah, of course. I felt very lucky. What's the chance you find a 10 out of 10 genetic match donor in another country with the same blood type?

RB: And you said you could find out. Do you plan to find out?

DOMINIC LEBLANC: After a year, I was told, assuming this person agrees, I can communicate. I can send a letter through the hospital where he would have donated his stem cells and they'll give him the letter. And I would think he's going to get a very nice Christmas present. I hope he likes champagne. I hope he likes.

RB: Cigars.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Cigars. The doctors weren't too encouraging about the cigars.

RB: No, I bet not. When you go through these kinds of things and you're thinking about different things and your life, I imagine it changed you in some way, other than the new hairdo and the weight loss.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: The new hairdo and the slim figure.

RB: Yeah.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: It probably does. I used to think it sounded corny, but when you go through it, you see it yourself. You realize a whole bunch of things that used to aggravate you or frustrate you aren't really that important. It really does make you realize that time you spend with your family is, my wife took a leave from her job and lived in Montreal and spent 10 hours a day at the hospital. That's remarkable. So you to honour that unbelievable generosity, you want to be able to spend time with people and on things that matter. So it sort of allows you to hit delete on a whole bunch of stuff and not feel guilty about it.

RB: And to come back to a job where you feel like you're doing something bigger than just what you would do for yourself, I guess.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: It makes you motivated to want to make a real contribution to the country or to my constituency, because that's an opportunity that not many Canadians have and I've been given that opportunity. So you don't want to waste any day of it. But it also brings you back to the job with perhaps a better balance. You know, you don't necessarily have to travel every single break week. You don't have to fill up every weekend with activities at the other part of the country. So I'll use this period, frankly, I'm hoping to go snowmobiling next weekend in New Brunswick. My wife said we should do more winter sports, so I bought a big skidoo. I don't think that's what she meant.

RB: That's fine. That sounds like fun.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: I love it. So I'll spend more time on the skidoo this winter. We just need more snow.

RB: Yes. I'm glad you're doing well.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Thanks, Rosemary.

RB: Thank you for making the time. I appreciate it.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Thank you very much. I'm glad to see you.

RB: Thank you. Glad to see you.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Dominic LeBlanc is a Liberal Cabinet minister and MP for Beausejour. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today, Q's screen panel shares their takes on last night's Oscars. And finally, we've just been hearing about glimmers of hope and beauty in Australia following months of devastating bushfires. Here's another one to end things off today. Last week, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra held an outdoor concert dedicated to victims of the fires. It opened with a new composition by Aboriginal soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham. It's a so-called "Welcome to Country" piece performed to welcome visitors to traditional land. I'm Rosemary Barton, sitting in for Matt Galloway. I'll be back again tomorrow morning. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Music from concert by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra]

Feb. 10, 2020 episode transcript

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