People of colour are under 'pressure' to immediately accept Trudeau's apology, says activist

Guests: El Jones, Kamal Al-Solaylee

RB: Once, twice and now at least three times. Three times that Justin Trudeau has in the past put on black or brown face to impersonate a person of color. And Canadians are reacting.

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VOICE 1: I'm a kind of like brown person too. So I really don't find it racist. I mean he was dressing up like a character, like Aladdin. Yes. So for me it's because it was that personality so that's fine.

VOICE 2: It's a bad decision.

VOICE 3: I don't like it. Yes.

VOICE 4: It's not good.

VOICE 5: It was racist. I think they should get a different prime minister.

VOICE 3: I think he is going to lose votes over that, personally, I don't think that he's going to get elected this year.

VOICE 6: I see nothing wrong. Probably what I saw on TV was that was done years back and he's apologized. I see that he was sincere about that.

VOICE 7: That is a little bit too much. I wish he had not done it but I respect him. So I would like him to learn from this and show us what he's got to bring a change.

VOICE 8: Yes we want to know the character of people that we are electing but at the end of the day we also really need to be debating and looking at how we're going to solve real issues that we're facing as a society. And by just simply focusing in on what different people have done in their past we are distracting ourselves from the real bigger issues that we really need to be looking at.

RB: That's just some reaction from people in Winnipeg and Halifax to the images of Justin Trudeau in black or brown face that have come out over the past couple of days. Justin Trudeau presents himself as an ally, someone who champions diversity and criticizes others for their intolerance. Now he's firmly on the defensive and he's reignited the discussion about Canada's history of racism and what politicians need to do to address it in the future. To talk about this I'm joined by two guests. El Jones is a poet and an activist and she teaches at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax. She joins us from our Fredericton studio today. And Kamal Al Solaylee is a professor at Ryerson School of Journalism. He's also the author of Brown. That being Brown in the World Today Means to Everyone. And he's with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning to both of you.

EL JONES: Good morning.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Good morning.

RB: El Jones going to start with you. Let's just get your reaction to these images that you saw we all saw now of Justin Trudeau. Well what did that do to you?

EL JONES: Well I don't think I'm actually particularly surprised or shocked by these images. I think every time there's a black face scandal there's always a pretense that this is newly shocking. Yet we seem to have these scandals every six months, every year or so. I'm in January at Dalhousie University the president of that university who's interim president Peter MacKinnon had a book that defended wearing blackface costumes. So I don't think it's quite as shocking as people perhaps like to pretend in that it's not unusual and it seems to be quite expected. With that said I think that making the conversation kind of about our personal reactions to this or Trudeau's personal behavior, I think misses the bigger picture is that the reason that this reveals in Canada the structural questions that I think about really need to be addressed.

RB: Okay fair enough. And let's get to those so that we feel that we've addressed the bigger issues too. But Kamal I do want to get your reaction as well too. What you thought when you saw not one, two, but three pictures?

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Oh my first reaction was like welcome to my world. This is what a lot of people of color experience. Kind of- if not always outright racism then very subtle or mocking or in general like people thinking that blackness or Brown is something they can wear on and off. Like you can wash it off after a long day or is a costume. So all of that was disappointing. But I tend to agree with your last streeter and with El that this should not be the conversation that we need to have on race. There are far bigger issues here.

RB: OK. I want to play a little clip of Charmaine Nelson who has studied blackface in Canada. The professor of Canadian art history at McGill University. Here's how she describes its Canadian roots because. We probably know more about it in the United States but its Canadian roots after the abolition of slavery in the U.S.. Here she is.

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There would have been blackface to troops. They were like acting and performance troupes that traveled in different regions in Canada and or the U.S.A. So we've forgotten that these troops and these actresses performers were not just American imports and we'd like to say that a lot about anything to do with slavery, colonialism and racism in Canada. We forget how much this is also our history. So we need to own up to that. We need to face those histories and we need to understand that the legacy of Trudeau or anyone else performing this or participating this in 2001 have a long history in Canada that goes back into the 19th century actually.

RB: I mean that seems sort of import. And here too, El Jones maybe you want to weigh in that that something that we maybe are more comfortable seeing in the United States or we associate more with the United States is actually been prevalent in Canada and obviously continues to be to some extent. El?

EL JONES: Absolutely and one of the arguments you'll sometimes see to minimize or excuse black face in Canada is well it doesn't have the same history. We didn't have the same histories of enslavement here. Yesterday I was looking at something sent over to me by Dr. Claudine Bonner who's a sociology prof at Acadia. And it's from the 1918 issue of the Acadia Athenaeum that describes a minstrel show with quote 23 Coons performing, and says this was the best show we've seen of its time. So that indicates how regular these performances are. And I think what it also were and what it also indicates is how often they took place. To describe something as the best show of its kind in a while also suggests that there were many of these shows. So these certainly weren't something that only took place the American South which you sometimes have argued. There is a history of enslavement in Canada which were not taught about and a lot of people aren't aware of. And blackface shows persisted in Canada well into the 1950s. So this isn't again as Dr. Nelson said something that's imported to us and it's not part of our history or something that we shouldn't understand. And when we have we engage in conversations particularly around anti blackness and race in Canada, there's always a move to push it off the United States and say that didn't really happen here or it's not the same thing here. But if these images aren't so charged in Canada, why do people continue to engage in wearing them. Why are these stereotypes still having so much traffic. If blackface didn't mean anything people would continue to wear blackface costumes. And of course when we're talking about the issue of blackface we have to understand these images come from these minstrel shows which are about the most degrading, dehumanizing and grotesque images of black people. So black people as lazy, black people as unintelligent, black people as criminal. And those issues still persist. So when we talk about the carding of black people and how black people are stopped by the police at wildly disproportionate rates that's about how black people are seen by the stereotype. When we talk about how black kids are suspended from school at these incredible rates, that's about how black people are still seen as unintelligent. So these images are about our humanity and how we're seen. And I think that's really important to center in these discussions. Not minimizing, well it's just a costume.

RB: What. I mean you know Justin Trudeau said he did this in 2001. He didn't know it was hurtful. Had he known better he would have done better. You know I don't know whether that's valid a valid claim or not, but I would say that the things that El has just brought up there that I have not been personally well educated on them. And I'm wondering how much of that is also at play - that we just don't talk about this enough in Canadian society.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Well I mean I guess I you know academics and people who have done this with this kind of research had been having an anti-black activists have been mentioning it for a long time. But did they have the microphone? Did have the platform? That's a different story. Well I agree with everything El has just said, but I was at first I was quite surprised to see this term brown face being sort of commonly used, because when I wrote about it in my book I had to explain what it is because it's a much- sort of it's a different phenomenon and it should not take away from the seriousness of blackface but it does exist. I'm seeing on social media people saying that no such thing as brown face. But there's a long history of people just darkening their skin. I mean whether it's in Hollywood, whether it's on stage and there's a long history of that in English literature, colonial literature in general. So it's also has a long history but it's not as well known.

RB: But they are equally offensive.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Oh oh absolutely yeah. I'm not saying that. But perhaps what I would say is that again I think I have sort of bigger fish to fry when it comes to race issues that go beyond Brown or blackface.

RB: But does that mean, El, that- I'll just ask you: Can you look past an incident like this in order to discuss bigger issues around racism and policies for dealing with discrimination?

EL JONES: I don't think it's about looking past. But I think it's about removing that impulse to always reduce racism to the individual. So discussions of racism always quickly turn into, 'is he a bad person? Are you saying he's a problem?' And making individuals out of the broader issue. So that image, the so-called Arabian Nights Aladdin image that takes place in 2001, that's obviously the same time as 9/11. And you see an expanding state security apparatus against Muslim Canadians that still exists - so people are still fighting to get off the no fly list. So at the same time as we're saying, 'wasn't that so long ago and was racism really so serious 18 years ago?' Certainly Muslim Canadians are still feeling those reverberations. So I think it's those connections that are important to make. Not to excuse him firstly and talk about 'should we just move on and forgive? I think that's not the conversation.' But also to not just try and focus it on the actions of one person as though that's what the conversation racism of becomes about - just picking out individual activities and then pointing the finger at them.

RB: Kamal, your book Brown deals with the issue of colorism right. That that racism is not experienced by everyone the same way. Obviously it's there's no monolith. Would there be people reacting differently to this? I guess based on, well not only their own lived experience, but their own color, the way they've been raised?

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: No absolutely because even with within sort of black and brown community which are - which are not in the least bit monolithic and they have different points of view - there will be different reactions to this. But I mean I will probably say that the reaction comes from my disappointment because what actually happened- You have no idea what his election in 2015 meant to Brown and Muslim communities particularly. You know after 10 years of populism. So I think the laid down is probably bigger because of who he is. On the on the other hand if he was the only one to pay the price for this, maybe that would be sort of just retribution but I think if he goes down and when he goes down he's going to take a lot of us with him, because we feel less. I definitely will feel less secure in Canada in the hands of Scheer or in the hands of other of particularly the current form of conservatism which has sort of aligned itself pretty much with white supremacy and with the yellow vest movement. So you know in the spectrum of color brown face, versus yellow vest, versus white supremacy I just feel like that. I mean - and I hate to say this - but the lesson of all evils is probably brown face.

RB: I mean just to just to push back the conservatives would say in fact that they are not aligned with white supremacists. That that is not who they allow into their ranks and just to be fair Andrew Scheer has said I don't want them here, show them the door. Let me just play a clip of Justin Trudeau. Yesterday he went back again for sort of another apology, a more lengthy press conference in Winnipeg yesterday. And he said this.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I didn't understand how hurtful, this is to people who live with discrimination every single day. I have always acknowledged that I come from a place of privilege but I now need to acknowledge that that comes with a massive blind spot. I have dedicated my leadership and my. Service to Canada to try and counter intolerance and racism everywhere I can, but this has been a, personally, a moment where I've had to reflect on the fact that wanting to do good and wanting to do better simply isn't good enough and you need to take responsibility for mistakes that hurt people who thought I was an ally.

RB: What do you make of that El Jones? That he is recognizing a little bit to Kamal's point that that he was presenting himself as an ally and this may send the opposite message.

EL JONES: Well I suppose I would question how much of an ally Trudeau's government has actually been to black people. You yourself interviewed Abdul Abdi and you'll remember that that was a Somali child refugees who this government was attempting to deport to Somalia when he didn't get his citizenship because he's in child welfare. So we can rehearse all the ways that anti blackness has existed and persisted under this government. So again I think sort of this conversation around 'well Trudeau's a nice person,' and then we move to., 'are you going to accept his apology?' becomes about the emotions and feelings and reactions of people of color, and whether we're going to be generous and the kind of pressures we're under because as we're talking about there's a lot of pressure to say 'Yeah but do you want Scheer?' So immediately the conversation gets switched to our reactions and how much we're willing to accept apologies and not around, why do white people continue to invest in these stereotypes? Why can Justin Trudeau say 'I didn't understand racism and I'm still a suitable leader for this country' but Jagmeet Singh faces questions around whether when you wear a turban you can lead this country. Right. There are two different conversations. Justin Trudeau still gets to be seen as a leader. Jagmeet Singh has faced throughout this whole election and through the times his leadership at the NDP party all these questions of will Canadians even elect someone who isn't white? And we're having that conversation openly. So I think just to simply say oh yes he recognizes his privilege, is not enough to talk about how anti-black policies have actually continued under this government, how the immigration policies- we have indefinite immigration detention in this country where accelerating rates of deportation. So I'm not sure that I'm willing to accept that he's an ally and this is just simply a mistake and doesn't reflect anything broader other than his own youthful indiscretions.

RB: We are accepting the rates of deportation have also gone up though because the number of people that are entering illegally or illegal points of entry has also gone up, and the claims have been rejected. So just to be fair on that point. And I would also wonder whether Jagmeet Singh is also not having a moment now. El was suggesting you know we're looking at Justin Trudeau still as a leader but in the past few days we've seen Jagmeet Singh look like. Yeah he has done some impressive outings.

EL JONES: But Under what conditions?

RB: Yes. Fair enough.

EL JONES: So he's had to be very forgiving. He's always had to talk about love in his campaign. He's like I'm going to speak to children. You can still believe in Canada. So he doesn't get to be angry about this right. So this shows you the kind of discourses that we're still constrained by right now. If we're too angry or too harsh then it becomes about how we're unreasonable and not about the behaviour of white people. We're asked to move on. But white people are never being asked to move on from their racism. Perhaps they should move on from blackface, which is the slavery era stereotype that should be long over.

RB: Yes. Kamal.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: I mean it's me again I agree with El, but to me it's a lot more about- it's a little book more than anger because to me it's about moral double standards. Because you know I have been disappointed in Trudeau for a number of other reasons and most of all his continuing to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. And I come from Yemen originally and for everyone who looked at the brown face or blackface photos and was outraged but not outraged at the photos of Yemeni children starving and dying because of you know in part because of policies that the Liberal governments have adopted from the Conservatives. To me that is moral hypocrisy. I mean for you to take the [unintelligible] road now is moral hypocrisy.

RB: does this, again, you know I am always looking for opportunity out of negative things and maybe I shouldn't be doing that. But you tell me. Does it allow for an opportunity, El, though to put this on the table in a way that maybe it wasn't going to be for all sorts of reasons? To put racism on the table.

EL JONES: We've seen white nationalist editorials in major national newspapers. So it's always been front and center whether or not people always want to admit that these are questions about race. So the question isn't are we going to talk about race. I think the question is, one, are we going to admit that we talk about race? Two, when we talk about race whose voices are really centering when we do that So are we sending the voices of white people talking about everybody else and other or are we having a different conversation? And I think, three, is are we just talking about individual behavior and mistakes or are we going to talk about policy? So we need to think of the recent leaders debate and nobody was really willing to come out strongly and condemn the bill in Quebec that is saying that you can't wear hijab and work in a public school. And nobody was really willing to condemn that in strong terms. So if we're going to talk about race in this election yes I don't want it to stop at just Justin Trudeau's personal behavior. We need to be actually having that honest conversation. Be willing to talk about it and not be scared of having race on the table so that it only becomes an issue weaponized by the far right but not something that we actually talk about in any other party.

RB: Kamal.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Absolutely. I mean the idea the idea that race is a new addition to to politics in Canada. For anyone who's who is a person of color would probably you know would scoff at that idea because we have been living race. The whole election as El said, has you know the subtext of it has always been race. This just brought subtext to something that much more front and center that's all.

RB: And does that change the nature of the campaign? I understand what you're saying I think that race has been an underlying theme for many of the things we've been discussing. Certainly was in 2015. But does it change the nature of the way the rest of this campaign will unfold?

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Unfortunately it will derail the rest of this campaign. I mean unless this story sort of goes away and we in the media stop talking about it soon, it would be the kind of the defining act of this or the defining moment of this campaign which again I would, as El has already said, I would hate that to be the conversation on race in this campaign. Because whether it's Bill 21 or whether it's kind of a resurgence of anti-immigration anti multiculturalism these are, to me, these are the issues that should be the debates. I just want to make me make it clear that I'm not absolving Justin Trudeau at all. But but I do think focusing on those images which you know say a lot about the power of image because there've been a lot of other politicians have said worse things than just you know- but the power of the image is something we were reacting because of an image and not because of something he said.

RB: Okay. Kamal Al Solaylee Professor at Ryerson School of Journalism. He's also the author of Brown: What being Brown in the World Today Means to Everyone. He's here in the Toronto studio with me and El Jones is a poet and activist and teaches sociology at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax and she's been in our Fredericton studio today. Thank you both very much I appreciate it. Thanks El.

KAMAL AL SOLAYLEE: Thank you.

EL JONES: Thank you.

RB: The CBC News is next. And then:.

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You've done this obviously more than two times. Why?

RB: Does the press gallery lack in diversity have the right equipment to pose the toughest questions about race? That discussion in six minutes. I'm Rosemary Barton. You're listening to The Current.

How the Canadian media covers race

Guests: Anita Li, Tanya Talaga, Manisha Krishnan

RB: Hello I'm Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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REPORTER 1: How do you feel about this coming up right now?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Obviously I regret it.

REPORTER 2: So exactly how many times have you darken your skin with makeup in an act that you have yourself described as racist?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I shared the moments--

REPORTER 3: I just would like you to answer a very basic question. You've done this all obviously more than two times. Why?

REPORTER 4: Mr. Trudeau, what do you say to racialized comedians who are likely going to be offended by seeing these photos and hearing about what you also did in high school?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I regret it deeply.

REPORTER 5: When did you realize that blackface was racist?

RB: Ever since the news of Justin Trudeau wearing blackface broke two days ago he's been faced with tough questions from reporters. But what those questions be different if more of them were visible minorities. And when you're covering a story about racism how can that change the coverage. Tanya Talaga is a Toronto Star columnist. She's in our Thunder Bay studio today. Anita Li is a journalism instructor and the co-founder of Canadian journalists of color. She's here with me in Toronto. And Manisha Krishnan is a senior writer and host with Vice. And she joins us from Berlin, Germany. Good morning everybody.

GUESTS: Morning. Good morning.

RB: Manisha. I'm going to start with you. I don't know if you watched that scrum on the airplane that first scrum that was done with Justin Trudeau. What jumped out to you with the nature of the questions there?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean the main thing that jumped out to me was that the questions you know were largely focused on Andrew Scheer and how would Justin Trudeau react if Andrew Scheer had done blackface or if someone from his party had done blackface or if one of Justin Trudeau's own MP said in blackface. And I think that Trudeau was able to sort of dodge a few questions. He really did not explain why he did blackface. He said that he didn't realize it was racist at the time but there was really no one asking him, okay, you didn't think it was racist, what were you thinking? Walk us through your thought process. Why you would think this was an appropriate thing to do? So that was one of the big things that jumped out to me right away. And then when I was asked to explain why blackface is racist he also could not answer that question. I think he went on some sort of tangent about you know marginalized people and I'm not one of them that really doesn't answer the question of why blackface is racist which made me think that he doesn't actually know.

RB: I mean it is an election campaign and this is, you know, the Prime Minister so it's normal that you get political questions too. But I redid my podcast that night with Elamin Abdelmahmoud and he noticed the questions that weren't answered too. And to be fair they were not questions that had occurred to me right away, Anita, and I don't know if that's because I'm overly political or because I am not a visible minority. Anita.

ANITA LI: Well I think it has a lot to do with lived experience but I also think there's an educational component to this. In Canada and I've worked in both the U.S. and Canada there seems to be a lack of dialogue and discourse in this country around race. Whereas in the U.S. for example there's a much more both individual and institutional willingness to have these discussions. And I think oftentimes in the U.S. compared to Canada these conversations are facilitated by our political leaders. They're also facilitated by media because there's a much more diverse media ecosystem here. Whereas for some reason we're much more stagnant. We're much more silted here. There's a reticence to speak about race and I think the media is part of educating the public right. We as the public to get the tools in the form of language from media to have these conversations at the dinner table with our family members and our friend.

RB: Tanya I did think that the questions aren't well the answers were certainly better the second day that Justin Trudeau went out. But the questions were better to and I would expect everyone you know was able to think a little bit more about the things that Canadians needed to get answers to.

TANYA TALAGA: I agree. But I also think that this election has always been an election about race. I think that from the beginning though and I don't think we're actually having these conversations yet you know and while I agree the questions did get better the second time around and the coverage was getting better. I still think we need to bring this back to the point that this is a country that's been built on systemic racism. I mean all you have to do is look at the issues that we've been facing as Indigenous communities for over 154years in this country. And I think that when we start an election to wondering if somebody can lead this country because his skin is brown and that's been the question that we've always been having it seems in the media regarding Jagmeet Singh. This has been an election about race and we need to have deeper questions as a country about why that is.

RB: Can I ask what impact t it had on you this story? Because obviously I would expect have affected you differently than it did in me.

TANYA TALAGA: Mm hmm. Well for me I have to tell you that the night that the story broke I was just getting back off of a charter flight from [unintelligible] First Nation which has had the longest boil water advisory in this country for 25 years. You know I was there with the Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler from Nishnawbe Aski Nation. We were visiting with Chief Munoz and we were talking about the effects of what it's like to live in a community with no running water. What it's like to evacuate 220 people and not have the support of the federal government too. And you have to make that decision on your own send your people by charter to Thunder Bay. There are two different candidates here. There have always been two different candidates for Indigenous people. And you know I get on the flight, I get home. I check my twitter and I see this this story breaking and I'm thinking to myself, my gosh the gulf between us couldn't be any larger. Could it.

RB: Manisha you're not in the country but obviously you're following it. How did it how did it affect you?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Oh man I have been having insomnia for several days and I was about to go to bed when the story broke. And of course that ruined my plan. And so it went from you know kind of disbelief like surprise but then not surprised and almost like. Laughter and kind of a morbid sense I guess. And then it graduated into a feeling of disgust. You know I'll be honest. Especially when it came out that had you know three times at a minimum now. Sort of bewilderment. You know why are you so obsessed with this. And kind of made me look at his India trip with a different lens as well. So it just kind of evolved into disgust on my end.

RB: Is it hard Ali to look at it to have it affect you personally and to be a journalist. Are those hard things to navigate?

ANITA LI: Yeah. I mean it was a lot for me to digest to like when I saw the newsbreak in the evening. It was a bit of numbness. And it took a lot of time to process. For me it was interesting though not not ultimately not surprising because this is something I've been but I've been speaking about for many years now and I just haven't seen a movement towards more robust conversation around race, not only in the public sphere but also in the newsrooms and many establishment newsrooms that I've worked in. That's actually part of the reason why I ended up moving to the U.S. because I was able to do the kind of coverage that I wanted to do there on communities of color and the intersections within them. And I think that's often because you know in the U.S. there's 50 percent people of color whereas there's 20 percent here. And like I said there's just more of a history of dialogue around race and in the end stateside.

RB: Well Anita, talk - and then we'll get everybody to weigh in - about why you have weighed in on on the lack of diversity in newsrooms and then how that affects coverage of news stories like this, or any other story that maybe is not getting talked about enough.

ANITA LI: So I've spoken a lot about. Well first of all there's just the demographic stats around overseeing newsrooms in Canada are pretty abysmal. The last national study into newsroom diversity that was comprehensive was from 2006 on newspapers in 2004 when it comes to broadcasting, and so that's 15 years ago. I'm that and that in and of itself is a testament to how much we as an industry actually care to hold ourselves accountable around issues of diversity. In the south where visible there at the time. So in 2006 in 37 newsrooms and indigenous people and people of color only accounted for 3.4 percent of employees versus 16.7 percent of the audience at the time. And that was a similar similar stats in the broadcasting industry. It's only a little bit better but still not proportional to the Canadian population. And what that does essentially is that there are missing voices and they're missing perspectives within the newsroom. So for example when I saw the newsbreak yesterday I found that the coverage was pretty reductive and simplistic it was about outrage and reactions. I would have really appreciated for example more in its brief explainer about the history of systemic racism in Canada or even an explainer about brown face for context, to accommodate this kind of onslaught of news that the Canadian public isn't even primed to understand because there wasn't ongoing coverage of race in a consistent way. And we can't cover these issues in a vacuum.

RB: Tanya how do you think the lack of diversity in newsrooms affects how stories like this get covered?

TANYA TALAGA: Well it's really quite a remarkable thing isn't it? I mean we see it all the time. We see the lack of our voices meaning the lack of coverage on everything. I mean you could say- you'd look at the newsrooms and I 100 percent agree with Anita what she was just saying the newsrooms are totally not reflective of Canadian society whatsoever. I mean you can walk into any newsroom and you will see predominantly white people essentially. You will not see Indigenous voices there. You will not see black voices there, brown voices there. I mean it is getting better but the people making decisions too, the people running the editorial meetings, the people behind the camera, the people in the boardrooms those are the people that we need to change and they are the ones that are going to reflect the different stories as well. And that is so important and that's so important to that we start thinking outside of the box as well. And going to different spots. I mean do we have to have journalists that graduate from Columbia University and all of our newsrooms. How come we're not you know broadening scope and collecting kids that are coming out from confederation college or from Lakehead or from Laurenson or from different schools all across this country. You know I think we have to think differently in order to catch different voices because not all of us have the means and the ways to get to those large Ivy League schools.

RB: Manisha what do you think how does it how does it affect coverage of these kinds of stories. But stories that maybe aren't getting covered too?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean I think just in general it can be exhausting especially if you're a young reporter of color who's sort of try and break into the industry. And you want to be sort of seen as having a quote unquote agenda, but a lot of times the issues that you will pitch the stories that you'll pitch- you know I won't name what newsroom this was but a few years ago I pitched a story about black lives matter and was told oh that issue is to live right now. To this day I have no idea what that means. What it meant was that the story was not going to get a green light. And so that can be very frustrating and you can feel like your point of view is not valid. And it's really hard to kind of push back on that especially if you're younger, if you're more junior in the newsroom. And a lot of times where we're catering to a suburban white story sets and that's not reflective of the Canadian public.

RB: We did reach out to several major media outlets and didn't receive a response in time. We did get one from our own organization from the CBC though it said, this is some of what it said: "We know we need to do better and are striving to do so. 20 percent of CBC News employees are self-reported as coming from diverse backgrounds". I mean I will personally say that I think it has improved as I think you've all said it's improved. And it's even improved from when I think about when I was in journalism school where there was very few, maybe one or two diverse voices in that classroom versus now. And I'm sure some of that is about seeing yourself in these positions as journalists and knowing that that's something you could get to. Does it though, does it affect stories like the one we've been covering the past two days to the point where we don't give it the weight that it deserves? Is that Is that what we're seeing that it becomes a political story rather than a story about systemic race? Anita.

ANITA LI: Yes. In fact I was at the CBC yesterday doing interviews about a piece I wrote for policy options about how I believe that Canadian media should have more nuance race coverage. And because of this this news broke I was asked to at the top of my interviews to give my reaction quote unquote to the brown face incident. And so that that component leads completely challenges or flies in the face of my point which was that we need to have more nuanced conversations about systemic racism in this country. And in some ways although obviously this is a huge news story and needs to be covered, it feels like a bit of a red herring, a distraction, from the much more substantive issues beyond you know the political race.

RB: So then how do you take that Tanya and how do we all take that and then turn it into a more substantive conversation that would be useful for Canadians? While not putting aside the political consequences of it which I think, as a political journalists, are extremely important. But to make it a bigger a bigger conversation, how do we do that Tanya?

TANYA TALAGA: Well I think that there are a number ways that you can do that. I think that you have to start by looking at why is there a difference between us. I mean ask the big questions and you can get all aspects of society young and old to talk about color and what the problem is in this country. You could talk about you know why is it that we see people that are brown differently than white and black. You know why are we not talking about the larger issues too in this political campaign. How come the reporters aren't asking questions about murdered and missing indigenous women and girls which has been a massive issue in this country. Or about even something really that just happened the two billion dollar compensation from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that was ordered the government of Canada pay to about 50,000 First Nations kids who were born after January 2006. Why did Cindy Blackstock have to take the Canadian government to court for 14 years over issues of racism against our children. Those are all bigger issues that have been lying out there. Those are issues that come to us because of the history of structural racism, systemic racism in this country. Reporters should be asking both those questions. If you actually want to change the country of Canada, we have to get dirty. You have to ask these questions. These questions are here. Don't be afraid to ask these questions, Canadian media. And it doesn't seem like we are.

RB: Manisha what do you think that journalist should be doing differently to serve their audiences? I mean I will say I think there is a difference between covering the leader as someone that's done where you sort of get caught up in those movements and what they're doing on a daily basis, versus being sort of pulled back and able to dig into issues which we are doing as well. But what is your advice I guess for trying to make this into something that will- that something will come from this I guess is what I'm trying to say that it won't just be this conversation?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean I think you know bottom line is that newsrooms need to actually hire more people of color. And you know the people of color who are in those newsrooms need to be- Their opinions need to be taken seriously. They need to be at the table. They need to be promoted because really that's the only way that things are going to change, and that you're going to get different perspectives. And Rosie I fully respect your point of view and you are a political journalist. There's plenty of room for you know both of those stories all of those stories. And I just think at the end of the day like as a personal policy I don't do diversity panels anymore. I don't talk about that issue anymore because I look around the room and it's all you know people of color or women. And why am I preaching to the choir. You know the newsroom bosses and management are not in those meetings and they're really the people who need to be hearing this message and need to be changing their practices. So you know in my opinion that's the simplest way. And for some reason it's just not happening fast enough.

RB: It's the simplest way. Maybe although, yes, you're right, it's not happening fast enough. But it's also not going to happen overnight. Like it's not going to happen during this election. There are diverse reporters. You know we have some of them and they will get out there and do things but what do we do now? Like for the next you know 30 whatever days we have here on this countdown. How do we make sure that we don't get locked into a conversation about are these photos bad or good? And what does it say about one person as opposed to what it says about a country? Manisha.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean I guess at the end of the day you know obviously listen to the other perspectives that you have in the newsroom, but also you know, frankly, if you're a white reporter and you feel a little bit intimidated talking about race or asking those types of questions do the homework. You know educate yourself. Look into the history of blackface and why it's racist. I would say like you know we are reporters. That's our job is to do research. So even if you're white it doesn't mean that you can't talk about race or call something out as being racist. So you know it's really it's pretty straightforward. You just have to do that work and put it in.

RB: We have to work maybe a little bit harder. Is that fair?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: I mean think outside of your own world view.

RB: Yes. Anita.

ANITA LI: You know so I would say I think we're in an unprecedented time in Canada and globally and right now what we need is more adversarial watchdog journalism. Journalists calling things as they are. And given that this country has multi culturalism enshrined in our Constitution and that media is a pillar of democracy, I think it's incumbent on us to challenge party leaders when they say things that may be unconstitutional or fly in the face of our Constitution. And that's our responsibility. And I think in the next 30 days I think, like I said, speaking more to Canada's history of systemic racism, speaking to for example certain house or policy issues may impact certain marginalized communities. So for example Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to climate change and obviously the environment is a really big issue in the upcoming election. And it's really important for us to serve all communities and not just one homogenous community in this country. Because we are pluralistic. We are multicultural.

RB: Tanya what do you think?

TANYA TALAGA: I totally agree. You know I remember just when the election kicked off and I was reading the coverage of from the papers and listening to it from the news on what the big issues were. And I didn't hear anything whatsoever about First Nations, Inuit or Metis issues. I didn't hear about us in the context of climate change or I hear about us when it comes to pipeline. But when it comes to regular you know everyday issues, the systemic racism that people in this country face every single day that wasn't anywhere near any of the coverage. What should reporters do? Reporters by their nature, this is their job. It's their job to find out about issues. That's their job to be fair and to get out there and ask the hard questions. And I know those reporters that are sitting on those planes in the press gallery they can do that but it's also really tough for them to write because they're following the leaders around and they are on a schedule when it comes to covering a political campaign. But think differently. Maybe we should be covering the political campaigns completely differently. Maybe we should, you know, yes, that's what the leader said this day. But let's go and do another story that's deeper on those policy issues that we're talking about here, on issues of race, on issues of how are indigenous communities being affected by climate change. You know make calls outside of it. Get outside that bubble. You know we always were there is the thing about the Ottawa press gallery bubble and it's true. But it's hard to break out of that bubble when you're in it. But you got to. Maybe team up with another reporter that's sitting in a newsroom or out in the field and get them to start asking the hard questions to marry with your story.

RB: Manisha. I'll end shortly but do you think this is - this is what I'm talking to the other panel about - do you think this is also an opportunity - and this is my naiveté coming out a little bit. Usually I'm deeply cynical - but is it also an opportunity for us to start having conversations that maybe particularly as Canadians we feel a little bit uncomfortable with?

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Yes absolutely. And you know I actually appreciated that Trudeau was straight up in saying that what he did was racist because I'm so tired of every time there's a racist incident his go to line is something along the lines of 'This isn't Canada, this isn't us'. And that kind of a sentiment is actually very patronizing. I find it very patronizing because the reality is that is us. You know some of us are racist. That's part of our society. We always love to be very smug and compare ourselves to America. But the reality is all those systemic issues exist here too. So I feel like this you know it's sort of a jarring in your face example of racism. And as everyone here has pointed out there's there are other more pressing issues. But I feel like this maybe has sort of broken the ice in that sense so that we can actually have a conversation about race and face it.

RB: Well this has been a good conversation here. And so this is a good start. And I will take it also as a good start. Thank you all.

ANITA LI: Thanks so much.

MANISHA KRISHNAN: Thanks for having us.

RB: Thanks a lot. Anita Li is a journalism instructor and co-founder of Canadian Journalists of Color. Here with me in the Toronto studio. Tanya Talaga is a columnist with The Toronto Star. She was in Thunder Bay and Manisha Krishnan is a senior writer and host with Vice. She joins us today from Berlin, Germany. And to wrap up this discussion about blackface and confronting racism in society, here is a little bit of some guy from yesterday night. Trevor Noah host of The Daily Show.

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TREVOR NOAH: When you look at Trudeau and all these new stories of blackface coming out every day. At some point we have to admit that this problem is bigger than some people would like to believe. So we need to treat this like the epidemic that it is. Which is why today, ladies and gentlemen I'm proposing a buyback program to get blackface off the streets. And for those people who already have a blackface photo that hasn't come out yet. We need to have one day of amnesty where you can put it out online without getting cancelled. And don't use this as an excuse to make new blackface photos, okay? I see you white people. Old photos only. Don't abuse the amnesty day.

RB: Oh dear. Coming up in our next half hour monarch butterflies appear to be making a comeback. I'm Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current.

The return of monarch butterflies, gun violence

Guests: Mark Kelley, Carolyn Callaghan

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current.

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SARAH BATTERSBY: Hi. Hi butterfly. Okay let's walk over. So this is just a strip of grass next to the parking lot of the school and neighbors kind of got together and started slowly digging it up and turning it into a garden. And then because it was one of the few sunny spots I started planting butterfly plants over here. They like the sunflowers too. There he goes.

RB: Sarah Battersby is searching out butterflies near her home in Toronto. She's actually an official butterfly Ranger one of a group of people who are planting native flowers to attract pollinators it's all part of the Butterfly Way project. And this year she's excited by the number of monarchs she's seen.

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SARAH BATTERSBY: It just makes me so happy. It's a joyous feeling standing in my garden and say I'm just out here just doing some kind of chore and then all of a sudden a butterfly will go pop by my ear and I just stop and it's just this moment of bliss. That's you know that's the real reward is that feeling of nature flourishing and because I had something to do with it and we all can you know.

RB: I need more of that in my life. Sarah Battersby isn't alone. Canadians actually across the eastern seaboard are seeing the threatened monarch in all kinds of places even at a Blue Jays game.

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SPORTS COMMENTATOR: Meanwhile check this out as Britain is getting ready to throw a pitch, a butterfly lands on his glove. He doesn't know it and throws the pitch. You guys photoshopped that. That didn't really happen, did it?

MALE VOICE: That was awesome.

RB: But the monarchs are showing up in quieter environments to take the white point resort outside of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Staff there started growing milkweed to help the monarchs and they noticed the population growing. But it was inside where they really got a surprise. Manager Donna Hutt and cleaner Paula Frelick show CBC producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh inside a very special closet.

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FEMALE VOICE 1: All right. [Laughs] All right. Follow me. We have to go into the house keep. You open up that door. Feel that breeze coming through here? This is where we came in and we found this Caterpillar had turned into- it was going through the process of turning into a chrysalis.

FEMALE VOICE 2: I think we go boy we have a baby monarch on the way. Put aside there a little box around it to protect it, because it only hangs on a little thread so that nobody would knock it hit it. The sign said careful baby on board.

FEMALE VOICE 1: And it hung on five more than five feet suspended in the air upside down on a shelf. Absolutely amazing that, yet again, for a second year in a row we had a caterpillar arrive in housekeeping only to emerge as a beautiful monarch butterfly. I'm just checking to see some of the names of the folks who travelled here to White Point because they had special babies onboard themselves and were nervous that their butterflies or their chrysalis is may not survive. So they brought them here to us.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So sometimes guests come with their caterpillars?

FEMALE VOICE 1: To see our guests take this and to have guests call and ask Can I bring mine to you. Very exciting.

FEMALE VOICE 2: I also won first place this year of a Halloween contest dressed as a monarch. I made my own monarch wings. I've won first place. So it was kind of nice.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Did you ever think you'd be raising monarchs?

FEMALE VOICE 1: No no. My neighbors were quite shocked that I got to do this. Look I'm going to raise them and grow monarchs here and I will have more monarchs next year.

RB: From Toronto all the way to Nova Scotia, there seem to be more sightings. But what does all this mean for the health of the butterfly populations. Carolyn Callaghan is the senior conservation biologist for terrestrial wildlife with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. And she's in our Ottawa studio. Hi Carolyn.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Good morning Rosemary.

RB: This a good break from our other topic. And I think a good story to this is a a banner year for these butterflies?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: We're seeing we're certainly seeing a good year last year was absolutely a banner year this year looks to be a really good year and the population needs that.

RB: Tell me what you've been seeing in terms of monarchs in your garden or other places.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Yes I've seen I've certainly seen a lot more last year and this year. This year I did was part of the tri national monarch monitoring blitz so occurring across Mexico U.S. and Canada. And in my own little patch of garden which I would say is probably four metres by three meters, a pollinator garden where I just let the milkweed grow where they want and I have other native wildflowers, I counted 70 stems of milkweed that grew on their own, 29 caterpillars and 15 eggs.

RB: Wow.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: So good production.

RB: No kidding. That makes me want to grow some milkweed too. Before we get to why we're seeing more and I think it has something to do with the milkweed just remind us of that sort of magical journey the monarch has from north to south.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Well I would say first of all, to picture the monarch butterfly. They weigh in at about point five grams. So if you take a dime out of your pocket and you cut it in three take one of those pieces that's the weight of this butterfly. It can fit easily in the palm of your hand. And yet they migrate by the millions each fall up to 5000 kilometres from as far north as the 50 degrees north latitude - that's about Winnipeg - to all the way south to the highlands of central Mexico. And that's at about nineteen point five degrees north.

RB: It's crazy.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: They over winter and the oil smell for forest up at ten thousand feet of elevation over about ten different mountain tops. And they live strictly on their fat reserves. They don't eat all winter. So imagine they have flown that long distance and then they let live off their fat reserves for the winter. All they need is water. They farmed these hugely dense clusters in the fir forest by the hundreds of thousands on a particular tree. They have many trees but there would be hundreds of thousands on one tree so much that the weight of the clusters bend the branches of these magnificent mature [unintelligible] fir trees there. Their migration is one of the world's greatest natural phenomena.

RB: Do they have a rest stop along the way? Do they did they pull over for gas?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Yes that's a really good analogy. They do their fuel is nectar from wildflowers. So if you can imagine that trek from as far north as Winnipeg all the way through the U.S. into central Mexico they need many rest stops and they need to fuel up with nectar. So having places where there is wildflowers is critically important to the adults.

RB: So we have been hearing about the demise and the risk to monarchs for many years now. Give us a sense of how their numbers have changed over the past 20 years?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: So we have two distinct populations the eastern monarch which occurs east of the Rocky Mountains and the Western monarch occurring to the west of the mountains. The Eastern monarch population has declined by around 70 to 80 percent in the past 20 years, so pretty steep decline. In the mid 1990s there was an estimate of say a billion, billion butterflies, and now it may be as low as 300 million. So while that seems like a still a very large population, we need to think about the events that can happen that can knock down the population. So for example in 2002 I believe in the wintering grounds there was a storm that killed 70 to 80 percent of the population of the entire over wintering population. So we need the population numbers to get higher so that it can be buffered about against these kind of things.

RB: And given that the monarchs travelled from Canada across the U.S. and into Mexico, all three of those countries are doing different things right to try and help them along. Is there one country that's that's figured it out that is doing a better job than the other?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Well they're all working. They're all working at it. And this goes back and it's actually there's even a global effort. In 1983 the IUCN the International Union for the Conservation of Nature declared the over wintering sites in Mexico and California to be a threatened phenomenon. And that was the first time that a biological phenomenon was given a declaration in the whole history of conservation. So that's global. Mexico has listed the species under special protection since 2001 and it established protection for the over wintering sites. There was a lot of logging going on and these trees are critical for the survival. They really shelter the insects. They cluster together but they shelter the insects from extreme heat and extreme cold and without them we wouldn't have the monarch butterfly. So establishing protection for these over wintering sites was critically important. And they are really trying to work on reducing illegal logging which is still going on. And keep in mind this is a very impoverished area. So illegal logging happens. They're working hard and they're trying to build incentives. And in fact the U.S. has funded a lot of that effort. In the U.S. They have not yet listed the monarch as endangered but they actually have a really clever strategy. It's called a candidate conservation agreement CCA. And what they do under their endangered species act is they can say we're not going to list this species yet, but for everyone who has private lands who would be affected if this gets listed we're going to give you an opportunity to make some conservation gains by rehabilitating habitat. And so they've done that. And so companies involved with energy, development, solar, hydro electric power for example roadways, states, federal, all the entities that have something to do with land management have gotten together and they've shared information and they've learned some things and they're really restoring hundreds of thousands of acres. It's quite impressive what they're doing in the U.S..

RB: My colleague Susan Mackenzie went out to see what was happening with Monarch butterflies at the Quinn farm on Notre Dame De l'Ille Perrot. We're not far from Montreal. I want to play you a little bit of Phil Quinn known to many as Farmer Phil.

SOUNDCLIP

PHIL: So you'll see lots of weeds here on the farm the pride of the past few years it's part of our integrated pest management. We tolerate having weeds around in our orchard you'll see the is really really long up until the last minute we only cut the grass once a year just before harvest. It leaves a habitat for beneficial predatory. Insects that are eating away at the nasty bugs that we don't want around. We went to cut the grass there and weeds. I guess it was mid-August and then we saw a lot of the milkweed there with the damage on it and pile, like I mean a lot of the caterpillars there the monarch caterpillars. So we didn't cut the grass. When we see the butterflies in full action mode here, it's beautiful to see. It's a little too early in the morning right now. It's still quite cool. We had our first little frost here this morning. There was one a little butterfly the little yellow one. Won't be too long. Another 20 minutes or so we'll be seeing the monarchs out and about.

SUSAN MCKENZIE: You've seen a lot this year right?

PHIL: Crazy crazy. And I like to think it's a result of the Integrated Pest Management work we're doing here and the extra habitat we're giving. And some of it is. But across the board everywhere you look this year there's a lot more butterflies around.

RB: So you talked about what countries are doing. But how important are these kind of grass roots things or even what you're doing in your own backyard?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: They're really important and really my hat's off to Farmer Phil. I think he's awesome. He's connected to his land and he's observing and paying attention and adjusting his management accordingly and that's finally important. Millions of small acts like that it magnify into one large effort for restoration. And so for the monarch butterfly everyone can do something. If you have a garden you can grow a wild flower Pollinator Garden. If you don't have a garden you can help a local school or a community center build a Pollinator Garden. You can encourage your municipality to restore habitat along roadsides, along rights of way. You can to encourage your provincial and federal government to take initiatives to make a difference for the monarch.

RB: What do you think it says about us that we've managed to maybe turn things around here for the Monarchs?

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Well I think the monarch is extraordinary and the Monarch touches the heart of so many Canadians. Most schoolchildren learn the life cycle of the monarch. That's part of the curriculum. Some children raised them in the classroom and released them. They're very special in the fact that it takes three nations it's going to take the efforts of three nations to recover this species. I think it really touches Canadians and it says that we can do this. All we have to have is the will and what I'm seeing is a groundswell of people very concerned and wishing the monarchs well. So I think we can do this.

RB: You're hopeful.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: I'm very hopeful.

RB: Okay so I should go get some milkweed.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: Yes, and milkweed grows so readily. It's a weed. So it's not hard to grow milkweed.

RB: Good cause I'm no good at any growing anything Carolyn. All right I'll do my little part for the Monarchs. Thank you so much.

CAROLYN CALLAGHAN: My pleasure.

RB: Carolyn Callahan is the senior conservation biologist for terrestrial wildlife with the Canadian Wildlife Federation and she within our Ottawa studio.

[Music]

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: There was other pandemonium outside the university building as ambulances carted away the injured. Police have now confirmed 14 students dead. All women.

VOICE 2: Moncton is in the grips of an unrelenting nightmare.

VOICE 3: Four people including two police officers are confirmed dead in a shooting on Brookside drive this morning.

VOICE 4: You're looking live at Quebec City this morning. The scene of something unprecedented in this country we have never seen anything like it in Canada. A deadly attack on people at prayer in a house of worship.

VOICE 5: A targeted ambush style attack. More than 100 shell casings were found on the lawn. Most of the people caught in the crossfire were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

RB: Canada is not immune to gun violence. You may recall the highly publicized shooting in Mississauga over the weekend. Five people were injured and an innocent 17 year old bystander was killed. Investigators believe there were at least seven shooters armed mostly with semi-automatic handguns. The shooting has renewed calls for a ban on handguns and for the political parties to put gun control on the election campaign agenda. This Sunday CBC TV's the fifth state launches its forty fifth season asking why, despite 30 years of lobbying, there has been no kind of firearm ban to date. Correspondent Mark Kelley goes inside Canada's gun lobby for that story and he joins me now in our Toronto studio.

MARK KELLEY: Hi. Good morning.

RB: So who is the gun lobby in Canada? I'm not sure we all understand. Who me. Who makes up that lobby.

MARK KELLEY: Most Canadians would be hard pressed to identify any group that is in the Canadian gun lobby is not like the NRA which is so identifiable in the United States. So political and so powerful. In Canada you've got a series of groups like the Canadians Shooting Sports Association, the Canadian Firearms Association and the Canadian Coalition for firearm rights. Remember that word rights. We'll get to that later. And a group that represents some of the 2.2 million Canadian men and women who own firearms licenses across this country people who have contributed eight point five billion dollars in consumer spending on sports shooting and hunting. This is big business in this country. These groups represent these people. They are a powerful group of 2.2 Million people as I say two point two million adults voting adults tapping into that can have a real impact on this election.

RB: Okay. That gives us a sense of the scale and probably the weight they could have in this election. Blair Hagan is one of the gun lobbyists you spoke to and he's with the National Firearms Association. Here he is.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK KELLEY: Do you believe that Canadians have a right to bear arms.

BLAIR HAGAN: Absolutely.

MARK KELLEY: Would you like to see this actually the constitution changed to reflect the right to bear arms in Canada?

BLAIR HAGAN: There's been a lot of talk about that and a lot of talk about property rights.

MARK KELLEY: And you see those as one and the same, the right to bear arms is in fact a property right.

BLAIR HAGAN: Firearms are property in this country and I think that's something that governments often forget.

RB: So that that sounds like things I haven't necessarily heard before. Is that sort of representative of what you heard?

MARK KELLEY: Yes certainly from the from the NFA the National Firearms Association. They believe the Constitution should be amended and they've been lobbying the government to do this, that they're that this this right to bear arms being a property right. They also believe that we should have the power be allowed to have the concealed carry that you can actually conceal a weapon which is something you can do in the U.S., and that weapons or firearms can be used to protect yourself to defend yourself which is also an American right now. So I mean by their own admission they say this is becoming a sort of an Americanized debate a polarized debate. They may be more on sort of the extreme on pushing for that but make no mistake that this is a you know the gun lobby these different groups coming together they want things change. They want restrictions rolled back that they firmly believe.

RB: As you say that's maybe the more extreme point of view. What do they generally sort of want from politicians?

MARK KELLEY: What they generally want is for politicians to leave them alone. I mean that the recurring theme that comes up Rosie over and over again is that they will say look there are problems with gun violence in Canada. We agree with that. We as law abiding firearms owners are not the problem. You want to. You have an issue. Go after the criminals who are hot. How have illegal weapons. You know we talk a lot about the AR 15 because the AR 15 is being seen as the weapon of choice for mass shooters in the United States. You can buy an AR 15 in Canada. A lot of people probably don't know that. It is a restricted firearm which means you can only use that at that approved gun ranges. They'd like to change that. They want this rifle to be allowed to be used to hunt for example. They want the government to back off and they say already it's been overreaching too much intervention and they're targeting the wrong people.

RB: So you actually fired and a AR 15. Tell us what that was like.

MARK KELLEY: Well the point that the Canadians shooting sport association wanted to make and they invited me to a gun range was to show that the AR 15 wasn't really different from any other firearm that it is not more powerful if anything it just has a more powerful reputation and a bad reputation. And I said what is the big myth that you think has been propagated about the AR 15 and they said that it's a killing machine. It's not a killing machine any more than any other firearm would be. So they put one of these in my hands took me to the gun range and look I'm not somebody who goes out to a gun range. I can feel the power of this rifle in my hands. But then they gave me a more powerful one. They said see there are more powerful ones out there. I'm not sure exactly what point that really truly makes in the eyes of a lot of people, but they say that the big concern that most Canadians have about an AR 15 is it looks scary. And that's part of what they call their education. And it's not just me Rosie it's every year they say that they will take out 100 MPs and senators to two gun ranges to show them for themselves to make their point. This is the kind of quote unquote education that they say is underway. And part of their efforts to actually change some the laws and legislation in this country.

RB: Okay so that's the education they're trying to do. Gun control lobby obviously sees things pretty differently.

MARK KELLEY: Absolutely and of course we're speaking to the other side of this. We didn't really want to look at this story. We're doing for the fifth estate is being a debate. The debate has been talked about for 30 years. But we did want to find out the effect that the gun lobbyists had on that debate. This goes back 30 years. This conversation we've been having of course, and almost to the day because we'll be celebrating the 30th anniversary, sadly, of the attack of the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in December. And that's really- this was the watershed moment that not only sort of pushed this movement for gun control- and at that time 500,000 Canadians signed petitions demanding that assault weapons be banned. 30 years ago. That hasn't happened. But it also then started to galvanize the gun lobby and bring them together because they realized that they had to get political. And one of the people that we talked to was one of the one of the survivors of the Ecole Polytechnique shooting, Nathalie Provost. Incredible story of a woman who was shot four times including once in the head by Mark Lapine but she survived. And I asked her how she saw the gun lobby in Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

NATHALIE PROVOST: I really know that most of the people who own gun, who own permit, who go hunting, who are sports shooters most of them are goodwill. I am sure of that. But what I'm afraid is that what they are playing with is it extraordinarily dangerous.

MARK KELLEY: Do you feel it takes. A massacre to get Canadians to remember this issue?

NATHALIE PROVOST: How many will it take? Politechnique was not enough obviously. And the Quebec mosque. It's never enough. It takes courage.

RB: So don't most Canadians want tougher gun control or a vast majority of them?

MARK KELLEY: Yeah there was a poll that was done by Angus Reid earlier this year that shows that 75 percent of Canadians including a majority of gun owners support a ban on so-called assault weapons. So in some senses it would be a political no brainer for. For a government to be introducing a ban on these so-called assault weapons. And that hasn't happened. And when I've talked to the gun control advocates I say why hasn't that happened. They say one reason the power of the gun lobby. They have been fighting this. They have been resisting it. But you know they want to point out that the gun control advocates do and said Just remember that when we look at Polytechnique, if we look at the attack on the mosque in Quebec City, if we look at the attack on Dawson College in Montreal all of those attacks were perpetrated by legal firearms owners.

RB: So what does the gun control record under the Liberal government?

MARK KELLEY: They're the ones who started this going the Liberals way back when in 1994 when they wanted to bring in the gun registry we know how that story ended. And that has really scarred the Liberals from pushing for more gun control.

RB: We'll watch your story on the fifth estate on Sunday, Mark. Thanks.

MARK KELLEY: Thank you. Mark Kelley is a correspondent with CBC TV's investigative show The Fifth Estate. And as I said his story airs on Sunday. And if you want to hear where the various parties stand on the issue of guns you can hear Laura Lynch's interview with three candidates from this Tues past show. Visit our Web site for that at cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. You don't want to miss Tom Powers interview with - Oh my God - Celine Dion. She opens up about loss, leaving Vegas and her new album. How did he score that? I can't wait to hear it. Well for the last two days we've been talking about that Arabian Nights party that went so wrong for Justin Trudeau back in 2001. You know the one where he okay - you know what he did at this point. Anyway. There is apparently a way to hold an Arabian Night themed event without actually blowing up an election campaign. In fact there is one happening tonight in Vancouver. You can learn Arabic dance. There will be live music and of course Middle Eastern food. All the profits will be donated to refugee families Anas Al al-Hassan and Baker Al Masbey are two of the organizers and they will get the last word today. I'm Rosemary Barton. What a pleasure being with you this morning. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

ANAS AL-HASSAN: The picture we are really against that. I mean I was personally shocked when I when I just I mean saw that.

BAKER WL-MASBEY: You know in my opinion I think it's an honest mistake, if people like see it as a mistake.

ANAS AL-HASSAN: As a general idea our vision is just we are against this in general, coloring in races. The good thing is that I really respect which is he has the courage to go life and say that I did it and I'm sorry for it. I didn't mean I mean to harm people.

BAKER WL-MASBEY: If they just want it like to celebrate as I have you know they could dress as early as night. But I mean you don't really have to change your color. You could just like dress the costume and it's fine. Like I go to Indian party and I dress like them and it's absolutely normal. Everybody love it. And you just experience the different culture and the different customs as well. And the theme.

ANAS AL-HASSAN: And by the way we invite them. I mean to the Arabian Nights wearing a costume that he choose but without colouring. I'm actually just inspired of this incidents. So I wrote some words and I would like really to sing it in my own voice in my own also tune of cultures for all the Canadians.

[Starts to sing]

We are all humans

We belong to one race.

No matter color.

We all have a pride and [unintelligible].

We can sometimes make mistakes.

What matters is action that we take.

The Current Transcript for September 20, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

People of colour are under 'pressure' to immediately accept Trudeau's apology, says activist

How the Canadian media covers race

The return of monarch butterflies, gun violence

Friday September 20, 2019 Full Episode Transcript

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