Hey friend, come on in. My name is Alameen Abdul Mahmood. I am the host of a show called Commotion. Let me tell you what we do. Every day we gather some of the sharpest and wittiest culture critics I know around the commotion table and then we get into the biggest stories that are happening right now.
in the world of arts and entertainment. Things like Bad Bunny's latest album or this incredibly close Best Actress race at the Oscars or how YouTube is changing kids' entertainment. You can find a new episode of Commotion every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Neil Kirksell. Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.
Tonight. Border double crossing. The Prime Minister says Donald Trump's tariffs are on hold for a month. RBC's top economist says they better stay that way because they threaten to leave Canadians poorer. Caught in the crossfire, we'll hear from a Canada-U.S. dual citizen living in Texas who has deep ties to both countries and says no one she's talked to is happy about a potential trade war.
Sticker Shock, an independent grocer, is making it easier for his customers to buy Canadian by adding stickers to domestic products. He says he's surprised by just how eager shoppers are to support the home team. Watershed moments. A friend remembers the late Indigenous activist Jimmy Johnny, who fought to preserve the pristine watershed in Yukon that he loved so much. At the end of his rope, when a teenager fell into the icy waters by his home, an Indiana skipping whiz...
grabbed his double Dutch ropes, and jumped into action. And we can't believe our ears. Scientists discover that a muscle around our ear is not totally obsolete after all. It twitches and strains to hear a lot more than we... heard. As it happens, the Monday edition, radio that thinks that's a weird flex. Well, we've stopped hyperventilating for the time being but you should probably keep that paper bag handy.
Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had not one but two meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss his midnight tariff deadline. But after this afternoon's conversation, which the PM described as a good call, Mr. Trump moved that deadline back a month. The extension offers immediate relief for Canadian businesses and Canadian workers, but it also extends the uncertainty around a tax that could extract a devastating price.
Frances Donald is the chief economist with the Royal Bank of Canada. We reached her late this afternoon in Montreal. Frances, a reprieve for now. What will that mean for the Canadian economy at this stage? Well, a reprieve in the sense that we don't have tariffs dropping tomorrow, but our expectation is that Canadian businesses are still operating with a really big dose of uncertainty that's probably going to weigh on.
decisions to make big, bold investments. And my sense is Canadians will probably be wondering what's in store for us ahead and perhaps how close we came to getting the largest trade shock in 100. years is really calling to attention how dependent Canada is on the United States. And it wouldn't surprise us economists to see a tilt towards Canadian buying, even if we don't end up seeing these tariffs come to fruition in another 30 days.
What is the price of that uncertainty? How do you in your role navigate all of that? Well, we've already seen uncertainty permeating through the Canadian economy and the U.S. economy to a certain extent. And we tend to think of this as a uncertainty tax because it limits visibilities for companies as to what things will cost and where.
will come through in Canada in the future. Business investment in Canada has often been called a serial disappointment. And it's going to struggle to get a lot of confidence in the next month or two. And that probably weighs on the economy for the first quarter.
first three months of the year and possibly into the second as well. Now, that said, we may want to see governments, you know, giving businesses and households a vote of confidence that they're still standing by to provide support packages if we do end. back in a trade conflict in the not so distant future. And we may see a Bank of Canada recognizing that business investment is low, continuing on their path of easing rates. So this is an economy that's going to definitely need a pick-me-up.
after a very complicated 24 to 48 hours that we suspect as economists is going to weigh on the Canadian economy long past these past two days. What workers do you think are going to face this? Well, we know that if there were broad tariffs applied in Canada, that the place they'd be felt the largest would be the manufacturing sector in Canada. And that's about 9% of the total economy. It's significant.
Top 15 industries within manufacture employ about 3% of Canadians. Now, we haven't escaped the possibility of tariffs. We've been told that they're on hold for about a month. are so difficult for that sector that even if the potential still looms, that's likely to weigh on that part of the business. Now, one thing we want to watch is how the Canadian dollar responds. It's now back to where it was before tariffs were.
announced by President Trump. But the weaker the Canadian dollar goes, the more it's going to offset some of the potential impact of these tariffs for what's ahead. You know, I'm thinking of people just maybe even starting to exhale a little bit in just last few weeks in terms of interest rates falling, maybe it impacts their mortgage, those sorts of things. Certainly people are still in difficult circumstances, but this roller coaster people are on. What are you hearing from those around you?
This is one of the challenges is Canada is not cyclically or structurally in a great position to receive any type of shock, a trade shock or any other sort of, as economists call them, black swan events. is just starting to get its footing again after the bank of canada has cut about 200 basis points we're starting to see some life coming back into the housing market into business sentiment but the unemployment rate is still rising in Canada absent this shock as well.
So this is still an economy that needs to find its footing. And we're hopeful as economists that not only do we see some support coming through from the Bank of Canada, but we also see a reorientation of policies, no matter what the next government is. towards some of these productivity enhancing or some of Canada's really large strength.
And they include resources, they include agricultural elements, critical minerals. Canada has so much to offer the world, and it almost seems as though we forgot it for a brief period of time.
For our listeners, we have listeners around the world and certainly in the U.S. as well, but for those workers and families in Canada, if in March these do go ahead, that this is just a temporary reprieve, and Donald Trump imposes tariffs and their long-term tariffs, what will the reality and the price that people in this country are going to be paying long-term?
You know, I feel a little bit like a doctor who has to give a difficult diagnosis that they don't want to give and keep some hope alive. Tariffs of the magnitude that they've been floating in the past couple of days are very damaging for Canada. We're extremely exposed to Canadian goods, Canadian trade activity, and we're exposed to prices that happen on a global scale.
So our analysis was showing that, you know, according to a lot of different assumptions we have to make, if tariffs extend in Canada for longer than three to six months, it does raise the odds of recession very quickly. So it doesn't take a long time.
time of these tariffs to create that challenges. Now, it's not a catastrophe. It's not a 2008 type financial crisis, but it certainly wouldn't be a positive economic environment. It would require a lot of support from governments who have already said. They wanted to put in place, we've heard the term COVID pandemic era type of supports. I don't think that's exactly what we would get. But certainly there's a lot of focus on what can we do at home to soften some of that impact.
But if you ask me in a spreadsheet, what does this all work out to? 25% across the board tariffs, a 100-year trade shock for Canada would be very, very difficult for a whole slew of Canadians. Bottom line, before we let you go, Frances, I know there are never simple answers in a situation like this, but when you saw the bulletins about what the Prime Minister has been able to secure, is that relief for you, or are you still worried tonight?
We're looking for any type of off ramps that keep Canada from suffering a really significant trade shock. Certainly injects a lot of uncertainty, though. And I wouldn't downplay that Canadians learned a lot about their own economy. in these past three days, my sense is they're probably going to engage with their own economy and have a different relationship with it no matter what happens with tariffs ahead. That is a very small but important silver lining for me as an economist.
Frances I thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. Frances Donald is the chief economist for RBC. We reached her late this afternoon in Montreal. In the face of President Trump's tariff threats, politicians across Canada have united behind the idea of buying Canadian. And Giancarlo Tremarchi wants to help his customers. do that. He's the president of Vince's Market, an independent grocer with multiple stores in Ontario, and his staff have been putting new labels on products.
Mr. Tremarki is also the honorary past chair of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. We reached him in Sharon, Ontario, before the U.S. president extended the tariff deadline by 30 days. Giancarlo, if we were to walk into one of your stores this week...
Compared to last week, what would be different? You would start to see a lot of Canadian flags everywhere. What we've been doing over the last 48 hours is starting to identify products on shelf with a Made in Canada or a Product of Canada sticker or label. And we've been going through all the departments one by one and applying those to those products. And a lot of those products, I mean, or some of them at least, were already advertising those sort of things, were they not? Yeah.
They were. You know what? A lot of customers about a week or so ago, when the threat of the tariffs really started to become more realistic, started calling and asking, how could we make it easier for them to identify Canadian-made products? They want to support Canadian-made products. And then particularly this past weekend, Sunday morning, it was just really started a lot of customers asking and saying they wanted to be able to differentiate and to make it easy for them.
And so that's what we've done. You know, just a real simple little trick or tool is just using labels right in front of the price stickers or beside the price stickers so you don't have to change the way you shop, but allows the customer to actually be able to identify what products would be Canadian versus not.
And what percentage of those products in your stores? Oh, gosh. Well, yeah, it's funny. You know, we never really do this kind of an exercise, to be honest. It's not something that we would regularly do and kind of create a number. I'm pleasantly surprised that there is a lot of products that are Canadian-made or products of Canada. And each department's a little bit different. Departments like the dairy department, for example, which is obviously getting a lot of flack from President Trump.
But dairy is predominantly Canadian, you know, eggs, dairy. Some juice, particularly things like kombucha and things that are brewed naturally can be Canadian. As we get into the frozen department and, you know, the frozen foods are McCain French fries, Cavendish, they're products of Canada. A lot of pizzas are made in Canada, etc.
chicken fingers and chicken wings. So I'm actually really surprised. And what's it like to realize that and also get that kind of see and hear that shift from customers? It is exciting in one sense. It's exciting in the sense that customers are doubling down and asking for Canadian products because as an independent grocer, those are the products we like to sell.
That's how we differentiate as a grocer, particularly in such a competitive landscape. So there's that excitement that people are looking and hopefully they'll seek out and they'll try something new that is Canadian made. But then on the flip side, there's still a lot of apprehension and anxiety around what does that mean for those products that are U.S. or American-made, and what do we do with them, right? Because as a small business...
We don't have the luxury of just saying, yeah, we're going to deplete them or let them go away. We've got to find a way to turn them out without losing a lot of money. So there's an excitement, but there's also an apprehension still at the same time. So you're still deciding on what you're going to do on that front? For the most part, yeah. I don't think we'll take the angle of taking product off the shelf. I don't think we're there yet, and hopefully Canadian customers aren't there yet.
If somebody wants to buy a craft dressing, they're more than welcome to buy their craft dressing. You know, we never want to be that kind of, I don't think we want to be that kind of a society, and I don't want to have a business where we're doing that. But on the flip side, we're educating ourselves on alternatives.
so that if sales in those products do slow down and if consumers do choose to buy Canadian, we know what we're going to do in lieu of that space, whether it means finding and sourcing more Canadian products or expanding on the existing lines of products that we already have. When there is not a trade threat looming over people's heads, even if they want to buy Canadian, there are a couple of things that often hold people back from doing that. And at the top of the list is cost, right?
How much more should people, do you think, be prepared to be spending? Yeah, it's a great question. And a lot of the times, the reason why the American products obviously get cheaper is because of the size of that market. And for the most part, the production has left Canada and it's moved to the United States. Food is such a volume-driven business. The more you buy, the cheaper the cost, no matter what product you're talking about in the grocery store. It's why...
Costco and Walmart and Loblaws can offer such much better prices than an independent. You know, we're buying one for their every 100 they buy. So I think it's reasonable to expect that if you're buying Canadian made products made locally. with local workers and local products, you can expect anywhere from about a 10% to a 15% premium. That's normally what we see.
But again, in a circular economy, you know, that's money that stays in Canada and stays in our local economy. One of the other things people may not notice, some know this well, but others may not. The language around the stickers or what's on the packaging, made in Canada, produced in Canada, these are all very important. Do you think people, your customers, know what they're getting? I think they're becoming educated.
Everyone's asking questions now a lot more than they used to, which is good, right? I'm a big proponent of helping educate our customers and particularly my team so they can educate our customers on... where their food really comes from. Listen, it's one of these things where produced in Canada or a high, you know, over 90% production of product coming from Canada, that's a high threshold to meat.
particularly because just how our agriculture is set up for what we bring in. So, you know, when it comes to wheats and products that are made with wheat and corn, yeah, we've got lots of that. But as soon as you start adding in different ingredients, you know, if you have a muffin, you like to have, you know, dried pineapple in it. Last time I checked, we don't grow pineapple in Canada.
You know, there has to be a little bit of a recognition that there's going to be inputs that come from all over the world, and that's what you want in food manufacturing, right? You want creative companies who are bringing new taste ingredients, you know, amazing quality stuff. But what we really like to focus on is if it's manufactured in Canada by a Canadian company, that's keeping the economy of Canada moving.
If it's an import product where there's absolutely no production value happening in Canada, it's literally just a cross-border, pop it on the shelves and sell it, then those probably are the items that you maybe want to stay away from at this current time while we're in such a trade war. But we do have to recognize that.
Our tastes have changed, you know, as customers. You have to really think, like, what's our favorite snack to munch on? A lot of people, you know, love to snack on bulk food, like dried nuts and dried fruits. You know, and the majority of that, again, we're not growing that in Canada. So if you're prepared to give that up to fight the good fight, then that's your prerogative.
But on the flip side, there's a lot of great companies in Canada importing that stuff and then doing the seasoning, doing the repacking, adding value by mixing it in a different style with their own. particular spice blend. We'll bring them in from other countries as well. Yeah, right. And that's just the way our economy works. So I think we need to be careful too, in one sense, to really not go a little too off the deep end here.
Because as much as we do want to support Canada, we do only have so much agricultural land and the climate for so much growing. We need to have international partners for us to have a really full and fulfilling diet. Giancarlo, a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for your time. No problem. My pleasure. Thank you. Giancarlo Tremarchi is the president of Vince's Market. We reached him in Sharon, Ontario, before the extension of the tariff deadline.
He's been on TV many times, broken world records, performed at an NBA game, and for world leaders, all because of his remarkable talent and innovation at jumping rope. But now David Fisher's skills with the jump rope have landed him a new level of respect. recognition, this time from his mayor.
Mr. Fisher and his teenage son, Felix, were recently recognized with the Life-Saving Citizen Award for rescuing a 19-year-old and a dog who fell into icy water. It happened by their home in mid-December of last year, and the double Dutch skills Mr. Fisher has been perfect... for decades came in handy. We reached David Fisher in Westfield, Indiana.
David, jumping rope, jump ropes, huge part of your life. Obviously, you've achieved a lot with jump ropes. Have you ever used those ropes to save someone's life? Not in real life. Stage name is The Rope Warrior, and I've written a series of science fiction superhero books called Adventures of the Rope Warrior. So in my mind, I've always had these...
crazy scenarios of how a rope could be used to defend or, you know, save or, you know, almost used as an appendage kind of a thing. And it was just kind of a instinct to grab the ropes. in times of trouble. So are you writing your next book based on what really did happen? I've talked to a couple of people that are suggesting that very idea, so we will see.
Let's go back to when all of this happened in mid-December. Your son rushes home saying people need help. I know you said you've written about this in your books, but I'm just thinking in that moment you could have just run out, but you grabbed your jump ropes. So my son was out packing up the car, and he heard somebody screaming, and he came back inside, and he went on our porch to look and see what it was. He said, oh, the...
Looks like this dog got away from the woman and the dogs on the ice chasing geese and the dogs in the water. And he said, I'm going to go help. And so he... went to help. And, you know, I told him, like, just be careful. And then realizing I just sent my son out on the ice, I hurried, you know, I raced upstairs, got dressed, put on some warmer clothes and came down.
And by the time I got back down, my son was already back and said, you know, the boy went in after the dog and now he's going to drown. My son came back to get his phone to call 911 and to tell me what was going on. And then that's when I grabbed the ropes, and we both headed for the ice. And how far is that away from you? Away from shore, just so we can visualize? I would say he's about 60 feet from shore, was my estimate. You know, the pond had frozen over, but it was kind of a warm day.
The middle of the pond is where the ice, you know, there was a bunch of area where there was just water and no ice. And so I started heading out on the ice toward him. And as I do that, I can hear the ice cracking underneath my feet as I take each step. So I spread my feet wider and lowered my center of gravity in case I had to get down on my stomach.
And before that, I took a couple steps and then I left one of the two double dutch ropes near the shore in case I went into the water. You know, I've turned double dutch in the show so many times. that I knew exactly the distance I needed to be away from him to get him the other end of the rope. And so when I finally arrived at that point, I flung him the rope, and he moved a little bit to get to it.
And then grabbed onto it. And then he tried to push down on the ice so he could get himself above the ice, but the ice broke where he was. Then the second time he... He got himself more parallel to the ice and less perpendicular, so then I was able to pull him up onto the ice from there. And then you were able to get back to shore. I mean, it's remarkable that the ice under you did not break as well. You mentioned your son, Felix, had called 911 when they arrived, EMTs.
What condition was the teenager in? Well, as soon as he got to where I was, I gave him my coat. He had taken off his shirt to jump into the water after his dog. So I gave him my coat. I gave him the Crocs that I was wearing, so he had something on his feet. And we walked to our house. We put blankets on him and gave him a towel and put blankets on him. The paramedics came and had one of those warming blankets and started monitoring his vital signs, and I got him some dry clothes to wear.
And, you know, they stayed with us until he was out of danger. And then the boy and his mother, you know, made the decision that they didn't feel they needed to go to the hospital. So, you know. And he's okay now, as we understand it. You were at the awards ceremony together. Yes, he was at the awards ceremony. It was nice to see him. We shook hands, and we didn't get a great chance to talk.
He's back at Purdue where he goes to school. Okay. And, you know, just very thankful that my son was outside because I'm not sure anybody else would have heard anything. And that, you know, I happened... to have the perfect tool for getting them out of the water and the background to be, you know, to... to use it. It's remarkable. You mentioned your Rope Warrior title. There's also a theme song. We should play a little bit of that for our listeners.
Was that playing as you walked up to accept your award David? No, no. Missed opportunity, I'd say, yeah. That is my theme song, but it was definitely not playing at the time. And I know, Neil, that you are in Canada, and I have a jump rope company. I'm the U.S. distributor, but the manufacturer is from Canada. Well, hopefully all this tariff stuff doesn't impact your jump rope sales. Hopefully not. But, yeah, the young man was saved with ropes from Canada.
And your hard work, obviously, your skills. David, great to chat with you. Thank you. Thank you, Neil. Have a good day. That was professional rope jumper David Fisher in Westfield, Indiana. Bye. Thank you. We've heard from a lot of people wondering if, as it happens, we'll share its famous recipe for scalloped potatoes. Well, okay, but just this once.
First, you'll need Yukon gold potatoes. Important. Now, the next part is critical, though. You have to turn your head so you're facing away from your radio while I explain about the roux. Now, what you'll want to do is melt the... Oh, I'm so sorry. I promised you our scalloped potato recipe and then I played you the courtship call of a male weasel. But when you heard the weasel, did you feel your ears physically shift backwards toward the radio?
If so, that confirms the research of a team of scientists whose new study is bewitchingly entitled Electromyographic Correlates of Effortful Listening in the Vestigial Auricular Motor System, in which they reveal that our auricular muscles may not be totally... obsolete as previously thought. These muscles are in our heads, surrounding our ears. Some people can use them to wiggle their ears, but...
Those people have long been considered to be goblins in League with the Devil. For the rest of us, those muscles seemingly did nothing. But in the new study, the researchers played two audio clips at the same time and then asked test subjects to listen to one of...
the clips in particular. And they found that that effortful listening activated those forgotten muscles, in particular, the superior auricular muscle. That's the one over your ear. Now, presumably it was trying to listen harder, but was it helping? Was it doing anything at all besides straining to prove its continuing relevance? We don't know yet, but monitor your heads to see if those muscles kick in. It's an eerie feeling.
When Derek Johnson was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, his family thought that he would never be able to speak. And then they met Professor Anna Stubblefield, and she believed that with the right technique, he could say what was on his mind. But what began as an opportunity turned into accusations of sexual assault. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this week on Crime Story, we dive into the complicated questions surrounding the doc, Tell Them You Love Me. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.
In one weekend, decades of neighborliness between Canada and the United States blew up. As you've probably heard on the news by now, Donald Trump's tariffs are on hold after he and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had what Mr. Trudeau describes as a good call. It sounds relaxing just yet. The tariff back and forth over the past weeks and especially the past few days is not only pulling the two economies apart, but pulling people apart as well.
Sharon Manna is a Canada-U.S. dual citizen. Born in Newfoundland and Labrador and raised in the States, she has lived her whole life happily identifying as Canadian and American. Now it's complicated. We reached Ms. Manna earlier today in Keller, Texas. Sharon, usually I don't like to ask people these kinds of questions, but are you feeling more American or Canadian today?
I guess 50-50. I'm always kind of split in between. That's sort of the way I live. But I'm sort of leaning towards the side that I think has been wronged. Which is... Which is Canada. I mean, which is everybody. Again, we have President Break stuff that is just out to destroy and not build. And I'm really worried about... tearing down alliances that are centuries in the making. And did you think it would get to this point? I did not. I did not. And today is two weeks since he's been inaugurated.
And the pace and rapidity of change and chaos, I know it is by design, but it comes at us in waves every day. And this didn't happen during the first administration. But they were able to gear up and have a plan, Project 2025, and implement it at rapid pace. And it's a little bit unsettling.
So how do you cope with that and your neighbors? I mean, there might be political differences and all of that, you know, where you live. But this specific issue, you're leaning towards your Canadian side. How do they feel? Oh, absolutely, yes. Well, we basically, you know, I live in Texas. It's a red state. And there are pockets of blue around. I don't know a whole lot of fellow Canadians around here. I fly my Newfoundland.
yard flag in the front, and I'm thinking about getting a bigger one. But what we're just doing is my husband and I are going to vote with our wallets. We are going to pretty much do with some of the suggestions at home are, which is not travel in the U.S. And if I don't have to travel for work in the U.S., I'm going to travel somewhere else.
I have a trip planned to Montreal, and I was explaining to someone earlier that I'm a little bit worried about the reception, because I do travel on an American passport, and I don't doubt the... intentions of people that we might run into, and I don't blame them for that. But I think I need to go and get myself a Canadian passport so I have options. It's extraordinary, you know, even that sliver of that doubt and that thought.
would would sit in your mind because I think just even a few weeks ago You know, someone coming through a Canadian airport with an American passport wouldn't necessarily feel like that. It's quite something. It's the easiest thing in the world. If anything, it's always harder coming back through U.S. customs. But I...
You know, I don't doubt that there are going to be some more difficulty and more questions on both sides. And it is completely understandable in light of this new environment, which is completely unnecessary. And what about your family in Newfoundland? What are they saying? Well, they, you know, they are watching the news closely.
That's pretty much all the talk about how are we going to handle these 25% tariffs and what does it mean for them. And they're all on board with shopping and buying local. Canadian products, and I think that's a wise course of action. It tends to limit their abilities if they want to travel to the States.
But it gives people pause. It gives them the ability to say, I can spend my tourism dollars elsewhere. In terms of your own finances, your budget at home, how do you think these tariffs might impact that? So I think where we are in our lives, my husband and I are probably about five years away from retirement. So I think our costs are generally stable in terms of paying higher ed for my daughter and kind of our everyday lives. We have low interest rate mortgages right now, but we were.
contemplating downsizing our house and we put that on we put it on hold i mean we were thinking about it on friday and on saturday we stopped that thought process because everything is is volatile right now And so by not doing that, you know, that's a whole lot of money that could be spent in the economy that we're just going to kind of hold. We're going to keep our powder dry, as my husband says, and wait. And if more and more people do that.
That calls for contraction of the economy. The governor of your state, Greg Abbott, is threatening Canada with tariffs of his own as well, specifically on cotton. Is that the kind of response? you want to see from your political leaders there? Oh, absolutely not. No. He spent all of his time kind of shouting out and down at Justin Trudeau when...
The tariffs which were just put on hold this morning with Mexico would have been far more impactful for the Texas economy. Between tariffs and the deportation roundups, the economy here in Texas will suffer. particularly in agriculture and in housing. If you had a direct line to Greg Abbott or your president or Prime Minister Trudeau, what would you say?
I would say to I would start with my congressional leaders and I would say they have to do something to act as a co-equal branch of government to check the impulses of this new administration. Regrettably, I live in a red state, so all of my elected officials are Republicans as well, and they seem too able and easy to kowtow to what he wants.
I've already tried to contact them to stop certain appointments to the cabinet, and they've ignored those. And so I would probably be, you know, shouting at deaf ears. You mentioned your Newfoundland flag. that you're going to get a bigger one. What's the reaction to that flag? People don't know what it is, which is why I think I'm going to go get a Canadian flag. Nobody knows what it stands for, and I've only had one person actually ask me.
And when you tell them, because people love to fly American flags there, and here we see people fly Canadian flags in some areas as well. So how do you think people will react? Oh, I think I'll probably get some questions. You know, I'm a golfer as well, and I play a Canada golf bag. And so I'll have people at the club ask about that. But I want it known.
I'm Canadian, I'm Canadian-American, and these are things that are important to me and that you need to consider the decisions that are made by our government because they will hurt all of us. I'm glad we could speak, Sharon. Thanks for your time. Well, thank you so much, Neil. It was good to talk to you. Sharon Manna is a Canada-U.S. dual citizen living in Keller, Texas. That's where we reached her earlier today. Few people loved the Peel watershed as much as Jimmy Johnny.
The experienced hunting guide and beloved elder of the Nacho Nayak-Dun First Nation advocated tirelessly to preserve that pristine region in Yukon. And when the Yukon government wanted to explore the region for minerals, Mr. Johnny, who first ventured out there as a teenager, put up...
a fierce fight. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in the First Nations' favour. In a 2019 interview with CBC Yukon's Midday Cafe, Jimmy Johnny talked about what that victory and that water meant to him. Yeah, you can drink that water any way you want. You can just dip it into the creek or the river and just have a big cold shot of that water. And I've always told people that. I understand your grandpa told you about the water back in the day.
You look after that water because that water gives you life, gives you all the animals and the fish and all the vegetation on the ground, giving all life by the water. Nacho Nayak-Dunn Elder Jimmy Johnny speaking with Leonard Linklater on CBC Radio in 2019. Mr. Johnny's death was announced last week.
Kevin Barr is a former Yukon MLA and was a longtime friend of Jimmy Johnny. We reached him in Malacca, Mexico. Kevin, he loved the land. He loved the water, clearly. What did... jimmy tell you about what he felt looking out at the land and the water well that was um a way of life to be living on the land and any He lived on the land and trapped and hunted and fished and ate, drank the water. It was part of being able to understand that.
The water and the land is something that we have to protect. When was the last time you saw him and spoke? I believe it was at another elder's potlatch. And he was asking me about when our friend, or John's potlatch, was going to be. Because he cared a lot about him. Him and Art were one of the last of the Indian cowboys up here. And he just wanted to make sure that he could get there. And unfortunately... Arts won't be till September. And so they're up there, I'm sure, singing the song. Yeah.
You know, I was looking at some photographs on our website of Jimmy Johnny, and when you say one of the last Indian cowboys, that's, cowboy is the first thing I thought when I saw him, you know, the hat, the belt, arms crossed at his chest. Oh, geez, yeah. He'd finish something and he'd sing a song and afterwards he'd say, hot dog. That was just his trademark, hot dog, and he'd smile.
How did you get to know one another? Yeah. I guess through art and through, you know, saying some music from time to time and genuine and would always be. At fish camp or I believe it was maybe at a general assembly somewhere in the Yukon. And we're just sitting around and he just come over and said hello.
And he knew everybody. And I was more new in the Yukon maybe 35, 40 years ago. But he was all out and about. And so that's where I got to meet him. And we just... maintained a friendship all uh all the years after you know whenever we'd see each other at musai gathering or you know traveling to different potletches or just uh
He'd be coming to Whitehorse, I'd go into Whitehorse, and we'd have coffee. He looks very serious in those photographs, as I said. Those were for serious stories, but it sounds like he was fun to be around. Oh, he was always joking with the girls and everybody. And he was quite a photographer. He'd be dancing or, you know, we'd play music and he'd be always up there dancing with somebody. in his cowboy hat and his shirt and his boots and yeah having fun telling stories
He didn't just love the water and the land as we were hearing and talking about at the start of our conversation. Kevin, he obviously, he worked to protect it. He fought to protect the Peel Watershed from mining exploration. What was it like to do that work and that advocacy with him? Well, you know, when you believe and love and live it. Jimmy lived his stories. It was not stories. It was his life, and he lived that life. And knowing that and knowing...
Up here, I don't know, I think when you're in the city, you get away from thinking that your food comes from the grocery store. and everything that we take for granted is going to be there and you know up in the Yukon You see that what they call progress keeps wanting to come in and remove that way of life for many people. under the guise of profit or progress, and he understood that that's who we are and that you can't
practice a way of life if you don't have the environment there to practice it. And it's just you can talk about it, what it used to be like, but you can't live it. And like his clip was, you can drink the water. Well, there's a lot of places, including up in the field, that you can just go drink the water. And you can hunt and fish and you can live and you can sustain yourself.
And there's ways of understanding the respect just by living that way. And so when you walk alongside, like we did a lot of... marches and protests and things like that and we're just there and when you have that strong understanding and faith in and then in doing something that's right for the greater good you just are stronger together and Jimmy brought a lot of people together just because He's real. It's real. It's real. It's a real thing. So you get strength from people like Jimmy.
Kevin, I'm so sorry for your loss, but I really appreciate you sharing your memories with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for honoring our friend. Kevin Barr is a former Yukon MLA and was a longtime friend of the late Jimmy Johnny. We reached him in Malacca, Mexico.
It's been a few years since an Ontario parent the CBC is identifying only as Roger discovered his teenage son was using drugs. But what began back then as a cannabis habit has evolved to include drugs like LSD. And Roger says his 50... year old is buying them on Snapchat. Any parent that's lost their child, I grieve with them because every day I think about these things and with some of the situations we've had as a family.
I cried driving past a cemetery because I started thinking about, okay, if my son dies, how are we going to do this? And I started planning his funeral in my head. with all that's gone on. And, you know, no amount of money would ever bring him back. No amount of money can change anything. So... You know, other than a lawsuit to put them out of business, forget it. But what we need to see is some sort of real accountability, some real acknowledgement. I'm a firm believer.
You know, for my university courses in deviance, we studied things like restorative justice. And perhaps it's time for them to sit down and acknowledge the harm. You may have heard some of Roger's story this morning on Go Public, where he spoke with the CBC's Ithil Musa. For Sam Chapman, the story is all too familiar. Mr. Chapman's 16-year-old son Sammy died in 2021 after buying fentanyl through Snapchat.
Since then, he's been a guest on our show more than once regarding a lawsuit against Snapchat and his family's effort to get new legislation known as Sammy's Law passed in Congress. We reached Sam Chapman in Manhattan Beach, California. Sam, when you hear that, you're hearing from another father, what would you want to say to him and other parents who find themselves in that situation?
Well, just be thankful that it hasn't happened yet, and I have had to plan that funeral, and it haunts me. It soothes me and haunted me at the same time. And it's out of control. It's as bad as COVID. And it's time for everyone to stand up and be counted and to get our lawmakers and our leaders to do something about this definitively. And you've been...
fighting for that, pushing for that kind of change for quite some time now. And I wondered yet to hear that again, because the goal of what you're trying to do is to stop other families from living through this as well. But it's happening. As we speak. It's happening and there's been a slight dip in the deaths and you hear people celebrating that. But we're still at a peak that is unacceptable. So many.
young people have died from this, that it is the crisis of our era, and it is time to put an end to it. We first spoke to you about the lawsuit against Snapchat that you launched, that suit, we talked to you about that in 2023. In December, a judge in California ruled that that case could... proceed despite Snapchat's efforts to stop it. It's not the end of the road, certainly, but did that feel like a victory? It was an enormous victory. In our country, we're being prevented from
suing by a law from 1996 that treats the social media platforms like a blackboard where you can't blame a blackboard for what someone writes on it. And that's what the internet used to be. But now with algorithms and... artificial intelligence that drives them. It's very sophisticated, and they're doing things to addict our children to the platforms, to increase engagement, and to announce
a large number of users to Wall Street every quarter, which is how they mostly make their money. Companies like Snap Inc. that run Snapchat have never made any money, so they're reliant. on Wall Street and they can't do anything that brings the number of users down. So they appealed. We won the motion to dismiss and they appealed it to a higher court.
And it took a long time, but the court finally ruled in our favor. And there are 65 families now suing for the death of their children from fentanyl poisoning via Snapchat. We're 65 individual cases, but all represented by the same lawyers at the social media victims law firm. And where we are now is we're going to discovery. They're choosing. five bellwether cases, and they see how those five turn out.
And if all five win, then we're all going to trial. And if all five lose, then maybe that's the end of the road. But our judge seems open-minded. He thinks we need a trial just to determine. under law what Snapchat is. Is it a product? Is it a service? Is it a unique environment that no one's contemplated under the law? So what would success be? However the legal road goes from here, what could you live with at the end of those legal proceedings?
Well, you know, it's a civil trial, so money has to be involved, but none of the parents care about the money. We just want them to clean up the platform and make it safe for children. They have the technology to do so. And it's inexcusable that they're not. We've also spoken to you on our show about the kind of change you want to bring through.
The bill known as Sammy's Law. Just briefly remind our listeners, Sam, if you don't mind, what that legislation in your dream scenario would be able to do. So SAMI's law would require social media and gaming platforms with children as users to integrate with third-party safety software. And there's software out there that will give... Parents are warning if something dangerous happens on their kids' devices. Now Snapchat, the snaps disappear.
so parents can't have any knowledge of what's happening on there. So we need this parent monitoring software to be integrated, and we're pushing for that in the U.S. Congress. It would be great to see that in Canada as well. It would allow parents to parent online again instead of having everything be a mystery and hoping the drugs don't show up at our front door like happened to us.
I wonder, Sam, how you're feeling. You know, when we first had you on the show, I think it was about a year and a half ago. So compared to that moment today, how are you feeling about some semblance of justice for Sammy? I have given up on justice for Sammy in favor of a larger conversation to save the ones who were left behind. The DA and...
Los Angeles let Sammy's killer walk. But we're trying to stop all of it from happening. And I have mixed feelings now. I feel like the number of deaths have risen so high. that it's impossible to feel good about it, but I also feel like the dam is breaking, and our government is paying attention to this problem now, and now that things are...
are changing and the Congress is paying attention. We have a hearing tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee to make fentanyl a Schedule I substance, which gives it the... strongest penalties and makes it like heroin or crystal meth. So people are paying attention. I can feel... that there's change coming. But the high number of deaths is so upsetting that until it's fixed, I'm not going to feel great. Sam, I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Alright, thank you.
Sam Chapman's son Sammy died in 2021 after consuming drugs purchased on Snapchat. We reached Mr. Chapman in Manhattan Beach, California. In a statement emailed to CBC News, Snapchat said the sale of illicit drugs on the app violates its Unquote. Most of the world's tigers are in India, but unfortunately most doesn't mean there are that many, just a few thousand. It wasn't always the case. The tiger population there has dwindled significantly because of poaching and habitat loss.
Yadvendradev Jala is a senior scientist at the Indian National Science Academy who's been studying the tigers for over 20 years, and he has some good news. He says India has helped its population of tigers double over the last decade. That's according to a new study. he led that was published in the journal Science. We reached Yadvendra Devjala in Wadwan, India.
Yadvendra Dev, I wonder, when you started this research all of those years ago, is this the kind of result that you dreamt of? How is what you're seeing in this data sitting with you? Not exactly. We had no idea what we were going to expect, but it was a monitoring for the countrywide estimation of tigers, which we started off in 2006, and it still continues every four years across the entire country.
It helps us guide policy and management issues and also national level decision makers. Politicians and bureaucrats can take clues from it so that we have people and biodiversity both benefit out of the... policy which comes out of it. Ultimately, looking across all of those years and the data you collected, what do you think it was that helped these tigers, helped their population grow?
Basically, it was the reforms which were brought in through legislation after our first estimation in 2006. A core and buffer strategy was adopted for... tiger conservation core areas which have an exclusive agenda for biodiversity conservation that is land sparing where people were given incentives to move out of the protected areas you cannot evict them but you can give them an incentive which they can't refuse So people benefit monetarily out of it.
and they have better livelihoods, better facilities with modern civilization and simultaneously create space for biodiversity. So with 1.4 billion people, space is the crunch. for most conservation programs in our country and to secure space you have to give people what they want you've also said that it is not necessarily, in your view, just about the density of the population, but the attitudes of people. Can you explain a bit of what you mean by that?
Absolutely. So till today, biologists, people like me, used to think that human densities are extremely detrimental for conservation of large carnivores because carnivores and people don't mix. Yes, they don't mix at high densities, but at low densities, you know. you could have a coexistence. And that's what we have achieved by sparing lands. We've been able to achieve sharing of lands. So once these protected areas are made free of people, tigers reproduce here.
And then they go out of these protected areas to colonize habitats, which are conducive to their survival, but also have people with multiple use in the forest. And we have today 60 million people sharing space with about...
You know, 40% of our tigers. So there is... programs which allow benefit sharing from tiger reserves, gate receipts as well as ecotourism revenues are shared with the communities in the buffer zone of tiger reserves so that there is a benefit directly linked to tiger conservation. Take us into the field with you, if you could, in terms of carrying out this research, compiling this information so we can imagine it. What did you do? How did you do this? So we divided India into...
100 square kilometer grids 10 by 10 kilometer grids which we fixed for posterity and it is within these grids that we sent out forest guards to actually collect data on mobile phones so we created an app which records GPS coordinates and track logs of every guard which walks in these grids and record signs of tigers like pug marks, their fecal matter, their rake marks on the trees. And you take a photograph which is geotagged.
And so this data is, you know, you can map it straight away into a geographic information system and make inferences right out of it. So we had about 44,000 people working to collect this data. across the country. It was a humongous task and coordination was the key. These numbers in your study are estimates, you underline that. What kinds of challenges did you and your team face trying to get the most accurate numbers?
We use double sampling, wherein the first cut is what we published in the science paper. We look at where the tigers are, occupancy of tigers. Secondly, after that, we put in camera traps and get photographs of tigers, wherein you can identify every... individual tiger based on the stripe patterns it's like a fingerprint but all tigers don't come in front of cameras you don't have a hundred percent count there
and so that there are models statistical models called mark recapture models which allow you to estimate the probability of detection by a camera
And those are the ones which are used for correcting the minimum estimate to an estimated population. They are very robust and scientifically reliable estimates. The issue here is the scale. We're looking at about 300,000 square... which are being monitored every four years and you have several thousand people working to get this information and coordination of that having a statistical design which allows you to make inferences at that large spatial scale was more of
challenge than the reliability and the accuracy of the data. But when you look at those numbers, those estimates, is it a sense of satisfaction at this stage? Yes, in 2006, my colleagues and many conservationists believed that that was the death knell of tigers and we would in the next 10 years lose all of them in India.
But they made a comeback with proper policy and proper governance, control of poaching. I think the tigers, all they need is space. So once you give them that and protection, they can bounce back. You've had a chance to see.
these tigers up close what is it like yes it's i have captured tigers and put transmitters on them and studied them very closely and they're magnificent creatures one of the best creations on this planet And what do you think other regions with tiger populations should take from this research?
I believe that many of these countries are far more prosperous, the Tiger Range countries, than India is, and they are far less dense. So it's more of an attitude towards life forms, which is a very crucial element. And I think for that, you need to have education. and you need to share economic benefits with the local communities. So in Africa as well, you know, you need to fence the parks. In India, we don't have fences there.
Cultural and social fences which allow animals to coexist with people. We share landscapes with elephants, tigers, lions. We lose people to wildlife, no doubt about it. But if you look at the magnitude, we lose about 35 people. annually to tigers, but we lose 150,000 people to car accidents.
We don't stop driving on the roads because people die. So it's the same thing with tigers. It's just that the mortality by wildlife has become so few that it hits the headlines much more than a person dying through a road accident. Yadvendra Dev, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yadvendra Dev Jala is a senior scientist at the Indian National Science Academy. He led a new study on a growing tiger population in India. We reached him in Wadwan, India.
You've been listening to the As It Happens podcast. Our show can be heard Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 after your world tonight. And you can, of course, also listen to our show online at cbc.ca slash AIH or on the CBC Listen app or, of course, where. wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Neel Kirkshal. And I'm Chris Howden. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.