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The AIH transcript for July 24, 2025

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MEGAN WILLIAMS: Hello, I'm Megan Williams, sitting in for Nil Köksal.

ACEY ROWE: And I’m Acey Rowe, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[theme]

AR: Tonight:

MW: Decision day. An Ontario justice today found five former players of Canada’s world junior hockey team not guilty of sexually assaulting the woman known as E.M. We hear from a legal expert on violence and sports on what the long-term impact of the trial may be.

AR: From the ashes. A year after wildfire destroyed her home in Jasper, B.C., one resident says she's proud of how far she, her family and her community have come -- but says the toughest battle has been dealing with her insurance company.

MW: Age appropriate. A senator says it's high time Canada lowers the federal voting age to 16 -- and one teen tells us why he and his peers should be trusted to vote.

AR: Without a trace. A Canadian researcher has created a tool that erases the digital markers that make AI-created deep-fakes identifiable as hoaxes. He says he did it to show how easily bad actors could do the same thing.

MW: Pitting them against each other. Okanagan cherries face off against oysters, and Chinook are up against Sockeye, as beloved B.C. icons battle it out over which one best symbolizes the province.

AR: And...why the long face? A talented miniature horse is bringing joy to patients in a children’s hospital by "playing" the piano with her face - and we'll soon discover if that joy extends to listeners like you...

AR: As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that's not above a little horseplay.

[theme]

Part 1: Hockey Canada Decision, Jasper Anniversary, B.C. Symbol Bracket

Hockey Canada Decision

Guest: Daphne Gilbert

AR: The Hockey Canada trial is over. Today, in a London, Ontario courthouse, Justice Maria Carroccia found five former players of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team not guilty of sexually assaulting a woman known as E.M. For about four-and-a-half hours, Justice Carroccia recounted all the evidence heard over the trial, and said she ultimately didn’t find E.M's testimony that she was sexually assaulted in a London hotel room by Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote "credible or reliable". After the decision, Mr. McLeod's lawyer David Humphrey spoke outside the court.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID HUMPHREY: Justice Carroccia rejected E.M.'s claims of fear and her claims of non-consent. That should be the takeaway from today's judgement. The damage to Mr. McCloud's reputation and his career has been significant. But today's decision begins to restore what was very unfairly taken away from him.

AR: E.M's lawyer Karen Bellehumeur also spoke.

SOUNDCLIP

KAREN BELLEHUMEUR: Many people understand that when a person summons the courage to disclose their story, the worst possible outcome is to feel disbelieved. It's a gutting experience that no one deserves. That's why today's verdict is so devastating. E.M. did everything in her power to recount her experience honestly and to the best of her ability. She agreed to do everything asked of her by the criminal justice system. Yet, it was not enough.

AR: E.M's lawyer Karen Bellehumeur, speaking outside the London, Ontario courthouse. Daphne Gilbert is a law professor at the University of Ottawa who researches violence in sports. We reached her in Ottawa.

DAPHNE GILBERT: Well, I'm very disappointed in the reasons for the acquittals. I'm not surprised that there were acquittals, and this is an excellent judge who has an excellent reputation, and, you know, I could see a pathway to acquittal. It was just not the pathway that she chose that I would have agreed with. I think, to me, the evidence was clear that E.M. did not consent to what was happening in that room. And so, what I was hoping is that the judge would take that and say, but did the men have an honest but mistaken belief that she was consenting? And that would have allowed her to dig deeper into what the men were doing. And that was just not the way that she chose to come to her conclusions.

MW: Justice Maria Carroccia said that she found E.M., in fact, did consent not vitiated by fear. That's her quote. What does that wording say to you about how Justice Carroccia came to this decision?

DG: Well, it says to me quite frankly that she did not see up to 10 men in a room with a naked woman where they all know each other and she doesn't know them, and many of them don't even know her name, that she didn't perceive that as an intimidating situation. That she somehow believed that E.M. had absolutely no concerns in that situation and I think that just defies common sense and logic, and it certainly defies, you know, the dinner table conversations that I know many of my friends and I have been having around how the men behaved. As I said, it's, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt is an extremely high standard. I am not surprised that there were acquittals. It's very difficult to prove a sexual assault, but I don't see how it makes any sense to think that she didn't have some intimidation factor or fear factor going on in that room.

MW: Now, a big part of the trial was around two videos that defendant Michael McLeod took of E.M. in the hotel room, one in which she's only wearing a towel where she says that she is okay with what has happened to her. Justice Carroccia said EM did not display any signs of intoxication and had no difficulty speaking. How much do you think these videos played into the decision?

DG: Well, I don't think they played into the decision in a wrong way, in the sense that I certainly do not think that Justice Carroccia relied on them as evidence of consent. She didn't say that because we had these videos, we can assume she was consenting. That would have been an error in law. There's no such thing as after the fact consent. And, you know, I would have hoped for a very strong statement to that effect because it seems that professional athletes, according to Carter Hart, now think that this is routine thing they should be doing, and they should know that there is no legal relevance to those kinds of videos. It seemed to me that the justice was referring to the videos to say that she wasn't as intoxicated as she had claimed that she was. The videos were taken at the end of the night, several hours after she had consumed the alcohol. You know, and perhaps it's true she didn't appear intoxicated, but the Crown wasn't arguing that she was intoxicated to the point of incapacity, so I'm not sure why that needed to be mentioned.

MW: Now, I know you can't get into her head, but why do you think, you know, she basically said that, well, she said that EM wasn't credible or reliable. I mean, it's a pretty definitive statement and as we heard from EM's lawyer, pretty devastating.

DG: Yeah, you know, we do obviously give incredible benefit of the doubt to an accused. We don't want to convict innocent people. We don't want to have wrongful convictions. So, once she made up her mind that she had reasonable doubt and that she was going to acquit them, perhaps she felt she had to give them back something. Certainly, they've been living under a cloud for many years. They are the ones who are named. They are out in public. And perhaps she felt she owed it to them to give them the clearest possible win. She would be aware that there was a lot of conversation in the public domain about believing survivors and about how badly the men had behaved. That's a common thing that people have been talking about is what was going on in that room was not right. So, maybe she felt she needed to make a strong statement in their favour to give back something from the justice system.

MW: What do you think a guilty ruling would have meant for how consent, or would mean for how consent is viewed in this country?

DG: Well, I had really hoped that there would be a line of reasoning around the intimidation factor in that room. And that intimidation is an issue that goes to freely formed consent. We don't have a lot of strong case law around sort of a whole atmosphere and how an atmosphere can lead one to feel that they don't make choices about how they consent. I was also hoping for some strong language about the reasonable steps requirement that the men were, you know, were legally required, had she pursued a certain line of thinking, to have made sure that she was consenting. And that those steps are heightened when she is intoxicated. It's heightened when they don't know her, when she doesn't know them. It's heightened in a situation where there's 10 of them and there's only one of her. I was hoping for that kind of language, which might have come from a guilty verdict, it still could have come from an acquittal. It just would have been a different line of thinking as opposed to what the judge ended up deciding, which was that E.M. was not truthful.

MW: And what effect do you think the outcome of this case will have on the world of hockey?

DG: You know, the only good thing, I think, and it's at a credible cost to E.M., but she has provoked conversations across the country about consent, and about appropriate behaviour, and about bystander intervention, and about right and wrong. And those conversations in families with young men and boys, I think, is where we have to start in terms of changing especially hockey culture. Families will be talking about hockey players and saying, I think, this is not how I want you to be behaving.

MW: Daphne, thanks so much for speaking with me.

DG: Thank you.

AR: Daphne Gilbert is a law professor at the University of Ottawa. She was in Ottawa.

[‘90s movie music?]

Jasper Anniversary

Guest: Megan LeBlanc

AR: One year ago, wildfire changed Jasper, B.C. The blaze tore through a swath of the idyllic Rocky Mountain community. It levelled homes. It charred the landscape. Knowing the fire was coming -- Marc LeBlanc, his wife, and two young kids packed up and hit the road. They arrived in B.C. the next day to the news that their house was gone. That's when he spoke with As it Happens host Nil Koksal about what they were feeling.

SOUNDCLIP

MARC LEBLANC: Hugging and so yeah, I think we're going through stages of grief.

NK: I'm so sorry that you've lost your home, Marc.

ML: Yeah, the story of hearing it is, you know, just [pause] raw human emotions surrounding me that you just never want to have to even think about.

AB: Jasper resident Marc LeBlanc on As It Happens one year ago. You might also remember hearing his wife, Megan LeBlanc, telling us about their children's return to school last fall. We reached her again today in nearby Hinton, Alberta.

MW: Megan, when you hear Marc talking about the grief you were feeling the day after the fire, how much of that sadness still lingers for you?

MEGAN LEBLANC: Well, I think that sadness will linger a long time, but I do feel like in a year we've come quite far. We're back in Jasper, and we still miss our home, but we have a lovely rental that we're in, and we're our community, which means a lot to us. And I do feel like we're moving forward, and there's a lot of strength in that, and there's lot of pride in being able to do that. We've come quite far in a year.

MW: Your kids are 10 and seven now, how are they doing?

ML: They're doing great. They're doing really, really well. We had a fantastic school year, and they're back in school on September 17th, so we were only two weeks late. And for those of us who were fortunate enough to be able to return to Jasper like our family, it felt quite normal, just a different house, but the same routine. And our kids are doing really well.

MW: What we didn't hear from that conversation with Marc last year was his determination to get back up on his feet, to return to Jasper, to rebuild your home, and get your liquor store business back up and running. He used a hockey analogy, and he said you were going to go pucks deep, hit the net hard, and get it done. How challenging has that been over the past year?

ML: [chuckling] It's been challenging, yeah. But we also had a few things fall into place, which helped with that. We were fortunate to land a rental quite early on in the process. And getting the stores up and running, we were pretty proud that we were the first non-essential business to open after the fires. And that was a big feat, and that sort of felt, again, like one step closer to feeling a bit more normal. There were lots of challenges to getting it done, but we have a supportive community and we have fantastic staff. And the house stuff, having that rental was big, and then just filling this house with new things, and getting the kids back to school, and getting back into a routine, all while juggling the insurance game, which is always the thing lingering, it's kind of this heavy cloud over our heads, and it was then and it still is. That's the big challenge. But yes, the hockey analogy was probably apt.

MW: Can you tell me a little bit about the insurance challenge?

ML: I can tell you a lot about it. [chuckling] I said last year, I wonder when it will be that we stop just talking about insurance with our friends, because it's just the default conversation. For our personal story, we had two businesses with insurance claims, we have the house, and we had a car that we lost. So, we had four insurance claims. And the business is almost wrapped up, so we've signed. We're just waiting for the final cheque. So, that's two business claims. A year later, we still don't have it all wrapped up, but it's close. And the house claim is just the monstrosity of an uphill battle. There's so much paperwork. It feels like a game where we don't know all the rules, but somebody else knows them very well. It feels like you have to fight for everything. I mean, we lost absolutely everything. We lost our house and every single thing in it. And yet, it feels like we have to fight to prove that every single day for some reason. It's like a full-time job that you have to tackle on top of everything else.

MW: How much of that frustration plays into the overall challenge that you're facing?

ML: It's tremendous. It colours everything we do. It's taxing on your patients, so sometimes you're short with your kids because you've just had an unfortunate email from the insurance company. And now, you're frustrated, and then your kid asks for something, and then you snap at them. And so, it colours every aspect of your life all the time because it's always there. And you don't always know, it's not like you sit down and you talk about insurance at this time of day every week. It just comes from out of nowhere. You'll get an email, and you didn't expect this, and it's not great news. And so now, we have to deal with this that we didn't understand properly because it kind of feels like you're in battle against somebody who knows what they're doing and has done this a hundred times over, and this is your first time, and you're learning the rules.

MW: You have so much to deal with, and as you see so many other communities going through similar challenges with wildfires this year, what goes through your mind?

ML: I feel compassion for them. It's not particularly triggering for me in that it doesn't make me want to burst into tears, but it does make me feel sorry for these people, and hope that they're all okay. But the one thing that I took away from last year that kind of haunted me for a while that I've worked through was that my idea of an evacuation was survival mode, and that's how it felt that night. Have things for the side of the road in case you're stuck. Be to camp anywhere. So, we had a tent, we had sleeping bags, we had lots of food and coolers, which is important and I certainly don't want to downplay the importance of that, but I honestly never thought I was going to lose my home. And so, I didn't bring a lot of things that I miss and will miss for the rest of my life. And so, that would be the one thing I would want to tell to these people is security and safety comes first, but take the two minutes if you have it and go grab the things that matter to you. Grab family treasures that you've had, grab memory books, and grab diaries and things like that that might matter to you that you'll never be able to replace.

MW: I'm sorry, you lost all of that. Where do you hope you and the town will be five years from now?

ML: That's my magic number; I always think about that, because the next couple of years are definitely going to be lots more ups and downs. But five years is the year that I look at as everyone should be in their home. The town should look like a new version of itself, and what I'm actually hoping for is that we're now a town in five years that can attract new people, so that there's new life coming into the town. We've lost so many people. And it's hard to watch our town kind of dwindling. That's what breaks my heart the most, is seeing people not be able to make a life here when that's what they had wanted. So, I'm hoping that people who can't be back now might be able to come back, and maybe even new people could come to our town. And I'm really hoping for a thriving community in five years.

MW: Well, I hope that wonderful picture you just painted comes true.

ML: Thank you so much, Megan. Thanks for the time.

MW: Thank you.

ML: By-bye.

MW: Bye.

AR: Megan LeBlanc lost her home in the wildfire in Jasper one year ago. We reached her today in Hinton, Alberta.

[newsy theme]

B.C. Symbol Bracket

Guest: Justin McElroy

AR: There are some competitions that never chill out. The ultimate showdowns of Crunchy VS Smooth. Toilet paper over VS under. Texting "k" VS being a decent human being. But no showdown is as gripping, as thrilling -- nor as high stakes -- as the competition heating up in B.C. right now.

SOUNDCLIP

[lively gameshow music]

JUSTIN MCELROY: It's the search for B.C.'s best symbol. And after more than 200,000 votes, you've narrowed 64 iconic items from across British Columbia down to 32. But what will move on to the next round? There were no major upsets in the first week with all number one seeds advancing.

[fades]

AR: Yes, you heard that correctly. It's Orcas versus ravens. Totem poles versus B.C. Ferries. And -- unthinkably -- the Terry Fox statue versus Mr. Prince George! CBC Vancouver's own Municipal Affairs reporter Justin McElroy is once again putting on his self-described "maniacal ranker-of-things" hat in a search for the province's best symbol. And with round two of voting wrapping up this evening, there have already been a number of upsets -- as well as some impressively dominant performances. We reached Justin in our Vancouver studio.

MW: Justin, isn't being a reporter hard enough? I mean, why are you putting yourself in the position of pitting sockeye salmon against chinook, or oysters against cherry? I mean why not just chillax and enjoy that big, beautiful B.C. Buffet?

JM: Especially in the summertime, when the weather is great, and we've got the mountains and the oceans.

MW: Exactly!

JM: And now, I'm talking about symbols again. Every year, we do a different bracket trying to determine what the best thing in British Columbia is. We've done small towns, we've done neighbourhoods, we're done songs, we've done lakes. And in one hand, it's sort of just a fun internet competition in the summer time. But on the other, it allows us to explore the history, geography, culture, politics of different things that are really fundamental, but we just sort of take for granted a lot of the time. And so, this is a fun opportunity to have those sort of higher level discussions, while at the same time also asking people to vote between an Nanaimo bar and a B.C. sushi roll, and asking what they think is better.

MW: Right. And I want to talk about all of those things because they're in this bracket. And now, our listeners in B.C. will have heard a bit about this, but for the rest of the country and beyond, you've divided your contenders into four categories. So, there's animals, nature, coastal symbols, and provincial symbols. What have been the biggest upsets so far?

JM: You know, there have been a couple. For example, the pot leaf, you know, for a long time in British Columbia, it was associated with marijuana, B.C. Bud. You could see the pot leaf on a sticker on the back of cars everywhere. It was a really potent simple, pardon the pun. [MW chuckles] And yet, it lost in the second round to the gold nugget, which was sort of B.C.'s first symbol as a colonized place. Literally, the reason British Columbia became a political entity was discoveries of gold. A mountaintop, for example, you know, everyone associates B.C. with mountains, and we thought that it might do well, but it was the small but mighty dogwood flower -- the Western Pacific dogwood -- that people have, you know, it's B.C.'s official flower. It looks very cute. But, you know, if you're under the age of 40, it hasn't necessarily, maybe, been something that's been advertised as much of part of B.C.'s identity, but was for a long time. Uh, and those people showed up to vote, and uh --

MW: Yeah, who would have thought the dogwood was David to Goliath?

JM: Exactly.

MW: Now, what about, have there been any sort of dominant wins in the ones that have moved ahead?

JM: For totem poles versus glass condos [MW chuckles], you know, two tall things that have dotted coastal skylines. Totem poles won 96 to four per cent, [chuckling] a margin of some 9,000 votes or so at the end of it. You know, it was a bigger blowout than for a Conservative candidate in rural Alberta. [MW chuckles] And then, you have ones where it ends up being, we had the battle of the Okanagan fruits. So, if you've ever driven through the interior of B.C., you've come across fruit stands.

MW: Yes, I have.

JM: You've probably seen Okanogan peaches and Okanogan cherries. And, in the end, cherries defeated peaches by, you know, more than 8,000 people voted on that. The margin of victory was just 39 votes.

MW: Yeah, I gotta say, I'm on Team Peach there.

JM: I'm sorry for your loss. [chuckling]

MW: Thank you, thank you. You're hearing from all sorts of people by way of their votes, but what feedback have you been getting from British Columbians about all of this?

JM: It's been both, you know, fun and passionate. People have said things like, if you make me choose in the end between a Terry Fox statue and an orca, I will riot. [both chuckle] Um, but it's, you know, we've heard, uh, the passion. We've also heard from a lot of nerds, right? Where it's like, you are really into salmon and you go, no, no, there's not just Pacific salmon. There's five different types of chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, and chum. The last two weeks has being your opportunity to make those arguments in the group chat. We got that with salmon, we got that with bears, we've got that with trees in a way that is really fun because it stands in something like this to go a little bit deeper and have these debates.

MW: Yeah, for sure. Is there any online betting over this stuff?

JM: [laughing] I've seen a couple people on TikTok say, hey, is there a parlay that I can do to make this happen? [both laugh] And people were upset that the raven was up against the orca in the first round. And they were like, that's so unfair to the raven. It could have won a couple of times. And I'm like, yeah, but if it can't beat the orca at the end of the day, then it's not going to be the champion. [both chuckle]

MW: Justin, thanks a lot. We will be following closely.

JM: Thanks so much.

MW: Okay, take care.

AR: Justin McElroy is a municipal affairs reporter for CBC Vancouver. That's where we reached him.

[plucked instrumental]

SOD: Anesthesia Horse

[ah, the morning alarm…lovely]

AR: OK, seriously how terrible do you feel hearing that sound? I think my shoulders just fused with my neck. Waking up to any sound before you're ready...is a horrible experience. And you can test it. Want to ruin a song you love? Set it as your alarm clock for a few weeks. Next time you hear it out of context, pavlovian rage response triggered. And this can be a real problem because for some people, waking up is delicate business. Which is what a team working with Shriners for Children Medical Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, must have been thinking about when they set out to find a brightening way to wake kids up from anesthesia. And it must have been with a whispered "eureka!", they turned to their smallest, furriest team-members: miniature therapy horses that go around the hospital spreading joy to patients and staff. And one mini horse in particular, Black Pearl, really enjoys waking kids up from anesthesia...by gently...delicately... rocking her face back and forth on a keyboard!

SOUNDCLIP

[yup, this is exactly that...rubbing back and forth on a keyboard]

AR: I mean, can you imagine waking up to that from anesthesia? [fades back up, a woman is heard saying “good job”] No shade to Black Pearl and her muzz-ical stylings, but "Good Job" is perhaps not how I'd describe that jarring performance. And the comments agree. A couple of my favourites are, "If I woke up to this, I would assume I'm still on heavy drugs." And, "I too want to be woken out of a coma by every key on the piano played at once over and over again by a small horse." Anyway, the patient does seem happy -- and most importantly, they're in stable condition.

[hip-hop]

Part 2: McPhedran: Voting Age, Waterloo AI Watermarks

McPhedran: Voting Age

Guests: Landon Sanderson, Marilou McPhedran

AR: When the next general election rolls around in the U.K., there'll be a lot more fresh faces at polling stations. Last week, the Labour government announced that it's lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 years old. And a Canadian Senator wants us to follow suit. Marilou McPhedran has made the voting age her top priority as a senator -- and introduced a bill to make that happen in May. She's trying to shepherd the bill to second-reading in September. But past efforts to lower the voting age have fizzled out. Landon Sanderson is a 17-year-old who has been fighting for the voting age to change. We reached him in Winnipeg. And we've reached Senator McPhedran in B.C.

MW: Landon, I want to start with you. What do you tell people when they make the argument that 16-year-olds don't have the maturity or the experience to be allowed to vote?

LANDON SANDERSON: What I tell them is to just look around a little bit, and look at what the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds in their lives are already doing. So, for example, working and getting jobs, getting their driver's licence, or getting prepared to lead their adult lifestyles. That, to me, sounds like the experiences that prepare somebody to be able to vote, participating in the systems that affect them. They should have the ability to govern who makes those, are in those leadership roles.

MW: So, why do you think 16 is the right age, you know, instead of say 15 or 17?

LS: Yeah. So, cognitive science has actually shown that the developmental part of the brain that leads rational decision-making starts to complete development by 15 and 16. That proves that in the evidence that they are prepared and can make that decision for themselves.

MW: Senator McPhedran, I want to bring you in. Does what's happening in the U.K. now give you renewed hope that maybe this time you can get your bill passed to lower the voting age?

MARILOU MCPHEDRAN: It most certainly does. I want to point out that the U.K., like Canada, has had a slow build toward this expansion of voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds. And that kind of slow build is very similar to what's been happening in Canada. You know, the first bill to lower the voting age to 16 was more than 30 years ago. And I think that the U.K. decision, although it's also triggered a lot of the haters, really, I think that for most Canadians, fairness is a very appealing principle. And expanding our voting rights will strengthen our democracy. I have the advantage of being able to bring in a whole range of high-ranking, credible academic researchers in many different countries. In particular, the research that's been done out of Austria, which lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007.

MW: And what is, in a nutshell, what is that research saying, if you, if you --

MM: Well, very recently, one of the leading researchers, Professor Humner, made this observation having reviewed the research that's available across countries. Basically, she has said, nothing bad happens. What we're talking about are very positive results.

MW: Now, there's a difference between nothing bad happens and there are positive results. Can you tell us how it's actually positive?

MM: I sure can. First of all, 16- and 17-year-olds consistently vote at a higher rate when they first get the opportunity. And when they start to vote at 16 and17, they tend to continue to be a voter throughout their life. That is not the case for 18- to 20-year-olds. You have a considerably lower participation rate for the first-time voters at the age of 18. And they don't necessarily continue. So, what that boils down to is vote young, vote long, and strengthen democracy.

MW: What do you say to the argument that lowering the voting age would benefit left-leaning parties because more young people tend to that side of the political spectrum?

MM: I would say that's not true. And I would give a very specific example, and I'd love to have this discussion with my Conservative colleagues. In fact, in Canada, there were mock elections conducted across Canada in high schools; more than 900,000 Canadian high school students voted. And guess what? They put in a Conservative minority government.

MW: Landon, you know, we know that there's a lot of political apathy out there. Last election, more than 30 per cent of people did not cast a ballot. How many 16-year-olds will actually take advantage of this new right to vote if it's extended to them, do you think?

LS: So, in the current high school curriculum, at least in Manitoba, we're only taught about democracy and political systems in Ninth Grade, when people are just coming out of middle school, 14 years old max, and it's not really covered ever again throughout high school. And not many people retain that sense of information because it doesn't apply to them. But I would say that if they knew that in high school, they would be casting a vote at 16 or 17 years old, then that turnout would be higher because they would recognize that it's not an adult problem, that it is just as much their decision as it is adults.

MW: Now, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there, especially obviously on social media, TikTok, et cetera. Do you think young people are ready to handle the intricacies of a political campaign? You know, while at the same time, trying to discern fact from fiction, which is hard enough for people who are more politically sophisticated, let's say.

LS: Yeah, and this question has come up a couple times about misinformation online, and propaganda on social media. And young people are growing up in the digital age, and we are responding to that in a way that is progressive. So, as much as young people may subject themselves to information online that may not be true, I found that currently people are recognizing that, and are able to do their research, and fact check, and look at the original articles that we've seen.

MM: May I just jump in on this one?

MW: Sure.

MM: Because I think it's important to acknowledge that scams and disinformation via the internet affect everybody across the generations. And the truth is that most of the information we have through the media about people who have suffered from this kind of disinformation, it's not about young people, it's about older people.

MW: Now Landon, you're turning 18 in the fall. What do you think it will feel like to be able to cast your vote for the very first time?

LS: I think it'll feel good, but I think I was ready at 12 years old to cast my vote. [MW and MM laugh] So, I think it's very much a long time coming, yeah.

MW: Senator McPhedran, Landon, thanks so much for speaking with me today.

MM: Thank you for the interest.

LS: Thanks so much.

AR: We reached Landon Sanderson in Winnipeg, and Senator Marilou McPhedran in B.C.

SOUNDCLIP

WILLIAM MCINTOSH: Every time, I've done this, I'd say close to 10 times now, and three on this trip in the last 21 days. And you just know that there's gonna be answers for the family, and that there is gonna be a relief. And that in itself is very humbling. It's, we're honoured to serve. We've been doing this with Adventures with Purpose, the YouTube channel from the U.S. that has 3.6 million people watching us. And you know to serve our community and serve our fellow man, or to come from the U.S. and Australia and help Canada find its missing is, you know, it's an honour to do it. And to help Natalie and her three sisters and her brother find their father after 40, you know, after going missing at 42 years old for 37 years, it was just a, it was an honour.

DOUG GELEVAN: How did you break the news to them, and what was their reaction like?

WM: Natalie was with us the whole time. We called her at 2:45 telling her we were coming in that we'd be there in 25 minutes. She, with open arms and smiles, was very excited for us to come in. And after we found Mr. Guévin, Yvon Guévin in Pierreville. So, she just was, she knew that, she had a feeling that we were gonna be the ones to find her father. She knew he was somewhere in that region. She knew she was in he was in the river. That's where he fished. That's what he went. And it's been, after talking, you know, on the news in the past, you know, we talk about that natural patterns of the human beings that go missing. Somewhere in your pattern of your life you are in when you go missing, you go to somewhere comfortable. And so, we went to where he was comfortable. He fished in that 60-foot, 70-foot hole almost every day. You know, 67 to 70 per cent of the time, we are finding these individuals when we go look for them. You know, they're there.

AR: William McIntosh volunteers with the nonprofit dive group Exploring with a Mission. He spoke with the CBC's Doug Gelevan.

[elevator music]

Waterloo AI Watermarks

Guest: Andres Kassis

AR: This week, Donald Trump posted a video to his social media platform that seemed to show Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. It's phony. It never happened, of course. The video was a deep-fake originally posted to TikTok. To the naked eye -- it's the kind of video that could appear to be completely real. But it should contain a secret clue that would show it's not real -- a buried watermark identifying it as AI-created. A watermark designed to expose hoaxes. But now -- researchers at the University of Waterloo say they've developed a tool that makes it easy to blot out AI-identifying watermarks -- exposing how bad actors could make it that much harder for all of us to separate the real from the fake. Andres Kassis is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, and one of the creators of "UnMarker". We’ve reached Mr. Kassis in Toronto.

MW: Andres, how big a deal is this? How close does the UnMarker tool come to rendering the AI watermark obsolete?

ANDRES KASSIS: I'd say it's a pretty big deal. Right now, these watermarks are the last line of defence against the danger of deepfakes. But in our research, we basically have shown that any watermark that is invisible and is also universally applicable to any type of content, then we can show that the watermark is actually vulnerable to the type of attacks that we devised in our paper. And then, with that, we're able to eliminate the watermark. And from so many systems, it wasn't like, you know, one, two, or three systems. We actually systemically surveyed around seven different systems from the academia. And in addition to that, we also managed to attack Google's newest product called Synth ID. And in all our experiments, we categorically managed to lower the detection rate below 50 per cent. Beyond that, we theoretically proved that you can defeat these watermarks and eliminate them.

MW: Now, I think most of us understand the concept of a watermark, but can you explain how they work?

AK: Yeah. The idea is that we need something to allow us to differentiate between real images and then AI-generated images. Because right now, anyone can create fake content portraying anyone else engaging in, I don't know, illicit activities, or create non-consensual pornography, so on and so forth. Previous attempts have all failed. And for that reason, we have come up with this technology of watermarking. So, the idea is that we inject a subtle pattern that has to be invisible so it does not interfere with the content in the image. And then, if this image is ever used to create chaos or in any kind of improper context, then we can invoke a specialized detector to identify the watermark, right? So, it's sort of like a hidden signature. It's like what they do like in forensics, right? Like, when you can't see like a blood stain or whatever. And then, you, like, soak it in some kind of, like, specific liquid and then it suddenly becomes visible, same kind of way, right? So, this is how this detector operates.

MW: Right, got it. So, what does it mean in the fight against deep fakes if you've proven that experts can't rely on watermarks to unmask them? Are there any other safeguards the big AI creators have in place?

AK: So, unfortunately, the bad news is that it means that we still have a very long way to go because watermarks were not the first systems that were created for this purpose. Before that, we had something we called passive detectors, and these were, like, AI systems trained to identify deepfakes. They would just look at the image and say, okay, this image looks fake because it doesn't look natural. However, as we continue to develop these systems more and more, we're at a state where we cannot differentiate between real and unnatural content in any other way. And so, we're at the stalemate right now where all our previous approaches have failed, frankly.

MW: Yeah. So, I mean, you've created this tool that shows how just how easy it is to defeat watermarks. Um, what's what's your goal here? I mean whose side are you on?

AK: First, we did not create a tool to defeat watermarks, right? The idea is we created a tool to expose a systemic flaw in the current approach that's being taken to tackle deep fakes, right?

MW: Right.

AK: So, our work should serve as a cautionary wake-up call. What we want to show, what we want people to understand is that we do not have a valid response right now in place that would allow us to deal with deepfakes. And we need a lot more work to be put into it. Because currently, as it stands right now, this technology of watermarking is being promoted as, you know, like, the cure-all, the ultimate solution that will save us from, you know the future dangers of deepfake. With institutions like the White House promoting and investing in this technology, and major players, Google, Meta, and OpenAI and others pouring billions into it. What we want people to understand is that we have basically exposed that it has systemic flaws that make it unsuitable to an extent to actually tackle this problem deepfake. What we always say in security is that if the good guys can figure it out, then so can the bad guys, right? And what we want to do is we want to always be one step ahead of the bad guys. And this is what we wanna do in this work.

MW: Right. Now, you've made the UnMarker research open-source, meaning anyone can access this and see how you created it and potentially use it themselves. Does that worry you at all?

AK: No, look, this is an acceptable practice in my field, right? Computer security, this is what we do. People develop attacks, and then, in fact, you're actually encouraged to make your attack open-source. And the reason behind it is that what you want is you want other researchers to play around with it, to experiment with it, and develop defences to this attack. Like I said, we're the good guys here, but there's always going to be bad guys, like I don't know, like on the dark web, or the black market, or whatever, who might already have similar tools.

MW: Right.

AK: So, what we're doing right now is we're intercepting this mass deployment and we're showing the flaws in it so we can actually opt for an alternative approach, or enhance the approaches that we have right now. If we don't have attacks like UnMarker, people will just be surprised to wake up one day to a world where bad actors have done very malicious things with this technology and created deepfakes that no one has a response to.

MW: Right, so you've exposed a critical vulnerability. Is it possible that you've shown that this kind of technology is inherently ungovernable?

AK: This is the million-dollar question. Right now, we don't really have an answer. Like I said, we tried the passive approach, and that one failed. And then, now we showed that the proactive approach also failed. So, what's next? And that's a very good question. I think right now, like I said, we're at a stalemate. I do believe that we have unleashed something that we are yet to understand how to deal with. But I do believe that we shouldn't give up, right? So, we need to basically, you know, do a lot more intense research and collaboration. So, maybe one day, so I don't know, like, maybe if this fails and that fails, maybe if we can just like, you now, have a mixture of all sorts of different countermeasures together, maybe we can, and again, like develop some newer systems, we will get to a state where it's a lot under control.

MW: Andres, thanks so much for speaking with me today. Fascinating stuff. And we, as you say, we all need to be really cautious.

AK: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

AR: Andres Kassis Andres Kassis is a PhD candidate at Waterloo University. We reached him in Toronto.

[R&B]

Paul Watson Update

AR: Japan may still be pursuing Paul Watson, but it appears Interpol is no longer quite so interested. This week, the international police organization removed the anti-whaling activist from its most wanted list. Mr. Watson is the former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, known for confronting whaling vessels on the high seas. That work has left Mr. Watson facing up to 15 years in prison, over his role in a 2010 incident when explosives were allegedly thrown at a Japanese ship. He denies those charges -- calling them absurd.

PAUL WATSON: For 50 years, I've non-violently intervened. We've never caused a single injury to anybody. We've ever sustained an injury. On the other hand, the Japanese cut a vessel in half. Six crew members were thrown into the frozen waters of the Southern Ocean. One of them had his ribs broken, and then they collided with our ships. They threw grenades at us, stun grenades at, they fired, they shot at us. A lot of acts of violence on the side of the Japanese without any legal consequences at all. Because they have the authority of the Japanese government behind them. And we have gone to incredible lengths to make sure that we didn't, and never have, caused an injury to a single person.

AR: From last December, that's anti-whaling activist Paul Watson speaking to As It Happens following his release from prison, after Denmark ruled that it would not extradite the anti-whaling activist to Japan. This week, Interpol took him off its most wanted list.

Cow Rescue

AR: When I think of British cows, I picture rolling green pastures, stiff-upper-lipped moos, and the occasional cameo in a BBC period drama. What I don’t picture is a full-blown bovine remake of Indiana Jones: Grazers of the Lost Farm. But that’s exactly what happened in Newton Arlosh, England, when four cows broke out of their pasture and found themselves bells-deep in…quicksand. And here’s the thing. As kids, we were warned warned about quicksand. Constantly. It sat in a trifecta with the Bermuda Triangle and jetpacks. The impression was that quicksand would be a major life obstacle (like taxes and other people). But here we are as adults, noticeably quicksand-free! And then...out of nowhere...four cows get the full cartoon experience!? Not even in a jungle, but in England!? The Lake District, meet the Silt District. Thankfully, three town's worth of firefighters brought in trained Animal Rescue and Swift Water Rescue crews. (The cows, for their part, brought only panic and hooves.) And with the help of a borrowed "telehandler", which is like the cow-lifting equivalent of an arcade claw machine) they extracted the herd one by one. It's the pastoral reverse of that scene from the first Jurassic Park that still keeps me up at night. The fire department later described the outcome as, quote, “an udderly good ending for all,” which tells you two things: One: Everyone’s okay, and two: Even first responders cannot resist a cow pun. The takeaway? Sometimes, even for cows, life can be a total beach.

The AIH Transcript For July 24, 2025

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