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The Current Transcript for April 25, 2019

Host: David Common

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

With climate change you see more and more of these extreme weather events more regularly. That means we have to think about adaptation, mitigation and how we're going to move forward together.

D: Once in a century floods are happening a lot more often those waters now pouring into homes and across highways, as the spring melt combines with heavy rains just as well rivers. We're heading to the flood zones to hear about the latest impacts. And then to the Netherlands, a country that knows all about water. It's taking a different approach. Rather than respond to floods as an emergency. They accept them as a certainty and plan communities accordingly. After that: it's been six years since the Rana Plaza collapse killed more than a thousand of the people who make our clothes and make them cheaply. Now an effort to build a bridge between us and them.

SOUNDCLIP

Consumers ought to know who make their clothes. You know we want to know where our food comes from. It shouldn't be that different with fashion.

DC: Fashion Revolution hopes this improve working conditions. Others doubt it. And in an hour a new film on the man they hold up Patient Zero.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Essentiallly, Gaetan, in Vancouver was the face of AIDS.

VOIC E2: It felt like scapegoating to me. I felt like oh who's this poor guy that they're trying to blame this all on.

DC: An Air Canada flight attendants set up as the main key to the spread of AIDS across North America. They were wrong in many ways and the film works to set the record straight. Patient Zero, by the way, was actually Patient 'O', and 'O' turned to Zero, a mistake that changed everything. I'm David Common and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

How floating homes could guard against floodwater damage

Guests: Nicholas Achim, Frans Klijn, Elizabeth English

DC: Troops are hitting the street. A dam could Borsht at any time and more rain is coming very soon. In some places lots of it. In parts of Ontario Quebec, in New Brunswick, floodwaters from the end will spring rains and thaw are breaking records once again. Soldiers are already a familiar sight in New Brunswick. The military pitching in after the St. John River breached its banks forcing hundreds to evacuate their homes. The military is also on the job in the nation's capital. The Navy now involved in some evacuations. Yesterday Ottawa Jim Watson conveyed the gravity of the situation in that city.

SOUNDCLIP

Updated projections now show the possibility of peak levels in some areas reaching as high as 11 centimeters above May 2017 levels. As you recall, the 2017 floods were devastating to several communities that lie along the Ottawa River. Based on this new information, city manager Steve Kanellakos and his team recommended that I declare a state of emergency in our city. As a result of the worsening conditions and the significant rainfall we anticipate, we were formally requested the support of the Canadian Armed Forces. Both levels of government have agreed to this request and we hope to have up to 400 troops on site in key areas.

DC: Meanwhile in Quebec up to 250 people living below the Bell Falls Dam on the swollen Rouge's river had been ordered to evacuate. Hydro Quebec officials say the dam is at risk of failure. Water could go over the top, the sides. It could even crack in giveaway. Nicholas Achim is one of those affected by the evacuation order. He's the owner of Propulsion Rafting which is located just down the river from the Bell Falls Dam and we've reached him today Saint Colomban, Quebec. Hello Nicholas.

NICHOLAS ACHIM: Hi there.

DC: Tell me about this dam. It is a bit awed but it was built to withstand a one in 1000 year event and now that seems to be happening. How did you react when you heard it might fail?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: It's not good news for sure, but it's not the first time that we see the Rouge River will go to a thousand CFS. It happened about 15 years ago. Yes they could broke because the water goes all around the dam but we have to keep faith.

DC: You have to keep faith but you're also, you are speaking to us today from your home which is not under the evacuation order, but your business certainly is. When you look at the river right next to your business what does it look like right now?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: Right now all the base [unintelligible] was the surrounded by the water. At 1000 CFS the water goes all over the road and go to the building. But the water didn't get in the building right now. It's a slab concrete. The slab is a little bit higher than the water level right now. It's about two inches over. The water's kept down a little bit last night. So we got a new a half an inch in safe. But if the dam break probably we're going to have maybe one or two feet of water or more and we are going to have water in the basement.

DC: Okay and if the dam breaks how long, how many minutes do you have before adhere to your business?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: We can say about 20 minutes. We are about less than 15 kilometers from the dam but it's going to come like a tsunami. The water will raise up slow, a little bit but you are going to have the time to see it coming and get out if ever we are there. But right now nobody can be around the base camp on the Rouge River Roads, so just waiting.

DC: When was the last time you were there?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: I was there yesterday when they call the emergency. I reach base camp by a four by four wheeler by the mountain. When I heard the evacuation I go to my neighbor because there are a little bit further and a little bit closer from the river. They are really far from the exit point. So I just go there ATV to help them to get out.

DC: To help them to get out. You know you're a business owner along this river but there are people who live along here. You're talking with your neighbors for instance. What is the concern both in terms of the damage that already happened, the damage that could happen and then just the idea of getting people out safely?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: For the moment there is no big problem. Unless the dam broke there is nothing we can do. We can just get out and wait. There's nothing we can do.

DC: What are the things that you have done, knowing that your along a river, knowing that this is not the first time that you've seen the river get as swollen as this, what are the things that you have done and can do for your business to help protect it?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: For my business there is nothing I can do. We live beside a river so we have to live with what she gives us. We are going to wait that the waters go down. That's the only thing we can do.

DC: You have not started your business is in rafting and adventures and that kind of thing. You haven't started yet for the season, but will this impact your actual start? Will it impact when you can start making money?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: Normally we start the season at the end of April around 20-21 April we've started the season. So for this year we delay everything we push the opening up to May 11 for the moment. So, it's about a month, three-four weekends of money loss.

DC: Of money loss. And when you look at that potential loss it's now coming of course it could be accompanied with loss by your neighbours in terms of damage that may still come. You've been in the area for quite some time.

NICHOLAS ACHIM: 30 years.

DC: For 30 years. When you look over the past three decades down and compare it to today what are you left thinking?

NICHOLAS ACHIM: It's not the first time that Rouge get to 1000 CFS. So it's the maximum level that I've seen. I hope she's going to take a break. The rain [unintelligible] the tough words the few next hour. But like I tell you keep the faith, the waters will go down.

DC: Nicholas, if luck counts for something, good luck.

NICHOLAS ACHIM: Thank you so much.

DC: That is Nicholas Achim who is the owner of Propulsion Rafting near the Bell's Falls Dam which could fail today. He was in Saint Colomban, Quebec. Now if there is one country that knows how to live alongside the constant risk of flooding, it's got to be the Netherlands. The country's name translates to the low land. For centuries people there have been trying to control and constrict the flow of water so they can continue to build and live there. But in recent years the country's taken a different approach to water management with a vast ambitious project they call Room for the River. Frans Klijn was one of the driving forces behind room for the river. He's a senior specialist at Deltares, an independent research institute in the Netherlands. And we've reached him today in Delft. Good day Frans. How are you?

FRANS KLIJN: Good morning. I'm fine, thanks.

DC: Can you tell me more? What exactly does Room for the River mean?

FRANS KLIJN: Room for the River means that we have enlarged the floodplain area so that the river can discharge its water more easily to the sea.

DC: When you enlarge what does that mean for people who live along that area?

FRANS KLIJN: Well it means that the embankments which we have put closer to the river over and over again - in the last 150 years we've lost more than 50 percent of floodplain area because we reclaimed boulders along the river and now we are giving back part of this room which we took from the river, but only a small part yet.

DC: So on a practical level does mean people have had to- I mean are homes that were located there not located there anymore?

FRANS KLIJN: It does mean about between 50 and 100 houses had to be removed, yes, because the [unintelligible] was relocated [unintelligible] constructed. So a number of farms and houses have been replaced or moved out of the area. Yes.

DC: And what was it that prompted all of this, for Room for the River to come into play?

FRANS KLIJN: Well we had two flood on succession in 1994 in 1995. They didn't cause any breaches of the embankments yet but it was very dangerous and we had to evacuate about 250,000 people there. And after the evacuation, the conclusion was we don't want this again. So are we going to raise our embankments again and again as we have done for eight years now, or are we going to really give the river some more breathing room? And that was then decided that first we should not build in the floodplain when it caused any any [unintelligible] obstacle. And secondly that the river need more room because we would expect larger discharges in our rivers especially with climate change.

DC: So the idea is accept what is increasingly becoming a reality, that flooding is getting higher and higher and so move people out where you can. You've talked about polders there briefly. It's a big big hills essentially where houses are now being located. I wonder if you can just differentiate for me what the different philosophical approach is now, compared to what it was even a decade ago.

DC: Well we looked at the last flood and then we raised the embankments to about one metre higher than the last highest flood. And what that causes is the embankments become higher and higher but people start developing behind the embankment. So the country which is protected becomes more vulnerable again and again. So you are in a kind of a feedback loop where you become more vulnerable where if the river has been pushed up in a narrower floodplain area. So the hazard is increasing and the vulnerability is increasing and we wanted to stop this process. Its known as the levee effect. Actually it was coined already in 1945 by the American White. It took us 50 years to come to the inside. That is really is something which is happening in that we are becoming more and more vulnerable especially with climate change being previewed. Well we need to get out of this feedback group.

DC: Frans I want to bring someone else into this conversation. Elizabeth English she is an associate professor at the school of architecture at university of Waterloo and is working on a novel flood mitigation strategy. The idea of Amphibious Homes. She's in Orlando, Florida today. Elizabeth can I bring you in? Hello.

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: Hello. Good morning everyone.

DC: Good morning. You've been listening in. What do you make of this idea is that that river should be given room to flow even if that means that people whose homes are there need to be pushed back, need to be relocated, that we're not going to be building right along the rivers themselves?

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: I think it's a brilliant idea. I think we need to let Mother Nature do more of what Mother Nature wants to do rather than humankind trying to control the water, as much as has been the strategy in the past.

DC: You have a different approach, very different - not contradictory - but this idea of amphibious homes, what exactly is that? I'm picturing sort of a house with big frog legs, but that can't be it.

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: That's not too far off. If you imagine a house that has a hidden floating dock underneath it. So a house that originally has a crawl space and can be retrofitted with buoyancy elements underneath it and a vertical guidance system. And then the house sits there looking like an ordinary house most of the time but when the flood comes, instead of filling up with water it floats on the water goes up.

DC: A vertical guidance system. Is that an anchor?

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: No, that is posts, vertical posts and the House slides up and down on the posts.

DC: So this is something that has to be a new build house. You talk of being able to retrofit existing houses.

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: Well actually they have new built amphibious homes in the Netherlands, but I work almost exclusively and retrofit. So I take an existing house that has pure in-beam construction - meaning there is a crawl space - and put buoyancy elements into the crawl space and that can be anything that will displace water. And then put in vertical guidance system and sleeves that go around it, or if it's a telescopic system, then caps on the top of the inner pipes. And the when the water comes it lifts up the house off of its existing foundation, static foundation, and it goes up on the vertical guidance posts, comes back down to its original place and there is no damage and it looks just like did before for.

DC: Frans Klijn, can ask you what you make of amphibious homes?

FRANS KLIJN: Well I think it's a good idea, an example of flood proofing. You could do it with steel. You could do with floating houses. You could do it and you could do [unintelligible] we have done. There are many many ways of flood proofing but it is mainly intended for the individual homeowners and that's a good idea. With Room for the River we looked at the system level there, the whole catchment area and we want to take into account any trade off in the river. And when a house is making a hydraulic obstacle you are offsetting your risk to other areas. So upstream or downstream they get the trouble or it's translating into time into the future. So we make a distinction between where you could do flood proofing when it's not a hydraulic obstacle and when you can't do because you are really hindering the river to discharge free. So that's where we make a distinction between the two.

DC: Elizabeth I wonder if I can just expand on that idea with you because the idea of an amphibious home really is an adaptive solution to the water instead of trying to control the water or give the water more space free of things like homes. Is one a better approach or are they complementary in your mind?

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: There are absolutely complementary. Room for the River is not a strategy that can be implemented everywhere and neither is amphibious construction. But one of the advantages is it doesn't provide those obstructions that Frans is talking about. It lets the water go wherever the water wants to go and the house gets out of the way, if you will. So it doesn't try to compete with Mother Nature, lets Mother Nature do it she wants understand humankind does the accommodation rather than trying to push the water around.

DC: Frans Klijn I sit here and think about some of the disasters we've had in Canada whether it flood or fire and the desire to rebuild after damage in exactly the same spot. Sometimes there is a pushback a political pushback saying no you shouldn't because the risk is simply too high in this area. And yet of course political forces come into play. So I'm wondering in the Netherlands how the idea of room for River was received politically. Was there immediate consensus or was there a lot of resistance?

FRANS KLIJN: Well politically there was a lot of consent that we should go into a transition in our way of dealing with rivers. On the other hand there have course been opposition especially from the people who were affected. That's why we tried to get a joint plan which was supported by everyone from the beginning onwards. And what we then did is build a kind of tool with which you could - we call planning kit - with which you could see whether an intervention would help and where the trade-off would be. So we enabled all the parties who were involved in the planning process to participate in these joint planning by seeing the effects of any intervention which was proposed. All interventions were taken seriously so everyone was allowed to come up with proposals. But in the end you had to come up with a solution which worked at a system level. So the whole river system had to be enlarged, the discharge capacity, the whole river system and not only one location or one local solution could be promoted because you have the trade or fax them. So that's what we tried to come up with the solution for everyone and there has been political debate of course. Some people said, especially nowadays with populist vote, they say well should we go as far as we are doing or could we go back to reinforcing our amendments again?

DC: Elizabeth English, just very briefly we've only got a moment here where do you think North America gone wrong?

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: Trying to control the rivers instead of allowing the rivers to do what they want. Building the levees too high and not maintaining them so there we have things like the catastrophic failure that devastated New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And not encouraging the use of amphibious construction because it's very difficult to implement in North America right now. Which is really a shame because it's a very inexpensive solution. And so when people find out about it they're very excited.

DC: We're going to have to leave it there, Elizabeth, but thank you very much to both you and Frans this morning.

FRANS KLIJN: You’re welcome.

ELIZABETH ENGLISH: It's a pleasure.

DC: Thank you. That's Elizabeth English an associate professor at the School of Architecture at University of Waterloo in Orlando, Florida, this morning and Frans Klijn a senior specialist in water management in Deltares, an independent research institute in the Netherlands. He was in Delft. Now at the CBC News is coming up next. Then, six years after the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, do you know who makes your clothes? When are going to talk to one of the founders of Fashion Revolution hoping to revolutionize the way you think about the clothes in your closet in the hands that sold them. I'm David Common. This is the Friday edition of The Current.

6 years after Rana Plaza collapse, many fashion giants still unwilling to make changes, says industry expert

Guest: Scott Nova, Carry Somers

DC: Hello I'm David Common and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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DC: Still to come he was called Patient Zero. A Canadian flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas who, when AIDS emerged, was fingered as the primary culprit in helping to spread the disease. He died long ago yet his name is lived on and a sort of infamy. But a new documentary premiering in Toronto at Hot Docs is rehabbing his image, arguing that he should be considered something of a hero. I'll speak with the director and an old friend of Gaetan's in half an hour. But first if only fashion workers’ rights were always in fashion.

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It was pure chaos, a giant plaza with a market and several clothing factories inside. During morning rush hour it simply collapsed. Officials discovered cracks in the building yesterday but workers say they had no choice but to go in. [In translation] We didn't want to go up in the factory, she says, but the management forced us to go and said it was no problem with the building.

DC: That was six years ago, April 2013, when a collapse took more than 1100 lives and opened many people's eyes to the reality of where their clothing comes from the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh affected factory workers producing. The inexpensive fashionable clothes that filled closets throughout North America. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy garment makers, such as Canada's own Joe Fresh, resolved to make sure their workers were treated humanely and paid fairly, and to be transparent about every item of clothing they sold. There is even a hashtag campaign who made my clothes was launched in 2013. Six years on it's fair to ask just how much has really changed. This week fashion houses around the world are taking part in Fashion Revolution week. Carry Somers is the founder and global operations director for the organization behind it and she joins me now from London, England. Hello Carry.

CARRY SOMERS: Good morning.

DC: Well if I can take you back six years to that Rana Plaza collapse. We all saw it. We saw the images. What do you remember thinking?

CARRY SOMERS: I remember an incredible sense of shock and sadness seeing this disaster unfolding in front of me, but also a sense of inevitability and we'd always known that a disaster of that scale was on the cards. We knew this auditing practices were insufficient to pick up any structural issues. We knew how many fires and smaller disasters there had been. I mean thousands of workers had been killed over the previous decade in Bangladesh, but because there hadn't been an instance of this scale, plans and retailers really were being very complacent about the risk in their supply chains. And it was just a couple of days after the disaster and I really wasn't thinking of any response to the tragedy but I was having a nice warm bath on a Sunday evening. An idea of Fashion Revolution literally popped into my head and it seemed like a good enough idea to get out of my warm bath and do something about it and that's what I did.

DC: What exactly is it? What does fashion revolution mean?

CARRY SOMERS: Fashion Revolution is a campaign for a more transparent and ultimately more sustainable fashion industry. We believe that transparency is the key to transforming the industry, because transparency leads to greater accountability and eventually this will lead to a change in the way in which the fashion industry works. We saw, after the disaster, the activists having to actually search through the rubble to look for the labels to prove which brands were producing at Rana Plaza. Most of the brands and retailers had really no idea what their relationship was with the factories who were operating there. We know that exploitation thrives in hidden places and this is why transparency is really the very first step to transforming the industry.

DC: But we've become very accustomed in the West to inexpensive clothes. And I just wonder how you make people care, both on the level of the industry and care on the level of the consumer.

CARRY SOMERS: Yes I mean it is a challenge. We've certainly seen in numerous surveys that consumers didn't want to be spending their money to support human rights and environmental abuses. Most of them would be willing to pay about an extra five percent to make sure that people and the environment weren't being exploited through their purchases. Really when we buy a new item of clothing we have the right to know that our money isn't supporting environmental degradation and human rights abuses. But without transparency there's no way of knowing that and I think consumers do care. We know that consumers care and what we have to do is just to encourage people to ask the question 'Who made my clothes?' and to demand greater accountability because that really will lead to a change in the way in which the industry works. The cost, the actual labor cost of clothing, is typically between only about one and three per cent of the retail price. And so the fact that an item of clothing is cheap, you can actually have more expensive item for clothing made on exactly the same production lines. They've paid basically the same price for the garment and yet it might be you know 10 times the price and your mostly paying for markup. So it's not necessarily just to do with cost, although we probably do need to pay at least a little bit more for our clothing.

DC: Well you're essentially saying that if we paid just a little bit more you could substantially increase worker's wages.

CARRY SOMERS: You could. It's been estimated that about an extra 25 cents on an item of clothing made in Bangladesh would pay a living wage to garment workers and ensure that all buildings met building safety standards, and I'm sure that most consumers would be willing to pay just that little bit extra.

DC: So why isn't that happening?

CARRY SOMERS: It's not happening mostly because of the will of the brands to make a difference. In fact when I was in Bangladesh I heard from numerous factory owners that they're receiving between three and five percent less from the brands every year. And so not only are they not paying more they're actually paying less. And yet the factory owners are expected to meet increased wage bills and the high cost of making their factories safe. So the brands and retailers they need do more. There are certainly a lot of brands who are making efforts towards paying living wages. But we need to see this actually translated into impact in the ground. And that's why in our fashion transparency index, which we launched this week, we're not looking at just at policies and practices and procedures but actually looking at how these translate into impact, into real change for workers and for the environment.

DC: You talked about transparency. You have this fashion transparency index and the companies on this index, what exactly do they represent? How did they get there?

CARRY SOMERS: These are the 240 toe 200 largest fashion brands and retailers in the world. So it's a mixture of luxury sportswear clothing and footwear. So not including things like jewellery. So they get there by being the biggest brands globally.

DC: Give me an example of some of these brands.

CARRY SOMERS: So these would include you know well-known high street names like H&M, Zara, Asus in the U.K. some of the big brands. In terms of footwear, sportswear, we have Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Nike. We have the luxury brands like Hermes, Burberry the caring group of brands which include Bottega Vaneta and Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, down to sort of Chanel and Prada who you know a slightly lagging behind the other luxury brands.

DC: And when you came onto the fashion scene and you're starting to have this conversation with these kinds of brands, particularly around this idea of transparency, what do you say to them? And then I'm also curious if they are resistant to your message.

CARRY SOMERS: Yes. I mean brands don't have an option as to whether to take part in this index or not. We include them whether or not they want to be included. I think that's the first thing to say because we are ranking them on the information which is publicly available on their website or directly linked from their website. But we do send the questionnaire out to the brands and they have the opportunity to complete it because then they will be points that our researchers have missed because some of the brands websites are incredibly complicated and information is buried in a lot of different places and potentially different SIR and even jobs websites. And so the brands who do complete the questionnaire typically may score a few extra points because we haven't found the information. And sometimes fans are resistant. We find a lot of the time when brands are included for the first time - because we increase the number of fans that we include every year. So the first year brands typically do score quite poorly and are quite resistant and quite shocked at how poorly they score. And then we do see change. We do see improvements year on year. In fact the 98 bands who were included in the index two years ago and are included again this year have increased their scores by an average of nine percent.

DC: What have they done differently has allowed them to improve that ranking?

CARRY SOMERS: It's pretty much an improvement across the board. So we're seeing improvements in every category. We look at their policies and commitments both for their companies and for their supply chains. We look at [unintelligible] and so do they publish information, and if we sport violations of human rights in the supply chain how can you report that? How can that information be made known to the brand or retailer? We look at traceability. So, do brands and retailers publish their factory lists - not just for the factories where their clothes are cut and sewn together which were wasting a lot more brands publishing that information now. It was 12.5 percent two years ago. It's up to 35 percent now. But also the processing facilities where clothes are laundered, where they're printed, where the spinning and ginning takes place, right down to the raw materials. Two years ago not one brand was publishing any raw material suppliers. And this year 10 brands are publishing that information so that's really important and significant progress because that's where a lot of abuses take place. We also look at no show fix. That's about how any are any abuses are identified and how they're rectified. So if an issue is supported what do brands do, how do they go about fixing any problems that they spot during audit process. And then we have different Spotlight issues every year. So this year we're looking at the sustainable development goals, so how brands are addressing issues like climate change, gender equality, sustainable production and consumption.

DC: So I see some of the trajectory of the things you're looking at trying to improve. It is so in many ways seemingly a very opaque industry.

CARRY SOMERS: It is an incredibly opaque industry and in that respect not a lot has changed. I mean we are seeing incremental change and we really have to see systemic change. I mean that's what transparency does but it's still incredibly opaque. Many brand and retailers are operating in broadly the same way that allowed the Rana Plaza factory to collapse in the first place. They're relying on auditing for the basic compliance and we really have to see systemic change. We have to see plans and retailers engaging with multi stakeholder initiatives with industry wide, initiatives and commitments to improve everything familiar, detoxing chemicals in their supply chain to joining in with agreements to improve worker safety.

DC: In the aftermath of Rana Plaza there are a number of companies that signed on to this thing called the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh really did provide more protection for workers and workplace safety. One of the signatories to that accord was Loblaw which is the parent company of Joe Fresh, a clothing chain that uses Bangladeshi labor. In a statement we receive from Loblaw they said they remain committed to ongoing progress to provide better protection for workers and to increase workplace safety in Bangladesh factories. That's the end of their quote. I wonder if you think that kind of thing is enough.

CARRY SOMERS: It's a good start but it's really not enough. I mean we need to look at things like unionisation. Only 10 percent of factories in Bangladesh currently have registered trade unions who are able to give a voice to the garment workers. Yet the most of brands and retailers will have freedom of association listed in their supplier policies as a fundamental human right for the workers. So we have to see these policies being put into practice. We have to see the brands and retailers pushing to do much more to make sure that human rights are respected, and not just in those first tier facilities where the clothes are cut and sewn together, but at the subcontractor level which we know is a huge problem in Bangladesh where a lot of subcontracting place takes place. So we have to see them really delving down through the layers and the supply chain and doing much more at those lower layers where everything gets an awful lot murkier.

DC: We ask one of our producers, Samira Mohyeddin, to head out on busy Queen Street, a big shopping district in Toronto to talk to people about their own buying habits when it comes to fashion. Here she is speaking with university student Quinn Palmer.

SOUNDCLIP

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Does it make a difference, do you think to people if they knew where their garments were being made?

QUINN PALMER: I hope so. I know a lot of the time it's more about cost for peopel, especially in the city, than it is about sustainability. I hope so. For me I try as a student. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. I usually buy from the source because unfortunately a lot of sustainable fashion is with a higher price. So there are some things you can do somebody, a student like myself, without having to pay that price, in my opinion.

DC: Carry Somers, sustainable fashion can be financially out of reach, financially more expensive. That's worth hearing from former shopper there. What do you think?

CARRY SOMERS: Well at Fashion Revolution we believe that all fashion should be ethical and sustainable. We shouldn't be separating it out saying this is sustainable fashion. It's the risk to the industry which is unsustainable and we have to get the mainstream brands to change. That's why asking the question 'who made my clothes?' is so important. I was told by an industry insider for every one person asking that question 'who made my clothes?' they take it as representing 10000 people who feel the same way but can't be bothered to do anything about it. And we know that that question is pushing plans to change. It is pushing them to be more transparent. So were ever people shop they need to be asking that question to the shop assistant, online, on social media because we need to push the mainstream to change. It is fantastic if people can afford to buy from supporting smaller sustainable brands and designers. Obviously buying thrift and vintage is a really good way to go. I think renting will become a lot more commonplace. Buying from designer selling sites - like the dress I'm wearing today - is also a really good way to buy. Fantastic items [unintelligible] at a much lower price. But ultimately it has to be those high street brands, mass produced luxury, sportswear, everybody has to change and they have to improve. And we have to see just great impact on humans right and on the environment. I mean we talk about course but we simply cannot afford to continue with the fashion industry which supports environmental degradation which harms and exploits people and which supports gender inequalities. We really have to see this industry change.

DC: Carry Somers will leave it there. Thank you very much.

CARRY SOMERS: Thank you.

DC: Carry Somers is the founder and global operations director of Fashion Revolution and she was in London, England.

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DC: In January garment factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, took to the streets. Sadly those protests took a tragic turn themselves. One protester was killed another 200 injured. They were demanding better wages because six years after the Rana Plaza disaster, garment factory workers in Bangladesh are still making about 45 cents an hour. Last week the Workers’ Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights monitoring organization, published a report on the lives of garment workers in Bangladesh. Scott Nova is executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium in Washington D.C. and he's in our Washington studio. Hello Scott.

SCOTT NOVE: Hello David good to be with you.

DC: What have you been thinking as you listen to the last guest about things that we should do about ranking companies? Does any of it make any difference?

SCOTT NOVE: It does make a difference. The critical goal has to be to get Western brands and retailers to sign enforceable agreements that actually contractually obligated them to improve the conditions and wages in the factories around the world they use to make their clothing. The one area where there's been sweeping change in Bangladesh is in building safety. Under the Bangladesh accord and agreement you spoke about with Carry - which is an enforceable agreement between 200 brands and retailers across the U.S., Canada, Europe and much of the world and labor unions that represent the interests of workers - under that agreement we've seen a physical transformation of close to 2000 garment factories in Bangladesh employing nearly three million workers; the installation of fired doors, the shoring up of weak structural columns, the renovation of grossly haphazard wiring systems that led to fires in the first place. Those changes have made those factory buildings for those millions of workers vastly safer than they were on the day of the Rana Plaza collapse. At the same time, while we've seen change on the safety issue, we've seen very little change in many other respects particularly on the issue of the wages that workers are paid, on the right to unionize and in the willingness of brands and retailers to pay a price to their suppliers that actually makes it possible for those suppliers to respect the rights of workers and pay them decently. And the reason we've seen progress in safety but haven't seen it on wages and other issues is because we don't have enforceable commitments from the key brands and retailers on those issues.

DC: We know that there are issues, not just from the reports that your group is writing but from the protests that are happening on the streets of Bangladesh in the face of intimidation from employers, from authorities, from politicians, these workers continue to step up and advocate for themselves. But sometimes that advocacy work leads to violence, has led to death.

SCOTT NOVE: Workers in Bangladesh have shown extraordinary courage in fighting for better conditions and wages. And as you mentioned workers were protesting largely peacefully at the end of last year simply seeking a factory wage of a little less than one dollar an hour, which the government, the employers and the Browns have refused to pay them. The response to those peaceful protest from the factory owners and the government of Bangladesh was to fire more than 10000 workers simply for engaging in their right to speak, jailed dozens and subject them to outrageous false criminal charges. And big brands in retail are sourcing from Bangladesh from Mark's warehouse - which is owned by Canadian Tire - to H&M, to Mango and Marks and Spencer have sat by and allowed this to happen. They've allowed the factories that supply them to victimize workers in this manner.

DC: You're saying they know.

SCOTT NOVE: They know. They know they know which factories. There is a list of factories that have filed false criminal charges against peaceful protesters that produced for these brands. They're well aware of which factories and of what they've done. We're calling on those brands and retailers to compel their suppliers to withdraw the false criminal charges and to reinstate with back pay the peaceful protesters that they fire. The question is will those brands do so.

DC: You know there's a good opportunity for us to bring in a clip of an interview we did with Miran Ali who is the director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. It's a group that represents 45 hundred member factories. We asked him where Bangladesh is, six years after the Rana Plaza collapse.

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MIRAN ALI: A lot has changed in Bangladesh in the last six years. We started implementing the most rigorous and transparent structural electrical and fire safety inspections that exist in any exporting country in the world. We have gone from a situation where there were fundamentally issues and problems to where we feel we are doing a much better job.

DC: Miran Ali is clearly speaking for the garment manufacturers not necessarily for the workers, but says they're doing a much better job. What do you think Scott?

SCOTT NOVE: Well Miran Ali and the BGMEA are people that we know quite well and that the critical question to ask Miran Ali and the other factory owners in Bangladesh is, if they are proud of the progress that's been made on building safety under the Bangladesh accord, why are they doing everything they can right now to force the accord to leave Bangladesh? The BGMEA [unintelligible] recalcitrant factory owner the government of Bangladesh are actually trying to force the only functional building safety program in the country to leave so that the fact owners will not face the kind of effective regulation that they faced under the accord. It is an illustration of the lack of fundamental progress in terms of the attitude of the factory owners in terms of the priorities of the Bangladesh government, and fundamentally in the end because there are the ones with the most power in terms of the willingness of brands and retailers to actually ensure a safe conditions, decent wages and fair treatment for workers in their supply chains in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

DC: The thing with Bangladesh of course is the garment industry is the economy. 83 percent of Bangladesh has export earnings come from that garment industry. I wonder how you see that affecting the way the government responds when workers demand things like better working conditions, slightly higher salaries than they currently receive.

SCOTT NOVE: Well that's an excellent question. The fact is of course have enormous political power for the reasons that you cite indeed many of the members of parliament are themselves factory owners. But at the same time the governments are looking at another question, not just the power of the factory owners in Bangladeshi society, but the priorities of the brands and retailers who are responsible for all of those billions of dollars in apparel orders for Bangladeshi factories. The government continues to believe that for all their rhetoric, the highest priority of the brands remains getting the lowest possible prices. And as long as the government has reason to believe that's the case - as long as brands place price over the safety and dignity of workers - the government will have an incentive not to regulate, not to protect workers, not to do anything that would actually raise the costs of production. And the reality of it is it costs more to produce under good, safe conditions than it does to produce under bad and unsafe conditions. And the central question for the brands and retailers is are they willing to pay a price sufficient to actually enable suppliers to treat workers decently.

DC: We've got less than a minute. What would it take for consumers who are on the other end of their garment industry to actually care?

SCOTT NOVE: Well I think consumers do care. You know brands worked very hard to ensure that there is enormous psychological distance in the minds of consumers between the product they're looking at in a store rack and the life of the garment worker who made that product. Consumers are denied solid information about what's actually happening in these factories; what the wages are, what the conditions are which is why the kind of reporting you are doing is so critical. Because when consumers do get good information about the fact that workers are making pennies an hour, about the fact that they're being put into a 10 story factory building without fire exits, then they act. Then they turn against those brands and retailers that refuse to do the right thing. And so for consumers to act consumer need information, but it's important to know brands and retailers are terrified that they will be associated in the minds of apparel consumers with the kinds of conditions that led to the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. And we need to use that fear on the part of brands and retailers to press them to sign agreements we can actually enforce, that compel them to pay fair prices and ensure that their suppliers actually treat workers like human beings.

DC: Scott thank you very much.

SCOTT NOVE: Thank you.

DC: That is Scott Nova the executive director of the Workers’ Rights Council. He is in Washington D.C. Coming up in our next half hour from Patient Zero to hero. A new documentary re-evaluates the life of Gaetan Dugas, the Canadian man who for years was blamed for the initial spread of AIDS in North America. I'm David Common. And you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

Killing Patient Zero profiles Quebec man unfairly targeted in AIDS epidemic

Guests: Richard Bisson, Laurie Lynd

DC: I'm David Common and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Patient Zero, is the name doctors and the medical detectives used to describe this man, the airline steward, to protect his identity.

VOICE 2: I have spoken of Patient Zero to people who weren't around at that time and when they realise that who I'm talking about and that I actually knew that person and that there was a real person rather than you know somebody eight feet tall, dripping blood from the mouth. It was as if I'm talking about having known Joan of Arc, personally.

DC: Patient zero was a real person, a Canadian flight attendant who worked for Air Canada. His name was Gaetan Dugas. But in the early days of the AIDS crisis he became identified in media headlines as the man who gave us AIDS. Now a new documentary introduces us to the real person and debunks many myths about his role in spreading the disease. The film is called Killing Katient Zero. In its screening in Toronto as part of the Hot Docs Film Festival. I'm joined by Richard Bisson who was a friend and colleague of Gaetan Dugas. He is in Vancouver, and the director of Killing Patient Zero, Laurie Lynd in our Toronto studio. Hello to both of you.

RICHARD BISSON: Morning.

LAURIE LYND: Hi David.

DC: Laurie, let's start with you. Why did you want to tell the story of Gaetan Dugas?

LAURIE LYND: Well it's interesting. It's a project that came to me through my producer Corey Russell. And I had read, and the band played on, the book that gave the rise to the patient to a story back in 1990. And it actually was kind of a wakeup call for me because I'm a gay man and I was living in New York in the 80s, and I realized I had blinkers on about it. And when I read it back then I actually bought the whole patient a story back in 1990.

DC: What do you mean?

LAURIE LYND: I thought oh my God what a terrible person. You know I believed it. And then I said my friend John Grayson's movie Zero Patient which he made in 93 which totally debunked the whole thing. So it was extraordinary for me to come - I think 27 or 28 years later - come back to band and look at Dugas story and recognize that this is a man whose name needs to be rehabilitated. Because there's so much that's good about Randy Schultz's book, but the whole Patient Zero thing is terrible.

DC: The key thing for you here is rehabilitating the name of Gaetan Dugas.

LAURIE LYND: Absolutely.

DC: And you do that in part by exposing this myth around him being patient zero being the originator, the guy who brought AIDS, who spread AIDS, who was the link.

LAURIE LYND: Well the extraordinary thing is it's based on a typo because Dugas, as the film suggests, really should be proclaimed a hero of the fight against AIDS because he was one of the first 40 cases in the United States and he was very candid with researchers from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. And he named something like 72 partners .and nearly everyone else in that city could maybe remember too. And so it's sort of an ascertainment bias that happens where he looks central in the diagram that was created to show what was initially the L.A. cluster and then they followed up on his name [unintelligible] the New York part. And he's sitting right in the middle as Patient 'O' for outside California, but then once people start reading he loses the California part and they think it's a zero.

DC: So Patient 'O' goes to Patient Zero and there is a demonization of being Patient Zero. It makes it sound like you're the originator of this disease, the person who brought it perhaps even unto the continent and in fact it couldn't be further from the truth.

LAURIE LYND: Exactly.

DC: Let me just pause you there for a second because we talk about the past. I want to, Richard, bring you in to talk about who Gaetan Dugas was, what should we know about him?

RICHARD BISSON: Well I would say that he would just you know an average guy just like everybody else during that period then you know he was gay. But I don't think he was exceptional in any way. I mean we were all living the same kind of life back then.

DC: Which was what?

RICHARD BISSON: We were partying. It was the seventies where all of this began. That was I think one of the best decades in the history of the world. I'm sure the sexual liberation had happened, or had started in the late 60s and just everything was available. He was part of that as we all were then. And then of course the 80s struck and that put a damper on everything that took place, which is where Gaetan became famous, if you like, because of this Patient Zero thing. But he wasn't an extraordinary- you know out of the ordinary at that time. Everybody was doing the same thing. We were all going to discotheques. We were all in our 20s there, the baby boomers, and there were quite a few of us and we just took over and had a good time. Everything was available.

DC: You knew him through your work at Air Canada. He also worked there. He was a flight attendant. What was the environment like for openly gay man at Air Canada in the 70s?

RICHARD BISSON: Well openly gay is not like openly gay now in the sense that we have married couples now and everything like that. But being gay was not an issue. I think it was 1969 that the whole homosexuality was legalized. And so consequently there was no difficulty really in the culture, I think, and even people my age - the other people who were part of the sexual revolution - I think were actually curious about it. And many of us were like you know the token gay at parties just because we were nearly required, one of us at least.

DC: Required?

RICHARD BISSON: To just kind of liven up the party, that type of thing. And we could party and we knew how to party. We're the ones who started discotheques you know in the late 60s, that was I'll do that. So the girls especially just loved us because of the fact that when we knew where to go and give them a good time without any danger and we were protecting them etc. As far as the straight guys were concerned, well, they didn't want to dance.

DC: Laurie, as we look at the period the 70s and Richard is talking about it. The era of sexual liberation that it is much easier for a gay man to exist as gay, to exist more openly. There was a community that had been delisted as a mental illness by this point that were going on around the era of decriminalization. And then along comes the 80s, along comes AIDS.

LAURIE LYND: In 1981. I mean some people they realized had it in 79 and 80 but it was really on the radar as of 1981. It was the first time in recorded history that gay men could live freely and be themselves and to have that last about a decade before AIDS hit. I mean as one of my subjects in the film says it's like you know life isn't supposed to be wrapped up in metaphors. And AIDS feel felt like a metaphor for the homophobia of the religious right. The timing of it couldn't have been worse because the AIDS crisis that was used to roll back civil rights advancements and stuff. It was a terrible time.

DC: There is this line that you have in the film when one man is talking about coming out as homosexual to his family and his family responds 'well AIDS will get you'.

LAURIE LYND: Yes.

DC: It is a sweet satisfaction.

LAURIE LYND: Yes. And that was the thing that was really upsetting once it had gotten into the blood supply and, you know, hemophiliacs were getting it - which was terrible - from transfusions, but they were called innocent victims. Whereas gay men were obviously not innocent. One of my subjects uses the word 'indulge' because she said she read that a lot of the time that you know gay men indulge in sex as opposed to doesn't everyone? You know it's interesting there was so much prejudice, still, against gay sexuality. I think it still was very early on in homosexuality being--.

DC: Richard, please.

RICHARD BISSON: Could I point out that the girls and the guys not just the homosexual were experimenting with sex. Stuff was happening in the 70s that had never happened in the 50s. The pill had come out and so girls were out there having sex as well, maybe not to the degree heterosexuals as homosexuals could. I mean you could meet three tricks in a day back then if you were gay, not likely to happen if you were heterosexual. So yes, there were there was more of sexuality I would suspect with gay men. But again gay men, some gay men, were just not all that sexual in the sense that they were you know- their sexual guilt prevented them from going out and doing stuff etc. Many were in the closet and so on and so forth. But the point that I'm trying to make is that when AIDS happened they needed a scapegoat so that it was easy to point at gay people back then instead of just the culture in general and that's what happened. You know they found somebody to point the finger and say it started here which was ludicrous even back then as an idea.

DC: What do you remember of those early years, Richard? Did you lose friends?

RICHARD BISSON: Oh my goodness yes. Lots and lots. As a matter of fact at one point we were meeting each each other and saying, you know after a period of time of not seeing each other, and saying 'oh my God you are still alive'. That was like a greeting you know. So many many people died and many are very close to me too.

DC: Laurie, this time in the United States in states like California at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, they are beginning to try to get a grasp on just what's going on. They don't know about HIV at this point. They know about something that in some cases has just being called the gay cancer.

LAURIE LYND: Yes.

DC: But Gaetan Dugas, this young guy from Quebec, this flight attendant for Canada, his name is suddenly the one identified as Patient Zero. How that happened?

LAURIE LYND: Well he was on the radar of some of the like the San Francisco Health Department because he still went out to the bouts occasionally when he had Kaposi's Sarcoma so there would have been visible lesions. We will never know but I am convinced he probably was having safe sex although that phrasing hadn't been invented yet. And it was really that- I mean it's one of those no good deed goes unpunished because if he hadn't cooperated with the Centers for Disease Control none of this would have happened to him.

DC: By naming his partner, by being very open about talking with them.

LAURIE LYND: So once he's in the cluster study which gave rise to all of this and that's where there's this famous diagram and he's right in the center as Patient 'O', that was published around the time of his death, like literally the weak of it. It was sort of mainly in scientific circles until Randy Schultz, who was an out gay journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he was sort of the only major newspaper reporter covering AIDS as a full time thing. Because again it's hard for us to imagine, but you know major Daily papers weren't covering it. You know it was a gay disease. So Randy was the only voice that was steadily doing that and he finally realized he needed to read a book about it. And that was And the Band Played on which came out October 87 which is three years after Gaetan had died. And his publisher Michael Delany who we interviewed in the film they were worried that no one was going to review the book. The New York Times said they weren't going to review it. And the whole point of the book was to get AIDS on the national agenda because North America needed to wake up to what was going on. It had been too easy to dismiss it because it was you know quote "just affecting gay men predominantly". And so as a publicity stunt they decided to pull the Patient Zero section out of And the Band Played on. Band is an amazing book. But it's weird how Randy Schultz wrote Dugas. He's like this evil vampire growing up willfully infecting people. And I don't know where that comes from. Anyway, so they feed this story, Patient Zero story to the New York Post which is a very homophobic paper, at least it was then, and all of a sudden it's all over North America. The man who gave us aids. The monster who gave us AIDS. And again it's all based on a typo.

DC: Yes, Patient 'O' not Patient Zero. Richard, we began this discussion talking about Gaetan Dugas being, as you say, being the scapegoat. When you think about the coverage around Gaetan, what stands out?

RICHARD BISSON: Oh my goodness, what stands out. Well first of all I never believed it I was there and I just don’t you know it was [unintelligible] to me. As I said earlier I think the idea of calling anybody the first AIDS patient is nearly ludicrous as far as I'm concerned. I guess somebody would have got it originally but the other thing too is you know it’s a sexual thing, so there are immediately two people and two people have to be participants in this issue. And so right there you can't you know say this person is responsible for that. My ideas haven't changed about that. Gaetan was a delightful soul, as there were many back then who you know were having as much sex as Gaetan with as many partners, and many of them have passed away, many of them have survived. And you know it was a plague I guess and here we are. We were all people doing best just having a good time. We were all in our 20s and early 30s. We were just having a good time and enjoying what the world had to offer and then suddenly were we were hit with this thing and had to deal with that. What I remember is myself - I can only talk about myself - but I suspect that all other homosexuals or people for that matter were much more careful about how much sex they were having, what kind of sex they were having. They were monitoring you know moving their way through this mine field really. And some came out the other end.

DC: Know I wonder and I would ask both of you, because there is this moment in the movie where you look at the White House press conference in which a question has asked, perhaps the first question ever, about what came to be known as AIDS and the response from the press secretary at the time was really laughter.

LAURIE LYND: That was one of the most shocking things that I found in researching the film. Its October 15th 1982 and at this point 600 men have died and it is called gay cancer. And so I cant remember the reporter's name but he asks the press secretary what is the Reagan government position on AIDS. The speaker has no idea what AIDS is and then they sort of go on to joke about it being gay cancer, not the reporter, but everyone else in the room laughs because of this squeamishness around gay. And its chilling to hear that now.

DC: That's 37 years ago. I mean its not actually that long.

LAURIE LYND: No I think that’s the thing that people can't wrap our heads around is that it was also new. You know someone like Richard and Gaetan, they were bravely out at that time. I was as well. I made gay movies and stuff. And it wasn't as easy as it is now. It wasn't as mainstream.

RICHARD BISSON: I think that many of us were accepted. My family accepted me you know from the moment I told them, Gaetan's probably as well. However it was a new thing and I think some of the laughter in the White House could have been embarrassment at the subject. It was new and you know anything sexual will be a little both titillating and embarrassing at the same time which can provoke laughter in people. And what I remember especially as being isolated though in other words they were two worlds. The straight world understood that it was going on but they didn't really want to have that much to do with it on a day to day basis. Yes they came to our discos etc etc. but they were a separate cultures, the gay culture and the straight culture and they didn't kind of come together very much. There was very little contact or support for that matter. I think a lot of it had to do with embarrassment about this particular thing. For my parents for instance to understand that I was gay. They were very very accepting. On the other hand they didn't really want to talk about it with a lot of people you know. For that matter my partner of 10 years before he passed away I didn't even know his parents. They didn't - I wouldn't say they didn't want to know me. It was just that it was being done. We didn't socialize with our gay partners parents back then.

DC: As you speak, Richard, about parents I wonder what the impact on Gaetan's parents on his family in Quebec.

RICHARD BISSON: You know my heart was breaking for them. Even then at the time I just thought how unfair and how cruel it is for these parents to have to go through something like that. By that time you know get tired passed away and they were dealing with the grief around them and suddenly to have all of that dumped on them. It was cruel really cruel. I think unforgivable real.

LAURIE LYND: And they were broad sided by it because no one from St. Martin's Press that published Band give Dugas family the book. No one gave them a heads up saying that he was going to be labelled as Patient Zero. I believe they found out by watching the nightly news. How he's written in that book is just weirdly negative. And I think the family has maintained a principled silence ever since the story broke in 1987. They did one brief interview with Le Soliel, a Quebec City paper, where they just said they were looking into their legal rights and worried that hospital confidential records might have been breached. But they didn't want to participate in the film. We approached them and they declined graciously. They just want to stay silent and I really admire that. I think it's refreshing actually that they've chosen to keep their grief private.

DC: Do you think they would be happy if they watch?

LAURIE LYND: I hope they'll be happy. I hope they see that this film rehabilitates his name completely and also situates him you know, that he is - exactly as Richard said - he was average. A lot of gay men were partying like that and you know sleeping around a lot. It was a celebration. And to single him out as if he was some kind of you know pariah, I hope it is a comfort to them.

DC: Richard there is a moment you have this lovely story about what was probably the last time that you saw Gaetan. Would you be comfortable sharing that with us?

RICHARD BISSON: Absolutely I think no one knew me mean. I just met him in the crew lounge and he was well enough to work at that point. He had had some time off to deal with health issues. We were friends but we were acquaintances. I went up to speak to him. We also had the French Canadian connection there. We both spoke French so there was that element as well and the gay thing. And I just went up to them and we you know started talking. I said 'hi', 'how are you' etc. etc. And I just said 'let me do this, you've got too much make on here' and just kind of brushed, fixed it on his face, on his cheek, on his right cheek countries kind of made it look not as heavy if you like. And so I just redid his makeup.

DC: And he would be partly wearing it then to cover the [unintelligible] lesions because that's what you do associate it with AIDS.

RICHARD BISSON: Yes.

DC: Laurie, what do you want those who watch Killing Patient Zero to take away? What do you want us, listening, to understand about Gaetan Dugas?

LAURIE LYND: I think people need to be aware of prejudice and how damaging it is to be biased towards, unfairly biased, towards someone. So I hope it's a kind of cautionary tale. You know we live in a time with rising populous governments where the rate of LGBTQ people are threatened in a lot of countries now that they weren't before. So in a way I hope people are shocked that this miscarriage of justice was allowed to happen and I hope that they feel more vigilant about gay rights, civil rights, after seeing it. In Toronto we've had the horrible gay serial killer and don’t even want to say his name, and there there's no way that homophobia is not a part of that. The police clearly could have responded faster and probably would have if his victims had been straight white men and most of his victims were men who had lived on the down low and that homophobia in their culture. So I think in a weird way that serial killers thing is a little miniature version of the AIDS story.

DC: Richard what is the image of Gaetan that stays in your mind?

RICHARD BISSON: I think it is just a really fun person. You know he was out to enjoy life, to just play in the fields of the Lord, really, like we were all doing back then. I don't think he was a mean or evil person by any means. He was at a lot of fun to be with etc. The media put out a narratibe and we were, are we are still, all too quick to say okay, that's where the case is, when you know theres a thing is an example of where it is and that's not how it works.

DC: You know here we are four decades later trying to repaint that picture, a picture that was painted wrong in the first place.

LAURIE LYND: Exactly.

LAURIE LYND: And Dugas comes across so well from the people I've interviewed who knew him like an incredibly loving generous man. Someone else we weren't able to interview in the film but I've spoken to on the phone and worked with him, and she was down on her luck and didn't have enough money and he was going to buy her car from her and then give it to her. Because he didn't drive but he wanted her to have the car. And I've heard stories like that over and over about what a kind man who was.

DC: Richard and Laurie thank you very much.

RICHARD BISSON: Thank you.

LAURIE LYND: Thank you David.

DC: Laurie Lynd is the director of killing Patient Zero. It's screening at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto. He was in our Toronto studio. Richard Bisson worked with Gaetan Dugas at Air Canada. He now lives in Vancouver.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Hi, I'm Samira Mohyeddin, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Idella Sturino, Alison Masemann, Howard Goldenthal, John Chipman, Karin Marley, Julie Crysler, Ines Colabrese, Danielle Carr, Jessica Linzey and Sarah-Joyce Battersby. Our intern is Cinar Kiper. Special thanks to the CBC's Olivia Stefanovich in Ottawa and Philip Drost in Fredericton. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producers are Padraig Moran and Emilie Quesnel. Transcriptions are provided by Rasha Shehata and Shamhan Bhuiyan. Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our documentary editor is Joan Webber, and our presentation producer is Liz Hoath. Our senior producers are Pacinthe Mattar in Toronto, and Cathy Simon and Geoff Turner in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Willow Smith. And of course, the host of the Current - Anna Maria Tremonti.

DC: And that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Irish novelist Sally Rooney is on the show to talk about her latest book Normal People. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally after a discussion about the early days of AIDS, let's end with some music from one of the really AIDS benefit concerts. In 1993 the Concert of Hope saw George Michael and others performed live in front of the late Princess Diana. And many more. And here's the song with which he opened the concert, Father Figure. I'm David Common. Thanks very much for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Father Figure by George Michael].

April 26, 2019 episode transcript

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