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The Current Transcript for February 2, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

It wasn't really Curt who came home. I mean, for a good three four months he was very zombie-like and numb and cut off. As a spouse you just want to help the person, really you feel helpless, you can't reach out to them.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The Kurt she's talking about is someone whose name you likely recognize, Curt Petrovich. Longtime reporter here at CBC. Simply one of the best. You haven't heard him lately because after he came home from one particular news assignment, things were never the same. In an hour, Curt Petrovich and his partner Yvette Brend talk candidly about the reality of living with PTSD. Today we're also talking about the power of language.

SOUNDCLIP

Next time you meet a person from the Muslim community in Quebec, just stop and say hello. I'm sorry for what happened, we are with you. Little gestures like this, little words like this go far.

AMT: Quebec’s premier using different inclusive language and urging it, even as some were issuing mea culpas this week, after being called out for inflammatory rhetoric and the demonization of Muslims in Quebec. On a day of a public service honouring the men killed while worshipping in their Quebec City mosque, we're looking at how Sunday's attack may be forcing a new dialogue. Also today, the erosion of democracy.

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DONALD TRUMP: These are people who work hard, but no longer have a voice. I am your voice.

[Sound: crowd applause]

AMT: While his supporters hear a victory in President Donald Trump's rhetoric, long time conservative David Frum hears the makings of an autocracy. He makes the case right now. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

How Trump can build a U.S. autocracy: David Frum

Guests: David Frum

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Hail to the Chief]

It's 2021, and President Donald Trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term. The 45th president has visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter Ivanka’s arm during his infrequent public appearances. Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for re-election. His has been a popular presidency. Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic. The president's supporters credit his restrictive immigration policies and his Trump works infrastructure program. The president's critics meanwhile have found little hearing for their protests and complaints. Allegations of fraud and self-dealing in the TrumpWorks program and elsewhere have likewise been shrugged off.

[Sound: Church choir singing]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, that vision of a Trump inauguration in 2021 is found in the opening paragraphs of a new article for The Atlantic by David Frum, headlined How to Build an Autocracy. It paints a disconcerting portrait of what Mr. Frum believes America could resemble in four short years. An America where checks on presidential power have failed, where President Donald Trump has managed to consolidate power and erode democracy. It's a bold message from Mr. Frum. The conservative commentator and former speechwriter to Republican President George W. Bush has emerged as one of Mr. Trump's most vocal critics. And his warning to Americans is that the path to autocracy banks on public indifference, that what happens in the next four years is up to them. David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic. And he's in our Washington studio. Hello.

DAVID FRUM: Good morning.

AMT: Your vision of the near future is pretty dystopian. Describe what an autocratic America could look like by 2021?

DAVID FRUM: It's very important to understand that 21st century authoritarian rule does not look like 20th century authoritarian rule. You're not going to have people in parade ground formations. You're not going to have a police state. You're not going to people with decorative armbands bullying people on the sidewalks. And the leaders won't stand at microphones for hours ranting at people. All of that is so 80 years ago. Modern authoritarianism, as it's growing inside Europe and now coming to the United States, rests much more on the use of power to protect the guilty than to persecute the innocent. And its motive is not crazy totalitarian utopianism, it’s motive is repressive kleptocracy. To steal and to use the powers of the state to protect theft.

AMT: And you say that there is a breakdown in the American political system that's allowing this to happen?

DAVID FRUM: Americans are about to discover that their system is more vulnerable than they thought. There's a lot of complacency in American politics, there’s a lot of complacency in advanced democracies generally. We're seeing in Eastern European countries that are members of the European Union and signatories to European Convention on Human Rights, Hungary for example, I spent a lot of time there. No one is murdered in Hungary and there are no illegal arrests, but people have begun again, when they talk to you in a public place looking around to see who's listening. You see that in Slovakia, you're beginning to see that in Poland. Not hard to imagine it coming to France if the National Front wins this year's elections. And in the United States, you're going to see around Donald Trump, a series of abuses. Politico has a story about how Donald Trump maintains a private security squad as well as the Secret Service. And unlike the secret service, his private security squad does use violence. The Secret Service never would of course.

AMT: What kind of violence?

DAVID FRUM: They lay hands on people. They don't beat people up but they assert that, for example, that Donald Trump owns the sidewalk in front of his tower. And if a demonstrator walks on a piece of sidewalk that they wrongly claim, the Trump organization to own, they will lay hands on the person and push them away. Now, that's not a beating but it's unprecedented all the same.

AMT: The American political system famously rests on checks and balances. Take me through some of this. Why won't Congress be able to prevent Donald Trump from consolidating the kind of power and doing the kind of things you're talking about?

DAVID FRUM: Congress could but it won't. We have seen the Republicans, who are the majority in both Houses of Congress again and again accept things that weeks before they would say are unacceptable. Paul Ryan who's the Speaker of the House, an open borders guy, kind of shockingly open borders, is now defending President Trump's immigration orders. Why? Normally what happens in a new administration is a president comes in with a big policy agenda and in order to get it through he has to deal with the human weaknesses and frailties of members of Congress, overlook this one's drinking and this one's stealing in order to get the vote. This time it's Congress that has the big ideological agenda. Donald Trump doesn't believe in much, doesn't want to do much. And they, in order to achieve their agenda, from confirming the Supreme Court justice they want to getting the tax cuts and regulatory relief they want, they have to overlook the human frailties of the president. So they don't insist that he release his tax return. They don't insist on divestment of his investments. They do not insist on things that every president since Gerald Ford has had to do.

AMT: And of course, he has argued that that is the establishment and that he is anti-establishment, that these rules don't matter as much.

DAVID FRUM: Well, one of the things we're all going to have to discover, establishment is just an abusive term for institutions. It's institutions that keep us free. We're not free because other people are nice, maybe other people aren't nice that day. We're free because we expect the institutions of government to work impersonally. That we expect people in government to understand they don't work for the president or the prime minister, they work for the government. And the government is always there. Presidents and prime ministers come and go. So if you attack that so-called establishment, what you're really doing is every day corroding the norms. So little of what makes a democracy work is written down. So much of it is just the things you don't do. There are a lot of things that a prime minister or a president can do and they don't do them because it never occurs to them to do them. And because if they ever suggested it, the other members of our cabinet would say are you crazy? You can't do that, this is a free country. But Donald Trump does suggest doing those things and instead of being restrained by the people around him, he's enabled by them.

AMT: You write that liberty is threatened in modern times not by diktat and violence but by the slow demoralizing process of corruption and deceit.

DAVID FRUM: Yeah. I want people to understand that, look, we're in a period of democratic deficit, democratic recession. There are fewer democracies in the world today than in 2005, and in many of the countries that are still technically democracies, we're seeing a reduction in the rule of law. And that's especially true in Central Europe, but it's also true of places like South Africa, the Philippines. Venezuela has gone from being a democratic country 15 years ago to being totally not a democracy today. Usually that de-democratization doesn't take the form of a heavy handed police state. I mean, as I said, we're not going back to the 1930s and 40s. It just doesn't work that way. It takes the form instead of what you see in modern South Africa, where, you know, the government uses libel laws to stop journalists from remarking on the president’s theft. They don't put journalists in camps and they certainly don't shoot anybody, but they stop you. Or in Hungary, day by day they make sure that any independent media, first the government withdraws the advertising. So the independent media, which are very government dependent are weakened. And then they arrange for a friend of the state or the friend of the president to purchase the independent media and fire everybody. And then it continues to exist. It continues to cover sports and entertainment. And it may even cover corruption at the municipal level but it will not do anything that the national authorities think is unwanted.

AMT: And you see some of this erosion already occurring in the United States?

DAVID FRUM: Well, you can see the beginnings of the corruption and then you can see the president asserting that, at the press conference the other day, the press secretary explained that those officials, presidential appointees who don't agree with presidential policy must quit. That's actually not the way the United States government works. If you work for the State Department, they have all kinds of channels where you can continue to execute the policy and you can express your view if the policy is mistaken. And those channels were established mostly after the Vietnam War by the way, to say, you know, we got into Vietnam because we didn't have an open debate about whether this was a good idea. And the people at the top couldn't hear the worries and concerns of people below. So let's have protected channels where without retaliation, people who are executing policy can say, you know, I'm loyal to the government, I don't think this policy makes sense. And the Trump administration wants to turn those things down. And they are sending messages that not just the deputy attorney general, who was an Obama appointment on her way out anyway, but people at intelligence agencies who have information that Trump finds embarrassing, their jobs are in danger. One more thing about this. Republicans have often talked about passing a law to make it easier to fire civil servants. And, look, there's some justice to this, there's a notorious case here of an employee for the EPA who was watching hours and hours of pornography on a government computer and it took years to fire him. So, you know, you can see why they'd want to do that. But think of the power that such a change, and Republicans want to do it, puts into the hands of someone like President Trump, who's going to fire people not for watching porn on government computers but for reporting the truth about Russian involvement in American elections.

AMT: Is Donald Trump deliberately setting out to create an autocratic state?

DAVID FRUM: I don't think, he's not so strategic. He's setting up to steal. That's his big goal is to become the richest man in the world, abusing the powers of the presidency.

AMT: Setting himself up to steal. That's very provocative.

DAVID FRUM: You know, steal is maybe the wrong word, because the money, this is new money coming into the systems. But, you know, we've already begun to see the flows of funds to the president. The Trump organization has announced that it will triple the number of its hotels in the United States. Now, pre-election the Trump brand was not a popular or successful brand in the hotel industry, and it was a very troubled company actually. And, you know, their hotel business was in deep trouble the Trump hotel in Washington was on its way to bankruptcy, he had paid way too much for it. But suddenly, the market has changed and there's a demand for three times as many. Mar-a-Lago, Trump's club in Florida where you get direct access to the president, last week announced it was doubling the initiation fee. Because if you pay the 200,000 dollars, was 100,000 dollars, you get to buttonhole the president. Well that's worth money to people. And at least you can imagine you can buttonhole the president. He has declared that he's going to divest himself from his companies and that his sons will be separated from the government. But his sons who run the company are regularly attending his meetings with senators, making it clear to everybody, you want access to Trump you pay.

AMT: You argue that should this scenario unfold, there are other people who would be enriched along with Mr. Trump.

DAVID FRUM: Yeah. One of the things you can learn from a figure like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is that if you take all the resources of the state for yourself, you don't build much of a constituency and you have to rely on repression, and repression is difficult in the modern world. But if you take a slice and bestow it in arbitrary ways on favoured groups, Chavez used to run a, basically a game show, where once a week he would be on TV and there'd be some sad person who got a house and they filled it with appliances. He would go to poor parts of Venezuela and distribute refrigerators to people. And there was weeping and gratitude. And this selective bestowing of what was not the president's to give. What were the resources of the state, not the president personally, of the people, bought him a lot of popularity. And you saw a little flavour of this with what Donald Trump did with that Carrier plant in Indiana. They saved some hundreds of jobs or at least postponed the loss. And the way they did that was partly with some special favours from the state of Indiana. But even more because Carrier’s parent company is a big defense contract. And I presume the defense contract is going to get its money back in some other way. But Donald Trump collected personal gratitude, and it was expressed, it was very upsetting if you watch the interviews, is it was expressed to him personally in ways that in a free country, in a free country the president works for the people. You know, he gets paid every two weeks, he's doing his job. If he improves the economy great, he gets re-elected that's his job. You're not some serf who has to tug the forelock to say thank you Mr. Trump for doing what you were supposed to do. And although in this case, he's not supposed to do that. He's not supposed to save jobs one by one. He's supposed to build a sound macro economy in which private enterprises create jobs.

AMT: It's interesting you say they're paid to work for the people. We do see people in the Trump administration who are working essentially for free.

DAVID FRUM: Well that's a very very bad. That it's really seriously improper for people to waive their salaries for a number of reasons. First, one of the obvious motives for not taking your salary is to escape the need for disclosure. If you're not a government employee, you don't have to fill out these disclosure forms. Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and one of the real power brokers in the White House will not be disclosing his holdings and how they grow or don't grow. It's also improper because it suggests there's something wrong with normal professionals accepting a salary, something less about the people who don't have wealth who work for the state in a honest way and receive their proper compensation for it. That there's an implicit criticism of the people who are actually doing the right thing. And the last thing again, is it suggests there is this caste of people to whom things are owed and that they are bestowed, they are not in a normal lower case r Republican relationship of governors to people. But they are actually rulers.

AMT: Mm. So what role does the media play in preventing this or enabling this?

DAVID FRUM: There is a rejection of traditional, what is called the mainstream media, and that is journalism that takes accountability seriously. You know, Donald Trump, well, again and again suggests, we all work for media, we all make mistakes all the time. That's inevitable. What the difference between a responsible journalistic institution is, does it care whether it makes mistakes or not? And does it correct them? So Time magazine got into trouble because a reporter for Time was in the Oval Office for one of Donald Trump's early events. And there are a lot of bodies milling around and there's a bust of Martin Luther King that had been there under President Obama. And there are bodies in the way so the journalists couldn't see it. And so he tweeted that he thought the bust had gone. And then 10 minutes later, the bodies move around and he realizes his mistake and he tweets a self-correction and an apology.

AMT: And he's accused of fake news.

DAVID FRUM: And he's accused of fake news. Well, people get things wrong all the time. The question is do you do it accidentally and do you correct it? Meanwhile, there are entities like RT and Info Wars and even some of the parts of Fox that will deliberately create fictions and never correct them, even when they're exposed as untruth. That's what fake news means, not normal human error. And then the president, you know, it's kind of alarming. The other day at his press conference, Sean Spicer said only 109 people had been delayed or detained because of the president's immigration order. No one knows where that number comes from. It's super specific, so it sounds like it must be based on something but it's clearly wrong. It's clearly wrong. Wrong, maybe by orders of magnitude. There are estimates that maybe as many as 90,000 people were delayed or detained. But you don't expect the press secretary of the president of the United States to come up with a fake fact like that that is so specific and insists on it insists on it. And then the next day, of course it will be withdrawn. And if you remember the fake fact now you're the liar, as President Trump insists journalists are when they quote his own language, that his ban was called by him a ban, was called by his press secretary ban and then 48 hours later we never said it. And you're insulting us if you play the clip in which we did.

AMT: And of course Fox News plays into this, you make the point that they have become an enabler.

DAVID FRUM: Fox News has a very interesting set of incentives here. President Trump watches a lot of television. I mean, really a lot. His favourite channel is Fox. Now just imagine somebody wants put a message in front of the president. You can hire a lobbyist or you can buy a minute on Fox or you can even pay somebody at a think tank to articulate your message and then pay a booker at that think tank to get that person on Fox and put the thought directly in the president's ear. Now look at Fox's incentives. So long as Donald Trump is powerful and popular, they are going to achieve an advertising bonanza unheard of in the era of modern cable, because people will pay them to talk to the president.

AMT: You know that there are people who are, would it be in agreement with you, they've already taken to the streets. We've seen mass demonstrations in the women's march, we've seen protests against the visa ban and the immigration ban. But you say that plays into his politics.

DAVID FRUM: If you do it wrong. I mean, one of the things I say in the article is understand that civil unrest, civil turmoil is not a challenge to President Trump. It's a resource for him. He needs to create an image of a polarized country in which the people who are against him are somehow alien or anti-system. So when as some of the marches you see protesters carrying Mexican flags, I mean, you glimpse them for a minute and maybe there are only three of them there but they're going to be on a permanent loop on Fox News. And The O'Reilly viewers are going to see them as if there were a million of them. The same thing when Black Lives Matter protesters brandish anti-police slogans, there may be only a few of them there. But there's a larger point, which is one of the things that really has gone wrong in modern politics, one of the things that made Trump possible was that many people have a view of politics as something dramatic and exciting and thrilling and emotional. And you to the streets and your demonstration. Democracy is not about protests. Democracy is about meetings. The PTA, not the protest is the incubator of democracy. The habit of going to your congressman's town hall and asking questions, that's powerful in a way that shouting slogans or getting arrested is not, that is completely counterproductive. And one of the things that Trump as a genius that is goading people to do destructive things. You remember he had this tweet about how people who burn the flag should be stripped of their citizenship. That very next day some doofus obligingly stood in front of a Trump hotel and burned a flag.

AMT: Which plays to the base.

DAVID FRUM: Yeah. Everybody, oh, OK, well Donald Trump is the keeper of the flag. And, you know, my message, well, I'm not a person of the left, I don't talk to them very much but when I do I say you should carry the flag, he doesn't own the flag. He's boosted into power by help from Russia. That is not his flag. Don't let him claim it. Don't burn it. Carry it.

AMT: Well you actually make the point that if people actually called their elected representatives they could get the hearing they want on Russia.

DAVID FRUM: The Congress could tomorrow stand up an independent commission. Congress could tomorrow by the way pass a law requiring the Treasury Department to release the president's tax returns. Congress can subpoena tax returns and Congress has enormous power if it will use it. The struggle over the next years is that the president is unpopular in the country but hugely popular within the Republican Party. And so that members of Congress, their incentives all run to appeasing and pacifying the president.

AMT: You're a Canadian, you've lived on both sides of the border. Could a scenario such as the one you outline happen in Canada?

DAVID FRUM: Look, no one should be smug about this. This is happening all over the western world. There are regional differences. Canada has certain assets. Canada has a real civil service, which the United States doesn't have, an independent civil service. Canada also has a stronger federal system. You take over Ottawa, what exactly have you taken over? [chuckles] But no one should be smug. Americans, look, two years ago we were all attending these earnest conferences about what was happening in Poland and what was happening in Slovakia. And then it happened here. No one should be self-congratulatory. Everyone should worry.

AMT: So how do people inform themselves and how do journalists inform people?

DAVID FRUM: You know, journalists have to do their job. And journalists have to resist emotionalism. You have to keep your cool and to continue to do your job until you're prevented. But a lot of the onus falls not on the journalists but on the consumers of news. And one of the things that always drives any practitioner of journalism crazy is you'll run it people who say why doesn't the media cover this or that? Well of course the media covered it. Why didn't you read about it? And, you know, it's, you know, there you are, it's not the journalist's job to knock down your door, you know, punch the URL into your computer and force you to stop watching the Kardashians and to read, you know, a report on integrity in government instead, it’s your job.

AMT: You outline a worst case scenario. Do you have another scenario?

DAVID FRUM: I have a range of scenarios. One of them is a chaos, that what could happen is Congress does step up a little bit and the administration is paralyzed. And we go through all kinds of constitutional crises, impeachment or the 25th Amendment removal process. Another frightening scenario is Donald Trump is steering his way to a series of international confrontations at the same time as he's appeasing Russia. He's behaving in an extremely provocative way toward China, having first cancelled the TPP and alienated America's friends in the region. Same thing that he's authorizing much riskier gambits against ISIS, having alienated many of America's allies and friends in the region. So we could have those things. It's also possible, by the way, that he could ignite a spark of civic engagement. We've seen that before too, where people become reenergized and re engaged. We saw it happen in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, as the vote spread, so did people's involvement in public life.

AMT: It's interesting. You are arguing for people to actually get involved in a way that they have not before. Arguably, Mr. Trump is in office because a whole group of people who felt that they were ignored and didn't have a voice thought they had a voice. And now you're saying that the wider group of Americans needs to use their voice in a much more concrete way.

DAVID FRUM: Yeah. And to use your voice not just to say the system isn't working for me, let's burn it down. But if the system isn't working for me let’s actually seriously fix it. Donald Trump did talk to that in some people, but it is always worth keeping in mind that three million more Americans voted against him than voted for him. And while there is an attempt by the Trump people to say that California isn't really America. California certainly seems like America to me. Democracy takes work. That's the thing we're really finding out, that, you know, in many ways, you know, the past two decades we've taken for granted all of the extraordinary achievements of the post-war generation. You know, building this global alliance structure that has kept the peace across the North Atlantic since World War II. Building all of these institutions, building all this remarkable technology. And people have privatized. You know, you can now, you don't have to go outdoors much, the whole world comes to you. And you can have these fake engagements, these virtual engagements that substitute for actual engagements. You don't have to participate, you can hit a button, send you 200 dollars to the Barack Obama for President campaign and think it's like you knocked on a door. But you didn't knock on a door.

AMT: You have made the point you're not a person of the left, but you're arguing now this is not about left or right.

DAVID FRUM: Yeah. Today Donald Trump just announced the nomination of a conservative Supreme Court justice, I'm all for that, that's my kind of judge. I am not a person of the left. But one of the things, the central idea of democracy is that you have a bigger investment in the system as a whole than you do in any particular outcome. Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system. And that is the way successful countries, and Canada has been one of the most successful countries over the past quarter century, they operate. That when you win, you win within limits, when you lose, you accept the outcome. We all have more at stake in the rules of the game than we do in the outcomes of the game. When that changes, that's when you begin to lose democracy.

AMT: David Frum lots to think about in what you're saying. Thank you.

DAVID FRUM: Thank you very much.

AMT: David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He was in our Washington studio. His article How to Build an Autocracy is out in the print edition of The Atlantic next week, it's already online. We will link to it from our own website. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Mosque attack forces Quebec politicians to confront inflammatory rhetoric

Guests: Mireille Paquet, Haroun Bouazzi, André Pratte

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, Curt Petrovich has reported from some of the most difficult situations in the world. But after an assignment to report on a devastating typhoon in the Philippines, the longtime CBC journalist couldn't shake the tragic scenes from his mind. Now Curt Petrovich is talking about his experience with post-traumatic stress disorder. That is the story. His experience in half an hour. But first, mea culpas in Quebec.

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When I say that words matter. It means that words can hurt. Words can be knifes slashing at people's conscience. And we have to be more cognizant of this. What we say here and elsewhere is not trivial. And when we talk about issues of how we live together or immigration or these type of subjects, I hope that we will start by expressing positive values first, inclusion, brotherhood, working together. So let's start with this message.

AMT: A lot of thought and discussion right now in Quebec about words. That of course is the provincial Premier Phillipe Couillard, reminding Quebecers of something that has become painfully clear in recent days, that words can inflame, lead to hatred, even worse. We don't know right now what was going on inside the mind of Alexandre Bissonnette, the man charged in the Sunday attack that left six worshippers dead and many more wounded at their Quebec City mosque. But the tragedy has forced many in politics and the media especially, to confront their own inflammatory rhetoric and ask whether they've given their own words enough thought. To take one example, Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée made the accommodation of Muslims an issue in the party's leadership race. This week, CBC Montreal's Mike Finnerty called him out on some of his language.

SOUNDCLIP

MIKE FINNERTY: You warned about women in burqas carrying AK 47s possibly in Quebec. And as it turns out it was a white Francophone male. An angry young man of the majority who was the real danger. How did you get it so wrong?

JEAN-FRANCOIS LISEE: Well, I think the rhetoric has to be toned down on every side of the debate. I used an example of a terrorist in Africa where it actually happened, not a good choice of argument, I agree with you.

MIKE FINNERTY: So you regret that now?

JEAN-FRANCOIS LISEE: Yeah, I don't think, and I said that before, it was not my best line. It's true that this happened in Africa, and I’m talking about terrorists trying to hide in that garment to commit terrorist acts. It was not a good argument to put into the Quebec debate.

AMT: Well, we're going to keep the conversation going now about words and their power in the context of Sunday's attacks. We have three guests standing by. Haroun Bouazzi is the co-president of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec. He joins us from Montreal. Mireille Paquet is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, and the author of The Federalization of Immigration in Canada. She is also in Montreal. And Andre Pratte is an independent senator from Quebec, former editor-in-chief of La Presse. And he joins us from Ottawa.

AMT: Hello everyone.

MANY VOICES: Hello.

AMT: Haroun Bouazzi, I want to start with you. When you hear Jean-François Lisée saying his choice of an example might not have been the best, not his best line when talking about burqas and AK 47s, what do you think?

HAROUN BOUAZZI: I think he has so many very bad lines that he actually throw in the public debate for the past four years. You know, we've seen at least since the debate on the Charter of Values, which is four years ago now, on everyday basis, we made these citizens half citizens, the Muslim citizens, especially the women, but not only, were seen as half citizens. A line, for example, as simple as let’s throw out from their job any woman that is actually wearing a scarf, is actually making these citizens half citizens. And Mr. Lisée doesn't seem to understand that actually taking out liberties from these people and making it a public debate is actually part of the problem, and not just burqas and AK 47s.

AMT: Mireille Paquet, where does Jean-François Lisée stand in terms of the spectrum of political rhetoric in the Parti Québécois and more widely?

MIREILLE PAQUET: I think Lisée’s declaration, as Haroun was talking about have been increasingly intolerant. But I think it's also important to realize that the kind of wave of apologies that we've been seeing since Monday are coming up, but they are limited. And they’re limited in two ways. The first way is that they maintain kind of disposition of Quebecers as witnesses, or in some cases, a simple transmission belt of Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia. So they're never kind of acknowledging that Quebecers are themselves part of power struggles, power dynamic and contributing voluntarily, and in some cases involuntary in this. And the other thing is that anything that touches, not just Lisée, but also Couillard, when he also responded to the attack right? Is this intrinsic tension in Quebec politics to situate Quebec in a bidirectional power relation. Meaning that to understand that both Quebec can be in a dominant position and in a position to actually oppress people or to create policies or discourses that create, you know, a subpar category of citizens while also potentially being in a subordinate position, right? So and this has been a problem going on in Quebec for a long time. So while Lisée is at the end of the spectrum, I think that it's important to realize that almost everybody who's talking in a province right now grasps, and is struggling with these two issues.

AMT: Well, I have another clip that I want you to hear. Jean-Francois Lisée of course is not alone in saying he wished things were said differently or he said them differently when it came to discussing questions related to Muslims. This is a clip from Sylvain Bouchard, a radio morning show host in Quebec City. We will hear him in translation.

SOUNDCLIP

[French speaking language]

[Through translator] Yesterday, we wanted to talk to people in the Muslim community of Quebec. I didn't have anything in my address book. Not normal, that’s not normal. Where are the leaders? The imams? Why don't I know who they are? I've been doing radio in Quebec for 11 years. Why don't I know who to call right away? The Muslim community has been hit by an attack and we know right away it's Islamophobic. It's really aimed at them. Why didn't I, why didn't we, why didn't we have ten phone numbers. Talk to him, to him to him, OK, probably yesterday they would have said no. But I think you understand my point. So we talk about them but do we talk to them?

AMT: Andre Pratte, you were the editor-in-chief of La Presse for many years, what do you think of this?

ANDRE PRATTE: Well, you know, it's each time some kind, something like that happens anywhere in the world, there is that kind of sudden empathy for a community, in this case Muslim community. The challenge is what happens in the long term afterwards. Everyone today says. there was a before and after. But as Mr. Couillard, the premier has said, the challenge is to maintain that type of empathy and the new language in the long term. And that will be the real challenge because I don't think suddenly what everyone thinks about Muslims, what everyone has been saying either loudly or not so loudly, I don't think everyone's minds are suddenly changed because of what happened on Sunday night, on Sunday evening. So I think the challenge is really there. I mean, you have to maintain that type of new civility on the long term and that will be the real challenge.

AMT: Well, some of Mr. Bouchard’s fellow Quebec radio hosts denied going too far. What responsibility does the media have for anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec?

ANDRE PRATTE: It's the media. It's the politicians. But the media and particularly here, if you want to talk about the media, I think it is a very important responsibility. One of those responsibilities is exaggerating the importance of some incidents, you know, we've been talking a lot in Quebec about what is called reasonable accommodation. That is the accommodation of religious practice by especially Muslim people. And that was really the, you know, the difficulty posed by certain requests by Muslims that wanted to practice their religion. And that was wildly wildly exaggerated. You know, for instance, last summer we spoke about the burkini, the bathing suit that covers the whole body of women. We had, this was a debate imported from France. And I mean, there are probably one or two or three women that wanted to wear the burkini in Quebec. I mean our problem in Quebec is our summer is so short that we can't wear bathing suits, whatever, what kind of bathing suit. So I mean, we have this debate with political parties involved whether we should forbid the burkini yes or no, and this was in the media, you know, front page for days and days and days. This is wildly exaggerated. And people that don't live for instance in Montreal, where they don't have a diverse population, they think this is a real problem. And they get, you know, they feel threatened by this because they think that Quebec culture is threatened by, you know, Muslims at every corner imposing their religious practice to everyone. And this is a part, a major part of the problem, and this is the media's responsibility.

AMT: Haroun Bouazzi, Le Devoir today has a story and you are mentioned in it. Muslim leaders sounded the alarm about rising Islamophobia in September. Can you tell us what happened?

HAROUN BOUAZZI: Yeah, so we had the chance to meet with a lot of political leaders and the Devoir piece is about the meeting we had with Mr., sorry, the minister of security in Quebec, Mr. Coiteux, sorry for that. Mr. Coiteux, where we actually met with him with a couple of other community leaders and we gave him a long actually a letter, a five page letter, to explain everything going on from a security perspective, from the death threats we received, from the hate that all the mosques for example in Quebec that are receiving, from the fact that in Terrebonne, in in Mascouche, the mayor decided that they won't have any mosque at all, so they change actually the municipal law to actually prohibit their region to actually have mosques, etc, etc. And we explained that we felt security problem. We felt also that the police didn't understand the problem associated, etc, etc. And we gave six clear recommendations. And this is obviously five months ago and nothing happened. I have to say that we've met with the mayor of Montreal in 2015 with the same kind of recommendation. I met with the mayor of Quebec and I told him personally that why he never went to the minorities in Quebec City each time they actually are subject to hate? I mean, you have to understand that 100 per cent of the mosques in the Quebec region, the capital, four out of four were subject to hate crimes or hate acts. And he told me that first, he didn't know about it and second, all the churches have been subject to hate. So we have to understand that all these leaders have a responsibility, because either they were part of the problem or they actually didn't do anything, which is actually also part of the problem. And hopefully they would actually change and actually do something, no matter if they're in the opposition or in the power. I have to say I'm optimistic. You know, for example, we are talking by the Parti Québécois, there is two currents there. I mean, we saw Mr. Cloutier saying clearly that he was sorry, that we have to think about everything we said, think about everything we share, etc, etc. And we heard yesterday at the TV, Jean-François Lisée saying that we should still talk about reasonable accommodation, even if it's 0.3 per cent of the request that the Commission des droits de la personne received. So these two currents now have to agree that the right one is the one of Mr. Cloutier, otherwise it's not even worth it to think that their partner in fighting racism and Islamophobia.

AMT: Mireille Paquet, Alexandre Bissonnette, the man who has now been charged in this attack had shown his support for Donald Trump and far right French politician Marine Le Pen. Is this a Quebec issue or is this about the state of political rhetoric worldwide?

MIREILLE PAQUET: Two things here. The first is that we shouldn't necessarily think that the shooters action were the result of Trump's election, right? These are bigger, much broader structural forces in world politics and Trump is one manifestation of that. But we can suppose a link, a cause to effect link to that.

AMT: Right. We don't know what he was thinking, this is very true.

MIREILLE PAQUET: No.

AMT: The trial is far from now, but keep going.

MIREILLE PAQUET: But the point also is that this has been going on way before Trump, right? So Islamophobia, xenophobia and racism are global forces that wrath and power relation institution and dynamics of othering that have been going on for decades, if not more. And they rest on historical trajectory. And I think that, and part of the issue here, is that we actually are failing to talk about that, we're failing to see that in Quebec, as elsewhere, these liberal forces are dynamically unfolding in relation to our own historical trajectory, in particular power structure. And I think the two other commentators were pointing to the fact that part of what is going on here is also an issue of representation, right? So we have been talking about Islamophobia, or even more precisely we've been talking about Muslims, but we haven't had Muslims as interlocutors, as part of this society, as people that were actually able to challenge power structures, as people that were actually represented in the media properly, that have a voice, that are present in universities in TV and arts and the media, right?

AMT: And of course they’re there, they just weren't invited, right?

MIREILLE PAQUET: Exactly, exactly.

AMT: It's not like they don’t exist.

MIREILLE PAQUET: [crosstalk] It’s not that they are not present, it’s that I am called to talk about these issues instead of other people, right? And this is a power struggle. Whereas some people have privilege, are seen as more intelligible, are seen as easier to understand, maybe less intense. And we have to challenge all these things right? And so to simplify this as thinking that it's mostly the result, or it could be, you know, something that has to do with the election of Trump is actually kind of missing the point. That these are huge huge huge current, huge waves, and the best thing we can do at this point is first acknowledge that they exist and then start a discussion from there.

AMT: Well, and you say the election of Trump. But what about the rhetoric of Trump, the rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, the rhetoric that's going on in Quebec, the rhetoric that we hear in other parts of the country?

MIREILLE PAQUET: But these rhetorics are becoming acceptable because of these huge waves, right? And I don't think these rhetorics, they contribute to making them more acceptable. But there is a growing climate that make these people, you know, be able to gain political capital based on that. There is a strategic reason why somebody like Jean-François Lisée would decide to talk about the burkini, right? So--

AMT: [interposing] Well, yeah, let me ask Andre Pratte about that, because the strategy of politicians who are looking for a base that they say needs a voice. And somehow in here I want to talk about radio poubelle, so-called trash radio in Quebec, the strategy of media looking for that exciting, you know, back and forth so that they can have more listeners. I mean, what's going on?

ANDRE PRATTE: Well, I mean, you know, they of course use or misuse the perceptions of some people and they confirm those perceptions. And so that makes them popular among certain people. And what I find despicable is that politicians who should know better also try to use that to get votes. And they therefore also confirm those perceptions that Muslims in this case, but also other minority groups, are a threat in particular to Quebec values or to Quebec culture or to Quebec per se. And now some candidates do the same in the rest of Canada. And you see the same in France and of course in the US. And I, you know, that some, I don't blame, certainly don't blame people who live in monolithic cultures outside the metropolis for not knowing better. But I certainly blame, you know, politicians who know better and who use this with a full knowledge of what's going on. Someone like Jean-François Lisée for instance, but he's not alone, he’s far from being alone, in all political parties who use this or who do nothing, which is certainly also a big problem. And who confirm people perceptions that Muslims are a danger because they do not do exactly, you know, they do not act, they don't practice the same religion as we do. You mentioned earlier that, you know, the other commentator said that Muslims are not invited for instance in some programs and so on. You know, in Quebec City many Muslims have said that they hide their faith because they know that if they don't, if they show that they are Muslims, practicing Muslims, they won't be accepted in Quebec society. And having, you know, I was born in Quebec City, I’ve lived there many years before moving to Montreal and then Ottawa. And I mean, Quebec City is a very, you know, closed city if I may say. So it’s not easy to be accepted living in Quebec City. So if you're from a different faith, you may be a bit timid in showing your faith. So I mean, you're already from a different country, you're an immigrant and hearing what you hear about Islam, you might not wish to be identified as a Muslim, and you may be very discreet into your faith and going to the mosque. And if you saw, you know, what the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec looks like, it's not very evident that it's a mosque and there may be a reason for that.

AMT: Mm. And of course, many Muslims are not immigrants. They are born in this country.

ANDRE PRATTE: Well, yes, of course.

AMT: Yeah.

ANDRE PRATTE: But in the case in Quebec City many were immigrants.

AMT: Right. Haroun Bouazzi, so you're hearing a lot of people talking about a need for a different kind of dialogue, mea culpas. What has to happen for you to think that something really is changing? What do you need to hear? What you need to see?

HAROUN BOUAZZI: So now we need public policies. I mean, we need, you know, Islamophobia like any other systemic racism is a system. We have to understand the system. And the system is not just radios in Quebec, the system is actually mainstream media also. The system is actually not having a representation of diversity in the police. The system is discrimination and profiling. The system is not having elected people that are part of the, etc, etc, etc. So to answer a systemic problem, we need the systemic answer. And that means what? It means first we need a commission on systemic racism to understand the problem, to have numbers, to understand where we should actually act. Second, we need a public media advertisement to actually fight racism and name thing, name Islamophobia, name racism, and not say oh we're all together, like pinky stuff, if I would give it a colour. Third, we actually have at least for the government media, we should actually have a real policy, you know, at Radio Canada, at Télé-Quebec, to actually have diversity at TV, in the radio, etc, etc. Every party needs actually to do something to bring these diversity people to places where they can be elected. And education is very important. I mean, how come in Quebec we don't have one course that is mandatory for every Quebecer about sexism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia. I mean, we have Quebecers that actually go out from school and they have no idea what is a systemic sexism, and this is the main problem. And not just, you know, meeting with people and having picture and eating couscous or griot with Haitians, that's not fighting racism, it's not fighting Islamophobia. We need public policies. And we have to bring back that specific law that was pushed out, the ‘59 law that would prohibit the calling for hatred and violence, which is today legal in Quebec.

AMT: We're almost out of time, but Mireille Paquet, what do you think of what Haroun Bouazzi is saying?

MIREILLE PAQUET: This is absolutely right, public policies are the way to go. And maybe just to close, I think it's important to remember since this is a Canadian show, that this is happening in Quebec and several incidents have happened in Quebec, but not to necessarily play the ostrich, if I can have a bad translation here, but to think that this is a specific problem, right? And I think the line we've been talking about is that Islamophobia is a widespread phenomenon, and as such, it is not because it is not expressed the same ways in other parts of the country that it does not exist, right? And so for everybody in the country, even in Quebec, it is extremely counterproductive to see this as a specifically Quebec problem. It is expressed a certain way in Quebec and it is expressed differently in other parts of the country, as long as we don't understand that, and as long as we don't see how the situation of Quebec within Canada, or the strategic way Canada could sometimes represent Quebec as the only space where there is racism or Islamophobia in the country, is also political. We won't be able to go forward in that struggle.

AMT: OK. Well, thank you all of you for weighing in on this today.

MANY VOICES: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with Haroun Bouazzi, he is the co-president of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec. He joined us from Montreal, as did Mireille Paquet, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. And the author of The Federalization of Immigration in Canada. And Andre Pratte joined us from Ottawa. He is an independent senator from Quebec, a former editor-in-chief of La Presse. What do you think? Let us know how you think the dialogue should change or what you think of what they have said. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. And stay with us. In our next half hour, lost on arrival. CBC reporter Curt Petrovich opens up about his family's struggle and his own struggle, their struggle with him, with PTSD. Curt Petrovich and his partner Yvette Brend will join us to talk about living with PTSD. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

'You can't look away from a smell': A reporter's struggle with PTSD

Guests: Curt Petrovich, Yvette Brend

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: ambient airy tones]

I've passed through YVR more times than I can recall, coming home from one assignment or another. And it's always great to come home, especially from someplace overseas.

AMT: The voice of Curt Petrovich, his is a familiar voice and face to Canadians. As a national reporter for CBC News, Curt has been reporting from around the country and from many of the world's hotspots for three decades. But for Curt, one assignment in 2013 was different from the others.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: somber piano]

But I have absolutely no recollection of coming home from the Philippines. I don't remember the flight. I don't remember landing. I don't remember walking through YVR. I don't remember what I did when I got my luggage. I don’t even remember coming home.

AMT: When Curt did come home after covering typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, he developed post-traumatic stress disorder. His experience with PTSD is the subject of a new documentary that airs on CBC Television next week. It's called Lost on Arrival: Me, the Mounties & PTSD. Curt Petrovich joins me from our Vancouver studio, with his wife Yvette Brend who is also a CBC journalist. Hello to you both.

CURT PETROVICH: Hi.

YVETTE BREND: Hi.

AMT: Curt, tell me about that last trip to the Philippines. What were you doing there?

CURT PETROVICH: The thing I do remember is that within a matter of hours of a typhoon having swept across several islands in the Philippines, I got a phone call, my boss in Toronto said how would you like to go to the Philippines? And my answer was, well, I don't really want to go, but of course I'll go because that's what my job was. And so I ran home, because I was out for a run that morning, ran home, grabbed a bag, said goodbye to my family and in a couple of hours I was on a plane, on my way to Manila. And, you know, the job was to basically document the destruction and how people were dealing with what had happened. Which at the time I received the call, you know, information was a bit sketchy, but we knew a lot of people had died and there'd been a lot of devastation.

AMT: What did you see when you were there that really made you stop, amongst all the things that make you stop?

CURT PETROVICH: Well, it took a couple of days to get into the hardest hit areas, in particular, a city called Tacloban, which was a city of 200,000 or so. But my first sense of how bad it was was flying in and it was just nothing but rubble. And then when the plane touched down, one of the first planes to get in, the terminal was nothing more than a bombed out shell of a building. I mean, there was no ceiling to speak of and it was of course pouring rain when we arrived and there were puddles of muddy water all over the floor. And it was jammed with people trying to get out on whatever military or relief aircraft could take them and here we were rushing into it. And it was difficult once actually making our way into what had been the city, you know, and that's when I started to see the body bags piled up on the sidewalk. And then later seeing them in greater number at an outdoor morgue. There were other scenes that were difficult, but I think the reason why the body bags affected me so profoundly was because it wasn't just seeing something, it was understanding at a very visceral level that those were people who had died and had died in very difficult circumstances. Along with what I was seeing and reporting was something that was very difficult to convey in any of the radio reports that I did at the time. And that was the smell. Because it was, I think I want to say, it was November but it was very hot and relief had been difficult. In fact, I don't think even, you know, Medecins Sans Frontières had been in yet, and I don't believe we saw even any army in to help deal with clearing out the dead, which were many of them were still buried under the rubble. And not to put too fine a point on it but after four or five days, decay happens and it was difficult because you can't look away from a smell. It's not something that is easy [voice shaking] to put out of my mind.

AMT: Mm. You can hear it in your voice. Yeah.

CURT PETROVICH: Yeah, it's difficult.

AMT: Yvette, how did you know something was really wrong while he was away on that trip?

YVETTE BREND: Well that trip, it's interesting to hear Curt talk about it now, I still find it difficult because I didn't find out what was going on till probably a year later. But I could hear in the few phone calls that he got out to me that he was very upset and that he was distraught. I remember a particular call where he was sobbing. And that was not like Curt at all. He's very professional and he's very, you know, into his work and I’d just never had a call like that. And he's so far away and you just want to enfold the person you love in your arms and you can’t even get a phone call through to them, maybe the odd text, and he was stuck there. And there was just panic in his voice. So I mean, I remember the feeling in my gut at that point that OK, this is terrifying, I don't like what's happening to Curt. This is not good. I want him out of there. But of course he can't get out of there. He has to finish the assignment. And actually, they couldn't even get out of there. And then what was more disturbing and it became more clear to me as time went on, was that when he came home, it wasn't really Curt who came home. I mean, to the point where you'd look at him in the face and he'd look different. His actions were different. I mean, for a good three four months he was very zombie-like and numb and cut off and odd. And, you know, as a spouse you just want to help the person, there's really, you feel helpless, you can't reach out to them. And that then melds into sort of an anger and irritability and, you know, we have little children and they are always happy when Daddy comes home, that's always the highlight, you know, when Daddy comes through the door. And that highlight wasn't there when he came home and that was very odd. So I mean, the feeling in my gut was pretty dire at that point. But I had no idea what we were in for. We were in for so much more than what I could have ever imagined.

AMT: And when you say that he was a different Curt, did you try to talk to him about that?

YVETTE BREND: Curt never told me, he was never able to tell me what he'd seen or what had upset him. He didn't really speak for a long time. I mean, you'd maybe get the odd sort of housekeeping conversation out of him, but he was really not there.

AMT: Curt, do you remember how you were affected? And what life was like when you got back?

CURT PETROVICH: No I don't. I don't have much of a memory at all. It took me a great deal of time to even acknowledge that I was somehow different or changed. You know, I was angry a lot. I was quiet. A whole range of sort of bad feelings that I was having but I didn't immediately connect it to a particular event or anything of that sort. And even after, you know, I eventually saw a psychologist who suggested that, you know, I had the hallmarks of PTSD, I didn't accept it. I thought she was mistaken. And--

AMT: Why? Why?

CURT PETROVICH: Because I'd spent the last 30 years doing this kind of work and it had never affected me in this way before. And I just thought well maybe I'm just tired, maybe I need a break. Look, I've interviewed people with PTSD and I can tell you who they are. They’re are police officers who've been involved in traumatic situations. They're veterans who've been in war situations. They're people who've watched other people die. They’re people who've been victims of violent crime. I've talked to those people and I've always thought I understood what PTSD was and I've always believed that I was immune from it because, you know, I'm a professional. I'm trained to be an observer. I don't take it in the way other people take it in. But obviously I do. And I may never really quite understand why it affected me then, there. For what reason I don't know. But, you know, I've had to accept that it's something that has affected me.

AMT: What kind of treatment did you eventually seek?

CURT PETROVICH: Well, initially I just went to see a psychologist who had some experience in dealing with people who'd been in hostile environments or difficult situations. And she was brilliant, she was great, and she was the first person who suggested to me that maybe I had PTSD. But it wasn't until I ended up, because Yvette found them, a husband and wife psychologist and psychiatrist team who just happened to be involved in a ground-breaking study, experimental study into the use of psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD, that I really started to understand what was going on, because I went through a battery of tests and was one of six people who was admitted to this Canadian aspect of an international study into the use of MDMA, or otherwise known as ecstasy, to treat PTSD. And I slowly became aware and accepted that not only did I have PTSD but I was apparently, I had in terms of the scoring that's done to evaluate severity, I had one of the highest scores in anybody. Not something I'm proud of, but one of the highest indicators of anybody in the study globally at the time. So--

AMT: So you were a candidate for this research and to try this. Before I ask more about that, you make the point that you're the researcher, you're being a journalist and looking around. How difficult was it to find some help and the help that led you to this, these two doctors?

YVETTE BREND: Well, it's you have to understand that I was coming from a place of pure desperation. I mean, I love Kurt. And I was seeing a man slip away and our life slip away. And I just didn't know, I was over my head. And I happened to have been doing some film research that touched on some of these things and I, through somebody else, found Dr. Obay who is, like, an excellent resource as an expert in PTSD. But I was also doing research on addiction and through that research, there were certain studies that were being done that didn't quite fit in with our film. And I stumbled across this one that dealt with MDMA and I thought oh, MDMA for PTSD, what is MDMA? [chuckles] I mean, I think back now and I laugh at how absolutely naive I was about any of this. I really still had the magic bullet thinking, thinking that there was some way you could just take a pill or do some therapy and PTSD would go away. And it's not that simple. But at least this gave some hope. And how easy was it to find? I pause because I'm so overwhelmed with emotion by this. It is impossible to find help for PTSD. There is nothing out there for families specific to PTSD. And we live in a province, a have province where you would think there would be a lot but it's really difficult to find support specifically for PTSD.

AMT: And you know how to look. You know the work.

YVETTE BREND: And I have 20 years experience looking for things, right? So it’s not like I was just, and I wonder after going through this, what it's like for the families of soldiers or police officers who don't have that experience, that don't know where to turn. It must be very very difficult.

CURT PETROVICH: When I initially went off work because my doctor said you need to get treatment, you know, a whole series of things kicks in and of course the insurance company is now involved. And of course, they want to send me to their own specialists and that's fine. So they sent me off to a psychiatrist, an insurance company psychiatrist. And after his evaluation, he produced something like a 60 page report, which I eventually read. And at the very end of it he said I believe Mr. Petrovich would benefit greatly from seeing a psychiatrist, unfortunately there are none available and the waiting list is over a year in order to get in to see somebody who has any kind of ability to deal with PTSD. And that's what I was facing. I was basically told that I have a mental illness that needs to be treated but there really is nobody who can treat you. I'm so fortunate that I was able to get in by the skin of my teeth into this study that allowed me access to two very well trained specialists in PTSD and therapy, because if I hadn't been, I don't know where I'd be today. I mean I'd probably still be on a waiting list and I'd still be back where I was a couple of years ago.

AMT: So tell us about the therapy. What did they do with MDMA, ecstasy?

CURT PETROVICH: Well, and you know, in the last little while I've read a lot about the results of the global study. But I want to point out that yes, it involves the use of a psychedelic drug but that's actually a very small part of what actually went on. Most of what went on is talk therapy. And this played out over a period of months, the study did, and it was double blind, so neither the doctors nor I knew exactly what I was getting. But after the first couple of sessions that were spaced out over a period of a couple of months, it was apparent to me that I wasn't getting anything but a placebo because I was experiencing no kind of, you know, altered reality or any kind of, I mean, the talk therapy that would go on for eight hours a day was doing me some good. But it was only after the blinds were removed and the doctors and I were made aware that I wasn't getting anything that I was then eligible to actually know that I was getting a certain amount of pharmaceutical grade MDMA that needed a special license and government permission to import into the country and all of that stuff. And it was only then, once I had access to that drug under a great deal of talk therapy, that I was able to go to some of the things that were difficult for me to remember or even talk about. And I was able to not just remember them and confront them, but I was actually able to dwell in them in a way that allowed me to not necessarily become used to it. But as I say in the documentary, because it's still so profound, one of the enduring memories I have is traumatic memories I have, is dealing with the body bags. And what the drug enabled me to do was to, you know, in a very sort of altered sense of reality was to be back there again. And I was able to transform the body bags into in my head, these little shrubs, these little bushes. And I was able to walk amongst them and I was able to move around them to the point where, you know, they started to then melt into the ground. And so I was creating sort of new memories to replace the ones that would be constantly pushing up unexpectedly from my whatever place in my brain where these things come from. I was able to create new memories. And my doctors have told me that unlike depression, you know, which can be affected by sort of positive thinking and cognitive behaviour therapy, PTSD resides in a part of the brain that you don't have direct access to. That's why the flashbacks are so difficult, because they just come up out of nowhere sometimes. And what the drug enabled me to do with my doctors as guides, is to be able to go back there, on command essentially, and re-imagine and relive certain things in a way that was for me, was far more comforting. And so I mean, today I can talk about it. When I started the therapy, it was not something I could do.

AMT: So Yvette, how hopeful did you get about his recovery at this point?

YVETTE BREND: To be very honest, I'm convinced that they saved his life. I wish that that therapy was available for soldiers and police officers. I wish it was, you know, it was not just us that got this. But it doesn't solve everything right? It's a process. It's not like you do that and then you're all OK. But for me, it brought him from the zombie state, to the point where I could bring the children in to meet him and he hugs them. And you see this in the film and it's a very emotional moment for me, because the children actually got their dad's arms around them and he had that feeling again. And they can tell right? Kids know. He had stints where he was very, he went through very difficult struggles. After that it didn't solve everything but it made a huge difference for us. I think the talk therapy was massive too. I mean, it's a combination of things, it's a process. Because you're trying to build executive function in the brain, you're trying to make the brain go back to executive function again. And that's not an easy thing to rewire your brain.

AMT: Yvette, can you tell me what has gone on in your relationship then, between the two of you, through all of this?

YVETTE BREND: Honestly Anna Maria, no I can't. [laughs] But I can give you a sense that it's been really difficult. And, you know, I have such massive respect for Curt. How much he's fought this demon and what he's done to try to get back to stability. But at the same time, I've sat on the other side of it and been victim to it. So it's a really hard place to sit, because I can see what he's going through but I can't help. I really can't. There's only certain things I can do. So it's been super difficult and on our children as well.

AMT: How do you talk to them about it?

YVETTE BREND: You know, I got advice earlier from Dr. Obay about that. And we've been very open with the kids because they need to have boundaries and understand how to deal with it too. I mean, we don't tell the nitty gritty. They certainly don't know some things. But, you know, they know that daddy is struggling with this and that sometimes when Daddy gets irritated it's OK to put their hand up and just say enough and walk away, you know. Because they have to be able to protect themselves too. I'm lucky in many ways, because a lot of people, you know, don't have the maturity and the emotional skills that Curt already had. And when they get angry they turn to violence. And Curt has never been like that. So I've never had to worry about that.

AMT: But have you had to change the way you interact with friends, inviting people over, having kids friends over, because of all of the uncertainty over this time?

YVETTE BREND: Yes, it changed everything. We became very isolated. And not because, you know, for a lot of variety reasons but also to protect Curt. Because sometimes he just can't handle socially interacting with people. And, you know, we have a core group of friends that understand and know everything and they've been wonderful. But, yeah, it changes everything. You're very isolated. It's one of the very most difficult things about PTSD, because if you were in a family and your husband got cancer, people would be bringing casseroles to the door right? But the way it works is PTSD is people just stop talking to you. [chuckles] You know, and that's been very difficult. And if nothing else comes out of doing this film, people say to me why would you do this? And it's like I hope people just can understand it a bit better so they're not so afraid of it. And I've been approached quietly by many people in journalism who have PTSD, who hide it, and I hope for them it gives them a little bit of understanding and ability to speak out and get help. Because you really need to reach out and get help from people and it's difficult to do that.

AMT: Well, and I guess we need full disclosure or a full reminder here. Curt, you’re a CBC employee. You were on assignment for the CBC.

CURT PETROVICH: That's true. And, you know, look, there are some days when I wonder whether or not acknowledging that I have PTSD is basically saying I can't do the job anymore. I don't think so. In fact, I think I'm a much stronger person now than I was before I went to the Philippines. I think I would be actually better able to handle it. But yeah, it has really made me rethink a lot of the things that I've done over the past 30 years and how it's affected me.

YVETTE BREND: And Anna Maria, I think Curt’s paid the ultimate price that a journalist can pay. I mean, I think there's a lot of journalists that go through this. Curt didn't just go to the Philippines, he had disaster after disaster. When I look at his calendar from 2011 to 2013, it's mind boggling the amount of things that he went to that were traumatic. And before that, he had had things that had affected him. PTSD can have a concussive effect. If you have PTSD and it's undiagnosed and then you get it again, you know, and then you're subjected again. It's even worse. It's like getting a concussion over and over again. So it would be nice if we could learn from this and not do that to journalists and get them some treatment the first time they show signs of PTSD. And I don't think that that was happening 20 years ago, because I don't think we understood it. And I don't think even up until ten years ago we really believed that journalists and social workers and frontline nurses could get PTSD but they sure can. And I think we need to pay more attention to that.

AMT: And so how are you now? How are all of you doing and the kids? Your whole family.

CURT PETROVICH: I'm much better.

AMT: But it's a process right? It continues to be a process.

CURT PETROVICH: It is a process. Last month I had another treatment with my doctors. It wasn't extensive, it wasn't as elaborate as some of the ones in the past, but I felt that I needed it. And it was very helpful and I'm still actually benefiting from it a month later, that's how sort of profound it is for me. I think I'm doing better. But, you know, like I say, there are parts of the last few years that I don't remember. I know that I was really difficult on my family and I know that I caused a lot of grief and pain and anxiety in my household. And, you know, I have to live with that. And it's not easy. I still carry around a lot of guilt for having, you know, brought this into my house.

AMT: Well, you know, you two are people whose voices have been used, you've used your voices to tell so many other people's stories. So thank you for telling us your story.

CURT PETROVICH: You're welcome.

YVETTE BREND: Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: Journalists Curt Petrovich and Yvette Brend. They are in Vancouver. The documentary Lost on Arrival airs next Thursday, February 9th on CBC Television. That's our program for today. I just remind you that you can take The Current with you on the CBC Radio app, it lets you browse through past episodes of our program. You can start listening in seconds, you can search for stories you missed if you want to hear again or you can listen live to your favourite or local CBC station right from your smartphone or tablet. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. And again, if you want to hear anything that you missed on The Current, you can do that through the CBC Radio app as well. We're going to leave you today with the names of the wonderful producers who put the show together this week. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Credits]

VOICE 1: Well, it's now time to give credit where credit is due. Time to thank the hardworking people behind the scene. Hi, I'm Lara O'Brien, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show is produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Calabresi, Shannon Higgins, Ashley Mak, Sam Colbert, Sujata Barry, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Samira Mohyeddin, Kristin Nelson, John Chipman, Pacinte Mattar and Willow Smith. Special thanks this week to our network producer Susan McKenzie in Montreal. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producers are Lisa Ayuso and Sarah Claydon. Transcriptions are provided by Eunice Kim and Rignam Wangkhang. Our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

[Music: Extro]

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February 2, 2017 full episode transcript

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