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The Current Transcript for June 29, 2020

Host: Rosemary Barton

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: And we're up to almost 30 million tests. That means we're gonna have more cases. If we didn't want to test or if we didn't test, we wouldn't have cases. But we have cases because we tested.

ROSEMARY BARTON: Donald Trump's response to the pandemic has been highly criticized. But it's not just him. In half an hour, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, on why he feels governments around the world have bungled the response to COVID-19. Then.

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VOICE: His name is going to stand for something that happened, that he will never be forgotten by his friends and he's going to stand for change.

RB: After their son Kaleab died by suicide, Sandra Barker-Schmidt and Dean Schmidt share how they hope their son's name will stand for stronger anti-racism action in Saskatchewan schools. But we begin with artificial intelligence and how the technology could be reinforcing racial biases. Good morning. I'm Rosemary Barton. I'll be here with you all week, sitting in for Matt Galloway. You are listening to The Current.

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Following wrongful arrest of Black man, advocates uneasy about 'flawed' facial recognition use in policing

Guests: Phil Mayor, Daniel Castro, Deborah Raji

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VOICE: A detective turns over a picture of a guy and says, I know, what it's like, so that's not you? I look, I said no that's not me. He turns another paper over, he say, I guess this not you either. I picked that paper up and hold it next to my face and I said, this is not me. I was like, I hope y'all don't think all black people look alike. And then he says the computer says it's you.

RB: The computer was wrong. It wasn't him. That's Robert Williams describing a police interrogation following his arrest back in January. When police came to his home in suburban Detroit in January, he had no idea why he was being arrested. He found out later that it was a mistake. A facial recognition software had wrongly matched him to someone accused of shoplifting. It took months, but last week, the prosecutors involved finally apologized to Williams for what happened. The case though is raising questions about the use of facial recognition technology. Phil Mayor is a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and he's been working on Robert Williams's case. Hello. Hello, Phil?

PHIL MAYOR: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

RB: Yeah, thanks for being here. So what happened when police came to Robert Williams's house in January? What did they tell him about what was going on?

PHIL MAYOR: They told him nothing. He received a phone call telling him to report to the Detroit police for arrest. He asked why, they would not tell him. So he thought it was a crank call and told them, well, if they wanted to arrest him, they could they could come to his house with a warrant, which which they did. And he pulled into his driveway after work on what was otherwise a normal Thursday afternoon. The cops raced down the street and cut off his car to make sure that he wouldn't pull out of his driveway. And as his wife came to the front door and his children were peering around her leg, he was arrested in his front lawn without any explanation. He was shown a warrant that said felony larceny, but the officers refused to give him any facts about what he was accused of, and he didn't find out anything further about what he was accused of until after he spent a night in a filthy, overcrowded jail and was interrogated the next day.

RB: And we heard, we heard some of him describing that interrogation and the photo. How long did it take for police to realize that they had made a mistake?

PHIL MAYOR: Well it would seem that the police realzed it during that interrogation. After Mr. Williams, you know, as he described, put that photo up and says, I hope you don't y'all don't think all black people look alike. The officers told him the computer must have got it wrong. But even at that point, actually, he was not released. He had to go before a judge and be arraigned and then remain, even after he was arraigned and ordered out on bond, he spent about another six hours in jail and wasn't released until that night in the dark on a January night when it was raining. He had to wait for his wife to come pick him up, and then he still had to go hire a defence attorney and appear in court before the charges were finally dismissed. And even when they were dismissed, no one explained to him why. He was told that the charges could be refiled and efforts by his defence attorney to obtain the records to get a full accounting of what had happened until this story went public last week had failed entirely and even now are not yet complete.

RB: This is apparently the first time it's ever been publicly acknowledged anyway that that facial recognition got it wrong. How worried are you about the use of this kind of technology going forward by police or anybody else?

PHIL MAYOR: Yeah, extraordinarily worried. The only reason, in my opinion, that this is the first case that we're hearing about is because this technology is typically used in secret. It's very rare for someone to actually find out that the police have used facial recognition to identify them as a suspect. What's remarkable about this case, I think, is not that there was a false recognition, but rather that the individual was told. And we know this because the science on this is really quite clear that this technology is flawed and that it is particularly bad at identifying faces of people from communities of colour and black faces in particular, and black female faces even more so. In a recent study by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, facial recognition software was found to be 10 to 100 times more likely to misidentify black people and Asian-American people.

RB: Prosecutors have apologized and are working to expunge the arrest from Mr. Williams record, which, you know, you would think is just a given. How important is it for that to happen? How likely is it that it will happen?

PHIL MAYOR: I'm optimistic that those things will happen here, but I think it's important to note what hasn't been done yet. We still haven't received the Freedom of Information Act information that has been requested from the Wayne County prosecutor. They still have not committed to bringing these charges back and they are saying that they couldn't possibly commit to that, which is candidly nonsense. And the apology itself was sort of a guarded apology that tried to point the finger at the police and point the finger elsewhere. And most importantly, when Mr. Williams filed his complaint about what happened to him, he asked for an end to the use of this technology in Detroit. And and far from doing that, all he's received from the city and the Wayne County prosecutor is, you know, comments about his personal case, but no commitment whatsoever to reforming and ending the use of this dangerous and racist technology for good.

RB: How is Mr. Williams doing now?

PHIL MAYOR: You know, he's he's doing pretty well, but, you know, he describes himself as having been really quite humiliated by this experience and that, of course, makes sense. He was arrested on his front lawn and in front of any neighbour who might have been watching in front of his wife and children. And there have been lasting effects for the family. His children, after seeing him arrested, were, as you would expect. They were crying and his daughter didn't want to do her homework that night because she does it with daddy, she said, and she was too sad to do her homework without him. And, you know, even after he got back from jail, the nightmare didn't end for the family. Her his girls had started playing games in which they'd arrest him and accused him of stealing things from them, of stealing the stuffed unicorn. And he would recount that. Just the other day, he got back from work and, you know, asked when asked his now six year old daughter if she missed them. And she jokingly said no. And he said, You don't miss me. And and she said, I only miss you when you're in jail, Daddy. So, you know, this is obviously had an impact on them and on this family that is continuing to last that I think emphasises why, you know, these mistakes, even if they are corrected later, are so far from harmless. I mean, it's really been traumatic.

RB: Phil Mayor, thank you for your time this morning. I appreciate it.

PHIL MAYOR: Thank you so much.

RB: Phil Mayor is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Michigan. Facial recognition technology has been used by police forces in Toronto and Calgary. Other Canadian forces are considering it. The RCMP initially denied they weren't using it, but now have admitted that they do. Advocates say it can be a valuable tool in policing. Daniel Castro is the vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. Good morning to you.

DANIEL CASTRO: Good morning.

RB: So let's just start with your reaction to that case of Robert Williams. How common do you think it is? I guess the difference here is that Mr. Williams found out about it, but maybe it's more common than we think.

DANIEL CASTRO: Well, the case here is absolutely inexcusable. When you look at it, you know, they arrested him with an evidence. They didn't immediately release him. Once they were shown that it was the wrong person. They never apologised. They didn't dismiss the charges. There were so many human failures involved. I think it's just problematic though to say you know the real problem is an algorithm.

RB: So you obviously think that this is valuable. Facial recognition can be valuable. Why do you think it is, given some of the concerns other people have expressed and we'll get to those.

DANIEL CASTRO: Sure. Well, you know, the issue is simple. You know, when you have police investigating crimes, they're often trying to identify suspects, witnesses, even sometimes victims. And this is traditionally been a very manual and slow process. It takes a lot of people looking through really just photos to identify people. It's not very effective. But what we've seen is with facial recognition. They can speed up that investigative process.

RB: But as we heard there from Mr. Mayor, there are issues around racial biases built into the technology, particularly black women are often picked out, but are not part, not the people being targeted. What do you say about those technologies and the fact that police are using flawed technologies?

DANIEL CASTRO: Well, he's simply wrong about the fact that the technology is inherently racist. When you look at the studies, what you see is that there is a wide variation in performance across all the different types of facial recognition systems that are on the market. And if you look at the bottom performing ones, those have poor performance. If you look at the top performing ones, they're highly accurate. They're highly accurate in ways that surpass human recognition. So they're less biased than humans and they're more accurate than humans and they also display minimal to no bias when you look at differences between demographics.

RB: OK. But there are police forces obviously using ones that are not the top of the line, facial recognition software, obviously. And do you think that that's not a concern if they are picking up different people and and targeting different races?

DANIEL CASTRO: Yes. Absolutely. You know, across the board, we should have standards on what police use. No police agency, no law enforcement agency should be using any of the poorly performing systems. We do need standards around that. We need transparency so citizens can see what's being used. But, we have to be careful about is, you know, overstating the argument against this, because what the technology does is it simply identifies potential matches, and those potential matches have been given to investigators who should be following up on those leads. They're not given to them and saying this person is guilty. That's never where the technology was meant to do. That's not what it should be doing and any agency that's doing that should be stopped.

RB: So it is a tool for police as as opposed to a conclusion for police?

DANIEL CASTRO: Absolutely. And again, you just have to remember that if you don't have a computer doing this, you're going to have a human doing the exact same thing. And what we know is that technology is more accurate and less biased than humans. So it's not really a question of do we use the technology or not do anything at all? It's do we use the technology or do we use humans who are going to be more biased and more problematic?

RB: Well, so that's interesting. Do you think that the facial recognition technology actually, I don't know, eliminates bias as opposed to what we're hearing from the people around Mr. Williams?

DANIEL CASTRO: Absolutely, across the board. I mean, what you see, even in Mr. Williams case, is that it was the human biases there of not seeing the results and not recognizing that it was clearly a different person that led to his arrest. And that's where we really need to be addressing that type of problem. When you look at how the systems perform, they perform with such high accuracy. It's, you know, over 99 percent accuracy compared to humans that are around 80 percent. There's just no comparison.

RB: There are lots of people right now, protesters, particularly in the U.S., who are very worried that their faces are being scanned, their images are taken and uploaded using this technology and that it could be subsequently arrested. What would you say to those people?

DANIEL CASTRO: That's a legitimate concern. What we need to have, again, are rules around. In that case, police surveillance. But my concern there would be it doesn't really matter if you're having police manually surveil protests or using the technology. We need to have expectations and rules around what type of police surveillance is appropriate in sensitive uses like protests like, you know, going to an abortion clinic, anything where you really want to protect people's privacy.

RB: Daniel Castro, thank you for this this morning. I appreciate it.

DANIEL CASTRO: Thank you.

RB: That's Daniel Castro, Vice President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. Well, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM, those are just some of the big companies now refusing to sell facial recognition technology to police forces. Banned in San Francisco and Boston. And Deborah Raji understands why she's an engineer, an artificial intelligence researcher at the AI Now Institute at NYU. Good morning to you.

DEBORAH RAJI: Hello. Good morning.

RB: So, I mean, it's obviously different perspectives all over the place on this issue. It's so interesting, but tell me how facial recognition is being used most commonly by police that you've seen.

DEBORAH RAJI: Yeah, I think, you know, that's the case that we saw of, you know, the police sort of using facial recognition software to filter through a suspect, sort of let's identify faces from surveillance footage is pretty common. There's been an excellent sort of report from Georgetown Law called Garbage In, Garbage Out, where they actually identify many situations where police departments misuse the technology. So there's many cases where even given a sketch of a suspect, they might try to use that to find a match and identify suspects or even they might be told that, oh, a suspect looks like a certain celebrity and use that celebrity image to try to find a match. So police departments often misuse the technology outside of this, its sort of intended scope of use. And that's one of the reasons that in addition to sort of the basic concerns communicated, that there's there's a there's a lot of sort of ambivalence sort of face towards the technology. And I think another sort of consideration here, too, is a heavy use in immigration, like was mentioned by the previous respondent, Plato, your lawyer. There's many ways in which facial recognition is being used by the government outside of law enforcement and local law enforcement, specifically a lot of agencies within the government, especially intelligence agencies and, you know, Department of Homeland Security, make use of facial recognition in alarming ways to identify targets, pretty much, to arrest and to pull into the system. And that targeting of these innocent, you know, perhaps innocent people in many cases inconveniences their lives a lot.

RB: You did your research was around why, you know, people of colour and how this might be problematic. Can you explain to people, we heard a little bit there from Mr. Mayor, but why is it specifically problematic for people of colour?

DEBORAH RAJI: Yeah, so our research was on the performance of these deployed systems. So keep in mind, you know, these are the systems that had already passed whatever criteria for deployment were already out there and being sold by IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies at the time. And we took those, you know, sold products. And we said, well, how well did these perform for a different demographic groups, including women of colour? But also, you know, lighter skinned men, lighter skinned woman and darker skinned men. And we found that there was almost a 30 percent disparity in performance. Meaning these systems were performing at less than 70 percent accuracy for darker skinned women, for example, and at almost 100 percent accuracy for lighter skinned men. So it was one of the first sort of examples, sort of undeniable examples of the racial bias that we see and the multiple sort of axes of bias that we see in the performance of these technologies. And it was actually one of the cited inspirations for that in this study that was mentioned earlier that eventually demonstrated that was a lot of the facial recognition tool being vetted as vendors for the U.S. government. There's, you know, 10 to 100 percent time an error rate for darker skinned individuals, including Asian-Americans and black citizens.

RB: So when Mr. Castro, who we just spoke to there, says that, you know, humans are biased too, so that this actually is a tool to help all of that. What do you say to that? That it can be valuable to use the technology, but it is not a replacement for authorities.

DEBORAH RAJI: Yeah, so I think that certainly humans are biased, but the accountability measures around human bias is vastly different. With something like facial recognition providing a lead, it's a justification in many cases for police to target specific minorities, to perhaps have cause for arrest in a situation where typically based off of their initial hunch or their initial bias, they might not actually have that evidence. So it it sort of empowers human bias in a way that we wouldn't otherwise see. And additionally, you know, bias is just one dimension of concern with facial recognition technology. I like to think about it as if we uploaded our fingerprints as our profile pictures on the internet, we would be horrified. But a face is that sort of that equal level of identifiable biometric. It's that sensitive information. It's very sensitive data. And the way that we sort of treat this data, the way that we amalgamate these data into these databases of millions of faces, which is what is a requisite for facial recognition to be sort of a functional tool, also brings in certain concerns around privacy, around consent, around the weaponization of the use of this technology. There's a lot more to it than bias, but also I do feel like it is definitely a tool currently being used in a way that definitely puts communities of colour at risk.

RB: I just have about a minute left, but obviously large companies have heard these concerns. As I said, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM now refusing to sell this to police forces. What, though, what happens if this does go in to more widespread use? Amazon has just paused it I should say, while they're reviewing it. So what happens if this does, you know, become what we all are subject to?

DEBORAH RAJI: Yeah, well, I think surprisingly and this was mentioned by the ACLU lawyer as well, we are already subject to a lot of this technology. That it is, at least in the US, which is the environment I'm most familiar with, but also definitely increasingly finding out about this in Canada, there is a prevalent use of this technology that is clearly not mature enough, that is clearly not ready. You know, a lot of police departments in the US are making use of this tool already, so I think given the current prevalence of the tool, we can see already that there's going to be definitely, you know, more false arrests, more mistakes pulling people into these systems. Like I mentioned, they're sort of unspecified, but suspected use you know by ICE and immigration.

RB: Deborah Raji, I got to leave it there.

DEBORAH RAJI: Oh yeah, of course.

RB: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Deborah Raji is a tech fellow at the AI Now Institute at New York University. The CBC News is next. Then we will talk to the editor of the medical journal, The Lancet. I'm Rosemary Barton. You are listening to The Current.

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Editor of The Lancet says the COVID-19 catastrophe could have been prevented

Guests: Richard Horton

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

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RB: Still to come, a family's fight to ensure their son's life will stand for a legacy of change in Saskatchewan schools. But first, politicizing the pandemic.

RB: Tomorrow marks six months since medical authorities in Quhan first alerted the WHO that they were seeing an unusual new form of pneumonia in local hospitals. Now, the virus is a global pandemic that has infected at least 10 million people and killed more than 500,000. For my next guest, the pandemic has revealed deeply troubling failures on the part of governments and policymakers. Richard Horton is the editor in chief of the leading medical journal The Lancet. He's author of a short but very forceful new book called The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It from Happening Again. Richard Horton, hello.

RICHARD HORTON: Hello. It's good to be with you.

RB: And good of you to make the time too. When you began publishing some of the early research in The Lancet, what concerned you most about what you were seeing?

RICHARD HORTON: Yes, we received and published five papers in the very final week of January this year, which describes an entirely new virus related to but slightly different from the SARS virus of the early 2000s. It was a virus that was transmitted from person to person. It was also a virus that was tipping thousands of people into hospitals in China, where many of them were being admitted to intensive care with a very unfortunately, a very high death rates. And there was no treatments available, no vaccine. And the very final paper that we published in January in Hong Kong was making the call that this had all the hallmark hallmarks of a global pandemic. And so by the end of January, we were very concerned that this was going to be indeed what WHO called it, a public health emergency of international concern.

RB: And yet, in spite of that, in spite of the research you're talking about there, it would seem that Western governments were slow to react. Why do you think that happened?

RICHARD HORTON: It is true that pretty much every Western government. And, of course, we include North America here, too, was slow to react because of the lens through which they were viewing. The risk of a pandemic was influenza. And influenza is a can be a very unpleasant disease and it does carry a mortality rates. But on average, the mortality rate for influenza is about zero point one percent. And the SARS virus we're now talking about is ten times more than that. That information was available in January from China. And I think this is the second reason why we failed. I honestly don't believe that we believed what was coming out of China. I think that there was a genuine scepticism combined with exceptionalism that we thought, well, our health systems are better, our scientists are better, our doctors are better, and we will be able to handle this better than the Chinese have done. And I think those are the two reasons why we were ultimately complacent. And why are simply tens of thousands of our citizens have died and they didn't need to die.

RB: And how justified do you think that was, that scepticism, given that we do know that that China tried to stifle its own scientists and their warnings around this? And how much responsibility do you think the Chinese government bears for our understanding of what was happening at that time?

RICHARD HORTON: Well, I'd like to distinguish between the Chinese government and Chinese scientists and doctors, because the Chinese scientists and doctors actually worked tireless, tirelessly to describe this new disease, to sequence the genome of the virus and to tell the world about it. Now, it is true that we don't fully know what was taking place in China during December. And the very first patient that we're aware of who was diagnosed with this new disease was December the 1st. And it took until December the thirty first before the Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organisation. So there is a whole month where we don't know what happened. And that needs to be investigated. But as soon as scientists understood that this was a new virus, they did tell W8 show and W8 Cho informed the world about that in very early January. So my view is that the scientists in China actually did a spectacular job of tracking down this agent out of telling the world about it. The failure was on behalf of Western governments for not taking their warnings seriously.

RB: You do talk about, though, the World Health Organization and the criticism of which they've faced a lot. You defend it to some extent, but you also say that that it is an imperfect institution, that it could and should have done more. Let me ask you what you think the WHO did right first.

RICHARD HORTON: So the WHO in the very beginning of January, when they were first informed about this new virus, a new disease, immediately put together a team in the very early days of January to try to understand the exact nature of the disease. It then started putting out a series of bulletins to the rest of the world to explain that there was this new disease that was caused by a virus that was possibly transmitted from person to person. It was very difficult to be sure in the early days. And then towards the end of January, they arrived at the conclusion that this was indeed a public health emergency of international concern. They declared that on January the 30th. And this is the most significant power that the director general of W8 show can have. It's like it's like the director general standing on the planet to waving a red flag for every country to take notice of. But sadly, he was ignored.

RB: He was ignored, but you also say that there were things, other things that they could have done. You talk about, for instance, some sort of, you know, gathering of global leaders even virtually to come up with a solution. It was almost like he was waving his hands, but then that's all he did. He didn't follow through. So tell me what more you think the WHO could have should have done?

RICHARD HORTON: Well, that is exactly the lesson. And, you know, it remains the lesson today. It's incredible to think and you said the figures yourself, 10 million cases of infection, 500,000 deaths and we have not had one attempt to bring countries of the world together to discuss the lessons to be learnt from our attempts to fight this pandemic. The risks of flare ups as we try and ease out of lockdown. And the dangers of a second or even third wave of this pandemic coming back to hit us later in the year. Not one international gathering has taken place to discuss what is the biggest global crisis for a century. Now it is impossible to understand why the World Health Organization or the United Nations or any other international body has not seen fit to bring countries together. It is a stunning, a spectacular failure of global political leadership that we all, all countries, share it.

RB: You use some very strong language in the book around the United States and President Trump, particularly in his decision to cut the funding to the WHO. You actually call it a crime against humanity. Why do you make that case?

RICHARD HORTON: Well, the World Health Organization exists for one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to protect the health and well-being of the peoples of the world. The World Health Organization is very dependent upon U.S. government funding. As much as a fist to a quarter of funding of WHO comes from the U.S. government. So if the U.S. government withdraws that funding W8 show, by definition we'll be able to do a quarter to a fifth less work to defend the health and well-being of peoples of the world, a crime against humanity is defined as a knowing act of attack or aggression against a people. And so by attacking WHO, the U.S. government is attacking the people W8 show is seeking to defend. So that is why it fulfils the definition of a crime against humanity.

RB: I want to ask you about what's going on the United States right now. There's a rise in cases in something like more than 30 states in the U.S. in spite of what some people are saying. These are real rise in cases, it's not just more testing. What do you make of that when you look at the situation unfolding in the U.S. right now?

RICHARD HORTON: It's a tragedy. Unfortunately, the states that lifted the lockdown too early are seeing flare ups. And those were entirely preventable. At the same time, America suffers because it doesn't have an effective public health system that can test, trace and isolate people who might have come across a person who has the infection and the combination of a lack of political will to really extinguish the lines of viral transmission, which is so needed with a lack of infrastructure in public health, means that you have almost a perfect storm to allow this virus to infect communities unchecked. It's absolutely necessary to stop the lines of transmission of the virus, and that means aggressive lockdowns. Yes, there's going to be an economic hit. Yes, there's going to be economic hardship for communities. This is absolutely true. But better that that than tens of thousands of needless deaths. You have to get a grip on this infection first before you can definitively deal with it.

RB: Well, there are as you may know, our our border remains closed with the U.S. to non-essential travel again for the month of July. Probably will continue given the situation there. But how well do you think Canada has handled the pandemic from what you've seen on the other side of the pond there?

RICHARD HORTON: I think Canada has handled pandemic better than your southern neighbour. No question about that. And I think you handled it as well or not as well as most Western European countries. Truth is, I think that all countries could have looked earlier. Given what we knew at the end of January, and I think the questions I would have to your government are the same as for my government. What were your scientists doing at the end of January? Why were they not advising governments, your government, that there was this new disease that was emerging from China and the risk of a global pandemic was real? Why was there not better preparation of your health system for the arrival of pandemics in terms of personal protective equipment, in terms of testing, tracing and isolating systems? In terms of protecting your health services to make sure that it was resilient enough to cope with a rising number of cases of this new disease. This information was known in January. And our scientists and policymakers and politicians I'm afraid all failed to give the best advice in order to prevent the deaths that have taken place. This is why I call it the greatest science policy failure for a generation.

RB: I want to ask you about a study that The Lancet recently retracted about the use of hydrochloroquine to treat COVID-19. It was revealed that the dataset wasn't reliable. Did you rush to publish that or is that sort of the nature of a a novel virus that you don't know enough and it's hard to get a handle on?

RICHARD HORTON: Well, you're absolutely right. It was a monumental fabrication. And the reason for the monumental fabrication is still hard to discern. There's an investigate investigation taking place at one of the institutions where the research was conducted. We did indeed fast track the paper because it was a it was addressing an urgent clinical question, just as we fast tracked many other papers, as many journals, scientific journals are doing at the moment. But the challenge in science is that the whole system of science depends upon trust. And if somebody intentionally, intentionally sets out to deceive you, it's very easy for science to be misled. And it looks like that's what has happened here. But it was somebody who has fabricated data sets and was able to convince some of his colleagues that his data were true, which they were not, and then was certainly able to convince us and our peer reviewers that they were true and they clearly were not. I'm afraid that we were all deceived and we're going to have to strengthen our systems of peer review to make sure that this kind of deception cannot happen again.

RB: In spite of that, the collaboration, cooperation and speed at which scientists, certain researchers are working together in the world right now is is, you know, astounding, really as a lay figure. Do you take heart in that and do you think that a vaccine or treatment will happen quickly?

RICHARD HORTON: I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years working at The Lancet. The scientific community has has worked in an unprecedented way to gather knowledge about this completely new virus and new disease. And in in such a short space of time, I mean, it really has been a remarkable contribution that scientists around the world have made. Currently, there are over 100 candidate vaccines that are being investigated. There are something like cysteine that are in clinical trials in human humans right now. I'm sure that we will get a vaccine. But it's not going to be soon. We won't have a vaccine by the end of the year. I hope that we will have a vaccine next year. But we need to remember that no vaccine is 100 percent effective or 100 percent safe. All will be taken by 100 percent of people. So a vaccine will not be a magic bullet to solve Kofod 19. We are still going to have to change our behaviours with physical distancing, mask wearing, avoiding mass gatherings and so on. So this is a revolution that taking place in our way of life. A vaccine will certainly help. But we have to find a way to peacefully coexist with this virus for the foreseeable future.

RB: Only about 30 seconds, Mr. Horton, but you write to honour lives lost, we must live differently. What does that mean to you?

RICHARD HORTON: This virus, this pandemic has held a mirror up to our societies are we have seen injustices and inequalities that we knew with there, but we've never had to confront like we have to confront them now. This pandemic presents us with an opportunity to live our lives differently. Bye bye. Caring for those who are most vulnerable. By recognising and rewarding key workers who've kept our societies going. By the way I describe it in the book is to have an ethics of memory. To see that this pandemic is a moral provocation to all of us. That we have to ask the question, what do we owe to each other in society? And the answer to that question is a new era of solidarity amongst our communities.

RB: I got to leave it there, Mr. Horton. Thank you. I enjoyed the book and I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.

RICHARD HORTON: Thank you very much indeed.

RB: Richard Horton is editor of the medical journal The Lancet.

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North York holds curbside drag show

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton, and you're listening to The Current. One of the ways that COVID has changed things is through Pride celebrations. One neighbourhood in Toronto is seeing something they wouldn't normally see. Drag queens are gathering in North York for a curbside drag show. It began this spring to support frontline workers. Freelancer Rachel Matlow visited the neighbourhood to catch the show.

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[Clip from curbside drag show in Toronto]

RB: I can relate. I also sew with a glue gun. Thanks to freelancer Rachel Matlow for that glimpse into the North York curbside drag show in Toronto. Celebrate pride how you can. Coming up in our next half hour, Kaleab Schmidt's parents will join me to talk about the loss of their son and how they are fighting racism in Saskatchewan in his memory. I'm Rosemary Barton. The summer edition of The Current is back in 90 seconds.

[Music]

Parents of Kaleab Schmidt open up about racism and school bullying

Guests: Sandra Barker-Schmidt, Dean Schmidt

RB: Hello, I'm Rosemary Barton, sitting in for Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Kaleab Schmidt was 13-years-old when he died by suicide in April 2018. He was a student at Greenall High School in Balgonie, Saskatchewan. A coroner's inquest this spring heard that Kaleab was bullied repeatedly about being black. Now his family is renewing their calls for stronger anti-racism action in Saskatchewan schools. Sandra Barker-Schmidt and Dean Schmidt are Kaleab's parents. They're at their family home near Balgonie. Hello.

DEAN SCHMIDT: Hello.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Good morning.

RB: I'll start with you, Sandra, if I can. Can you sort of give us a sense of what Kaleab was going through at school before he died two years ago?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Well, when he first started going to high school, he was so excited to be going to high school, and then once he started going within the first two weeks, when boy had asked him if he wanted to go do drugs at lunch, and Caleb said, no, I'm not I'm not into that. And then after that, he was called the N-word. Kaleab, he punched the kid, came up, was suspended for I think it was a day. I'm not sure what the other boy got. And then repeatedly for the next few months, stuff happened on and off. There was a Snapchat group going around that said, I hate Kaleab Schmidt, which Kaleab didn't even tell us about. I didn't find out till actually be in class when the social worker told us that social worker from Greenall High school. I know Kaleab, I kept telling Kaleab we'd change schools. I said, just tell me what school you want to go to will make it happen. I will drive you in. But he just kept saying to me, mom, you don't understand. You don't understand how hard high school is. And then, you know, you seem to be okay. He didn't say much, but I guess we didn't really realize half of it. Kaleab never told us. He said, mom, if you say anything, it'll just be worse. Yeah, that's.

RB: Was Kaleab the only black student at that school? Or were there other diverse people there?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Not many, maybe three percent of you know, I'd say three percent of the students at Greenall. Some are black, some are Aboriginal. Yeah, so I don't know exactly.

RB: Dean, can you tell us a little bit about Kaleab? What kind of what kind of guy he was?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Oh, he wasvery confident. Very, a real charmer. He had, everything he did, he did to the best of his ability. He gave 110 percent and there's nothing he would not. He wasn't afraid to beat anything. He was just a survivor of Africa and everything he did was to the best of ability. Ane he would never take no for an answer. He always accomplished everything he tried to do and he was a very, just a happy go lucky kid. It's just yeah.

RB: How old was when you, when when he came into your family from Ethiopia, where I know he had a difficult time as a small child.

DEAN SCHMIDT: He was about nine. Nine in our years cause we actually did a bone density and he was older than what he was. So he was probably about nine years old when we got matched up with him in Ethiopia.

RB: And let me ask you, Sandra, before high school, had Kaleab experienced any bullying or sort of overt racist acts against him?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes. In his elementary school, I got a call one day that Kaleab had been in a fight. I went to pick him up and he opened the door to get in and he goes, Mom, are you mad? And I said, No, Kaleab. I said, I'm not mad actually. I said I'd have punched him too. Called him the N-word. And that was it. And Kaleab, I made sure I told the school that there will be no consequences at home. And I always told the school that when it comes to racism or racist comments or bully and Caleb was suspended when he was actually the victim. And I would tell the school he's not being I am. There's no consequences for Kaleab. He was sticking up for himself. And I think of how many times that he did walk away. You know, I've always told him when he was little, give them 10 chances. Cause I always thought then it would kind of, it would blow over and there wouldn't be an altercation.

RB: Dean, was he used to hearing that word? The N-word? Was that something that was commonplace for him as people would treat him that way?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Not at home or not to his sport. Like he played a lot of soccer because that was what he grew up with. And then he started playing football here and to sports he never was. Maybe on the football field, like from the plays were on we on the lines sometimes that would happen that he'd just tackle football, he would take it out on the field. Through the lines, we'd pay em back on the football field. But I think it just happened more at school or social media. I think that was a, I guess because you never can get away from it and he'd keep it to himself. I guess h'ed be on his phone, a teenager and he didn't want to. Yeah, we didn't know some of the stuff that went on the internet, on his phone. We didn't know a lot, like we didn't know all of it. He kept it to himself. But as a whole at home or with his friends or sports, going to select, we went down to the states, there was nothing with his teammates that I knew of.

RB: So you didn't know about this Snapchat group called I Hate Kaleab Schmidt?

DEAN SCHMIDT: No, I didn't know. No.

RB: So he was dealing with that by himself?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Yeah. Cause we, he was as a survivor of Africa. When he was little, he kind of raised himself. He was given up for adoption, like he was in an orphanage, and before that he had left his home. And he always, since he was little, he kind of raised himself. So he thought he could handle everything on his own. I mean, we tried doing the best we could, but he tried to kind of keep it to himself a lot of stuff, because that's just how he was before we got him. But we were there to help him. But he just, yeah, he kept it. He tried to channel stuff on his own a lot of the times, instead of, he needed to reach out more.

RB: And Sandra, what did the you two do to try and help him deal with what he was experiencing as a black boy? And having to face that word sounds like more than once? Because I imagine you couldn't necessarily relate to that, so what did you do to try and help him with that?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: He's seen a psychologist in Regina, and I would take him there probably, I don't know, at least once a month. And then he had a really good friend here. It was clean, too, and he was also he was adopted from Ethiopia. So it does you and Caleb were pretty close. I don't know how much Kaleab confided him about, you know, the racist comments. And then he had another friend, too, Bam, that he was also adopted from Ethiopia. Him and Caleb played football together. And again, I don't know how much you know, Kaleab talked to him about it either, you know, but they, I'm sure heard it too. And probably still do. Right?

RB: Did he have any black role models, any grown ups around him that he could speak to about that or?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes, we actually belong to the, there's a a group in Regina, an area where families get together. We take the kids to the Christmas celebrations, Easter. Every summer we get together for a whole weekend, a long weekend, and we all go camping. So there's like probably 75 people there, like families that have adopted kids. There's Ethiopian families that, you know, have moved to Saskatchewan and they come. So, yeah, there was lots of adults that Kaleab, you know, could have talked to.

RB: So there was a coroner's inquest in in March of this year, which I know must have been difficult to sort of relive all of this in many ways.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes. Yes.

RB: Was it helpful at all? How did you find it?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes, I'd say it was in some areas, but not all. It wasn't just Greenall High School that felt Kaleab. You know, I feel the police failed Kaleab.

RB: What do you mean by that?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Well, when Kaleab got into the altercation at school that weekend, when he was suspended, I said to Kaleab, I said, I know you just didn't punch him, Kaleb. What happened? And he said, Mom, he's been bugging me and bugging me and bugging me. And so Kaleab punched him. And Kaleab knocked out two of his teeth. So the police came on that Sunday and they took him and they charged him with assault, causing bodily harm. And, yeah, the next day, Kaleab committed suicide. Having said that, they could have given the peace bond, which they didn't. And even after the fact that the inquest, we found out that the boy had denied tripping Kaleab, playing basketball, on purpose and at the inquest, we did find out that the boy did admit to doing it, but nothing ever happened to him. And last night was actually I was on my Facebook and I was kind of browsing and one of my friends, her son was awarded the basketball award for Outstanding Player. And there I happened to see the boy that Kaleab got into a fight with. He was outstanding player. So that really hurts to see that. And Kaleab's not here because Kaleab was a, he was an outstanding athlete at everything he did.

RB: And Dean, what were some of the recommendations that came out of that inquest? And has anything come out of it?

DEAN SCHMIDT: The school division has to have an investigation protocol for all physical altercations and reports of bullying and racism. All incidents occur the school must be recorded in central system. Need to review suspension policy. If any students home does not appear to work.

RB: So lots of things came out of it.

DEAN SCHMIDT: Yeah, there was lots. Like there was like rules made up for Kaleab in his name.

RB: Yeah. We asked we asked the Prairie Valley School Division for some comment on how they've gone about implementing those recommendations. And so here's part of their statement I'll just read for both of you. Since there was a two year lapse between Kaleab's death and the release of the inquest recommendations, we had as a division already done a lot of work to address all the policy recommendations from investigation through to disciplinary actions. We are confident the recommendations have been address. The statement went on to say that the student, the school has also taken other actions, including developing a respect for self and others anti-bullying action plan, that there are regular cheque ins with students who may be struggling socially, emotionally or academically. And the school also now offers a mental health and well-being credit course. Dean, do you think any of that would have helped Kaleab?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Oh, definitely. Yeah, I think so.

RB: It sounds, Sandra, like it was sort of a build-up of things. Is that?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yeah, I think so, yeah.

RB: And what have you heard from the school board since the inquest, anything?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Nothing. No, I actually contacted them. I sent an e-mail. It was Kaleab's two year anniversary since he passed away. One of Kaleab's friends had taken a picture of a Snapchat that this boy had some really terrible racist comments about Kaleab. Why he would do something like this, I have no idea. He doesn't even, he wouldn't even have known Kaleab. He was from a different town. So this girl ends up sending it to the Cadiff.

RB: Cadiff is one your daughters and Kaleab's sister.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: She's our oldest daughter. Yes. And I contacted the police and I wanted this student made accountable. Anyways, I did my own investigating. I p honed the Regina School Board, I phone dthe Catholic School Board. I couldn't find this boy. I couldn't find him. So I phoned one of my friends who's a city police, and he found him for me. And he is a student of Prairie Valley School Division. So I sent an email to Ms. Harkness and I sent her actually the snap of that comment that this boy made. And I said, and this is another one of your students.

RB: What and how did they respond?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: She did e-mail me back, but that was it. We never really went further because I was trying to get a hold of the police. So I called and I said, I want this child talked to. And then I had to wait another week and then I called them back. Then they called me back. So then they sent out this detachment to go talk to this child. And then they called me back and said that the police officer did go talk to him and his mom and I guess his mom was pretty disgusted by it. And now that's all that was said. And of course, I'm not getting this from the policeman that talked to him. I'm getting it from a different detachment. So I phoned the department. I said, I want to talk to the officer who talked to him. Like, I want to know what was said. Like, you know, so he finally did call me back after I called them twice and he'd and I said, did you tell him how hurtful this is to families? Well, no, I can't really do that. That's up to parents, you know, to discipline. And it's not a criminal offence. So that's all that was really done. You know, I feel like the child, you know, that he should be writing us a letter. He should, you know, make an apology. You know, I will never do this again. Obviously, this child must be troubled even to do something like that. Parents need to educate their children. You know, it's hurtful. It hurts. And it's just, it's got to stop.

RB: Well, that's sort of why you're both speaking now. Is it not?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: It is. It is. Like I don't want any family or any child to go through what we have gone through and still go through all the time, you know. Cadiff does not want to go to high school.

RB: This is your oldest daughter?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes. And she goes, why can't you homeschool me? And I'm like, well, I can't like I work outside of the home as well. We have fun. We're like a busy working family.

RB: And will she go to the same school as Kaleab?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: You know what? We just don't know what we're doing yet. I've had I've had strangers reaching out to me on Facebook Messenger telling me, do not let your daughter go to Greenall. And these are strangers.

RB: And Dean, when you hear Cadiff say she doesn't want to go to high school, that she's scared. How do you feel about that?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Well it bothers me because she get anxiety because and she's a very proud person, too, but she's shy and she's tough as nails. Like she's just a really strong, real kid. She's just, she sees like what happened in the States. I just bothers me because everybody's equal. We're all, I don't see, it shouldn't be a problem. It's 2020. When this happened to our son it was 2018. This isn't 1960 or 19, like it still, president, 1960, 90, it's got to stop. People got to realize they're all the same. It's just like some people here, they just, they just don't. I don't know it starts with the parents. They got to educate their kids. It's just like yeah, she's a beautiful. They're beautiful. We have two daughters. We have a younger one too. They're beautiful daughters and they're just very athletic and really, she's into music and she's into sports.

RB: How are they doing since Kalea's death?

DEAN SCHMIDT: Well, the corona thing, they're kind of wish to their friends more. That they don't see. We're kind of let us go down a bit. I assume that sounds a bit now, but it just happened a bit of a super extra hard. But it was better. But now the corona thing, it's just a lot of fun, sort of, you know, some tourists do. We got some baby clothes to help with them. Have some pets. But I mean, if they just need some come. It's been a long haul with the corona.

RB: And Sandra, have they experienced racism? Your daughter's.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yes, they have. I don't think so much. Well, actually, our youngest. Yes. I got a call from the principal here this past school term, and these two girls were using the N word. I don't know, I. I was told that they didn't really know what it was. I don't know. I let it go directly to smile's France's G. Chun's with so. And could ask. Yes, absolutely, she said. There's been a couple of times where more than two. But I called the parents. I'll just call them and say, this is what's going on with your child's life. Kids should be able to go downtown to Bel Gony, to the ice cream parlour and order an ice cream cone and not have to hear the N word or kids all play their music and then the N-word comes on. So they turned it up for, you know, just stuff like that, which is not. It's not called for. They don't need to do that.

RB: Can I ask you, when you were deciding to to adopt Kaleab and and his sisters and bring them back to Saskatchewan, did you ever think that you were going to have to deal with this, that you would be faced with?

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: No. Not for one second. I did not. You know, me and Dean are both Caucasian. So I guess. I don't know. We don't know what it's like, I guess. Right. Because nobody ever says anything to us about our colour of skin, you know? So but no, I didn't. I really didn't.

RB: It's probably been shocking, I guess.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yeah, it has been in it. Yeah. And I don't know what other families go through. I think a lot of families just kind of. You know, they don't say anything. They just let it go because it's easier to let it go. But unless we all stand together like it's not going to stop. So that's why, you know, Dean and I are you know, we're making a stand for this and for Kaleab's legacy. You know?

RB: Dean and Sandra, thank you. I know it's been such a difficult time for you and much of it has come back, but the fact that you're speaking to so many Canadians about this, I think it's really important.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Thank you. Yes, we do, too. We think it's very important as well.

RB: Dean, thanks, Sandra, thank you. I appreciate it.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Yeah. You're welcome. Thank you.

DEAN SCHMIDT: Thank you very much.

RB: Take care both of you.

DEAN SCHMIDT: Kaleab would be very proud of everything we're trying to do for him.

RB: Yeah, I'm sure he would. Thank you both. I appreciate it.

SANDRA BARKER-SCHMIDT: Thanks. K bye.

RB: Sandra Barker-Schmidt and Dean Schmidt spoke to us from Balgonie, Saskatchewan. Their son, Kaleab, died in April 2018.

[Song: "Sweeter" by Leon Bridges]

RB: That's new from Leon Bridges. That's "Sweeter." I'm Rosemary Barton. You are listening to the summer edition of The Current. And before we say goodbye today, I just want to tell you about what's coming up tomorrow. Journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova will be here for a lesson in No limit Texas Hold'em. No, we're not learning to count cards to come up big on the river. No, Maria's approach to the game is all about reading the person across the table and not just their poker face.

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VOICE: It turns out that in study after study, psychologists will see that we're just about a coin flip, 50/50 at telling if someone is lying or telling the truth. Now, when you get to poker, you realise that, OK, well, not everyone here is a con artist. Not everyone here is a professional liar. So they shouldn't be giving off more information. But it's still not in the face. So I actually did some work on this and talked with some researchers who study tells. And it turns out that the face if you focus on the face, you're going to pick up the wrong information. When the psychologist at Columbia University, Michael Slepian, had people view videos of poker players, he did a really interesting thing. One one time, he had everyone just view a full video of people at the World Series of Poker so you could see everything. The poker table, their bodies, their faces. Then he had the video altered twice, once. You could only see the face. And once you could only see below the shoulder. So you can see the arms in the hands. When people just looked at the whole video, they were at about chance 50/50 to tell if someone had a strong hand or not. When they looked at the faces, they were below chance at, actually. Like I said, they they started performing worse. But when they looked just at the hands. All of a sudden their performance improved and they became much better at being able to tell whether or not someone was bluffing. And what Slepian found was that the way that someone handled their chips, the way they handled their cards, it gave off a lot of information.

RB: See, isn't that good to know? Next time I do a tricky interview, forget eye contact, I'm looking at those hands. Maria Konnikova is here tomorrow to share some more insights about what poker has taught her, about making life decisions and taking risks. Her new book is called The Biggest Bluff. Listen, if you have any thoughts on that or anything else that you've heard on the program today, we'd love to know. You can reach us on Twitter. Our handle is @TheCurrentCBC or I'm @RosieBarton. We're on Facebook under CBC Radio - The Current. Or you can always use the fancy old website. And that is cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact us link to get in touch. We do love to hear from you. That is our program for today. The CBC News is next. And then coming up, it's Q with my pal Tom Power. You can catch The Current anytime, anywhere with the CBC Listen app. I'm Rosemary Barton. I'm sitting in for Matt Galloway all week. He's taking some well-deserved time off. And I'll be here happily for you for the rest of the week. Thanks for listening to The Current, the summer edition today. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Bye bye.

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June 29, 2020 episode transcript

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