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The Current Transcript for March 23, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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MANY VOICES: Join us or go home! Join us or go home! Join us or go home!

LAURA LYNCH: They gathered outside an NBA game in Sacramento last night, arms locked together, barring sports fans from getting inside the arena. All in the name of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was shot by police in his grandmother's backyard earlier this week. It was at night, Clark had reportedly run away from officers. Police said they believed he had a gun, only a cell phone was found. Once again, police actions are under scrutiny in the U.S. That's in an hour from now. Before that, a challenging subject for educators and parents.

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VOICE 1: I probably stumbled across porn for the first time, I want to say around 11, age 12. It was both terrifying and I exciting I would probably say at first.

LL: It's pretty easy to find pornography on the internet and studies suggest lots of young boys and some girls are doing just that. So is it time for educators to start talking about pornography as part of sex education in order to give children context and a critical eye to understand what they're seeing online? Or is it better to rely on parents to take on the subject at home to set out their own values and rules when it comes to shaping those young minds when it comes to sex and pornography? That's in half an hour. But we start today on a much different beat.

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VOICE 1: We're putting the band back together.

VOICE 2: Forget it. No way.

VOICE 3: We're putting the band back together man. We need you man, we need your horn.

VOICE 4: I can't, I really can't.

VOICE 2: I said no. Absolutely not.

VOICE 5: We're on a mission from God.

LL: The Blues Brothers wanted a reunion but it was a hard sell. This weekend, the Barenaked Ladies will reunite with their former lead singer Steven Page as they're inducted into the Canadian music hall of fame during the Juno music awards celebrations. It can be great for fans who want to revel in nostalgia, but can the bands recreate the magic, hit all the right notes and make sweet music all over again? That's where we're starting today. I'm Laura Lynch and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

'Some things can just end': Why getting the band back together isn't always wise

Guests: Jeff Burrows, Carly Lewis

LL: This weekend at the Junos the Barenaked Ladies will be doing something they haven't done since back in 2009 — performing, reunited with former lead singer Stephen Page. It's been nearly a decade since he parted ways with the band, but they're putting aside their differences and sharing the stage again to mark their induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. And when they do, they'll be joining a long and loud tradition of bands getting back together. In recent years groups like Guns N Roses and Blur have taken to the stage again. And after saying for years that they'd never ever, ever, get back together, Swedish super group ABBA is planning a "virtual reality" tour for 2019. It's often the fans who clamour for their favourite bands to reunite. Here's what some music store employees in Vancouver had to say about band reunions

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VOICE 1: The first band reunion I saw was Bauhaus and they booked that tour as the resurrection tour. They said this isn't a reunion it's a resurrection. And it was amazing. He wore a girdle, but it was very charming. He's uh larger than he used to be so it was to keep everything from moving too fast and furious during the show I guess. So you know it's all about adapting to a new situation...

VOICE 2: I would like to see if it was possible at all is the original line up of Queen to reunite and tour again with Freddy Mercury, he'd have to be there...I don't want a hologram. I feel that the band that should have never reunited is the Eagles especially since they released an album called Hell Freezes Over making light of the fact that they had reunited one time and now they are back with Glen Frey's son is playing guitar or something...yeah that shouldn't be allowed. When bands like each other I think it’s great but when it's just all about money...no. They don’t need the money.

LL: Of course, it's not always easy for band members to find their way back to one another, especially after painful breakups. Jeff Burrows was the drummer for the Tea Party, a band that broke up in 2005 only to get back together six years later. He joins me now from Windsor, Ontario. Hello.

JEFF BURROWS: Hi. Good morning.

LL: When the band broke up the media called it "messy" and "acrimonious." What was the experience like for you?

JEFF BURROWS: Well to begin with it was filled with anger in the beginning and once the dust started settling it became this existential sort of experience where normally when you would come home any one of your friends or family members — the main questions would be: "Well how was that writing session? How was the studio? How was that tour? How was the record launch?" It was very encompassing. So it just became normalized and you adapted to the fact that is who you are. You are the drummer, one of the songwriters, and performer. I felt that, man, what am I really? Who am I? It was that very existential question that everyone is constantly asking themselves and it hit me really hard. I've gotten over it obviously but in the beginning it was pretty difficult.

LL: What went into the decision to break up?

JEFF BURROWS: We'd been doing that for so long. A lot of people don't understand that Jeff and I had been friends literally since grade school…

LL: Your band mate.

JEFF BURROWS: Yeah, Jeff Martin, our singer, my brother. Since Grade 6, Grade 7, and we had met Stuart in early high school and we had bands in and out since then. So much like a marriage and I know the comparisons been done a million times, if there is no communication, there is no relationship. And it just started getting to be "no talking" means "no success." And you can't have a successful anything if there's no communication. So that's been remedied obviously.

LL: And how long had the band been together at that point?

JEFF BURROWS: The Tea Party itself was early 1990 and I believe seven albums in, 23 videos — gosh 20 tours. You know we had crisscrossed Canada ourselves before we even signed about 13 times in three separate vans until they wore down right. So a lot of close quarters and a lot of getting used to each other and then finally making a good success of it and then eventually growing apart.

LL: When the breakup hit you, you called it an "existential crisis." How would you describe the years that followed?

JEFF BURROWS: A lot of support from my fantastic wife. We've been successful through great communication skills and we had been together since about the same time we started playing in bands together in high school. So that was a key. And then you know just trying to move on. I got into radio and I did a lot of rock radio and I started another band with my friends Mike Turner from OLP, and Edwin from Mother Earth, and Amir so we started Crash Karma and that was great. And we did well and we had fun. But there is always something missing. And you know I had picked up the pieces and I felt better about myself and I did not consider myself, "I was once the drummer of the Tea Party." It was, "Ok, I'm Jeff."

LL: But at what point did you start to consider that a reunion could be possible?

JEFF BURROWS: About two or three years in because we had been with management — SRO management — who manage Rush and you know Kim Mitchell and the day and so on. I mean I was always very friendly with the entire staff and great people and so on. And we were always being told that you know it's festival season and a lot of promoters are asking if you guys would like to do something and it was always like, "No." We hadn't even spoken to Jeff, Stewart, and I. And Jeff was full on solo touring and writing and deep down I was quite happy for him because that's what he does. You know he's a performer — par excellence. But we had been receiving these sort of notifications back and forth for a while and then it got to a point where it was like, "Guys seriously you should talk because there's a lot of opportunity out there for you to get together, play some of the old songs, see how you feel together, and maybe move on." And you know a lot of people knew that we were as close as we were and thought it was a shame and deep down you always think you know I wish I had a second chance to work on things.

LL: This week Stephen Page said that he's approaching the reunion with his Barenaked Ladies band mates with excitement and some terror. Can you relate to that?

JEFF BURROWS: Absolutely. I always thought Steven got the raw end of the deal on that whole break up. But he's such a nice guy. Yeah I can totally relate. The first time when I was the one who was to meet Jeff, Stewart was living out West, Jeff was in town visiting his folks. And I remember talking to my manager and he said, "You know just go meet for a coffee." And I'm thinking, 'No I should go meet for whiskey because I need something a little stronger. I don't need my nerves to explode under another cappuccino’. So we met. And he was stoic as always and I was nervous... I was excited to see him but I was very nervous and I was terrified. And I can entirely relate to Steven's thought process right now. And right before coming on air I actually saw a photo of Steven and the guys out West and everyone's smiling and there are no bruises on anyone. So it was good. It just at least marked that launch pad. And as with the Ladies I think this is going to be quite the launch pad to use as a nice reunion reformation sort of thing

LL: Jeff really great of you to give us sort of the inside look inside the family and the splits and getting back together this early in the morning because I think you're still "rock guy." So thanks a lot.

JEFF BURROWS: You're welcome. Thank you.

LL: Jeff Burrows is the drummer for the bands’ The Tea Party and Crash Karma. He was in our studio in Windsor, Ontario. To reunite or not to reunite? Whether tis nobler to remain in obscurity or to face the slings and arrows of an audience that hasn't seen you perform in decades? That is the existential question many bands are facing. To help me answer that question, I am joined by Canadian music writer Carly Lewis. Her work appears in the Globe and Mail, New York Magazine and Maclean's. She is with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

CARLY LEWIS: Good morning.

LL: What is a band to do? You heard Jeff Burrows talk about his motivations for reuniting. What were you thinking as you listened?

CARLY LEWIS: Listening to Jeff was interesting because I think those of us on the outside of any band who is contemplating a reunion it's very easy to think that the reasoning is all monetary or that it's a very easy decision — an offer comes in and you either take it or you don't. But it was enlightening to hear that actually it was kind of an emotional journey toward the decision for the Tea Party to reunite. It wasn't as easy as someone is offering us money so let's take it.

LL: How much of a factor do you think money is then? I mean we're seeing more and more bands do this.

CARLY LEWIS: Yeah I think that money is a huge factor in terms of why bands get together in some cases decades after they last performed together. And when I was younger I might have been cynical about that but the older I get the more I realize that everybody requires an income of some kind and that's fine. If the reason that you get back together is because someone offered you a lot of money to play together at a festival for an hour, sure, why not?

LL: What about the fan factor in all of this? How much do the fans drive these reunions?

CARLY LEWIS: Well the fans are the ones with the spending power. So I think that fans have quite a lot to do with the decision to get back together. I mean listening to Jeff, he was talking about how opportunities kept kind of being repeated to him and something was driving that right. I think it was probably demand from the audience.

LL: What band would you like to see reunite?

CARLY LEWIS: What band would I like to see reunite? You know what? It's hard to answer and it's taken me a long time to accept in my life that some things can just end. You know some things can just be over. Relationships can end and that's fine. And I think that's just my answer as much as it’s kind of a downer answer. I think it's ok for bands to run their course and do what they're going to do together and then leave it. And if we want to go back and listen to the albums they made together that we loved, there they are. We can do that anytime.

LL: There are so many bands people hope and pray would reunite — one of them being OASIS — take a listen to Gallagher brother Liam respond when asked if the hugely popular British band would consider getting back together.

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VOICE 1: Without a doubt that’s my band you know what I mean without a doubt but we have to become brothers first I think you know what I mean before we start talking about music. If we start liking each other inevitably the next step would be to take the band out for a little spin around the block — why not people want it you know what I mean and I like it. I love Oasis. Oasis is the best thing ever.

LL: That's Liam Gallagher on the Howard Stern Show last summer talking about the potential reunion of the British band Oasis. Now you heard him say that they have to become brothers first. How much of a band calling it quits has to do with animosity between the members?

CARLY LEWIS: Well I'll say sometimes a band can call it quits just because their contract is up and they simply no longer have to make any more albums legally to satisfy the contract they signed with the label. I mean animosity drives people in bands apart for sure. But what I will say in the case of Oasis is animosity that the public can see after a band has broken up is the best thing in terms of momentum for an eventual tour. And you know my cynical kind of conspiracy theory mind thinks about whether the Oasis brothers have been publicly feuding for so long just to stoke the fire of a possible eventual reunion because it will just be so shocking and such a big deal if they did announce that they were getting back together even for one show.

LL: Yeah, greater the animosity then the greater the reunion.

CARLY LEWIS: Absolutely.

LL: So what do you think people are going to be watching for this weekend when they see Stephen Page up there with the Barenaked Ladies?

CARLY LEWIS: Stephen Page was profiled by Courtney Shea in The Globe and Mail last weekend and he talks a lot about his relationship with Ed Robertson who is the other lead in the Barenaked Ladies or is currently the only lead in the Barenaked Ladies. I'll be watching and trying to catch glances between the two of them. I'll be very interested to see what their dynamic is like on stage because they had a tenuous breakup as well I believe. And they haven't been super in touch since about 2009, right? So I'll be interested to see how they kind of socialize around each other. You know they're professional musicians I don't doubt that they're going to pull off a completely great performance. But it's more the kind of social dynamics I'm interested in.

LL: Any other tales of epic breakups because of animosity that you know of?

CARLY LEWIS: I would say when the Death From Above formerly 1979 guys got back together a couple of years ago for Coachella, I was surprised by that because they had kind of a quick great fast paced tumultuous career together as Death From Above 1979. And then they hated each other for years and years and years. They hated each other and everyone knew that. So when they got back together you know I was surprised. But again that Coachella money is hard to turn down I would imagine.

LL: OK. Not every band breakup is about animosity.

CARLY LEWIS: Right.

LL: Not every band break up is about animosity. REM was wildly successful and ended the band at the height of their success. Listen to front man Michael Stipe talk about why they broke up and about getting back together.

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VOICE 1: In capping the band with our last day and the way that we made that announcement I wanted to preserve the legacy of what we had created and spent 32 years of our lives working on. I did not want it to drag into us being in our mid-50s and going on tour becoming something other than what we were. I think we did it the right way.

LL: So the fear of becoming something other than what they were. What do you think of what Michael Stipe says there?

CARLY LEWIS: Yeah I think Michael Stipe is one of the most highly intelligent people with such integrity when it comes to his artistic output. So I admire you know a lot of what he said there because REM is a band that's still very much in demand. You know if REM toured tomorrow every show would be sold out right. They're huge. And yeah I think it would have been hard to walk away from the career that they had. But I also admire you look at something like you know the band Hole. There was a Hole tour and an album a couple of years ago around 2010. But it was only Courtney Love. She wasn't involved with any of the other original band mates and I think that's what Michael Stipe is kind of getting at when he talks about wanting to preserve the integrity of the band is that eventually you get into this contractual mess of hiring people to replace the original musicians and you know it doesn't make any sense. It's kind of like lopsided and confusing to audiences too.

LL: One more thing to get at here. These attempts to bring bands back together in the absence of a key member. One critic classified these as "sham reunions," such as Queen where Adam Lambert took the place of Freddie Mercury. Are these ever a good idea?

CARLY LEWIS: I mean in that case you know there could be no Queen reunion, right? And I suppose Adam Lambert was good attempt at a fill in. You know there are some similarities there. But I don't think so. You know like I said that whole album Courtney Love’s Band was disappointing and awkward and weird. You know I wish that she had just done a Courtney Love album not put the band's name on it I wish she had just set out and done her own thing. So sham reunions — nostalgia can only take you so far. You know it kind of feels faked.

LL: Ok Carly you told you that you didn't have a band that you wanted to see get back together necessarily but what band do you absolutely not want to see get back together?

CARLY LEWIS: I mean, umm... I don't know. I don't know because I hate to squash anyone.

LL: Go ahead. Come on.

CARLY LEWIS: Let me think here. Bands I absolutely do not want to see get back together? Oh, the Smiths. You know people talk a lot about the Morrissey-Johnny Marr kind of drama — I'll say drama. And I kind of just think well first of all I'm no longer a Morrissey fan because he said some racist things that I politically can't support but I kind of just think ok you guys are done I don't care.

LL: Ok Carly thanks very much for coming in and giving us your views. Carly Lewis is a Canadian music writer. She is in our Toronto studio. The CBC News is next. Then, we move from rock and roll to sex, and whether sex education in schools should address online pornography. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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Should porn be a part of sexual education in schools?

Guests: Kristen Gilbert, Dr. Teresa Pierre, Matthew Johnson

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LL: Still to come, the death of Stephon Clark, in Sacramento, California, is just the latest reminder that despite all the protest and outrage police shootings of unarmed black men continue. We'll get the latest from Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery who's been covering this latest, troubling case, of a man shot 20 times in his grandparent's back yard. Police thought he was holding a gun, it was merely an iPhone. Much more on that story, what's happening in Canada too, in about half an hour from now. But first, what to do with the "sex ed" kids are getting in online pornography. And a warning there will be some strong language ahead.

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VOICE 1: Growing up I probably stumbled across porn for the first time, I want to say, around 11, age 12. And it was you know a Google search probably that brought me there. I'm sure many other kids who grew up around the same time as me and now can relate. It's getting easier even for younger kids than 11. So that is probably the first time I stumbled across it. It was both terrifying and exciting I would probably say at first. You know your mind is developing and you're learning new things and yeah.

LL: That's Michael Wilkinson of Vancouver who was kind enough to share that memory of us of his first memories of seeing pornography. He's 21-years-old now. So that was about a decade ago now — a lifetime or three on the Internet. And the amount of porn online and its pervasiveness has grown tremendously since then. For young people like Michael, and the generations growing up after him, there's an open question about just what the effects are of being exposed to so much porn online. Lawmakers in some areas are grappling with the problem. In Florida just last month, the House of Representatives passed a motion declaring porn a health risk. But, that doesn't make porn and online access to it — go away. And some say that's not a bad thing that the fears of negative effects, are being overblown. Others say our sex ed curriculums need to adapt to this new reality of ubiquitous porn online and start talking about it inside the classroom. Matthew Johnson is with Media Smarts, a non-profit group focused on digital and media literacy. He's their Director of Education. He's joining us from Ottawa. And just a warning this conversation will deal with mature subject matter. Hello.

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Hello.

LL: Let's start off by defining our terms. Pornography can mean many things to many people. What does it mean to you in the context of the research that Media Smarts has done?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well really what we asked about, we allowed young people that we survey to define pornography for themselves. We asked them if they had sought out pornography online. And I think that's really what's more important is that in their minds what they're looking for or what they are encountering fits their definition of pornography.

LL: So did you have a range of definitions?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: We didn't really get different definitions. As I say we allowed them to define it for themselves when they answered whether or not they sought it out. And if they did how often they looked for it.

LL: Let's talk about the study a little more. You looked at the number of kids who were accessing pornography online. What did you find?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well what we found was that actually fewer than we thought were seeking pornography out intentionally. We surveyed a little over 3,000 students in Grades 7 through 11 across Canada. And we found that only 23 per cent of them had intentionally sought out pornography. But at the same time this was very different when we divided it by gender. We found that the boys were much more likely to have done so. Forty per cent of them had done so compared to the girls in the sample and also that those boys who were seeking it out were doing so often. So 28 per cent of the boys had looked for pornography at least once a day or at least once a week. So for those who were doing it, it was clearly a habit for them.

LL: And what do we know about what kind of material they were getting access to?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well we didn't get into that because this was part of a much larger survey of which pornography really was one very small part. I mean just by taking sort of a survey of what's available on the internet we know that sort of the variety, the ease of access of porn, the way one can easily go to very extreme or very specialized content is a significant concern because we do have you know young people who are just developing their sexuality and we know from research done elsewhere frequently seeking out porn as a means of sex education and being exposed to things that really they're not ready for just because of the network nature of the internet.

LL: Again can we try to define our terms here? What do you mean when you say extreme or specialist?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well that can mean a lot of different things. So in some cases it can mean porn with violent content. In some cases it can mean fetish material. Even things you know there are certain sexual acts that we know anecdotally have become kind of normalized as a result of porn where they're that were sort of created for performance purposes essentially because they look good on camera. As porn tropes have become more codified and also porn producers have felt pressure to compete with other porn producers as more and more porn gets produced, and we hear again from qualitative research that's been done around the world girls saying that their boyfriends expect them to participate, even boys saying that it's not something that interests them but they perceive it as part of normal sex because they received their sexual education from pornography.

LL: So given that what concerns do have about young people — kids — having access that much access to pornography?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well the biggest concern really is that like any media product it shapes the idea of what's real and the only way that we can engage with it critically is if we recognize that it is unreal. But young people in many cases do not for a variety of reasons mostly because they don't evaluate it in the way they evaluate other media because of the way they're accessing it, because often it's filmed to look spontaneous. It arrives frequently without a lot of the trappings of other media that remind us that we're watching something that somebody made like credits. Frequently they don't even have music anymore. You know we're accessing it furtively and we know also that even when it comes to things that are very clearly media texts we don't automatically engage with them critically. We have to be taught to do so and we have to be taught specifically to engage with them. So when we don't engage critically with the media text we take it consciously or unconsciously as a reflection of reality. And so we see the effects that I was just talking about where young people are integrating pornography, they're taking their sexual script from pornography, their expectations of healthy sexuality is, their expectation of what their bodies should look like and their partners body should look like, their expectations around consent — and certainly pornography is not a great model for consent. All of these things they're taking from pornography which would already be a concern if it were just what in the industry as called "vanilla porn." But again it's so easy to accidentally encounter things that are much more extreme and much more special.

LL: I am speaking to Matthew Johnson and I want to bring two more voices into the conversation. Kristen Gilbert is a sex educator and Director of Education, Options for Sexual Health in Vancouver. And Dr. Teresa Pierre is the acting president of the Parents as first Educators. It's an advocacy group that has been opposing Ontario's sex ed curriculum and we've reached her in Toronto. Hello to you both.

KRISTEN GILBERT: Hi thanks for having us.

LL: Kristen Gilbert your heard Matthew Johnson's concerns, what do you make of what he said?

KRISTEN GILBERT: I think he's spot on. I think that young people are curious. Young people are curious about sex. That's healthy and natural. And when we don’t talk to young people about sex, when we don't give them good information that's age appropriate, porn reaches into fill the gap. And so he's quite right that they're learning about their bodies, they're learning about sexual scripts, and frankly they're learning about what they think pleasure looks like.

LL: But when you go into schools do you get questions about pornography when they're doing your sex education?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Yeah I do. You know to be honest they're usually anonymous questions. It's unlikely that someone will raise their hand and ask me a porn question because the way that we talk about porn is filled with so much shame that people are unlikely to ask me questions in class if their name is attached to it. But I get a lot of anonymous questions.

LL: Pieces of paper…

KRISTEN GILBERT: Yeah, little pieces of paper.

LL: And what are they asking?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Well they asked me about what's real. So they want to know you know what sex is really like and what do people really enjoy and how to make decisions. I can tell by their questions that they are thinking critically when they're seeing porn they’re wondering could this be real life. It's a great opportunity for me as someone who is comfortable talking about sex and does that for a living to frankly give them the context for what they've seen.

LL: And I'm curious to know as access to porn over the internet has expanded, have you noticed those questions you get from young people changing?

KRISTEN GILBERT: A little bit. Yeah a little bit. Some of the things that Matthew referred to; some of the sort of porn specific actions that maybe different generations didn't even know existed. They'll ask me a lot of questions about anal sex for example. I probably get more of those now than I did 15 years ago. But another thing that I want to point out is how knowledgeable some young people are from having access to the Internet. And by that I mean in a positive way. So young people who have explored human sexuality online because they're not getting the sex-ed that they're entitled to, that frankly they have the right to in school, this generation of young people are in fact really good decision makers with great outcomes. And one of the things that we can attribute that to is their access to the internet. So it's not all bad news.

LL: Ok. Teresa Pierre, as a parent, what concerns do you have about young people watching pornography or sexual explicit material online?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Well research has determined that porn watching causes physiological changes in the brain which is one of the hallmarks of addiction. From the moment you start watching you have less volume and activity in the regions of the brain linked to reward processing and motivation. And as these reward centres become smaller it becomes necessary to increase your porn consumption to achieve the same amount of reward. And the type of porn consumed tends to escalate to harder forms as well. So many studies since 2011 have discussed these brain changes in internet pornography users and noted that these are the same patterns in drug addicts. Beyond the risk of addiction compulsive porn watching poses personal and public health risks as well. It's been linked to an earlier age of sexual… and decrease condom use as well as an increased number of sexual partners. And we have longitudinal research which means research over a longer period of time with control groups found that pornography exposure was associated with a nearly two fold increase in the odds of casual sexual behaviour. So it doesn't seem like a very positive outlook to me. And so our concern is not having a generalized discussion of porn in schools but something that we think would be helpful to these group of kids whose brains are forming. It doesn't seem to me that you would want to give them a direct exposure to what it is but to warn them that this kind of behaviour can lead to lifelong problems with not only forming attachments but also health and physical risks.

LL: Kristen as an educator, what do you think of that?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Well I think we can't teach young people how to thoughtfully make good decisions about sex and pornography if we disrespect them and if we just focus on eliminating what we think are poor options. I think what's important is teaching people and supporting them to make thoughtful decisions. And in order to do that they need information. And so earlier I mentioned context and I think that's one of your most important roles as parents, as caregivers, as educators that we talk to young people about what sex really means, what it really looks like. You know sex is about connection and intimacy and you know often love. It's also perfectly fine for adults to make decisions about casual sex. And so we need to discuss that as well. You know let's remember that you know the age of consent in Canada is 16 and there are also provisions for people younger than that to be able to legally consent to sex. So given that, we need to make sure that young people who are legally old enough to make decisions about their own body and their own sexual choices that they have all of the information that they need.

LL: So at what age do you think it's appropriate to start discussing pornography in the classroom?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Whenever it comes up organically in class. But I'm definitely hoping that you know certainly by Grade 8 people have a lot of information about this that they can use. And I'm really hoping that parents and caregivers are picking up the slack at home.

LL: Teresa I am going to come back to you in just a second but I just want to ask Matthew Johnson; you were a high school teacher, what role do you think schools should be playing in educating people about pornography?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: I think schools have a huge role to play and it's twofold. I mean one is just ensuring that every young person gets comprehensive sexual education because again we know that a lot of the times when young people are seeking out pornography it is out of curiosity initially. So if they're being given sex education even if they're being directed to good quality online sources that they can access privately if they're getting good quality information that's going to affect the demand side. But I do think that schools do need to be talking about pornography. And you know when we're talking about it early on a lot of it can be talking about how do we avoid it because in fact research out of Europe has found that for a lot of young people the number one concern they have about being online is avoiding adult material. One U.K. study found half of boys and two thirds of girls wanted it to be more difficult to access adult material online. So we have to keep that in mind too that part of it is teaching them how to prevent themselves from coming across this stuff unintentionally before they're ready.

LL: Ok so that's another side of this. Teresa Pierre you are here as the parent representative, I'm wondering what you think of what Kristen said about trying to you know organically when the right time is to talk about and also get more of your thoughts on how it should be incorporated into the sex education curriculum.

TERESA PIERRE: One of the cardinal rules of sex education is to respect the developmental age of the child, not offering more information than they're able to handle. So our concern with the current sex-ed program in Ontario is that it's offering too much too soon. And when I hear you know that we want to offer porn experience as young as possible then alarm bells go off from me as well. I think that an appropriate time when they're you know going to come across it which is mid-teens I would say — going to come across it and be equipped to handle it I should say. They obviously are coming across it younger than that.

LL: Mid-teens... yeah I would think they would be coming across it younger than that.

TERESA PIERRE: But able to understand the issues of long-term effects on their lives; like what addiction can really mean for them, what the issues of self-esteem are for women. Those kinds of things I think require a little bit more life experience to property deal with.

LL: If you are just joining us now we're talking about the growing number of kids being exposed to pornography at a young age. What the significance of that is and how educators and parents should deal with it. And just a warning this discussion has mature content and strong language. I'd like to play some tape for you now. This is Gail Dines from Culture Reframed. She is a US-based anti-pornography activists.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: What I've heard mainly from kids is that they feel often shame about using pornography. They feel for many of them it has harmed their ability to have healthy sexual relationships. For some its harmed their ability to even want sex with a real human being. They prefer actually to masturbate to pornography rather than have sex with real people. And often the girls feel pressured into performing porn sex with the boys that they date and hook up with.

LL: Kristen Gilbert, you heard what she had to say. There was some aspect of shame in all of that. What do you think of what Gail Dines her to say?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Yeah I'm glad that you brought up the shame. Any time we're talking about sex we're navigating our shame response. So you know I'm doing that as an educator and parent. All humans are navigating their shame reactions to sex. And when we add the sort of illicit properties that porn comes worse it adds another layer of that. I'm curious about Gail Dines reaction that the idea that people would masturbate is a downside of porn. I think you know a lot of the time as educators and as parents we're hoping that young people get to know their bodies, we're hoping that people don't have partnered sex younger than they're ready for, we're hoping that people have a positive relationship with their bodies and with pleasure. I don't see the idea that young people might be masturbating as necessarily a downside. That's not my goal as an educator to discourage that. My goal is to give people information so that they can make decisions that work with their personal values.

LL: Teresa Pierre, what do you make of that idea? That porn and masturbation can sometimes be a safe way for young people to explore sexuality and practice.

TERESA PIERRE: No I wouldn't take that view. I believe that the issue as I've alluded to before is really the addictive quality of this behaviour and I think that you don't want to expose kids to this at such a young age because it can have significant negative effects on their ability to form actual attachments.

LL: You have kids yourself.

TERESA PIERRE: I do.

LL: I'm curious to know about what approach you take in addressing the topic of pornography with them?

TERESA PIERRE: I did discuss it with my children at the very end of middle school. You know just wanted to before they went off to high school — get their minds around the fact that their futures we would hope for to be in a long-term monogamous marriage and an early use of pornography can really be them on a different path. I haven't discussed very much what the problems are within marriage but we have found that the ages of erectile dysfunction seem to be rising at a stronger rate.

LL: Where does that come from?

TERESA PIERRE: It's a global study of sexual attitudes and behaviour study. In 2011 they found that the rates risen from two to five per cent among young men to 14 to 28 per cent. And in addition there was an Italian study that found that 70 per cent of these young men with erectile dysfunction began habitually watching porn in their mid-teens.

LL: Kristen Gilbert, what do you make of what Teresa maintains? And partly about how she talks to her own kids and partly what she's been saying about the addictive aspect of this.

KRISTEN GILBERT: Yeah I think I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that none of the official regulatory bodies like psychiatric and psychological regulatory bodies recognize sex or porn addiction as valid. In fact many of them see that as a harmful diagnosis, something that doesn't move us forward. The other thing that I want to say is that I think what Teresa is doing is perfect which is that she's sharing her personal values with the young people in her lives. I think that's our job as a parent. That's mine as well.

LL: Is that what you do with your children?

KRISTEN GILBERT: Of course. Of course. I talk to my child frankly about my beliefs and help support her as she develops her. She's 16 now and you know so far so good. I think as an educator I have a different role. My role is not to teach values. That's a parent and caregivers role. My role is to supply the data and the information so that young people have all of the information that they require to make smart decisions that work with their values and the values they've learned in the home.

LL: Matthew I asked for your views as a former high school teacher. Are you also a parent?

MATTHEW JOHNSON: I am. I have a six-year-old and a nine-year-old.

LL: So talk to me about that and in particular how you talk to your children if you do about pornography.

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Well we haven't yet. But you know with the nine-year-old it is something we're going to have to talk about soon because he's starting to use the computer more independently. He's using it for school so we can't supervise him on it all the time. Now obviously on his account I have all of the safe search settings to help him avoid unintentional contact, unintentional exposure. And we've also made it clear to both of them that we don't expect them to go exploring online without us and that if they ever wind up somewhere they didn't want to go to come and tell us right away and they won't get in trouble for it because what we've found in our research at Media Smarts is that having household rules about accessing online content actually does have a strong correlation with whether or not young people do it. We found there is a significant difference in whether or not young people had accessed pornography at all depending on whether or not there is a rule in the home and there is a really strong influence on how often they did it. So those without a rule were three times more likely to do at least once a day as those where there was a rule in the home. So you know we've been talking about just now about communicating your values, about communicating your expectations, and you know establishing a clear procedure for what to do if you do come across something unintentional that's not appropriate, talking about these things from early on and continuing to have these conversations as kids get older these are the ways that parents can prepare their kids.

LL: Teresa Pierre, the last word to you. We've been talking about parenting and how parents should deal with this issue. But how do you think the balance should be struck between what the parents role is and what the school's role is in trying to educate young people?

TERESA PIERRE: From a pragmatic point of view I think that the school has a role in that. I have no opposition to a generalized discussion of porn and especially the harms around it. My concern as I've said is that despite the fact that we are in the early days of the discussions of porn so that professional bodies have not… addiction I would say wait and see. Major researchers in the area think that it should be called an addiction and the studies are only a couple of years old. So give the bodies some more time to turn their wheels. I would say that porn is coming to us uninvited. Let's really not invite you know watching porn itself into the curriculum. I think that we do our kids a disservice in their time of growing and changing.

LL: I thank all three of you for making the time to come and have this discussion with us.

MATTHEW JOHNSON: Goodbye.

TERESA PIERRE: Bye.

KRISTEN GILBERT: Thanks so much.

LL: Kristen Gilbert is the Director of Education, Options for Sexual Health, We reached her in Vancouver. Dr. Teresa Pierre is the acting president of the Parents as first Educators. We reached her in Toronto. Matthew Johnson is Director of Education at Media Smarts and member of the Sexual Health Education Working Group. He was in Ottawa. Coming up in our next half hour, once again troubling questions after American police shoot an unarmed black man and devastating video is released. More on the death of Stephon Clark after the break. And we'll hear from two former officers with differing views of how to interpret what happened. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Police shootings of unarmed black men are a Canadian problem too, says author

Guests: Wesley Lowery, Ed Obayashi, Michael Wood

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. His name was Stephon Clark.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You gonna know his name forever, John. You hear me? You're gonna remember it like how you know Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice... you're gonna know. You're gonna know him. You're gonna remember this.

LL: That's his brother, vowing to a local journalist that his name will not fade away any time soon. On Sunday, 22-year-old Stephon Clark was shot dead by two Sacramento Police officers. The father of two was in his grandparents' backyard. Police were responding to a 911 call about a man breaking vehicle windows in the neighbourhood. They mistook the iPhone he was holding, for a gun, and they fired 20 shots at Stephon Clark. On Wednesday, Sacramento Police released footage of the incident. Here's part of it, and a warning what you will hear is disturbing. This is from the body cameras worn by the police officers.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Show me your hands, gun! Show me your hands. Gun gun gun!

VOICE 2: 5-7 shots fired...

VOICE 1: Show me your hands!

VOICE 3: Let's see your hands!

LL: After the shooting, the officers call for back up and as other officers arrive on scene, they call out to Clark.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hey can you hear us?

VOICE 2: Police department, can you hear us?

VOICE 3: We need to know if you're okay. We need to get you a medic so we can't go over and get you help unless we know you don't have a weapon.

LL: Clark died at the scene. Here is Stephon Clark's grandmother, Sequita Thompson, recalling what she heard that night and the horror at seeing her grandson lying dead in her backyard.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I went to the floor and it was fast, it was a lot of em, just go 'Pow pow pow pow pow!' He was right there dead. And I told them officers, you guys are murderers, murderers! You didn't say halt, you could've said halt. I heard the gunshots. They took him. And them two officers — they didn't know. God don't forget. They gon' reap what they sow. They gon' reap what they sow."

LL: The release of the video has prompted outrage, criticism, and many questions. Wesley Lowery is a national reporter at The Washington Post who's been covering this story. For two years he was also the lead reporter for the Black Lives Matter protests, which he chronicled in his book, They Can't Kill Us All. He's in Washington. Hello.

WESLEY LOWERY: Thank you so much for having me.

LL: You've seen the different video images, what stands out to you?

WESLEY LOWERY: Well a few things here. I think as is always the case with these videos it's striking how quickly the shooting transpires, how something goes from an interaction to someone being dead. What's interesting here also are some of the questions the video raises because this has happened at night. There are a lot of things we don't see, that we can't see, and that it's hard to tell what the police could see or what they could not. Beyond that question of if the police actually thought they saw a weapon, if they in the heat of the moment had the adrenaline pumping so much that they didn't properly assess or were not. But then beyond this question after the shooting, after they fired these 20 bullets, and there is a real question of whether or not they should have fired it all much less that many times, this pause the time they take before rendering aid to the person — Stephon Clark who they have killed. And then at the end of the video there is this piece of video where one officer says to another, “Hey we should mute our mics essentially.” And then this question of why that was the instinct to turn the cameras off after they had shot and killed this man who didn't have a gun.

LL: A lot of questions there. What do we know about the information police had when they began chasing to Stephon Clark?

WESLEY LOWERY: So to our knowledge and we still don't know everything to our knowledge the police got a 911 call about a man in the neighbourhood breaking windows in houses possibly committing robberies, vandalism, or something. They arrive and they encounter Clark at the site of his grandmother's house. Now what we see from the video is that he had been a few houses over when the video starts and then he gets back over to his house and that's where he encounters police. It's unclear if he fits the description specifically of who the police were looking for. It's unclear if he was the person police were looking for. It's also unclear if the police ever identified themselves as police. And then from that point he moves from the side of his house to the back of his house and six seconds later is dead.

LL: Now Wesley you've been keeping track of fatal shootings at the hands of police since 2015 in the Washington Post Fatal Force project. Tell me a little bit about the database.

WESLEY LOWERY: Of course. We launched the database after the police shooting Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri because we realized that there was no comprehensive statistics and certainly not real time statistics and who was being killed by the police and under what circumstances. So we're having this massive conversation about police shootings and police violence, but we're doing it without statistics and data. And so we begin this process by hand tracking every fatal police shooting we could confirm. And what we found was that there are about a 1,000 fatal shootings each year in America, that while the majority of people shot and killed are armed and the majority of people shot and killed are white that you do see a disproportionate number of black Americans being killed and a disproportionate number of unarmed black Americans being killed. What we saw also is that while there is an increase uptick in the number of these shootings that are being captured on video, one thing that is missing is true transparency that in most cases these videos are not released to the public. And so in this case the video was released relatively quickly and that was done in part because of a different shooting that happened in Sacramento a few years back where after that shooting they changed their policy to require the release of these body camera videos. And so what we've seen is some movement in terms of how departments handle these policies. But also at the end of the day every single day about three people are shot and killed by the police. We know they're disproportionately unarmed black men. And that there are these questions still about tactics and training that haven't been fully resolved.

LL: And we're seeing protest now and the mayor of Sacramento saying that there needs to be a full thorough investigation. What are you going to be watching for as this investigation into Stephon Clark’s death goes forward?

WESLEY LOWERY: Well I guess I think one of the key here is what are the statements of the officers, what did they say happened, what information did they have in that moment. But beyond that what we know is that shootings like this do not result in criminal charges and so there should be almost no expectation that will happen. The internal investigation may result in some discipline although that is also relatively rare in these incidents. We give our police officers wide latitude and when they make decisions that result in people being killed more often than not there are not repercussions for that. So the main thing to look for in these investigations is what additional information do we get because beyond that it seems very unlikely that there's going to be action and that something's going to happen. But we might get some more clarity on what they knew and what they did not know.

LL: Wesley Lowery, thank you.

WESLEY LOWERY: Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Wesley Lowery is a national reporter at The Washington Post and the author of They Can't Kill Us All. He was in Washington. We did invite the Sacramento Police for an interview today. They were not available, but we did get a chance to speak to them briefly yesterday. Here's Sacramento Police Sergeant Vance Chandler.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We made it a priority to release the video and audio of this incident. The significant portions — because we want the community and the public to have this information and we want everybody to know that we are committed to releasing the facts on this incident. We are committed to showing everyone that we are transparent, and we are an open book, and we want to move forward with our community.

LL: My next two guests are current and former law enforcement officers who have two very different views on what they believe unfolded that night in Sacramento. Michael Wood is a former officer with the Baltimore Police Department and former United States Marine. He is in Boston. And Ed Obayashi is a Deputy Sheriff and Special Counsel for the Plumas County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies. He has served as a use of Force expert for the U.S. government. He's in Plumas County, California. Hello to both of you.

MICHAEL WOOD: Thanks for having me.

LL: Ed Obayashi let's start with you. What did you think when you saw the footage that has been released related to the death of Stephon Clark?

ED OBAYASHI: I agree with Wesley and just about every other commentator who has viewed the video. The video right now is highly inconclusive in regards to a number of key facts. But the video eventually will be more relevant as dissected frame by frame. That can take some time of course. But based on what I saw the shooting to me appears very reasonable from the terms of the officers tactics, the circumstances, both leading up to the shooting and at the moment of the shooting. As Wesley pointed out myriad of factors involved here. What's important to realize is regardless of what the respective viewer might see or deduce from the helicopter video which is basically a sanitized representation of what occurred, everyone has to understand that since the advent of social media and body cams, etc, there tends to be an immediate rush to a conclusion by...

LL: Can I ask you this? The time from the first sighting of Stephon Clark to the first gun shot is a period of about six seconds. Is that enough time especially in the dark to fully understand the reality of what the police were seeing?

ED OBAYASHI: Time is one huge factor but also are all the other factors involved. Keep in mind video is a two dimensional representation of what occurred. You have to account for the fact that the officer is viewing it through his or her perspective in three dimensions: sound, sight, temperature, other environmental factors. Six seconds — you really have to go back further than that because the officers responding to a report of dangerous felonies at the moment. By definition, legal definition, these were dangerous, potentially violent felonies. Car break-ins and then the individual was attempting to break into a residence. The officers have to assume that's an innocent individual's residence in the middle of the night. It leads up to the moment where they're giving commands. They have to presume that this individual is potentially violent based on what they knew at the time.

LL: Ok. I want to turn to Michael Wood now. What do you think of what Ed Obayashi is saying?

MICHAEL WOOD: I would really like us to instead of defending the profession like the blind religion; I would hope that we could all agree that every police shooting is a failure of our mission and the public education of what police are to do. To say that this is under tactics is insanity. There is no training of police that teaches you this way. Let's go through the errors really quick. Conflicting commands they issued, they blindly followed a 911 call, a failure to follow basic firearm safety that every person knows, treat every weapon as if it were loaded, never point your weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot, keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you identify a threat, failure to identify a threat, they had sympathetic fire, failure to obtain, cover, concealment, now you have to wait for responding units before engaging. There was no need for an apprehension in a dark yard when there is a helicopter up top. We always wait for the helicopter to issue everything…

LL: You mean the helicopter. I just want to clarify that.

MICHAEL WOOD: Sure. We continue to value the lives of people over the lives of our citizens and the lives of our police officers over the lives of our citizens. Police are supposed to be heroes because they hesitate to pull the trigger not because they do it willingly. There is no dangerous felony to people from somebody that is committing property damage. His very words pointing out the problem of our culture being that we value the property of people with money and an eliteness over the value of oppressed classes and it's disgraceful, immoral, and it kind of makes me sick.

LL: A much different point of view, Ed Obayashi. Michael Wood is calling this a failure. What do you say to that?

ED OBAYASHI: With all due respect to Michael that is just a completely unrealistic and impractical viewpoint of the reality of what took place here. The Supreme Court United States has ruled consistently that other cases very similar to the facts involved in this one clearly justify the response of the officers in this situation. Yeah I agree with Michael, yes, the value of life that is just so obvious. I have stated this publicly in the national media before. I'm sorry, this will sound callous, but unfortunately it is the cost of doing business in our society.

LL: Ok we've got about a minute left for you both and I just want to ask you The Washington Post has been keeping track of the number of fatal police shootings. This year there have been 230 in total, including Stephon Clark. Last year 987 people were killed. 68 of them were unarmed and large chunk of those were black men. How do you propose to stop the shooting deaths of unarmed people at the hands of police? 30 seconds each gentleman. Why don't you start us off Michael Wood?

MICHAEL WOOD: I think we need to completely reenvision what policing is and the entire concept that we are using state violence under a comply or die situation for absolutely anything, and then making some justifications that legal makes right. I don't give a darn what the Supreme Court says. That does not mean it's moral or that it's within best practices of police training or in police protocol. A cop is hero because he values his life less than a citizen. Until we take responsibility — we have to step up and take responsibility. I'm tired of hearing police leaders shed accountability.

LL: Ed Obayashi, last word to you.

ED OBAYASHI: There is a perception that police shootings of unarmed black individuals have increased.

LL: There seem to be numbers that suggest unarmed black men are being shot in disproportionate numbers.

ED OBAYASHI: There hasn't been the uptick that certain statistical studies seem to show. Nevertheless, here's the bottom line, police do revere, respect life. To suggest otherwise…

LL: But how do you stop the shooting deaths of unarmed people at the hands of police. You said before, unfortunately that it just maybe a cost of doing law enforcement. Is that your view?

ED OBAYASHI: At the moment law enforcement, in particular California, we're ahead of the curve on training in regards to shooting protocols, tactics, etc. The rest of the nation follows California in that regard. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The bottom line is that when an officer's life is in danger tactics dictate that officers protect themselves...

LL: We have to leave it there. I thank you both. Ed Obayashi is a Deputy Sheriff and Special Counsel for the Plumas County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies. He has served as a use of Force expert for the U.S. government. He was in Plumas County, California. Michael Wood is a Former Sergeant with the Baltimore Police Department. He was in Boston. My next guest documents racist and gender-based state violence here in Canada. Robyn Maynard is the author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. She's in Toronto. Hello.

ROBYN MAYNARD: Hi there.

LL: What are you thinking as you listen to that conversation about Stephon Clark in Sacramento?

ROBYN MAYNARD: I think that I was just overwhelmed with that comment that the deaths of unarmed black folks at the hands of the police continue to be seen as the cost of doing business when we know that whether it is in Canada that black people are disproportionately being killed by the police. This is an issue of racial injustice of anti-black racism that we're still seeing manifested within police forces today. I think that it really speaks to I think the state of affairs that tells us that this can still be seen as the cost of doing business.

LL: Sitting here in Canada it is easy to feel insulated from this. What do you say to people who think this is a U.S. only problem?

ROBYN MAYNARD: I think that we need to realize that this is very much a Canadian issue as well. While police killings of black people are seen as an American issue, we know that the most recent study that came out of Ontario for example found that black people were 10 times more likely to be shot by the police than their white counterparts. We know that black communities have been protesting this for decades. We have the Black Action Defence Committee that came out after the police shooting of Sophia Cook and Michael Wade Lawson in the 1980s as well as in Montreal after the police killing of Anthony Griffin in the 1980s. This is an issue that's been gripping black communities for decades, right? You can actually even go back to 1946 you actually have the police killing of a black man in Africville who was shot because he was driving without a license. So we need to realize that this is something that's very much part of the fabric of Canadian society as well.

LL: What is the relationship like between the black community in Canada and the police overall?

ROBYN MAYNARD: Studies continue to be coming out of every city where they're looking at for example the reality of what's called carding or street checks. We see that black people's ability to circulate in public space is something that is you know very different than that of white Canadians. For example in Toronto, in Montreal, in Kingston, in Halifax statistics have shown us that black people were three or four times more likely to be stopped by the police. You know a recent Toronto Star article that came out only few years ago had black youth talking about how not only were they being stopped and carded by the police but actually being asked to leave neighbourhoods that they don't live in. We see a climate of hostility that black communities are still experiencing by the police more broadly that at times does escalate to excessive force and even to killings.

LL: Over the years that you've been involved in this issue which is over a decade, do you see things improving at all?

ROBYN MAYNARD: I think that we're starting to see more visibility to the issue in this moment. For example we're seeing visibility after the police killing of Pierre Coriolan who was in the midst of a mental health crisis. And then you know the police arrived and first shot him with a taser and then with rubber bullets and then…

LL: Where was this?

ROBYN MAYNARD: That was in Montreal just last year. We saw some visibility around that and of course the family is pushing for justice. There was just a video that was released around that. But I think that what we've seen is that there's too little change that police officers are still routinely exonerated after these killings that there really is an overall climate of impunity. Like for example if you look to the Sûreté du Québec which are the provincial police in Quebec there are just cases of dozens of women coming forward to CBC that were talking about allegations of sexual assault, of being dropped off outside of the areas that they lived in. And then again nothing has come of it. So it's not only by black populations but also Indigenous people that are really experiencing…

LL: Maynard I wish we had more time but I thank you for coming on today.

ROBYN MAYNARD: Thank you so much for having me on the show.

LL: Robyn Maynard is the author of the book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. She was in Toronto. Tom Stamatakis is the President of the Canadian Police Association, it represents 60,000 police personnel across the country. He's been listening in from Vancouver. Hello.

TOM STAMATAKIS: Good morning.

LL: What have you been thinking as you listened to what's happening with policing from Sacramento to right here in Canada?

TOM STAMATAKIS: Obviously there are a lot of people who have different perspectives of what happened not only in Sacramento but what's happening across the United States and Canada. I guess it's important to have different perspectives and engage in dialogue and try and understand where each person is coming to get to a place where we could continue to build relationships and public confidence and trust and deliver not just effective police service in both countries but also ensure that the services the government provides its citizens are the services that they want and expect.

LL: I am curious to know do you think the situation is different here in Canada than in the United States?

TOM STAMATAKIS: Oh I think it's absolutely different. There is certainly no evidence to support that there is a systemic bias against any group based on ethnicity or race or any other factor and the fact is in Canada police use force in less than one per cent of our interactions with the public on a year to year basis. And I think that's a good thing. And there are many reasons for that. Police in Canada have embraced the notion of community policing and public engagement for many many years and continue to try and engage in those kinds of activities. And the other key difference is we have in our policing structure we have a lot more independent oversight whether that comes from police boards that are made out of elected officials or citizens that are appointed from the community or whether they're independent agencies that are statutorily created to oversee incidents involving the police major, including complaints and major incidents.

LL: I just want to pick up on what you said only one per cent. But Robyn Maynard says that in that one per cent there is a disproportionate number of blacks and Indigenous populations that are being affected by this. What do you say to that?

ROBYN MAYNARD: I have a different perspective and I think there is research that suggests different things. In fact in preparation for an interview I did with The Fifth Estate I was provided with research that the CBC had undertaken where they reviewed fatalities involving the police in this country from 2000 to 2017. The data they provided me certainly didn't suggest that black people or Indigenous people were more likely to be involved in an incident that led to a fatality than anyone else. In fact most people that were involved in those kinds of incidents came from all backgrounds and typically in Canada we really only have one of those kinds of incidents per year. So I think it's a bit of stretch to suggest that the interactions are comparable to what occurs in the states. The key difference is there is a proliferation of firearms and there's a different culture and attitude towards firearms in the U.S. that we have managed to avoid... it makes a significant difference.

LL: Unfortunately we’ve run out of time, but I thank you for coming on. Tom Stamatakis is the President of the Canadian Police Association. He was in Vancouver. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for special edition of Q, live from the Juno Awards in Vancouver. I’m Laura Lynch, thanks for listening to The Current.

March 23, 2018 Episode Transcript

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