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The Current Transcript for May 19, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

One young fellow has spent seven days in an emergency hallway, which was a direct access from the ambulance bay. The lights never went off for this young man for seven days.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She's not talking about someone under interrogation. She's from the BC Nurses Union, outlining the consequences of overcrowding in hospitals in northern BC last year. This is a problem that knows no provincial boundaries. New information on Ontario hospitals shows many spend weeks at a time without enough beds. And in Regina one hospital is trying out a new idea to treat patients that seems not only to reduce crowding, but actually result in healthier patients. We’ll take you through that in a moment. Also today, it was a grateful Ken Bae who stood before the microphones in the US after 735 days in custody in North Korea.

SOUNDCLIP

Thank you all for supporting me, lifting me up, and not forgetting me. It's been amazing two years. I learned a lot. I grew a lot. I lost a lot of weight. But I stayed strong.

AMT: An American accused of trying to overthrow the North Korean government with his religion - he ended up in a North Korean labour camp, but came to see his imprisonment as a God-given opportunity to proselytise among his North Korean guards. Ken Bae can buy joins me in half an hour with what he saw and what he learned. And when the massive wildfire, that still rages, first forced evacuations from Fort McMurray we heard from people like Kim Clemens.

SOUNDCLIP

I did panic. I was in a complete panic. We were on the fifth floor of our apartment building and I wanted out, like, now. We didn’t even really have chance to pack.

AMT: We’ll check in with her and follow up on other stories we've been covering, in an hour. But first, decorum shoved aside in the House of Commons. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Trudeau apologizes after 'manhandling' Conservative and elbowing NDP MP in House of Commons

Guests: Chris Hall

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: No amount of escalation or mood in this House justifies my behaviour last night. I made a mistake. I regret it. I am looking to make amends and I fully hear the desire of not just her, but a number of members across the House, including the leader of the Official Opposition, that we take concrete measures to improve the way the tone functions in this House and the way this government engages with opposition parties as well.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the midst of another apology just about an hour ago in the House of Commons - the morning after, the night before, where we all saw him get physical with two opposition MPs. House of Commons video from late yesterday afternoon shows Mr. Trudeau walking briskly across the floor of the House towards opposition whip Gord Brown and grabbing him by the arm and in the process shoving NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau into a desk. She was clearly taken aback.

SOUNDCLIP

I was elbowed in the chest by the Prime Minister. It was very overwhelming and so I left the chamber to go and sit in the lobby. I missed a vote because of this.

AMT: As you can imagine, this event has dominated debate in the House today and triggered a bigger discussion. The CBC’s national affairs editor Chris Hall joins me now from Ottawa. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS HALL: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Now, this incident has underlined a real problem with how the Trudeau Liberals are using parliament right now. The opposition's been all over it this morning. Where do we start with this one?

CHRIS HALL: Oh, it's really hard, isn't it? There's a whole bunch of things that we could turn to. First of all, the Liberals, when they came to power, talked about having a greater respect for parliament and in particular an end to what they called the ‘legislative tricks’ that had been used by the previous Conservative government –proroguing to avoid a confidence vote, limiting debate on important measures, omnibus bills. Well, six months into office and the Liberals have used their own time allocation, called move to limit debate, on four separate occasions on four separate bills, including on Wednesday, over the right to a doctor-assisted death bill and that's what led to the outburst and the actions of the Prime Minister. But more importantly, the opposition says that there's now a motion the government is putting forward that if it passed, would effectively give government members complete control of the House, unchecked control of the House, and how it does business. And that's what they really were looking for this morning - in addition to the apology, a commitment that this motion would be withdrawn and the normal balance of checks and balances would be returned.

AMT: Well, I've been watching this morning and Ms. Ambrose and her fellow Conservative MPs are essentially saying that this government is taking away or trying to take away the tools of Parliament that are used to hold government accountable.

CHRIS HALL: Yes, she is.

AMT: But that’s the same criticism that the Liberals used to use on the Conservatives.

CHRIS HALL: Absolutely. It's exactly the same thing. And I went through some of those legislative tricks, as the Liberals call them, that the Conservatives employed with regularity. This actually goes a bit farther in some ways, because it does prevent the opposition party from its usual tactics of filibustering for everything. So the big issue in this new motion would be that a cabinet minister or their parliamentary secretary could move to extend sitting hours for debating an issue. And that means that rather than being able to drag out the debate over several days and to delay until you can force some kind of compromise, hopefully, if you're the opposition parties. This week allow the debate to continue without end and effectively allow passage, much more quick passage of a bill.

AMT: And now at the same time that the Liberals are accused of trying to take real control, Rona Ambrose has also made the point that despite having a majority, they almost lost a vote on Monday, that they kind of lost their way. What happened?

CHRIS HALL: That's right. Well the simple fact of the matter is not enough Liberals showed up in the House of Commons and instead of doing a count on their side, the opposition parties counted up and they figured they had an opportunity to defeat this measure. A vote was called. The Liberals scrambled back from around the city, in from the airport, and in the end it was a tie. 139 to 139. And the Speaker, who's a Liberal, had to cast the deciding vote. And the tradition is you continue to side with the government. But it shows a deliberate really don't yet have control of the House of Commons, that their house leader and their whip may not be as experienced as those on the other side, in terms of forcing embarrassing moments like that. And the opposition says, including the NDP, that this is one of the reasons now that the Liberals are trying to end other obstructionist tactics, if I can call them that.

AMT: Now, Conservative MP Peter Kent is also charging that the Prime Minister is in contempt of Parliament. What is the significance of that?

CHRIS HALL: Well, yeah, well, he went well beyond what is acceptable decorum - to walk across the floor of the House of Commons to grab one member of the opposition and in the process of doing that to elbow another who was a member of the NDP and a woman who clearly was hurt. She recoiled at the contact. And that's behind the apology. Now, Peter Kent is trying to escalate that by saying it's also a contempt of Parliament. We'll see how it goes. As it stands right now the Prime Minister has said he is willing to have his behaviour looked up by the Procedure and House Affairs Committee. This is kind of the internal discipline. He's willing to go there. He's apologized. He is not, though, agreeing to withdraw this motion or to change the kinds of measures the government wants to bring in to control the flow of debate in the House.

AMT: And so very Canadian. They are going to a committee.

CHRIS HALL: [Laughs]That's where things are done here.

AMT: Okay. And the NDP, briefly?

CHRIS HALL: Yeah. Very briefly, the NDP is so siding with the Conservatives. They want it to go to this committee. They don't think the apology is enough. They say that the Liberals are basically practicing the same kinds of tactics that makes it impossible to effectively hold them to account and to ensure proper public scrutiny of important bills, like this right to a doctor-assisted death.

AMT: Well, how things turn. Chris Hall, thank you.

CHRIS HALL: Thanks, Anna Maria.

AMT: That is CBC’s national affairs editor Chris Hall. He’s in Ottawa.

[Music: Sting]

Hospital overcrowding leads to poor patient care and low staff morale

Guests: Jim Hornell, Ron Taylor

SOUNDCLIP

Why is this Liberal government cutting hospital services, closing beds, and laying off frontline health care workers, Speaker, when major hospitals in Toronto and across Ontario are already overcrowded and filled beyond capacity?

AMT: Well, a different legislative session. That's the leader of the Ontario NDP Andrea Horwath challenging the provincial government this week. According to documents obtained by her party, hospital overcrowding is a critical problem in Ontario. Many major hospitals across the province are operating at over 100 per cent capacity. That is leaving patients waiting, sometimes days on end, for beds and care. The documents indicate Toronto's Hospital for Sick Kids, Brantford General, the London Health Sciences Centre have been among the worst hit and that raises questions over how overcrowding affects patients and those who are working to try to help them. Jim Hornell is the President and CEO of Brant Community Health Care System which oversees Brantford General Hospital and he joins us now. Hello.

JIM HORNELL: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: How often is your hospital operating at over capacity?

JIM HORNELL: Well, far too often, actually. It's sort of become a constant state for us. I would say that the last 400 days, 337 of those days we have been operating over our funded census.

AMT: And what does that mean? If you have 100 beds?

JIM HORNELL: On average, it's about 18 beds a day. We've hit a high point, at one point, where we had 59 on one given day, so it can fluctuate, but, in general, we operate at about 118 per cent over—188 perr cent of our capacity.

AMT: A day when you had like 59 people who you needed to put in a bed and you didn't have one?

JIM HORNELL: We had more people in our hospital than we were funded for. We found opportunities to put them in beds, but they certainly weren't in the most appropriate location.

AMT: And so how long can they be waiting before they’re transferred?

JIM HORNELL: It can vary. It used to be that it could be upwards of, in some cases, 80 hours and we've been able to bring that down significantly now through a number of incidents or initiatives. But I mean, we can still find people that are in an emergency room on a stretcher for upwards of 25, 30 hours.

AMT: And how does that affect the quality of care for a patient?

JIM HORNELL: Well, they’re certainly not in the best location. I mean, the emergency is not built for housing patients who need to be admitted to wards. It's a very public place. It's very open. The staff there are trained to handle emergencies and their focus is not really on admitted patients who no longer need the acute emergency care. And so it becomes a distraction for them. They become hypersensitive, concerned that errors take place, who's looking after the people when there are other emergencies happening around? So, it’s really is not the most appropriate place. And, of course, then you've got so many people living in such close quarters that it can present some infection control issues as well for us.

AMT: Oh, I hadn't thought of that. And what about your staff, if they're trying to deal with more people than you actually have staff for?

JIM HORNELL: Oh, it’s a significant impact on our staff. Our staff work very hard anyway because the type of people that come to hospitals now are far more complex than they used to be and have high demands and high expectations, as they should. So you see staff are working overtime. It impacts their sick time and I guess most importantly, Anna Maria, these people come because they want to care for people and when they feel they're not caring for people in the most appropriate setting, it’s frustrating for all of us when we walk through our emergency and see this type of thing. So they see that they need to make some changes to deal with these situations.

AMT: Now, we asked the Liberal government for an interview. No one was made available. In answering her critics Deb Matthews, the deputy premier of Ontario - who, as you know, used to be the Liberal health minister - listed how much money the province is spending on health care. She says a billion overall. She says more money is going for home and community care, more for community-based hospice and palliative care, I'm guessing to move spaces for hospitals. Do you see it making a difference?

JIM HORNELL: Yeah, we do, actually. And it's not only the money, because certainly more money would be would be helpful, but it also is encouraging us to look at doing some things differently. And we've actually been able to increase our funding, in some respects, through our ability to bring down wait times. The government is incenting hospitals through pay for results type of programs, where if you can bring your waits down, they reward that kind of behaviour to really incent. We're also recognizing that it's not just a hospital issue to solve, so putting funding into the community is really an important thing. If it affects my budget, of course, but I recognize that we're going to solve the problems of health care not within the walls of the hospital totally, but also to make sure that the agencies that are out there are sufficiently funded, that there's transition beds, that we're able to have programs. One of the successes we've had is with the health links and this was funded by the government and we've been able to significantly reduce our—

AMT: What’s health links?

JIM HORNELL: Health links is a program where we identify the top users in the system, the people who seem to keep coming back and are not getting their care, I guess, in the way they need it and we've taken and identified them. So now, electronically, when they show up we see that they are high users and have high demands and we're able to marshal the resources that we need and that they need immediately.

AMT: So they don't have to wait and then stay longer.

JIM HORNELL: Exactly. And we took our top nine and we were able to save the system about 400,000 dollars in just six months by making sure they get the service in the right place as opposed to languishing in in a hospital.

AMT: Well, that sounds good. But I've got a clip here that suggests that Ontario has a way to go. Natalie Mehra, you'll hear her in a moment, she's executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. She says Ontario has cut more beds than any other province in the country. Listen to her.

SOUNDCLIP

We now have the fewest hospital beds per person by far. And then we plotted Ontario against the OECD, so that's all the developed nations of the world, and Canada is low in the list. It's a right down in the bottom third, but Ontario is right at the very bottom. The only countries that have fewer hospital beds left than Ontario does are Mexico and Chile.

AMT: Mexico and Chile, what do you think?

JIM HORNELL: Well, I mean, you can’t argue with those statistics, but the thing is that it's not all about bed either. And I mean we're starting to understand that people need services and it's not just a measure of the system by the number of beds that exist. It's how they're accessing their services, where they're getting those services, are those services available for them when they when they need it? I mean, it is a challenge and it's still from coast to coast and it's not just an Ontario issue for sure.

AMT: It must take up a lot of your time trying to figure out how to make it better.

JIM HORNELL: It is and it’s frustrating for all of us in the in the system, but that's what we sign up for. Health care is a complex organization and there are multiple causes for the challenges we face.

AMT: Okay, Jim Hornell, thanks for speaking with me.

JIM HORNELL: Thank you very much.

AMT: Jim Hornell, President and CEO of the Brant Community Health Care System. It oversees Brantford General. He was in Brantford, Ontario. Well, hospitals may have the worst numbers in Ontario, but Ontario is not the only province with hospitals over capacity. One hospital in Regina has been finding a way to reduce the problem through a pilot project that’s trying to care for patients in a different way. Dr. Ron Taylor is the principal investigator of what’s called the Accountable Care Unit pilot project at the Pasqua Hospital. And he joins us from Regina. Hello.

RON TAYLOR: Good morning.

AMT: First of all, can you relate to these stories of overcrowding that we're hearing?

RON TAYLOR: Yep. It sounds like I could be just talking to the people here in my health region with the same conversation.

AMT: Okay. So you're trying something different called Accountable Care Unit. What is that?

RON TAYLOR: It's a way of reorganizing care on a unit that was the work of Dr. Stein in the US. So we are sort of challenging the paradigm of how care is provided on the ward by having a couple of physicians based on the ward and they provide care for all the patients on that ward. That allows a few other things to happen, because that's the foundation for the establishment of some routines on the ward where we are at the bedside with the patient on a daily basis at the same time with the entire care team. And we do that engagement with a script that has embedded in it a sort of safety quality checklist as well as engaging the patient in their own care. And those are the two most prominent things and then the last two parts of Dr. Stein's work, included having a unit run by a nurse and a physician, as opposed to just a nurse manager, and unit based metrics or establishing ways to measure our performance and feed it back to ourselves to see that we're doing what we’re supposed to do or areas we can improve on.

AMT: Okay. So, I'm not a healthcare professional, but I think what you're saying is that doctors do rounds, people do rounds every day, right. And you've changed that. The rounds are different now?

RON TAYLOR: Yeah.

AMT: Who shows up to see the patient now?

RON TAYLOR: At the very minimum, there is a doctor and the bedside nurse and that’s sort of a weekend phenomenon, because we don't have, on the weekend, the social worker, the pharmacist, and the physiotherapist that we have during the week. So during the week a group of people can be five or six large.

AMT: And why does that make a difference?

RON TAYLOR: I think the biggest thing is everybody brings their piece of information about the patient's care to the group at the same time, including the patient and their family. So we get the closest portrayal of the truth of the care because everyone can contribute. We don't miss pieces or we miss them less frequently.

AMT: So you know they're showing up, say, at8:00 in the morning and they're all going to be there and they're going to deal with the care together?

RON TAYLOR: Right.

AMT: Instead of waiting for the pharmacist to come later and maybe the physiotherapist isn't available, and the social worker is not available until tomorrow.

RON TAYLOR: Right. And then the communication happens face to face and not through notes in the chart. So we then all form a care plan together and we know what we're doing, at least the next 24 hours, in the direction of the care.

AMT: And how's that been working for you?

RON TAYLOR: So we've been doing this model now for about 12 weeks and we're excited by what we're seeing. We don't have hard number data yet, but I can talk about the qualitative experience of the staff and the patients and it's fairly overwhelming.

AMT: How so?

RON TAYLOR: Well, the story I like to tell has to do with the research coordinator who is collecting patient surveys as people leave the ward and after he'd been going through the first batch of them he actually came back to the nursing staff to ask to make sure that they weren't deliberately not giving surveys to people who might have had a bad experience because they thought the data was kind of looking skewed. So everything is routinely positive on those surveys. And then the staff themselves, I think we've untapped a big potential in their ability to provide care and they're very excited by the opportunity to work this way.

AMT: So you've essentially cut to the chase and you can provide the care faster?

RON TAYLOR: That's what we think we can do.

AMT: Okay. And how does affecting beyond the overcrowding then? You're seeing benefits to the patient in other ways?

RON TAYLOR: Well, I think we are going to have to see what happens with numbers, but we're trying to measure things that have to do with outcomes. So we're trying to measure length of stay change, of course, because that's a system area, but we're also trying to make sure that we use a safety quality checklist and we're doing the things that keep people safe in the hospital - so removing catheters and foleys appropriately and making sure they’re on preventative medicine to prevent clots, et cetera, which are best practices, but often get dropped into the background. So Dr. Stein's work actually showed that mortality improved when care was organized like this by a fairly significant number. It was a relative number of 50 per cent.

AMT: It does mean re-organizing the way things are done. How much resistance will you get?

RON TAYLOR: Well, this is change. So the journey’s been actually longer than the last few weeks. So we started this work probably a year and a half, almost two years ago now and the first battle or resistance to change was the frontline care providers, because they've always done it a certain way. We won those people over on the ward in the last twelve weeks. The other part is the system and everybody who does it a different way and so that of course there's physicians concerns about how this is being delivered, but I think those concerns are healthy because it shows that they care and that we have to stay engaged with those people and talk about our results, whether they're good or bad, and work together to solve these things.

AMT: Okay. Well, I know you're now halfway through, so it's maybe worth talking to you when it's finished, but it sounds promising. Ron Taylor, thank you

RON TAYLOR: Thanks for having me.

AMT: Dr. Ron Taylor, principal investigator of the Accountable Care Unit, a pilot project in the Pasqua Hospital in Regina. That’s where we reached him. Please weigh in on this if you’ve experienced at your hospital, if you’re a health worker dealing with increased workload or a patient who has really noticed this, or a loved one. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Post on our Facebook page. Or email us through our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. This is The Current.

Kenneth Bae on life in North Korean labour camp

Guest: Kenneth Bae

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

AMT: Still to come, life after fire - we check in with two people from Fort McMurray who are anxious about a return home. But first, an unexpected release.

SOUNDCLIP

If you are just joining us, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, two Americans who had been held in North Korea. Stunning news this morning, out of nowhere, they are coming home.

AMT: Well, the sudden release of two high-profile prisoners in North Korea caught CNN, as you just heard there, and much of the world by surprise in 2014. Kenneth Bae, one of the men mentioned, spent 735 days in captivity. He’s an American citizen originally from South Korea. His troubles began when he was arrested and then found guilty of trying to overthrow the North Korean government with his missionary work. As he worked in a North Korean prison camp, his case played out in the ebb and flow of tensions between the United States and North Korea. Kenneth Bae recounts his ordeal in a new book. It’s called Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea. Kenneth Bae is with me in Toronto. Hello. Welcome.

KENNETH BAE: Hello.

AMT: Tell me about the day you were arrested.

KENNETH BAE: Well, that day was November 3rd, 2012, and I brought in a group of tourists into North Korea and the day began as usual. As I was across over the border waiting for customs to clear and I discovered that I brought in a portable hard drive, computer hard drive as a mistake. I started panicking because the hard drive contained all my mission work for six years in China and North Korea and some footage, you know, photos and others. It turned out that later on I realized that I brought in some material, like documentary films, about North Korea that were produced by Western media that really offended them. That led to the arrest later on that day.

AMT: So you this you had been in 17 times before this with the tour group.

KENNETH BAE: That’s correct.

AMT: And this was time number 18 and you just-- You were supposed to leave that computer on the other side of the border and you forgot.

KENNETH BAE: Yes. I left the computer on the other side, but I forgot to take out my small portable hard drive out of my brief case and that’s what led to the arrest.

AMT: And so they got this. They started looking through it. Where did they take you?

KENNETH BAE: So I was taken to a remote hotel, nearby the beach side-- on the mountainside near the beach. And I was being questioned there starting from the next day for about four weeks, constantly from early morning until late at night.

AMT: And what kinds of things were they saying to you?

KENNETH BAE: They wanted to know why, what was the reason for bringing in such anti-North Korean documentary films and so on. And they wanted to know who's behind the scenes, who this is for. And I told them that I just made an honest mistake. I didn't mean to offend anybody. I didn’t even realize I had this kind of footage and video clips in my hard drive, because they were given by one of my friends a few years back, so I didn't realize I had those in.

AMT: So these documentaries that looked at North Korean life.

KENNETH BAE: That’s right.

AMT: They didn’t even realize some of your missionary work right away?

KENNETH BAE: At the time, they didn't realize what I was doing. They wanted to know a little more and then once they go through the hard drive then they realized I actually was working as a missionary. And that’s when they seriously took more attention and wanted to know more.

AMT: Okay. And give us the context here. To work as a missionary, as a Christian missionary in North Korea is something you have to do secretly?

KENNETH BAE: Well, they assume that everybody coming in who are Western, basically everybody is Christian, and that’s what they assume. And then everybody's a potential missionary. But as long as you do humanitarian work, you're there to help them, and help them with their economy, and their needs, they usually overlook those things, as long as you play by the rules. In my case, I brought people in as tourists. But one thing they started to see as a threat was I brought people there specifically to pray and worship in North Korea and they thought that was dangerous.

AMT: And so the interrogators started to demand that you actually start writing out what you were doing there. What was that like?

KENNETH BAE: So, from early morning until late at night I wrote hundreds of pages of confession and then they didn’t like my answer, I had to rewrite it. So that went on for about four weeks. So, I think I wrote more than 300 pages of confession and apologies and different things.

AMT: And so you begin by telling them you're running a tourism business, but eventually you confess to more. What do you actually tell them?

KENNETH BAE: Well, after being there for three days and I finally realized that they have all the information they need, so I decided to tell them that I have something to confess. I'm actually a missionary and pastor. I brought people here to see the land, meet the people, and pray for them and love them as Christ loved us. And they saw that as threatening. And then they started to see any other bigger plot is out there then.

AMT: You had something in your computer about Operation Jericho. It was sort of to reach out to people through prayer with the Biblical references.

KENNETH BAE: That's correct. [indecipherable] Because I kind of named it like a military operation, Operation Jericho sounds military style. But I explained to them it’s based on the scripture. The Bible talks about how Israelites went into the Promised Land instead of taking over the city and it would their strength and they were relying on God has done, what God asked them to do, by circling around and just to pray and then the wall came down. So I told them that this is metaphorical. It certainly wasn’t meant to physically invade or anything. We just, as a Christians, wanted to go there and just pray for the people and worship on behalf of North Koreans, because people in North Korea are not able to worship God. As we go there and worship, you know, we weren't trying to cause any problem to anybody. We just simply wanted to do that and they saw it as a bigger plot. They said, someone behind you told you to do all those things, didn't you? That was their questioning.

AMT: So in other words, they saw the walls of Jericho come tumbling down as essentially the North Korean government being overthrown.

KENNETH BAE: That's right. And then that's the way they accused me, that you were trying to overthrow the government through the prayer and worship, by organizing the Jericho tour, and then also telling people that you need to pray for North Korea. And is this almost like terrorism for them.

AMT: Yeah. I was going to say, you characterize it as, for them it was terrorism.

KENNETH BAE: Yes.

AMT: And what's the maximum penalty you faced then?

KENNETH BAE: I was told that I was facing life in prison or death penalty. This was the only penalty that will be given, but at the end I receive fifteen years of hard labour.

AMT: And you were brought to a labour camp. Tell us about that. What did you see when you first got there? How did they treat you?

KENNETH BAE: Well, after about a four and a half-month pre-trial period, after the conviction they sent me to the labour camp. I didn’t expect to go to the labour camp because almost every American who are charged and convicted never made it to the labour camp. So I was hoping to go home with some sort of US government effort to get me home, but instead I was sent to a labour camp. And the labour camp was for specialized labour camp for foreigners only. And so when I got there I didn't see any other inmate. I was the only prisoner in the whole camp and there were at least 30 guards working in the camp. So I receive a lot of attention from every single one of them. And I have to work from 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening, six days a week working at the farm, doing farming work. Later on in the winter time, I was shovelling the coal and digging the ground and doing different type of hard labour - carrying rocks and different things.

AMT: You have a lot of health issues, though. You had diabetes.

KENNETH BAE: I had diabetes and some bad problems and few other symptoms that I had. The doctor told me that I don't fit to serve at the labour camp at the time, but they sent me anyway. And I was serving at the labour camp for a few months. But my health deteriorated. I lost a lot of weight. I lost about closer to 50 to 60 pounds during that time and they ended up sending me to the hospital after that.

AMT: They immediately tried to take your identity away at that camp. What'd they call you?

KENNETH BAE: Well, you know, I was known as Prisoner 103. That was my name from that moment on.

AMT: And you were taken to hospital several times. You were suffering from malnutrition?

KENNETH BAE: Right. Every time I was sent to the hospital diagnosis came back as malnutrition, mainly. And so I was given the medications and IV and different things to recover. It was several months before I was able to regain my strength back.

AMT: What were you eating? What did they feed you?

KENNETH BAE: Well, first summer, they were a little generous. And because I was American and they gave me normal three meals a day, plus some snacks, like some bread and so on. But after that, you know, the portions of the meal were reduced and I realized that it wasn’t just me, but in the winter time they didn't have much to go around. A few vegetables and soup and rice mostly.

AMT: And the conditions?

KENNETH BAE: Condition of the labour camp - I consider it’s fortunate because it's for foreigners only. At least I had a bed and bathroom built in my cell. So, it wasn't like a labour camp that most of the defectors described as. So its condition wasn't as a bad, but I have to survive like daily by—Because by night time they kept the light. So I had to sleep with the light on and then there were some insect problems and different things I had to endure daily. So it was still prison and it was still difficult.

AMT: And they also kept the television going, right? They had propaganda running on TV in your room all the time.

KENNETH BAE: Yes. At the labour camp they have a TV watching hour in the evening, from 8:00 until 10:00 at night. So I have to watch a couple hours a day. And then when I was waiting for the trial, for about four and a half months, I had to sit in the chair and watch the propaganda channel all day long every day. Yeah, that was difficult to endure from 3:00 afternoon until, like, 10:30 at night.

AMT: You had no idea what was going on in the US, what people were thinking?

KENNETH BAE: Yeah, I had no idea for the first several months. And after, I received a couple letters from my family. They actually allowed for me to exchange letters after that. So then I realized that people were starting to be aware of my situation from the United States.

AMT: You're very calm as you tell this story now. The very idea of being in a North Korean labour camp all that time, it's just unimaginable. We've heard the stories and then to have you go through that, and hard labour every day out in the fields.

KENNETH BAE: Yes.

AMT: You're a very religious man. That's what got you through, isn’t it?

KENNETH BAE: Yes. My faith in God-- As you know I'm a missionary, and so early on my in my detainment God just assured me through the scripture that he would be my rescuer. So he pretty much said to not worry and I'll be your rescuer, no one will be harmed through this. So I had a promise from God from the very beginning. So whenever I lost hope and whenever I become too desperate, I always have to go back. And if that’s not enough then I usually spend in the morning, before I go out and work-- We call it the full armour of God, which means praying and worshipping and reading the Bible. They let me keep the Bible. So I had my Bible with me at time all times, after first months of investigation, so that really helped for me to sustain myself.

AMT: And this was all going on against the backdrop of other stuff going on between the United States and North Korea, and other stuff is putting it lightly. One of the stranger things that happened during your imprisonment was a visit from the former National Basketball star Dennis Rodman. He says he's a friend of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This is a bit of what he said on CNN at one point. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

DENNIS RODMAN: If you understand what Kenneth Bae did.

HOST: Yeah.

DENNIS RODMAN: Do you understand what he did in his country?

HOST: What did he do? You tell me. What did he do?

DENNIS RODMAN: No, no, no, no. You tell me! You tell me! Why is he being held captive?

HOST: They haven't released any charges

DENNIS RODMAN: Why?

HOST: They haven't released any charges.

AMT: Sounds like he did you more harm than good there.

KENNETH BAE: [Laughs] Well, you know, when I saw Dennis Rodman on North Korean TV it was very bizarre. And I saw him an exhibition game with former NBA players and I saw him singing birthday songs, Happy Birthday to You to Kim Jong Un. But I didn’t realize until later that he did make this remark that got international media attention for my case. So last time when the CNN asked me, how do you feel about this? And I said, I want to thank Dennis Rodman for being a catalyst for my release because of his rant and the attention on my plight was increased. And maybe he accidentally he became catalyst in a way.

AMT: And he maybe some sparked some outrage. It’s actually interesting because there's a Canadian pastor, as you know, Hyeon Soo Lim, who's being held by North Korea. He was sentenced to life with hard labour. You probably know more than anyone what he might be going through. What can you tell us about his case?

KENNETH BAE: I can clearly picture what he is going through at this time. It was so devastating to find out that he was put in the same prison that I was in. One thing that I know—

AMT: How do you know that he's in the same prison?

KENNETH BAE: When he did an interview with CNN I recognized two guards that came out with him, and I spent a lot of time with those guards before. And they are the same guards at my special pardoning ceremony as well. So I knew the guards. That means that he's at the same prison and I believe there's only one prison for foreigners anyway. And then there are a few rooms there but my room was the only room that had a TV in it, so he maybe stayed in the same exact room that I was in, doing exactly the thing that I was doing before.

AMT: And he's been there 15 months now.

KENNETH BAE: He's been there 15 months, that’s correct.

AMT: And you’ve been able to speak to his family, have you not?

KENNETH BAE: Yes. I was able to meet with his wife in South Korea briefly. I spent some time with her and encouraged her to stay strong and not give up the hope for him being released. And I also talked to his son over the phone a couple weeks ago. But I do believe that Pastor Lim will stay strong, his spirit is strong. But yet, one thing I heard is that he was sent to hospital because of his health issues and when he was visiting with the consular visit he kept shaking his hand and rubbing his hand and arm. I think he has pain, arthritis pain or something like that. I had exactly the same thing. So, I believe that the hard labour at the North Korea prison doing it for several months was probably extremely took a toll on his health.

AMT: And, of course, Sweden acts for Canada as it did for the US there in Pyongyang. But we asked the government to comment on what it's doing in relation to Pastor Lim and the government of Canada, they sent us a statement saying the government of Canada is concerned for his rights and well-being. We've been fully engaged on this case since it began. As Canada does not currently have an ambassador accredited, Sweden acts as protecting power and provides consular services on our behalf. Is that enough? What would you be advising the Canadian government to do?

KENNETH BAE: Well, I'm sure the Canadian government is doing everything they can so far, but for people waiting from this side, the family and church and everybody concerned for Pastor Lim’s case, want to see some action that happens soon so that he’ll be able to be released. I believe that in my case, based on my case, the reason why it took 735 days is because of timing issues, because of the hostile relations between US and North Korea. It was very intensified during that time. It was very difficult for any dialogue to happen at the time. And then there was a difference of expectation - what it would take for me for them to let me go. So, I believe the Canadian government does not have that kind of hostile relations with North Korean government. So I believe that if they're able to sit down and talk and there can be something that they can work out, some sort of way for them to let him go on a humanitarian basis.

AMT: You have said that the North Koreans aren’t really interested in hearing governments say their people are innocent. They want to hear an apology.

KENNETH BAE: Well, this is what, you know-- My take on it is that they convicted me and said, you say you did mission work but it's actually harmed us. And I say, oh, how is it? And they say, you brought people to pray, you had people believe in God, and all those things will jeopardize our national security because it’s like almost a injecting the Christian virus into the nation. And therefore, for them, I was dangerous and I was, for them, I was considered more like a terrorist. Pastor Lim has not done any type of-- He has not done anything like this, but they consider him dishonouring, disrespecting the leadership and therefore they're keeping him there. So, I believe that right now is the time to recognize that, at least, saying that, please, let the Pastor Lim go under humanitarian circumstances and base because of his health, rather than saying you’re holding an innocent man and we’re not going to negotiate anything like this. I think that would be difficult for them to accept that.

AMT: I wanted to ask you, what happened to the people who were named in your hard drive? There was one specific woman who you worked with who was making, she had been setting up an orphanage, a Christian orphanage. Do you know what happened to her?

KENNETH BAE: I don't know what happened to her. There was one lady who came to one of our training centres and she later went back to North Korea, wanting to start an orphanage for the street children in her town. She never got to start one, but last thing I was told by the North Korean government is that because she testified against me at the trial and then that she was corporative and they pretty much pardoned her in a way. So I was told that she actually went home. But there's no way of verifying whether that was true or not.

AMT: Do you worry about that?

KENNETH BAE: Yes, but I still go back to the promise of God that was given to me, that no one would be harmed through this. And everybody else that was involved in our ministry, later on I found out that everybody kept safe, so I’m hoping for the same result for her, that they will go after her or anything because she was just a person. [indecipherable]

AMT: In your conversations with God, you realized that maybe you were there to do work and you ended up speaking to those guards who you never thought you would be able to about God.

KENNETH BAE: Yeah. After being there for one year I realized that I wasn’t going home anytime soon, so I have to either accept-- Am I supposed to be here longer then am I willing to accept that? It was very difficult, but once I made this prayer after about three weeks of pondering this and said it’s not my will but your will be done and then use me and I give up my right to go home, God opened my eyes and I started to see those people, not as oppressor anymore, but as people who are lost without knowing God. So I was starting to have more compassion toward them, almost like a compassionate God came over and then God opened the door for me to talk about, you know, different issues. And later on I was starting to engage in conversation. They opened up quite a bit and I ended up doing some counselling, parenting counselling and different things, just became friends with the many people. And they started to wonder. So they started questions like, if you believe in God, do I get something out of it? If I believe in God, then do I need to pay anything to a church? And asking like, what's the benefit and what's the price? Why do you believe in God? They saw me working and worshipping and living. And they said, you're very different type of prisoner because you are the prisoner, we are the guards. Why do you seem happier than us? Where does your joy and hope come from? They started asking those kinds of questions.

AMT: Things they would have never been able to think about or know about if you hadn't been there. Had the government known, they might have kicked you right out of the country. Kenneth Bae, it was quite the ordeal. Thank you for writing about it and sharing your story with us.

KENNETH BAE: Thank you for having me here.

AMT: Kenneth Bae. His book is called Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea. He joined me in our Toronto studio. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online at cbc.cs/theucrrent.

[Music: Sting]

Checking in with Fort McMurray evacuees

Guests: Kim Clemens, Jeff Peddle

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

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We have rights not only to vote but also stand for election and obviously a term limit would impair that ability to run for office.

VOICE 2: My life is here and I've been here 47 years, almost 48 years. My girlfriend is here, my son is here, my family is here. My parents are buried here.

VOICE 3: She was following her GPS and was unfamiliar with the area, missing a turn. Instead of turning right, she went straight and that short section of road leads directly onto a boat launch into Little Tub Harbour of Georgian Bay.

AMT: Well, a taste of the Week That Was that has been on The Current and now it's time to talk about the stories that had you hitting your keyboards this week. To help me go through your tweets and posts and emails I'm joined by CBC National Medical Sciences correspondent and this week's Friday host, Kelly Crowe. You’re back, welcome.

KC: I’m back, thanks for having me.

AMT: Kenneth Bae, it's just so interesting. You know, three quarters of the way through his book he realizes, okay, I'm here, I wanted to meet regular North Korean people and tell them about God and I've got a captive audience in these guards and he starts to talk to them about God and they start to listen. Fascinating, a fascinating way to deal with imprisonment in such a place. Let's get to it. Last Thursday we talked about term limits. According to a leaked draft agenda, there is a push within the Conservative Party of Canada to debate a two term limit on their party leader at their upcoming convention later this month.

SOUNDCLIP

Historically speaking, one of the reasons why Prime Ministers, I think as the years go on, tend to govern in an increasingly authoritarian sort of manner. This affects Liberals as well as Conservatives is because they have this promise of endless power. They have a promise that they could theoretically govern forever, keep running for re-election, keep running for re-election, and I think that term limits, as we've seen in America, sort of impose a restraint and discipline on leaders makes them a little bit more restrained in how they exercise power and also makes them a little bit focused. They only have a set number of years in office and so they're going to make the most of them.

KC: That was political commentator J.J. McCullough, and that conversation led to a lively debate on social media. Abigail Barker posted on Facebook: I agree with this 100 per cent. Canada doesn't elect politicians in, they elect them out. It's been proven over and over again that leaders stay too long and become arrogant and then voters retaliate. Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien, Harper, it does not make for a healthy political environment.

AMT: @Mason5280 had a different perspective in tweets: There's already a provision limiting terms for politicians it's called voting.

KC: Betty Dondertman adds: Let's not Americanize our system. We vote for parties and there's no need to limit a leader’s term, that's not what's broken here.

AMT: Kristen Templin was against the proposal for a different reason and she writes: Great leaders are hard to come by and when you get one don't let her or him get away. Who could object to term after term after term of a good thing for the country?

KC: We’ll give the last word to Stephen Garlick with this quip: Make the term limit two recessions.

AMT: Well, and we want to take a little time to reconnect with some people from Fort McMurray.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You could see the flames and the wall of fire. Boulder Hill, which is an absolutely crazy scene there. So, at that time we just went door to door and started to get every resident out.

VOICE 2: I did panic. I was in a complete panic. We were on the fifth floor of our apartment building and I wanted out, like now. We didn’t even really have a chance to pack.

AMT: Well, that was Jeff Peddle and Kim Clemens, two people we spoke with the day after Fort McMurray was evacuated. Many of you were moved by their interviews. Today we want to check back for an update. You’ll remember Jeff Peddle was managing a 500-unit apartment complex in Fort McMurray. He took to the road north out of the city and ended up in a camp for a few days before being flown to Edmonton. That's where Jeff is today, he's in Edmonton. Kim Clemens drove south down Highway 63 to Edmonton and then she moved on to Stettler, Alberta and I think she's somewhere in between right now. Hello, Jeff. Hi, Kim.

GUESTS: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: Kim, let's start with you. Last time we spoke you were at a hotel in Edmonton. Now you're in Stettler, why Stettler?

KIM CLEMENS: I had a friend from Fort McMurray who asked if I was having a hard time in the hotel. The hotel was full of people and it was really busy and I was having a hard time gathering my thoughts and a friend invited me down to stay there, and they welcomed me with open arms and I’m in a hotel here in Stettler and this town is just absolutely amazing. It's one of the good things that came out of this whole thing.

AMT: Oh, that's good to know. And having a hard time with it, it's just been kind of overwhelming, yes? What kinds of things have you been going through?

KIM CLEMENS: Some things like just wondering what my house is like. I’ve just found out that it's standing. I don't know if the sprinklers went on, we don't know if we have any stuff left, dealing with money issues and trying to figure out when my fiance is going back to work, and when we're going to get settled in, and my animals have been sick, it's just one thing after another.

AMT: That's right. You took some guinea pigs and a dog, right?

KIM CLEMENS: [laughs] Yes.

AMT: How are the guinea pigs?

KIM CLEMENS: The guinea pigs have settled down, there doing okay. The dog actually just went to the vet yesterday still having stomach issues, so that was another big vet bill but, hopefully he'll be coming around soon.

AMT: Now, Jeff you went north and then you had to get out of there, too?

JEFF PEDDLE: That's correct. When we were leaving, the gas station had just blown up going south, so we actually couldn't go down. We went up north and after the third night we got flown out. We stayed in an office complex for the first three or four nights, then went to a hotel like Kim [laughs]. I find this very funny but we went to Stettler and we’re 20 minutes outside of Stettler and some amazing people we met gave us their summer home, so we’re actually residing just 20 minutes outside of Stettler as well.

AMT: Oh, okay so you are both talking about the outpouring of generosity here.

JEFF PEDDLE: We didn't even know these people, Karen and Shane, and a mutual friend hooked us up and they took us into their home in Edmonton and then they drove us down to their summer home, and again, someone had given us a car from Edmonton because our three cars were up north, and they just open their home to us, you know complete strangers, and said here are the keys, make yourself at home, stay long as you want. I think the biggest thing that touched us was the generosity of people from Edmonton and across Canada and the outpouring of support and love that we received. It was just incredible.

AMT: What about you, Kim?

KIM CLEMENS: The biggest thing for me was the kindness of everybody. I just couldn't believe how kind everybody was. It started in Edmonton but Stettler was an amazing outpouring of—everyone has just been unbelievable to us. It’s the only thing that keeps you from stopping and crying, and worrying, and stressing out about things. It’s all the people who have helped us all across the province that have really kept us going. I don’t think they get enough praise for what they’re doing because they are really working hard. It’s a constant thing, everywhere you go, even in this tiny town, you see everyone supporting Fort McMurray like crazy. It’s so helpful to us because it gives us a moment of freedom from all of our stress

AMT: Jeff, a lot of people really just thought of Fort Mac as a place where the oil patch does its work.

JEFF PEDDLE: I think that was the biggest mind change for people to see; that there is regular people there, regular folks there, not everybody made two or three hundred thousand dollars a year working in the oil field. We have the Jamaican restaurant chain, Max and we can't wait to get back and rebuild, reopen, and start serving food and people again. So, I think most people are-- I think yesterday when the announcement came to go back, people were just ecstatic. For us, it was like bricks were lifted off our back, it was like thank God, finally we can go back. It's like an end to a means, but I think Fort Mac will come out stronger, and certainly much better. Alberta is strong, Fort McMurray is strong, it’s certainly a momentum I think that will carry on through.

AMT: Do you know what happened to the apartment complex that you manage? Is it okay?

JEFF PEDDLE: Yeah, right now it's still standing and still in good shape. Our restaurant is in the bottom, so we know it's still good. The biggest thing now is the interruptions obviously with the food and the spoilage and that sort of stuff that we’ll go through. I think as a landlord, we can go back a few days early, so I'll go back with a crew to kind of get things ready, and up and running and ready for all the tenants and owners to come back.

AMT: Right, and the restaurant you and your wife run, so you can go as business owners to get in there ahead of time a little bit to see.

JEFF PEDDLE: Well, we're certainly hoping. Like anything you know, it's our livelihood and it’s what we live on, and so we're hoping to get it open as soon as we can start to start pushing meals out the door to you know, get money back in our pockets.

AMT: And at the same time, this fire got bigger then it seemed to go back and was threatening parts of the city again. Just the size of this fire, what do you think as you watch the coverage of this stuff? Or do you watch?

JEFF PEDDLE: [laughs] Well, where we are in Stettler, we have no T.V. or radio, but we have amazing friends in Newfoundland and across Canada that send us texts and tweets, and we have friends up in Fort McMurray working that usually every fifteen to twenty minutes, we get texts or emails or photos. So, we've been certainly in the loop, but I think we find out first in a remote cabin before anybody else. We're certainly in the loop of what's on the go and I think everybody was shocked that the fire was growing you know, some days 20-25 percent overnight, it was insane. I think it's going to burn for maybe weeks or months to come because it’s just so big that it creates its own momentum as it goes.

AMT: Kim, Jeff's anxious to get back there and pick up the business. Do you really want to get back? Do you want to see what happened to your place?

KIM CLEMENS: I do and I don't. I really want to get back to see if I have anything I can save out of my place, but I have a heart condition so I'm obviously not going to be allowed to live there as soon as some people, which is a little discouraging, especially after the last evacuation, that was extremely discouraging. I am right in the middle Stettler, so I'm constantly watching the news and constantly keeping an eye on things. The last evacuation was really, really discouraging because it's just going to be so smoky and so hard for me to manage. I know that my fiance will have to go to work at camp and I'll have to find an alternate place to live and probably stay in Stettler until the smoke is really cleared like really, really well.

AMT: Yes, because they are saying people going in now have to be fitted with gas masks on.

KIM CLEMENS: There is no way I'm putting my animals into that, either. Obviously there are no gas masks for guinea pigs or dogs. I'm going to go in hopefully for a few hours to check things out and see what I can grab and pack up if there is anything left, and do my insurance stuff and all that crap, but that's about all I’m going to do.

AMT: Well, you still both have a lot to go through but it's good to hear how you've been so welcomed by so many people and the generosity that you talk about, it's interesting to hear your thoughts on all of that.

KIM CLEMENS: It’s been amazing.

JEFF PEDDLE: I think you know, we're truly blessed that they saved as much cities as they can. They probably have 2,500 to 3,000 workers, firefighters, first responders up there and the Premier and Scott Long, and everyone has just done an amazing job of keeping everybody updated. This was a tragedy, but it certainly brought Canada and Alberta and everybody close together.

AMT: I really appreciate you talking to us today and I hope things work out well for each of you. Jeff and Kim, thank you.

GUESTS: Thank you.

AMT: Jeff Peddle and Kim Clemens, Fort McMurray residents both ended up in parts of Stettler, interesting.

KC: So, moving on to the next story. On Monday we heard from a homeless man in Toronto who calls himself Captain. After almost 48 years in Canada, he's facing deportation after being convicted for a crime that landed him in jail for eight months.

SOUNDCLIP

It was break and enter which I broke into my own place. It was a cold night and I had a restraining order from another tenant there and I even got friends of mine to go back to get my things and she wouldn't let me get my stuff back. It was cold outside, it was freezing, and I was a little drunk, and I broke the little window in my room and climbed in and went to bed.

AMT: Well, Captain was ordered deported because under Bill C-43, a law passed by the former Conservative government, non-citizens are to be removed after serving a six month jail sentence. Despite being brought to Canada when he was nine, Captain never got his Canadian citizenship.

KC: Well, that interview sparked a mixed reaction from our listeners. Mona Rahman tweets: This was heart wrenching to listen to. Where is the compassion and mercy? He served his time, why punish him further?

AMT: Elizabeth Block in Toronto writes: When someone has come to Canada as a child, if they commit a crime it's Canada’s problem.

KC: Many of you disagreed. Margaret Long in Georgetown, Ontario writes: Sorry I cannot drum up much outrage for this current topic. It's not like he's being sent to a country where he does not speak the language or is war torn with poor human rights. The Captain will be well taken care of, maybe a change of scenery will help him turn his life around.

Canada's response to political turmoil in Ethiopia

Guests: Felix Horne

AMT: Well, we've got another update now.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET EVANS: A lot of Canadian aid dollars are actually going to Ethiopia, that is something people remember from the Eighties and will say to you, you know we've always appreciated that help and I think Canada now in 2015, in any case was the fifth largest contributor of humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia and there are also small projects.

AMT: That was CBC’s foreign correspondent Margaret Evans speaking with us last month about Canada's response to the devastating drought in Ethiopia. Canada is one of the largest humanitarian aid contributors to Ethiopia. According to the Canadian government, the relationship with Ethiopia is designed to encourage democracy and human rights in a country that has known decades of war, dictatorship, and starvation. But Ethiopian politics is taking a harsh turn and some are questioning Canada's relationship. Felix Horne is a researcher on Ethiopia and Eritrea for Human Rights Watch. He joins us from Ottawa, hello.

FELIX HORNE: Good morning.

AMT: There's a big crackdown on protesters by the Ethiopian government. When did it start?

FELIX HORNE: It started in November of 2015. It's sort of spread throughout Oromia ever since, which is Ethiopia's largest region. We now think it's encompassed about 500 locations and the protesters are met with lethal, excessive use of force by security forces, so we think that hundreds of protesters have been killed, many of them children, and that tens of thousands have been detained. It's a massive crackdown.

AMT: What are the protests about?

FELIX HORNE: So the protests originally were about something called the Addas Ababa master plan which is this urban plan that was designed to manage the growth of Addas, but what it was going to entail is an increase in the size of the municipal boundary of about 20 times, a massive increase. Protesters were concerned that farmers who lived in that area were going to be displaced from their land without any compensation, something that has been happening in that area for the last decade. But, of course as the protests spread and the security forces use more and more force against the protesters, the issues protesters were concerned with sort of changed into historic long term grievances about human rights issues, and about the large amount of detainees, and different problems that the Oromia population faces.

AMT: And you say that they've killed 400 people?

FELIX HORNE: We believe that yes, they've killed hundreds of people. It's very difficult to get exact numbers because of course, the Ethiopian government restricts this type of research; they restrict international journalists, international NGOs and domestic NGOs for researching this type of thing, but yes we believe that hundreds of people have been killed.

AMT: They have cracked down on journalists and any information getting out. How are they doing that?

FELIX HORNE: They’ve done a very good job of ensuring that nothing gets out so, the last four or five years, they've done everything they can to sort of eliminate basically independent media inside the country, they used trumped up criminal charges against journalists, they threaten, they harass, and journalists have to choose between sort of self-censorship, arrest, or exile. They've also passed laws that make it very difficult for NGOs that engage in human rights work to do work inside of the country. You know, recently they've been jamming different television stations that the Diaspora operate, trying to get information inside of the country, and they've also recently been blocking social media, so Facebook, Whatsapp, Viber, played a very important role in getting information out from Oromia during the protest, but also in sharing information within Oromia. Now that they have blocked that, there's very little information that's coming out of this region.

AMT: It's interesting you say for journalists it's a choice of self-censorship, or exile, or jail, so a lot of people are just pulling back because it's too dangerous.

FELIX HORNE: Yes, exactly. I mean, if you look at these protests in Oromia, it's been the biggest political crisis to hit Ethiopia since the 2005 elections, and within the Ethiopian media, there has been very little coverage of it other than just sort of regurgitating the government's line, which is largely that the protests are not peaceful; that there is other sort of motivations behind the protesters, and certainly our research has found that although there have been some acts of violence by the protesters, they've been predominantly peaceful.

AMT: Now, there is an insurgency in Ethiopia. They've got an anti-terror law that they brought in and they say to deal with that?

FELIX HORNE: Yeah, I mean the there's been an anti-terrorism law in place since 2009 and the problem is that they're using that law to charge, to crackdown, on legitimate forms of dissent. So, we’ve seen in the last month that a number of opposition leaders have been charged under the law. One of them is that Bekele Gerba, who is the deputy chairman of the Oromo Federalists Congress which is the main opposition party in Oromia, and he's a staunch advocate for nonviolence. To be charging him under the anti-terrorism law just sends completely the wrong message to those protesters.

AMT: Canada is one of the largest humanitarian aid contributors to Ethiopia, should Canada be trying to intervene here on some level?

FELIX HORNE: We would certainly like there to be a much more robust response from Canada and from the other Western countries. I mean, turning a blind eye to the repression that's going on is incredibly problematic for Canada’s strategic interests, whether that's humanitarian assistance, development assistance, or security. If you think of the protests, I mean it's had a massive impact on education; on health care. You know, there was one young girl I talked to, a Grade 8 student, who was telling me that there are 28 students in her class and after the protests happened in her community, 12 of those were arrested, one of them was killed, a number ran away and now there are only four students left in her class. The teacher was also arrested, so the there's been no education happening. As a result, she decided to flee the country. It has had a massive impact on sort of Canada's strategic interests in that region, so yes we would hope there would be a much more robust response from Canada.

AMT: And the Ethiopian government says about ten million Ethiopians require food assistance. So, how do you how do you provide food assistance without encouraging the government in this way? What can Canada do?

FELIX HORNE: I think certainly the humanitarian response is obviously very critical, but there's Ethiopia and Canada and other Western nations. There are so many different facets to the relationship and that gets Canada a seat at the table. I think there has always been the sense that if you want to have an impact on Ethiopia; if you want to improve their human rights situation, that you have to have this kind of this quiet dialogue. You have to gently push them in the right direction. We saw over the last decade, that just hasn't happened so what we would like is for Canada and other steps to be much more assertive in their response. What we're seeing is, when there's no ways to peacefully express dissent and there's no independent media, no independent civil society, the courts are not showing independence in these cases, and peaceful protesters are being shot by security forces, there's just there's no other place to peacefully express dissent and that's a huge problem if you think of the long term trajectory of Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa or more widely, so we hope that Canada would sort of realize that and be much more assertive in trying to push Ethiopia in the right direction.

AMT: Of course, it’s hard to get stories out of there, as you say. I remember Margaret Evans saying that when she was there it's very hard to move around, it's not easy once you're in there for the government to let you do the reporting that needs to be done.

FELIX HORNE: And that's the other issue. When you do get there, when you do get a visa, when you are able to go to the place that people there are afraid to speak to you because of the fear of reprisals and of course yes, you frequently have people that are following you and wondering what you're doing. There have a number of international journalists detained during these protests as well.

AMT: Okay, well Felix, thanks for bringing us up to date.

FELIX HORNE: You're most welcome.

AMT: Felix Horne, researcher on Ethiopia and Eritrea for Human Rights Watch, he's in Ottawa. Now we did ask the Ethiopian ambassador to Canada for a comment. We were told he was out of the country and not available. We did contact the Parliamentary Secretary for Global Affairs Canada, no one was made available to us.

KC: We have time for feedback on one more story. It's usually on the show. We discuss society's growing overreliance on global positioning systems and how it's affecting our brains. Roger McKinlay, a satellite communication and navigation consultant talked about the benefits of teaching good old fashioned navigational abilities.

SOUNDCLIP

Naval colleges are still teaching people to stand on a deck and use a sextant and take sightings of stars, which is no bad thing either.

VOICE 2: It primes your brain to think the right way. You're not just following instructions from a machine, you're aware of what's around you. Navigation is very much dependent on being alert. We ought to regard I think some of the navigation skills as some traditional skills which is really worth having because they help us think in a very clever way.

AMT: Well, I didn't realize naval colleges were still using sextants in their classes but there you go. Our story on GPS had some of you taking a trip down memory lane. Kate Sherwood writes: When I was a kid we could sit in the front seat if we read the map which was a big deal back then. GPS is not the same thing.

KC: Efren Henry from Sarnia, Ontario shared the moment he realized he'd become too reliant on GPS: In 2006, I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and I got a rental car with a GPS. I immediately started using it for a week, it was delightfully convenient. The next week when I flew into Harrisburg again, I got a new car. This time with no GPS and I couldn't find my way around. This is when it dawned on me that using the GPS would mean that I would not be exercising my inborn natural human navigation skills. I decided I will never depend on the car GPS again.

AMT: There you go. Cathy Stewart tweets: I agree that people can overuse technology, but lots who are really challenged with directions find it a lifesaver.

KC: And lastly, Penny Lavelle from Saskatoon writes: About a year and a half ago, just after we'd moved to our new home, our son came for his first visit. Alas, using GPS, he wound up at a nearby cemetery and funeral home. We were happy to remind him that his parents weren't there yet.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: [laughs] That’s a good place to start reading credits, I'm not in the cemetery yet. It's time to give credit where credit is due. This week The Current was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Julian Uzielli, Sarah Grant.

KC: As well as Josh Bloch, Pacinthe Mattar, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Marc Apollonio, Hamutal Dotan, John Chipman, and Karin Marley.

AMT: And special thanks to our network producer Michael O'Halloran in Calgary, The Current's writer this week is Shannon Higgins. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our technician is Gary Francis and our studio director this week is Gord Cochrane.

KC: Our senior documentary editor is Joan Webber. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. And the executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: To add anything you hear on The Current, weigh in by tweeting us @TheCurrentcbc or posting on our Facebook page. And if you want to join the conversation about our season long project Ripple Effect, make sure to use #ripplecbc. You can find all our Ripple Effect stories by going to cbc.ca/rippleeffect.

KC: While you're there, you can subscribe to our podcast or email us your thoughts by clicking on the contact link.

AMT: Kelly Crowe is this week's Friday host of The Current. She is, in her day job, the CBC National Medical Sciences correspondent and that is today's edition of The Current. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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May 19, 2016 full episode transcript

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