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The Current Transcript for October 14, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

LAURA LYNCH: I'm Laura Lynch you're listening to a special election edition of The Current. This is Staying Afloat, an election town hall about housing, poverty and the cost of living in one of Canada's fastest growing cities. Today, we are coming to you from the Westminster Savings Theatre at Simon Fraser University in Surrey, British Columbia.

[Applause]

LL: For much of its 140 year history, Surrey has played second fiddle to its bigger sibling, Vancouver. But not for long. This bustling city on the south side of the Fraser River is growing and growing fast. 1000 people a month, last time we checked. If it continues at that rate, Surrey will be the largest city in B.C. in under 10 years.

[Applause]

LL: Now people are coming to Surrey from across B.C., across Canada and from all over the world attracted by jobs culture and of course opportunity. But like a lot of Canadians a growing number of Surrey residents are struggling. Real estate prices have skyrocketed in recent years. And a community that used to be an affordable option feels less so by the day. And that's what we're here to talk about: housing, poverty and the cost of getting by in one of Canada's fastest growing communities as Canadians prepare to vote. So we're going to give yourselves one more round of applause and let's get down to business.

[Applause]

'I'm not a one-issue voter': U.S. Republicans divided over Trump's decision to pull out of Syria

Guests: Nicholas Fandos, Alice Stewart, Rick Wilson

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I'm heartbroken. I, in fact, I called my chief of staff and he had to pull my name off the I support Donald Trump list. I mean this is just, this has just shocked, embarrassed and angered me.

LL: Republican Congressman John Shimkus is taking his criticism of Trump further than many of his colleagues, but he's not alone.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Congresswoman Liz Cheney called the decision "a catastrophic mistake" and Nikki Haley, President Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted "We must always have the backs of our allies if we expect them to have our back. Leaving them to die is a big mistake."

LL: The big mistake according to those critics is deserting its Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS by pulling U.S. troops out of the border area between Turkey and Syria. The move has allowed Turkey to launch an offensive into northern Syria to eradicate Kurdish control of the region and is creating a crisis. It's just the latest presidential action drawing ire, even with an impeachment inquiry underway. It's that decision that has some major Republican lawmakers distancing themselves from the president. Nicholas Fandos is a congressional correspondent for The New York Times and he's in New York City. Hello.

NICHOLAS FANDOS: Hello. Good morning. Thank you for having me.

LL: How much of Republican support is the president losing over this military action?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: Well I think to answer the question you have to keep in mind that throughout his presidency, foreign policy has been one of the areas Republicans have been most willing to criticize the president about. He does not have traditional Republican views on the Middle East or a lot of foreign policy areas and priorities across the country. And what we've seen is that very few are willing to pull their support entirely from the president even if they disagree on foreign policy issues don't criticize him for it. We've seen quite a bit of criticism, more I would say than any other move in his three years as president, around this, but only one member who you highlighted at the beginning of the broadcast, John Shimkus has fully pulled his support from the president.

LL: Why is foreign policy an area where Republicans are more willing to stand apart from the president?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: Well it's a good question. I think that the kind of easiest answer that we in the press have arrived at is that it's an issue that frankly at this moment in time in the United States doesn't resonate as strongly with voters as some of the anti-corruption, tax, health care issues that the president has focused on and that seem to be deciding elections. So I think Republicans feel that Republicans who are not the president to it there are yes big consequences for the world. And that is some of his views could potentially be shaped by them, but there's less risk for them sticking their neck out and crossing the president on foreign policy than it would be on domestic issues.

LL: Well does it have any more impact though when it is folded in against the context of the impeachment inquiry?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: Right. Well that's the kind of auspicious or inauspicious timing of all of this that has a lot of folks speculating in Washington about what it means for Trump's base with the elected officials of the party. I mean he is facing one of the biggest threats of his presidency now and a fast moving impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives that the Democrats are leading and Republicans have largely either stood by the president or withheld comment you know out of courtesy and perhaps more cynically out of their own self-protection to see where that story goes. And in the middle of it he makes this decision that most of the view is utterly disastrous that reminds them of all the ways he's unconventional and impulsive as. A leader and you know I think it's clear that's not a it's not a good thing for him as he faces impeachment and needs to hold his party together if he wants to survive in office. Whether or not it will ultimately have the effect of helping you know increase some space between Republican senators and House members and the president or even leading them to turn their back to him. That remains to be seen.

LL: So how is President Trump responding to his Republican detractors?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: So his response has kind of fallen into three different buckets. You know to the most vocal detractors like Senator Mitt Romney, who's the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has been a strong critic of this president and his foreign policy. The president has has angrily lashed out attacked him on Twitter called for him to be removed from office removed from the party called him basically some dirty names. Then there are you know other closer allies Lindsey Graham senator from South Carolina. Others like him who have criticized this move. And you know Trump has has basically tried to obfuscate or explain himself and say it's not as bad as you think. And now over the weekend we saw him on Twitter acting as if he will support an effort by Senator Graham and other Republicans and Democrats to sanction Turkey for what it's done or at least that he was open to that. So it's Trump trying to move you know after first doubling down and defending himself trying to backtrack a little bit, but what we're hearing from Republicans is that that's not enough to satisfy them.

LL: What do they want?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: Well they feel a mistake has been made here and you know I think they would like to punish Turkey in a hard way in the short term, but they feel essentially that the president made a terrible mistake to forsake an important American ally that's going to put Europe and the United States potentially at risk. And I don't know that any Republican would tell you that there is a quick easy solution to undoing that now, which is part of why they're so livid.

LL: And when you talk about being at risk, you're talking about what we're seeing now is the release of ISIS supporters, ISIS sympathizers in the region.

NICHOLAS FANDOS: That's exactly right. So I think that there's a fear of that in the same way that in Iraq after President Obama drew down forces there that the Islamic State was able to kind of coalesce and rise up and assert itself as a power in the region that the United States will be leaving a vacuum here in Syria that would allow ISIS to gather its forces again and threaten you know Europe and the United States in the same way that they had that several years ago.

LL: Nick, Congress is back this week after a break. What are you looking for in the week coming up?

NICHOLAS FANDOS: So there's a couple of different things that I'll be looking for. One, we expect the House of Representatives to vote on a bipartisan rebuke of the president over his actions in Syria. Both lawmakers in the Senate and the House could be working to draft introduce and start moving through the legislative process sanctions to punish Turkey and its economy for this move in Syria. At the same time the impeachment investigation that we alluded to earlier is going to be marching forward at full speed. There's a long list of depositions witnesses this week that will take place behind closed doors. And the Democrats are going to look to continue to build their case that at least pertaining to Ukraine, President Trump exploited the forces of American diplomacy for his own political benefit.

LL: Another busy week for you. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

NICHOLAS FANDOS: It certainly will be. Thanks for having me.

LL: Nicholas Fandos is a congressional correspondent for The New York Times. We reached him in New York City. And I'm joined now by two Republican strategists. Rick Wilson is the author of Everything Trump Touches Dies and he's the editor at large for The Daily Beast. He's in Tallahassee, Florida. Alice Stewart is a CNN political commentator who has been a communications director for several Republican presidential campaigns. She's in Boston. Hello to you both.

ALICE STEWART: Good morning Laura.

RICK WILSON: Good morning.

LL: Alice I'll start with you. Do you still support President Trump?

ALICE STEWART: I do. I do simply on policies that he ran on and the policies that he vowed to to enact as president, for the most part the ones that are important to me he has followed through on. And that is Supreme Court nominations that is religious liberties rolling back federal government regulations and a lot of what he is doing with regard to the economy. Now look Laura, I'm extremely vocal on my opposition to the way he carries out a lot of his policies. I strongly oppose what he's currently doing right now with regard to withdrawing troops out of Syria. So some of his foreign policy positions I do not support, but overall with regard to the conservative Republican policies that he is implementing, I do support.

LL: OK Rick Wilson, how solid do you think President Trump support is among Republicans?

RICK WILSON: Oh I think his support is demonstrably been very strong about with Republicans but I think he puts them in a stress test every day partly because as Alice correctly pointed out the way he approaches things even the things that they like. It has become sort of very painful and difficult. And they have trouble balancing a lot of the times the very precipitous and capricious nature of his decision making. And I think there's no better example this week than essentially green lighting a Turkish invasion of Syria and Kurdistan.

LL: And all the implications of that. Yeah.

RICK WILSON: Yeah, which leaves a very very dire implications.

LL: How significant is it then that a few high profile Republicans are issuing rebukes to the president?

RICK WILSON: I think this is the for whatever reason, this is the thing that's caused the biggest break, I think Alice would agree with me on this. This caused the biggest break with Trump among people who ordinarily are fairly uncritical supporters of him to date.

LL: Okay Alice, do you agree?

ALICE STEWART: No I agree. I agreed 100 percent on that. When you have one of his biggest and most loyal defenders, Lindsey Graham who has described what's going on in Syria as a disaster in the making and Liz Cheney who has also had the president's back saying it's catastrophic. Nikki Haley has been very discouraged that we have not had our allies backs with regard to helping the Kurds who have been so instrumental to our war on ISIS. And even this morning most recently his one of his another staunch defender Fox News was critical of him. So you know if he's losing people like Lindsey Graham that's not a good week for him. But this morning Fox News was critical of it and he tweeted out his frustration to how they have reported on this this morning. So this is not something that is going unnoticed even by his strongest supporters. And it's going to be a situation where at this point we've gotten to a situation here where it's going to be impossible to walk it back. So he is clearly all in on on this. And it's it's not going to be a positive finish. And look I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were criticizing Barack Obama for leaving a vacuum in Syria and allowing ISIS to metastasize and we're running the risk of this happening again and this is not going to be something that he's going to win over Republicans soon, if at all, if it going down this course of action.

LL: Rick Wilson try to help us understand this. Nicholas Fandos suggested that the reason why Republicans are more willing to criticize Trump on this is because it's a foreign policy issue and maybe something that most American voters don't pay as much attention to. Why do you think the issue with the Kurds seems to be the tipping point?

RICK WILSON: Well I think it also has another way layer and there have been other foreign policy problems. His behaviour with Putin in Helsinki. His favour for North Korea. And I count the trade war in part as an international policy question that's also been a disaster. Republicans have been very onboard. I think the other thing that underlies this is that is that a few of these Republicans their conscience is pricking them because they recognize that this will be a massive humanitarian disaster. They also recognize that amongst the amongst the Kurds are a meaningful fraction of of of Christians which is a rare breed in the Middle East. And I think they see both of those things as major difficulties for them going forward in terms of defending this policy.

LL: Alice Stewart I wonder what you think of that. I mean from your perspective you've already said that despite this decision, which you really don't agree with, you still support him. Why isn't this enough to make you stop supporting him?

ALICE STEWART: Well I'm not a one issue voter. There are many other issues I think are important directly to things that happen over here in the United States and to a degree of what Rick said, it doesn't impact people. They don't see what's happening. Foreign policy wise as directly as they see what's going on here. And this will have an impact. We've heard from high level evangelicals that have supported the president that have been critical of this decision that he is making but that is not going to be enough, I see, to deter people from continuing to support him because of issues back here at home. When it comes to religious liberty and the appointments he's making to the Supreme Court there people will look at the totality of this president and the overall record that he will continue to have as we move closer to his re-election at this stage. That may change over the next several months depending on how this plays out. But from an overall standpoint the issues that are important to me if he continues to to enact that legislation and those policies I will continue to support him, but that doesn't mean I'm going to support what he's currently doing in Syria. I think it's wrong and we should not abandon people, our allies that have been so instrumental to our war on ISIS.

LL: You mentioned the evangelical base. What are they saying, particularly because with what Rick points out is that there are Christians who are being affected by the crisis.

ALICE STEWART: Sure. And if this continues to play out, it's going to be a tremendous devastating humanitarian crisis that we will have to deal with, and that's going to be a big concern. And evangelicals have supported this president in an amazing way. First and foremost because he made a commitment to support religious liberty he made a commitment with regard to the Supreme Court justices that they wanted that would be pro life pro traditional marriage. And a lot of the issues that they support. And this is going to be something that will cause some concern for them. But it's too early to tell exactly how it will impact their support as we get closer to the election. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out. But right now he's he's getting a lot of pushback as I said from people that have had his back from day one and now the evangelical community. So this will be something that time will tell how this will impact him moving forward.

LL: Rick Wilson, as we've said already that this is all taking place against the backdrop of the impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives, how much does this affect Republicans views of the president when it comes to the possible impeachment?

RICK WILSON: Well I think that most Republicans are going to bright line this in their mind. Most of the elected officials are going to brightline this in their mind and they're going to treat the impeachment as a separate matter. It is more consequential and more threatening than a lot of folks in the Trump sphere would like to have people believe. But it is still reaching because it's reaching a sort of critical mass with the public, but it's also something that will end up at some point in a situation where where you know all these things will start to be seen as a sort of an ongoing crisis. They'll all come together as an element of things that are wrong in the Trump world. And I think that that's a very meaningful potential note as they go forward. The foreign policy scrotes make it harder to defend the impeachment related offences. The erratic behaviour makes it harder to justify support for the president. It's been so far you know universal amongst the Republican elected class.

LL: Alice, I wonder what you think of that.

ALICE STEWART: A lot of his supporters are looking at this as Democratic overreach and Democrats who are obsessed with removing him from office. If you look at the rallies he had this week in Louisiana and Minnesota tens of thousands of his supporters were cheering emphatically for this president and they would walk through glass and on fire for this president. They are not looking at this impeachment as something that as he did something wrong. They are looking this through the lens that he is putting out on Twitter that this is a Democrats overreach. Me personally what I believe what he said with regard to the phone call with the Ukrainian president and also what he said with regard to China. I think the statements were inappropriate. I think they were very ill advised. If they were advised at all. But I don't think they are grounds for impeachment. That being said his his supporters see nothing wrong with what he did. They see that this is something again further of the Democratic script of removing this President from office. I don't see this at this stage impacting his base of support. But the question as the people that are not his strong solid base if they continue to see this drumbeat of of impeachment or or ill advised actions on the part of this president it may impact them but also the Democrats run the risk of if they over play this or set a level of expectations for the end game of this and it doesn't end up in impeachment. That right there is going to turn off a lot of their voters. They did the same at the Mueller report saying that this was going to have a huge smoking gun and this would lead to his impeachment. It did not turn out that way. And the Democrats actually run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf if they set a level of expectation for wrongdoing and high crimes and misdemeanours that they cannot reach.

LL: Alright lots to watch in the upcoming weeks in Washington. I thank you both for talking to me this morning.

ALICE STEWART: Thanks Laura.

RICK WILSON: Thanks for having us.

LL: Rick Wilson is a Republican strategist and the author of the upcoming book Running Against the Devil. He's in Tallahassee. Alice Stewart is a CNN political commentator, a Republican strategist and a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. She is in Boston. The CBC News is next. Then.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I screamed, I yelled, I cried. I was furious and finally I said, screw you guys I can't do this because there's not one of you in here that knows what's happening. Come and be at my house. And I stormed off.

LL: Peggy Allen wasn't coping well when a group of people who were homeless moved in at the end of her street. But when she lost her cool at that public meeting, everything changed. Our documentary, On Gladys Avenue, is coming up in about 30 minutes. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

Can the world make a dent in the climate crisis by planting more trees?

Guests: Edwina Guckian, Charlotte Wheeler, Stephen Woroniecki

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, when some homeless campers moved on to Peggy Allen's street, they brought drug use and violence. Peggy rigged up her house with alarms and was constantly calling the police. But the conflict eventually turned into something else for Peggy. Something she never expected. The documentary On Gladys Avenue in half an hour. But first, capturing carbon one tree at a time.

SOUNDCLIP

Sounds from Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail.

LL: That's Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau out on the campaign trail with two of his children planting a tree. It was a photo op designed to promote this plank in the Liberal platform.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Trees are remarkable. They pull carbon out of the atmosphere. So what we're going to do is plant two billion trees over the next decade in our cities and in other places that need it. Work with Indigenous communities and support forest regeneration after wildfires.

LL: The push to plant trees as a way to fight climate change isn't just happening in Canada. Globally there are some pretty big voices behind the effort like Greta Thunberg and environmentalist George Monbiot.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Lots of solutions are talked about. What about a solution that is right in front of us? I'll let my friend George explain.

VOICE 2: A tree is an example of a natural climate solution. Mangroves, peat bogs, jungles, marshes, seabirds, kelp forests, swamps, coral reefs. They take carbon out of the air and lock it away.

LL: Planting trees sounds like a pretty straightforward solution to a huge problem but it turns out not all trees are tree planting plans are created equally and planting trees doesn't always bring communities together.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound from protests in Ireland]

LL: Protesters from the region of Leitrim in Ireland in front of their parliament building. They're saying that the Sitka spruce has got to go. In that part of Ireland forestry companies have been planting trees for decades. The problem is they're only planting one kind of tree, the Sitka spruce. Edwina Guckian is a member of Save Leitrim and she is on the line from county Leitrim, Ireland. Hello.

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Hello. How are you?

LL: Fine thank you. Why did these companies choose only to plant the Sitka spruce?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: I think it's because it's a fast growing crop, particularly in west climate. And that's exactly what we have here in the west of Ireland. Our climate is very wet. Anybody that has visited Ireland will know that our landscape is wet and it's a fast growing crop, but it's a foreign crop to Ireland.

LL: I was going to ask you. It's not native to your country at all, is it?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: No it's not at all. No. And really when it's planted, it grows so fast that the quality of the timber in it isn't great either. So it tends to be used for pallets and fence posts and things like that.

LL: And what has been the impact of all the trees in your community being grown there? What kinds of things have you seen?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: There are several different impacts. There's so many different angles on this, it's not just about the trees. And like first of all it's a monoculture crop. So it's not when you say forest, you imagine this beautiful place. You know that you can walk through and that's full of life and biodiversity and benefits the ecosystem, but it's the complete opposite of that. So we have huge swaths all across our county, 20 percent of our county is planted in Sitka spruce. And there are these huge industrial plantations is really the only thing that you can call them of darkness. You know they grow, they plant them. In the first year, first four years when they planted them, they mount the ground, get it all ready for planting, spray it with Roundup to make sure that nothing can compete with it and spray for a continual four years and then wait for everything for the plants to grow up and they don't really tend to them for about maybe 30 years. And then they're 10 and then at 40 years it's a clear out. Absolutely come in and everything is cut out of it. And it's like a war zone and it just is just regurgitate. It just happens again and again and again until the land here in Ireland, it's low that if you plant your land you have to replant after you clear out. So it's it's had huge impacts on the community socially and economically because the money isn't it's coming in and they're planting, but the money isn't staying in our county. You know, people it's foreign investors and forestry companies coming up buying our land planting it and then they're leaving with all that money again and bringing all the timber out of the county. And it's had huge effects on our ecosystem and biodiversity. You know it's all so many different paths, but all leading to the one problem.

LL: Let's go through a couple of things that you said there. You said it's affecting people socially. How so?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Yes. Well we're a very rural area. For anybody that's been to the northwest of Ireland, our county is the smallest populated county in Ireland. So our population is just about 30,000 people. And our county town have about 3000 people live there and the rest of us are dispersed across the county. So it's a very rural area, but we thrive on that. You know it's very, we're very tight and very connected to each other. So you know seeing our neighbours light on across the field you know we know that they're there. And so things like that mean a lot to us, so the fact that these forests you know they're on the horizon, sometimes some people's houses they're surrounded on four sides because they don't own the land around their house. And they're completely 60 foot walls with green, completely around their houses. Like it's very, very isolating and a lot of the elderly people are really starting to feel that. But aside from that a lot of the families who have next generations that want to you know build or farm on the land, they're turned off by it because instantly when one of these forestries, the plantations land beside you, it instantly devalues your land.

LL: Is that so? Why?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Because of the the negative impacts it's having with light and with the runoff from it and the pines and the frost shadows that it creates on the land where the light can't shine on your land. So there are several problems like that with it.

LL: And the eco system you also mentioned, what about the wildlife?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Yeah so I'd love to show you one of the forests here because one of the things that especially on social media we get a lot of backlash from forestry companies. They put up pictures of these amazing forests and I only wish it was true. I wish we had them because it's the complete opposite of what we have. So for example I was just in one there lately and you have to crawl to get into us. There's no entrance into it. You know it's not a welcoming place. You have to crawl to get in and you could just about stand up inside and to actually reach the soil you have to dig about a foot deep through pine needles to get to the actual soil itself. And as far as you can see everything is dead. There is nothing growing on the ground in there. So there's I suppose by three quarters of the way up, it looks like the trees all the branches are dead. Just as the very tips that you can see the green and the cones on the top. And so very little wants to live in there. And also a lot of our land is high nature value farming and it is perfect for the birds that are really in danger here at the moment, like the hen harrier. And with every plantation that goes in we're taking their habitats away and you know we're not replacing them.

LL: Those who defend it do say that there are a resurgences of badgers and those kinds of animals in the places where the Sitka spruce is planted. Is not a good thing?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: On the hedgerows outside, the hedgerows that line the forests that are naturally there anyway, in those you'll find the dens of the badgers and the foxes. So they will pass through the forest as a natural path to wherever they're going, but it's not a place that they live.

LL: You know with the least the initial wish with the policy of doing these kinds of things was to help with climate change. Do you support the principle of it?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Oh for sure. For sure. And our message is we want the right trees in the right places, used in the right way. You know there's no point in coming to one of our forests and tearing it up and and planting it with Sitka spruce because it's a natural. You know it's a natural absorption of carbon as it is you know. So the right trees in the right places, you know we've nothing against trees, we just want it to be done in the right way and not the way they're doing it now because right now it's just absolute greenwash saying that it's for the absorption of carbon when really this is just totally a money gain.

LL: Okay let's break that down a little bit. What are the right trees?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: The right threes like using some native hardwoods. Even the spruce, but using them that they're not planted a metre apart away from each other that it's an industrial thing and that it's grow things fast fast fast, clear fall out there and release all of that again. So something like maybe you know like a continuous cover forestry, like thinking about the trees for the future generations. Like I could travel for miles here and I won't find a hardwood forest that I can go walking in. There's just, they don't exist.

LL: And you say it's greenwashing. Why do you use that phrase?

EDWINA GUCKIAN: Well I think that they're they're covering it up and saying well we are like they're for example about two weeks ago our government announced that they're going to plant 500 million trees by 2022 to counteract carbon and carbon emissions. But when you look at that time, brilliant and on paper it looks fantastic and everybody is saying great. But when you actually read the document to see what they're going to do, 70 percent of them are going to be Sitka spruce again. So you know it's very very frustrating because there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. And the forestry industry will tell you themselves that there are better ways to do it. But they've been incentivized and investors have been incentivized for 15 years, tax free using Irish taxpayers money to do this. So how can you turn something down when you can make that much money for doing it the wrong way and doing it the right way not making as much money. You know it doesn't make sense.

LL: Alright. Edwina Guckian, thank you for your time.

EDWINA GUCKIAN: No problem.

LL: Edwina Guckian is a member of Save Leitrim. She is in county Leitrim, Ireland. Now Ireland isn't the only place taking action. China is aiming to plant an area of forest as large as Ireland this year. In Africa, a project called The Great Green Wall is attempting to restore vegetation to 247 million acres in the Sahel grasslands. And India is pledging to plant 13 million hectares of forest by 2020. Charlotte Wheeler is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences. She's in Iquitos, in northern Peru in the Amazon rainforest. We also have Stephen Woroniecki. He's a doctoral candidate working on sustainability and climate change at Lund University's Centre for Sustainability Studies. He is in Lund, Sweden. Hello to both of you.

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Hello.

CHARLOTTE WHEELER: Hi there.

LL: Charlotte, I'll start with you. Earlier this year, Swiss researchers used the phrase "mind blowing" to describe the potential for trees to help with climate change. What is your view?

CHARLOTTE WHEELER: I think that trees have having an amazing opportunity to help us mitigate climate change, but I think that some of the numbers being bandied around and some recent papers are a little over enthusiastic and not quite realistic. We can use restoration as a means to try and mitigate some levels of climate change and use it as a buffer to help reduce the overshoot of atmospheric CO2 when we're looking at trying to get to net zero carbon emissions, but it's not by any stretch of the imagination the answer to climate change. If it's not done alongside reductions in fossil fuel emissions and halting deforestation and forest degradation then potentially we have an amazing opportunity that could be missed if we don't do restoration right. So as your previous speaker was saying, yes things can be done well, but there's a massive risk involved and it could be done wrong, which could ultimately lead to a very limited amount of carbon sequestration on a gloabl scale.

LL: Stephen I wonder if you could tell us how successful the great Green Wall project has been in Africa.

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Yes. So we don't exactly know if the Great Green Wall has been a success yet because the independent large scale evaluations have yet to be carried out. We have reasons to believe it's a mixed bag. We can say based on some of the things that your previous speakers have said that the ingredients are potentially there to provide more benefits than for example these Irish Sitka spruce plantations. For example the Great Green Well is based on ensuring incentives for farmers and that it recognizes existing restoration potential in the landscape.

LL: OK I want to play a clip for both of you now. David Wilclove is a professor of ecology, evolutionary biology and public affairs at Princeton University and he's been researching the large scale reforestation efforts that have been going on in China.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Almost the entire area that was reforested was replanted in monocultures of just a single species of tree and they didn't even plant necessarily native trees in any given site. And so as a result they created these monocultures that are just really bad habitats for wildlife. Well if you've only planted one species of tree then you're going to see slower growth or even tree mortality over huge areas. So you're essentially putting all your eggs in one basket.

LL: Now Charlotte I'm wondering how typical is what he's describing in China in the rest of the world.

CHARLOTTE WHEELER: It's quite commonplace actually. So I've been doing research into the bond challenge, which is an international targets for 350 million hectares by 2030 and we've been looking into the restoration commitments being made by various countries under this scheme. And we found that the current targets to date almost 45 percent of them are toward plantations probably of monocultures. In some cases they may be mixed species plantation, but the majority of them are for single species monocultures which as the clip suggests is not ideal for obviously questration for wildlife. And I think in that kind of climate mitigation debate, people forget the other very useful services that forests can provide. You know they help us with biodiversity protection, watershed protection, nutrient cycling, soil erosion control and will help us along the way to meet many of the sustainability development goals of the UN and also some of the biodiversity targets. We have to think about these landscapes as more than just providing a singular function. They offer us numerous different things and the plantations are very limited in being able to offer us the number of services that a mixed species natural forest could.

LL: Stephen what do you think on that same point about what is happening in the rest of the world?

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Absolutely. Well sometimes we see that a forestation which is planting forests where they haven't previously been, can be really counterproductive because you're not only replacing potentially high carbon other ecosystems like grasslands for example or wetlands, but you're also potentially increasing the risks to those forests from future climate change. For example if a fire comes through or an invasive species comes through later then you're kind of putting that whole carbon stock at risk. So we definitely see across the world where possible natural regeneration is the way to go and also restoration on previously forested land. And then there's also a whole bunch of social issues to consider as well. Like for example considering the needs for communities, especially marginalized communities who tend to experience the brunt of climate change impacts.

LL: I was going to ask. We heard about the controversy over the trees in Ireland. So how important is it to get local buy in to make any plans successful Stephen?

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Well exactly. So I mean just in terms of the effectiveness of this projects, if we want this forest to lock down carbon over the long term then we need to get that ownership we've seen in different projects around the world to where that sense of ownership or that sense of stewardship, even sense of security for local communities can be really key to getting the collaboration and the partnerships that are necessary for effectively using trees and other kinds of ecosystems as a climate change solution. But there's also just.

LL: Go ahead.

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: No sorry I was going to say apart from the effectiveness, there's also justice issues. You know people have a right to to participation. It's not just a question of whether it's effective for the global climate or not.

LL: So I'm wondering from both of you then, we just heard Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau saying as part of the election campaign, a policy to plant two billion trees over 10 years. Charlotte I wonder what advice you would give to a Canadian government, whatever party, if it plans to carry out a policy like this.

CHARLOTTE WHEELER: I mean well for any of these schemes I mean it's completely unrealistic of us to assume that everything is going to be restored as native habitat. I mean that would be you know an ecologists and conservationists ideal scenario, but it's just not going to happen. Plantations will be needed and we need to have resources on the landscape that can be removed at certain points used to fund these projects. So it's about trying to balance out the areas when conservation and national forests and those sorts of goals take priority areas where you think that none of the impact on native wildlife if you put in plantations. You have to think about these things, a landscape scale and find areas where you can put your natural forests and really focus on conservation work and climate mitigation and long term protection. I think that's the key as well is that making sure that once you start these projects that the funding isn't front loaded so all of the workers put in the beginning ,but there's no protection for these forests long time because as soon as the funding stops then there are many cases where people have just gone and cut the trees again because there's no incentive for them to be maintained. So it's about long term funding for the you know into the future to make sure they actually can have an impact on climate mitigation.

LL: Stephen what advice would you offer to Canada.

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Well absolutely I do think it's about that reframing from tree planting to tree growing to cultivating a sense of stewardship in the communities and also facilitating these kind of links between the national government, the international government and more local municipalities. How can people be supported in those efforts? Are there funds available for community level projects as well as you know these large landholders? But I think the number one thing here is to remember that tree planting or tree growing as we might prefer to call it, it cannot be an replacement for keeping fossil fuels in the ground and that when we see the politics of climate change it often tends to be in terms of these numbers what can we do in terms of planting so-and-so billion trees or so so many thousands of hectares, but what that reallys shows that tree planting is only seen as a limited contribution to a much broader program of decarbonisation of the economy.

LL: Alright I thank you both very much for your insights.

CHARLOTTE WHEELER: Thank you.

STEPHEN WORONIECKI: Thank you.

LL: Stephen Woroniecki is a doctoral candidate working on sustainability and climate change at Lund University for sustainability. He is in Lund, Sweden. Charlotte Wheeler is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences. She's in the Amazon rainforest in Iquitos, northern Peru.

[Music]

LL: Now in case you haven't heard, a massive blizzard dropped a wet heavy blanket of snow over southern Manitoba this weekend. The storm wreaked havoc with the power grid and as many as 5000 residents of First Nations communities face evacuation. The snow stopped, but not before Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg declared a state of emergency. Even with highways closed and thousands without power, some Winnipeggers decided to make the best of a bad situation. CBC's Cory Funk went out to Garbage Hill over the weekend to capture all the action.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds of children playing in the snow]

LL: Hope he's OK. That was CBC's Cory Funk and the Davidson family enjoying Winnipeg's wintry October. Well coming up on this Thanksgiving Monday, why one woman is feeling grateful for a homeless camp at the end of her street. The documentary On Gladys Avenue in about 90 seconds. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

On Gladys Avenue

PEGGY ALLEN: That's my street. So if you were coming along here, you'd be turning. Well I'll show you.

RON ALLEN: It's ruined our life. We have a nice piece of property here that we can't sell for what it's worth. It's devalued down to not worthless, but certainly nothing that it could be. Nobody would want to bring a family in here and raise their kids here.

ANNE PENMAN: It became nearly impossible for Peggy and Ron to have friends over.

PEGGY ALLEN: Every time they came here, something was happening. Some crazy person was knifing somebody or chasing somebody with a stick or you know I mean that's the way they lived out there. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think. Every time we left the house, we had to lock the doors, we had to get an alarm, we had to use the alarm. We had to make sure.

ANNE PENMAN: The chaos began to take a toll. Peggy and Ron were raising their granddaughter who was just a preschooler.

PEGGY ALLEN: We had her fourth birthday here and invited all her friends and their parents. So they're out in the back and I hear the doorbell and I've got this fruit tray and I figured it was somebody's parent coming. It was a crackhead from next door and she started to come after me.

RON ALLEN: Chased my wife through the house, it was a birthday party and I didn't have a railing on the patio at that time and she chased her right out through the back door and she slipped.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I went right off four feet down.

RON ALLEN: Landed on the concrete. She ended up in the hospital on my granddaughter's birthday.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I ended up in a neck brace. So that was our fourth birthday.

ANNE PENMAN: And that was just the beginning.

RON ALLEN: And we've had some strange things. I mean I had a guy banging on my door a few months ago.

PEGGY ALLEN: On the twenty seventh of July last year, in the middle of the night yelling at 2:00 in the morning Ron, Ron, you have to help me.

PEGGY ALLEN: I heard somebody screaming and banging on the door and ringing the doorbell.

RON ALLEN: Yelling and I knew him. He lived in a tent on this property here.

PEGGY ALLEN: And there's a man out there and he's leaning over and there's blood everywhere.

RON ALLEN: Help me, I've just been attacked by a guy with an axe.

PEGGY ALLEN: A man had come after him with a hatchet and tried to cut his arm off.

RON ALLEN: I look and here's this guy bleeding all over my carport.

PEGGY ALLEN: And he bandaged him up with all we had was Scott towels and phoned the police.

RON ALLEN: You know and I stayed with him until the police and the ambulance came, but those aren't everyday occurrences and they do put fear into your hearts. You know because you don't know if that fellow with the axe might come and start chopping your door down or something and you know probably he won't, but they could because when people are desperate and maybe addicted and maybe they're having a bad trip or who knows what it is. Certainly they're desperate. They're all desperate.

ANNE PENMAN: As shocking as these incidents are, Ron was not shaken in the same way Peggy was.

RON ALLEN: It's not that her fears weren't warranted. It's just that I just looked at it differently so and I just hated that she was always so upset. Always upset.

MICKEY BOLEYN: So I can't quite remember when the situation on Gladys Avenue started. By then we became quite good friends.

ANNE PENMAN: That's Mickey Boleyn. She met Peggy through the Valley Women's Network, a community group in Abbotsford.

MICKEY BOLEYN: One time I had mentioned I was knitting toques for the homeless and she said don't even mention them to me here. Perhaps a little stronger than that but.

ANNE PENMAN: Mickey was well aware of the safety issues Peggy was dealing with on a day to day basis. It was hard not to notice.

MICKEY BOLEYN: And even driving over to her place to pick up something or drop something off you had to be real careful you didn't run over anybody in the driveway. Things got progressively worse. M.

ANNE PENMAN: Ickey tried to help Peggy.

MICKEY BOLEYN: My husband and I were able to get some barb wire donated and he went and helped her. They tried to put up a fence on her side of the creek, but of course it wasn't fully closed down in and it didn't stop a lot, but it may have helped.

ANNE PENMAN: In addition to the barbed wire, there were security cameras and fencing around three sides of the property. Mickey knew it was her young granddaughter that Peggy was most concerned for.

MICKEY BOLEYN: Her granddaughter saw a lot of things sexually that she shouldn't have even been aware of at that age because they were, they could be shooting up or having sex or whatever right out in front of the house. A lot of people doing things in trees they shouldn't be doing. Not up in the trees but.

ANNE PENMAN: Mickey remembers watching as anger consumed her friend.

MICKEY BOLEYN: She spent a lot of time attending council meetings, phoning City Hall, phoning the police.

ANNE PENMAN: And when Mickey says she spent a lot of time, she means it.

VOICE 1: August 16th, 2009 at approximately.

PEGGY ALLEN: Freedom of Information documents show she reported hundreds of incidents to the police.

VOICE 1: At Gladys Avenue regarding suspicious circumstances. The complainant, Peggy Allen, stated that someone was knocking at her front door, but she could not see anyone.

ANNE PENMAN: But rarely was Peggy satisfied with the responses she got.

VOICE 1: Were unable to locate anybody.

PEGGY ALLEN: By the time they get here, they come with their sirens. They're gone. Nope, we didn't find a soul. Over hundreds of times. And after a while you get a little choked putting it mildly.

ANNE PENMAN: After helping with the barbed wire, Mickey got a little creative with her input.

MICKEY BOLEYN: When my mom passed away she had this little ceramic dog that barked when you came in the doorway. So we gave that to Peggy for her security, so she could hear. So it sounded like a dog. It was just a tiny little thing and it ran on batteries, so she put it in the window and she could hear them come to the yard. The dog would bark yes, but I mean it was you know make sure your door is locked in.

ANNE PENMAN: And the doors are always locked and the windows covered with boards and sheets. On the day I visit, there's only one window in the house that's not covered that you can actually look through to the outside to see that it's a bright sunny day.

PEGGY ALLEN: I kept track over the years of different things that happened.

ANNE PENMAN: In her home office Peggy opened some of the files that itemize city council agendas, as well as her diaries documenting her 9-1-1 calls.

PEGGY ALLEN: This one is July. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, that was seven that month. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four.

[Radio radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: Well if they're breaking a bylaw, would you come down and arrest them?

[Police radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: I didn't phone every day, but I phoned almost 500 times in 15 years.

[Police radio chatter]

PEGGY ALLEN: Like what recourse do I have when they're spread all over the street. I can't come down here with almost running over them. I can't drive straight down the street and they're all over looking at my driveway and parked in and out of the area continually like who do I speak to?

[Police radio chatter]

ANNE PENMAN: And as Peggy flips through the pages of her diary, there is a date from last year that stands out.

PEGGY ALLEN: 17th of July of 2018, I was invited to a large meeting at City Hall.

LIANNE RADMORE: There was many issues on the Gladys corridor, which is the street outside Peggy's house and I had been invited and there was lots of folks who have businesses here and residents here that struggle with some of the things that have gone on in this neighbourhood. So my name is Lianne Radmore and I'm the harm reduction coordinator for Fraser Health, for Fraser East.

PEGGY ALLEN: And we were all supposed to sit there and we're supposed to draw on these big pieces of paper what we thought would make a difference and put them up on the wall. Then we were going to all walk around and talk about what's going to make a difference and on and on and on. I lasted it was a three hour meeting, I lasted 2 hours and 57 minutes.

LIANNE RADMORE: At that meeting Peggy stood. I think was probably halfway through.

PEGGY ALLEN: Then I got up and I just lost it.

LIANNE RADMORE: You could see how upset she was and how frustrated she was.

PEGGY ALLEN: I made a complete ass of myself. I screamed, I yelled, I cried. I was furious.

LIANNE RADMORE: And she said you people don't understand. You people aren't listening to us.

PEGGY ALLEN: And finally I said screw you guys, I can't do this because there's not one of you in here that knows what's happening, knows what it's like. You don't live here.

LIANNE RADMORE: Like you need to come to my house.

PEGGY ALLEN: Come and live at my house. Come and be at my house. And I stormed off.

LIANNE RADMORE: After the meeting I said, people were like wow she was so upset and I said well why don't, she wants us to come to her house. Why don't we go to her house?

PEGGY ALLEN: I got a phone call and these two ladies Lianne and Camilla wanted to come and see me and I said forget it and they said, well you invited us and okay fine and I was going to really give it to them right.

LIANNE RADMORE: Myself and Camilla who's a community health specialist for Fraser Health, we came here and we came here for about two and a half hours and all we really did was listen.

PEGGY ALLEN: So they came and I just let it all out. And then when they were leaving they said well there's nothing we can do. We can't understand, we can only care for you and can we call you and follow up with you? And I said don't bloody well bother. Don't call me ever again. I said, what are you going to do? It's not, is it going to help you on your resumé or something? Don't call me.

LIANNE RADMORE: I said that's fair. That's totally fair. And I said would you be okay if I bring what you've told me today, if I bring that to the drug war survivors because the drug war survivors are people with lived in living experience who are you know could be actively using substances or historically have used substances in the past and so she was like well you can do it, but it's not going to do anything for me. And so I did. I brought it to the drug war survivors and it kind of just took on a life of its own from there.

PEGGY ALLEN: And then all of a sudden one day the doorbell rang and here's this man and this woman and this kid and they're standing there with this plant. And so they said are you Peggy? And I said yes and they said we'd like to thank you for what you said at that meeting and we hear that you need some love to come your way and we would like to invite you to our drug war survivors meeting. And I said are you serious? And then I looked at this kid, he was like five or six years old just staring at me and I just well anyway I said well thank you very much. And didn't say what I wanted to, went in the house. And then they phoned me back and a week later and I said fine I'll come to your bloody meeting, but I'm telling you, I'm going to tell it like it is.

ANNE PENMAN: And the day came in early September of 2018.

PEGGY ALLEN: I didn't even know who these people were. I didn't know anybody there. I walked in there, thought there'd be about ten homeless people there right. There was 105 homeless people there.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy had to wait or turn. She was third in line to speak.

PEGGY ALLEN: They got up and one speaker talked about something and another speaker talked about something else and then I got up there and I thought boy you guys are going to be sorry. And I opened my mouth and everything came out.

ANNE PENMAN: Everything. Her troubled and tragic childhood, her own father.

PEGGY ALLEN: About my dad. About my dad. He was a very, very bad alcoholic in Regina. He was a beautiful brilliant man. He was a land developer. He was a classic piano artist. We had Satchmo you know, Louis Armstrong in our living room.

[Trumpet sound]

PEGGY ALLEN: And he brought them home and I mean this is who my dad was.

ANNE PENMAN: She loved him, but when he was drunk, he was violent towards her mother. Finally her mom kicked him out of the house.

PEGGY ALLEN: He went to a hotel downtown and wanted us all to come for dinner. And so we all got in the car and we had to stop at the school to get my sister and by the time we got there, he had blown his head off in the hotel room.

ANNE PENMAN: And if sharing this to a roomful of strangers wasn't enough, Peggy continued, detailing her own drug use.

PEGGY ALLEN: It was just pot and stuff like that and then it got into a little bit more than that like acid and the fun stuff. I've always been an entrepreneur. I was selling out of my locker.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy surprised herself. She had not come to the drug war survivors meeting expecting to reveal such deeply personal and painful memories.

PEGGY ALLEN: I just wanted to tell these people that I understood, but I didn't go there wanting to do that, but in my talk I did that. And so I finished my talk and not one person moved. Not one person spoke. And then all of a sudden they all got up and walked into a line and I went I was getting ready to leave and every one of them hugged me. It was so unbelievable. I just, here I am by myself, don't know anybody and they just embraced me like I've never been embraced in my life. The last man that was there, he said to me I had to wait to be last because I want to tell you something. He said I know you. I went to school with you. And he's pretty drugged out this guy. And I looked at him and he said I can change. I know I can change. He said you were the worst drug addict I had ever met. I mean it was just pot and stuff, it was nothing compared to now. And he said our family was told to stay away from you, that you had drugs and that wasn't good. And he said I got so drugged out and so screwed up in my life and he said, here you are and you're OK and I'm not. And he said, I can be.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy went home in a daze. She had felt such love from her audience, but she was still Peggy, angry at what was happening outside her home. And then later that same day, she stepped outside to pick up her mail. Two strangers were coming up her driveway.

PEGGY ALLEN: And I don't know if I should, anyway I'll just spell it. She says oh there's that F and C word and I looked at her and I just went crazy and I started running towards her and I was going to hurt her. Like I'm not that kind of person, but I wanted to hurt her. And I stopped halfway down there and I said Peggy I hate the way you are. This isn't who you are. And I stopped and literally it was like the light switch switched and I turned around. I went back into the house and I just bawled my head off.

ANNE PENMAN: Something fundamental had changed for Peggy.

PEGGY ALLEN: It just was a gift from God or somewhere I'm sure. Instantly, I just became filled with love. I can't tell you that, like it's been an incredible metamorphosis in my life.

RON ALLEN: Oh my. Well she next to never calls the police anymore for one thing and she for some reason, the noises have not stopped. The kerfuffle, all the things on the street have not stopped, but it's almost like she doesn't hear them, but they just do not affect her in the same way. She doesn't have the same level of fear. She has more of a feeling of contentment in her life. She isn't constantly, did you hear that and sort of attitude about constantly her ears out on the street rather than doing the things she needs to do for her own life and our life here. It's just an incredible difference. It's like night and day. It really is. She's a much different person, her personality.

ANNE PENMAN: Incredibly, Peggy now volunteers on projects to help the homeless. Her current passion is the Business Engagement Ambassador Program or BEAP. It's organized by the drug war survivors and it pays members to clean up around local businesses.

PEGGY ALLEN: Great to meet you. Nice to meet you.

ANNE PENMAN: Rob Larson is a homeless man who works for them. Peggy has made an impression on him.

ROB LARSON: Her story became it's never going to leave me because I mean somebody that's gone through what she has I mean and just to become this overwhelming loving person is amazing, right. We've become really good friends.

PEGGY ALLEN: He hugged me so hard the first time I met him, he scared the hell out of me. But I was the one with the fear, not him. He was the one with the love and that was one of the first steps for me to make a change in my thinking because he hugged me and he cared for me without even knowing me. And it was real.

ANNE PENMAN: Peggy has taken me to meet Rob in an industrial part of town. He looks to be in his 60s and he's thin and neatly dressed in jeans and a jacket.

ROB LARSON: Just cleaned up you know garbage and stuff and all the sharps off the street. And it was just my way of giving back. It makes the community look you know not the greatest, but I mean if we could just out there, just make a little bit of a dent or maybe you can't change everybody's mind, but maybe a few opinions along the way. It's already working because I've got people just pulling over and asking me questions. I get police officers who have stopped and said just thanks a lot for cleaning up our community man. And that hits me, I mean that's all I need. I don't need to be paid for this. Whatever, it's nice, but I mean the way I look at it, if you give back a little bit to your community, you know they're giving back the whole armful of what you might need here or just open arms, right?

ANNE PENMAN: Rob was about to move into a new modular social housing complex when I met him. Peggy tells me he's very happy there.

PEGGY ALLEN: I don't expect anyone to jump on my bandwagon that lives around here because they've been through hell and they've had a lot of bad things happen. But I gotta tell you that what I'm gaining from helping these people is way outweighs what I lost. I didn't realize that I had built my own prison. These walls around me or fences or alarms or cameras, I built that prison and lived in it for 15 years and I don't have to anymore. And the thing is that what I was afraid of is real out there, but it was killing me and that's crazy and I don't want to live that and I don't want to die from that ugliness and that stress. I want to make a difference and I will. I don't know how yet, but I do know I will.

ANNE PENMAN: In fact Peggy Allen is doggedly working on a project to modify a shipping container to become a bathroom, complete with a sink. It would go at the end of her driveway for the homeless who live in tents on Gladys Avenue.

[Music]

Oct. 14, 2019 episode transcript

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