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It's Wednesday, December 5th.

Karlheinz Schreiber says he didn't discuss money with Brian Mulroney during a private 1993 meeting, but that the two made an oral agreement to work together when the former Prime Minister left office.

Currently, the agreement went something like: I'll scratch your back if, when I retire, you scratch my back with something that rhymes with honey.

This is The Current.

Schreiber Testimony

Yesterday, Karlheinz Schreiber made his second appearance as a witness before the House of Commons Ethics Committee. And he handed the committee members piles of correspondence and stacks of other information, all neatly organized in collated binders. Then, for more than an hour, Mr. Schreiber answered every question thrown his way: about when he and Brian Mulroney first met, when they began their business relationship and why Mr. Schreiber had $500,000 set aside for the former Prime Minister's help.

In the end, Mr. Schreiber did say that he never discussed money with Mr. Mulroney while Mr. Mulroney was Prime Minister, but that he did pay out the first installment of the $300,000 fee in the brief time Mr. Mulroney sat as an MP after stepping down as Prime Minister.

Linden MacIntyre was glued to his TV set watching that testimony. He's the co-host of CBC Television's The Fifth Estate. He's been covering Karlheinz Schreiber and the Airbus story from the very beginning and he joined us in Toronto

Schreiber Testimony

In his testimony yesterday, Karlheinz Schreiber did an awful lot of name-dropping. For their thoughts on the political fallout from the testimony, we were joined by Lawrence Martin, a political columnist with The Globe and Mail in Ottawa, and Heather McIvor, who teaches political science at the University of Windsor.

Listen to The Current:Part 1

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 2


DNA Testing - Companies

For previous generations, finding out where you came from meant combing through baptism records, pouring over grave markers and sorting out whatever you could from local oral histories.

But now, next-generation genealogists are more interested in the stories written on your DNA.

In one of the most high-profile examples, the PBS series African-American Lives used DNA analysis to trace the genealogies of several high-profile African Americans, including Oprah Winfrey. And so far, National Geographic has analyzed more than 250,000 people as part of its Genographic project, an ambitious attempt to track the migration of all of humanity through our entire history as a species.

At a more mundane level, mainstream, commercial DNA genealogy is becoming big business. The results aren't as sensational as the Da Vinci Code -- not many people are going to find out they're related to Mary Magdalene. But you might just find out you're a distant relative of Marie Antoinette.

Wendy Mesley is the host of CBC Television's Marketplace. She's been busy putting consumer DNA testing under the microscope and she was with us in Toronto.


DNA Testing

As the business of mapping people's DNA gains momentum, there's a lot at stake beyond your place in world history.

To help us break down what we can gain from genetic testing we were joined by Dr. David Agus. He is the co-founder of Navigenics, a company that assesses genetic risk factors for disease. He's also an Oncologist and the Director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.


Listen to The Current:Part 2

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 3

Census - Ethnoburbs

Statistics Canada has released the data on immigration from the 2006 Census, and there are some interesting findings. More than a million people came to Canada between 2001 and 2006. And while they're still gravitating to major urban centres like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, they're heading increasingly to big, suburban centres like Markham, Ontario and Richmond, British Columbia. In fact, both of those cities are now home to more people born outside Canada than in Canada.

Rosemary Bender joined us for a look at the hard numbers. She is the Director General for Social and Demographic Statistics with Statistics Canada and she was in Vancouver.


Ethnoburbs - Voices

Well, as you heard, immigrants to Canada make up the fastest growing demographic in the country. And along with that growth, suburbs on the outskirts of Canada's biggest cities are growing along with them.

The city of Markham sits roughly 30 kilometres northeast of downtown Toronto. Of the 260 000 or so people who live there, 56% are immigrants. The community is peppered with huge asian malls and restaurants catering to its primarily Chinese community. The Current producer Dominic Girard stopped in earlier this week to see how the cultures are mingling -- or clashing. He took in some line dancing and snooker at the Markham Seniors Activity Centre, met with a city councillor, and chatted up a young man working a cell phone shop in one of the asian malls.

Ethnoburbs - Panel

Today's numbers raise questions about whether ethnic enclaves are a place to start out in and move out of, or are they becoming a place to stay permanently -- and what is the impact of that on Canadian society.

Sudha Krishna is a former CBC journalist and now a partner in a Vancouver new media company called The Nimble Company, and he was in our Vancouver studio. Dr. Myer Siemiatycki is the director of the graduate program in Immigration and Settlement Studies at Ryerson University. And Howard Chen is the president of the Chinese Professional Association of Canada and a resident of Markham, Ontario. Both were in our Toronto studio.

Listen to The Current:Part 3

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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