January 29, 2010

Today's guest host was Brent Bambury.

It's Friday, January 29th.

A 42 year old Canadian woman in Florida has been outed as Tiger Woods 19th lover.

Currently, the news comes as a surprise, since Woods usually only plays 18.

This is The Current.

SCOC on Khadr - Reporter

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it is the federal government's decision whether to ask the United States for Omar Khadr's return to Canada.
The court's unanimous decision is a blow for Khadr, whose legal team was hoping the court would force the government to push for the terrorism suspect's return.

Mr. Khadr is the only westerner still detained at Guantanamo Bay and is scheduled to be tried before a U.S. military commission later this year. He faces five charges, including murder as a war crime, for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. army medic in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr was just fifteen years old at the time.

The Canadian government has so far refused to push for his return, saying that the U.S. legal process must first run its course. Critics, however, say the military commissions are deeply flawed and inherently unfair for the defendant.
The Supreme Court said the Toronto-born Khadr's constitutional rights were violated, but the Canadian government can decide the proper remedy.

For her perspective on today's Supreme Court ruling we were joined by Janice Tibbetts. She is the national Justice reporter for the Canwest News Service. She was in Ottawa this morning.

SCOC on Khadr - Lawyer

Barry Coburn is the lead counsel for Omar Khadr's American defence team. He was in Shreveport, Louisiana.

SCOC on Khadr - Analyst

For a sense of both the legal and the political fallout from the Supreme Court's decision we were joined by Craig Forcese. He is a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Listen to Part One:

Rich Dad

The Rich Dad workshops are just one part of a sprawling financial empire. The man at the helm of that empire is Robert Kiyosaki. He's one of North America's best-known get-rich gurus. And his book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" has spawned a raft of self-help material. The message is to let your money work for you and that day-jobs are for chumps. With more people losing their jobs -- and in some cases their retirement savings -- these kinds of seminars are becoming more popular.

But according to our colleagues at CBC Television's Marketplace, the Rich Dad seminars are often just the beginning of a very expensive learning process. Erica Johnson is one of the hosts of Marketplace. She has been looking into the Rich Dad workshops.

You can watch Road to Rich Dad, tonight at 8:30 on CBC Television.

Documentary Promo

Coming up next week on The Current ... we'll have a documentary about a man named Denny Simon. He's 67. He lives in Calgary. And he has a deep and long-standing fascination with one of the more peculiar winter sports around. Denny Simon has been riding skeleton for 22 years. That's where you speed down an icy bobsleigh track, on a tiny little sled, face first, at more than a-hundred-kilometres-an-hour.

We'll repeat this again. Denny Simon is 67-years-old. And one of the things that compels him to keep hurling himself down a sheet of ice is a memory from his childhood. We aired a preview of Dominic Girard's documentary, In His Bones.

You can hear the whole story, next week on The Current.

Listen to Part Two:

Haiti Cruises

Okay, picture it. You're on a deck chair on a cruise ship. You have a drink in your hand. It's warm. And you're headed someplace suitably tropical. Except that suitably tropical place? It's Haiti.

Well, it's true. For the last two weeks, cruise ships have been continuing to dock in Labadee, Haiti. Labadee is about a hundred kilometres from the devastated earthquake zone and Labadee suffered no damage but it's pretty obvious why this would seem a bit distasteful to some people. It is true cruise ships that pump money into the places they dock at. And so for Adam Goldstein -- the CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines -- the decision was simple.

In addition to using its cruise ships to deliver relief supplies to Haiti, Royal Caribbean has donated a million dollars to the relief efforts. And its customers -- the ones roaming the beach at Labadee in the days after the earthquake -- seem to support the company's decision.

The CBC's David Gutnick hit the streets of Port Au Prince yesterday to get some thoughts from the residents about the cruise ships docking at Labadee.

As well Jean-Max Bellerive -- Haiti's Prime Minister -- went so far as to say that the image of a cruise ship docked at Labadee gave him hope.

But that doesn't mean everyone thinks this is all okay. The debate has exploded on-line. And the detractors aren't pulling their punches. We aired some comments from a site called Cruise Critic.

Haiti Cruises - Debate

We asked Adam Goldstein -- the CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines -- to speak with us this morning. He declined the invitation.

And for their thoughts on the political and ethical questions surrounding this debate, we were joined by two people with very different perspectives on it. Rebecca Tiessen is a professor at Royal Military College. She specializes in global development and she was in Kingston, Ontario. And Brian White is the Director of the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Royal Roads University in Victoria. He was in Vancouver this morning.

Haiti Cruises - Philosopher

People have tended to have very strong reactions to this complicated question. And ever since the earthquake in Haiti, Chris MacDonald has been thinking a lot about where those reactions come from. He teaches in the Philosophy Department at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. But he was in Toronto this morning.

Listen to Part Three: