June 22, 2010

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Whole Show Blow-by-Blow

It's Tuesday, June 22nd.

The Toronto Police will be using the CBC building as a staging area for the G-20 summit.

Currently, coming up later tonight it's the National with Sergeant Pepper.

This is the Current.

G20 Foreign Security - ISU & CSIS

We started this segment with part of a recording first broadcast on APTN, the Aboriginal People's Television Network. APTN says the voice is that of a CSIS agent telling an Aboriginal protester to watch out for foreign security agents in Canada for the upcoming G-20 Summit.

CSIS will neither confirm nor deny that the person speaking on tape is a CSIS agent. But the tape has sparked questions about the powers foreign security agents will have while working in Canada.

The RCMP has formed the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit (ISU), which is comprised of the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police, Toronto Police Services, Peel Regional Police and the Canadian Military. For an idea of how they'll work with foreign security, we reached Sgt Tim Burrows of the RCMP's Integrated Security Unit.

Ron Atkey is a lawyer and professor of national security law at York University and the University of Western Ontario. He was the first chair of SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the watchdog for CSIS. He was in our Toronto studio.

G20 Foreign Security - Ronald Kessler

For a sense of how foreign security agents approach these situations, we were joined by Ronald Kessler. He interviewed more than a hundred current and former U.S. Secret Service agents. He chronicled their stories in his book In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect. Ronald Kessler was in Potomac, Maryland.


PART TWO

Banking on Africa - Babak Abbaszadeh

We started this segment with part of a role-playing exercise in Kigali, Rwanda. It's run by a Canadian group called The Toronto Centre. The participants are banking regulators from more than a dozen African countries. And the scenario is this: A bank failure in one country is threatening the economies of three countries. And they have to figure out how to help that country recover while preventing their own economies from crashing.

The Toronto Centre runs similar sessions in developing countries all over the world. The idea is remarkably similar to what's on the agenda at the upcoming G-20 Summit. That's figuring out how to build well-governed financial institutions capable of withstanding -- or better still preventing -- an economic crisis.

Babak Abbaszadeh is the CEO of the Toronto Centre. He was in Rwanda earlier this month coordinating the session we just heard. Babak Abbaszadeh was in Toronto.

Banking on Africa - Paul Collier

Paul Collier agrees that improving the developing world's financial institutions would help matters. But he says the developed world -- Canada included -- has a lot to answer for as well.

Paul Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University. He's also an advisor to the IMF and The World Bank and the author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. His latest book is The Plundered Planet. He was in Oxford, England.

PART THREE

Detroit is Shrinking - Horrace Sheffield

We started this segment with a clip from David Bing, the Mayor of Detroit, Michigan. Earlier this year, he announced a controversial plan to downsize his city by calling in the bulldozers.

Mayor Bing's plan calls for the demolition of as many as 40,000 homes in Detroit. It targets neighbourhoods where empty homes are a blight on the urban landscape ... neighbourhoods where he says abandoned buildings attract crime and cost the city a great deal of money.

It's a long way from the Motor City's hey-day in the 1960s, when it was the bustling home of nearly two million people. According to the latest census, only 800,000 people live there now. And many of them have a hard time finding work.

Some of the people who live in the neighbourhoods where the demolitions are happening are concerned. We heard from Carolyn Leadley. She lives in the Farnsworth neighbourhood of Detroit, where she's an urban farmer. And she's worried her community could be lost in the demolitions.

Some civil rights groups in Detroit say the demolitions could have a devastating impact on the city's poor. Horrace Sheffield the Third is the Executive Director of The Detroit Association of Black Organizations. He was at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this morning.

Detroit is Shrinking - Karla Henderson

Karla Henderson was born and raised in Detroit. She's the Director of Building and Safety Engineering for the City of Detroit. She is carrying out the Mayor's demolition plan. Karla Henderson was in Detroit.

Detroit is Shrinking - Robin Boyle

The attempt to down-size Detroit presents an unusual, and largely unprecedented case study for urban planners because it involves trying to make a major city smaller, not bigger. For his sense of the challenges involved, we were joined by Robin Boyle. He's the head of urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Last Word - Artist on Detroit

We ended our discussion on Detroit with one more thought about Detroit. The city's decaying urban landscape is what draws Traven Benner there. He is an artist based in Toronto. And he has just returned from a few days of painting and taking photos there. We ended the program today with his reflections on the Motor City.