BAIL REFORM

Guests: John Cerasuolo, Anne-Marie McElroy, Jonathan Rudin

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DAVID LAMETTI: I want to reassure Canadians that if someone poses a significant threat to public safety, the law tells us they should not be released on bail. I'm disappointed that the official opposition is using tragedies to try to score political points. Canadians know that these are serious and complicated issues and that there are no quick or easy solutions.

MG: That's Canada's Minister of Justice, David Lametti, addressing the issue of bail reform yesterday in the House of Commons. All 13 premiers recently wrote to the Federal Government demanding changes to Canada's bail system, including the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford.

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DOUG FORD: We need to put the bad folks away in jail and not let them back on the streets so easily. Some of the cases have showed me are staggering how they get out on bail. So we need to do a better job. And anyone caught with a gun in a heinous crime, they should be going away for a long time.

MG: The call to tighten Canada's bail system has been echoed by police associations across this country. John Cerasuolo is president and CEO of the Ontario Provincial Police Association. Anne-Marie McElroy is a criminal defence attorney in Ottawa. And Jonathan Rudin is special projects Director of Aboriginal Legal Services in Toronto. They all join us now. Good morning, everyone.

ALL GUESTS: Good morning.

MG: John Cerasuolo, what sort of bail reform are you and your association calling for?

JOHN CERASUOLO: Well, basically what we want is a review of the bail provisions when it applies to serious offenders, chronic offenders with violence and with firearm offences, including specific consideration for possession in the act of a criminal offence.

MG: I apologize because your phone line is breaking up a little bit. But what specifically is wrong with the bail system as it exists right now?

JOHN CERASUOLO: Well, right now, they call it a catch and release. Right now, people will be charged with an offence, they'll be released, and then we'll be dealing with them as a quick fix bait. So we have to take that into consideration. When we’re talking about various violent offenders, chronic offenders, compiled with firearms, we should be taking a serious look at that. And we should look at reverse onus in those types of releases.

MG: I want to come back to the issue of reverse onus in just a moment. Anne-Marie McElroy, Statistics Canada’s latest figures show that there has been an increase in violent crime in this country. Do you believe that there needs to be a reform of the bail system?

ANNE-MARIE MCELROY: Oh, no. So when we look at what the framework is for bail in terms of the laws that are set out in the criminal code and how they've been interpreted by the Supreme Court and our other courts in Canada, there are many tools that are available for a justice who is reviewing someone's case and deciding whether or not they should be granted bail. In terms of the use of firearms, one of the grounds of bail is what we call the tertiary grounds. So the justice will consider whether the person is a flight risk, whether there is a substantial likelihood of offence, and also whether they need to detain the person just to maintain confidence in the justice system. And one of the specific points under that last one is whether or not a firearm has been used. So in those cases, those facts will already sort of mitigate in favour of detaining a person unless they have a very strong plan with a lot of supervision.

MG: Let me just clarify that, because we heard from the conservative justice critic that Bill C-75 was brought in essentially, her words, as a default position that courts and police would facilitate bail. That's the default position now for violent criminals. We don't believe that's the way it should be. Is that the default position that bail is facilitated through this bill?

ANNE-MARIE MCELROY: No. So there is a principle that requires a justice to consider release on the least onerous forms. And then if that's not appropriate, to move up in the levels of release from that with stricter conditions. And so that's part of our charter rights in terms of the presumption of innocence and the right to reasonable bail. So we do need to consider those things. But it's not the default position that someone charged with a violent offence is released on bail.

MG: Jonathan Rudin, Do you believe that the system such as it is is broken?

JONATHAN RUDIN: There's no question that the system is broken. And it's been broken for many, many years. But what's broken is not necessarily what's being talked about today. 70% of people who are in jail, in provincial and territorial jails, and that's where most people are in jail, are in jail because they were denied bail. They're not serving their sentence. They're in jail because they've been denied bail. So I don't see any evidence that we're massively releasing people who shouldn't be released. We continue, in fact, to overly incarcerate people who, as Anne-Marie said, have not actually been found guilty of anything. And the other thing that we should think about in this context is that when people are denied bail who shouldn't be denied bail, all sorts of consequences happen. Just two days ago, the Ontario Coroner's Office released a report that found that the number of people dying in custody in the province is increasing dramatically. And a lot of those people are there not because they've been convicted of a crime, but because they're on remand. And so we do have a crisis in the bail system. And what I worry about and what we worry about is in responding to the immediate issues, we're going to make what was always a bad system even worse.

MG: Well, I want to go back to John Cerasuolo on that in a moment. But he said, and I’ll just get your response to this, Jonathan. He said in some ways that the system is broken because there lived experience shows as officers that violent offenders are repeatedly out on the streets. That something happens, they go in, they come back out. And that, as he was saying, sometimes officers would see that same individual in the following days. Does that not suggest that something is wrong in that system?

JONATHAN RUDIN: So I guess one of the things is that we all have different lived experiences. And our lived experience with the clients that we work with, indigenous people, that's not happening. And so I think one of the things that is important, and I certainly agree with John on this point, that before we rush to do anything, we actually have to look to see what's really happening because relying on what you think you see happening can often obscure what's actually going on.

MG: John Cerasuolo.

JOHN CERASUOLO: You know, he does make a good point there. But at the same time, I think we have to look at other things as well. Legislative changes, but also we have to look at other avenues as well. And that is the accountability piece. And that could be compliance checks, through compliance checks to make sure that offenders are abiding by their conditions. We need to enforce that as well as we need to enforce possibly monitoring systems, be it the ankle bracelet system when they're out and about. The biggest thing that we're looking for here is to ensure public safety. That's what we're looking at. And at the same time, as a police association representative, we look at the health and safety of our officers, our members as well.

MG: You talked about the idea of reverse onus. Just briefly, what is that? What would that be that you're calling for? And premiers have been calling for that as well.

JOHN CERASUOLO: And to put it in just simple words, you provide the reason why you will not re-offend, and go that route. That's the simplest way to put reverse onus.

MG: Anne-Marie McElroy, does that square with the charter? That under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, if you are accused, you have the right to bail as I understand it, unless there is a compelling reason to keep you in custody. Does the idea of reverse onus square with the charter?

ANNE-MARIE MCELROY: It does in certain situations. There's already provisions in the Criminal Code that provide that in certain situations, a person will have the burden of showing why they should be released as opposed to it being the Crown's onus to show why they should be detained. So we already have situations where if somebody is already on a release, so they're already on bail for something and they're accused of re-offending, then it's their onus to show. And this goes back to the changes in Bill C-75 that changed with respect to people who have a previous instance of intimate partner violence on their record. Then it's their burden to show why they should be out, and it's a reverse onus situation.

MG: So that could be extended then to those who are accused of violent crimes involving firearms.

ANNE-MARIE MCELROY: That could be a possibility. The other thing that's important to remember, though, is that when we have situations where people are accused of gun crimes, at first glance, it seems like obviously they're all very serious. But we also see situations where there might be a possession of a firearm in a house where, you know, six family members are charged even though the gun is found in one person's room. So whether or not mom who, you know, lives in a different floor should be subjected to detention on the grounds of being charged with a firearm is a question that, you know, we have to look at what the actual circumstances of the case are and what that person's risk of re-offence is in all the circumstances.

MG: Jonathan Rudin, What would the idea of reverse onus mean for the clients that you work with?

JONATHAN RUDIN: Well, the difficulty that we face, and the Supreme Court and all sorts of organizations have noted this is it's very difficult for Indigenous people to get released. And that's because often, the people who get caught up in the justice system are at the lower end of the economic spectrum. They don't necessarily have a place to live, they don't have a job. And so to make it even harder will mean that they're just not going to get out at all. And what happens if you don't get out is that you often plead guilty to things that you might not even have done just for the sake of getting out of remand and getting your sentencing dealt with and starting to move on with your life. So I worry about reverse onuses because they're going to have a disproportionate impact on our clients. And I don't know and there's no evidence to suggest yet that it will make anyone any safer because, you know, we have to remember that people always do get out of jail. And so when we say we have to keep people in, you're keeping them for a limited period of time. When you're on remand, you get no services, you get no programs. That's why it's called dead time. And then when you get released and often on time served, because people are waiting months and months and months out of the trial, they're no better off. In fact, often worse off because people lost their housing, lost their employment opportunities, lost their counselling. All these things happen. So we can't assume that just because someone is locked up, we're making the community safer because that's not happening.

MG: John Cerasuolo, Is there any evidence that keeping certain offenders behind bars would make the community safer?

JOHN CERASUOLO: I don't have access to those statistics. I could just give you the lived experience of what my members are dealing with day to day and other municipal services are dealing with day to day. I can tell you right now, when you start seeing in the news vehicles being pulled over with a large, a substantial amount of drugs, a substantial amount of money and a loaded firearm, that is the ingredient to a disaster. It's a jackpot, right? So, you know, you have to really take that into account. And when you're dealing with those individuals and they are already out on bail conditions, we have to take a serious look at that.

MG: It's important because if we are saying that people will be held without bail until the trial happens, and that could be months down the road, is there any evidence that shows that holding them would actually make a community safer? Again, Statistics Canada shows an increase in violent crime. So people are trying to deal with this issue. But is there any evidence that that step of reverse onus would make people safer?

JOHN CERASUOLO: Are you asking me?

MG: Yes.

JOHN CERASUOLO: I think that would help. And that would at least deter because the accountability piece is there. And the offenders would know, you know, if I do this, this and this and it's escalating, you know, I'm going to be subject to be in custody.

MG: We spoke with Carolyn Yule, who is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Guelph, on this issue of bail reform and the changes that she thinks are needed to the bail system. Take a listen to what she said.

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CAROLYN YULE: Currently, the statistics on bail are inadequate. So we need much better information about how long our accused are on bail, the number and type of conditions they receive, when they're out in the community and they breach, how many times are they breaching? What are the nature of those offences? We also need much better information on what happens following breaches when accused are returned to court. Do they get rereleased with the same type of conditions? Do they get rereleased with stricter conditions? Do they get remanded into custody? What's happening?

MG: What's happening? John Cerasuolo, You raised the issue of compliance checks. Do we have enough resources to keep track of the people who are actually out on bail?

JOHN CERASUOLO: From our experience, no, we don't have the resources out there that are specifically assigned to compliance checks. Within the OPP, members lay charges. If that does warrant bail and they’re released, the offenders are released on conditions, it's up to the officers to maintain those compliance checks. When you're short staffed, when it's extremely busy with calls for service, that seems to go on the back burner as well. Municipal forces, the same thing applies there. It's all resources when it comes to compliance checks. And, you know, if you're short staffed, you have to do the priority calls as they come in.

MG: Jonathan Rudin, What would that support mean for people who are out on bail? Not just the compliance checks, but also support for them when they are not in remand, not in custody. What would that mean for them and for broader society, do you think?

JONATHAN RUDIN: So certainly, we have seen that there have been supervision programs called bail supervision programs established for Indigenous and non-Indigenous offenders. Not offenders. Accused people. Sorry. And they're actually very helpful because what they do is they assure people that if this person is released, there's someone they can check in with every week who will see how they're doing and can help them start on getting their life back on track if they need that sort of help. And so I think bail supervision programs make a lot of sense. We need to, though, distinguish between bail supervision, which helps people sort of get on track and compliance. Because one of the other issues that we know, and the Supreme Court has talked about this, is that a lot of people are released on conditions that are unreasonable and that they can't actually meet. And so sometimes people are being arrested again and again, not because they're doing anything dangerous or wrong. It's because when they were released, they had to promise, for example, don't drink, but they're an alcoholic. Well, surprise, surprise, they drink when they get out. It doesn't mean that they've done anything that endangers the population, but it means they're going back to jail. So we do have to look seriously about conditions. And so I would distinguish between supervision, which is really helpful, and just compliance checks, which don't really do much and aren't likely going to.

MG: We started this conversation, Anne-Marie McElroy, by hearing from David Lametti, the justice minister, speaking yesterday in the House of Commons. He called bail reform complicated. There is an emotional component to this, obviously, when we're talking about immediate incidents and tragic incidents. John Cerasuolo talks about what the officers that are part of his association see when they're out there. But given the complications of that, how do we go about keeping the public safe and upholding the principles of law as well when it comes to bail reform, the principles that show that somebody is innocent until proven guilty?

ANNE-MARIE MCELROY: Well, I think that I'll come back to the point that Jonathan Rudin made, which is that people are going to be released back into the community eventually at some point. So I think that this conversation was spurred from a specific incident. And we need to keep in mind that the real issue there is community safety and safety for officers that are trying to do their jobs. And the issue of people reoffending or offending on bail is just one part of it. And the larger issue there is just the safety of our communities. And so our reaction to that cannot be to restrict bail in a way that is going to violate any charter principles or have a disproportionate effect on the marginalized and indigenous and other people who are more likely to get caught up in the bail system anyways.

MG: John Cerasuolo, just the last minute to you. Do you think as somebody who is calling for this reform, that to Anne-Marie's point, we need to understand the larger context here, that individual reform of holding somebody, you know, without bail does not address the larger issues that perhaps might make a community safer.

JOHN CERASUOLO: Yeah. But we have to look at the extreme situations and treat those as they come in. And I forget who said it, but it's almost like a case by case analysis. You also have to take a risk management approach to it. Like we're just putting ideas out there for further discussion. We're not saying that we have to disadvantage marginalized population. That's not what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make sure that the community is safe as well as public safety officers are safe.

MG: We'll leave it there. Glad to talk to you all about this. Thank you very much.

ALL GUESTS: Thanks. Thanks very much.

MG: John Cerasuolo is president and CEO of the Ontario Provincial Police Association. He was in Sault Ste. Marie. Anne-Marie McElroy is a criminal defence attorney. She was in Ottawa. And Jonathan Rudin is special projects director of Aboriginal Legal Services in Toronto and the Asper Centre’s New Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence. He was in Toronto. Your thoughts are welcome. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is next. And then.

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Was Frank shot by his father? Was Frank shot by his brother? Was he shot by the father of some young lady that Frank had wronged? Frank was good looking. And Sher She la femme was the big question.

MG: Who shot Frank Westwood? More than 100 years later, this mystery that gripped Toronto is being told in gripping detail. And the woman blamed for his murder is having her story told as well. You'll hear it coming up in 6 minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Stay with us.

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CLARA'S GUN

Guest: Carolyn Whitzman

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, the push for better primary care in Canada. Plus calls for action to stop abuse in amateur sport. But first, a Canadian whodunnit.

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MG: Let me take you back to Toronto on the night of October the sixth, 1894. The audience at the Grand Opera House was enjoying the musical The Black Crook.

[Song: “Naughty Men”]

MG: Across the city in the Parkdale neighbourhood, as that's unfolding, a pistol shot rang out. And so began a fascinating episode in Canadian criminal history. Carolyn Whitzman tells the story in her new book, Klara at the Door With a Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, the Exemplary White Son, and the Murder That Shocked Toronto. Carolyn Whitzman is in our Ottawa studio. Carolyn, good morning.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Let's talk about Toronto in 1894, because this is in many ways one of the characters of this story. What was that city like then?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, Toronto was, and I'm not going to say it's like this today. It was deeply, deeply hypocritical. So there were rules about women in public space. There were rules about respectability and how it would be maintained. But those rules were being broken all the time. There was plenty of cases of women procuring abortions or becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and there were plenty of cases of men openly harassing on the street.

MG: This is Toronto the good.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: This is Toronto the good, and Toronto, a city that very much saw itself in the forefront of a creation of a new Canadian identity.

MG: You were living in Parkdale at the time when you heard about this?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes, I was.

MG: How did you find out about this story?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, 20 years ago, I was writing my thesis. I'm a housing policy researcher, and I'm very interested in how housing policy sometimes reflects stereotypes as opposed to actual social conditions. So I came across a mention of this murder case. I went down an absolute rabbit hole of reading all the newspapers of the time. I came away with a very strong sense of a very strong woman. Clara Ford, impoverished black tailor who was accused of murdering her former next door neighbour, a rich white young man named Frank Westwood.

MG: What happened the night of that shot?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Right. So Frank had returned home after a fairly steady evening with some friends, and his mother had stayed up. The light was on in the front room. He spoke to his mother for a few minutes. And just before 11:00, they went upstairs. They'd doused the lights. There was a knock at the door. Frank went downstairs. His mother heard a sound like glass crashing. She ran downstairs to find her son on the floor, clutching his stomach, saying that he'd been shot. The father of the house, Benjamin Westwood, ran downstairs still in his pyjamas. He had a revolver. He shot up into the air to get the attention of the police. But even though Frank was still alive and four doctors came immediately, nothing could save Frank in the days before antibiotics. He'd been shot in the stomach. He died of blood poisoning three days later. The media in the meanwhile had gone wild.

MG: Who was Frank Westwood? I mean, again, in the title of the book, He is the Exemplary white Son.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Mm hmm. So Frank had just graduated from Parkdale High. He was the son of a prominent boating manufacturer who owned a store, Benjamin Westwood. Benjamin was prominent in liberal politics and also in the prohibition movement. They lived on the banks of Lake Ontario. They had a boat house. Frank was a wealthy, privileged 18-year-old.

MG: And as you say, at Frank's shooting and after his death, the press goes wild. How was that murder covered in the press?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, there was a lot of criticism of the police because they didn't immediately arrest anyone. There were all kinds of rumours swirling around. There were seven newspapers in Toronto at the time, and they were all engaged in a very furious circulation war. In fact, one of the newspapers, the Empire, would close down two months later. So they were just putting everything into the mix. Was Frank shot by his father? Was Frank shot by his brother? Was Frank shot, and this was the idea that was most talked about. Was he shot by the father of some young lady that Frank had wronged? Frank was good looking. And Sher She la Femme was the big question.

MG: Hmm. And then Clara Ford comes into the picture. Again, in the title of the book, you say that she is the scandalous black suspect. What made her scandalous? She sounded like a remarkable person.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: She is a remarkable person. She was smart. She was witty. She was a survivor. She was suspicious, first of all, because she was black. There were about 500 black people in Toronto in a city that was then 250,000, and they were very scrutinized. She was suspicious because she was a single mother and the daughter of a single mother. And she was suspicious because she was known to wear men's clothes and there were rumours that she had lived as a man.

MG: There are a number of precedents that you point out in this book. The first woman and the second person who testified on her own behalf in the Canadian trial. Is this true that she was the first person described by a North American newspaper as a homosexual?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Certainly that I could find. I searched for the term homosexual both as one word and with a little dash in the middle of it in a range of North American newspapers. The term had been introduced when Kraft Bing's work was translated in 1893, and she was called a homosexual in 1894. She was called a homosexual because of what would be called today transphobia as opposed to homophobia. There was some question about whether she fit in as a woman, whether she was a mannish woman as it was termed in those days. So yeah, she was subject to racism, sexism and homophobia.

MG: Do we know whether she identified as a man or a woman?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, if only we had her diary. What Clara said to the police at the time and to her friends was that she dressed and possibly lived for a time as a teenager as a man in order to be safer and in order to have access to better jobs.

MG: You mentioned that the black community in Toronto was scrutinized. This is in a city that you describe, you know, being smug in the self-satisfied superiority of the white Protestant majority. How would you describe the black community at the time?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, when Toronto was founded, there was still slavery. By the time Clara was born in 1861, there were a large number, again, about 500 people, many of whom had been American refugees who had moved up during the years before the Civil War when the Fugitive Slave Act made it very dangerous for not only escaped slaves, but free black people in the North U.S. In the 1860s, there was a black presence downtown in the neighbourhood, then called Macaulay Town, later called The Ward. And there was a black middle class in the 1890s when Clara was on trial. William Hubbard was a deputy mayor and he was black. But the vast majority of black people by the 1890s, many black people moved south again to the U.S. after the Civil War. I'd say that attitudes hardened as Canada moved on from seeing itself as a temporary and contingent refuge for black Americans. And there was a general notion that black people were all very well in their place, but there were minstrel shows, There was mocking of accents. There were stereotypes that Clara was constantly fighting against, and there was also harassment on the streets.

MG: And what made her interesting in that context is, as you say, she was in many ways stuffed into boxes that didn't fit.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes. So when she was arrested, which was six weeks after the shooting, the newspapers once again went wild. And various newspapers couldn't decide whether she was a tragic mulatto girl, to use one of the tropes at the time, who'd been tricked by the police into a false confession because she had confessed the day that she was arrested by the police, or whether she was just this monster, sort of a black brute stereotype with John McDonald himself saying that if there wasn't lynching, black men would rape white women. So there was that notion of black people as brutes. And then there was also the notion of not needing a motive at all. If Clara was insane and if Clara was dressed up in men's clothes and felt herself to be a man, she was ipso facto insane.

MG: You have to go back and explain what the tragic mulatto trope is, because there's a lot of people who may not now know even that phrase.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: So Clara was of mixed race parentage. She was brought up by her so-called foster mother, Jesse McKay, who was a white woman. I contend in the book that she was Clara's biological mother. But definitely, as her defence lawyer said, Clara could pass as a man, but could never pass as a white woman. So in the mid-19th century, there was the notion of a mixed race person who didn't quite belong in either race, not black enough to be considered black, not white enough to be considered white. And because that person would never fit, they were doomed to be alone. Well, Clara wasn't alone. She was a single mom, but she had friendships with both white women and black women. She transcended boundaries.

MG: She was also characterized, as you said, as a monster. And one of the ways that that characterization was played, it was again through one of the newspapers that's fighting for circulation, suggesting what? That she drank a pint of warm blood every night?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes. There were all these stories that blew up. So there was an anecdote about Clara being harassed on the streetcar, getting off with two men who'd been harassing her and punching or slapping one. That quickly turned into Clara has the strength of two or three men. Clara is an expert boxer. And the rumour of her drinking pints of blood or buying pints of blood from the butcher in Parkdale, I suggest that given that she had a Scottish mother and they were very poor, it's possible they were making blood pudding. But in any case, any story about Clara fighting against unfair treatment by her employers or by people on the street got pathologized.

MG: She confessed to the killing of Frank Westwood. Why did she say in that confession that she shot him?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: She said that Frank had sexually assaulted her. That one summer afternoon as she was sitting by the lakeside after going to church, Frank and possibly some of his friends had tried to rape her and that she fought him off, but that she vowed revenge and came back in October and shot him.

MG: Why do you think she made that confession?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, Clara's treatment by the police on the day of her arrest was very unlike what usually happened with the police. In the 1890s, you could argue that accused people had maybe more rights than they do today because the police were expected to arrest someone immediately, to possibly ask them whether they had some sort of alibi for the crime, and then to put them in jail overnight and in the morning, they would be seen by the magistrate. In contrast, Clara was detained at about 3:00 in the afternoon. She was questioned for about 8 hours with a break for dinner, not given access to a friend or a family member. Again, very untypical of treatment, particularly of female suspects. Two men in a room with a single woman was not allowed in 19th century society. And at around 11:00 she confessed. She contended when she became the first woman to testify on her own behalf that the police had tricked her and had intimidated her into a false confession. And the jury of 12 white men believed her.

MG: They certainly did. What was her alibi for the allegation?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Her alibi is that she'd been at the Black Crook that night.

MG: And that’s where she was.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes. She was an avid theatre goer and that she'd been there with her daughter, Flora. Flora actually testified that Clara hadn't shown up that night at the theatre. However, two people who worked at the theatre said that they'd seen her there that night. And two people in the rooming house that she lived in said that she had returned home at approximately 11:00 and certainly before 12:00, and Clara would have been unable to return from Parkdale in that time if she'd shot Frank at about 11:00.

MG: She was, as I said, the first woman and the second person in this country to testify on their own behalf. What was she like on the stand?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: She gave the performance of her life, as I say in the book. She was considered very brave. And she told lots of amusing anecdotes about the police officers, and used a combination of. Humour, but also some sort of triggering language about the police cornering her, the police keeping her alone. The police saying, for instance, that if she confessed, she'd have access to the $500 reward offered by the Ontario government. She gave a fascinating performance, which is repeated almost verbatim in the newspapers the next day.

MG: In many different storytelling traditions, including in black cultures, there is the character of the trickster. And you in some ways say that was something that she brought to life in her performance.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yeah. She was caught in a web. She was desperately trying to get out.

MG: Like the Anansi character.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: The Anansi character. Exactly. Like the spider in the African legend. So Clara really didn't have a choice. The strongest piece of evidence against her was her confession. Her own daughter refuted her alibi. If she didn't get up there and convince the jurors that the police had acted improperly and had elicited a false confession, she would have hung.

MG: And is that what most people seemed to believe was going to happen? That a black woman accused of shooting the son of a prominent white family in Toronto of that time as you described it would be heading to the gallows?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Absolutely. Until the very moment of the verdict, the assumption was that she would be found guilty. And in the best case scenario, her death sentence would be commuted. But Clara was a survivor. She was a desperately poor woman who had probably been homeless during her youth. She had been arrested when she was 12 or 13 and sent to jail for vagrancy. But she was a survivor.

MG: What was the courtroom like when she was acquitted?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Pandemonium.

MG: Pandemonium?

[both laughing]

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes. So there was much cheering. There was nothing that the bailiffs could do to stop the really, you have to call it the audience, the folks who were in the courtroom from cheering and stamping their feet. As she left the courtroom, a bookmaker touched her skirt for luck. She returned to her home on York Street, which then was the epicentre of the slum known as The Ward, surrounded by about 200 men and boys. It was an impromptu parade.

MG: What happened to Clara after all of this?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Oh, another thing that is difficult to know. What we do know is that Clara joined the first black vaudeville troupe called Sam T. Jack's Creole Company. Sam T. Jack was white, but the troupe itself included pioneers of gospel, of ragtime, of jazz, of comedy. And the emcee was a woman, Florence Hines, who was a male impersonator.

MG: At the end of the book, you say that in some ways you fell a little bit in love with her.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Yes.

MG: Why did you say that?

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Well, I think I had to be on Team Clara in order to keep that story alive in my heart for 20 years. But Clara had a great sense of humour that comes out really clearly. She was not only physically strong, but had to be very mentally strong to survive this constant misogyny war, this constant racism and sexism that she faced to eke out a living for herself, for her mother as her mother got ill, for her two children. And I just kept on, you know, thinking what a person who deserves a book written about her.

MG: Why do we need to hear the story now, do you think? You talk about this being a very different city, Toronto, than it was way back when. And then there are some people who say, well, perhaps not as different as we might like to believe.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: No, it's not different enough. I would say in an era when there is increased scrutiny on the police about their treatment of black people, in an era when still there's a great deal of bad feelings about single mothers who might have to rely on welfare, and in an era where it's very hard for a claim of sexual assault or racial harassment to stick, the story is still very relevant.

MG: It's a hell of a story. And I'm really, really glad to have read this book, but also to talk to you about it. Carolyn, thank you very much.

CAROLYN WHITZMAN: Thank you so much, Matt.

MG: Carolyn Whitzman’s new book is Clara at the Door with a Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, the Exemplary White Son, and the Murder That Shocked Toronto. You're listening to The Current. My name is Matt Galloway. Next week, Monday to be precise, we will be in Victoria, British Columbia, for a public forum. We are looking at what it means to live without a family doctor and also at some of the solutions to the crisis in primary care. And one of my guests will be this doctor. He let us tag along on one of his appointments.

SOUNDCLIP

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Hi. My name is Dr. Ted Rosenberg, and I'm a physician that does exclusively house calls for elderly people and particularly frail elderly people living in the community, together with an interdisciplinary team of nurses and physiotherapists and exercise trainers.

[phone beep]

MARY: Hello.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Oh, hi, Mary. We're just downstairs.

MARY: Okay, I'll let you in.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Thanks a lot. See you in a minute.

[phone dropped]

DR. TED ROSENBERG: When I first had this idea for this model of care, you know, my sense was that, you know, if I could see people in their homes, we could probably keep these people at a hospital and also out of nursing homes. And most importantly, you know, to improve their quality of life and support their caregivers.

[knock on door and door opens]

MARY: Hello.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Hi, Mary.

MARY: Hi. Hi, Ted. Nice to see you.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Nice to see you too. Why don't we grab a seat and then we can talk a little bit about what's been happening with you. How's your day been so far?

MARY: Well, it's been okay. I've had quite a few things to do. It's just a dusting day.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Okay. I just wanted to check in about how you're doing with your pain.

MARY: Having Dr. Rosenberg come to the house with his team has just been fantastic because it started out when my husband was ill, and I managed to get on the home team. That was about 11 years ago. And I mean, the support I had just with his illness was great. And then they kept me on. And they just seem like family and friends now.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: You know, everything else looks pretty normal except for the spine. There's arthritis.

MARY: There’s arthritis everywhere.

DR. TED ROSENBERG: Is there anywhere where there's no arthritis?

MARY: I mean, now my hands are going. I don't think I told you last time. And I'm finding it hard to pick things up and hold them. If I had to go to another doctor's office or I had to get on a bus, I couldn't do it with this walker. So I just find it’s great. I know that I can phone and someone will come if my ears are clogged up or whatever. I was going to move back to my hometown when I was go into retirement home. My brother said, You can't come back. You're never going to get the medical care that you're getting there. You'll have to stay in Victoria. [laughing]

MG: Dr. Ted Rosenberg's patients pay an annual subscription fee for his service. We'll hear more about that at our forum in Victoria. It will air next Tuesday on The Current. And coming up after your regional update, a new report digs further into the details of the desperate search for primary care in this country. What are the trade-offs that you would make for primary care? These are some of the questions that were asked, and we'll talk more about that in a few minutes when we take a look at what's in this report. We'll also take a look at a new CBC investigation on the scale of abuse in amateur sport and what needs to be done to make sport safe for all. That's coming up. The Current’s back in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

PRIMARY CARE REPORT

Guest: Dr. Tara Kiran

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. As I mentioned, next week, I'll be in Victoria, British Columbia, hosting a public forum to hear from people about the crisis in health care, in particular, primary care. In one neighbourhood in Victoria, people without a family doctor or other primary care line up outside waiting to get into an urgent care centre.

SOUNDCLIP

You know, we don't have enough doctors anymore, so we don't have anybody we can call and go and see. And here we are. Three or four walk in clinics have closed for us. And it's a really broken system right now. It's not just here. I think it's across Canada. It's just an unfortunate time. We need a whole mess more doctors.

MG: A whole mess more doctors indeed. That patient is right that this is a problem right across the country. New research out this week shows that more than six and a half million Canadians are in the same boat, one in five adults without a family doctor. Dr. Tara Kiran is a family physician at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto and the Fidany chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto. She's also the project lead at Ourcare. This is a project looking into the future of primary care in Canada. Dr. Kiran, good morning.

DR. TARA KIRAN: Good morning.

MG: Do you think the system is broken as that individual said?

DR. TARA KIRAN: I certainly think primary care is in crisis. There are far too many people who don't have a family doctor.

MG: We know this and we've been talking about this. The number keeps going up. It was 6 million. Now it's six and a half million. How does this new data that you have published add to that conversation?

DR. TARA KIRAN: Yeah. So we did a research survey in the fall. We asked people in Canada to tell us not just about their experience in primary care, but also what did they want to see in a better future. So what their needs, values, preferences and priorities were. And so we got more than 9000 people across Canada who responded to this survey. And our findings for one just highlighted the problem. You know, our estimates are that 22% of people who responded to our survey did not have a family doctor or nurse practitioner who they could see regularly for care. And extrapolated to the full Canadian population of adults, that would mean about 6.5 million people 18 and over who don't have a family doctor. Now, back in 2019, when Statistics Canada put that estimate out, it was four and a half million. So that's a huge jump. And the other thing that we did is we looked to see how that differed based on people's background. And we saw, you know, for example, people living with a low income, people who are racialized, men, people who are younger, all were less likely to report that they had a family doctor. And by far, some of the biggest differences actually that we saw were by region. So in a region like Ontario, maybe about 13% said that they didn't have a family doctor or NP. But compare that to British Columbia where it was 27%.

MG: Can I go back to who this is impacting and how you were able to break that down along the lines of race and income? Why is it important in some ways that we speak openly about that and that we shine a light on the fact that this is hitting different people in different ways?

DR. TARA KIRAN: Because I think it ultimately comes down to how we design our health care system. We've known for a really long time that the outcomes when it comes to health are not equal across Canada. In fact, they're unjust. And we know that people who live with a low income and people who are racialized are less likely to live a longer life. They're less likely to be healthy to receive the care that they deserve. And so part of that is related to the social determinants, but part of that is also related to access to health care. And so primary care and access to primary care can be a real equalizer. And we know that many of these same groups have a lot of barriers to getting the care they need. So they may be working two jobs and logistically it might be difficult. And we know that people who are black and indigenous have experienced tremendous amounts of racism. And so there's issues of trust in the way that we've designed our system not to welcome them. So there's many specific issues that we need to take into account when designing specifically for people who have what I would say are the highest needs.

MG: What about networks? I found that really interesting, that, I mean, often, as with many other things in life, you get something because you might happen to know somebody else who has that. How does that play out when it comes to people trying to find a family doctor?

DR. TARA KIRAN: You're absolutely right. So some of these groups that we mentioned have less access to what I would call social capital. So they aren't as well connected. And so we know that right now, if you really want to get a family doctor, often you're trying to work your connections. And there are people who are living on the margins who don't have the access to that privilege.

MG: Again, in Victoria, we heard people, and this happens across the country, we know, but people are lining up outside urgent care centres in the wee small hours trying to get in. If people don't have access to primary care, what did you learn specifically about where people are turning to?

DR. TARA KIRAN: Yeah. So people who don't have a family doctor, we asked them, do you have another health care provider that you're turning to? And about 12% said yes. And for many of those people, it was a specialist or a pharmacist who they were turning to, but the vast majority didn't have one. And then we asked them, okay, well, when you have a concern that's actually not urgent, but that needs to be addressed, where did you try and get care? And the top three answers in rank order were an in-person walk in clinic, a virtual walk in clinic, and then a hospital emergency room. And we know none of those options are great options for people for different reasons.

MG: As you mentioned earlier, you asked people a series of questions about… these are sort of trade-off questions. If you don't have a family doctor now, what would you be willing to give up or where would you be willing to go to find that care? Walk me through some of those trade off questions, because it's really interesting in terms of how people see a way out of the problem that we find ourselves in.

DR. TARA KIRAN: Yeah. So maybe I'll start by saying that 97% of people who responded to the survey thought it was important that everybody in Canada have a family doctor and that they could see regularly for care. And then we asked them also what was important to them, because I think that is really helpful when we're designing, like what are the things that we should prioritize? And the number one thing that people said was important to them was that their family doctor know me as a person and consider all the factors that affect my health. The second was that they stand up for me and the third was that they coordinate the care I get from multiple places. We asked people about things like team based care, but we asked them, you know, would you be willing to see a team member if your family doctor or NP recommended it? And actually, the vast majority, 90%, said they would be comfortable doing that. We asked them about, you know, organizing the family doctor system the way that we organize our public school system. So what if family doctors and nurse practitioners in Canada had to accept as a patient anyone who lives in their neighbourhood near their office? And about three quarters said that they would agree with that kind of system. We also asked, you know, how willing would you be to see the same nurse practitioner consistently for most things, except when the nurse practitioner felt you really need to see a doctor? And, you know, 90% said they were willing to do that if it meant that everybody in Canada could have a family doctor and NP. Similarly, even though they really valued the one on one relationship, clearly, that was the number one important thing to them. When we said, you know, if it meant that everybody in Canada could have a family doctor and NP, how willing would you be to see any family doctor or nurse practitioner in a practice who has access to your records, but it may not be the same person you see every time? And again, the majority said they would be willing to do that. So what we see is that people are willing to accept trade-offs if it means that everybody does have access. People recognize how important that is and they're ready to embrace team based care and a different way of working.

MG: And virtual care to some degree as well.

DR. TARA KIRAN: So yeah, so that's an interesting one. I mean, basically, we asked about virtual care. And the type of care that people want the most access to is in person scheduled care. But one of the things that really struck me in our survey data was we did ask some questions about virtual walk in clinics. And remember, I mentioned that, you know, that was one of the places people were turning to when they didn't have a family doctor. We made explicit some of the connections between some of these new virtual services and large for-profit companies and pharmaceutical companies. And then we asked them how willing they’d be to use the service. And so for example, we found that most people were actually pretty hesitant about these services when those kinds of connections were being explicit. So people actually don't want that kind of service in the future. What they want is a relationship with a family doctor or NP they can see in person.

MG: Just before I let you go, because we are out of time, part of this is about changing what we think of our relationship with the doctor, where in past perhaps you had the same doctor your whole life and now there is a move towards, as you said, more team based care. And you might see the doctor occasionally, you might see nurse practitioners or residents throughout much of your other time. How should that be factored in when the premiers, the Prime Minister meet next week and we try to figure a way out of this issue?

DR. TARA KIRAN: Great question. Well, for one, I think that primary care needs to be front and centre. It's the front door to their health care system. And I really hope to see some recommendations there. Second, I do think that team based care is part of the way out of the problem. So it's a way for us to grow our capacity to take on new patients, for a family doctor or NP to see more people in a way that, you know, hopefully can actually still build continuous relationships. So I hope to see funding for that. But most fundamentally, I actually hope that they'll put forward a different vision for primary care as a right that is organized similarly to our public school system, because I think until we really move to that kind of system where there's more accountability and more structure, where family doctors and teams are brought into the system and not self-employed and other business owners, I think we're going to continue to have this problem until we completely redesign and think through how it should be organized.

MG: There's a lot to think about here. Glad to talk to you about it. Dr. Kiran, thank you.

DR. TARA KIRAN: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Tara Kiran is a family physician at St. Michael's Hospital and the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto.

[Music]

SPORTS ABUSE

Guests: Jamie Strashin, Paul Sir

SOUNDCLIP

LANNI MARCHANT: I grew up a figure skater. I skated at the champion's training centre out of Cambridge, Ontario. I started there when I was in Grade three and stayed through my first bit of high school. While there, I was weighed in weekly, fat tested monthly, and had the results posted on the wall for all to see. I was a pre-teen female and was made to share the dressing room with skaters much older than me, male included. It was normalized to be yelled at to the point of tears. And heaven forbid you get pulled into the dressing room. Number six with Carey Leach. If you were not perfect, you were made to run laps at the parking lot. I guess the silver lining is that those running laps for me turned into running laps at the Olympic Oval. The entire culture was toxic and overly sexed.

MG: That's Lanni Marchant, Canadian Olympic marathoner describing the abuse she experienced as a child in sport. Lanni was speaking at yesterday's Status of Women hearings on women and girls in sport. Amateur sports in Canada have been rocked in recent years, with reports of athletes being abused, many of them children and teens. While some reports have made national headlines, many other incidents go under the radar. Pascale St-Onge, Canada's sports minister, recently spoke with the CBC's Jamie Strashin about what the federal Government is doing.

SOUNDCLIP

PASCALE ST-ONGE: I can tell you that we're taking it extremely seriously. That's why we've invested $16 million in the last budget just to create the Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner because we felt it was so important to have that independent mechanism.

MG: Jamie Strashin is here to update us on what he and his team have uncovered. Jamie, good morning.

JAMIE STRASHIN: Morning, Matt.

MG: We’ll talk about that money that Pascale St-Onge talked about in just a moment. But first, I mean, you were here on this program four years ago looking into the reporting of abuse in sport. And at that time, as we said earlier, you had found more than 200 coaches in Canada had been convicted of sexual offences against young athletes since 1998. What have you found since then?

JAMIE STRASHIN: Well, we've found out that this is a problem, Matt, that despite many promises, many programs, lots of talk about making the system safer for athletes, that it persists. In the last four years since we did that investigation, we found 83 more cases of a coach charged with sexually abusing someone under their care. These are cases that are happening at the grass roots level of sports where hundreds of thousands of Canadian families take their children, you know, to the pool, the rink, the diamond every night. So it's a problem that persists. We were surprised to see that number of cases. And, you know, I should say that, you know, it's a troubling number, Matt, and I think it's troubling that this is still happening. I think it exists against a backdrop at the grassroots level where, you know, almost everyone is trying to do the right things for kids to make sports fun. I think that's important to say as well.

MG: I found it troubling reading your report that there was a quotation from the head of one of the largest youth sports charities who says that at the grassroots, safe sport is nothing more than a compliance exercise.

JAMIE STRASHIN: Yeah. I think, you know, as someone who lives and breathes amateur sport, I think, you know, you can find me at a hockey rink or baseball diamond most nights throughout the year. I think safe sport, you know, at that level, you know, you take a little module or course at the beginning of the year, you know, you check off a box and you're good to go. There's very little that takes place with, you know, children of different ages, very little kind of age appropriate, you know, training or prevention that's done. And there's very little resources to do anything at a meaningful level at the grassroots. And I think it has become something that you kind of get through at the beginning of the season, you know, kind of say, okay, you know, we're done and let's get on with the game.

MG: The former sports minister, Kirsty Duncan, who's still a Liberal MP, has been calling for a public inquiry into abuse in sport. She's accused her own government of not doing enough to tackle this problem. What can you tell us about that?

JAMIE STRASHIN: Well, I think Kirsty Duncan, you know, speaks from experience, as we've seen with some articles published in the last week. You know, she lived with some of the same kind of scenarios that Lanni Marchant mentioned in the clip you played. I think when we first did the investigation and in speaking to her at the time, you could see that it deeply resonated with her. And now, we kind of know a little bit more why it did. I think, you know, a national inquiry, we've heard that from a lot of different circles, you know, to kind of, you know, get to the bottom of this. But as a lot of other people are saying, we know what the problems are. We've been hearing about, you know, these issues from athletes for years about, you know, bad relationships with coaches, you know, the push to win. We know what the problems are. The question now is, you know, what are we going to do about it in a meaningful way? And a lot of people are saying, you know what, maybe an inquiry is not the best way forward.

MG: And the government is saying that. The government is saying that it's not interested in a public inquiry, that that's not the best way to answer the question. So what do the people who work in sport, what do they want? I mean, if it's not a public inquiry, what is it that they want to ensure safe sport for all?

JAMIE STRASHIN: Well, I think, you know, like many things in this country, it comes down to money, resources, desire and really, will. And if you look at the Canadian sport as a giant pie, you have the 1%, you know, at the top, the elite athletes that we're trying to put on, you know, podiums.

MG: This is on the podium.

JAMIE STRASHIN: This is on the podium. And they act under the national sport organizations that get the most amount of direct funding from Ottawa. And you know, for those athletes, there's been this Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, this universal code of conduct. There have been things that have been rolled out since our investigation to give these athletes a place to take their complaints.

MG: That's the money that Pascale St-Onge was talking about.

JAMIE STRASHIN: That's the $16 million to set up this office over three years. In theory, you know, some of these ideas are supposed to trickle down through the provinces and then through the grassroots. I think that's very kind of wishful thinking. You know, as someone who's spoken and lives the life at the grassroots, this is not a conversation that's happening in a meaningful, deep way that resonates with children, coaches and parents at that level. It's just not happening right now. So a lot of people are saying flip the pyramid around. You know, if you want to take this safe sport file seriously, get more resources and money down to the grassroots and do things that actually have impact.

MG: Do you think the grassroots, if they were to get that funding, are they prepared to take on that responsibility? Do they have the capacity to do what's necessary?

JAMIE STRASHIN: Well, that's a great question. You know, I think the grassroots level is driven by volunteers. It's driven by parents who have very little bandwidth. You know, they're getting their children to whatever activity that they're doing. They're trying to go through a laundry list of things to get their kids onto the field. To then say, oh, you know, you've got to take on this safe sport file as well, I think would be daunting for many, you know, organizations, and I think will require some kind of, you know, outside assistance. If I could just make one other point really quickly about I think, you know, through the course of this investigation, the first question we always ask people is, you know, what does safe sport mean to you? And you get 100 different answers. I think it's come to encompass far too many things. You have concussions, you have toxic culture, you have parental behaviour, and then you have, you know, sexual abuse and grooming. And it's a lot of things to download into one file and just, you know, call it safe sport. I think certain things need to be hived off. And we've seen this with concussions, you know, here in Ontario that have kind of, you know, taken on their own thing. But I think something like, you know, sexual abuse and grooming needs to be age appropriate. It needs to be, you know, instructed and taught by people who know what they're talking about. And to simply dump it down onto the grassroots without support, I think would not get us to where we need to be.

MG: Just before I let you go, you mentioned, I mean, your own experience. There are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of kids who play sport in this country every single day. What should their parents be thinking about now in light of your reporting?

JAMIE STRASHIN: I think, you know, never be scared to speak up. You know, if you see something, you know, call it out. And I think we hear from parents all the time. I didn't want to upset the apple cart. I didn't want to affect my son or daughters playing time. You know, I didn't want to, you know, be the parent that, you know, sticks out at the rink or the diamond or the gym. And I think, you know, by doing that, you know, we perpetuate these kinds of cases and allow this kind of behaviour to persist.

MG: We just need the systems there to address those concerns when they're raised.

JAMIE STRASHIN: Exactly.

MG: Jamie, thank you.

JAMIE STRASHIN: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Jamie Strashin, a CBC reporter with me in our studio in Toronto. Paul Sir is the executive director of the Alberta Basketball Association. He's been involved in basketball at the local level as a father, a coach and administrator for the past three decades. He's in Edmonton. Paul, good morning to you.

PAUL SIR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Is Safe Sport a compliance exercise at the grassroots?

PAUL SIR: Well, it can be if that's the approach that you choose to take. But I would say, Matt, that at the grassroots, most of my peers take it very seriously. The problem is, as Jamie identified, is we just literally do not have anything close to the capacity to be able to address this in a meaningful ongoing sense.

MG: You admitted, I mean, that given your capacity issues, your efforts to make change on a file like Safe sport can't be really more than lip service. Those are your words.

PAUL SIR: And that is my intent, to say exactly that, because it's one thing to trumpet any issue, it's another thing to act on it and act on it systematically. We work closely through ABA with Canada basketball. And Canada Basketball has taken a real strong position on safe sport and shared so much of the information that's provided them by the federal government. But when we get it, it's what are we capable of doing with it? That really becomes the issue because we're a small staff and we're covering all aspects of governance in the sport of basketball in the province. And so to be able to dedicate human resources, much less communicate effectively and provide opportunities for understanding and training, that really is impossible with our present funding structure.

MG: Can you just briefly describe some of the specific incidents you've had to deal with in your work as an administrator?

PAUL SIR: Probably ongoing. And as you said, I've been involved in this for a long, long time. In an ongoing basis, there have been parental and athlete complaints about the way they've been treated and handled. And that could be from coaches, the way they talk to their athletes, that could be from fans. And recently, we had an issue that two young girls of African descent were playing in a tournament and people in the stands were making animal noises that were racist in their nature. And we had then to be contacted by the parents, of course, and the clubs that were involved. And it took us over four months to work together to get to, I guess, what you would call the bottom of the matter that took place, get the appropriate apologies in place, make sure the girls were okay. And by okay, I mean getting the help that they needed to deal with this kind of situation. But like I just said, that was four months. And we don't have a mechanism in place to address a situation like this.

MG: So if you had more money, what would you do with more resources to make sports safer for those girls so they don't face the abuse that they did out there, but also that the larger mechanisms are in place so people realize that it's not acceptable and that there are consequences for that sort of behavior?

PAUL SIR: Number one, I would hire and train a safe sport director in the Alberta Basketball Association. And their role and responsibility would be education, consultation, and also be the starting point in our province to hear the complaints and the concerns and then guide and direct them to the appropriate resources. Whether that would be an investigation into the matter that took place like the one I just described, Matt, or if it would be moving it up the ladder to what should be an aligned system, for instance, with Canada basketball or Sport Canada. And I believe that's what we need. Jamie used the term trickle down. It has trickle down, but it's a slow drip because we don't get any resources to back up the hope that we're addressing the Safe sport issue.

MG: Do you have the capacity to tackle those issues in a meaningful way even if you had more resources?

PAUL SIR: Yes. We’ll have the capacity because we have the motivation, and I think that's where this comes from. Matt, It's a shame that we have to define this issue as safe sport. Everything we do as a PSO should be geared towards a safe and positive experience for the kids. And as Jamie also alluded to, safe sport goes way beyond just an athlete being abused. It can be coaches being abused by parents. There are a lot of layers to this. But what I think, Matt, and what I say with great zest, that yes, we would have the capacity. We would make the capacity because I think that is one of our pride, that is our primary responsibility, and that we have to put that at the top of our list of what we're trying to do in providing sport opportunities for young people is make sure it's safe and positive and positive to use that term again, influence and make a positive impact in their lives.

MG: We just have a couple of minutes left. When you hear the Sport minister talk about the $16 million that the government has put in to safe sport, is your sense, as Jamie has said, that that overwhelmingly is going to those elite sports, it's not trickling down, dripping down, making its way at all toward the community level?

PAUL SIR: There's $0 making it to the community level for safe sport.

MG: $0.

PAUL SIR: $0 for safe sport from the federal government or from the provincial government that's targeted to safe sport.

MG: And so I'll ask you just finally the same question that I asked Jamie. For parents whose kids across this country are involved in sport for all of the reasons that we know are beneficial, what would you say to those parents about whether there is the real will broadly to make that sport safe?

PAUL SIR: I'll speak to what I know, Jamie. Alberta Basketball Association has that will. We have demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate that we take any complaint seriously. And we'll do everything that we can within our ability to influence the situation, to investigate and help them find a way out.

MG: Do you think parents should be reassured beyond your own involvement? I mean, again, across this country, should parents be reassured by what's happening when we talk about safe sport?

PAUL SIR: Here's what I think is reassuring. The awareness level is growing. But now, money has to be put into the system so it isn't just lip service saying this has got to change. We've got to collaborate at all levels of government, all levels of sport to make this a meaningful part of the way sport is delivered in our country.

MG: Paul, thank you very much.

PAUL SIR: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Paul Sir is the executive director of the Alberta Basketball Association. He was in Edmonton. And that is The Current for this Friday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. Reminder, on Monday, we’ll come to you from beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, looking at BC's new drug decriminalization project. We’ll also bring you a story about people's fascination with wolves. People who live with wolves and wolf dogs. It's quite something. We'll tell you more about that. And of course, we will speak about the pressing issue of health care and how to fix our system when it comes to primary care. Hosting a public forum on Monday and you'll hear that the next morning, Tuesday morning on this program. Looking forward to being in Victoria. And hopefully if you're in Victoria, meeting you and saying hello. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have a great weekend.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for February 3, 2023

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

BAIL REFORM

CLARA'S GUN

PRIMARY CARE REPORT

SPORTS ABUSE

Friday February 3, 2023 Episode Transcript

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