Ending the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in Canada’s jails

Guests: Kim Pate, Lynn Groulx, Corey Shefman

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I hope we keep telling these stories because this country needs to understand residential schools and what happened there aren't just a dark chapter there, the whole story.

MATT GALLOWAY: Duncan McCue has told the stories of survivors of residential schools for many years, but he says what he heard about Bcc's Kuper Island Residential School had the hair on his arms stand up. He takes us there and it is a CBC podcast and he's here in 30 minutes with more and to discuss what responsibility he feels as an indigenous journalist to tell those stories. Also this morning, students in Ottawa last week protested the enforcement of a school dress code, calling it dehumanising. The police were ultimately called. And coming up, why observers are now calling for an end to school dress codes overall. Plus, El Salvador had a plan to transition its economy to one dominated by Bitcoin. And in the face of criticism, government officials were defiant.

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We have the first country with legal tender for bitcoin, the first country who's now going to start using Bitcoin as a means of funding itself. What's wrong with that?

MG: Well, plenty. It turns out Bitcoin tanked, taking the country's finances with it. Later, why observers see this as a cautionary tale for other nations, including Canada. We begin, though, with a call from three Canadian senators to free 12 imprisoned indigenous women. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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MG: Indigenous women now account for 50% of all female inmates in federal prisons in Canada, even though less than 5% of women in Canada are indigenous. Earlier this month, we heard from Donna Gamble about her 20 plus years in and out of the corrections system.

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It's just not simply black and white. There's stories behind the you know, what they're going up on. People are astounded, like women being going up on murder charges when in fact, they've been, you know, probably abused for many years, even as children, and trying to fight back in their way with what they know. You look around at everything and what it tells you is, is we're less than and certainly as indigenous women, we're even more or less than.

MG: Now, three Canadian senators are recommending that 12 indigenous women be exonerated and their cases reviewed for possible miscarriages of justice. Senator Kim Pate co-authored a report on this released yesterday. Senator Page, good morning.

KIM PATE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: These women are identified in this report by their initials. Can you just briefly describe some of the cases and the women that you're recommending be exonerated?

KIM PATE: Sure. And I want to say they're described by initials because they have not had any kind of fair process yet and are understandably mistrustful. And so these are women who predominantly have responded to violence first perpetrated against them. Eight of them are serving life sentences, which means that from now, from the time they were convicted, many of them in their teens and early twenties, they will be supervised and subject to being retailed throughout their lives until they die. One of them did die last month, and so we're now down to 11 possible cases to be reviewed. And many of them experienced residential school, the child welfare system, the foster care system, which is a pipeline directly into juvenile detention for far too many. And in the provinces where many of them come from, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The number of indigenous women and girls in juvenile detention. It ranges from 95 to 100%. So even as we have seen reductions and very well-intentioned law reforms to try and reduce the numbers of indigenous people and indigenous women in particular, all of those well-intentioned reforms have actually backfired and seemingly made the system feel more comfortable putting more and more indigenous women in prison.

MG: I want to talk about those systemic failures. I mean, again, with these cases, I mean, they ranged from everything from a murder that somebody else has confessed to in prison to somebody who was jailed for for break and enter while they were to flee their fleeing violence.

KIM PATE: Yeah, one was fleeing her, her birth father raping her corrections still describes in her paperwork that as a sexual relationship with her father. Incestuous rape is not a sexual relationship. And she was jailed. She was held most of the time in segregation. And she developed what the psychiatric system has labelled isolation induced schizophrenia and is now in the community, but spent almost 11 years in segregation within federal penitentiaries. And then almost 11 years in the mental health system is now in a supported, independent living situation.

MG: Why did you highlight these cases in particular?

KIM PATE: These are women I have known for many years, one for almost 38 years, another one for over 40 years. These are women who I watched grow up and some of them I met first when they're in the juvenile system. And what I saw was a trajectory that despite well-intentioned ideas, sometimes more rhetorical than action oriented. I saw these women being pushed further and further into the system, being essentially told, it's your job to protect yourself. It's interesting. One of the next stories you're going to talk about is dress codes. Women are told all the time you're responsible. If you were victimised, somehow you're responsible. Many of these women did not have the protection of whether it was their families, police, anybody in the system. And yet, after being told to protect themselves and or their children or others in their care when they acted to do that, the full weight of the law came down on them to criminalise and then present them. So these are women who I think their cases exemplify the systemic issues that missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls enquiry and the Tracy pointed out need to be rectified. And yet we see attempts even right now Bill C-5 that's going before the House of Commons and that will eventually come to us in the Senate, talks about reforms and says it will reduce the overincarceration. We've shown in separate documents to the Minister of Justice and others that in fact, it won't achieve that if. We really want to do this. We have to take serious attempts to address allowing judges to do their job, look at all the context. And in cases like these, where judges, if they had heard all the context, might very well have not even convicted these women, let alone sentenced to life in prison.

MG: Let me ask you about Bill C-5. This in the context here is, as I mentioned, there's over representation when it comes to indigenous women in the federal prison system. The justice minister has said that this bill would reduce that overrepresentation, would repeal 20 different mandatory minimum sentences, mostly for gun and drug crimes, re-establish conditional sentences such as house arrest. You've said this is tinkering. This is not going to address the meat of the issue.

KIM PATE: That's right. And what we will see is this is fewer than half of the mandatory minimum penalties that courts have have struck down. So we'll still have a patchwork of which mandatory minimum sentences apply across the country. And for most of these offences, people are serving time in provincial jail. Or, you know, if there are conditional sentences, they might not serve jail time. But this will not impact the mass incarceration of indigenous and black people in any significant way, and especially not in the federal prison system. And as Judge Reticoli said, when a justice attorney, when she did a review of the cases of women who used force against abusive partners as just a terrible form and we need to Westmoreland trailer, he said when the Minister of Justice commissioned them to look at the miscarriages of justice and the conviction review process, we need a fundamentally different approach and it must include as all of those and the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and cry and the Teresi and the Aboriginal and on and on before have said we have to also look at things like the life sentence because in these women's cases and and many more, we see that in fact it's the pressure to plead guilty to a lesser charge that sometimes drives the convictions, or it's the fact that the racism and discrimination in the system is not even examined because the judges can't even get to the sentencing principles if you have a mandatory minimum penalty, they're precluded from looking at all of those issues. They're just told about her sentence.

MG: We're going to speak in just a moment about the issue of decarceration. But when you take a look at the sentences that have been imposed, we asked the justice minister for an interview. He wasn't available. He sent us a statement that reads in part that he is committed to creating an independent criminal case review commission that would look at these cases, cases like this, and see whether there is room for discretion. Would that help address some of the issues that you've raised and address that larger context of overincarceration?

KIM PATE: Well, if they look at it and make the necessary reforms, the problem is the government, when they ran in 2015, said they were going to eliminate mandatory minimum penalties that result in overincarceration. Bill C-22 in the last session. Bill is exactly the same as Bill C-5 in this session. It won't achieve that. And so if we really want to address this issue, we have to take much clearer steps to ensure that judges can have the opportunity to do their job. A new commission might very well be available. There's also the Law Commission that is being developed. And as you saw from the document, we're suggesting either of these take this on. And and unfortunately, the current process has been shown to be wholly ineffective, as you know, and I think you reported. Of the 20 cases that the government has reviewed over the past two decades, all of them have been men and only one black and only one indigenous. And so so we see the systemic bias continue in that process. And clearly we need a new approach.

MG: Kim Pate, good to speak with you. We're going to talk further about what that approach might look like. Thank you very much.

KIM PATE: Thank you.

MG: Kim Pate is a Canadian senator. The overrepresentation of indigenous women in Canada's justice system, as we've been talking about, is not new. Advocates say that in spite of government promises and policies, it's only getting worse. Lynn Groulx is the CEO of the Native Women's Association of Canada. Corey Shefman, a lawyer for indigenous people and organisations at the authors. Clear Townsend, the law firm. Good morning to you both.

GUESTS: Good morning.

MG: Lynn Groulx. You tweeted that the justice minister is claiming to be turning a big ship around. But from your view, it looks like the ship is sinking. What do you see going wrong with Bill C-5?

LYNN GROULX: Well, as pointed out by Senator Pete just a little while ago, Bill, C-5 does not it's only tinkering with the minimum mandatory, you know, sentences. And it's not it's a patchwork. So we still have the rest of the, you know, minimum sentences there. And it's just not an effective way of of getting to the issue. And as Senator Pete just pointed out as well, we need to make sure that the judges have the information in front of them when when these cases are coming through. So, I mean, how can we say that we're just turning a ship around? I mean, how long is it going to take to turn your ship around? We've been talking about this issue since the 1980s, 1990s. And here we are going on and on. And in fact, the ship's not turning at all. It's sinking and the statistics are showing that.

MG: Corey Shefman, you have said that this will not be solved by pilot projects, procedure changes or sensitivity training. Been there, done that. The solution, you say, to indigenous the indigenous incarceration crisis, and that's what the Supreme Court of Canada has called this has called it a crisis. You say that the solution is systemic decarceration. What is that?

COREY SHEFMAN: That's right. And, you know, I think it's important to know that the Supreme Court of Canada called it a crisis, you know, some 20 years ago. This isn't new. Decarceration means making concerted efforts and focussing on reducing the number of people, and specifically in this case, indigenous people in jails and prisons through directed, directed policies and and ways of addressing the incarceration system that focuses on removing people from that system rather than adding more people to it. What does that.

MG: What does that look like practically?

COREY SHEFMAN: So using an example that you were speaking with Senator Pate about, rather than just ending mandatory minimums and rather than just ending some of them, end all of them and end them retroactively. Bill C-5 would leave the people who have been subject to those mandatory minimums over the last years in jail, serving sentences which the Government of Canada has essentially now admitted are unjust. And so end those sentences retroactively. But that's just one small way of decarceration. It doesn't address all of the people who are serving other kinds of sentences, and so offer parole earlier and more importantly, make parole presumptive. That's reversed the onus on parole so that the inmate doesn't need to prove that they're ready for release. The system would need to prove that they're not ready for release. The other really important thing, and Senator Pate talked about the pressure to plead guilty that many indigenous people face, and part of that is because they're not receiving proper legal support. We saw a few years ago the Ford government, the provincial government in Ontario, in Ontario, the trade massively cut legal aid funding. And his excuse was basically that the feds, the federal government hasn't been paying their fair share over the years. And this is a fact across the country that legal aid isn't properly funded. Legal aid should be funded on par at parity with the prosecutions officers to make sure that people accused of crimes get fair representation and to make sure that the court system is able to work effectively. This is as much a budget issue as it is a humanness in the in this.

MG: Let me just ask you one for the thing around mandatory minimums in the criminal justice system. Part of that justice system is also accountability for victims and victims rights. How does that square with eliminating all mandatory minimums?

COREY SHEFMAN: Mandatory minimums aren't about providing accountability for victims and victims rights. They're about making people feel like there's accountability. But the whole point of our sentencing system in Canada is that judges should make judges are intended are meant to make punishments fit the crime. I mean, that's the old saying, right. But the punishment should fit the crime. Yeah, well, the whole point of mandatory minimums is that they don't it's that the government is saying that no matter what the nature of your crime is, no matter why you committed it, no matter how it was committed, if it's this kind of crime, this is the type of sentence that you're going to get. Our judges are extremely qualified, well-trained and with incredible life experience, and they need to be able to take that context into context and apply a sentence that's fair and with guidance that that encourages them to find non incarceration options for Indigenous people.

MG: Lynn Groulx, to your point, we've been talking about this for a long time and the Supreme Court in 1999 said that this was a crisis. It's been studied. Endlessly, it seems like since then, why haven't these steps been put into place by now, do you think?

LYNN GROULX: That's a very good question. And it's probably part of the same situation that we're talking about colonisation and institutional you know, institutional issues that are that are just there and policies that are in place that are not changing now. And the judges, when they're sentencing the women. Part of the problem is that there's there's there's not enough alternatives for them to to to look at. So why are there not enough alternatives in our communities? We could have more alternatives.

MG: Alternative alternatives. Like what?

LYNN GROULX: Yeah.

MG: Like what? What would those alternatives be like, do you think?

LYNN GROULX: Well, an alternative, for example, like there's there's new healing centres that we want to open. Many communities have been talking about this. If we are empowered, we have our own spaces where we can receive a judge could say instead of sentencing someone to X number of days in prison, we're sentencing you to this Indigenous healing centre for women that is led by elders where we we can have our own programmes and that is, that is a way to decarceration as well. It's a real option and we don't have enough of these options. It does have to do what's funding and getting the communities empowered to take control and be be a part of the solution. Because what we have right now is absolutely not working. We have a crisis on top of a crisis.

MG: Corey Shefman, is the justice system equipped now to implement some of the things that you've talked about, whether it's issues around parole, whether it's that discretion, are the judges who are on the bench able to do that now?

COREY SHEFMAN: Absolutely. I mean, I think the judges who are on the bench, many of them are the ones who are seeing a lot of this firsthand. I mean, they recognise the problem, but their hands are tied by the as as Lynn said, the lack of other options. And as Senator Pate said, by the mandatory minimums, there are the system. Some of the changes that I'm suggesting that the decarceration advocates are suggesting. They're not massive changes. I mean, all the government would need to do to Bill C-5 is make it include all of the mandatory minimums instead of a handful.

MG: What's the what's the what's the resistance there, do you think?

COREY SHEFMAN: The resistance is that there isn't a lot of political appetite for letting prisoners out of prison. I mean, the Canadian public, I think, still needs to accept that the fact that the our jails can Canada's jails and prisons are filled with indigenous people doesn't actually mean that those indigenous people are inherently criminal. They're they're as your other guest said, because of colonialism, because of racism. And that needs to be it needs to sink in. We've had these studies over the years. And, you know, Canadian heroes like Senator Pate have told us about this issue for decades. And Canadians need to start listening.

MG: Lynn Groulx, I can hear you in the background. What's at stake here?

LYNN GROULX: I mean, I do agree 100%. If you look at just David Lametti statement, he said, you know, we're turning a big ship around. And I think it's fair to say we're doing it incrementally in order to bring the rest of Canadian society along. It is a political issue, right? The government is concerned that Canadians are going to view this in a bad way when, you know, on the contrary, we all we have these reports, GRC and MMI WG explaining what has happened with Indigenous people in this country. So, you know, I, we, we strongly feel that more has to be done and immediately and we strongly support Senator Pete and Senators that produced this report on the 12 women.

MG: I guess just finally, Lynn, do you have confidence, given the fact that this has been discussed again and again and again, that now is actually the time I can hear you laughing because we've had this conversation before.

LYNN GROULX: I don't have confidence the system is so stuck right now. It's so stuck. The only confidence I have is that the advocates and that there are good people there and there are good judges, of course, that are there. We're going to continue to do our job, do our job until these human rights violations stop. Because when you really look at it, clearly, it is they are human rights violations. So I have confidence that we are on our side, but I have some doubts on the other side.

MG: Corey Shefman, in just about 30 seconds to you. Is now actually the time to make these changes? Are you confident that this will happen?

COREY SHEFMAN: The changes need to be made that we simply don't have an option anymore. Like Senator Pete said, up to 98% of inmates in Saskatchewan's youth jails are Indigenous and that number can't be excused and Canadians can't accept that that is okay. We need to act and we need to act now. And the government is going to need to swallow some hard pills in order to make it happen. It's good. We just don't have a choice.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much.

COREY SHEFMAN: Thanks for having me.

MG: Lynn Groulx the CEO of the Native Women's Association of Canada, Corey Shefman, a lawyer for Indigenous Peoples in organisations and authors. Clare Townsend Law Firm. Your CBC News is next and then the CBC's Duncan McCue will be here. He has a new podcast coming out about Kuper Island Residential School. At least 160 unmarked graves are found on the grounds of that school last summer. We'll talk about the legacy and we'll talk about his responsibility as an indigenous journalist to tell these stories now. That's coming up on The Current.

Duncan McCue on new CBC podcast, Kuper Island

Guests: Duncan McCue, Ricky James

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

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MG: Still to come, is it time to ditch the dress code? Some Ottawa High School students are pushing back after girls were pulled out of class to have their clothes inspected. That's in just under 30 minutes. And a little later, what yet another cryptocurrency crash means for El Salvador and other countries, thinking of using Bitcoin as legal tender. But first, the story of Cooper Island Residential School.

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MG: Connecticut Island at one time known as Kuper Island, is part of the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia. It is also where the Kuper Island Residential School operated for 80 years. That school was demolished in the 1980s, but for some it's been a struggle to build and live around it. Last July, the community announced the discovery of 160 unmarked graves. And about a month after that, the CBC's investigative journalist Duncan McCue, started looking into what happened to the survivors of Kuper Island Residential School and to those who didn't make it out. He brings us those stories in a new podcast, Kuper Island, and a discussion warning. This discussion and this podcast deals with sexual abuse and some trauma. Duncan is with me in studio. Duncan, good morning.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Good morning, man.

MG: Can you describe the community? Describe this island.

DUNCAN MCCUE: It's an isolated island off the off the coast, just outside of Shimane. And it takes about a half an hour to get there by ferry. Beautiful place. It's gorgeous. You know, typical West Coast scenery, you know, the towering cedars and orca whales. It's a small community, though, with all of the wealth in the Gulf Islands. You know, people think about the Gulf Islands and and they think about the spires and the retreats and the B&Bs. Penelope doesn't didn't get a piece of that. It's it's a place that doesn't even have a store. It's, you know, an isolated Indian reserve. And they've been dealing with the after effects of the of the Kuper Island Residential School for a really long time.

MG: Why did you want to do a podcast on the Kuper Island Residential School and what happened at that school? But also what happened in the years following.

DUNCAN MCCUE: You mentioned last summer and you remember reporting on the just seemed like after the announcement at the Kamloops of the unmarked graves, it was just school after school after school right across Canada announcing that they, too, had graves and on on their former school properties. And it was hard to keep up. There were so many. That was not a surprise to indigenous people. It was something that survivors have been talking about for a really long time. At the time that that pinnacle made their announcement, it caught my attention because I'd been a reporter in B.C. for for nearly 20 years. And I heard a lot of really awful things about what happened at the Cooper Island School. You know, this was a place that was referred to by the former students as as Alcatraz. I described it as being on an island. I mean, incredibly, students throughout the school's history, throughout its 85 year history, students kept trying to run away from this place. And runaways from residential schools, that's that's that happened at every residential school across the country. But I have to emphasise this is this is on an island in the Salish Sea. And kids kept trying to run away. And you have to ask yourself why? So that's how it started for me when they announced that there was a ground penetrating radar that had had been going on there for quite some time. I started making some calls and and lo and behold, where we ended up with the podcast.

MG: What do we know? And I mean, this comes out in the podcast and it's also difficult to talk about. So say what you're saying, but what do we know of what was happening there and that school?

DUNCAN MCCUE: There's a couple of things that I heard a lot of residential school stories or over the years. I've been reporting on this for a long time.

MG: You said the stories from the school made the hair on your arms and the hair on your neck stand up.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Well, there was a thing that that one of the first calls I made was to former chief Jill Harris. And Jill told me that unmarked graves was nothing new. Pinnacle had been dealing with this long before it made the headlines. 20 years ago, she told me this story. There was community members who were experiencing the spirits of children, coming to them and knocking on windows, in some cases touching them on the shoulders, crying, sometimes laughing. But the way that Jill Harris describes it was that the children, the spirits of the children were were in anguish. And when I heard that story, it echoed the spiritual pain that I have heard from, from so many indigenous people about what they experience and what they continue to experience at residential school sites. And Jill told me that 20 years ago, the community to try to deal with this, the spiritual pain, they began to try to do ceremonies. And it helped, but it wasn't going away. You know, and this is this is the journey that the people of Pinellas get have been on. Because one of the things that really shocked me or surprised me when I went to Pinellas Kit for the first time is that the community has grown up on the former.

MG: Will site on the site where that school was and where where those things happen.

DUNCAN MCCUE: That's right. And so they tore the school closed in 1975 and panic. It very quickly tore the place down like within five years. They tore it and burned it to the ground. But then the school site ended up getting, you know, becoming the centre of the community, really. And it was this place where survivors certainly said there were bodies buried on the on the former school grounds. But there's an adult ad centre on the former school site. There's a day-care. There's a health centre. People line up for the ferry right on the former school grounds. And yet there was this ongoing trauma, spiritual pain and knowledge from survivors that there were burials on the school grounds. And so they've been dealing with this ever since the school was was was knocked down in 1980.

MG: These are hard stories to tell. You talk about how in many communities the legacy of residential schools are like bombs in the family. What do you mean by that?

DUNCAN MCCUE: Well, I thought it was important to distinguish for our indigenous listeners what they might be getting out of this podcast. As I say in the podcast, I don't need to tell Indigenous listeners that residential schools are like bombs in our family. They know that. And so I think that it was important for us to acknowledge that there are Indigenous listeners are going to have a different experience than non-Indigenous listeners who may be hearing this history for the first time. And we're not shying away. We're not shying away from from some of the the really horrific details that that may get kind of cleansed out of of of a brief news report. This is going to be hard listening for some people. I understand that. But I hope that people understand that this is hard for the survivors who are still dealing with the the ripple effect of what happened at the school.

MG: How did you build trust with those survivors to carry that story?

DUNCAN MCCUE: I have been telling these residential school stories for a long time. But last summer, what I sensed was wounds that were fresh in a way that I hadn't sensed before. And so it was a challenge last summer to set out and to approach the community of conflict and say, we would like to spend the next several months with you talking about dead children and unmarked graves and the incredibly high levels of sexual abuse that occurred at the Cooper Island Residential School. That was that was no small task. And there was hesitance, I have to tell you, Chief and council initially suggested that I should look elsewhere, but the Pernilla Kit Elders Committee had some time for me and they invited myself and my producers, Jody Martinson and Martha Troyan to present to them. And that's what we did. You know, I set out what a podcast is. These are these are survivors. They're elders. They're they're esteemed members of the community. But they, you know, they may not be quite understand what a podcast is. So we set that out and explained what kind of journey we were hoping to go on, what kind of story we were going to tell. And they they were they were supportive. They had lots of questions. Their experience with the media in the past hasn't always been positive. But at the end of the day, they they said, please, this story needs to be told. These stories need to be told.

MG: These are stories about survivors, but they're also stories about students who didn't survive.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Mm hmm. It's about four students, three who survived and one who didn't. We started off with two members of that Elders committee, James and Tony Charlie, who were very gracious and wanted to tour us around the old school site and point out some of the places where there was both the spiritual unrest, but also unmarked graves. And in talking with James and Tony, we heard a story that we would end up hearing from many, many community members about one death in particular, the death of a boy, that that really impacted a whole generation of survivors. And they still talk about to this day, they still whisper the stories about because his death was such a mystery. That boy was Richard Thomas. He was six years old. He was found hanging in the school gym in 1966. And in starting to ask more questions about Richard Thomas, that led us to Belva, his sister. And so Belva is also very gracious, but also wants to know what happened to her brother over 50 years ago. This is and this is what I say. These deaths are not a thing of the past. For Belva, the impact of Richard's death has impacted her and her family ever since it happened over 50 years ago and in her seventies. She still, still is looking for answers about the mystery of what happened to Richard. And so it is about for children, it's about James and Toni and Belva, three, who survived and one who didn't. Richard.

MG: I want to bring somebody else into our conversation. Rocky James is in the podcast. He is an intergenerational survivor and the treaty communications coordinator for the Padalka tribe. Rocky, good morning to you.

ROCKEY JAMES: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Your father went to the Kuper Island Residential School. What did you know when you were growing up? What did you know about his experience there?

ROCKEY JAMES: I think I need to start with protocol. I'm concerned about any survivors who are listening. So I'd just like to start by introducing myself and offering a short prayer. [Foreign language]. I'd like to thank the Creator for this day peace and similar to and yes, the nerd may traditional names. Name from the panel could. My mother is Florence James and my father's the late Gilbert James. I just like to offer that prayer to help people spiritually navigate these complex histories of genocide. You know, I feel fortunate enough myself that my parents never shied away from sharing the histories of the Indian Residential School experience on Connecticut Island, including my father's. But they did it gradually over time. You know, I only had my father for the first eight years of my life, you know. So at that time, what I understood was that there was an Indian residential school on Palakkad that he attended that Indian residential school. And the first story I heard was that they would stick needles in his tongue when he would try to speak Coconino. And so that was my first impression of what happened at the Indian Residential School for for my father and for his sisters as well, who also attended they entered Indian residential school without a stutter and left with a stutter.

MG: That's awful to hear. And as you're growing up, I just wonder, I mean, what sort of impact that has on you as a as a young man.

ROCKEY JAMES: You know, as a young person growing up, you kind of grew up with this idea that, you know, non-indigenous people can hate you, that racism is real. You know, that, you know, violence can be inflicted on you at any time, you know, but you also have a lot of strengths to draw on. You culturally grow up with the desire to retain your culture and eventually learn your language and try to focus on your strengths.

MG: Why was it important for you to learn your father's language, the language, as you said, that he was tortured for speaking in that school?

ROCKEY JAMES: It's important for me because it's just a part of my identity and where I come from. And my mother has always said the language is the culture and the language gives you access to the true meaning of ceremony and process. There's also, you know, a lot of barriers that you have to overcome within yourself in order to be able to learn the language. There's a lot of internalised racism or internalised homophobia that has to be overcome. So in essence, what a shame to overcome, to be able to speak your own language.

MG: As you learn the language. What was that like?

ROCKEY JAMES: It's a painful process. They've tried off and on since my early twenties. You know, was my father's wish before I was born, when he spoke with my mother, that we have the choice to learn as we're growing up, not to teach us the language until we've decided that we want to learn it. But by then, for myself, I was already in my mid-twenties and had a couple of decades of thinking and speaking in English and writing in English. And, you know, so it's been difficult journey. And so I've been in and out of it. You know, it wasn't until this year my mother's a language instructor and I enrolled in one of her online courses. And I was surprised that at 43 years old, there's still difficulty. There's still shame to overcome in learning my language. And I think one of the really awesome experience of intergenerational trauma, when you finally find the courage to learn your own language, the expectation on yourself is that you learn it perfectly, or that you should be able to learn it perfectly because it's a part of who you are. But naturally you're going to make mistakes. And so, you know, I grew increasingly frustrated. When you write quizzes, I would you get like eight out of ten and ten out of ten. And it really affected the trajectory of my learning experience and the programming I struggled to completed.

MG: Duncan talked about the work that he had done in the lead up to this podcast in terms of earning trust and and getting the community comfortable with the idea of him working on this and telling the story. This is not something that you initially wanted to participate in. Why was it that you were reluctant to be involved in this podcast?

ROCKEY JAMES: And as a resolution [unintelligible]. I'm trained to be to have an Indian residential school survivors centred approach. And, you know, so my hesitancy is around being an intergenerational survivor. And, you know, so it's just a continuous struggle to create that balance between each generation's truth and experience that the legacy of the Indian Residential School.

MG: Duncan, Rockey plays an important role in the podcast, and part of your job is to bring him on side. What did you do?

DUNCAN MCCUE: Yeah. [Unintelligible] Rocky for being here today. Actually, I'm a little rocky. Started at the beginning with a prayer. And, you know, that's not typically something that that you and I do when we sit down to talk on The Current Matt, you know, I don't start with introducing myself from where I'm from. But Rocky, even here, just, you know, quietly and subtly schooled us on on the way that that indigenous people do things in a good way. You know, Rocky's hesitancy about talking with me had to do with with the way that media treat these stories. And it was entirely fair. And so I'm so pleased that that he's part of the podcast, because, as you just heard, he's such a an articulate and and strong [unintelligible], two spirited man. But but also his intergenerational perspective is important. It's important that we understand that a younger generation, children, grandchildren, have been impacted by the schools and continue to be. And that's why it was important to have him in the podcast.

MG: What is your responsibility, Rocky? Do you feel as that next generation to make sure that these stories are told?

ROCKEY JAMES: He really recognised last summer when, you know, the content was consistently in the news was that people are still coming to grips with the fact that this is Canada's genocide of Indigenous people and we've known this truth for decades and now unfortunately it's a part of our oral histories. We have to be prepared to confront these issues as we mature across the lifespan. And it's important for people to recognise and remember that non-Indigenous people are finally in a place where they're saying, we might believe you, we might believe your stories, that your children didn't come home. Even though you've been saying this since they didn't come home since they attended the Indian Residential School and went missing and were never returned to community. I think that's the important part of all of these events since the Kamloops to 15. And I think, you know, my other responsibility that I recognise since last summer was that, yes, it's vitally important that Indian residential school survivors have the opportunity to share their truth, but we cannot forget why that truth is being shared. And that's because these children that were like five, two or even four years old to, you know, 17 years old, were raised by clinically diagnosable sociopaths, that they were murderers and rapists. And, you know, I think that's why. Survivors continue to seek justice because we overlook those criminal facts when it comes to the Kuper Island Residential School.

MG: What about for you, Duncan? At the opening of the podcast, you say if Canada had had its way, I wouldn't be here. What is your responsibility as an Indigenous journalist, do you think, and how do you see that responsibility?

DUNCAN MCCUE: It's a big one. I hope, Matt, that that we keep telling these stories, as a country, that we keep hearing Rocky and and others and we don't turn the channel. Because this country needs to understand that residential schools and what happened there. Aren't just a dark chapter there. The whole story. About the relations of this government, of this country, this state with our peoples, my peoples. Rocky talked about languages and learning languages, and my heart was just ripping because I'm a language learner myself and I feel that same shame every time. When I skipped class yesterday, I felt badly again. And I beat myself up. But. I started the podcast that way of saying I wouldn't be here because there was. When you go into the history and this is a I don't it's difficult for Canadians to appreciate this. But there was Duncan Campbell, Scott said. You know, I want to get rid of the Indian problem. That's why residential schools were made compulsory in 1920, because they did not want Indians to exist in this country. That was why John McDonald, our first prime minister of this country. Declined to set up de schools when it came to education for Indian children, but instead set up residential schools because he looked to the example of the United States and recognised that when you separate children from their parents. Savage. Savage parents, as John McDonald said, that that was more a more effective way to break down families. The residential schools were a war on Indigenous families and I can say that confidently as a journalist. But Canadians need to understand that. And as an Indigenous journalist, that's a tough story for me to tell. But it's necessary. Duncan. Thank you. Thank you.

MG: Rockey, thank you very much. It's really a joy to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

ROCKEY JAMES: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Rocky James is an intergenerational survivor of the Kuper Island Residential School and Treaty communications coordinator for the panel. Like a Tribe. Duncan McCue is a CBC investigative journalist. His new podcast, Cooper Island, comes out today and you can find it on CBC, listen or wherever you get your podcasts. A national Indian residential school crisis line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. The 24 hour national crisis line is 18669254419. Well, coming up after your regional update, a group of Ottawa High School students are calling a dress code crackdown at their school sexist and unfair. And at least one Ottawa politician agrees with them. I'll speak with her in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current on CBC Radio One.

Calls to end school dress codes — and the tactics used to enforce them; and how El Salvador bet big on Bitcoin, but suffered heavy losses

Guests: Catherine Kitts, Isabella Cota, David Gerard

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. It hit 30 degrees in Ottawa last Thursday. And if you've been to Ottawa, you know that that humidity comes with the heat. Needless to say, winter fashion was out, summer shorts were in. And at one Ottawa High School, the administration decided that that was the day to crackdown on dress code violations. Dozens of students were pulled out of class at a call secondary Catholic Beatrice Desloges and told their clothes were inappropriate.

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Basically, I'm 18 years old. I've been going to this school for six years and I've been dress coded every single year that I've been here. And I'm just very frustrated and angry that I've been told that my body is making other people uncomfortable, because I don't see how that's an appropriate thing to say to a child at 13 or 18. It doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And I didn't really appreciate being told that my shorts would be short and being told that they have to be at mid-thigh and touching my thigh. I just thought that was very unnecessary and inappropriate.

MG: That's high school student Sophie Labbee. The French Catholic School Board put out a statement on Saturday apologising for the incident that she described. But there are calls for changes to dress code policies. Catherine Kitts is an Ottawa City councillor for Cumberland Ward. That is where the school is located. Catherine, good morning.

CATHERINE KITTS: Good morning.

MG: Girls at the school described being pulled out of class, being made to touch their toes to see how much of their thighs were exposed, having their shorts measured. What do you what's your reaction to that kind of enforcement?

CATHERINE KITTS: Yeah, I mean, I remain absolutely incredulous over the tactics the school administration used to enforce the dress code. You know, and that's what I'm hearing from the broader community. I mean, I think, you know, there is some debate about whether a dress code is appropriate at all anymore, but a general consensus over the fact that the tactics that the school used were wildly inappropriate. I mean, as you said, reports from these young girls and women that they were singled out in front of their peers, removed from class, lined up in the hallways, you know, scrutinised for their outfits in some cases in front of male staff. And as you described, you know, having their skirts or shorts measured, I mean, this is an experience that left students feeling objectified and embarrassed. So just really not okay.

MG: Why are you speaking up about this? This is I mean, education is a provincial matter. This you're a city councillor who represents the area where the school is. But why have you taken this on?

CATHERINE KITTS: Yeah, well, I mean, I think as a city councillor, you know, you hope or you endeavour to to be really close to the community. So I think it was people came to me right away with this. And as you said, you know, this school resides in the ward that I represent. But I think also, you know, I'm a I'm a young woman myself. I'm the youngest member of city council and the only woman under 40 on Ottawa City Council. And I think, you know, one of my motivations for running for council was just sort of, you know, inspire young women and girls to be in positions of leadership. So I think it's important for me to speak out in defence of what these women experienced and, you know, to to let them know to be an advocate for them and applaud them for standing up for themselves and pushing back on the experience.

MG: Standing up for themselves was part of the story. I mean, hundreds of students protested the enforcement tactics on Friday. The police were called. One teen was arrested. The police were criticised by some for their actions. There's video that has circulated widely on social media of this. How has Ottawa City Council reacted to that, given what the police were involved in? In the occupation downtown? People have drawn comparisons between how police reacted to that and how police reacted to this protest.

CATHERINE KITTS: Absolutely. I mean, I think you you hit the nail on the head there. You know, I though I've come to understand that it was, you know, the school and others that called the police because the students were protesting near the road and crossing the road. And that's where the school is located, kind of at the apex of two arterial streets. So, you know, I think it was appropriate for police to respond and, you know, maybe help control the crowd and control traffic. But certainly that video where you see an officer grab a student and kind of shove him and then that student was arrested. He was later released, I think really kind of just driven down the street and calmed down and released. But definitely when we've seen weeks and weeks of, you know, sort of a hands off approach to demonstrations to see sort of a real lack of de-escalation, especially when dealing with minors, I think was shocking for for people in our community to see. And, you know, I still think that, you know, any amount of force in that situation was not needed.

MG: I mentioned earlier that. The Ottawa French Catholic School Board has apologised. The director, Mark Bartra, apologised in a statement on Saturday saying the actions do not reflect the values of that board. Is that good enough for you and is that good enough for the students and the parents that you've spoken with?

CATHERINE KITTS: I don't think it's good enough, but I think, you know, if they if they do sort of follow through on what they're saying, they will then that hopefully will lead to some positive change. I mean, I was relieved and pleased to see that the board took quite swift action in putting out a statement and saying that this was not in line with their values. They have committed to taking this seriously, to to full investigation of what happened and reviewing its policies. I think that that work has already begun. I've spoken to the trustee for the area and, you know, I was pleased to see that. But I think it's you know, the board is going to have to take this back, engage with their stakeholders and really review their policies because something the experience that these women went through and I've heard it's not just at this school, I heard this is happening at other high schools in the area. We can't let this happen again.

MG: It's spring, almost summer. Temperatures have been warm not just in Ottawa, but in many parts of the country. Is this the opportunity to get rid of dress codes, do you think?

CATHERINE KITTS: Yeah. You know, I think the the the problem with the dress code is that I think there's always going to be an element of subjectivity that, in my opinion, will continue to unfairly target young women and girls. And I think, you know, when it comes to I think it might be okay to communicate, you know, expectation for, you know, what students in a broad sense wear to class. But enforcement, I think, is always going to be an issue. We've seen this, you know, historically through time women, you know, specifically being scrutinised for what they're wearing. And I think, you know, in the message we can't let the message we send to our our young people be that what they're wearing is more important or of a bigger concern than what they're learning.

MG: Catherine Kitts, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

CATHERINE KITTS: Thank you.

MG: Catherine Kitts, Ottawa City Councillor for Cumberland Ward. She was in Ottawa. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway.

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Bitcoin is going to change the world. But you know, this is normal evolution and you can't stop evolution. But it's nicer if we are part of it. So it's nicer with Bush. It is nicer if we make it legal tender. It's nicer if we make some countries home. For me, you know, for others it will be nice to be the financial centre of the world. Yeah, it sounds good for us. So it doesn't matter. Probably for bitcoin, but yes, it matter for us.

MG: That's El Salvador's president. Nayib Bukele at last year's Bitcoin Week conference. Under his leadership, that country became the first in the world to make the digital currency legal tender. In recent weeks, though, Bitcoin has been in a bit of a slump, a big slump, actually, and that could have dramatic consequences for El Salvador. For more, I'm joined by Isabella Cota. She's the Latin America correspondent for El Pais. Isabella, good morning.

ISABELLA COTA: Hi, Matt. Good morning.

MG: I want to talk about the drop in Bitcoin value in a moment, but we just heard the president there talking about wanting to make other countries feel FOMO, fear of missing out as though they're not part of something by, you know, being part of Bitcoin. How does he explain his decision to make Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador? Why did he go all in on this?

ISABELLA COTA: So Mr. Bukele is a is a giant disrupter. That's how he sees himself. That's how he fashions himself. He's also, you know, 40 years old. He's very young to be president. And and so he he really wants to bring new investment, new innovation into the country. And he truly believes that the way to do it is through cryptocurrencies, very specifically Bitcoin. He's gone all in because he is not just an enthusiast, but he is an advocate of decentralisation in the banking system. He has criticised the Bretton Woods consensus policies. He's criticised central banks and Western policies in general. So he's going all in because he believes that this will be the drive that his country needs to grow their economy.

MG: And then Bitcoin drops substantially in value since the end of March. How big of a problem is that for Salvador?

ISABELLA COTA: Oh, well, yeah. I mean, so he started this programme, this law, last September, and when he did so, the currency was rallying. It had been rallying for the last two years, partly due to the pandemic and the the financial stimulus that the Federal Reserve was injecting into the financial system. So the currency has dropped 45% in value since he started buying Bitcoin with the country's reserves. He's got about 105 million in Bitcoin, and that value is now it's now the equivalent of 66. So he's so he's lost around $40 million of the country's reserves. This is putting the country in very limited scope when it comes to their finances, their public finances. They need a loan from the IMF or from the markets to cover this deficit. And the IMF has really said that they're not willing to provide him with lending if he doesn't back track this policy of making Bitcoin legal tender. So, you know, he's doubling down even as the price of Bitcoin goes down. He bought more Bitcoin with the country's reserves and now investors are really fearful that there will be a debt default in January.

MG: And he could just do this. He he as the president can buy Bitcoin with the company's reserves.

ISABELLA COTA: Well, El Salvador is a specific case in Latin America because as you know, it is a dollarized economy. Therefore, the central bank doesn't really work. Like most central banks, it doesn't really define its interest rates. And it doesn't have a lot of scope to to manage the economy and the purchasing power of the country. And so it doesn't really have autonomy. It just kind of manages the country's reserves. And so there's no really there's no real division in powers in El Salvador. So technically, yes, this is something that he can do.

MG: How are. Salvadorans reacting to this. I mean, is is Bitcoin being used by people in the country?

ISABELLA COTA: That is a great question. And Salvador is one of the poorest countries in the Americas. 23% of the population lives below the poverty line. So when this was introduced, there was a lot of enthusiasm around it. Everyone was giving it be given a digital wallet with around $30 worth of Bitcoin, and there was facilities for them to use these devices that they could use to charge people for, I don't know, a hot dog on the street with Bitcoin. But the truth is that the Internet is not that widely available in the country. It lacks a lot in infrastructure, which is really what you need if you're going to use a digital asset as your currency. So it hasn't really worked out like that, like it was expected. And in fact, a couple of months ago, the president himself faced some strong protests on the street. And one of the things amongst others, that people were complaining about really was this use of bitcoin, which has basically made the country's financial reserves more volatile and unstable. So it's kind of a mixed message. There have been some investors coming in. There have been some investors coming in, external investors, and the president still thinks that this could grow.

MG: And yet, in the face of of the possibility that the country could default on its debts, he's doubling down on this. He's still talking about this idea of a Bitcoin city, for example.

ISABELLA COTA: That's correct. Yes. You know, it's interesting because he's been trying to sell new bonds that have been backed that would be backed by bitcoin. For months now, since late last year. And there's been no appetite in the market for it. This is how he said he would finance this Bitcoin city, which is a coastal city that he thinks would bring in a lot of Silicon Valley type investment and innovation. So, yeah, he's not backing out and investors are really concerned, especially because of the IMF angle. The IMF would come in as a lender of last resort for El Salvador to pay its debt. And if that doesn't work out, the president is really running out of options.

MG: Isabella, good to speak with you. It's quite a situation. Thank you very much.

ISABELLA COTA: Thank you.

MG: Isabella Cota is Latin America correspondent, economic correspondent for El Pais. She was in Mexico City. Our next guest is a critic of cryptocurrencies. David Gerard has written about the history of the industry, the people behind some of the biggest scams that have plagued crypto since its inception. He's the author of the book Attack of the 50 foot Blockchain and a blog by the same name. He's in London, England. David, hello to you.

DAVID GERARD: Good morning.

MG: You have warned from the beginning that El Salvador's experiment with Bitcoin was bound to be a disaster. Why did you think it was doomed from the get go?

DAVID GERARD: So nobody could see how this could possibly work? There was some interest in it, but mostly because they announced this on stage at a Bitcoin conference in Miami. In English, he didn't tell anyone in the country that he was doing this, though they'd been planning it in various forms for months or even years. This was the first anyone in the country heard about it. That was in June. It went live in September. In the three months leading up to that, everyone was going, What is this? How can this work? This makes no sense whatsoever. This is going to be a disaster. And because he said, no, no, it'll be great. And you did things like arresting critics, that sort of thing. And then it launched in September and it sort of took off the launch pad and crashed into the ground. People took it up because they got through $30 for free. And El Salvador was a poor country. That's a lot of money. It feels like maybe $300 would in the US or Canada or something. But basically it didn't work very well as currency. The payment system called Chivo didn't work because you can't launch an entire payment system from scratch in three months, you know, and by 2022, there was a survey done by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US. They do a national survey in El Salvador. Almost nobody signed up for it in 2022. A few people still use the bitcoins because they can make some money day trading. But some Salvadorans mostly don't worry too much about Bitcoin. They're really upset because this was forced on them. It was made compulsory.

MG: Can you just explain in simple terms is possible. What's happened in the last week or so? People have lost a lot of money as Bitcoin has gone through volatility, he said in quotation marks. It seems like a big difference from when Matt Damon was, you know, pumping the tires of Bitcoin back during those Super Bowl ads. What's happened?

DAVID GERARD: So it isn't really that different because so bitcoin is in an economic asset bubble, you know, like stories of tulip bulbs, bulbs going up and going down. Everyone's super enthusiastic. They say it's a whole new paradigm. Money is different now. But, you know, magic doesn't happen and what goes up must come down. So Bitcoin's been doing one of those. It had one in 2017. It had one in 2021. Everyone's been waiting for the air to leak out. I think the Super Bowl ads about Bitcoin were actually a sign that it was going badly because that's when the industry is screaming to try to get new customers in because the air is running out. So in the last week, it's sort of gone down week and a half. It's gone down from about $40,000 to 28,000, 29,000 . And the reason is because it can go up or down five or 10% in a day. But there's a lack of confidence in the market because you can't do anything with these things. You can only buy or sell them. They're just trading things for speculation. All the promises of how this will change the system, whole new paradigm magic totally happens. Two and to make six. It turns out none of these are true.

MG: That volatility has led to people calling on national regulators to step in and regulate this. Is that the answer here?

DAVID GERARD: It certainly needs a lot of regulation, but the regulation it needs is things like investment advice. Scammers have to be prosecuted hard, you know. This stuff isn't magical. It's frankly, it can barely be called an investment. It's much more like a speculative gamble. You buy a thing, you hope it'll go up or down. You hope that there's someone else will buy it from you later. This is the sort of thinking, by the way, that went on with El Salvador. Nobody knows what Piccioli was thinking. I mean, the best guess is that the fact that it's a dollar economy and he can't print money means that he has to borrow all the money he uses. He spends a lot of money on public spending, but he's got to pay those bills somehow. A lot of people, including me, think that he was trying to use Bitcoin as a way to inject fake dollars into the economy that he couldn't get any other way. And it backfired because it was a bad plan.

MG: You are people can hear a sceptic. People call you a no coiner, somebody who just has no no time for bitcoin. There are people who, yes, are sceptics but also see opportunity in this and the possibility of something coming out of this. We spoke with Andreas Park. He's a professor of finance at the University of Toronto. He has concerns but also sees those opportunities.

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There are hundreds of thousands of people in Canada that send money to loved ones all over the world, usually to less developed countries. And we're talking about billions of dollars that are being sent collectively through the world. We're talking about something international remittances account for around $800 billion each year. And the cost for these remittances to send them astronomical. They are on the order of between 6 to 10%. So now this is money that poor people pay financial institutions just to shift bits and bytes around the world. That cannot possibly be a good thing.

MG: Could cryptocurrencies help make things like international money transfers cheaper and faster, particularly for those who are living on a very, very thin margin?

DAVID GERARD: So hypothetically, but in practise not and basically not in the last ten years this has been touted as a potential use case for ages but hypothetical potential and could they're all words that mean doesn't. So in practise if this stuff works, then Western Union would have adopted it already. And they haven't. So it turns out that things are much more complicated in practise and the current systems do about as good a job as can be done in a competitive market. It would only work if we were using bitcoins as actual currency and like it doesn't even work for the case of El Salvador in practise. They put it forward as a thing that will work in El Salvador, but it turns out not to really work that well in practise there either. So hypothetically, maybe. But in practise? No, not for the last ten.

MG: Years we've been talking about El Salvador in this country. Pierre Pollio, who's a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership, has been talking about the benefits of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. There was this widely circulated video. You can see him smoking shisha in a restaurant with the restaurant owner and a cryptocurrency investor. Take a listen. So.

Speaker 3: Ali, you started talking about inflation on Twitter. And I was thinking, look, you've got all these big shot experts, so-called economists and central bankers who claim that money printing doesn't cause inflation. And I'm saying I'm seeing this schwalm, a shop owner from London, Ontario, who says, no, of course it causes inflation. And then you predicted it and you protected your family business against inflation with a very clever financial decision you made. It involves a Bitcoin.

MG: Can Bitcoin be a hedge against inflation?

DAVID GERARD: Well, as we started this discussion with it went down 50% in the last two months. So I'd say that's not much of a good protection against inflation. The answer is no. The trouble is that it isn't it doesn't do anything as an investment either. It goes up and down like, Yo, yo, that is not what you want in the safe haven. And you also have to be sure that there's enough buyers at the other end. Because when everyone wants to sell their bitcoins, because they want to cash out, who's going to buy? It's very unstable and it's a very thinly traded commodity. It gets a lot of headlines, but it's actually quite a small market in actual dollars. Like you see big headline numbers like $200 billion lost from Bitcoin. That money never existed. It was just virtual numbers in actual dollars in the system. Everyone works in the U.S. dollars in actual dollars in the system. There really isn't that much there. Now it's the pleasure is very sincere, but I think his economics are pretty hypothetical in that example. In practise, there's a lot to complain about our current system, but it actually works reasonably well and is battle tested. Like just because you can think, say I've got an alternative doesn't mean the alternative is any good. It has to be examined on its own terms.

MG: So your sense is that what happened in El Salvador or what's happening in El Salvador should be a cautionary tale to other nations?

DAVID GERARD: Absolutely should be a cautionary tale. It's really quite scary because another country, the Central African Republic, just adopted Bitcoin as currency using an act very like the Salvadoran act. And nobody knows what the heck they're thinking there because their internet penetration is 11%, it's the second poorest country in the world and nobody knows what's going on there. Russian money laundering or something. There's all sorts of weird hypotheses. The local banks are very upset in the West, the central CHF, CFA franc area. It's a mess and nobody knows why they're doing this and what it feels like. It feels like there's a scam going on and no one can quite work out what the scam is because it can't possibly be a thing that's supposed to work.

MG: David, good to speak with you. Thank you.

DAVID GERARD: Very much. Thank you.

MG: David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 foot Blockchain. He was in London, England. That is the current for this Tuesday cuz. Up next on CBC Radio One, the United States Congress is about to have a public hearing on one of the great mysteries of our time. It's not about Bitcoin, it's about UFOs. This is the first public hearing on unknown identified flying objects since 1969. You can imagine a lot of people will be tuning in and perhaps this will be a nice piece of music to set up that hearing. We'll leave you with The Kinks. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. I'll talk to you tomorrow. It's supersonic rocket ship.

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[Song]

The Current Transcript for May 17, 2022

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Ending the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in Canada’s jails

Duncan McCue on new CBC podcast, Kuper Island

Calls to end school dress codes — and the tactics used to enforce them; and how El Salvador bet big on Bitcoin, but suffered heavy losses

Tuesday May 17, 2022 Transcript

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