Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2023

The Current Transcript for March 22, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Nobody is safe anywhere. There's a lot of kidnappings that are happening. And so every time I go out, I'm playing Russian roulette with the kidnappers.

MATT GALLOWAY: The president of the United States arrives in Canada this week. And one of Joe Biden's requests to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be for Canada to lead an international force to stabilize the situation in Haiti. Armed gangs rule much of the country, kidnappings are rampant and the population lives in fear. In 30 minutes, why, despite a string of disastrous foreign interventions, many Haitians are now asking for help. Also this morning, cast your mind back to those early days of the pandemic. Lockdowns, working from home perhaps. Did each day start to feel like it was bleeding into the next? We weren't alone.

SOUNDCLIP

JENNY ODELL: In trying to move beyond my own sense of paralysis, I was really looking for ways of thinking about time that were different from that, where actually every moment is different from the one before it and does contain that kind of seed of possibility.

MG: The author and artist Jenny Odell spent those pandemic days thinking about our relationship with TIME. Her new book is a meditation on how the ticking clock rules our life from labour to leisure, and why nature can give us a different sense of time. In 30 minutes, living Beyond the Clock. We begin, though, on the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, gripped by grief and fear six months after tragedy. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

JAMES SMITH CREE NATION

Guest: Olivia Stefanovich

SOUNDCLIP

[police radioing each other]

MG: Stewart Head is out on patrol.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: The mood is scary. Scared, waiting for something bad to happen, wondering when it's going to happen.

MG: Stewart's driving his shiny white pickup truck. The words James Smith Cree Nation security are written in bold red letters on the front doors. He drives up and down the streets slowly in this community of 1100 people looking for signs of trouble.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: Well, we call it the Bronx. It's just a name we gave it because of so many rough people. If you just look at the windows on some of them, some of the houses, they're busted open. They don't care.

MG: This neighbourhood is in the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. That is where Myles Sanderson killed 11 people and injured 17 more last year. It is an incident that still looms large in this community, a place that is still dealing with violence. CBC reporter Olivia Stefanovich was riding along with Stuart Head. She joins me now. And just a warning, this subject matter will be difficult for some listeners to hear. Olivia, good morning.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Hi, Matt.

MG: Tell me more about Stewart Head and how he ended up on these patrols in his community.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, Stewart Head was living outside of James Smith when he got a call last September that changed his life. He learned his younger brother, Christian, had been stabbed to death. Stewart says he dropped everything he was doing at his home in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, and rushed to James Smith. And when he arrived, Stewart says he fought the RCMP to see his brother one more time and say goodbye.

MG: That would be incredibly difficult as one can imagine. Or perhaps we can’t even imagine that. How did that moment affect him?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, he says when he saw his brother, that's when he decided to make a pledge to come back to James Smith and help to fix things. So he joined the community's new security team in November as one of four full time security supervisors. He works 12 hour shifts, oversees 20 security officers who keep watch night and day.

MG: And so why were these patrols set up in the community?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, they were set up by the community of James Smith in the wake of Myles Sanderson's massacre, the 32-year-old community member who committed the worst mass stabbing in Canadian history. But the violence didn't end with his rampage or his death. And one of the big issues that Stewart and his team are trying to tackle is just how far away the RCMP are and how much time it takes for them to respond.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: Well, it used to be like let's say an hour, an hour and a half for the RCMP to respond. This truck responds within three minutes in the village to anything that goes wrong. But we're not the RCMP and we're unarmed and we're going through violent scenes involving weapons, guns, knives. It's dangerous. It's downright scary at times.

MG: So what kind of calls is Stewart responding to on this patrol?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Everything from domestic disputes, checking in on children, elders and parties getting out of control. During our ride along with Stewart, we went with him on a night shift. And he took us to a street in James Smith called the Green Mile where he says daredevils often come to fire off bullets just to scare people. And when we were in James Smith, the RCMP were called to arrest a man for pointing a BB gun at one of these security officers. And Head says that last month, he had to respond to a call about a man threatening to outdo Sanderson's killing spree.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: We come to this one house to protect this one young lady. She was pregnant. We managed to get her out of the house. And the young man was in the house and he had his kids in there. And I was on the phone with the RCMP dispatch in Regina. And he said he was going to kill his whole family, his wife and all of the security and he was going to break Myles Anderson's record, which he probably would have. But our response time was really, really quick. And we kind of diffused it slowly, but some of the things that he said were really traumatizing on us.

MG: It's a really scary situation. What is it that Stewart can do in those sorts of situations?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, not much. In that particular situation during that call, he said he told his officers to rush this guy. The security team has no formal training. They don't carry weapons and they have no powers. They're only equipped with a pickup truck, a two way radio, a cell phone and a flashlight. So all they can really do when things get bad is to call the RCMP. And in the meantime, it's up to them to de-escalate these tense situations at least until they're outnumbered. At one point during our patrols with Stewart Head, I was in the front seat with him and he rolled down his window to show me a group of about a dozen people down the street from where we were driving. And he told me we weren't going to go that way. And he said it's dangerous because they could come after us.

MG: Oh wow! So how bad is the violence in the community?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, people are still living in fear. It's very clear the events of September traumatized everyone there. But Stewart worries there could be another attack like September 4th.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: We're thinking it's going to happen and it's probably going to involve firearms. We're thinking it could be anytime and everybody is on edge.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: And this isn't just a concern that Stewart has. I asked everyone I interviewed if they thought another incident like September 4th could happen and almost everyone said yes.

MG: What's going on here? I mean, why does Stewart think this is happening?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, he blames the use of drugs and alcohol in the community. And he's worried the problem is getting out of hand because people were so traumatized from what happened in September that they're turning to substances more and more to relieve their trauma as a quick escape. Now, James Smith is supposed to be a dry community. But without anyone enforcing the rules, he says hard drugs like crystal meth, cocaine continue to flow in from nearby cities, fueling violence.

MG: And we know that Myles Sanderson had a history with drugs.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: That's right. And we don't exactly know what happened to cause his violent rampage that day in September. And the RCMP have even said that we may never know his motive because Sanderson died. But what we do know from Sanderson's partner is that he had fetal alcohol syndrome, and he was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder before the stabbings. He had 59 convictions in his life, and parole documents show that he had a troubled upbringing. He was shuffled from home to home, started cocaine at the age of 14, and then moved on to crystal meth.

MG: So as somebody whose job it is to help keep his community safe, how frustrating is it for Stewart Head that he can't do more?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, when we first met Stewart Head, we could tell that he was shaken up. The night before, he tried to stop two men from drinking behind the wheel. He called the RCMP, but they only arrived after the men took off and rolled their vehicle on a highway outside of the community. Now, luckily, these two men survived, but Stewart was shaken up by the incident and he wishes he could have intervened.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: There's always parties and a lot of drunk driving out here. And, you know, there's certain things we can and can't do. And right now, we're frustrated with the direction we're getting from the RCMP because they tell us not to take any keys away from anybody. They want to see an accident before they like to come out, and it shouldn't be that way. Like these two young men this morning, it was a serious rollover at the high rate of speed.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: So all Stewart and his team can really do is watch and report to the Mounties and wait for them to show up. So they feel helpless in many ways. And people in the community are nervous too.

MG: What do you mean?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: People in James Smith used to keep their doors unlocked and welcome anyone into their home unannounced. But now, everything's changed. People keep their curtains shut, doors locked. Some people got guard dogs. When I went to go meet community member Joyce Burns, I had to give her family our vehicle description so they knew who we were when we drove up their driveway. And when we arrived, we saw Burns sitting at the edge of her couch looking out the window.

MG: Who is Joyce Burns?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, she's 68 years old, a residential school survivor from James Smith. She lives with her two daughters and grandchildren. She had just finished breakfast on September 4th with her husband, Earl Burns Senior when Sanderson broke in and started his attack. I asked her how she's doing since then.

SOUNDCLIP

JOYCE BURNS: I'm coming along. Doing okay. Finding it hard to do things around the house, but I try and do as much as I can.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: What's the hardest part for you?

JOYCE BURNS: Getting up. Getting up from the bedroom or leaving the house.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: What was it like returning here?

JOYCE BURNS: It was okay. I didn’t find no difference just that my husband wouldn't be here, that's all.

MG: She sounds like she's just sort of hanging on in some ways. What happened to her husband?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Earl her husband was killed in the attack. Joyce was also injured and she spent two and a half months in hospital. Joyce remembers seeing a white SUV pull into her long gravel driveway that morning. She went to open the door because she thought it was her brother, Barry, since he had a similar vehicle. But it was actually Sanderson and he had a cigarette in his mouth. Joyce says she turned the lock because Sanderson has a violent history with her family.

MG: What was that History with Myles Sanderson?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, Sanderson has five children with her daughter Vanessa and he was abusive towards her. Back in 2015, he stabbed both Joyce and Earl with a steak knife after they tried to defend their daughter. And when Joyce didn't let Myles in that September morning, he kicked the door open, walked right past her, and went straight for Earl attacking him. Joyce says she called police to tell them what was going on. She tells me that they assured her help was on the way but then hung up on her. And that's when she walked out of her bedroom and came face to face with Sanderson.

SOUNDCLIP

JOYCE BURNS: Myles sees me and he chased me back in the bedroom. I went running back in the bedroom trying to lock it and he kicked the door open. That's when he starts stabbing me. He stabbed me on my arm, my neck. Then when he stabbed me in my abdomen, that's when I fell. So after that, he heard the bus started and come running out.

MG: That's just awful to listen to. What is the bus that she mentioned?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Her husband, Earl, used to drive the community's children to school in that bus. He had been badly injured, but Joyce says he used his final strength to get up, go outside and start the bus to try to distract Sanderson. And she believes by doing this, he saved her life. That bus was later found in a ditch down the street from where Joyce lives, her husband dead inside. There's a large memorial now to mark that place with yellow and black flowers in the shape of the school bus that he used to drive.

MG: This is a community that is dealing with a lot of trauma and hurt still. How is the community dealing with the issue of drugs and alcohol?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, I spoke to Darryl Burns about that. He's been an addictions counsellor in James Smith for 25 years. Four years ago, he says his granddaughter was murdered by her boyfriend who was a drug dealer and turned the gun on himself. Two years later, he says his wife's niece and her husband were shot and killed in another drug related incident. And he says nothing was done.

MG: And so obviously, these issues go back much further than the horrible events of last year.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: That's right. And Burns even thinks that, you know, the tragedy that happened in September could have been prevented if action was taken sooner. He says that he believes the community's battle with drugs and alcohol stems from intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools and colonization. He says every single person in James Smith is affected by these institutions in one way or another because everybody has family who were forced to attend these institutions. And the substance abuse problem is so widespread in James Smith touching everyone that Burns says people are actually afraid to address it.

SOUNDCLIP

DARRYL BURNS: We talked about, you know, is that enough people to die now, 10 people enough people to die in order for changes to be made in the community? I said I've had enough. I'm not going to be silent anymore. I'm going to talk about the issues that are facing us as native people. We're not going to sweep it under the rug anymore. We're going to talk openly about all the violence, all the addiction issues in our community.

MG: And so what would he like to see change?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, he says there needs to be a community meeting. He says James Smith hasn't had a band meeting for years. The last one was sometime before the pandemic. He says people need to get together to decide how they want to act and specifically what they want to do about the drug dealers living amongst them.

SOUNDCLIP

DARRYL BURNS: Well, a lot of people are talking about banishing them. And yeah, something has to be done about them, getting them out of our community. And if you want to come back into our community, well, let's see you change your ways. If you want to come back into our community, give us four consecutive clean drug tests.

MG: How does an idea like that of banishing those drug dealers, how does that go over in the community?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, I asked Chief Wally Burns of James Smith Cree Nation about this. He says he's planning to hold a community assembly soon to talk about drugs and alcohol. And he says if people call for drug dealers to be banished, he says he will support their wishes. But Burns is now focussed on something bigger. He says he's focussed on setting up the community's own police force to deal with this head on.

SOUNDCLIP

CHIEF WALLY BURNS: To me, honestly, I think it would make a big difference. I like how other first nations protect their nations. They run out the drug dealers, they run out everybody that's not supposed to be in the community. They have their own bylaws, some are autonomous. And, you know, that's what we want in our community is our own bylaws.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: I spoke to him in James Smith's council chambers. Along the walls are messages of support from across the country. And in amongst those messages, there is a whiteboard that hasn't been touched since September 4th. It lists all the emergency contacts for the tragedy almost as if that moment is frozen in time.

SOUNDCLIP

CHIEF WALLY BURNS: This is our command post from September 4th.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Why have you kept this up here?

CHIEF WALLY BURNS: That's a good question. And, you know, every time I look at it, it always reminds me of the people that, you know, that we lost on September 4th. And I think some people don't want it off, to tell you the truth.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Because you're still dealing with the aftermath.

CHIEF WALLY BURNS: Yeah.

MG: What does dealing with the aftermath mean for Chief Burns?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, along with creating a police force, Chief Burns wants to see more mental health support in the community. He says it's hard for people to go to the health clinic to access support because it's attached to the band office. So there really isn't much privacy. He's asked the federal government for funding to buy two trailers. And Indigenous Services Canada confirmed it's giving James Smith more than $870,000 to set this up.

MG: In the meantime, as we've heard, people feel frightened in this community. So what could be done now to help people feel safer?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: The chief is optimistic that James Smith could have its own officers patrolling the streets within a year. And that's because the federal government is creating legislation to make first nations policing an essential service and expanding it to more communities like James Smith.

MG: How much of a difference do people think that something like this could make?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, they think it will be huge. People told me that they feel much better when they see security patrol in the day and night, but they would feel much more relieved if they see officers around who can do the work that security can't such as making arrests, issuing tickets. The other big advantage to having a community police force is community knowledge. If James Smith gets its own officers, they'll know who everyone is in the community and they'll be able to develop closer ties with members and establish trust.

MG: That is the big goal. In the meantime, what happens to the community between now and then?

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Well, people like Stewart Head who's running those community patrols are doing what they can to try to keep the peace in the community and try to keep it safe. But he too is dealing with the trauma of losing his own brother. He now lives in his brother's house. And when he makes coffee every morning, he looks at the spot where his brother lay dying on the kitchen floor and says a prayer.

SOUNDCLIP

STEWART HEAD: We're seeing too many people dying out here. I myself, all my friends my age are all dead. Car accidents, suicides, drug overdoses. And it's really hard to see the damage that all these drugs bring and alcohol brings here. It is really, really hard to look at and try to help people to try and fix things. It's really, really tough. You have to have a strong mind in everything you do. If you don't, this is no place for you. And me, I love all my people here. Every damn one of them. Even the ones I have arguments with.

MG: This is a really difficult story to hear. And the community feels like it really is still hurting six months after this attack. Olivia, thank you very much.

OLIVIA STEFANOVICH: Thank you, Matt.

MG: CBC reporter Olivia Stefanovich was reporting for us from the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Your CBC news is up next. And then, a conversation with the writer and artist Jenny Odell about time. We're going to talk about slowing down and living beyond the tyranny of the clock. He looks at his clock and says, we'll be back in six minutes to tell you all about that. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

JENNY ODELL

Guest: Jenny Odell

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, Canada is being called upon to help in Haiti. In just under half an hour, while U.S. President Joe Biden is looking to this country to lead the effort to move Haiti from violence and chaos to stability and how Haitians are responding to the possibility of yet another foreign intervention. But first, time on your side.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[ticking clock]

MG: That’s the sound of a ticking clock. Do you find that sound calming or does the ticking clock put you on edge?

SOUNDCLIP

[ticking clock fades up]

MG: What if instead of seconds ticking by, time was measured by something like this?

SOUNDCLIP

[crackling fire]

MG: Crackling fire. Or maybe the sound of waves lapping at the shore.

SOUNDCLIP

[waves lapping at shore]

MG: The artist and author Jenny Odell thinks we are living on the wrong clock. She has made a career of making observations about the world around her. Her debut book, “How to Do Nothing”, offered a kind of field guide on disconnecting from the so-called attention economy. And now her latest book is diving into the past, present and future of time. It is called “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock”. Jenny Odell is in Oakland, California. Jenny, good morning.

JENNY ODELL: Hi. I'm so glad to be here.

MG: I'm glad to have you here. Are you somebody who can resist looking at a clock if you see one around you?

JENNY ODELL: Oh, it just depends on what I'm doing, right? I mean, if I'm on a deadline, right, like it's going to be really hard for me not to look at a clock. But if I have the luxury of not having to think about it, I'm very happy to not look at the clock.

MG: Tell me about when you started to think about this book and what was the genesis, the seed for writing about time.

JENNY ODELL: There is already a little bit about time in “How to Do Nothing”. There's kind of an implicit argument that, you know, it'd be great if not all time seemed like money. After the book came out, something that I heard from readers was this objection about time, that it's great to value rest and reflection and maintenance and these kinds of things. But they also require time and a certain type of relationship to time, right? And so I found that I didn't really have a satisfactory response to that. And then at the same time, I myself was experiencing the feeling of not ever having enough time. And this is all playing out, of course, against the backdrop of being concerned about climate change. So it was sort of just something that I observed in myself and in this feedback, this kind of dissonance of, you know, on the one hand, this time that you see ticking away on the clock always seems to be slipping through your fingers and you're always trying to, you know, be more productive or work faster. But then on the other end of things, you know, you're looking outside and you're seeing evidence of climate change and all of these things kind of being thrown out of joint. And I think I was trying to make sense of living between those two things and try to understand what they actually have in common.

MG: You say in the book, and this is right towards the very beginning, that in some ways you wrote this book as an attempt to save your life. What did you mean by that?

JENNY ODELL: I mean, that feeling that I just described, sort of like racing against the clock at what feels like the end of time is just an emotionally unsustainable way to live. I think it can be paralyzing. I just felt like I needed to recover my own appetite for the future, which means just being able to imagine a future, but also to kind of reopen these windows of possibility that actually exist in every moment. Something that I noticed during the pandemic, even though I wrote the proposal for this book before the pandemic, was that time felt like it was all the same and it was just kind of marching forward in an undifferentiated way towards like certain doom. And that was maybe heightened for a lot of people during the pandemic. And so I think in trying to move beyond my own sense of paralysis, I was really looking for ways of thinking about time that were different from that, where actually every moment is different from the one before it and does contain that kind of seed of possibility.

MG: We started by hearing the sound of a clock. And you talk about clock time. What is clock time?

JENNY ODELL: I sort of think of it as a language. I think language as a metaphor can be a really helpful way of thinking about many kinds of reckoning time, right? So, you know, clock's minutes, hours, days, weeks, you know, these are part of a cultural language for time that is like any other very culturally specific. You know, in this case, the need to regulate commerce, to measure the labour hours of other people, to navigate to new countries. As I found in my research for the book, like pretty dark stuff like logging the work hours of people working on plantations or regulating the work of people in factories who are working for a wage. You know, Now that's the language that we use to talk about time. But I think that revisiting those kind of early moments, particularly moments like when colonists would show up somewhere and need to impose that sense of time on another existing sense of time that's fully fleshed out and very different. In those moments, you can kind of step back a little bit and maybe something about time that you’d taken for granted, like the fact that minutes and hours like are somehow time can get like loosened up a little bit.

MG: How do you see that playing out in workplaces now? You write about this and again, that idea of time is money goes back to the fact that it was helping to shape and define workplaces in the past. But if you take a look at workplaces now, how does that play out, the fact that we're slaves to the clock in many ways?

JENNY ODELL: I would say it definitely depends on your line of work. But, you know, when I was researching early 20th century methods for regulating and timing work, it seemed like there was a direct through line to things that you see now, like the fact that a scanner gun that is used by an employee in an Amazon warehouse is also in a way a timer. Then you have delivery drivers whose trucks are using telematics, a system of sensors that's showing how long it's taking them to do things and then trying to direct them to do them faster. And then I also looked at employee tracking systems that are installed on the computers of people who are working remotely, including one that was amazingly named StaffCop. These are very highly detailed systems and interfaces for breaking up your work or surveilling your work, usually with the goal of making it go faster.

MG: You reference in the book a scene from Modern Times starring Charlie Chaplin. What does that scene tell you?

JENNY ODELL: I mean, I think it tells you a lot of things that again are very relevant. But the scene that really struck me in the beginning of that film is when the company decides to try out a feeding machine to eliminate the lunch hour. It's like horrific, but it's also really it's like one of the funniest parts of the movie, But it's this like rotating platter of foods, including like a corn cob spinner that looks like a thing on a typewriter and it's kind of malfunctioning and slamming this corncob into Charlie Chaplin's face. It's funny because it's such a bold illustration of the companies need to squeeze their workers’ and their workers’ time so much that they would want to eliminate the lunch hour, that they would want you to be able to keep working through that.

MG: It feels like the kind of thing that could easily I mean, not the corn cob perhaps, but all the other parts of it could happen now.

JENNY ODELL: Yeah. Yeah. And in the book, I compare it to this amazing short film, recent short film called Merger where it's kind of similar to the beginning of Modern Times, but it's more I think anyone who worked at home from the pandemic will relate to this film. It's by Keiichi Matsuda. It's this woman kind of at a wraparound futuristic looking desk with all these screens that she's just like frantically swiping and clicking and trying to keep track of all these things at once. And then at some point, she like takes a supplement and says something like there's not always time to eat lunch, but there are so many innovative ways to fuel your mind and body. Again, like that feels to me like very much the modern day version of the feeding machine.

MG: Have you seen the TV show Severance?

JENNY ODELL: I have. Yes, I love Severance.

MG: So one of the reasons I asked you about that and one of the reasons why people love it is because especially during the pandemic when it felt like the line between work and your life was just a race, that this was vaguely appealing in that you could just slice those two parts of your life apart and have different bits of time.

JENNY ODELL: Yeah. Like in that case, you'd have two completely different identities, right? And then obviously the whole show turns on the fact that there are like huge problems with that, right?

MG: Huge.

JENNY ODELL: I mean, that show basically illustrates the concept of being like alienated from yourself. In that case, you are almost two people. And one of the things that I referenced a bit in “Saving Time” is this magazine from the eighties and nineties called Processed World. That was very much this railing against that feeling of alienation that like one has to acquiesce to the idea of having an entire section of yourself and your time given over to something that you feel is really meaningless.

MG: One of the things that's really neat about this book is how you talk about language. You've hinted at this, but how you talk about language. What was interesting to you about that? Because I mean, even the title “Saving Time”, but then you talk about killing time, time well spent. What's interesting to you about the ways that we speak about time?

JENNY ODELL: I think I mean, I've always been really interested in language, but I'm also coming to it with the perspective of an artist because art also deals in language. And some of my favourite art I would say either provides a lens on reality or you could say it gives you a vocabulary for something in reality that ideally after you have that experience, the world sort of doesn't look the same anymore. Like the other metaphor that I use a lot is that I have a jeweler's loop that I carry with me everywhere. It’s a 10 X lens and I use it to look at all kinds of things, not just, you know, natural things, but like cement and like, you know, the side of a building, you know, just anything really. And I'm still in the same world, right? Like I haven't gone anywhere. But because I have this tool, I am able to see things about the built environment in this case or about the natural environment that I couldn't have seen before. And it definitely changes my understanding of where I am and I think it enriches it. And so just that's something that I've been kind of obsessed with for a long time both as an artist and a writer, is how new things can look if you're just given a new vocabulary or a new lens. And the implication being that you're never sort of done observing the place where you are, like that could sort of go on infinitely.

MG: Well, let me ask you about the lens in a minute. But I mean, if you talk about vocabulary, how could speaking and thinking differently about time change how we are governed by time, if that makes sense?

JENNY ODELL: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one example would be the fact that when we speak the language of time is money, then you get this idea that everybody has 24 identical hours in a day and that your job in life is to squeeze the most value out of those 24 hours, similar to, you know, a factory manager who's working with materials or workers. And in that scheme, the sense that you got is I have my 24 hours, you have your 24 hours. Those hours are unrelated. I'm just over here trying to squeeze the value out of them. You're over there doing that. Our time can only interact transactionally. So if I give you some, I have less, you have more, right? And there's a moment in the middle of the book where I describe a friend of mine who's in her seventies giving me some lettuce, insisting that I take some lettuce from her, which she was gardening at the time, and that it was hard for me to understand that she actually needed to give me the outer leaves of the lettuce for it to keep growing in the way that she wanted. And just this notion that if she gives me some, we both have more, and just like how unintuitive that idea was for me because I've grown up in this culture where everything feels very transactional. And that very simple moment for me was like kind of a revelation. It was like what if I thought about time like this instead, in which if I actually give you some of my time, we both have more. And so I think it opens up the possibility of thinking beyond that individualistic sense of like I have my time and my time bank and more like what could we do together in a coordinated way that would actually make time feel different for everyone involved in that coordination?

MG: I mean, the other thing that's interesting, and you mentioned culture, is that there are cultural variants on time, right? Your mom's from the Philippines?

JENNY ODELL: Mm hmm.

MG: Talk about this and how this comes out in the book, how different cultures have different senses of time.

JENNY ODELL: On a really basic level, it's just a really great illustration of that idea of the language, right? So when I was asking around in my family like what is the Filipino time? The consensus seemed to be one to two hours late, one to two hours late with respect to dominant time, right? Like the culturally dominant sense of time where the sense that like one shows up at the time that is listed. But then I go on to note that if you have a bunch of people who are all on Filipino time, then it's not Filipino time anymore. It's just time. So it kind of illustrates this notion similar to language that the way that you organize and observe time is a social agreement and it always has been. And I think it's also a really nice example of the fact that there are these pockets of other ways of reckoning time, other ways of practicing things in time that have survived and are evolving maybe. And so I think it's just a nice reminder of that, that it's not this kind of complete take over that all of us psychologically 100% live in clock time.

MG: Do you actually go around with a jeweler's loop?

JENNY ODELL: I do. It's really small, so you can just stick it in your pocket. And it's the easiest and simplest example of being surprised by something that you thought you knew, something that you passed by every day maybe. And you just look at it, you know, 10 X, like that's not a lot, but it's this completely alien world when you look through that loop.

MG: What does that give you? I mean, you talk in the book about what nature can teach you about time, whether it's looking at concrete or rocks or cedar wax wings. I mean, what do you learn about time from nature?

JENNY ODELL: I think, you know, if you spend time observing it at any level, you will inevitably start to notice changes. So I mean, one example for me has been bird watching. I've noticed that over the last six or seven years, I feel like it went from something that felt kind of not static, but it's like you see an image in a book and then you see the bird and like you check it off your list and that's sort of that. And I feel like my attention has evolved to the point of noticing first of all, just like moment to moment, what they're doing, what the bird is doing, but then also things like what time of year are they here, especially here where people say the Bay Area doesn't have seasons. I mean, that's changing because of climate change. But I don't really think that we have four seasons. We have kind of like micro seasons. But if you are paying attention, you realize that like okay, well, maybe we don't have four seasons, but things are changing all the time. And if you're looking at it in this minute way, like you can really see those changes happening materially. And I just think that that's an important way of accessing this fact that everything around us is also expressing time. Like I think that just something like walking around with the loop for me is a reminder that everything around me and myself included is all involved in these interwoven processes of change that I think are what time actually is.

MG: How can something like that help us think differently about the climate crisis, do you think?

JENNY ODELL: Just personally, I feel like it's really important to recognize agency in the nonhuman world. I mean, that's obviously not a new idea. And when I say, you know, recognizing agency, part of that is seeing something either acting or experiencing in time. And I think for me, it's just like if you really go to the root of the climate crisis, it really has to do with this extractive attitude toward so much of the world that's considered inert, that that kind of set this whole thing off in a way. And so you can think about solutions at many different levels. And there are a lot of things that need to be done. But I think if we were to really address the root of this problem, it would have to involve changing that cultural assumption about that divide between humans who are acting and making and doing things and the non-human world as sort of just existing.

MG: What sort of appetite do you think there is amongst people to change how they think about time? I mean, a lot of this book follows directly from “How to Do Nothing”. And “How to Do Nothing” was a big success and a big success at a time in the pandemic when people were thinking differently about time around them and how time was moving if they were stuck at home and they couldn't go and do what they wanted to do. How much of an appetite do you think there is for people to think differently, really to think differently about time?

JENNY ODELL: I think that there's always going to be some appetite because a big part of the reason I wrote the book was that I was living with these feelings day in and day out, you know, before the pandemic even, just like noticing that the feelings that I had about time were always somewhat painful, like whether it was feeling like I was running out of time, worrying about the climate or worrying about my own mortality and my ageing. Like those all felt so painful. And I think that those are pretty common feelings. So I think, you know, as a baseline, I think that there's already probably some appetite for that. But then, maybe there is a little bit more of an appetite just because it seemed to me like both because things were interrupted, but also because we were faced with mortality so much in the news and, you know, in our lives. I think for a lot of people, it was a moment to think about the fact that you only have one life and to really think about what it is that you're trying to do, perhaps like seeking meaning rather than accumulation or achievement. You know, it's like what do you really want on this earth I think is something that came to the foreground for a lot of people. So I would love if I could sort of like know what the collective was feeling.

MG: But I think a lot of people do feel as though they don't have enough time, that time is slipping away from them, that I mean, whether it's the work life balance or just the sands in your hand, that the grains are running through your hands and you don't have control of that in some ways.

JENNY ODELL: Yeah, right. There's something melancholy about it. I mean, I talk about it in the book, but I'm so haunted by that children's story where a witch gives this young boy a ball with a thread that you can pull out, but you can't put it back in and it makes time go faster. And every time he's impatient, he pulls the thread. Of course, he becomes an old man very quickly and, you know, regrets it. And the witch comes back and says, you know, you learned your lesson and he gets to be a young boy again. And none of us get that opportunity. I remember just being haunted by that because it was just like, oh, it only goes in one direction. And like I mean, that is the human condition, right? That is also what gives life meaning. But I think there's always going to be some interest in trying to find a different way of thinking about time that isn't just, you know, fearful or a melancholy.

MG: How has immersing yourself in this changed your life, do you think? I mean, what is different about you now?

JENNY ODELL: I mean, one thing that I have noticed is that, you know, so much of my argument is against individualism in a way. And I feel less individual, including the way that I think about my time. You know, I have the luxury to be somewhat in control of my time. But because of that, I'm more generous with my time. I feel less of that transactional sense of time. And I feel like I have a better appreciation for the fact that giving time often means also getting time. If not in that moment, you know, maybe later. I think I see myself more in this kind of network of give and take. And I put more emphasis on the relationship between myself and other people or other places than I do on, you know, myself as a bounded entity. And it's really exciting because I think many more things are possible when you conceive of yourself that way and of others that way because then it's not just you trying really hard to, you know, perform against certain metrics and it becomes more what happens when you can draw on the power of a community.

MG: So for people who, again, they feel like time is not their own and that it's out of their control, aside from maybe, you know, not wearing a watch or looking at clocks as much and trying to figure out how you can be more part of a larger community, what would you say to people about how they could change their own relationship with time?

JENNY ODELL: Well, I think, you know, there's kind of two answers. It's a different situation to actually have no control over your time because of your employer or your life circumstances or where you are, a social hierarchy, like all of these ways in which you don't have control over your time. And then there's another situation in which you have someone who could conceivably feel like they have control of their time, but they are burned out because they are kind of like working themselves to death because of an internalized sense of needing to get the most out of every moment. And not to say that those two situations are totally distinguishable at all times, but I do think it is an important distinction to make. And I think in the case of someone who's just burning themselves out because of these internalized values, that person, I think the solution for them is to do what I call experimenting with mediocrity or experimenting with what looks like mediocrity or like kind of just take stock. I mean, Oliver Burkeman writes so beautifully about this, just kind of readjusting your values. And in that, I would include like talking to others who are maybe dealing with like a similar problem. And then I think someone in the other situation who really has no control over their time, I think for them, like the natural movement would be outward toward others in order to build a collective power, whether that's a union or something less traditional, but it would have to be something beyond them. And the first step of that is recognizing that, you know, it's not their fault that they don't feel like they have control over their time. It's not that they're doing a bad job managing their time, that this is something that is bigger than them.

MG: And the last thing, I suppose, is just I love that idea that for you, free time in many ways equals being in a public space. What does that give you and what could that give the rest of us?

JENNY ODELL: For me, being in public, you know, non-commercial space, not a shopper, worker, consumer, for me, that's a very almost like sacred space of encounter. It's really important for me to see strangers going about their lives. You know, in “How to Do Nothing”, I talk about the municipal rose Garden that I lived near. I've had conversations with strangers there before. But even if you're not having a conversation, just seeing other people doing whatever they're doing and just kind of being confronted with that reality, because I think a lot of what I'm arguing against is this instrumental way of looking at the world in which everyone and everything else is either invisible or a nuisance or a product to be consumed, but it sort of doesn't exist for itself. And I think I want to be in a world where other people and other things exist for themselves and we are all encountering each other. To me, that is a very enlivening experience and that to me is also when time feels the most expansive because I think it's full of the most surprise.

MG: There's a lot to think about in this book, especially right now in this moment. I think a lot of people will look for something like this and be fascinated with some of the things that you've dug up. It's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JENNY ODELL: Likewise. Thank you.

MG: Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and educator at Stanford University and an author as well. Her latest book is called “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock”. If you have figured out how to live beyond the clock, you can let us know how. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update, Canada Feeling pressure to lead a Military intervention in Haiti. We'll talk about what that country needs, how we can help, and whether Haitians actually want Canadians there. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Back in 90 seconds.

[Music: Theme]

HAITI

Guests: Louis-Henri Mars, Renata Segura, Tom Lawson

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Calls to help Haiti are growing louder. Right now, gangs control more than half of that country. A cholera outbreak is worsening. Both the United Nations and Haiti's prime minister are calling for an international intervention. During his visit to Ottawa this week, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to lean on Canada to lead that effort. Louis-Henri Mars is director of the Haitian Peacebuilding Organization Lakou Lape. We've reached him in the suburbs of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Louis-Henri, good morning.

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Good morning.

MG: The United Nations says that Haiti is on the verge of an abyss. Does that seem like an accurate account to you?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Yes. We have a situation where at least the capital is surrounded by armed gangs that are controlling the access of all the roads in and out of the capital city. In order to go to the south, to the north, to the east, to wherever, you have to actually pay a toll to them to go through. And then you have on the eastern side of Petion-Ville where I reside, an armed group that is moving in the various small neighbourhoods in the hills. So the capital is surrounded. There are issues in the provinces in the Artibonite Valley. There's a lot of conflicts and gang warfare going on. There's about 4.5 million people who are in a food security crisis. So the situation is very, very, very dangerous right now.

MG: What does that mean in terms of if you were to go out into the streets? Would people feel safe on the streets?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Nobody is safe anywhere. There's a lot of kidnappings that are happening. Sometimes two, three, four or five kidnappings a day. On Saturday, my neighbour's son was kidnapped right next door to me in the yard of his business. And so every time I go out, I'm playing Russian roulette like with the kidnappers the same way as other Haitians are doing.

MG: And so for those who are kidnapped, I mean, for your neighbour’s son for example, what happens then?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Well, depends on the group that has done the kidnapping. Some groups are more professional at it than others. They'll have to wait three or four days before they make contact with you. And then during that time, you have to have a negotiator ready and you have to start counting your money. So once they make contact, you ask for proof of life, they give you the opportunity to speak to the kidnapped person, and then the negotiator starts until you have an agreement or a resolution. And the process continues until you have the delivery of the money and they give you back your loved one. Sometimes it happens that you deliver the money and they will not give you back your loved one. And they will insist on a second delivery saying that the first delivery was a down payment.

MG: So if that's what awaits people who go out into the streets, how are people getting the things they need to make it through the day, food and the other necessities of life?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Well, life goes on. It's not everybody that gets kidnapped every day. So sometimes they have targeted kidnapping, sometimes random. And that's what makes it even more stressful, is that you do not know when or how and where.

MG: The prime minister of Haiti has asked the United Nations for foreign troops. Canada is being asked to take a leadership role in this. This will be raised by the U.S. president when he visits Canada later this week. What would you want from Canada?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: I want Canada to support the national police, build the capacity of the national police, be a backup force to the national police and to the army that is whatever number of soldiers. I think there's about 500 of them ready to serve this country, but they need to have backbone support of professionals that are able to reverse the situation that is happening right now where it's not banditry that's going on. It's actually guerrilla warfare that's going on right now in Haiti.

MG: What is the long term answer here? What's the long term solution to the crisis that Haiti finds itself in? This is not a new crisis, although it's been exacerbated certainly in recent years. So as somebody who has been working on peace for a long time in your country, what is the long term solution here?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: The long term solution is first of all, understanding between all classes of society that we're all one country, that we're one nation. We have been divided from the get go. And there is a tremendous structural violence in the economic and social system that's in place here. So that has to change. What is going on now is something that's been evolving over the years. It's not new. It’s something that's been building up. And there is a fundamental change in the economic and social structures that need to happen in this country. There is the opportunity right now because wherever there is danger, there's also opportunity, right? So it is now that the people that were in comfortable economic situations are getting the sense that this cannot continue. And one of the things that the international community must be aware of is that it's not a question of coming back to the status quo if the gangs are subdued, but developing with the Haitian community here new ways of relating to each other, new economic structures, new ways of doing business, new ways of doing politics. The habit of using armed groups to control the results of elections has to stop. You cannot have elections under the control of armed individuals and armed groups. The people have to be able to freely choose, totally freely choose the people that they want to lead them into the future. This is where we need to start and move on forward as a nation.

MG: Are you optimistic about that future?

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: As long as I’m living and I'm dedicated to working in that direction, I believe in what I'm doing. If not, I would go on a beach in Miami and sun myself all day long. Why live here in these conditions? Why take this risk that I'm taking? And I'm not the only one. There's others that are doing that too. So yes, I believe. And I have other friends and other people that I know who believe in the future of the country.

MG: Alright. Louis-Henri, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

LOUIS-HENRI MARS: Yeah. Thank you very much.

MG: Louis-Henri Mars is director of the Haitian peace Building organization Lakou Lape. He was in a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Renata Segura is deputy director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the International Crisis Group, and she's in New York City. Renata, good morning to you.

RENATA SEGURA: Good morning.

MG: A Haitian developer told The New York Times this morning, “Right now, living in Haiti is a matter of avoiding being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The problem is that the wrong place is everywhere and the wrong time is literally all the time.” What would be the challenge, do you think, of rooting out the gangs and restoring peace so that people in Haiti could live without fear?

RENATA SEGURA: Yes. I think as your previous guest was explaining very clearly, unfortunately, the situation has been continuing to deteriorate. And so the challenges are very big. I think the immediate priority, at least the way that the US and others in the international community have placed it, is to be able to at least open the roads that allow access to the communities so that people have access to health, to food, kids can go to school. That wouldn't be at all a solution that really would end the violence that is happening in Haiti right now, but at least bringing a little bit of the day to day danger down so people can come out of their houses, return to their normal abilities, activities is indispensable.

MG: You wrote in December that to make that happen, a quick military deployment is most likely the only approach that would bring immediate relief. Do you still believe that four months later? Is that what it will take to restore that immediate security?

RENATA SEGURA: Yes. I think unfortunately, that seems day by day the only possible alternative. The police in Haiti is underfunded. They don't have the equipment necessary. And for very understandable reasons, a lot of the police members have been fleeing the country. And a lot of them are trying to migrate to the United States because their situation is really difficult. It's an impossible job. And so we do think that even though politically it's very complicated, a mission to support the Haitian security apparatus to do at least an initial combat of the gangs is necessary.

MG: You also wrote, “Many Haitians vehemently oppose the idea of bringing in foreign troops to solve Haitian problems. Past foreign military interventions have only subjected the country to the inequities of colonial rule and left a host of unresolved problems in their wake.” So why would this time be any different?

RENATA SEGURA: I think really because there's no better option. I don't think anybody in the international community or in Haiti is really looking at the foreign goods coming into the country as an ideal solution. But really, we have run out of options. The Haitians by themselves unfortunately cannot solve this situation. And we believe there is an international responsibility to help the country at this very, very difficult moment.

MG: Why is there that international responsibility if there is opposition? And that opposition has changed, I mean, and modulated over time. But if there is that opposition in the country itself to foreign intervention, why is there an international responsibility perhaps to override that?

RENATA SEGURA: Well, the first thing that we should be clear is that Haitians are fairly divided about this question. There are very important and very legitimate voices that are strongly speaking out against the intervention, but that's by no means the only opinion of Haitians. When we were in the country last fall and we were able to speak with people in the communities that had been most affected by violence, people were asking us, when are the troops coming? Are you guys going to just stand by while we all die? If you go into Twitter today, there is a hashtag that says, I live in Haiti, I will die soon. So there is a lot of desperation among the people of Haiti. And a lot of people are calling for an international operation to come and help. That said, there are important parts of the political community that say that this intervention would only help consolidate the current prime minister, which is not seen as a legitimate leader by a lot of people. So the difficulty is trying to reach an agreement among the Haitians that would, you know, welcome the forces without that meaning that necessarily the international community is supporting the current prime minister. We have heard from people who have been very loudly opposed to this that if it was not Henry in power, they would welcome the intervention. So it's not necessarily that people are against the idea of the foreign troops coming to help the police. It's more about the political ramifications of doing that right now, which would mean strengthening the hand of the current administration.

MG: Is it possible to thread that needle? I mean, one of the reasons why this crisis continues and has not been resolved over time is because these are really complicated issues. And I just wonder whether it's possible to satisfy all of those various constituencies and all of those various concerns.

RENATA SEGURA: I mean, it's very difficult. And clearly, that's what's been happening in the last months. The prime minister, I'm sorry, the interim prime minister on December 21st came up with an agreement among certain sectors of the political parties and social groups that were hoping to welcome the international foreign troops. Now, that is not going well though. Trying to bring more people into that agreement is not happening as we were hoping. But I think really the limits of people, people are reaching a limit. There's not that many options on the table. And I think at some point, the international community is just going to have to make a decision even if there is no consensus.

MG: How long do you think that force would be required to be there?

RENATA SEGURA: I mean, I think that that is the biggest question. And that's really the source of the hesitation of Canada and other countries to really engage in this operation. The secretary general had originally established a six-month pact. That is what they were thinking. That really will be insufficient to completely address the situation. This is obviously a very deeply rooted crisis that would require, you know, an intervention that is much longer than six months.

MG: I just want to be clear. When you say much longer, what are we talking about here?

RENATA SEGURA: I mean, probably years. That said, you know, the international community can also set goals that are not necessarily we're going to get rid of the gangs, right? You can establish goals that are more short and middle term that would be helpful, that would bring a little bit of air and the possibility of coming to an agreement within the political forces. So I would imagine that at least a year to kind of control the situation, make sure that the gangs don't have access to be able to control the ports, that the roads are open, things of that sort. Now, you know, these gangs have existed for decades. You know, it's been impossible to militarily remove them. And I think your previous guest was completely correct in his diagnosis. This is really a social problem, right? The political elites in Haiti have been predatory elites. The levels of inequality are astounding. A lot of Haitians have no paths into a legal way of making a living that will be dignified. So really, this is not going to be solved unless there is a profound political, social and economic change in Haiti. So everything else is just Band-Aids to stop the killing, stop the sexual violence, stop the kidnappings, allowing people to return to a little bit of a semblance of normality, but none of this is really addressing the root causes of what has been in Haiti a cycle of violence that we have been seeing now for decades.

MG: Renata Segura, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

RENATA SEGURA: Thank you for having me.

MG: Renata Segura is deputy director for Latin America and the Caribbean with the International Crisis Group. She was in New York City. Retired General Tom Lawson is a former chief of the Defence staff for the Canadian Armed Forces. Tom Lawson, good morning to you.

TOM LAWSON: Good morning, Matt.

MG: U.S. President Joe Biden will arrive in Ottawa this week and we believe will ask Canada to take the lead on that international deployment to stabilize Haiti. What do you think Canada should say?

TOM LAWSON: Well, you know, first of all, listening to your first two interviews, like all Canadians, I feel very deeply for Haitians in their despair and peril. But I really think that the prime Minister should maintain the point of view that he's expressed over recent months, and that is that Canada should not at this time take on a lead role of a military mission in Haiti.

MG: Why do you believe that given what we've just heard about the chaos on the ground right now?

TOM LAWSON: Well, right. So it's been tried many times before, stabilization missions, enough so that the international observers have learned that really, success in these things is predicated on supporting a home grown solution. And that is just not the case in Haiti where the government has really fallen into ineffectiveness. And when we listened to Mr. Mars, your first speaker, when you asked, you know, what could be done there, he said, really, for the people to understand that we are one people in Haiti. It would have been far better to hear of some small specific steps that could be taken where the military could help them, things like developing the government and governing and security.

MG: Why do you think the United States is pushing so hard for Canadians to do this, to take this leadership role in this?

TOM LAWSON: Largely because the Americans realize that it's in their neighbourhood and ours. It’s a terrible situation in which millions are in peril and the Americans don't want to take it on themselves. The Brazilians who led the U.N. mission from 2014 to 2017 would be the go to nation. But they have made it very clear under their last president and this one that they would not go in again because of the terrible experience they had over those decades in Haiti where it really ended up to be in a worse situation in 2017 than when they went in in 2004.

MG: I mean, given that terrible situation and given how Renata has described this in speaking with people who said, are you just going to stand by and watch us die, do we not have an obligation to do something?

TOM LAWSON: Yeah, I think the international community does. And I think she pointed to it, and that is to support in every way Haitian police, host police. And Canada has done a bit of that. You know, recently, we've sent in armoured vehicles for them and more are on their way. But, you know, trying to ensure that that police force is functioning and seen as an elite group for Haitians to join to develop some of this security is probably the way ahead. Military deployments really only work when the government has a plan. And other than that, it really becomes a nation building exercise, which is far more than a military effort.

MG: As you understand it, as a former chief of the defence staff, how prepared would Canada and the Canadian military be for that sort of stabilization force? You've given your advice. But if the Prime Minister were to say when the President asks, okay, we will lead this, how prepared is the military for that?

TOM LAWSON: Well, you know, Canada has a very professional military, but it's small. You know, it really does reflect the lack of investment Canada has made in its military for decades. And that's a topic for another show. But when you have a small professional military, then really the art of using your military effectively is in setting priorities. And right now, Canada has a significant leadership role along the east side of NATO in Latvia where we lead a trip wire force against potential Russian aggression. And it’s planning to enhance its numbers there. Now if a decision is taken to lead a mission in Haiti, it's going to require a rebalancing of those efforts. In other words, a decrease in NATO taskings. You know, the other thing we should recognize is whenever Canada deploys with allies, you know, to Europe or even to the Middle East, we really do position our troops in a logistics infrastructure that's already been built by our allies. You know, supply lines are in place, military hospitals are in place, ammunition supplies, all of that is well protected. And, you know, that's the beauty of allied deployments with NATO's and other Western countries. None of that exists in Haiti. So it would all need to be built up. And this is an entirely different sort of challenge than the Canadian forces have recently been used to.

MG: Are there other options? Could we as a nation perhaps send the RCMP as we have done previously? If the goal is to strengthen the police forces in Haiti in particular, is that an option?

TOM LAWSON: Well, you know, I would think that if the security level was higher, that is an option. But, you know, it's been tried, Matt. From 2004 to 2017, there were not only 2500 military in Haiti, there were actually 2500 police, some of whom over that period were Canadian RCMP and other police forces across Canada. So really, that's a little bit more of the same that's been tried. Largely, you want a host nation solution that we can support, that includes security that's provided by Haitians. And, you know, that's not me being unfeeling. It’s just me looking back at past deployments to Haiti and elsewhere around the world where similar situations of unrest have existed.

MG: You talked about the security level. This is a very dangerous situation. How prepared do you think Canadians broadly, the Canadian public would be for this sort of mission were it to be undertaken?

TOM LAWSON: Well, risk is really the first thing that the chief of defence staff will be assessing in a mission like this or any other mission and providing an assessment to the Minister of National Defence and the Prime Minister. You know, I really don't think that's so much the issue. Yes, I think it would be a dangerous mission, but I think that whatever troops arrived on the ground would be able to overpower and tamp down, you know, largely and over time tamp down gang activities and secure government facilities and infrastructure. I don't think that's the largest factor in the situation here. I think the largest is that which is attached to assessing the likelihood of success for a strategy. And that's what's missing here.

MG: And the fact that many Haitians, as we've discussed, don't want Canadians there. They don't want foreign troops there. How do you take that into consideration when assessing this?

TOM LAWSON: Yeah, deeply. You know, Renata your second interviewee said, you know, there are a lot of people speaking like that and we should just override them and provide the security that's required. And I can see why she says that. If I'm in a neighbourhood right now under gunfire and threat of kidnapping, it doesn't matter what sort of efforts or plans my government has. I want an international force. I get that. But really, what we have to do being the international community is look to what kind of situation, what kind of strategy can work. And really, unless the host nation and the large portion of the population want Canadians or international troops there, it's very unlikely we could work. You know, we look at Bosnia and Herzegovina in the late 1990s and early 2000s. When the troops were tired, the governments wanted international troops in there. And over a period of a decade, that worked. And we see they've got a functioning government, democratic government in Bosnia and Herzegovina now.

MG: We're just about out of time, but is that the kind of time frame that you think that would be required here, that we're not talking about six months, we would be talking about years, perhaps longer than that?

TOM LAWSON: Absolutely. And I think you teased that out of Renata. So the six-month is really a bait on the end of a hook to any country that might lead or contribute to a force there. We are not talking six months. We're not talking a couple of years. We're likely talking five to 10, 15 years because we're talking about nation building. We're not talking about establishing a safe and secure area for the government now to get to its tasks. We're talking about a non-functioning government. So we're talking about nation building. And that's in terms of like we've seen in Afghanistan and Iraq decades.

MG: Tom Lawson, we'll leave it there. Glad to talk to you. Thank you very much.

TOM LAWSON: Thanks for having me.

MG: Retired General Tom Lawson, former chief of the defence staff with the Canadian Armed Forces. That is The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next here on your CBC Radio One. You know of course that Quebec is home to one of the largest Haitian diasporas, a vibrant Haitian music community as well. We're going to leave you this morning with some of the music from that community. This is Haitian-Canadian DJ Gayance with a tune called Shore Apart. I’m Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Song: “Shore Apart” by Gayance]

Wednesday March 22, 2023 Episode Transcript