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The AIH Transcript for October 22, 2021

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: A big concern for a lot of little ones. Health Canada is expected to approve Pfizer's COVID vaccine for children five and up. And a doctor whose young patients are new to Canada says she hopes they will not be forgotten.

CH: In the age-ism of dinosaurs. A new study finds that a couple of hundred million years ago, dinosaurs lived in age segregated groups, which paints a new picture of life in the herd.

CO: Uncharitable behaviour. Alberta's enquiry into foreign funded anti-energy campaigns finds that no charities did anything illegal, but that doesn't seem to have changed the rhetoric of the provincial energy minister.

CH: An evolving situation. A researcher explains why he believes a spike in elephants born without tusks in Mozambique is a rapid evolutionary response to poaching.

CO: He struck so many chords, that struck so many chords. A Montreal pianist describes the moment he won the prestigious Fryderyk Chopin International piano competition, and he says he's still composing himself.

CH: And a come from behind defeat. The Canadian business community is a twitter and a snicker over reports that a planned corporate upset at Rogers was upset by a butt dial that exposed the plan and allowed its target to do an end run. As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that knows sometimes you bum yourself out.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1

Vaccines for kids

Guest: Dr. Shazeen Suleman

CH: Parents across the country are waiting to see whether Health Canada will give the go ahead to Pfizer's COVID 19 vaccine for kids. Last week, the pharmaceutical company asked for approval of the shot for children aged five to 11. And yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that if that approval is granted, Canada will receive millions of doses from Pfizer, enough to give everyone in that age group a first dose. Dr. Shazeen Suleman is a paediatrician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. She cares for children who are new to Canada. We reached her in Toronto.

CO: Dr. Suleyman, are the parents with whom you're speaking. Are they eager to get their kids vaccinated?

SHAZEEN SULEMAN: You know, I hear lots of different perspectives. There are certainly some parents who are eager and want to run to the front of the line, and there are other parents who have lots of questions.

CO: And so what would you say to those who are hesitant who are wondering whether they want to get their five year old vaccinated against COVID?

SS: You know, the first thing I would tell families is I hear you. I know that you're coming from a place of love and concern, and you want what's best for your child. And as your child's health care provider, so do I. And so for any parent that is concerned or has questions, I would say go talk to the provider that you normally see for your child's health and engage them in a conversation. We know your child, we know you, and we want to help you make that decision that's right for you, and we're here to listen. So that's really what I would tell families is that you're not alone and making these decisions. Consider your child's health care provider as part of your team.

CO: Now, some of the concerns I'm sure you're hearing from parents is they say, look, what they're reading is that the risk of COVID making their kids severely sick is much lower than it is for the rest of us. And so maybe the benefits don't outweigh the risks, maybe the risks of... because there are risks, that maybe it's not worth it, given the fact that they don't think their kids would ever get really sick.

SS: I, first of all, totally here where the parents are coming from, where they're worried. And a few things I would say is, you know, we do know COVID is affecting children, and COVID is a disease in evolution with different variants of concern. We've seen more cases in schools, we've seen more children be affected and we've seen more children actually get severely ill. Vaccination does slow the appearance of variants of concerns, and that's something that we can keep in mind. The other thing that I would, you know, ask folks to remember is there was a time when we used to think of chickenpox this way, you know, I remember going to chickenpox parties or being told about that growing up and and for the most part, children who got chickenpox were otherwise fine if they got sick. But there were some children who got severely sick and there were some children who died. And now we have a vaccine for chickenpox. And so we don't have to risk any child for whom that might be. And because we don't have any way of knowing if you are going to be the person who does get severely sick and you also end up protecting not just yourself, but your family and your community, especially those who are immunocompromised.

CO: With the chickenpox parties were they to expose the kids to it so they could build up natural immunity?

SS: Exactly that was before we had a vaccine for chickenpox.

CO: What we've seen over these months of having a vaccine is many inequities in how it's being distributed, right? I mean, we've seen that while people living downtown or living in wealthier areas have time off or they can get time off, they've been able to access the vaccine. We saw so many pockets where people just didn't have the hours or the transportation or whatever in order to get vaccinated. Are you concerned that that's going to happen with the kids too?

SS: Absolutely, Carol. You know, I do think it's important that we remember that children are not little adults and that a vaccine strategy for children absolutely needs to be accessible to every child. And that means children with disabilities, children who are not neurotypical, children who have parents and caregivers who are working and can't take them to vaccinations. Parents whose family may not speak or read English or who are single parents or don't have OHIP. Every one of these children need to be thought of when we're making our vaccine strategy. And it's so important that we make the vaccination as low barrier and accessible as possible, thinking about how we can do this in a child friendly way in spaces that children feel comfortable in, that families feel comfortable in with providers that children trust. You know, I think it's really important that we also think about how are we thinking about the caregivers of children. For example, as we know, there were temporary sick days put in place for individuals who needed to take time off to get vaccinated and recover from the vaccine. We need to think about having paid sick days for parents and caregivers to be able to stay home with their children after vaccination as well. And I'm very eager to see how we learn from what we did earlier on to create an equitable vaccine strategy for all children.

CO: We're already hearing that public health units across the country are making plans for vaccinating kids. Providing pharmacies, doctors offices... isn't the logical place, then, because they go to one place, it's called school. And isn't that the logical ground for where kids should be getting their vaccines?

SS: We've definitely had really great success with school based vaccination strategies, certainly in Ontario. You know, hepatitis B and HPV vaccinations are ones that are done routinely in schools. And again, school is another place that children feel safe and comfortable in, and it would be a wonderful place that could be engaged in a vaccine strategy.

CO: Remember also lessons learnt as you're discussing, that the government, the federal government said at the very beginning if you're hesitant about the vaccine, discuss it with your family doctor. And then of course, what we know is that so many people do not have a family doctor. So where can they go? Where can people go to get the advice, the reliable counsel they need to make this decision?

SS: That is, you know, I think the first thing is I'd love to make sure that everyone in our country can seek care when they need it. And that's a much bigger conversation for another day, but for the vaccine. I would tell parents one reliable resource that is great is Caring For Kids by the Canadian paediatric society that has information presented to parents. I would also invite people to reach out to their public health units, certainly in the city of Toronto. They have put out fantastic resources in a number of different languages. Also in child friendly and youth friendly language, those are two resources that immediately come to mind as resources that I know are written for parents and children with their needs in mind

CO: And not get their advice from Facebook.

SS: You know, it's always hard to make sense of what you're seeing on social media. And so I always, even for me, I tend to go to the places that I know, I'm getting good information.

CO: Good advice, Dr. Suleman. Thank you.

SS: You're welcome.

CH: Dr. Shazeen Suleman is a paediatrician at St. Michael's Hospital and an assistant professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. And you can find more on that story on our website, CBC.ca/aih.

[Music: spooky piano instrumental]

Anti-Alberta energy report

Guest: Simon Dyer

CH: When Alberta launched its $3.5 million enquiry into the foreign funding of anti oil and gas campaigns in 2019, Premier Jason Kenney spoke darkly of hostile interest groups trying to dictate the province's economic destiny and a campaign to defame and landlock Canadian energy. Well, that enquiry is over, and it found none of the above. A report released yesterday found that some foreign money had gone to charities that have concerns about oil and gas development, but it found no wrongdoing or illegal activity. All the charities appear to have been operating well within their rights. That didn't stop Alberta's Energy Minister Sonya Savage from claiming the enquiry as a victory.

SONYA SAVAGE: Well, I think the starting point is the report was never meant to be something that was intended to censure or impugn or punish anyone. What the report was meant to do is to find and document campaigns that were meant to delay or frustrate resource development. And the report not only found many sophisticated campaigns, but it found a lot of money coming across the border and extensive, coordinated, sophisticated campaigns. They carried out and executed their strategy with precision and resulted in a lot of job loss in the province.

CH: That was Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage speaking to CBC Calgary's The Eye Opener this morning. Simon Dyer is the deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute, a non-profit that's mentioned in Commissioner Steve Allen's report. We reached Mr. Dyer in Edmonton.

CO: Mr. Dyer, you just heard Minister Savage say this enquiry was never meant to censure, impugn or punish anyone. You were and your organisation on the receiving end of this investigation. Is that what it felt like to you?

SIMON DYER: Well, I don't think that's true. I mean, if you look to when this inquiry was launched and the press conference when Premier Kenney and Minister Savage introduced this, I mean, the rhetoric they used was very damaging. They talked about finding evidence of defamation and misinformation. They talked about wanting to find evidence of illegal activity. There was even musing about, you know, funding from Russians, in hundreds of millions of dollars. And certainly there's been a lot of rhetoric in the media criticising the Pembina Institute Pembina as a sustainable energy think tank where we're non-partisan and obviously we're very proud of the quality of our research. And just to have this sort of background, I mean, it's certainly establishing, though, of course, it was very positive to see the report findings and no evidence of wrongdoing. But even after that, the minister, I think, has continued to polarise this discussion and sort of misrepresent the findings of the report.

CO: She is encouraging all Albertans to read it, she says. It's extremely interesting. It shows exactly how these organisations like yours, wanted to hurt Alberta's energy sector. That Albertans have a right to be upset that the environmental campaign resulted in lost jobs and revenue because of cancelled energy projects. Is there evidence of that in this report?

SD: I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, first of all I mean, the findings of the report, you know, actually suggested that the amount of international funding to support advocacy around oilsands was tiny. $3 million a year over a 15 year period. I mean, that might sound a lot, but when you compare that to $200 billion of proposed oilsands expansion over the 2000s and you know the hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of government PR and individual company investments in PR and lobbying, I mean, there is a very odd sort of reverse David and Goliath thing going on here in terms of trying to frame this as the environmental community is somehow picking on a massive oil and gas sector, and there's been a recession in Alberta. As you know, there's been a decline in the price of oil in these changing markets, and the oil and gas industry is in permanent decline as a result of changes to energy systems to try and sort of crank up a battle between Albertans and the environmental community makes no sense. I don't know anyone in the environmental community who sort of sits around hoping people, you know, are suffering as part of this transition. Quite the opposite, you know, ensuring that a transition is equitable and fair. And we take care of everyone as we see changes in fossil fuel demand around the world is essential.

CO: What was it that Jason Kenney had hoped that this report would arrive at?

SD: I can't really answer that question. I mean, I think, you know, from Pembina perspective, you know, we're of course confident there would be no findings of wrongdoing. But, you know, I think it was largely political theatre designed to create an enemy and, you know, change the narrative about the real systemic changes that have been happening to the energy sector in Alberta. And, you know, use that for political benefit.

CO: Do you think that Jason Kenney actually believed that there was some kind of an international conspiracy to damage Alberta's energy exports to some advantage of foreign interests?

SD: I don't know. I think you'd have to ask the government of Alberta on that point, but it is... I mean, if you listen to the initial press conference, it is interesting where they sort of frame this as Alberta... You know, they perceive Alberta being the only place in the world where people are criticising oil and gas. And as we've seen in the past couple of years, it's amazing how quickly the conversation is advanced. And, you know, organisations like the International Energy Agency and the International Panel for Climate Change are really being clear about the long term changes and trajectories that are underway. So, so I don't know. But as the inquiry report found, you know, there is no evidence tying, you know, the activities of environmental organisations to those broader changes.

CO: In the end, the minister, Sonya Savage, says that she believes that the commission did expose what they had believed was there and that even if they found that there was no illegal activity or proof that it damaged the oil and gas sector of Alberta, that Albertans believe that it did. Do you think that's true?

SD: No, I mean, I don't think so. I mean, a couple of things. I mean, I feel like the government's really moved the goalposts in terms of what they said in this enquiry was about, and even in their press release, the government leads off with a false statement that the enquiry found evidence of misinformation and that clearly is not the case. The commissioner said he didn't look at that. So the government of Alberta, I think, continues to dig in on this. But I think the biggest thing is just the damage this continues to do to Alberta's reputation. Alberta's dangerously behind in the global conversation and mainstream action on climate change. No amount of public relations and rebranding is going to address the fact that Alberta does not have a 2030 target. Alberta has no climate plan, and Alberta has made no commitment to support Canada in achieving its 2050 targets. So I mean, we really urge the government of Alberta to join the mainstream and really start working on climate action. That's the only way that Alberta is going to improve its reputation and these issues globally.

CO: Mr. Dyer, we'll leave it there. The line does seem to be breaking up a bit. Thanks for speaking with us.

SD: Thanks very much, Carol.

CH: Simon Dyer is the deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute. We reached him in Edmonton.

Winning Canadian pianist

Guest: Bruce Xiaoyu Liu

[Music: Bruce Xiaoyu Liu playing piano]

CH: It took almost five minutes for Bruce Xiaoyu Liu to begin playing in the final round of the Fryderyk Chopin international piano competition, but when he did start, he barely stopped for 40 minutes and nobody listening wanted him to. At just 24 years old, Mr. Liu was named the winner of the prestigious competition in Warsaw this week. Along with the title, the Montreal pianist takes home a $40,000 euro grand prize and the kind of high I assume one only gets from a performance that ends like this. [SOUNDCLIP: Bruce Xiaoyu Liu playing the closing of his piano piece, loud applause]

CH: The audience at the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall applauding Canadian pianist Bruce Xiaoyu Liu after his Chopin piano competition win this week, we reached Mr. Liu in Warsaw.

CO: Bruce, first of all, big congratulations.

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: Thanks. It's still surreal for me. I mean, I don't have the time to celebrate the event. It's a bunch of things happening and keep going. You know, so.

CO: And so have you plans for how you are going to celebrate?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: I have to think about it. I don't have the time to sleep, even. I slept three... two or three hours for two days in a row. So.

CO: And this particular competition, the Fryderyk Chopin international piano competition, how big a deal is this?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: I think it's... For every kid who is learning piano, it is one of the biggest dreams, you know, to participate in this competition. I think it's one of the... it's definitely the most prestigious, I think. And you know, Chopin is so special, you know, it's only to one composer, dedicating one composer for one composition is really something.

CO: And to play Chopin before that audience at that competition in Warsaw. What did that mean for you?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: That's a good question, because only the feeling of playing Chopin here is already, you know, like a historical moment for me. You know, as a kid who was born in Paris and who was origin of Chinese and who grew up in Montreal, Canada, you know, this means like to prove that this music is really universal language and there is no cultural barrier, let's say. You know, the fact that's playing here really makes me stressful in a way because I think everybody in the audience is kind of like an expert, you know, didn't really know what they're listening to. And at the same time, it's stressful, but at the same time, it's really satisfying experience because you know that you're playing to a very knowledgeable people.

CO: I watched some... I couldn't see your performance in Warsaw, obviously, but I watched on YouTube. People have described it as intense, that the audience is breathless when they hear and watch you play. And it just seems you go so deeply inside the music and sometimes you're playful. Sometimes you're dramatic. Where do you go, when you're there, when you are so intensely engaged in that? What is that place like?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: I think all, you know, all of these conclusions are made from outsiders. As myself I don't even know what I was doing in a way, I was really just into my mood on the moment on the stage. I think every time is a little different in a way. It's like, of course, we have logic when we practise and everything but on stage, of course we keep this logic and we don't do any random things. But at the same time, there is really freedom, there's room for improvisation. So it's hard to describe because every time is different.

CO: Now you were not a child prodigy. This is not... You've said elsewhere that you... Piano is just one of your hobbies as a kid. But something obviously... it's obviously not a hobby anymore or just a hobby. What is it that drew you into it? Why did you become so engaged with the piano to this degree?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: I think it's still a hobby. Well, I think naturally, because I had so many hobbies, as you know, and I think music, I think I chose... I mean, I spend more time on this because I think, let's say in a simple way, is that the older you get, the better you get in a way. So it's a very long, long step and road. Unlike, you know, many other things, that the life is really short. So music is accompanying you for the rest of your life, for sure. So I think maybe that's something that I feel more and more, and I think I just naturally put more and more time in it.

CO: You're 24 years old, so I think you've got a lot more distance on this journey with your music. And [inaudible] you say it's still a hobby. So where does this... winning this competition, where does it take you in your hobby?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: I guess just into a hobby that I can do more. The reason I say that because I think I don't want this to become a routine or anything. The fact that hobby is something we're always interested at and not doing it because of, we have to do it. That's I think that's the reason why I say that.

CO: You know that you're much admired by the people who teach you, your mentors, other pianists. There's a quote from Canadian pianist Janina Zakrzewska, who knows you, says on top of your immense talent, she says, you are such a good and delightful human being, which is not always the case with super talents. How does it feel to hear that kind of praise from those who know you?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: That's really, really, really kind of her. Yeah, that feeling is really satisfying when you hear that people, you respect so much and you admire a lot, you know? Same goes to my teacher, Dang Thai Son. And you know, these guys are, you know, in my childhood, it's like someone that I think I would never have the chance to even reach because it's like so high and like the top people in this music world. Yeah. So I think I'm really touched by this, by their sympathy and their support, for sure.

CO: Well, that's what you're hearing from people who know your music, who have worked with you. What's your family saying? What are your parents saying? How did they react?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: Funnily and surprisingly, my dad especially is, you know, he of course he's happy, but he's more concerned for the rest, you know, for the continuing things. I think that's what's really close. People think for me, it's that there is no time really to be happy because, you know, winning this is a huge responsibility, you know.

CO: So your parents, your father worries that you're not going to have time to enjoy your life and have fun.

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: It's just, there is a lot of new things to learn, and it's not an ending, it's just the start.

CO: So you just finished your performance. And so now are you heading home?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: Yes, I'm going back to a hotel.

CO: And soon back to Canada?

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: No, I have actually I cannot go back home for a long, long time, which is something I didn't expect because after this, there's a huge list of just tours and doesn't give me any time to go back to Canada, which is very sad because I really wish to go home after this really exhausting experience. But it's just the start. As I said.

CO: I think I know what your dad was talking about then. Bruce, I wish you the best. I wish you to get some rest and well, and finishing this interview will help that. So. Thank you so much.

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: Thank you. Thank you.

CO: Goodnight.

BRUCE XIAOYU LIU: Goodnight.

CH: Bruce Xiaoyu Liu is a Canadian pianist and the winner of this year's Fryderyk Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. That's where we reached him.

[Music: Classical piano instrumental]

Part 2

Argentina fossils

Guest: Vincent Fernandez

CH: It turns out that millions of years ago, a bunch of dinosaurs invented the dreaded clique. A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports has found that the dinosaur Mosasaurus lived in a herd. And the fossils that palaeontologists found in Argentina are the oldest to ever confirm this herd mentality. Vincent Fernandez is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London and a co-author of the study. We reached him in London.

CO: Vincent, so how would you describe the scene of where these fossils were found?

VINCENT FERNANDEZ: So it's a site in Patagonia, which is very dry and there is like several horizons of sediment where all these specimens have been discovered.

CO: Can you tell us what you and your colleagues discovered in Argentina?

VF: So the sites have been explored for over two decades now, and they discover dinosaur eggs and juvenile dinosaur of Mosasaurus and young adults and adults of all of the same species.

CO: And what does it tell you the way that you found these fossils?

VF: So it tells us that this dinosaur was living as a herd and also is telling us that there was what we call age segregation. So the young ones were living together, the subadult, were living together, and so it was helping for the good social behaviour of the herd as a whole.

CO: How unusual is this to find this amongst dinosaurs?

VF: It is quite unusual. We had some other findings in other places in the world, like in Bolivia and China and the US, but it was never everything in one place.

CO: And also the age, there are almost 200 million years old. This site, right? So does that set a new precedent for this kind of herd mentality amongst dinosaurs?

VF: Yes, it does, because the oldest social behaviour that we had in the fossil record was 40 million years younger than that. So it's sitting, at 40 million years before that, which is quite a big number. But it's also sitting at just before the rise of the sauropod dinosaur. The big one with the long neck and the long tail. So it's very important to understand the success of that lineage.

CO: Right? And so now what is your evidence? How come you're so sure that these dinosaurs organised themselves as a herd?

VF: So it is a nesting site and we have... So we have three succession of layers on the fossil record showing different nests. So it means the dinosaur were coming to the same site like over and over to do the nesting thing. If it was just for nesting, maybe just the adult could go there and like some eastern crocodiles do that, just the adults go to a place and they do their nest and then they go back to living as a group. But here they go to the nesting place with the young adult, with the juvenile, with the newborns. So they were all moving together, even for something like nesting.

CO: And did they stay with their own mothers or did they? Was it like other animals were in the herd... So are they sharing the rearing of the young?

VF: So that's the thing... So the age segregation aspect means like there were, there were groups of different ages, and they do that because it means they have to synchronise their behaviour, they have to eat together. So when they eat as a group, only one of them has to be vigilant for a predator. So it means rapidly, the mothers were probably [inaudible] adults, actually, well, not taking care of the young ones. They were probably taking care of the very young one because they need protection and they probably need to be fed at the beginning. But rapidly, they probably... Maybe after a year or two, maybe they were quite independent, alright.

CO: So you found the evidence of this herd as they would have arranged themselves where they were laying their eggs and where they were rearing their young. And in fact, you found some eggs that had embryos in them. So what killed this herd of dinosaurs?

VF: So we don't really know. It could be several things, so we know that they were... We know that the eggs and the skeleton, we found they've been recovered up by some windblown deposits. So we don't know if it was a drought, if it was like an average season that was a bit longer than usual. And or was it like a big ... Was it because of the wind storm that came and basically suffocated them, so it's not very clear exactly why, but we know they were covered by wind blown sediments.

CO: So it could have been a really sudden death for all of them, right?

VF: Yeah. And the fact that we, if we have so many animals in one place, it means it happened in a very short time.

CO: Vincent, thank you for telling us the story.

VF: My pleasure.

CH: Vincent Fernandez is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He was in London.

[Music: guitar instrumental]

Ursula K. Le Guin prize for fiction

CH: Her son says she was suspicious of literary awards, but she also knew they could be enormously helpful, which is why this week, the estate of science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin announced a $25000 literary prize coming next year. And just like the late author's work, including novels like The Left Hand of Darkness and the EarthSea series, the new prize is full of surprises. At a time when speculative fiction is full of grim end of the world scenarios, the Ursula K. Le Guin prize for fiction will celebrate those who imagine a non apocalyptic future. Instead, it will honour imaginative fiction that champions hope and freedom, alternatives to conflict and a holistic view of humanity's place in the natural world. Ms. Le Guin was all about those kinds of big ideas about big ideas, as you'll hear in this speech she gave after accepting a National Book Foundation medal in 2014.

URSULA K LE GUIN: To the givers of this beautiful reward. My thanks from the heart and I rejoice in accepting it for and sharing it with all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long. My fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful awards go to the so-called realists. [laughter] I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fears stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom, poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality. I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practise of an art. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Thank you. [loud applause].

CH: That was the late Ursula K. Le Guin in 2014. The first Ursula K. Le Guin Prize will be awarded on October 21st, 2022, which would have been her 93rd birthday.

[Music: guitar instrumental]

Tuskless elephants

Guest: Dr. Robert Pringle

CH: We knew that elephant numbers were in serious decline, largely due to poachers. But now we know that humans have killed so many elephants so rapidly that the animals were forced to evolve over the course of just a couple of generations. A new study finds that more and more elephants in Mozambique are being born without tusks. Scientists say that might be an evolutionary response to out of control poaching during Mozambique's two decades long civil war, when tusks elephants were less likely to be hunted down. Dr. Robert Pringle is one of the evolutionary biologists behind the study, published yesterday in the journal Science. We reached him in Princeton, New Jersey.

CO: Professor Pringle, you focussed on this one national park in Mozambique. How many more tuskless elephants did you note? How much has this population increased?

ROBERT PRINGLE: Well, so the population of elephants in [inaudible] national park went through a population collapse, basically down to a small number of individuals and then a recovery. Over that period we found an increase in the frequency of tuskless females from about 18 percent, 18 and a half percent to more than 50 percent. So the female elephants that survived the war were much more likely to be those without tusks. We found that they would pass that trade along to their offspring. The first generation of elephants born after the war also had a higher frequency of the tuskless trait.

CO: And so this period where there was this rapid decline in the numbers of elephants in general was during the Civil War in Mozambique, right? When both sides were hunting the elephants, the tusks that were funding their war effort weren't they?

RP: That's right. As far as it's known and this is a tragically frequent occurrence throughout Africa, is that ivory poaching and rhino horn poaching is associated with conflict. There is convincing evidence that, you know, this is a regional conflict with other countries involved as well, and that ivory smuggling was involved in financing the conflict.

CO: And it went on for many years. So that had quite an effect. So maybe you can just explain to us why the poaching of the ivory from their tusks resulted in this population of tuskers elephants.

RP: Yeah, so tuskless elephants are not a new thing. They've been observed in populations and often in populations that have been subjected to intense hunting. But the link between those two things has never been firmly established. It's been hypothesised, but never really quantified or documented in a rigorous way. And the inference that we were able to make was that the intense selection, that's basically natural selection but imposed by humans on elephants with tusks... the elephants with tusks are much more likely to be the ones that are shot. And therefore there's a survival advantage to animals without tusks and that this is what led to the increase in the frequency of this trait and a change in a trait in a population through time is evolution.

CO: And this, the tuskless elephant, this is a genetic mutation?

RP: Yes. And this is another feature of the study is that we tried to get some insight into what the genetic basis of the trait was and indeed whether it was heritable, which is a precondition for evolution. And we haven't conclusively unravelled all of the granular molecular details of how this works. But we have identified probable, what we call candidate region parts of the genome that consistently differ between tusk and tuskless, elephants that are implicated in tusklessness.

CO: Right. But you mentioned that this tuskless elephant population is, it’s female. So why... is it only passed on to the female elephants?

RP: Yes, the evidence that we present in our paper seems to suggest that this is an excellent, dominant male lethal condition, but it basically means that we don't find any tuskless males in this population and throughout Africa. Tuskless males appear to be vanishingly rare.

CO: If you're finding so many, you said, a huge percentage of these elephants without tusks? I mean, I presume there's a reason for them having tusks. So what is life like for elephants who don't... who have this mutation and don't develop tusks?

RP: That's a great question, and that's one of the things that we want to try to get a better, a better sense of. Elephants use their tusks for a wide range of purposes, they use them for social communication and interaction, they use them in feeding peeling tree bark from trees to eat. There are various ways in which we could imagine that not having tusks would influence your ability to go through normal life as an elephant.

CO: How much damage has all this done to them, even the ones who now are surviving and going to second and third generations?

RP: I have a fairly nuanced view of what all this means. Obviously, it's an evolutionary response to a strong human pressure, and it changes the anatomy of the animals. It is another way in which the human footprint is massive and profound. At the same time it's a response that helped this population survive this tragic, long civil war. And the population is now recovering, and it may take many generations for the frequency of tuskless-ness to go back down to what we would expect in a fairly intact population. But the population is there and it's growing. If protection of this population continues in the way that it has for the last 20 years, that over time the disadvantage of being tuskless will be selected again and the population will recover. So there is a story of resilience here as much as there is a story of damage and the human footprint.

CO: All right. Very interesting. Professor Pringle, thank you.

RP: Thank you very much for having me.

CH: Dr. Robert Pringle is an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University.

[Music: guitar instrumental]

Butt dial problem

CH: There are a lot of reasons to be transfixed by the high stakes boardroom drama happening in the Rogers communication empire right now. But the main reason is the pivotal role of a butt dial. For those who missed that crucial detail, the Globe and Mail reports that the company's CFO Pocket or Butt dialled the company's CEO and overheard him talking about plans to unseat him with the support of then company chair Edward Rogers, who has since himself been unseated, thinks only in part to that mistaken call from one seat of power to another. Now that all seems a bit below the belt. Still we'll take this moment to mark the return of the butt dial to the cultural prominence it deserves. It's not that it ever stopped being a problem, necessarily. It just seems to have taken a backseat lately. So this is a timely reminder that your bottom can still land you on your backside. Just ask former Georgia state employee James Stephens, who has his own cautionary tale, thanks to a lack of caution from his tail. After a long call from his boss one evening. From April 2018, here's Carol's conversation with Mr. Stephens.

JAMES STEPHENS: When that call concluded. I put the phone in my pocket and walked into the kitchen where my wife was and apologized to her for the intrusion. And while we're in the privacy of our kitchen, she made a few less than flattering comments about my job and everything she said was truthful and nothing that really was unkind. Just things that only an insecure person would get upset and fire someone over.

CO: But so what? The issue here is that OK, you were. You were at home. You'd come home for dinner. Your wife was waiting for you. You took this call. 50 minutes, almost an hour on the phone with your boss. How is it that he came to overhear this conversation?

JS: Well, when I put my phone in my pocket and walked into the kitchen, apparently it had redialled the previous number that I had on the line back to him and I was unaware that that had occurred. But it was an inadvertent pocket dial that my phone did initiate.

CO: At what point did you realise that you had the phone open?

JS: My pocket illuminated. I noticed my pocket was illuminated, so I pulled the phone out and saw it was connected and said, Oh, expletive, said a word that you would have to beep if I said it and I disconnected the call.

CO: We have all, I guess many people have had this happen where you find yourself hearing a conversation or someone has pocket dialled you and you can hear what's going on. And I guess we listen in, but we generally don't tell the people that we were listening in. We sort of say oops, you pocket dialled me. Maybe we don't. You don't refer to it, but that's not what happened to you as it happened to you the next day? Tell us what happened when you saw your boss?

JS: Yes. No, about two hours into my workday. The next day, Mr. Cohen asked me if I could step into his office, and he had the H.R. representative there and told me that based on the phone conversation he had heard the previous night that he didn't feel he could any longer work with me and that he would give me the option to resign or he would fire me. And I said, You're going to terminate me for a private conversation I had in my own home. And he said I have spoken with the Attorney General's Office and they said that I have the authority to do that and that's your choice. You can resign or I will fire you.

CH: That was James Stephens speaking with Carol in 2018 about how a butt dial ended up losing him his job as a Georgia state employee. As far as we can tell, his lawsuit against his boss is still pending.

[Music: calm meditative instrumental]

Part 3

Encore: Alexandra Morton feature

CH: When former Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan ordered a number of salmon farms on Canada's West Coast to phase out operations, Alexandra Morton was pleasantly surprised. She'd be the first to tell you she's not used to agreeing with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Ms. Morton is a citizen scientist and activist and an author. In April, she was a guest on As It Happens to talk about her book Not On My Watch, which chronicles her decades long fight to end aquaculture on the shores of British Columbia. Typically against the objections of government as well as industry. But this week she's in court backing the government and defending the decision then Minister Jordan made in December 2020. Alex Morton and other members of a conservation coalition are intervenors in the case which began on Tuesday, and they're facing off against an industry Ms. Morton has a long history with. A history she spoke about with Carol in April. From our archives, here's their conversation once again.

CO: Alex, welcome to As It Happens.

ALEXANDRA MORTON: Thank you so much, Carol. It's really wonderful to be here.

CO: You have been doing this work for a very long time. And I just wonder what it is about this particular book that you needed to write and publish right now.

AM: Well, there was two things. One, there has to be a record of what happened here because it is really quite unbelievable and I felt that, you know, I know people have heard about this over the years, but there needed to be the full story with the citations, like how did I come to these opinions? And second of all, I witnessed the most extraordinary thing when the First Nations of this area decided to occupy the farms. It triggered an uprising, and I got a peek into watching an ancient government reconstitute itself, the hereditary leaderships. They could see that it was something that was destroying their culture. There was no more salmon left for them to eat, to preserve for the winter. And so I know that they knew that this was important, that the impact of the salmon farms was important because I had been talking to them for decades. But it really wasn't until their members stepped onto the farms and decided they were going to stay there through the winter of 2017 until something was done and the farms would start to be removed. And so when you look at these First Nation governments, there's the elected government, which can do one thing, but there's the hereditary government and they were the ones who guided us through this. And they placed so much value on the life of their territory. So they succeeded.

CO: And so, you wanted to make sure that the story was told. The fight against the farmed salmon, those decades you spent doing what you wanted... and there are footnotes, documents, everything in this book, but you also wanted the back story of how you came to be involved in this. And I want to ask you about that. I want to ask you... because you started with whales, right? With orcas, that's where you began your work. That's what you were doing in California. Tell us a bit about that. Tell us a bit about your time at MarineLand, especially and how that led you to the B.C. coast.

AM: I was studying two killer whales, or orca MarineLand, because I really wanted to try to figure out what another large brained animal was thinking and saying on this planet. And so that left the choices of elephants, primates or whales. And I picked whales, and I began to spend an enormous amount of time watching and recording these whales, 12 hours all day one day and then 12 hours all night the next week. And in the process of that, the whales gave birth, which was a remarkable thing to witness. But the baby died because the mother didn't know how to nurse it. And after this happened a couple of times, I realised that I really couldn't study whales in captivity. Things weren't right. And so I wanted to try to find their family in British Columbia, which I know it sounds like that would be a really difficult thing to do. But it was quite easy because a British Columbia scientist at DFO, Fisheries and Oceans Canada named Dr. Michael Big. He was in the process of identifying all the individual whales by the saddle behind their fin. And he took pictures during the captures. And so he knew which whales, the whales at MarineLand came from, which pod they were with. And in fact, the female Corky was very close with a female whale during the turmoil and terror of the capture operation. And so we realised that was her mother. And Dr. Big sent me a bunch of photographs of the family, said go to Alert Bay in August. And so I did. I had no idea about British Columbia or how to run a boat or anything, but off we went and I found them on the first evening that I was there and. And I took one sniff of British Columbia and realised that this was my habitat. I loved everything about it.

CO: Yeah, many people could identify with what you're saying. But as you fell in love with it and you found the family of Corky, you also found a great threat to it. What is it that brought you to spend decades of your life fighting against farmed salmon?

AM: So in 1984, I followed these whales into an archipelago called the Broughton Archipelago and found the little community of Echo Bay and made it my home. And for the first few years of research there, it was absolutely phenomenal. Every time I went out with the whales, I learnt something and I loved the lifestyle. You know, living in a floating house in the middle of nowhere. But when the farms came, when the salmon farms came, my first thought was that they were a good idea that they would keep our school open, they would be good for our tiny little local economy. But they weren't. And it was the fishermen who first came to me and said, you know, could you write a letter to the government and tell them that they're putting these things in all the wrong places? Right on top of the prime habitat for the salmon, the prawns and the rock cod? So I did that. And the answer came back. Dear Ms. Morton, there's no evidence and this went on for years. I just kept writing them letters about the additional evidence: the toxic algae blooms, the Atlantic salmon showing up in the rivers. Because these farms were full of Atlantic salmon, that they displaced the orca with the acoustic harassment devices. And finally, when the sea lice outbreak happened and there was dying young salmon everywhere, I said, OK, alright, I need to start researching this. Stop writing letters, produce the data because DFO kept saying there's no evidence and they just weren't out there getting the evidence. And you know, one thing just led to the next, and they never... the industry and the government never admitted that there was a problem here. Had they done that, had they said, OK, this is a problem, and here's what we're going to do about it. I would have so happily given this up and gone back to whale research, but they never did. And in the process I grew up, I was a young woman with a baby when I arrived and I became a mature woman who was now watching her home be destroyed. And so I just kept going. I actually can't believe that I did that because I have no interest in studying sea lice or eventually viruses.

CO: They're ugely. They sure are, and whales are not. They're beautiful.

AM: I know. Imagining what I would know if I'd spent all this year studying the communication of whales but, never mind this came up and apparently it was my calling.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens, and I am speaking with Alexandra Morton about her new book, Not On My Watch, which looks at the impact of salmon farming in British Columbia. So you are a scientist, you are a biologist. When was the moment when you realised that you were going to have to become an activist?

AM: This happened in 2010, when I had now done 10 years of research on sea lice, showing catastrophic impact of these farms. Sea lice are really easy to study because they changed their body shape every few days for the first month, so you can tell when they get on the fish. And they were getting on the fish at the farms and the fish were dying, and nothing I did worked. I mean, I went to Norway. I spoke at the AGM of these companies. I entered into all kinds of government processes. I took the industry to court. I wrote scientific papers. I turned my home into a research station and fed and housed young scientists who are also studying the sea lice. Trying to figure out what to do next, what to do next. So I began to host these small dinner parties and invited the most creative thinkers that I knew. And as the wine flowed, I asked questions like, What do we do next? And I harvested the ideas, and there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of silliness and there was some other good ideas. But on the third night, I had two friends, Don Staniford from Scotland and Anissa Reed, an artist from Vancouver Island. And I forget which one of us said it, but we said we should just walk down Vancouver Island and invite everybody who's against these farms to walk with us. And so we did that, and by the end of the walk, there was thousands. The people on the parliament grounds in Victoria said there was 5 to 7000 people of us. We took over the entire highway coming in from Sydney. People brought their horses and wagons and trumpets and canoes but it did nothing. But now I realised that there had to be something beyond the science, beyond the law, beyond sitting quietly and explaining this to government. And so it was a slow process of ramping up. But in 2017, when a young hereditary leader is also a schoolteacher, Ernest Alfred said in a meeting in Alert Bay, I'm going to occupy the farm at Swanson Island until the farm leaves. Everybody realised, OK, we're stepping over the line here. And so I jumped up and I joined him and became part of that occupation for 280 days, which was... it was gruelling. I mean, people were losing their relationships, their jobs, arguments flared up. People were cold and tired and scared, but it worked. And at some point I realised that if you can be peaceful and honourable about it, just physically putting your body in the way of what is damaging life on Earth is a very, very powerful thing. And I said, it's the only thing that works. So those farms are leaving now, a couple every year and last spring, I had the extraordinary experience of looking at the juvenile fish for the 22nd year at the farm sites that were now empty. And instead of being covered with sea lice and bleeding and shivering and emaciated and their eyes clouded over these little pink and chum salmon were so beautiful they were sparkling silver and blue, and their eyes were just so black. You felt like you were looking into another world when you looked in their eyes and they were fat and sassy, so they'll be returning this summer, and I'm very curious about how their numbers will look.

CO: But you know that many people in the government, other scientists, certainly in the industry, disputed that salmon farming/fish farming was the cause of the diminished wild salmon stocks. You run up against that a lot. And did you have any... Were there other considerations that you could entertain as to the reasons why the salmon stock was diminishing?

AM: Well, in this argument that has been presented to me again and again, I have never said salmon farms are the only impact, but I will say this, they're just not making it past these farms. Large percentages are simply being killed outright by the sea lice. And then as I went on in my research, I realised it's also viruses, it's also bacteria. Climate change is huge and obviously we hopefully are getting on that as soon as possible. Like right now, also deforestation, urbanisation, all of these things have impact. But I have to use my experience as the guide. So I went into the Broughton archipelago in 1984 after as much logging as people could physically muster had been done for 100 years. And yes, there was damage and it was wrong. But salmon were still abundant because the logging had specific impacts on specific parts of the rivers of different tributaries. There was no urbanisation in the Broughton archipelago, and there was just fewer and fewer people every year, there was almost nobody out there. So that was not an impact. And yet, when the salmon farms came in, the first thing we lost was the overwintering chinook salmon. And then we lost the herring. The herring were being protected. They weren't... No one was allowed to fish them, and they continue to go down and down and down. And it was during the occupation when I kept handing underwater cameras to the people on the farms that we realised there was thousands and thousands of herring in every single pen of every farm, and the whales were definitely displaced through the acoustic harassment devices. So, well, people could theorise about other things. I was on the grounds seeing it, measuring it, and I was very open to being convinced I was wrong. But I wasn't wrong and we're going to see as the farms are being removed, we are going to, for the first time, really get a feel for how catastrophic this impact was.

CO: So I want to ask you about that idea that you were open to other ideas because it is always difficult as a scientist to also be an activist. And did you feel... did you have any concerns yourself that you were not bringing enough scepticism, scientific inquiry to the work, that these two hats you were wearing sometimes collided?

AM: No, I mean, I did publish a paper at one point. So the salmon farmers did treat their lice successfully for a few years with a drug called Slice, and the lice numbers went down on the farms and they went down on the wild fish. And I published on that. You know, I thought maybe, maybe this problem had been solved. But like everywhere else in the world, the lice became resistant. And by 2015, the lice were turning back on and the wild salmon were suffering again. So no, I have absolutely no doubts. And when I went to Norway and met other scientists there who... they rented a room in a university and we started talking. And when the time was up for that room, we rented a room in a hotel and we went over and we were still talking. Those guys were putting wild salmon in tubes and towing them past the salmon farms because they wanted to protect the salmon of the Vasso river. And they were trying to get them past the farms fast enough that they wouldn't get lice, but they had to tow them in the water so the fish would imprint and know how to get back. These men were desperate. They were catching every single fish going into a river and checking its DNA to find out if it was a farm fish or not, and killing the farm fish and only letting the wild fish go. They knew exactly what I was facing because this industry has been very hard on every scientist that has gone up against it, and I write about that in the book as well. You know, I feel that the most dangerous animal on Earth is a scientist who will change the data, change the output of their data to fit a corporate activity or a policy. We see this in climate change. We saw it with the tobacco industry and those scientists are here in the salmon farming fight and I talk about what they did. In fact, Random House said you got to take the virus stuff out of your book, Alex, because there won't be any room for pictures? And I said, No, I can't take that out. The record has to stand as to what these people did.

CO: This is As It Happens, and I am in conversation with Alexandra Morton, a biologist who became an activist, did groundbreaking research on salmon farming and the coast of British Columbia, and we're talking about her new book, Not On My Watch, how a renegade whale biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon. There's a lot of pushback that you took, and there was at one point... there was even a documentary made about your efforts called the unofficial trial of Alexandra Morton. How personal did the pushback that you got actually become?

AM: Well, it devastated my life. I mean, I didn't plan to be doing any of this. I planned a really quiet life learning about how... what whales are thinking and what they're saying. And so I lost that. I can't live in the wilderness anymore because until COVID, I was on the road, constantly going to meetings, meeting with people, meeting with other scientists, funders stepped away from me. My allies stepped away from me because the more heat that I got, the more people just didn't want to, you know, suffer the same impact. And the worst was when one of the companies hired these boats to follow me around with blacked out windows. And when we drill down as to who had hired them and where they were from, the name of the company they were operating under was Black Cube, which is a pretty sinister group. They claimed it wasn't the Black Cube from Israel, but I really don't know. And these are very stressful things that just wear away at you. However, I live on the edge of the wilderness and I see it all the time and I see the animals in the fish. And it is so inspiring to be working for this big ecosystem that keeps us alive. You know, these salmon feed the trees that make the oxygen we breathe. 100 species depend on them. And this whole coast, the way that you know, the systems come in from the Pacific and the clouds hit the oceans and it creates rain and it falls down into these watersheds and the salmon go up and they die and their nutrients pour down through these valleys. It's incredible. And the more I know, you know, the less I can step away from this battle, I just have to see it through.

CO: The battle you were fighting was in a specific area, but you were battling an enormous industry and also perhaps if I can use the word a sea change in the production of food. We saw that agriculture is now what produces most land based food, and for many, they would argue that aquaculture is inevitable. It is what is going to produce water based food. Is it possible to feed the world's population with wild food?

AM: Probably not. And so aquaculture itself has enormous potential. For example, if you began with growing the algae, the seaweeds, you would create the bottom of your food chain and then you put your salmon into tanks and you build the food chain up. Feed those salmon, take the waste from that salmon and use it to grow plant crops. You have to... if you're going to do... if you're going to break the natural rules by stopping the salmon from migrating, stopping the predators from cleaning up the sick, giving pathogens such an incredibly good environment, you have to seal that new ecosystem away from the traditional ones that keep us alive on this planet. So it's... there's no gain in having your aquaculture in the ocean, which is killing off the wild fish around you and create less food than you began with. Because people don't realise farming salmon, for one, requires that somebody go fishing and go fishing a lot to get the food that those farmed salmon needs. So they're, you know, there's huge fisheries in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific to feed these farmed fish along with a lot of grain products. If you really want to make food, you would... You would farm a fish that eats plant matter, eats algae. So there's a lot of potential and there's people doing it. There's Canadians that are doing it, and I hope that the government is looking to them. But right now, the salmon farming industry is getting a free flush. Now the only farmers that don't shovel their manure, they use the ocean to oxygenate their pens. So they're getting a lot of natural services for free and they're externalising costs that you and I are paying and the whales are paying. And so this has to be brought into balance if they're really going to feed people.

CO: And what are the chances of that? Because I mean, what you came up against with government is that though the government has responsibilities to environments. It's often the principal obligation to produce food for people and jobs for people. So can all those things be balanced in your mind? Can the government find a way to balance that?

AM: Absolutely. And the government is moving in that direction. So Bernadette Jordan, she did an astonishing thing in December. She told these three Norwegian companies operating here that they couldn't put any more fish on the very narrow channel where the Fraser River sockeye migrate in the Discovery Islands. They couldn't put any more fish there, ever. The companies are pushing back, and they are suing our government to put fish back into the territory where seven First Nations very clearly said they don't want these farms to operate anymore because of the impact on the wild salmon. So, the solutions are here. The government has started to turn. But there is an enormous inertia in DFO amongst the senior bureaucrats and some of them just. I think really need to retire or just start working directly for the industry. And I talk a lot about this in my book.

CO: You do and you name names, lots of names and specific industry officials, people with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), researchers, and you accuse them of indifference, intimidation. Do you expect to be hearing from them?

AM: Yes, I do. But on the other hand, I have to do everything I can. You know, I'm a grandmother now, and I've kind of got the grandmother attitude and that is, OK. Look, a bunch of guys have just been really naughty. You've gotten away with this for far too long. You may not have intended to go so far, but here you are. You are way over the line, and somebody who has nothing really to lose has to call this out. I don't. I'm not a tenured professor. I don't want a political career. I don't run a big organisation very much on purpose so that I can speak freely. And so somebody just has to call it the way it is, and this is just wrong. So I mean, one of the things I've done is I've ordered thousands and thousands of pages of internal DFO conversations through the Access to Information Act to actually know what they're saying. I know who's been naughty. I know who's been nice.

CO: Do you feel you need that for your defence? Are they going to come after you? Do you think?

AM: I definitely think they're going to come after me, but I've been in court so many times now with this industry and they always try to discredit me. But I have the information, I have their own words. I would not say these things if I was not absolutely certain of my position and of the catastrophic damage that this industry has done to this coast. Somebody has to speak out. And so I've taken that role and I'm just going to take the consequences.

CO: Talk about being a grandmother. Early in your book, you talked about developing a twitch in one of your eyes. Your children often wondered if you were going to come home, maybe be arrested and worried about you a lot, clearly. You were pushing so much at the time and often talked about how tiring it was. Do you still have the energy in you to keep this fight going?

AM: I have a lot less energy, but I have to see it through. And what has been so remarkable is the allies that have built around this, in particular the First Nation governments. So I work for a number of First Nations now. Some of them pay me. Some of them don't. It doesn't matter to me. These are governments that actually take my information and try to figure out what to do next. I pay symbolic taxes to the 'Namgis government whose territory I live in because they are doing so much to protect the world that I live in. So, yes, I'm tired, but there are more and more people shouldering this and finally who believe me and can see the catastrophic shape that these wild salmon are in. We need to act now or it's over. I mean, the Fraser River sockeye, the lowest run in the history of this country, came back last year. Some of the tributaries had 20 fish show up, and this is the biggest removable impact that we could possibly do. And the Minister of Fisheries has done it. And so now we are fighting in court. I mean, I have incredible allies with Ecojustice, those lawyers. I could never afford these lawyers. And so as my energy wanes, I see the energy around me growing and that is very, very rewarding.

CO: We will be watching and I'm sure this is not the last time we will speak and thank you for your book and for speaking with us today Alex.

AM: Thank you so much, Carol.

CO: Take care.

AM: Bye bye.

CH: Alexandra Morton is the author of Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist took on governments and industry to save wild salmon. She spoke with Carol in April from her home in Swan Tula, B.C.. And she's back in court this week defending a government decision to order a number of salmon farms on Canada's West Coast to shut down.

October 22, 2021 Episode Transcript

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