Welcome to Global Connections at the ThinkTech live streaming network series. I'm your host, Grace Chang, and today we have with us on our program is Professor Frank Wu of the University of California Hastings College of Law. Welcome, Frank. It's great to have you here today. It's great to be here with you, Grace. Okay. Frank is the author of numerous publications on race and law in the United States including Yellow, Race in America, Beyond Black and White. And so today we're going to be talking about this topic, race in the United States and how it's changing, what we can expect. Some of your thoughts and hypothesis on this topic, so I'll let you take it away on maybe giving us an overview. Sure. So we, within our lifetimes, you and me and the viewers, will undergo a transformation here in the United States. It's never before been done by any human society on the face of the globe anywhere in recorded history. It's simply this. We will cease as a nation, as a society, to have one single identifiable racial majority in the overall population. So that's never happened before, but it's already started to happen and you can see it right here in Hawaii. You can see it in California on many of our college campuses. It's driven by many factors. Migration is one of them. Birth rates are another. Mixed marriages too. And this presents us with a choice, a dilemma. Will we embrace this with hope? Will we look at this and say, this changing face of America, what it means to be a real American, to look American, is a cause for joy, celebration. It's the American dream come true, this idea of the city upon a hill that beckons as an experiment in self-governance, the world over. Or will we fear it? Will we be anxious? Will people be uncomfortable about the loss of privilege and position? Will they feel displaced when they wake up and suddenly all around them, instead of it looking like the 1950s version of Main Street, USA, it looks like Honolulu? I mean, the US has always been ethnically diverse and I think this is something that we didn't notice and we don't represent that clearly. But now, as you're saying, the demographic change, it's pretty imminent that we don't have a particular minority in the near future. Do you think that we are moving in the right direction as far as which path we're going to take as far as reacting to this? Absolutely. I'm an optimist. I'm a believer in the American dream. And we have these great ideals, unlike any other nation. We've celebrated this idea. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what language your grandparents spoke, what faith they practiced, what occupation they had. If you believe in this set of ideals, the civic culture that we have, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, due process, you can come here. You can become an equal, a member of the body politic. You can vote, you can even run for office. You can aspire to the highest office of the land and you can participate. That's a great idea and we've incrementally moved toward that. So at the founding of the nation, there was slavery. The Civil War changed that. The Constitution was amended, the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments abolished slavery and said, if you're African American and if you were a person born in the United States, you were a citizen of the U.S. So that was one step. But we sometimes take steps backward. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It closed the doors. And the language that was used then was racist. Now, I don't mean by contemporary standards where I'm interpreting.  So, non-Chinese people, some of them, immigrants themselves. So one of the leaders of this movement had come from Ireland, Dennis Kearney. Kearney Street in San Francisco is named for him. So he was a foreigner, but he didn't like Chinese specifically. I wish he was okay with, but if you were Chinese, he didn't want you here. So Congress closed the door and then about 20 years later, 25 years later, there was a nativist movement. And it again was explicit. They didn't hide what they thought, what they felt. They said they wanted to preserve old stock America, meaning white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. So it's not just that they didn't like people of color. They didn't like you if you were Italian. They didn't like you if you were Catholic or Jewish. They didn't like you if you were swarthy. So back then, the conception of race also was different. People actually spoke about the Chinese race, the Japanese race, the Italian race, the German race. They viewed what we would call today an ethnicity as a racial group. So a law was passed in the 19 teens that set the quotas. So in addition to the exclusion of Chinese, which was extended to all Asianics for a period of time, the U.S. had something called the Asiatic Bard Zone. You couldn't come here if you were from the zones, almost all of Asia, except with a tiny, tiny quota. But in addition to that, the rules were for all the other countries, European countries, there was a quota and it was based on the proportion of that ethnicity inside the U.S. at the time the act was passed. That wasn't abolished until 1965. And in 1965, it was part of the civil rights movement and John F. Kennedy had been killed. And he had proposed this idea, so it was in part an honor in his memory. A Congress passed a new law that essentially opened the doors, not entirely fair even today, but it opened the doors to a much greater extent and to a much greater extent than any other nation. And that is what has brought us here today. It's not just Hawaii, it's not just people have come to places you never would have expected. So it's not just Hawaii. If you look at the Asian population, and Asian Americans are now the fastest growing racial minority group in the U.S. The metro area where they've grown by percentage the most, Las Vegas. Las Vegas is now an Asian immigrant city. You wouldn't imagine that. And when you look at the entire U.S., the region that has experienced the heaviest growth in percentage terms, because they started at a lower level, is the deep south. So you can go places where they had never seen someone with this color of skin, this texture of hair, the shape of eyes as you and me 25 years ago, where suddenly in the blink of an eye, they're ethnic neighborhoods. It's astonishing. The world changes at such a pace. This is accompanied by something else, though. And that's the ascendancy of Asia, the rise of China. People have real doubts now. Will the U.S. maintain its dominant superpower role? And there are many people from China, many people here in the U.S. who wonder, is China going to surpass the U.S. either as an economy or as a market for consumer goods? Sometimes people say to me, well, if that happens, you'll be all set, because you're of Chinese descent, to which I say, not quite. It's going to be disastrous for me if that happens. It would mean every bet my family has made for three generations turns out to be wrong. My grandparents left mainland China for Taiwan. My parents left Taiwan for the U.S. They arrived here more than 50 years ago. And then I'm an assimilated American. When I last visited Beijing just a few months ago, a more senior colleague who I was traveling with, also Chinese descent, scolded me a little bit. He said, you really need to be careful. You don't want to come across as just some kid from Detroit. Which is where I grew up. And I thought to myself, yeah, I've made a mistake here, because I am a kid from Detroit. Whenever I visit China, I look around and realize, my mother was right. I should have paid attention in Chinese school. Because if China is a Senate, so this is what I explained to my white American friends, if they go to China and they can say, shisha, people fall all over themselves. Oh, you speak Chinese. That's great.  You should be ashamed of yourself. Your Mandarin is really not very good. What kind of accent is that anyway? So the world has changed all around us. China has risen. And because of technology, something has happened. It used to be you had to be elite to be able to maintain connections across the Pacific Ocean. Now with the Internet, you can be working class, and you can still be on WeChat, which is the Chinese version of Facebook and Twitter. And you can still be plugged into the same community. You can keep all the same friends. You can have the same social circle, even without a physical critical mass here in Honolulu or San Francisco or Las Vegas. You're still part of a global transnational culture. So all this has changed, but my grandparents left, my parents left, and I assimilated. And that's true here in Hawaii too. When you think of local Asians, they're not the same as tourist Asians. Their behavior is different. The way they move, the language they speak, some of the foods are similar, right? They're comfort foods we have in common. But so much of what here in the US we think of as Chinese food is not really Chinese food. You can't get fortune cookies in China. Fortune cookies are Chinese American, and so many dishes that people on the mainland think of as Asian are actually Hawaiian, Span, Musubi, California rolls. They're things that are invented, either in Hawaii or California, that are unknown in China or Japan. And there's a mixing going on here that's unprecedented in human history. Yeah, and I think when we talk about this changing demographic that we're seeing in the US, we're not just talking about groups that are really homogenous within themselves. That's the interesting thing. We all have a history. Hawaii is a good example where we have had a longer history of a strong representation of people of Asian descent here for a very long time, but we have different layers of waves of people arriving. That's absolutely right. And so there's a huge difference between, for example, the Japanese who are agricultural workers who toiled in the fields, on the one hand, and the Japanese who arrived as expats in the 1980s as investors, as temporary residents. Both of Japanese descent, but by the 1980s, the Japanese Hawaiian population, the descendants of those who had worked in the fields as laborers, as farmhands, they were Sansei, third generation. They were Americanized. They were Hawaiian. And yes, they had something in common, but often they didn't even have language in common. They didn't have faith in common because they had converted. But there's always been a back and forth. So this is an anniversary of Sanyet Sen's birth. And some people know this. Sanyet Sen spent significant time here in Hawaii. He was converted to Christianity. He went to schools here. He went to Iolani. And then he acquired ideas here because he lived with his brother that he took back to China. So in a way that I believe we should celebrate everything that happened in China that he was responsible for, his ideas, had American roots. They were adapted and changed, translated, if you will. Yeah, I mean, this is not like societies that were sealed off for a very long time. But now we just see it more intensified, the ability for exchange of ideas and for this kind of communication. I think that's something we hope to see more of, you think? It depends. I think it's great because this is what propels society forward. And we're even more open here. Okay, well, thank you very much, Frank. We're going to take a short break right here. So you're watching Global Connection at the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. I'm Grace Chang, your host with Frank Wu. And stay tuned and come back in a minute. Welcome to HSU in Vivo. Looking forward to see you next month on October 13, Thursday at 11 o'clock. Aloha, my name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland. Every Friday here on ThinkTech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilucas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Hi, I'm Stan Energyman.  Noon! ThinkTechHawaii.com. Watch the show. Be there. I'll pay you to full weight. Welcome back to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Cheng. And we're hosting Frank Wu today at our program talking about the changing face of America, Hawaii is the future. So, Frank, your book title is Yellow, Race in America Beyond Black and White. And we tend to think of race in black and white terms. And we've been talking a bit about Asian-Americans in this program. Is that a strong composition in our American future? Or do we see other ethnic groups represented? I wrote the book to try to change dialogue. It makes just two points. As a law professor, it took me 400 pages to make two points. But the first is that race is not literally black and white. We often try to divide the whole population, just two boxes. And there are so many who are Latino, who are Arab, who are Asian, who have mixed ancestry. And they have a lineage that dates back in this nation to a time before it was a nation. There are people of native ancestry whose lands these were, they belonged to, other peoples who were displaced, conquered, and that's a grievous wrong that we have and technology owned up to. So, my point was very simple. It doesn't matter who you are. In other words, this isn't about ethnic pride on my part. It's not about Asians or Asian-Americans. It doesn't matter whether you're liberal or conservative, so this is not about politics. It doesn't matter what sort of academic discipline you're in. My point was, if you want a picture of the world that's accurate, it includes so many colors, complexions, and you see that so clearly here in Hawaii, everyone here knows far better than I do, that when you look at the family photo on the mantle, you see every group represented at every generation and Hawaiians have reappropriated a term that was once derogatory, hapa for mixed for half. And it's now to be embraced. It's now a new normal. So the margins have created their own mainstream. That was my first point. Race is not just black and white. And if we're going to talk seriously, if we're going to have good public policy, we should recognize that, that this is just complicated. The second point is race is not figuratively, metaphorically, symbolically black and white. What I mean by that is we like to tell ourselves a story about race. It's a story of progress. It's triumphalist. It's a positive, uplifting story. And that story is there were problems. Those problems were in the past. They were in the deep south. And we've overcome. We've become better. This is a story about villains on the one hand and victims on the other hand. So the villains are slave owners, slave traders. They're the Ku Klux Klan. They're skinheads. They're people who are vicious. Bigots just open through and through. They say they're in favor of segregation yesterday, today, tomorrow, segregation forever. The victims are faceless, nameless, passive. They're not agents of their own destiny. They have violence visited on their bodies and the whole community. And I always try to be clear. Don't get me wrong. There are villains. There are victims. But this story is not just about the past. It's not just about the south. It's about today. It's about the north. It's about the west. It's even about Hawaii. Hawaii has a history that until statehood or just before statehood, Hawaii was a plantation economy dominated by a handful of white-owned companies in which people of color were second class. And that's just the history. It's not people today may not want to remember it, but that's the truth. And then as people return from World War II, in particular Japanese Americans, Japanese Americans who had fought for the United States, they were not interned in Hawaii as they were on the mainland, but Japanese Americans who had had a subordinate status then been enlisted as soldiers given their lives or seen their family and friends give their lives and women too joined the service, came back after World War II and they were empowered and there was a political revolution here. So back to the main point, it's that race is not just clear-cut cases. So there are villains and there are victims and I'm dedicated to fighting the villains and helping the victims, but there are also cases that are about structures, patterns of conduct that are about what psychologists call implicit bias. It's the images rattling around in my head in yours. I'm guilty too when I walk down the street and I stereotype who might be a thug, who might be dangerous. Sometimes you can't help it and then you catch yourself. You realize with embarrassment, well, I just stereotyped someone when I crossed the other side, I shouldn't have done that. That person could be for all we know and honors students at HPU, right? So in talking about race, what I'm trying to do is get us to be more nuanced, to be more attentive to the subtleties, to the details, to the moment when someone says, where are you really from? As if to say you can't be an American or my, you speak English so well. Because they're shocked. My reply is, gee, thanks, so do you. And all of this is happening in a place that has these great ideals. So everything I say as an American, as a believer in the American dream, I wouldn't be here if America hadn't opened its doors and welcomed my parents as students on scholarships. But I'm not a guest. I'm not temporary. I'm not transient. I was born here. This is my home and is where I intend to stay and I will stand up and speak out and embrace that as not just a right or responsibility. So what I'm talking about here is that as the world changes around us, we are constantly struggling to live up to the ideals that we proclaim. And sometimes when I listen to, when I read angry bloggers or listen to politicians running for office, I wonder if we even share the same ideals. Not everyone does. Some people would say, you are not an American. You cannot be. We don't trust you. Why? Because where you came from. Because of how you worship. Because of something about you that isn't about you. It's about an image, a stereotype that they have that's a generalization. So maybe someone of a similar ethnic background or similar faith did commit a crime or terrorist act. That person should be punished. But this guilt by association, that's what's troubling because it violates the ideals that we hold dear. Individuals that we write the scripts of our own lives are now bound by stereotypes and we should interact with each other in that way. That's what America stands for. That's what has made it great, this openness, this sense of reinvention. That's the American myth.  You talk about this problem of people assuming that you have all of these characteristics based on how you look. Part of that has to do with our national imagination. How different people are represented in the media in systematic ways. How we talk about the topic of race and identity. Can you talk a little bit about that? How do we need to adjust as far as how we talk about this issue?  So when the kid comes up to me on the street even today and does karate moves, they do that because when they go to the movie theater or they turn on the TV, now it is changing just a little bit over time, in the past decade, let's say. But it used to be, what was it someone like me was doing on TV? Breaking cinder blocks with their head, right? It's crouching tiger-hidden drag and it's Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and so when I walk by and they say, yo, what's up, Bruce? That is an illusion to an iconic figure, right? A martial arts superhero who died tragically, who's become a myth. And it should be something that we celebrate, right? He was a breakthrough box officer, yet it's a way of mocking both Bruce Lee and mocking every Asian American guy who happens to be walking down the street, who may or may not know karate and kung fu and so on. There's also a germ of truth, right? There's a germ of truth to many stereotypes and sometimes I wonder for Asians, for Asian immigrants, for Asian Americans, whether we live up to or down to the stereotype. So I'll give you an example of what I mean. The stereotype has changed. When I was a kid, the stereotype of Asians was polite, submissive, deferential, passive, docile, you know your place. Now the stereotype is rude, pushy, aggressive, nuvel, rich, busloads of tourists, just behaving badly at national parks and monuments or at high end stores. So the image has changed, but some of it has that germ of truth to it. So let's take the older stereotype of Asians that were polite and submissive and deferential. Well, you know, when I wanted to go to law school, to be a lawyer, my parents discouraged that because they didn't think Asians could or should be making a fuss.  We don't do that kind of thing. That's not for us. Maybe blacks protest, they march, they carry signs, they give speeches, they're angry. Not Asians, we don't fuss that way, right? And that was part of the culture that my parents came from. And I wouldn't be who I am were not for them, so I have the utmost respect. But I wrote a blog a few years ago entitled Everything My Asian Immigrant Parents Taught Me Turns Out to Be Wrong. It was right for them, it was right for their generation, for their era, it worked, right? But compare, so most East Asian cultures have a saying. There's a Japanese proverb, that's the clearest. It's the nail that sticks up is pounded down. Now, what's that about? That's about deference to authority to your elders, fidelity to tradition. There's a Chinese phrase, the loudest duck is shot first by the hunter. Same point, the point of these sayings is do not put yourself out there. Compare that to the American adage, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Different attitude, right? So even today, sometimes, I'll give a speech and I'll talk about legal issues, and afterwards someone will come up to me, they'll be Asian, and they don't want to file a lawsuit or make a fuss. They don't want to embarrass their boss, and I want to say, why not?  So the moral of the story is the time has come for us to stand up and speak out and take our place. Good point, yeah. Our culture is evolving and part of being American is very individualistic and having the freedom to express ourselves, but we see that we have many traditions behind us and the many people. So last question, do you think we talked about Hapa? Are we moving towards a Hapa future? It will be a Hapa nation. Sounds good. Thank you very much, Frank, for joining us today. So you have been watching Global Connections with me, your host, Grace Chang, and we've been talking to Frank Wu, Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. So see you next time, you can catch me here every Thursday at 1 p.m. Aloha. Thank you, Frank. Thanks. Yeah, it went fast. Yeah, it sure did. So that was live broadcast, so some people just saw it, just now. And then it goes up on YouTube. And it'll be on YouTube later today. Oh, go that fast. I'll send it out there real quick. So yeah, when Nick took your email, he'll send you the link. Okay, thank you. Then work out okay?


The study presents a novel strategy called hyperbranched dynamic crosslinking networks, HDCNs, that can transform petroleum-based epoxy thermosets into degradable, reconfigurable, and multifunctional vitramers with superior properties such as supertoughness, high flexural modulus, transparency, and fire retardancy. The HDCNs have spatially topological crosslinks for solvent adaption and multi-dynamic linkages for reversible behaviors, allowing the resulting vitramor to undergo mild room temperature degradation to dimethylacetamide and recycle carbon fiber and epoxy powder from composite. Moreover, ethanol molecule can induce the reconstruction of vitramor network by ester exchange, converting a stiff vitramor into an elastomeric feature with an ultra-high modulus, 5.45 gPa, at minus 150 degrees Celsius for their ultra-low-temperature condition uses. This study proposes a potentially sustainable advanced material to address post-consumer thermoset waste and provides a newly cross-linked mode for high-performance polymer designs. This article was authored by Yuen Bu Jiang, Hong Xia Yan, Raze Yu, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Oh it's time. It's time. For what? For the curious trash show. Sit back and relax. We'll sing chat and laugh on the curious trash show. Welcome back everybody. You're getting so good at that song. And now we're going to do Who's Who in the Curious Crew. Oh, except today I'm going to ask if Dona could you pass this over to Dona? Okay, Dona is going to use the puppet Jeanette. So are you ready Dona? I'm ready to. Here we go. Who's Who on the Curious Crew. With a shell for us. This is Jeanette. Hi. And this is George. He's the quiet one. Now who else is on the Curious Crew. Hey Dona and Jeanette will you ask everyone their names? What's your name Maddie? Hi Emily. Hi Emily. What's your name Aurora? Hi Susanna. What's your name? I'm Dorothy. Hi Dorothy. What's your name? Dona. Hi Dona. Okay. Are you ready? Okay. We're going to just sing. We're going to sing this verse and the chorus and then I'm going to surprise you. Okay Maddie are you ready? For the curious giraffe song. Here we go. Oh I hear the surprise. Okay you can hold her for a minute. Or him. We don't know if that's a mother or a father or who. Okay here we go. Giraffe looked over at my mother and said I know you're so important to your family at home. I'm curious what else you do on your own underneath this one big sky oh yeah. Share one big sky. Share one big sky. Give the world a big high five yeah. We're different and we know it but we all get along cause we can all share and we can all care. We're different but we all belong and sometimes our grandmothers take care of us. Giraffe looked over at my grandmother and said I know you're so important to your family at home. I'm curious what else you do on your own underneath this one big sky oh yeah. Share one big sky. Share one big sky. Give the world a big high five yeah. We're different and we know it but we all get along cause we can all share and we can all care. We're different but we all belong. And I saw you sharing Savannah. You had it for a little while. Maddie's curious. Thank you Lauren. You all are doing a good job sharing. Just like we talk about in the song. So who else might take care of children in a home and create a family? We have mothers do, grandmothers do, who else? Yes. Fathers. Fathers who else? Grandfathers. And grandfathers who else? Yes. Oncles and aunties. Oncles and aunties. How about if you aren't even related to someone? Could maybe someone be a family even if you weren't born into the same family? Sometimes they make what's called foster families. Grownups want to have children and children need grownups and they say let's be a family together. Adoption. So an adoption and they make it permanent to say yes we want to always be family. So there can be many different kinds of families. So I have a song that says there are all kinds of families. So Maddie, I need you and Doné. How about we'll both of you pass those back over here and they'll watch the show because you're going to need your hands for the show. Okay, that's it. They can watch. Okay Maddie? Thank you. That's fine. They'll watch from here. Okay. They're cute. Alright, so let's do there are all kinds of families. I'll lead on the verses. You all do the chorus with me, okay? Ready? Remember the sign for families? There are all kinds of families when we take time to sing. When we look at our families they're as different as can be. But the fact about a family is that love is the key. Yes, it's love that makes a family. Good job on the signing. Some families have a mom and a dad, a boy and a girl. Some of us have folks who came from all around the world. And some families have two moms or dads and maybe boys and girls. Oh, it's love that makes a family. I'll do it with you this time. There are all kinds of families when we take time to sing. When we look at our families they're as different as can be. But the fact about a family is that love is the key. Yes, it's love that makes a family. And some families stay together and some families change. And they live in different houses but the love remains. Whether mommy or your daddy or grandparents tuck you in. Oh, it's love that makes a family. Here we go. There are all kinds of families when we take time to sing. When we look at our families they're as different as can be. But the fact about a family is that love is the key. I'm going to sing one more verse. And some families have lots of pets and some families have none. But all of us have chores to do but when the chores are done there are special days and special ways our families have fun. Oh, it's love that makes a family. Last time there are things to see when we look at our families they're as different as can be. But the fact about a family is the key. It makes a family. I'm singing. So, Aurora, today is M-Day on the Curious Giraffe show and we're doing moms and more. So, who have you invited to be on the show today? We invited our mom. Yes, so we're going to make room for her on the show. It's time. She's going to come to my seat and I'm going to come and sit behind you and watch and learn from your mom who has something special in her life to share with us. Come on up. And please let us know. Now we all found out who's who in the Curious Crew. Who are you? What's your name? Hi, my name's Alicia Duffy. How are you guys doing today? Good. That's good. Thank you so much for inviting me on your Curious Crew. This is awesome. Yeah. So, you asked me to come on your show to share a little bit about what I do. So, I teach Irish dancing and that's a family business that was started a long time ago. Would you guys like to learn a little bit more about that? Yeah. Yeah? So, I teach Irish dancing. I teach at the Duffy Academy because that's my name. And I teach there and I have help from Aurora and Maddie because I'm their mom and they help me out at dance class sometimes. Do you ever help your families out with things around the house and whatnot? Yeah. It's kind of like that, but maybe a little bit more work, just a little bit. So, in my family as I was growing up, we always did Irish dancing. That was something that was always there. And when I was little, sometimes I really liked it. Sometimes it was a lot of work and I didn't like it just so much. But now that I'm an adult, I really, really love it. So, I'd love to teach you a little bit about it. For my family, my family came from Ireland and that's where both my grandparents are from. And my grandmother, who was from Dublin, took from master teachers. And her family were all entertainers. Did you ever hear people for fun going to like a concert or to a show? They went to go see a band to play because it's just for fun, right? My family were the entertainers. And back then, if you were really good, you got to perform for these halls. And these halls were where you get to meet everybody. So, you would go to these, it's kind of like a big party. You go to these halls and you would listen to great music and you'd get up there and dance and then you get to meet people. Maybe somebody who had like a crush on, maybe a little bit. And that's how my grandparents met and became a couple, yeah. Okay, so I'm listening. So, at this concert, you went to watch the entertainers who were the dancers, but then the audience got to dance too? They did. That's the best kind of concert. Yeah, I like those concerts that you get to participate in too. So, that's how my grandparents came to come together. And my grandmother's side is all musicians, but then they started to do dancing as well. And so, I wanted to talk a little bit about Irish dancing and why I like doing it if maybe you guys wanted to try some out. So, did you ever see Irish dancing before? Yeah, some of you are saying yes. Some of you are like, nope, not. So, for Irish dancing, if you've seen it, do you notice anything very kind of strange, a little bit different about Irish dancing compared to some other dancing? I think you better show us. Well, so some of us don't have anything to compare to. Maybe the people who know. Irish dancers, they don't do a whole lot of arm movements. There's no Irish dances that you see doing the disco, right? There's one little condensed one where we do dance.  But for most Irish dancers, what you'll typically see is that their bodies are very straight and they keep their arms to their sides. Some Irish dancers do it on their hips. Yeah, that's a very popular move now. It's to have your hands upon your hips. I'm not getting an idea. You are going to give me an idea? Oh, that is beautiful Irish dancing. Can I do this? Yeah, you're a very good Irish dance dancer. I guess perhaps you would practice a timer too, maybe. We're also not flat footed ever. We're either on our heels or our toes. That's right, that's right. Very good dance moves. Well, for Irish dancing, they typically keep their arms down. They'll wear shoes like how I have on right now. These ones are the soft shoes. They're called ghillies. Can you guys say ghillies? Ghillies. That's kind of a silly name, don't you think? And we also have hard shoes, which are for percussion. Those are usually everybody's favorites because they make a lot of noise and drive your family crazy at home with the tapping. So those are always exciting to get when you've earned enough skill level to get into that. So I have a very important question for all of you. Do you think that maybe you could learn some Irish dancing with me today? Do you think so? Okay, so in order for me to teach you a little bit about Irish dancing, I think I need everybody to stand up. Can we stand up? All right, you guys are in an excellent formation. What kind of shape do you think this is? Circle. This is a circle. Good job. It's supposed to be a circle, but it's more of an oval shape. We're going to pretend it's a circle right now. So the thing about this dance that I would like to teach everyone is called the circle dance. And so you have all of my permission. If you like this dance, you can certainly teach your friends. I know a lot of my students ask me, is it okay if I do that? And the answer is absolutely yes. So we're going to do a couple different parts of this dance. The first part is skips. So we're going to skip our right foot and then our left foot. We're going to get the circle really small and raise our hands up. So we're going to hop your right foot in and hop your left foot in. And we come up with our hands.  And then we're going to hop back and hop back. But we don't want to go too close to the edge. So make sure we're staying very close to the car. Small hops. Yeah. So let's try that again. We do that two times. Are you ready? Here we go. Woo-hoo. And open the circle up one more time. And woo-hoo. Woo-hoo. And open the circle up. You guys are great. So now we're going to move this circle to the side. And when we move to a certain side, we're going to move left first.  So we're going to go, we're going to hop and then step with our left foot in front, right foot behind. Left foot in front, right behind. Good. And now we're going to hop it back. Hop back and please. Hop back and please. And then we're going to go to the other side. We're going to switch. Don't make that one awesome. And we're going to go to the right again. Beautiful job everybody. To the right. And then we're going to hop it back. Hop it back. And we're going to go to the right one more time. To the right side again. To the right. To the right. To the right. Hop back. Hop back. And one more time to the left. To the left. To the left. To the left. Hop back. Hop back. And then it's because it's my favorite part, we're going to skip in again. Woo! And you go back up in the circle. Good job. One more. Woo! A little steps back. Good job. Now this next part is really fun, but we have to make sure we stay in on the carpet so everybody can get around. This is called thread the needle. And you guys are the thread, and this is the eye of the needle. But in dance class sometimes I call it our magic portal. So I'm going to have Aurora skip through, and everybody's going to skip through and follow Aurora back around to me, back into a circle. Are you ready? Here we go. And one, and two, and three, and four, and five, and six, and seven, and eight. And now we're going to go through the other magic portal. Are you ready? Here we go. Step in just a little bit so everyone can get around. Good job. Go ahead and one, and two, and three, and four, and five, and six, and seven, and eight. Good job everybody. And we're going to skip in again. Ready? Here we go. And back one more time. And back. And just because you've done so well, can you take a big bow? Oh, very nice. So now I'll do something that's called liltting. So liltting is basically humming a tune. And if you guys know this tune, you can help me. So we're going to dance it. Are you ready? You guys did such a great job. I think you look very ready. So the first part is the favorite part. We're going to skip in. Are you ready, Miss Maddy? Here we go. Thank you. Ready? Five, six, ready, here we go. Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. And go to the left. Jump to the dum, da dum, da da dum, da dum. Now, go to the right. Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. Jump to the right, to the right. One more. Hop back to the left and left side, left side, hop. Hop it back, now we go in again. Here we go. Woo-hoo! And back two, three, and back. And in for two, woo-hoo! Back, now we throw the needle. Here we go, follow roar. And two, and three, two, and a dump, dump. And seven, great job. Now follow Miss Maddie. One, and two, good job. Go around three, and four, and five, and six, doing great. Seven, ready, here we go, skip in. Woo-hoo! Well, thank you for everyone for dancing with all, everybody was so included, and this is called the, what again? You can teach all of your friends, especially around St. Patrick's Day. Okay, Dona, what were you just asking? Can I do the mystery box? It's time for the mystery box, all right? Okay, now this time, listen, before I open it. I don't know. Wind chime. Excellent, excellent. I brought a kind of wind chime, because in our song, it's going to talk about a wind chime. And this is a special kind, that when the wind touches that part, that gorges, so I wanted you to see an actual wind chime before we sang about it. And this next song, in a few minutes, let's do our songs first, because it's hard to sing with different notes on that, but this chorus goes, there was music in my mother's house, there was music all around. There was music in my mother's house, and my heart's still full with the sound. Let's sing that. There was music in my mother's house, there was music all around. There was music in my mother's house, and my heart's still full with the sound. There were wind chimes in the window, bells inside the clock, an organ in the corner, tunes on the music box. We sang while we were cooking, or working in the yard. We sang because our lives were really hard. There was music in my mother's house, there was music all around. There was music in my mother's house, and my heart's still full with the sound. And for your family, we might sing, there was dancing. Let's sing there. And here, if you wanna do sign language for dancing, your fingers are like your legs, and this is like the dance floor. There was dancing. Here we go. There was dancing in my mother's house. How about, let's say my family. So we include all our different families. There was dancing in my family's house, there was dancing all around. There was dancing in my family's house, and my heart's still full with the sound. Or Susanna, or Lauren, or Emily. What happens in your family? No, what were you thinking of when you raised your hand? Watching, watching in my family's house, we like to watch things. I also know in your family, you have a lot of animals. Yeah, I think a lot. Should we say something that were animals in my family's house? Yeah. Okay, is that okay?  Little animals, here we go. There were animals in my family's house, there were animals all around. What sound do animals make?  Dogs? Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff. Horses? Dogs and horses. Horses, what sound do horses make? There you go. Okay, how about Susanna, or Emily, or Lauren. Let's get something from your family's.  How about Susanna? I need to pull something out, or I just need to louse it around because dad's there. And then your dad is there? How about there are dads in my family's house?  When you see somebody you know? No, I just. No, what else do you do? When you come home, yeah. I just go in the house and read. Okay, there's reading! Oh, that's one. Here we go.  Okay, I like to read a lot. Here we go. There was reading in my family's house. There was reading all around. There was reading my heart still full of the sound. All right, you can hear people reading aloud, maybe. All right, I still want Emily or Lauren to tell us a little bit about their family, what they do. Can you think of something you do just for fun? Or just because you're interested? Or you do some work? Something your family does. Or one person in your family might really like this thing, and so you all learn about it. Or just playing, is there playing in your house? How about singing? Your family sings. You all sing my songs, right? Let's do singing. Okay, and then we'll have to finish up. There was singing in my family's house. There was singing all around. There was singing in my family's house. And my heart still full with the sound. Aurora, what was your idea? When you said Dona had a lot of pets. Yes. That reminded me of a story. This kid really wanted a gecko that they had. And they have all sorts of reptiles there and stuff. His grandpa was like, no way. You already have a hundred good Jillian pets. And I'm like, oh, I don't have any. Congratulations. And he's like, no, literally. He has 24 rabbits, two horses, and like, five. Yeah, so some people really, just like in our family song, some of us have lots of pets and some of us have none. Okay, it's time to stand up and sing goodbye. Oh, really? Can I hold you?  In just a minute, okay? Because this is not going to go with our song. Can you line up for the song, please? And then, oh, actually, let's see if we can do it this way. Ready? Maddie, get in the lineup and sing, sing, keep singing, keep looking up. Ready? And we'll hold this up to look up at, okay? Keep singing, keep looking up. Keep asking questions and never give up. Keep singing, keep looking up. Keep asking questions and never give up. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye-bye. There was music in my mother's house. There was music all around. There was music in my mother's house. And my heart still full with the sound. There were wind chimes in the window, bells inside the clock, an organ in the corner, tunes on the music box. We sang while we were cooking or working in the yard. We sang because our lives were really hard. There was music.


In my video on sweeteners, I mentioned a scientific paper that had some surprising findings. I want to briefly present this data, but I also want to use this paper as part of a continuing series on how to interpret a scientific paper, even if you aren't a scientist. In recent years, most journals are online and offer either pay for use or free online PDF versions of content. I prefer the Medline Resources that are hosted at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, or NCBI. The widest search is called PubMed, and it includes a mix of pay for use and free articles. However, a PubMed central search will only return the freely available full text articles. That's where I found a version of this paper, available as an article in press. The journal is Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, and it's published in 2010. The authors are from Princeton and Rockefeller, and they are psychology or behavioral neurobiologists. This is an important piece of information, as we'll soon see. There are at least four major sections to every paper. The abstract, which summarizes the key points in the paper. The introduction, which gives background to people not familiar with the field. It will be heavily cited, since it describes the work in the field relevant to the current study. The methods section, which describes how the study was conducted. The results section presents the outcomes of test run. This is where you'll usually find the graphs and charts. And the discussion, which is usually followed by a conclusion or concluding paragraph. This is the most subjective part of the whole paper, where the authors can give their interpretation of the results. You'll also find acknowledgments, and a long list of references to other papers used to support points in the paper. In particular, you should keep an eye out for funding sources, which are listed in the acknowledgments. This group, for example, have previously been funded by PepsiCo. I personally make it a point not to dismiss research that is well published, even if there is an apparent conflict of interest. It adds to my skepticism of the results, but I think it's a slippery slope to reject research because of who conducted it. On to the paper at hand. I'm going to go through how I typically read a paper. I always start with the abstract, because I need to know if the article is relevant. I scan through the details, which gives a preview of the study. I note that this compares HFCS to sucrose, and that they find a difference between the two. Here's the statement that really catches my interest. Rats with 12-hour access to HFCS gain significantly more body weight than animals given equal access to 10% sucrose, even though they consume the same number of total calories, but fewer calories from HFCS than sucrose. The last statement is, translated to humans, these results suggest that excessive consumption of HFCS may contribute to the incidence of obesity. I usually read the introduction quickly, or skim it, because it's usually a summary of prior work. In this case, they summarize the nature of the problem of obesity, and how sweeteners have contributed to that. They also highlight the lack of studies directly comparing sucrose and HFCS. On to the methods. There are three experiments in this paper. The methods section is broken down accordingly. Experiment one compares weight gains in males only rats. Note the population size, which is relatively small, 10 rats per group. All the rats are given as much rat chow and water as they want. Group one gets no sugar, that's our control. Group two gets 24-hour access to HFCS solution. Group three gets only 12-hour access to HFCS, and group four gets 12-hour access to sucrose solution. They explain that the HFCS contains fewer calories, and is designed to match sodas. The sucrose is 10% solution, and likewise matches sucrose-containing sodas.  I want to draw your attention to the group three here, the ones that get only 12 hours access to HFCS. It's key to understanding this experiment. There's a citation to Avena et al. 2006, which is also available free online, and a very interesting paper that compares addiction to sweeteners to addiction to drugs. Remember that these are behaviorists or psychologists, and the results we will get for group three will be the most surprising. I'll come back to it in a minute. The other two experiments are less useful for my purposes, so I'll summarize them quickly. Experiment two was male rats, and it excluded the sucrose group from experiment one. They measure the results of varying access to rat chow and HFCS. So some rats had 24-hour access to chow, some had 12, others had 24-hour access to HFCS, others had 12. Experiment three is simply adding female rats to this experiment to allow for the measurement of sex-specific effects. This particular type of rat called spray dolly has a very noticeable difference in size between males and females at adulthood. Remember that good science is always testing one variable at a time, controlling for every other untestable variable element. In reviewing this paper, I spot a lot of ways that they failed to control for multiple effects of testing. The results of the testing are interesting and can be nicely summarized by table one. This is the final body weight after eight weeks of modified diet. The weight is in grams, and the plus and minuses are the range of weights obtained. A little star next to the value indicates that it was a significant change. That means something very specific in statistics, which we biologists usually summarize as saying that the probability of getting these results by chance is less than 5%. So according to this chart, rats who only had 12-hour access to HFCS got significantly fatter than the other groups. But I think it's worth noting that the effect is relatively small. So let's remember that this was a behavioral effect when animals only had limited access to HFCS. It was an addiction and tolerance behavior. The animals indulge in binging when you take away their sweeties. Even though they actually drank fewer calories of the HFCS, that behavior of binging appears to have increased their weight ever so slightly. The effect was more pronounced than with sucrose, although you may note that the 12-hour access to sucrose mice were heavier than the 24-hour access to HFCS mice. What I take from this is that sweeteners that stimulate sugar binging, which remember is a bit like what sugary sodas might do to humans, are likely to cause weight gain, but HFCS might stimulate this slightly more than sucrose. This is the fact I can't quite explain and it's very intriguing. I suspect that the small chemical difference between HFCS and sucrose, specifically the 9% lower glucose, is what's causing this effect. There's more of a dysregulation of blood glucose. The only way to confirm this would be to test it. The other experiments are interesting, but with the sucrose group removed, it's just more of an indictment of overconsumption of sweeteners and the negative effect of fructose on obesity and lipid profiles. I'll leave it to you to read these sections and make sense of them. Section 4 is the discussion, and it's somewhat subjective interpretation of the results. The authors reflect on the finding and try to synthesize them into the body of literature on the topic. I'm skipping over a lot of information in the interest of time, straight to 4.5, differences in sugar and metabolism. The area I found most interesting. They first proposed some mechanisms for the difference in weight gain between sucrose and HFCS. Lipid metabolism, fructose content, the rates of breakdown, liver transport. When I read this though, I'm struck by a mismatch. Remember the comparison in Experiment 1? We had sucrose with 12-hour availability, and HFCS with 12 or 24-hour availability. The 12-hour group showed the effects of addiction to sweetener, binging. But the 12-hour group for sucrose compared to 24-hour HFCS showed about the same weight gain. At most, I would say that HFCS may trigger more of a behavioral effect, and that's something I would like to see tested further. I'll give the authors the final word, Section 5, Conclusion. In summary, rats maintained on a diet rich in HFCS for 6 or 7 months show abnormal weight gain, increased circulating triglycerides, and augmented fat deposition. All of these factors indicate obesity. Thus, overconsumption of HFCS could very well be a major factor in the obesity epidemic, which correlates with the upsurge in the use of HFCS. Thanks for watching.


My dad told me the other day he said I still remember when you were drunk and crying and told me that you would never have a normal life and he said and I remember he told me before he said I remember thinking then it was so bad he said I believed you. My name is James Dixon I'm a contract grower for Georgia's Incorporated and we've been here for about a year before that we lived in Magnolia, Arkansas my wife and I were both originally from there and grew for nine years for Tyson down there I bought my first farm in March in February 2013 but I always wanted to expand my operation and as soon as I got enough equity to you know I thought I could make that happen. Yeah we're expecting in September we've been trying for several years but that was another reason we wanted to move was just to we both grew up in a small town and growing up in small towns good but we just wanted more opportunities more extra curricular activities for our kids and hopefully we'll have that up here. Well I guess how I coped with stress I didn't really know how to cope with stress when I bought my first farm when I was at the age of 23 and a lot of it was I guess isolation and I was single you're self-employed you don't have everybody to answer to things finally slowed down and I dealt with it by drinking and like I said you don't have anybody to answer to you don't have anybody to tell you hey you might not should drink at this time of the day and I mean it's just so it's a lot easier versus someone who goes into work somewhere to to get out of control and that's what happened to me is I started coping by drinking and that before I knew it wasn't it wasn't a choice anymore it was I mean my body was addicted to alcohol and I didn't know how to stop I don't know I mean it's weird how it's weird how bad things got and then it's just like everything and things aren't always great but when you compare it to that I mean I got it made now I mean and meet and Ashton I mean like like my dad told me I never thought I would have a normal life again but so I mean there is hope I mean it's just a lot of people don't want to talk about it and they don't want to the hard thing is reaching out that's that's the hardest thing I mean I hardest thing I probably ever did in my life was call my dad in the middle of the night and tell him I need help farmers think that it's a sign of weakness to ask for help not just farmers in general but men I mean they're in women too I'm sure struggle with the same thing but that it's a sign of weakness but and I thought the same thing to before I asked for help that it was a sign of weakness but actually I mean I think that it's exact opposite because anything that's hard you know take strength and that's like I said that's one of the hardest things that I've ever done is ask for help I reached out because I was thinking about killing myself not because I wanted to die I did not want to die I was tired of drinking and I didn't know how I did I didn't know how to stop and that's the that's I'm sure what a lot of people who wants to they get to the point where it's bad enough they do want to stop they don't know who to call there's there's places that you can go 12-step programs where you can walk in and then it's a scary thing to do but I guarantee you if you do it then there's gonna be people there that's gonna welcome you with open arms and they're gonna be just like you and you can talk about it and that's the that's the main thing is to having having people you can't get through it alone I mean anything I mean whether it's depression addiction I mean God put us here with other people to have other people for support of it actually I went to treatment twice and it was it was a long process and the first time I was I was doing it for everybody else I wanted to get everybody off my back and I wasn't serious about it so but the second time I went it had got bad enough that I didn't care what I had to do I was gonna follow the directions do whatever they suggested and anyway after the second time I went the last time I've it's been December 16th 2015 was the last time I had a drink that was when I went into treatment the second time for the last time and I actually I guess I accepted the fact that there's I guess there's a difference between it made in your novel I can accept in it I felt like I finally accepted it you you learn the tools necessary to help you stay sober in rehab but after you get out that's up to you and what I started going to a 12-step program that helped me and got a sponsor and ever once I committed I mean my life's never been the same I mean it was I had all those years when I blame God for the situation I was in and then I finally came to realize that it wasn't God that turned us back on me it was me that turned my back on God and when you're in it and it said it's worse you know you don't think there's a lot at the end of the tunnel but there's even things like that like my relationship with my family today I thought it was gonna be worse you know I thought it would never be the same and then turns out we're actually closer than we would have ever been had any of that ever happened so I mean there's and it not just that and meet my wife and you know doing well with the farm and moving and getting another form you think you're alone but then if you actually take that hardest step and reach out you realize you're not I mean and there's there's a whole world out there people are going through the exact same thing you are and just people don't want to talk about it but that that's why I said the hardest thing and the best thing you can do is reach out because once you do you'll realize you're not alone and I mean you're not


very special thank you to the Coast Salish who's traditional territory we are meeting on today and congratulate Al Richmond our incoming president from the caribou of course folks in the caribou went through a really tough fire season and Al and the community did so much to lead the community through that so I'm looking forward to working with you Al and of course Sav another Burnaby boy was I used to represent Sav actually he was reminding me that in his first election I don't know how many out here have you out here have ever lost an election but I certainly have more than one and he Sav in his first try lost an election and I wrote him a note just to say hey keep at it and I haven't always not regretted that Sav I have to say but but he has done such an incredible job we're also lucky that he did keep at it and has represented the people of Burnaby with such distinction represented British Columbia communities at the FCM and of course led this UBCM over this past year it's been a privilege Sav thank you very much when whenever there's a handover of power I'm reminded of that old story from from Soviet Russia you know the the the new leader takes over and goes to the pre his predecessor and says all right I need some advice and they and the pre predecessor says to the his his replacement will look here's two envelopes in the first crisis when that hits I want you to open the first envelope and then when the second crisis hits I want you to open the second envelope and so of course he goes and he has the first crisis comes along and he opens the first envelope and it says whatever happens just blame me and so he does as he's told and he survives the crisis and he moves on a couple of years later there's a another terrible crisis that hits hits the community and he goes and he opens the second envelope and the second envelope it says write two letters to your successor now I'm pretty sure that Sav has not had to do that for Al and when I look at the longevity of so many members who half of you who are returning mayors and councillors and members of regional districts and local government across the province clearly you are more than capable of weathering a few crises and a few difficult times and all those of you who are new welcome to this tremendous organization and the good work that it does for our entire province it's been a real pleasure a real pleasure to meet with you I am I have another story to tell and and this one is actually true and I could tell you a story of course about how bad things are and how it's only going to get worse but of course if I was going to do that I would have made that speech yesterday morning not today the I am I very much believe that when we talk about the future in British Columbia and anywhere in the world as leaders people look to us not for complaints and despair about the future they look to all of us all of you and me and all of the leaders in British Columbia for hope they look to us for reasons for optimism they want to know that there's a plan that we have a plan to help them through good times but more importantly to help them through some of the some of the bad times and you know this year this summer has been an extraordinary one all across the province and you know in cities all over the place we have had the best year for film that British Columbia has ever seen tourism is way up and many communities have seen a better tourism year than they've ever seen Whistler in the month of August as an example had more visitors than they did in the year of the Olympics in February 2010 in in parksville they hosted parksville which is a city of I think 12,000 people they they hosted 108,000 people for beach fest over a period of five weeks in tumblr Ridge a city of about 2700 people they hosted 8,000 people at the dinosaur museum alone British Columbia is really thriving and not just in the urban centers but all over the province in golden for the first time in 15 years one of the counselors told me they are starting to see their enrollment in their school grow as their community renews and young people come back the people in communities that depend that look to the car car shop to see how it's doing their sales are up 7% and you know what they're selling they're selling white trucks the kinds of trucks that men and women can put their own labels on as they get their small business going and get out there to go and create jobs and that's happening all over the province but it isn't all good news there has been as you know an extraordinary summer for lots of other reasons in BC to first of all there was the windstorm that hit the island the Gulf Islands the lower mainland and up the coast 710,000 accounts were reconnected by BC Hydro by our men and women that work as linesmen for that for our company in this province 710,000 accounts were reconnected in just 72 hours that is by the way twice as many people connected in half the time that they did in Toronto when they had their recent shutdown not long ago thank you to them thank you to the men and women who fought our firefighters fires wildfires all across the province in this incredibly difficult wildfire season here they were I I'm sure many of you some of you would have gone up if you were in a in a community that was affected and seen those young men and women walking into the burning forest with a can of gas in one hand and an axe in the other and they did it because they care about our province and they want to protect the communities that we all care so much about and thank goodness they do because I think a lot of us might have to dig really deep to try and find the courage that they had to do that and and mayors in Oliver Ron Havana's and Oliver Mike Richmond Pemberton Bruce Milne in seashell microtan and Port El Bernie Doug Finlayer in West Kelowna all of you did an amazing job during these this fire season I want you to know we are so grateful because you worked hard and most importantly you led no community no community in British Columbia this year personified leadership as much as Midway did Mayor Randy Caps and his community of 500 500 people in the entire community and 240 of them volunteered now that is really that is why leadership matters in British Columbia and what but though you know the lesson from this fire season is one that we would do very we would regret forgetting and that is what the fire fire experts all told us as they wrote there in the front lines this fire was moving in ways that people had never seen before people had never seen it behave the way that it has and part of that is because of climate change the National Research Council United States tells us that for every degree the average temperature goes up we will see quadruple the amount of land burn in Western North America now we can all hope that we are wrong that they are wrong but worrying about that will not help the only thing that will change that is if we decide to lead if we decide to lead in the fight against climate change and if we decide to lead in the fight to make sure that our communities are safe from for forest fires and not just forest fires but other disasters in appointing it Naomi Yamamoto we are the only jurisdiction in North America that has one cabinet member who is solely devoted to making sure that we are better protected in the case of disaster from wildfires from flooding windstorm response earthquakes and on that last one we are better prepared 17 billion dollars in seismic infrastructure upgrades that are already underway or completed but there is so much more for us to do next June we are going to hold the largest disaster bill drill in British Columbia history we all have to come together to make sure that 4.6 million British Columbians are working together to make sure that we are ready and it isn't acceptable that some people decide to sit that effort out and what I'm talking about are the folks that throw a cigarette but out the window or someone who decides to leave their camp fire burning even when there's a ban on in the community where they're camping people that fly drones and keep our forest fires forest fighters out of the air that is why I've asked Mike Morris to consider all of the range of consequences that we can use to deal with those kinds of offenders because thousands of people are depending on our forest firefighters and our community leadership to be able to make sure that we can be protected and we cannot allow people like that to get in our way and as I've said I don't think people count on any of us to complain they count on us to be ready and so I've got a few announcements I want to talk to you about today five of them that I think are going to mean that we are able to look farther down the road and really prepare our province for all of the circumstances that we might confront and part of that though is the fact that British Columbians expect all of us to live within our means and this is what it means for us in the provincial government it means controlling spending it means keeping government small it means shaving down our debt day by day and the first step in that of course was getting out of deficit and we've done that with three consecutive balanced budgets in a row that the next thing after you balance your budget you got to take care of your debt so the next thing for us is our operating debt we already have our operating debt down to one of the lowest levels it's been in a very very long time in four years as we stick to our plan British Columbia will have eliminated our operating debt for the first time since 1975 and that is where a debt-free British Columbia begins that is how we begin to be able to endow our children with a province that is unburdened by decisions that our generations and generations before us made but couldn't afford to pay for but we cannot at the same time that we make sure that we are balancing our budget and controlling spending forget about the importance of vital infrastructure for our province and communities right now we have more than seven billion dollars worth of projects out in the field that's bridges it's hospital transit schools things that are happening in all of your communities and then there's BC hydro BC hydro will be investing 2.4 billion dollars a year every year for the next 10 years that's dams its transmission lines its distribution and its jobs all over the province and federal politicians are doing a lot of talk about infrastructure spending well guess what here in British Columbia we're getting it done and when you consider all of those projects it adds up to a hundred and fifty thousand jobs over 10 years from infrastructure site see alone is going to create 10,000 of those jobs and I know that there are some of you in this room and outside it who opposed building site see as much as I passionately support doing it I understand your position what I don't understand is the position of those who say they don't have the courage to take a position it is not leadership to say on the biggest infrastructure project in British Columbia's history one that will create 10,000 jobs and have impacts across generations in creating clean energy it is not leadership to say you're just not sure because leadership is about growing a diverse economy it's about having the courage to say yes in getting to decisions it's about having the courage to want to put people to work and some of those decisions are hard ones but as we put people to work as we've been doing we have to reach out and find people who want to come back to British Columbia we spent some days out of the Calgary stampede this year with a booth called come home to BC 83,000 people came to the booth cuz these 83,000 people are from your communities these 83,000 people are from Nanaimo and they're from Comox they're from Kelowna they're from the caribou they're from the Kootenays they're from Vancouver they said thank goodness British Columbia is ready to welcome us back because we are ready to come home we are ready to be reunited with our families and we want to be home in communities that we love where we grew up places to which we are profoundly attached 83,000 people probably some of them just pretending to be British Columbians but we will be we will be we will be delighted to have them back you won't see a wall being built along the Rockies those opportunities are here for people to come back to your communities to all of our communities because we're starting to see economic growth really thrive in the province we're starting to see those first LNG projects take shape rural communities are really coming back but we cannot forget that we are outliers here in British Columbia in Canada in the United States in Asia in Europe what we are seeing are huge deficits debt that they can't control fragile economies huge numbers of people unemployed and facing unemployment and that uncertainty is crowding the future of millions of people all over the world we are surrounded by that uncertainty but we have made a singular achievement all of us together as leaders in BC and that singular achievement has not happened by accident it's happened because we worked for it because all of us had a plan yours in your communities and ours in the province as a whole we had a plan and we stuck to it and that plan is now bearing fruit all of the hard-working British Columbians who sacrificed along with all of us to make sure that we could build a better future and now it's our chance to talk to British Columbians and to communities about finding the dividend from that hard work that's the result of a plan and it's the result of all of us working together to make sure that we could secure our future in Kamloops Peter Millibar and his council undertaking a core review to make sure that they're not spending a dollar without really thinking hard about it knowing that there's only one taxpayer in the province Kitimat nobody nobody is more proud of the new smelter than Phil Garmouth when he sees that he sees a thousand jobs secure in the long term people will be paying taxes building their families in Victoria Lisa helps task force on economic development and prosperity she's reaching out to try and find new ways to attract investment to that beautiful city our capital on the South Island Lee brain and Prince Rupert Lee has an incredible vision Charles Hayes who died on the Titanic in 819 12 had a vision to and he wasn't able to complete it his vision was to make Prince Rupert a port for the world to open up the Northwest well Lee has taken on that vision with gusto so that he can make sure that he realizes that future for Prince Rupert that so many so long ago may have already given up on because he knows that when he sees his chamber of commerce grow by 46 percent it means that small businesses are coming and small businesses are growing and that is his vision and a vision of many leaders in the Northwest a part of our province that is saddled economic growth for far too long but none of this has been easy and I know it's never been easy for local government leaders either it's never easy to get through uncertain times but we've done it and we've done it together so now let's talk about how we can start paying that dividend back to the people of the province because we still have other challenges to tackle challenges that we can't tackle without money challenges with crime in urban and in rural centres places like Williams Lake and Terrace that need help just as much as places like Surrey and Abbotsford and here's what I think we need to do I think first we need to be tough on criminals we need to make sure that that guns and gang strategy that has been so successful that's put hundreds of gangsters in jail that's kept guns and kept drugs off the street that that needs to keep going we need to keep that work because crime is like a weed in your garden it doesn't stop growing just because you think you've got it beat and you decide to take the gardening season off crime just keeps coming back and we have to keep on doing it. We also need people to come forward anyone in communities who knows anything about the criminals we need we need your help in trying to solve these crimes Harry Braun had it right from Abbotsford he said we need to end the culture of silence and third I think most importantly we have to be tough on the roots of crime we have to prevent it we have to deprive criminals of their most important resource and that is our children we have to make sure that we are in schools helping kids get out of gangs and helping make sure they don't get into gangs because it's like stealing their oxygen if we can take children away from gangs we can stop gangs from growing in our communities and so today we're committing a further five million dollars over two years to build on the success of the guns and gang strategy to build on the success of the rap program in Surrey and to work with you in whatever community you're in to make sure that we can beat gangsters where they live and make your community safe again now there are a few communities in British Columbia that do what I think is more than their fair share of heavy lifting to make sure that we're all prosperous all across the province and they make a huge contribution to count kid to Canada as well and some of those rural communities are really struggling canal flats tumbler Ridge Cornell Houston communities that are going through real transition and they're not the first and that's why I asked Donna Barnett as the chair of our rural task force and our rural advisory council to go out and work with a group of marriage from across the province and talk about what we can do to try and support communities that are going through transition to think very hard about how we share the wealth better that is created in rural communities with the rural communities that created it and got it out of the ground in the first place they came forward with some principles some guiding principles for the rural dividend and so today I'm happy to announce that we are committing 75 million dollars over the next three years to create a new dividend for communities under 25,000 people I know that those cheers were not for me they were for Donna Barnett Donna will you stand up there we are that's the person who deserved it because you know we have protected British Columbia's economy by diversifying it over the years we have an incredibly diverse economy we have incredibly diverse markets and we've all worked really hard to create that but we have to help rural communities continue to diversify and that's what this rural dividend is going to be all about it's about sharing the wealth it's about doing like Whistler and Squamish are talking about when they think about how they can take their incredible tourism success and make sure that they're extending that across the south caribou all of these opportunities that we have in our communities are things that we haven't necessarily done a great job of sharing we haven't done a great job of sharing with First Nations that's another thing we need to correct make sure that First Nations on whose traditional territory we make resource operations work are also fully sharing and becoming a part of our economy First Nations communities rural communities and urban communities now speaking of urban communities we have had an incredible success in technology something Lisa helps Gregor Robertson and and people all over British Columbia certainly up in Kelowna will be able to tell you companies like Amazon that have moved in Sony Digital has named Vancouver their global headquarters up from LA and that is the hard work that we've done in our trade offices in your communities and by making sure that our tax policy is one that's going to work Victoria's tech scene is exploding at the moment Okanagan tech scene is over a billion dollars today and now we have this chance this moment in time where we've established British Columbia as a tech hub where we need to start thinking hard about how we can make sure that tech companies also start relocating to much smaller communities but they can't do that if you don't have high speed internet so in this year's budget you know that we committed 10 million dollars over the next two years to expand a high speed internet and I'm going to give you a quick update today more than 70 communities will benefit from the first eight projects that have now been approved starting with projects in the Kootenays in Goldbridge and in Port Alice right across the province and of course as you know Grand Isle the folks in Grand Isle were able to make their first phone call on a cell phone I think at 3 p.m. on August 21st the mayor not the mayor one of the counselors was telling me he didn't know who to call so he called City Hall I know everybody up there is complaining we've ruined their their peace and quiet sorry about that Grand Isle but that's one of those things that we need to make sure that we extend all across the province so that every community has the same opportunities that we do in the lower mainland in the South Island and because that kind of infrastructure is really the foundation for attracting new jobs and investment we all know that and that's why we created the that's why we've been participating in the small communities fund green infrastructure water projects road improvements 55 projects have gotten over the ground gotten off the ground in the last year and it's a pleasure to add to that today with another 90 million dollars that will be equal cost shared between the province and the federal government and applications are open now so get on your iPhone and and before I close I have one more one more announcement to make because my mayor Doug Finlayer has moved and moved a motion through UBCM and I want you to know Doug and and all of you I heard you we have we do have to protect interface communities and we have to protect we have to prevent wildfires across the province and this year we committed to removing five million dollars worth of that fuel that is close to our communities we will have more money for it in our budget in February I promise you that as part of a larger plan but in the meantime I'm announcing another 10 million dollars in bridge funding for the strategic wildfire prevention initiative that we will co-manage with you at UBCM now on that particular front you may know I've reached out directly to the prime minister to make sure that the federal government is part of this they need to be there for us in preventing wildfires here in British Columbia there's another file they need to be there on us though with us though on too and that we cannot do without them that is the softwood lumber agreement it has uh it expires next month we have one year to reach a new agreement with the U.S. and I want you to know if you are from a forest community whether that's Vancouver or Surrey or Williams Lake or Burns Lake I want you to know that whoever the newly elected prime minister is my very first call is going to be to talk about softwood lumber so let me close with this because I started with this point about how I think people look to us for hope they look to us for reasons to hope they want to know that we're living within our means and they want to know that we'll be there in times of need and they expect all of us to create a growing and diverse economy but I think most of all what they expect of all of us is that we'll find ways to work together and I read a I read a reread an old book this summer that I hadn't read in a long time it's by Victor Frankel I got to tell you a little backstory about it that may at first seem unrelated Victor Frankel was becoming a very famous psychiatrist in Vienna in the late 1930s he was on the cusp of having his name written in history as one of the great thinkers of the modern age and just as he was about to write that book he was hauled off to a concentration camp he survived that camp and I think for three three and a half years and every day he woke up without a doubt expecting the absolute worst and in his book what he does is he recounts how despite that every day he got up and decided to be his best and the message of his book is not really about that story the story of his life the message in the book is something that I've been reminded about every time I have met with one of you over the last few days it's the fact that it is not our job to go out and be great and to make our place in history so that we will be remembered forever it is our job to find out what the world wants from us to listen to that call from our communities to recognize what need it is that we can fill and to step up and answer it and every one of you goodness knows because local government is not always a rewarding job or a rewarding second job for many of you each one of you has stepped up because you heard a call you did not do it because you wanted to go down in history you did it because you wanted to make a difference because you saw a need because you answered that call and not everybody has the courage to do that and we do not know what circumstances we will confront but we can do this we can decide that whatever happens in this uncertain world we can decide to be ready to be ready to confront the world to be ready to confront its challenges to be ready to make sure we are there for the people of British Columbia when they need us that is what leadership is and that is what every single one of you to me represents thank you so much


In celebration of International Women's Day, first, I'd like to thank all the women in IOM for the work you're doing and the sacrifices you have made toward the vision of IOM as a fair, transparent, and inclusive organization, serving millions of migrants of all genders around the world. This year, our celebration theme is climate change and migration, a matter of gender equality. I'd like to take the opportunity to appreciate the continued efforts of all our staff to raise the visibility of the nexus between gender, climate change, and migration every day. The consequences of climate change have highlighted the gender effects on migration patterns. Migrant women facing a loss of jobs and livelihoods forced to return to their countries of origin, trapped, unprotected, along dangerous routes, while exposed to gender-based violence and exploitation. IOM continues to be committed to gender equality, as well as climate change action. But what does that mean for us? For IOM's management, gender equality is not just about the numbers. Our workforce at all levels should reflect the diverse populations that we serve. We must ensure that our policies and decisions are gender-sensitive and inclusive. We must create an environment where women's voices and considerations are heard as clearly and as loudly as other voices. This month, let's reflect on our own attitudes and perceptions around gender and how these might impact the working environment and the way we conduct our work, so that we can better integrate climate change and gender considerations into our existing and future work. Together, we continue to commit to meeting the various needs of IOM's colleagues of all genders. Policies and systems must be in place and strengthened so that all of IOM's team can work in an environment that recognizes gender equality and diversity and empowers each of you who are dedicated to serving migrants of all genders and all age groups all over the world.