What should the Royals talk about?

What should the Royals talk about?

Hello, royal watchers. This is your regular dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox.

---

As Catherine, Princess of Wales, continues her gradual return to the public side of her role after chemotherapy for cancer, she offered words of support for those who have addictions.

“Everyone suffering from addiction is another human being, with a story of their own, which many of us don’t understand or see,” she said in a message Friday marking Addiction Awareness Week in the United Kingdom.

“It is not our place to judge or criticize. We must take the time to sit by someone’s side, learning the values of love and empathy. Being a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen, these simple acts of kindness are crucial in breaking down the misunderstandings that so many face.”

Sharing that kind of royal interest in a current issue in the U.K. might be something some in that country would like to hear more of, at the same time as some might be content to hear less about the Royals’ personal lives.

Out of a recent poll by Ipsos for The Daily Telegraph, the newspaper highlighted how two in five respondents said they would like to see members of the Royal Family speak more about social issues, promote charitable causes and attend small public engagements.

Almost as many, Ipsos said, “would like to see them spend less or no time speaking about political topics and doing interviews about their personal lives.”

For the poll, Ipsos conducted telephone interviews with 1,089 adults aged 18 to 75 across Great Britain from Nov. 8-11. 

Trying to decipher what might lie behind those views and how they were reported leads down a multitude of paths, whether it might be how members of the Royal Family have been communicating with the public in the last few years or how reports of what they say and do are set against the social and economic climate of the day.

“Perhaps there hasn’t been this much personal detail [about members of the Royal Family] being discussed by the public since the 1990s, when there was the breakdown of the marriages of three of [Queen Elizabeth’s] four children,” Carolyn Harris, a Toronto-based royal author and historian, said in an interview.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, had a high-profile and controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey after they stepped back from official royal duties. They also did a docuseries for Netflix, and Harry released his memoir, Spare.

And this could mean that given “the sheer scale of different interviews and revelations that have taken place … this reaches a saturation point and it’s clear the public are ready to move on to other things,” Harris said.

This also comes at a time of strife in the United Kingdom, where strain over the cost of living is ever-present.

“The economic crisis and with Labour coming into power and the new budget … [Chancellor] Rachel Reeves has put out the new budget and it’s quite tough. And so things are going to get worse,” said Chandrika Kaul, a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in an interview.

“And I suspect it’s a bit of that,” she said, that lies behind the focus on poll results pointing to increased interest in hearing from the Royals on social issues (along with, she suggested, “the media looking for a new angle on an old story”).

Still, there does seem to be significant public curiosity in some personal details from the Royals right now.

There’s a lot of interest in the health of King Charles and Catherine, Harris said.

“People continue to ask what kind of cancer that they are each suffering from, what their treatment regime has been.”

That, she said, is leading to wider debates about medical privacy for the Royals and what the public has a right to know.

More recently, Harris noted, there’s also concern about Queen Camilla, “who’s been fighting a chest infection since very soon after the Australian-Samoa tour” in late October.

As for those who wish to see the Royals spending more time on social issues, Catherine’s comment for Addiction Awareness Week could fit that bill.

“Just as Catherine has made efforts to destigmatize speaking openly about mental illness through her work with Heads Together and other philanthropic organizations, she is making use of her public profile to address the stigma surrounding people struggling with addiction,” Harris said. 

“These are issues that transcend a single election cycle and the Royal Family are therefore well-placed to raise awareness of these important issues over an extended period of time.”

The public desire to see members of the Royal Family talking more about social issues and challenges facing the country needs to be balanced against opposition toward them straying into the political sphere, said Gideon Skinner, senior director of U.K. politics at Ipsos. 

“Generally, appetite for a more active, socially engaged Royal Family is higher among younger people, reflecting the fact that this is the group that feels most undecided toward them at the moment.”

Different members of the Royal Family seem to have different approaches to what they share publicly. 

“I think [Princess Anne is] someone who’s actually managed to have it her own way and who’s always prioritized the social agenda, her work, rather than her personality [and] she’s actually quite popular, too,” said Kaul.

“There haven’t been too many scandals. There hasn’t been too much that has brought her down so that, you know, the fact that she doesn’t engage with the media hasn’t really harmed her popularity and … if anything, she’s respected for the fact that she doesn’t.”

The Ipsos poll, of course, is only a reflection of views within the U.K. 

“Polling data in the Commonwealth realms is often very closely shaped by whether the question involves the cost of royal tours,” said Harris.

In the U.K., Harris noted, the public is aware of the Royal Family not only when they are undertaking public engagements, but also when they are away from the public eye.

“Their private lives as well as their public lives are unfolding in the United Kingdom, whereas … when members of the Royal Family are present in Canada, generally they are undertaking public engagements and that affects how they’re perceived.”

There are exceptions — Harry and Meghan living in British Columbia in early 2020 and Prince Andrew attending Lakefield College School, near Peterborough, Ont., in 1977.

“But generally the Canadian perception of royalty is different because they tend to be here undertaking either official or working engagements,” said Harris.

Harry comes back

Speaking of Prince Harry, he returned to B.C. for a quick visit to promote the 2025 edition of the Invictus Games he founded to support wounded, injured and sick veterans and members of the Armed Forces.

His visit included an appearance at the Grey Cup in Vancouver, and time with children who were taking part in a school program that aims to shift perceptions of service members, veterans and people with disabilities.

“Seeing them learn about the Invictus Games has had a profound impact on me because this is where Invictus starts to go even wider, outside of the Invictus community into schools in Canada and hopefully around the world, as well,” Harry said.

The Invictus Games in Vancouver and Whistler in February will be the first winter version of the adaptive sports competition Harry founded a decade ago.

Francesca Colussi, a member of Team Canada who will be competing in skeleton and seated rowing, told CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe what the Games mean for her.

“The core of the Invictus Games for me is healing, it’s healing through sport.”

Harry’s time in Vancouver reflected his personal commitment to the Games, Harris said.

“He made very clear when he stepped back from his duties as a senior member of the Royal Family that there were certain causes important to him that he’s developed in a personal capacity.”

The time with the schoolchildren included a game of sitting volleyball, with Harry in on the action at floor level.

“Prince Harry has always had a very strong rapport with children,” said Harris.

“He’s spoken about his own experiences in school, that academic subjects were sometimes a struggle for him, but being outside on the playing field, playing sports, physical education, that was where he felt happiest.”

The visit may also reflect shifting priorities for Harry and Meghan, who are living with their two children in California.

“For a number of years, Harry and Meghan were very focused on ensuring the public knew their side of the story for why they’d stepped back for royal duties — they wanted to ensure that they had some control over the narrative that was being presented to the public,” said Harris.

“But nearly four years after Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties, they appear to be moving on to other projects.”

In his promotion for this round of the Invictus Games, there was also a change in style, including a skit in which Harry appears to receive a tattoo from American rapper and country singer Jelly Roll, who will perform at the closing ceremony on Feb. 16.

“It’s a different tone than some of the earlier Invictus Games videos that featured Prince Harry and [Queen Elizabeth] and Barack and Michelle Obama,” said Harris.

A royal stamp of approval

Colleen Silverthorn, our CBC colleague in Regina, had this report the other day:

Jeffery Straker has had many career highlights, but a recent thank-you from King Charles may be at the top of his list.

Straker, a Saskatchewan singer-songwriter, was in the midst of a three-week tour of the United Kingdom earlier this month when he received an email from Saskatchewan Lt.-Gov. Russel Mirasty.

Mirasty informed Straker that his most recent album, Great Big Sky, had made its way to Buckingham Palace and King Charles had given it a listen.

“It kind of stopped me in my tracks. I sort of knew a CD had made its way, but I didn’t know where it had gone,” Straker told host Stefani Langenegger on CBC Radio’s The Morning Edition — Sask.

One song in particular, Better Than What We Found, struck a chord with King Charles.

“I really wrote it for him. It was a song for him and that’s what was the most staggering about it, that he actually heard it,” Straker said.

“I was moved by it. It was really something.”

Straker wrote Better Than What We Found after being asked to perform at coronation celebrations on May 13, 2023, at Government House in Regina.

“It’s a hard task to write a song to celebrate the start of something, ’cause you can’t go through the list of things that have been accomplished,” Straker said.

He eventually decided on a song that encourages all people to do their best and leave the world better than they’d found it.

“When it was done, the lieutenant-governor did a presentation and he sort of leaned in and said, ‘I’m going to Buckingham Palace next week, I’m going to tell the King about this song. I really like it.'”

Mirasty wrote a letter to the King this August explaining the context behind the song and enclosed a copy of the album, according to Caroline Speirs, Mirasty’s executive director and private secretary.

Ralph Goodale, the high commissioner for Canada in the United Kingdom, was visiting Saskatchewan and planning a trip to London that fall. He promised to hand-deliver the letter and album to Buckingham Palace.

“We didn’t have to send it through the mail or anything,” Speirs said. “The high commissioner took it in his suitcase.”

Speirs read the pertinent part of the letter for CBC.

“I was delighted to receive your most thoughtful gift of the CD Great Big Sky by Jeffrey Straker,” it said. 

“I was touched to learn that the song Better Than What We Found was commissioned for the coronation celebration at Government House in Regina. It was so very good of you and Mrs. Mirasty to have organized such a wonderful event to celebrate the coronation. Please do convey my very best wishes to Jeffrey Straker for a successful tour.”

Straker said receiving the thank you was special.

“He signed it warmest, sincerely, Charles R., for Rex, which was really lovely.” 

Royally quotable

“I want my children to live in a world where swallows still migrate, gorillas still live in the cloud forests of Uganda and rhinos still roam the arid rangelands of Namibia.”

— Prince William, during a speech at the 2024 Tusk Conservation Awards. 

William also offered insight into a new hobby one of his children has picked up, telling award guests Rolling Stones bassist Ronnie Wood and former Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler that Prince Louis is learning the drums. “That’s why I spend my entire life with my fingers in my ears,” William said.

Royal reads 

1. Australian lawmakers have voted to censure an Aboriginal senator who heckled King Charles during his visit to Canberra last month to express their “profound disapproval” of her protest. [BBC]

2. Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, expressed their sadness at the death of teenage photographer Liz Hatton, saying it was “an honour to have met such a brave and humble young woman.” Photos released on William and Catherine’s social media feed early last month showed the moment Catherine hugged the young cancer patient, who had been invited to take pictures at an investiture. [ITV]

3. Burglars broke into a farm on the estate surrounding Windsor Castle last month and stole two vehicles, Thames Valley Police said. [BBC]

4. Technology has been used to recreate the voice of the medieval King Richard III, complete with a distinctive Yorkshire accent. [The Guardian]

---

Sign up here to have The Royal Fascinator newsletter land in your inbox every other Friday.

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your questions, ideas, comments, feedback and notes to royalfascinator@cbc.ca. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

Published at Sun, 01 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Trump’s tariff threat throws a spotlight on the whack-a-mole trade in drug precursors

President-elect Donald Trump this week cited drugs as a reason for his threat of crushing U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports.

“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Canadian politicians have correctly pointed out that Canada and fellow tariff victim Mexico have little in common when it comes to the flow of illegal drugs (or migrants).

But it’s also a fact that fentanyl production in Canada is booming as seizures at the border are dropping — which indicates that Canada has transformed from a buyer of fentanyl and methamphetamine into a significant producer and even exporter.

That domestic production depends on getting the ingredients into the country. Increasingly, as the drug industry moves into synthetics and away from dependence on plants like coca and poppies, efforts to counter drug trafficking are focusing on those ingredients and precursors.

Fentanyl deaths may have peaked

It’s possible that 2022 may be remembered as the worst of the fentanyl epidemic. Deaths in the U.S. from synthetic opioid overdoses, which started to rise sharply around 2014, appear to have peaked in that year and declined slightly in 2023.

Canada is also posting a slight decline in fatal drug overdoses, with about 21 deaths every day in the first three months of 2024, compared to 23 a day in the same period last year. (For comparison, about two Canadians per day die by homicide, and five die on the roads.)

But that sliver of good news cannot obscure the huge toll that fentanyl has taken on both countries.

Between 2016 and 2024, both countries lost about the same number of people to opioid toxicity that they lost in the Second World War — about 47,000 in Canada and about 400,000 in the U.S. As in war, fentanyl’s victims are typically young.

So it’s hardly surprising that fentanyl has become a political issue, and whether Trump’s allegations against Canada are true or not, it’s clearly in both countries’ interests to do something about fentanyl.

The economics of making fentanyl locally

The logic behind importing chemicals to manufacture fentanyl or meth — instead of producing them overseas and then importing the finished product — is not hard to understand.

China is the number-one source country for the chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. China executes people who make illegal fentanyl.

But that same Chinese government has long been willing to turn a blind eye to Chinese companies that sell chemicals others might use to make fentanyl elsewhere in the world. That fact has led the U.S. to sanction Chinese companies and individuals Washington accuses of profiting from the trade without facing consequences at home.

After sanctioning eight China-based chemical companies last year, the U.S. Department of Justice said the companies proved by their actions that they knew their products were being used for illicit purposes.

“(The eight companies) often attempt to evade law enforcement by using re-shippers in the United States, false return labels, false invoices, fraudulent postage, and packaging that conceals the true contents of the parcels and the identity of the distributors,” the department said in a media statement.

“In addition, these companies tend to use cryptocurrency transactions to conceal their identities and the location and movement of their funds.”

Superlabs sprout in Canada

The two biggest criminal syndicates involved in importing precursors into North America are the Sinaloa cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).

They operate the sophisticated labs needed to turn precursors into finished opioids and methamphetamine, generating billions of dollars in the process.

But that production is not confined to Mexico. A recent RCMP bust in Falkland, B.C. unveiled a superlab production facility unlike any ever discovered before in Canada — one with the capacity to produce vast quantities of fentanyl and meth for export (although the RCMP reported that the drugs’ intended market was not the U.S.).

It was just the latest haul in a series of seizures by the B.C. RCMP of precursor chemicals.

There are also increasing signs of efforts by Mexican cartels to establish a foothold, and production facilities, in western Canada.

There’s nothing new about efforts to crack down on precursors. In fact, the main precursors of methamphetamine (1-phenyl-2-propanone [P2P] and methylamine) and of fentanyl (4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine [ANPP] and norfentanyl) are about as tightly regulated as the finished drugs themselves.

For that reason, the focus of law enforcement and regulators has shifted to “pre-precursors” that have been less regulated, such as the 4-Piperidone that is used to manufacture ANPP, which in turn is used to make fentanyl.

Both Canada and Mexico have taken steps against that substance.

In June, Canada put 4-piperidone, “its salts, derivatives and analogues and salts of derivatives and analogues,” into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act as a controlled substance.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum highlighted her own country’s anti-fentanyl efforts in a letter she wrote to Trump in response to his tariff threat.

“A constitutional reform is in the course of being approved by the legislative branch in my country that will declare the production, distribution and commercialization of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to be a grave crime for which all access to bail is denied,” she wrote.

“Nonetheless, it is public knowledge that the chemical precursors enter Canada, the United States and Mexico in an illegal manner coming from Asian countries, which makes international collaboration imperative.”

A game of whack-a-mole

But part of the problem with controlling synthetics is that there are often alternatives available — and there’s always a precursor to the precursor.

Calvin Chrustie spent 32 years in the RCMP, many of them investigating transnational organized crime.

“One of the complexities that makes it very difficult for law enforcement, border people, is the shift and change in terms of the structures of some of these chemicals,” he told CBC News.

Sometimes, minor molecular alterations can be made to a banned substance that render it legal and unregulated.

“They design them so that law enforcement and others can’t seize because they don’t fit into certain schedules within our legal framework,” Chrustie said.

It’s not hard to ban 4-piperidone, a substance that has no important commercial application beyond the manufacture of fentanyl. But 4-piperidone itself can be made from other substances that are less tightly regulated.

And if those substances are regulated, the drug producers can simply move further back up the production chain until they get to pre-pre-precursors — substances that do have legitimate uses in industry and are therefore very difficult to regulate.

At a certain point, the effort to stop illicit drug manufacturing begins to interfere with legitimate commerce.

Many ways to skin a cat

Moreover, when one precursor is banned, another one is quickly found (or designed) to replace it.

Case in point: when the U.S. meth epidemic began, most meth was being synthesized domestically in small labs using the pseudoephedrine in cough medicine as a starting point. Meth producers hired addicts, known as “smurfs,” to tour drugstores buying up large quantities of cough syrup.

The U.S. government responded in 2005 with the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, banning over-the-counter sales of such medications.

But by then, Mexican drug cartels — already rich from cocaine, heroin and marijuana — had taken an interest in the meth market and sought to obtain pseudoephedrine on an industrial scale.

As governments worked to shut down that international trade around 2008, Mexican cartels simply moved their ephedrine trafficking routes to other countries such as Argentina.

By the time the ephedrine trade was being more effectively controlled, the cartels had found they didn’t need it any longer. They could make meth using the “P2P” method that starts with 1-phenyl-2-propanone.

By 2019, the Drug Enforcement Administration was reporting that over 99 per cent of all Mexican meth samples tested were produced using the P2P method.

There are, in fact, dozens of different ways to make methamphetamine, and the meth coming out of Mexico now is as pure as it has ever been — and cheaper than ever.

Follow the money

The effort to stop the international trade in drugs was not successful even when drugs depended on the cultivation of crops such as coca and poppy that could (theoretically) be sprayed or manually eradicated. Today, more land is devoted to coca cultivation than ever before.

But the challenge is much greater with synthetics, which offer no obvious choke point where authorities might be able to intervene and interrupt production. Chrustie said a strategy that focuses mainly on the ingredients of drugs is probably doomed to fail.

“I think it has to be a much more strategic, holistic approach,” he said. “And that includes, yes, looking at the precursors, looking where they come from. I would just say it’s one aspect.”

The key to dismantling networks that import precursors and manufacture drugs, he said, is to target the people and companies doing it, and the illicit finance that supports it.

“Focusing on the people, I think, is just as important as focusing on the product,” he said. “And probably even more important than the product, I think, is the finances of it.

“If we just focus on the precursors and not those two most important impact points in terms of disruption enforcement, if we can’t target the people because our legal framework in terms of our disclosure laws doesn’t allow us to collaborate and share information with our foreign partners, that’s a problem.”

Chrustie said legal businesses are often involved in the trade, and wittingly or unwittingly profit from it without facing severe consequences.

“Tackling it without the business community and the banks clamping down on businesses being used to facilitate and fund precursors to productions, and the people that are behind these networks,” is unlikely to produce the desired results, he said.

Published at Sun, 01 Dec 2024 09:01:00 +0000