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Alan Gregg: You're back in Canada on a temporary resident permit and you made it known a many
number of times that you want to be a Canadian citizen. I mean, what was the status of that
whole process right now?
Conrad Black: Well, I'm just a temporary resident and I'm faithfully doing what temporary residents
have to do and not doing what they shouldn't do. And I had to wait for a time for a work
permit, but I didn't do any work for a Canadian employer until I got one. I did get one, I
do have one now. I'll just sort of monitor opinion... I'm assuming that everything will
settle down and those who are militant about these... I mean, goodness knows what motivates
them. I mean, I should be asking you, but that... I do not understand why anybody, no
matter what they think of me personally, is that excited about it. I mean, whoever it
is and whatever they think, must know other people if they don't particularly care for
it, but they don't demand that they leave the country or not come back to it. [laughter]
So, I'm assuming that when everything settles down, I can go back to being a dual citizen.
But if it doesn't happen that way, as long as I can come here and stay here for reasonable
lengths of time, that's fine and I'll just carry on being an EU citizen.
AG: What have you been doing since you've been released? What does your average day
look like?
01:47 CB: Well, I get a lot of work done and I write a lot, and I still am dealing with
some legal matters, though they're nothing like as taxing as they have been for most
of the last nine years. I have some... I'm reviving my career in finance, but in a matter
that since it has no public character, I don't talk about it.
AG: You had a big love fest at the Empire Club last week. I mean, have you been surprised
at your reception back once you come in?
CB: I must have, and I hear I'm being totally serious. I find the reception that I've had,
since I've been back, extremely affecting. It's very touching. I mean, I can not go out
of doors without... Even in my own neighbourhood, which is not heavily populated. I mean, it
doesn't have teaming sidewalks up there out there, but they... With people, very movingly
welcoming me back and it's terrific. It's absolutely terrific.
[applause]
CB: Now, but when you say a love fest, like ask me to give a talk, and I gave a talk.
I mean, I wouldn't...
AG: The organizer said you were a rock star and you're more popular now than before you
went to prison. That sounds like a love fest to me.
CB: I'm not qualified to comment on this.
AG: Okay, we've got some questions from the audience. Conrad, would you tell us what you
learnt teaching at Coleman and you should probably give a little background, some may
not know what job you assumed while...
CB: Well, I was in two facilities in the US. The first one was in a little town of Coleman,
which is midway but approximately so, between Orlando and Tampa. I was advised when I arrived
that I should seek a job, otherwise, I would be assigned one of the property maintenance
jobs like raking leaves or something. It's only a couple of hours a week but I'm... Being
from a northern place, raking leaves in the Florida sun, I thought was kind of underachieving
and might be uncomfortable. Anyway, fortunately, the Head of Education there, was aware of
the book I wrote about Franklin D. Roosevelt and said, "We'll have you." But I became a
tutor to inmates who did not succeed in matriculate... Had not matriculated before they got there
and didn't succeed in the normal examinations.
CB: And so, there was a new group set up of three tutors and I was the humanities tutor.
History and language, English. Although the Haitians, there were a couple of Haitians
that we did it all in French. But the others... Science's man was the former commander of
the torpedo room of a nuclear submarine. Graduate of the US Navy, Navy propulsion... Nuclear
propulsion school and the mathematics person is the former head of mathematics in a big
high school in Little Rock, Arkansas and a commodities dealer that had some problems
with the IRS. [laughter] But we were, if I may say, well qualified for this and [laughter]
we had over a 100 students who ploughed the program with the teachers. And we got them
all through, every one.
AG: And you write in the memoir that those ceremonies, those matriculation ceremonies,
were some of the most moving experiences you've had in your life.
CB: They were, and I hope it's not unscenely for me to say what I'm going to say, but while
I was very generously, very generously and graciously, received at the Empire Club last
week, it was not the same fervour of applause and not as moving to me as the applause I
got when I was introduced as a tutor to these... To this crowd of these people and their relatives
had come from all around the southern states to be present at their son's or father's or
cousin's or nephew whatever it was, graduation from high school which they had not ever been
able to do on the outside.
AG: Another question from the audience. You mention the vagaries of the US Justice system.
I wonder if you have any thoughts, yeah, on Canada's recently passed Bill C-10 which would
dramatically change the country's approach to crime and the justice system?
CB: May I just say very briefly one other thing about the last question? And that is
that I, one thing that shocked me was, I would always start out with these people who were
sent back to me. I was in a big room, almost as big as this and right at the back like
this. So, I could see them coming and they... It all started... I naturally asked them how
far they got in school and they always said they got to grade eight or nine and in fact
we had their academic record. Many of them couldn't, in fact, read or write properly
and they hadn't really learnt even grade one in the system that I went to which wasn't
that fabulous a system. It was a public school in Forest Hills. Good school, I guess, but
it wasn't that great a system, and I was shocked at how much human resources, just human raw
material, was being wasted by an incompetent education system in that country and I'm afraid
it's not the only country that does it.
CB: Now, on your question about Bill C-10, given as you know my status as a temporary
resident, I think it would be a little inappropriate for me to become too [laughter] demonstrative
or histrionic about what I really think of Bill C-10, but I think it is a mistake to
go down the path...