Juno News - August 18, 2025


Coalition Avenir Québec on track to lose every seat as separatists surge


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

173.05716

Word count

1,852

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Quebec s provincial government is on track to lose all of its seats in 2026 after a separatist party candidate won in an Arthabasca by-election. The U.S. State Department has warned Canada that its Online News Act undermines press freedom. A new poll has found that 62% of Canadians are opposed to the idea of criminalizing speech deemed as residential school denialism.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Quebec's provincial government is on track to lose all of its seats in 2026 after a separatist
00:00:09.380 party candidate won in an Arthabasca by-election. The U.S. State Department has warned Canada that
00:00:14.720 its Online News Act undermines press freedom despite Canada's historic respect for free speech.
00:00:19.980 A new poll has found that 62% of Canadians are opposed to the idea of criminalizing speech
00:00:25.140 deemed as, quote, residential school denialism. Hello, Canada. It's Monday, August 18th,
00:00:30.540 and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Isaac Lamoureux. And I'm Willie Temtem.
00:00:34.540 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know. Let's discuss the top stories of the day
00:00:38.720 and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else. A new 338 Canada projection shows
00:00:46.180 the governing Coalition Avenir Québec would be wiped out in the October 2026 provincial election,
00:00:52.000 losing all 86 seats it currently holds in the National Assembly. The seat forecast, released
00:00:57.420 Wednesday, comes just two days after the CAQ suffered another stinging defeat, this time in
00:01:03.080 the Arthabasca by-election, where the separatist Parti Québécois took the riding with 46% of the vote.
00:01:09.460 PQ candidate Alex Boissonneau held a steady lead throughout Monday's count, besting Conservative
00:01:14.640 Party of Quebec leader Eric Duhame, who finished with about 35% of the vote. CAQ candidate Kevin
00:01:21.740 Brasseur, who ran in a riding, the party captured with 51% of the vote in 2022, placed fourth with
00:01:28.240 roughly 7% of the vote. The loss marked the third consecutive by-election in which the PQ
00:01:33.840 rested a seat from the CAQ. The Sovereignist Party also captured Jean Talon in October 2023 and
00:01:40.820 Terrebonne in March 2024. Premier François Legault, whose party won 90 seats in the 2022 election,
00:01:46.440 but now holds 86, admitted Quebecers are, quote, disappointed with his government and said,
00:01:52.060 this week it is, quote, time for me to show humility and to listen to citizens. So, Walid,
00:01:57.060 if these projections are true and they do lose all their seats, what could this mean for the province?
00:02:02.180 Well, there's a few things at play here. First of all, the governing party has lost significant
00:02:06.660 support. This would be the first time in history that the governing party would go down to zero seats
00:02:11.280 in this consecutive election. I mean, that is insane by all historical measures. But beyond that,
00:02:16.540 who takes power? Well, we know about the Pacte Québécois and how that they're popular in the polls
00:02:20.460 and how they're leading the way to form the next government in 2026. This is a party which supports
00:02:26.980 a referendum process to create a situation for independence in Quebec, while, of course,
00:02:32.160 we see in Alberta the Prosperity Project taking the public forum with a similar agenda of
00:02:37.080 separatism or, at the very least, independence from Ottawa. So, it's significant because of the
00:02:42.340 opposition. It's also significant to note that Canada's, or Quebec's, rather, local dynamic is
00:02:47.800 changing. Across country, but especially in Quebec, we've seen a growth, unlike any time before,
00:02:52.540 of a provincial party that has not had a strong root in history in Quebec. I'm referring, of course,
00:02:58.460 to the Conservative Party of Quebec, which would have a chance to have their first ever seats ever.
00:03:02.680 They have had seats in the Legislative Assembly before in Quebec, or the National Assembly,
00:03:07.080 as they call it. One seat that was from a defective government member, but this next election can
00:03:12.620 project them winning around eight to nine seats, which would be the first ever seats they would
00:03:16.560 win an election, including their leader, Eric Duhaime. So, conservatives could see a great growth
00:03:22.360 in Quebec. The independence movement would see a formidable, strong government, and the current
00:03:28.580 government would see an absolute annihilation, perhaps even greater than that of Kathleen Wendon 0.99
00:03:33.580 Ontario, in 2018.
00:03:37.660 The U.S. State Department is taking aim at Canada's Online News Act and the New Human Rights Report,
00:03:42.520 warning that it undermines press freedom as hundreds of news organizations across the country have begun
00:03:47.940 receiving funding under the law. The report includes the act in a section on freedom of the press,
00:03:52.700 saying, quote, significant curtailments remain despite Canada generally respecting free expression.
00:03:58.080 In fact, concerns with the act, as well as journalism, tax credits, and federal media programs, including
00:04:03.660 a diversity hiring stream it claimed discriminates, quote, against journalists who fell outside of
00:04:08.860 these favored categories. Under the Online News Act, tech platforms are required to compensate
00:04:13.180 Canadian news outlets for their content. Platforms like Meta, which did not comply with the mechanism,
00:04:17.600 were barred from posting news articles on their platforms, effectively censoring news outlets
00:04:22.040 and their accounts on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Question for you, Isaac. So now that the
00:04:27.360 U.S. government has its sights on the Online News Act, what are some of the criticisms that Freedom
00:04:31.800 Advocates in Canada raised with the act initially? Yeah, Walid, so it's quite a long list. Freedom
00:04:37.580 Advocates in Canada have been raising red flags about the Online News Act for long before the U.S.
00:04:42.660 State Department weighed in, and their concerns have largely centered on how the law distorted the
00:04:47.600 media landscape undermined free expression and entrenched government influence over journalism.
00:04:52.880 One of the biggest criticisms was that the law created a two-tiered system in Canadian media.
00:04:58.440 Of course, outlets recognized as qualified by Ottawa, which is typically large, legacy, and almost
00:05:03.220 exclusively left-leaning newsrooms, gained access to Google's $100 million annual fund and other
00:05:09.020 subsidies, while smaller, independent, or concerted outlets were largely excluded. Reports have showed that
00:05:15.360 organizations like the CBC, Bell Media, Post Media, and Rogers received millions, while only a single
00:05:21.760 center-right newsroom got funding from the first Google payout. Critics have argued that this amounted
00:05:26.640 to the government picking winners and losers in the media space. Another concern was that, of course,
00:05:31.540 the act backfired on news accessibility, because as you mentioned, when Meta refused to comply, it blocked
00:05:36.300 all Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram, which resulted in a sharp drop in readership. Some outlets
00:05:42.460 cited losing more than 40% of their traffic, effectively silencing independent publishers
00:05:48.160 who relied on social media platforms to reach audiences. Candace Malcolm, founder of True North,
00:05:53.260 among others, have noted this irony, that while journalists were still banned from Meta, the Liberal
00:05:58.480 government quietly resumed running taxpayer-funded ads on the platform for its own political campaign.
00:06:04.820 Legal experts like Michael Geist also warned that the law was poorly designed and full of
00:06:10.140 contradictions. Google was given a special carve-out deal that let it avoid the binding arbitration
00:06:15.240 mechanism that was supposed to be the backbone of the legislation, but in practice, that means that
00:06:19.960 Google ended up paying far less than the government originally claimed the bill would deliver, while
00:06:24.620 still gaining a monopoly role in deciding which newsrooms got a cut. Civil liberties groups have also
00:06:30.140 chimed in, saying they're worried that, taken together with other liberal attempts at online
00:06:35.140 regulation, like the Online Harms Act, the Online News Act, represented a broader push towards state
00:06:40.340 control of digital speech. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned that these laws handed judge,
00:06:46.420 jury, and executioner powers to government appointees, chilling free expression. So freedom advocates in
00:06:52.340 Canada have said that the Online News Act was less about saving journalism and more about cementing
00:06:57.060 financial dependence on government-approved funding streams. And they have warned that this undermines the
00:07:02.020 independence of the press, restricts access to news, and is pushing Canada further down the path of
00:07:07.620 censorship and media capture.
00:07:12.900 Four years after the unsubstantiated claims that hundreds of children were buried underneath a
00:07:18.020 former residential school in Kamloops, BC, were first made, Canadians are now pushing back on the
00:07:23.300 notion of criminalizing, quote, denialism. A recent survey by the Angus Reid Institute found that 62%
00:07:30.020 oppose this idea, with 36% strongly opposing it. The survey reads, quote,
00:07:35.700 even among the demographic most concerned about this issue at any age and gender level, 18 to 34
00:07:41.700 year old women support rises to just 28%. According to the survey, among those who identify as
00:07:48.340 Indigenous, 245 of whom participated in this survey views are divided, with 42% supporting
00:07:54.820 criminalizing denialism and 45% opposing it. In recent years, there have been calls to criminalize
00:08:00.420 residential school denialism by classifying it as hate speech from both politicians and the
00:08:05.380 First Nations Leadership Council in British Columbia. NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, Leah Gazan,
00:08:11.540 introduced Bill C-413, an act to, quote, amend the criminal code promotion of hatred against Indigenous
00:08:17.860 peoples, which passed its first reading in the House of Commons last fall. The proposed legislation is
00:08:22.500 seeking a prison sentence of up to two years for anyone found guilty of, quote,
00:08:26.660 communicating statements other than in private conversation that willfully promotes hatred
00:08:31.140 against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying, or justifying the Indian residential
00:08:36.500 school system in Canada, or by misrepresenting facts relating to it. And just to finish with a fact
00:08:42.180 here, Waleed, remember, zero graves have been found. Survivors and their families deserve to heal from
00:08:48.500 this intergenerational tragedy and be free from violent hate. And we cannot allow their safety and
00:08:55.620 well-being to be put further at risk. All parliamentarians must stand firm against all
00:09:01.620 forms of damaging hate speech, including the denial of the tragedy of the residential schools in Canada.
00:09:10.340 So, Waleed, what were the main issues advocates have raised with the proposed ban on, quote,
00:09:15.140 residential school denialism? We've had coverage on the past at True North. An interview with a former
00:09:21.060 political science professor at the University of Calgary, Tom Flanagan, said the bill C-4813,
00:09:26.660 which was the proposed NDP bill about criminalizing this last year, even though there are some
00:09:32.180 qualifications in the text, these qualifications that you'd have to demonstrate in a trial. Tom
00:09:36.580 Flanagan, a former political science professor at the University of Calgary, spoke to True North last year
00:09:40.260 when he said that the proposed law at the time was a very grave threat to freedom of communication in
00:09:46.500 Canada. Even though there are some qualifications in the text, these are qualifications that you have
00:09:51.700 to demonstrate in a trial. He continued on in saying, if nobody ever went to jail because of it,
00:09:57.140 it has an enormous tendency to harass writers and historians. Most researchers don't have the funds to
00:10:02.740 do that. The very existence of the legislation is a dark cloud hanging over free historical inquiry in
00:10:07.220 Canada. And as you said, Isaac, towards the end of your commentary, there has not been proof of these
00:10:11.540 mass graves after these four years. So going after an unproven crime with such penalties involving up to
00:10:19.700 two years of jail time would have a chilling effect on free speech, as Mr. Flanagan and others have said in the past.
00:10:27.940 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by
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