Juno News - October 07, 2019We're taking the federal leaders' debate commission to court
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Summary
A brief update from Candice Malcolm at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Toronto on the case of True North Media's application to be accredited to cover the 2019 Canadian leaders debate. We are in court today, waiting to have our case heard by a judge.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Candace Malcolm here from True North. I am at the federal courthouse in downtown Toronto
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and we are now waiting to have our case heard before the judge. We've been given a time it's
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happening at 3 p.m. today so I'm just going to provide a really quick update and overview to
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what is going on with this case. So to take you back to last week, my journalists at True North,
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we submitted an application so that we could cover the national leaders debate. The leaders
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debate is happening tonight, Monday, and we applied two weeks ago on September 24th, almost as soon as
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the application became open. There wasn't a lot of criteria. They didn't say exactly what it is that
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you had to be in order to be a journalist. So my journalist Andrew Lawton submitted an application
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and then on Friday, Friday morning, just a few days before the debate, we got a two-line email
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from the Debates Commission telling us that we had been rejected, that we were not going to be given
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accreditation because they deemed that we were an advocacy organization. So they didn't give us any
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option of appeal. They didn't ask us for any evidence as to why we were a journalist organization.
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They just made their decision behind closed doors and we felt that that decision was arbitrary and
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partisan, that because we are a center-right news organization with a conservative perspective,
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we are being excluded. So we decided to hire a lawyer and to fight to take this to court and to
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let a judge decide. So that brings us here today. Monday, we came in first thing this morning with my
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lawyer in order to file the claim in front of the court. We were waiting to hear a judge. We weren't
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even sure if there was going to be a judge available. They let us know that they are going to be hearing our
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case today at 3 p.m. So I'll keep you informed as to what's going on. But fundamentally, this is a case
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of an organization, a news organization, and journalists fighting for their freedom of press,
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for the right to report. The establishment media in Canada, the mainstream media, have all been
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accredited. They're all part of the in-crowd. And the government, the Debate Commission, the
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Parliamentary Press Gallery, and the Trudeau government are trying to exclude up-and-coming,
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absurd digital organizations like True North. They're trying to exclude people with a conservative
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worldview and persuasion and opinion from attending the debate. It's not fair. We are journalists.
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We don't care what the government says. The government in Canada doesn't get to determine
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who is and who isn't a journalist. Between all of my journalists at True North, we have about eight
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decades of experience as journalists. Andrew Lawton, who is the journalist in question, who wants to
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report on the debate tonight. He's been working as a professional journalist for his entire adult life,
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just about. So anyway, we're going to keep fighting. It's been expensive. Having a lawyer
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work around the clock all weekend is really expensive. But thankfully, we have a lot of
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support from across the country. A lot of people have opened up their wallets. So thank you. Thank you
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so much for everyone who has donated. We're going to continue to fight. Even if we don't get the exact
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decision that we want today, we're not going to let this die. We're going to continue to fight for freedom in Canada.