HANNAFORD： Carney and press freedom
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Summary
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about protecting press freedom on World Press Freedom Day, but behind closed doors, government officials are actually discussing ways to restrict the rights of journalists to ask questions, even if they are not registered as journalists.
Transcript
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Good day, one and all. I have something on my mind today.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before the cameras on May 3rd, World Press Freedom Day,
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and had this to say, journalism empowers us with truth and protects our democracy.
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Also, he said, we must protect what it means to be Canadian and, further quote,
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in a sea of foreign media and disinformation, we need Canadian news more than ever.
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No great fan of Mr. Carney's ideas generally, not to mention relentlessly skeptical of his
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true objectives, I nevertheless could only agree. He said all the right things.
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But here it comes. Less than a week later, a Blacklocks reporter story,
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based on their access to information request, reveals that this is all highly conditional.
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Even as Mr Carney was speaking, behind closed doors his officials had actually been discussing
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how to restrict the rights of journalists to ask questions. Indeed, even who is a journalist?
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That is, on March 10, bureaucrats from the Privy Council Office, Global Affairs Canada,
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Treasury Board, Canada Revenue Agency, and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship
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gathered to hammer out what? A unified federal media accreditation system. These are all the
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most influential pieces of the federal government, the Privy Council Office especially. What that
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particular group of people decide is going to count. And so what was their goal? They wanted
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to decide once and for all who counts as a bona fide journalist worthy of asking questions
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to government officials at government events, and importantly for folks like us, who does not
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qualify. What do they want, state-licensed journalists? But this is nothing to joke about,
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for we know only too well what goes on. Last January, Western Standard reporter James Snell
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was physically removed by the Edmonton Police Service from Mark Carney's Liberal Leadership
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campaign launch event, a press conference, a news conference, held in Edmonton, Carney's hometown,
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as Mr. Carney was preparing for his run as leader of the party that would later win the 2025 election.
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We remember this. Snell, an accredited member of the Alberta Legislature Press Gallery,
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was denied entry despite having a valid invitation to cover this public campaign event.
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However, mainstream outlets such as CBC, Global News, and City News were freely allowed inside.
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Obviously, somebody made the judgment that the Western Standard shouldn't be admitted. Frankly,
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it was a piece with the Federal Leaders Debates Commission, another Ottawa creation,
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which in two elections, 2019 and 2021, denied entry to rebel news journalists. The commission
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declared them advocates, not journalists, and barred them from the post-debate scrums
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where leaders actually face real questions. The Blacklock's documents make the preference
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unmistakable. Priority access for reporters from the mainstream media,
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who, having access already, can be discouraged from shining light in the wrong places
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by loss of availability privileges. You say bad things about us, you don't get to come to
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the press conference. You don't get your phone calls returned. Independent outlets
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and self-published journalists operating outside the ecosystem are regarded with great suspicion,
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and Mr. Carney's government has evidently concluded that there has to be a way to keep
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them out of the briefing rooms and the lines of questioning reporters at the press conferences.
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This is not press freedom. Comfortable credentialists, journalists who rarely cause
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trouble, get the seat at the table, irritating upstarts who treat, what are you doing in our
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name as a serious question, get shown the door. This collusion is poisonous to democracy.
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Governments, by their very nature, loathe accountability.
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They prefer applause to scrutiny, press releases to tough questions,
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and that is why the right to question and criticize is not a privilege bestowed by the state.
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It is the people's primary defense against government overreach and even oppression.
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Don't forget that in our system, any citizen may stand up and demand,
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what are you as government doing in our name with our money and our laws we have simply grown
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accustomed to get delegating that duty to journalists but the right itself belongs to
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every citizen of canada that is our tradition our heritage from great britain when a government and
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its pet press corps decide together who may exercise it they are not protecting journalism
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they are protecting themselves. The shame lies especially with the established media that cheer
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this exclusionary project. Outlets that once loudly defended press freedom now quietly accept,
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or even actively endorse, rules that treat independent reporters as interlopers. Their
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silence or complicity reveals the ugly truth. Many in the Ottawa bubble view press freedom
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as freedom only for people who think like them. Alternative voices, especially those that challenge
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the prevailing consensus on climate policy, immigration, fiscal mismanagement, they're
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dismissed as not real journalism, disinformation. The result is a press corps that increasingly
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functions as no more than an extension of the governing class rather than its watchdog.
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Mark Carney's public rhetoric about defending Canadian voices rings particularly hollow
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when his officials are busy narrowing the definition of who even qualifies as one.
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Independent journalists, whether they work for Rebel News, Western Standard, True North,
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or who run their own sub-stack, perform the same democratic function as any legacy reporter.
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They show up, they ask questions, and publish what they learn.
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some of those questions will be awkward, some will be hostile. But this is not a bug in the
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system. It is the feature that keeps governments honest. If Ottawa is allowed to entrench this
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two-tier accreditation regime, the losers will not be a handful of conservative outlets.
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The losers will be Canadians who rely on vigorous, unfiltered scrutiny of power,
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the kind we practice here at the Western Standard. When only government-approved voices are permitted
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in the room, the public conversation shrinks to what the powerful find comfortable. That is not
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press freedom. That is managed speech. The access to information records released this week should
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serve as a warning, a government that meets in secret to decide which reporters may ask questions
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who indeed is even a reporter, that is a government that has already chosen convenience
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over accountability, and a media establishment that applauds the exercise has forgotten its
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own purpose. In a representative democracy such as Canada's, the right to say,
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what are you doing, in our name, belongs to every citizen. No closed-door committee in the Privy
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Council Office gets to take that away. And if Mr. Carney really wants us to believe he loves press
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freedom, he needs to repudiate this kind of skullduggery immediately.