Western Standard - Mark Carney and press freedom

00:00:00.000 Good day one and all. I have something on my mind today. Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before

00:00:06.800 the cameras on May the 3rd, World Press Freedom Day, and had this to say. Journalism empowers us

00:00:17.760 with truth and protects our democracy. Also, he said, we must protect what it means to be Canadian

00:00:25.120 and, further quote, in a sea of foreign media and disinformation, we need Canadian news more than

00:00:32.680 ever. No great fan of Mr. Carney's ideas generally, not to mention relentlessly skeptical of his true

00:00:41.420 objectives, I nevertheless could only agree. He said all the right things. But here it comes.

00:00:50.140 Less than a week later, a Blacklock's reporter story, based on their access to information

00:00:56.860 request, reveals that this is all highly conditional. Even as Mr. Carney was speaking,

00:01:03.420 behind closed doors his officials had actually been discussing how to restrict the rights of

00:01:09.980 journalists to ask questions. Indeed, even who is a journalist? That is, on March 10,

00:01:17.820 bureaucrats from the Privy Council Office, Global Affairs Canada, Treasury Board,

00:01:22.300 Canada Revenue Agency, and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship gathered to hammer out a unified

00:01:31.340 federal media accreditation system. These are all the most influential pieces of the federal

00:01:39.340 government, the Privy Council Office especially. What that particular group of people decide is

00:01:45.340 going to count. And so what was their goal? They wanted to decide once and for all who

00:01:52.060 counts as a bona fide journalist worthy of asking questions to government officials at government

00:01:58.700 events, and importantly for folks like us, who does not qualify. What do they want,

00:02:06.540 state-licensed journalists? This is nothing to joke about, for we know only too well what goes on.

00:02:15.340 Last January, Western Standard reporter James Snell was physically removed by the Edmonton

00:02:21.660 Police Service from Mark Carney's Liberal Leadership campaign launch event, a press

00:02:27.500 conference, a news conference, held in Edmonton, Carney's hometown, as Mr. Carney was preparing

00:02:35.500 for his run as leader of the party that would later win the 2025 election.

00:02:40.140 We remember this. Snell, an accredited member of the Alberta Legislature Press Gallery,

00:02:48.880 was denied entry despite having a valid invitation to cover this public campaign event.

00:02:55.260 However, mainstream outlets such as CBC, Global News, and City News were freely allowed inside.

00:03:03.200 Obviously, somebody made the judgment that the Western Standard shouldn't be admitted.

00:03:08.940 Frankly, it was a piece with the Federal Leaders Debates Commission, another Ottawa creation,

00:03:14.780 which in two elections, 2019 and 2021, denied entry to rebel news journalists. The commission

00:03:21.820 declared them advocates, not journalists, and barred them from the post-debate scrums

00:03:27.820 where leaders actually face real questions. The Blacklock's documents make the preference

00:03:34.700 unmistakable. Priority access for reporters from the mainstream media who, having access already,

00:03:42.140 can be discouraged from shining light in the wrong places by loss of availability privileges.

00:03:49.660 You say bad things about us, you don't get to come to the press conference. You don't get

00:03:54.460 your phone calls returned. Independent outlets and self-published journalists operating outside

00:04:00.620 the ecosystem are regarded with great suspicion, and Mr Carney's government has evidently concluded

00:04:07.340 that there has to be a way to keep them out of the briefing rooms and the lines of questioning

00:04:12.220 reporters at the press conferences. This is not press freedom. Comfortable credentialists,

00:04:20.060 journalists who rarely cause trouble, get the seat at the table, irritating upstarts who treat

00:04:26.940 what are you doing in our name as a serious question, get shown the door. This collusion

00:04:33.020 is poisonous to democracy. Governments, by their very nature, loathe accountability. They prefer

00:04:39.660 applause to scrutiny, press releases to tough questions, and that is why the right to question

00:04:45.420 and criticize is not a privilege bestowed by the state. It is the people's primary defense

00:04:52.140 against government overreach and even oppression. Don't forget that in our system any citizen

00:04:59.180 may stand up and demand, what are you, as government, doing in our name, with our money,

00:05:05.740 and our laws? We have simply grown accustomed to delegating that duty to journalists,

00:05:12.380 but the right itself belongs to every citizen of Canada. That is our tradition, our heritage,

00:05:19.420 from Great Britain. When a government and its pet press corps decide together who may exercise it,

00:05:25.820 they are not protecting journalism, they are protecting themselves.

00:05:32.620 The shame lies especially with the established media that cheer this exclusionary project.

00:05:39.340 Outlets that once loudly defended press freedom now quietly accept, or even actively endorse,

00:05:46.060 rules that treat independent reporters as interlopers. Their silence or complicity

00:05:52.620 reveals the ugly truth. Many in the Ottawa bubble view press freedom as freedom only

00:05:59.460 for people who think like them. Alternative voices, especially those that challenge the

00:06:05.660 prevailing consensus on climate policy, immigration, fiscal mismanagement,

00:06:10.720 but they're dismissed as not real journalism, disinformation.

00:06:15.400 The result is a press corps that increasingly functions

00:06:18.100 as no more than an extension of the governing class

00:06:21.880 rather than its watchdog.

00:06:26.220 Mark Carney's public rhetoric about defending Canadian voices

00:06:29.700 rings particularly hollow when his officials are busy

00:06:33.060 narrowing the definition of who even qualifies as one.

00:06:37.320 Independent journalists, whether they work for Rebel News,

00:06:40.260 Western Standard, True North, or who run their own substack perform the same democratic function as

00:06:47.700 any legacy reporter. They show up, they ask questions, and publish what they learn. Some

00:06:53.060 of those questions will be awkward. Some will be hostile. But this is not a bug in the system. It

00:06:59.940 is the feature that keeps governments honest. If Ottawa is allowed to entrench this two-tier

00:07:06.100 accreditation regime. The losers will not be a handful of conservative outlets.

00:07:12.980 The losers will be Canadians who rely on vigorous, unfiltered scrutiny of power,

00:07:19.140 the kind we practice here at the Western Standard. When only government-approved voices are permitted

00:07:25.940 in the room, the public conversation shrinks to what the powerful find comfortable.

00:07:33.780 That is not press freedom. That is managed speech. The access to information records released this

00:07:41.460 week should serve as a warning. A government that meets in secret to decide which reporters

00:07:47.460 may ask questions, who indeed is even a reporter, that is a government that has already chosen

00:07:54.180 convenience over accountability, and a media establishment that applauds the exercise

00:08:00.260 has forgotten its own purpose. In a representative democracy such as Canada's, the right to say,

00:08:07.460 what are you doing, in our name, belongs to every citizen. No closed-door committee in the Privy

00:08:13.700 Council office gets to take that away. And if Mr. Carney really wants us to believe he loves press

00:08:20.180 freedom, he needs to repudiate this kind of skullduggery immediately.

00:08:25.860 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - May 16, 2026

Mark Carney and press freedom

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