PHOTO: John McFadden, right, speaks with his lawyer outside a Yellowknife, NWT courthouse. Cody Punter/CANADALAND
A Yellowknife reporter charged with obstructing justice for taking pictures of a crime scene was acquitted, with the judge calling the testimony of the arresting RCMP officers “exaggerated.”
John McFadden, a 54-year-old reporter with Northern News Services, was arrested in the early hours of July 5, 2015 while taking photos of police searching a van in downtown Yellowknife.
During the trial, RCMP accused McFadden — who came to crime scene after having been in a bar across the street — of being intoxicated and aggressive toward police, with one officer testifying “it’s a huge officer safety liability to have an angry man with a camera in the area where you’re trying to work.”
Judge Garth Malakoe rejected the claims that McFadden was drunk and scolded two of the officers for being “inconsistent” and “obstinate” in their testimonies, in his judgement handed down in territorial court Oct. 21.
“What is concerning…is a certain willingness on the part of two officers to exaggerate to make a point and to evade answering certain questions,” Malakoe said. “It is unfortunate when the court observes these traits in professional witnesses when they are testifying to matters that are not central to the case. It means the court must treat their testimony with caution.”
‘Vindication’
In a telephone interview McFadden told CANADALAND he was relieved the 15-month ordeal was finally over.
“I feel 110 per cent vindication. I went to court that day with the hope that I would be found not guilty but that even if I was, [I thought] the judge was going to say something about my actions that night that did not reflect well upon me. He did not. What he said is that he believed me,” he said.
McFadden, who wept in the courtroom as the decision was handed down, added that the process took an emotional toll on him.
“I think I can roll with the punches with the best of them but this has been a very trying time and it’s been a very long time,” he said. “I’m not here gloating, I’m not here basking. I’m just trying to get on with my life.”
According to the facts of the case, during the three and a half minutes McFadden was taking pictures he was twice cautioned by RCMP officers to step back from the scene. He complied each time. When one of the officers saw the reporter’s camera lens come close to an open door where the police were searching, McFadden was arrested and charged.
After hearing testimony from the three Mounties, a witness who is a friend of McFadden’s, and McFadden himself, Judge Malakoe said the accused had not been given clear boundaries by police.
“He was told that he could take photographs from the sidewalk and to stay away from the van. There was no police tape outlining these boundaries. He was not given precise instructions as to what ‘stay away’ meant.”
Malakoe concluded the reporter had no intent to obstruct police officers and was simply trying to do his job.
“McFadden testified that when he saw the police emergency lights flashing and the lane blocked off he ran to investigate. It was part of his job to investigate, It was part of his job to take photographs. When he took [the final photograph] before being arrested, he did so when thought that he would not be interfering with any police officers.”
Before he was charged, McFadden had a somewhat contentious relationship with RCMP. In the winter of 2015, they took issue with McFadden reporting that RCMP had failed to notify the public there was a sexual assault suspect at large. Two weeks later another home was broken into and another person was sexually assaulted. The suspect in the original assault was charged for both incidents, leading police to change their policy about notifying the media regarding potential threats to the public. Several months before his arrest, McFadden was also was banned from an RCMP press conference due to an email which police claimed had a “disrespectful tone.”
‘It’s the mindset of the force’
Bruce Valpy, the managing editor of Northern News Services told CANADALAND that the fact McFadden was arrested and charged for doing his job points to a fundamental gap in police training and psychology.
“[Police] have an important role in society, perhaps the most important role, so it’s only natural the press in its role in society covers them, bad or good,” he said. “The press is 90 per cent positive, but it’s that 10 per cent that gets stuck in their craw. They don’t see that the press has a role to play they just see us as mad dogs and that’s quite a mistake.”
Valpy said if nothing else, the trial had helped clarify boundaries for RCMP and media. However, he added that there was still a ways to go to bring their relationship up to snuff.
“The relationship [between RCMP and media] is dependent on the training they receive and the mindset of the force in general, which is lacking a communication strategy that works for everybody,” he said.
“The problem isn’t the officers or the individuals it’s the mindset of the force.”
Valpy said he hadn’t spoken with RCMP since the decision was handed down, but he suggested such a conversation might be useful.
Yellowknife RCMP declined an interview request from CANADALAND but issued a statement saying: “This verdict is the result of the judicial process, in which we participate and support. We respect the decision of the court.”
While the case has been settled the question remains as to whether or not McFadden will return to his beat covering cops and courts in Yellowknife.
McFadden was reassigned when he was charged in order to avoid a conflict of interest. McFadden said he doesn’t have an axe to grind and that he is keen to get back to doing what he loves best. “I’d like to be optimistic that that relationship with the RCMP can be repaired.”
Valpy said he has yet to to broach the issue with McFadden but that it was just a matter of time until that happened.
“I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t go back to it.” he said. “As matter of fact I think he’ll be a little more agile when he gets in that type of situation again, because it was an agonizing process.”
***
@bordersnbetween
Disclosure: Cody Punter is a former employee of Northern News Services and worked alongside John McFadden.
Photo by Cody Punter.
When the fiction editor at The Walrus resigned last month, he was protesting what he saw as the limiting of icky swears in the magazine. But Nick Mount’s protest was in vain, as the story he quit over will be running in the winter issue with much of its profanity stripped out.
Mount’s frustration stemmed not from obscenities being censored, but the lack of a clear line. “A big part of the problem that led to my resignation [was] the lack of clear limits from the magazine’s publisher or EIC on what language was permissible and what wasn’t,” he said.
What started the discussion of how much profanity was okay in the magazine’s pages, was a now-infamous story by friend-of-CANADALAND Stephen Marche where an owl is fucked to death.
“After the Marche story, the publisher, Shelley Ambrose, said we’d had complaints and asked me to find stories with less ‘dark, violent, abusive, icky, fucky themes,’ ” Mount said.
Ambrose did not reply to several requests for comment.
Following that conversation, Mount was asked to tone down the language in a story by Eden Robinson. “It’s called ‘Nanas I Have Loved,’ and is adapted from the opening chapter of Eden’s new novel Son of a Trickster,” he said. In the story, “the boy’s mother swears a lot, which the story itself criticizes, though the boy’s father.”
After twice going through the story to remove much of the swearing, Mount had had enough and resigned, he said.
But to one source at the magazine familiar with the situation, the whole thing has taken on a tinge of farce in the office. Editors found the swearing in the original draft to be heavy enough that it bordered on juvenile. The edits were made not with an eye on censoring the language, but to tone it down, the source said. There’s no “family-friendly” diktat at the magazine.
Despite that, Mount is no longer the fiction editor and ‘Nanas’ has had its cursing dramatically scaled back, as shown in a draft obtained by CANADALAND. “Shit” appears twice, and “fuck” not at all. Numerous “cunt”s were also dropped from an earlier draft of the story. “Frig” is entirely absent.
The author, Robinson, could not be reached for comment. Mount said the story will appear, uncensored, as the first chapter of her book Son of a Trickster, to be published this winter.
***
@robert_hiltz
On the cover of the March issue of The Walrus, Death makes his merry way through a meadow, killing everything he touches. It’s a story of saving the world for the living by dissolving the dead, with the power of nature.
While the story was written by staffer at the magazine, a freelance writer says she pitched the idea first. Pitch stealing is a serious charge, one not far below outright plagiarism.
Ann Silversides emailed a pitch to the magazine to write a story about the facility in Smith Falls, Ont., on July 6, 2015. Three weeks later on the 27th, she received a rejection letter from the magazine saying the magazine was already working on a similar story. The next day, July 28, Graeme Bayliss was out reporting the story, according to an email he sent at the time.
Silversides was out of the country, but when she returned to Canada in May of this year to see a very familiar story gracing the cover of the magazine, she was taken aback. She sent a letter to the Walrus, asking for an explanation.
When confronted with the accusation of possible theft, Walrus editor-in-chief Jonathan Kay promised to look into the matter, in an email to Silversides sent in May. Kay said if her pitch was stolen, the magazine would pay her $1,500, the usual fee for a story of its nature.
From: Jonathan Kay
Date: 18 May 2016
Subject: Re: The Walrus calling
To: Ann Silversides
Thanks
I am investigating this. I am going to give everyone involved a chance to give me their side of the story.
If we determine that your idea was stolen, I will pay you the amount of money I would have paid for a finished draft of your article — which in this case would be $1500.
Best, Jon.
At this point, publisher Shelley Ambrose took the reins. In a long email to Silversides on June 2, Ambrose said she had spoken with staff and looked at prior research and concluded the pitch was not stolen.
The key paragraph (the full text can be found below*):
“I have now been able to not only talk to current and former editorial staff — including our editor-in-chief [Jonathan Kay], as well as the author of the Dissolving the Dead’ [Bayliss] and I have gone back to look at research timelines and more. And, although Graeme Bayliss did not actually do the interviews or write the story until much later, he did, in fact, pitch it — in June 2015 — to the then managing editor — a month before your pitch arrived. He had also – inspired by a short article he had read — done some early research (I actually have seen the dated Google records) in order to pitch the story internally. So the response you were given to your pitch at the time — perfunctory as it was, was the simple truth. We did, in fact, have a story about that very thing in the mix already, so we cannot agree that your pitch — excellent as it was — was the basis of ‘Dissolving the Dead.’ ” We all agree, however, that your pitch was timely and that the idea was obviously a good one.
There was a problem with this explanation. The managing editor at the time, Kyle Wyatt, has since said he did not know about the pitch before Bayliss had gone reporting the story. In a comment on Story Board, a news site run by the Canadian Media Guild frequented by freelance writers. Wyatt says the first he heard of the story was when Bayliss sent him an email saying he was off to report it.
I had been away from the office for a week or so, on an annual canoe trip in Nebraska. Beyond this email and processing a rental car receipt shortly after Bayliss’s visit to Smith Falls, I had no involvement with the story—the pitching, the writing, or the editing.
Shelley Ambrose cannot produce the emails that Ann Silversides has requested, detailing the June 2015 commissioning, because they simply do not exist; I made no such decision to “proceed with the story as planned.”
The content of the email, which CANADALAND has seen independently, reads [emphasis ours]:
From: Graeme Bayliss
Date: July 28 2015
Subject: Out of office Thursday
To: Kyle Wyatt, Jonathan Kay
“Just a heads-up that I’ll be away Thursday, driving out to Smiths Falls to report on a story. (Kyle: I pitched a story to Jon while you were away; broadly, it’s about a new bio-cremation facility. The man who runs it has offered to give me a tour and an interview. The drive is about four hours each way.)”
Graeme
Ambrose did not reply to requests for comment, nor did she provide any of the evidence that cleared the magazine. Kay, the editor-in-chief, said he was unable to speak on the record, and directed all questions to Ambrose. When reached for comment, Bayliss said he could not talk about anything that happened during his time at the Walrus, as he had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
This is not the first time Walrus staff have been accused of using a freelancer’s work in house. Last year, freelancer Alex Gillis said the investigative work he did for a story on cheating in universities was entirely reworked into an essay written by Wyatt. The writer, Gillis, received part of his fee when the story was killed, and an apology from Kay.
In her email to the freelancer, Ambrose said the magazine had done a poor job communicating with Silversides, and should have been more forthcoming with the writer.
“The editors who read your pitch should have called you or written to tell you exactly what was on the [schedule] here and involved you or even assigned the story to you,” Ambrose wrote. “Instead the managing editor at the time decided to stay on the course he was already on. However frustrating this may be in retrospect, it was his prerogative.”
Reached by phone, Wyatt confirmed his involvement in the story was limited to receiving Bayliss’s email and processing a car rental receipt, echoing his early Story Board comment.
Silversides wasn’t satisfied with Ambrose’s response. Despite promises to improve communication with the writer, Ambrose did not reply to an email from Silversides asking for further proof last June.
She’s still waiting.
—With files from Jane Lytvynenko
***
@robert_hiltz
*The full text of Ambrose’s email to Silversides:
From: Shelley Ambrose
Date: 2 June 2016
Subject: “Dissolving the Dead”
To: Ann Silversides
Hello Ann.
I am. Shelley Ambrose here. I am the publisher of the magazine and the exec director of the Walrus Foundation. Jon handed your correspondence on to me and I want to apologize for the length of time (i am on the road with The Walrus Talks) it has taken me to thoroughly check it out. We took this accusation of story stealing very seriously and can absolutely see how you might come to the conclusion that that is what occurred and so I wanted to turn over every rock.
I have now been able to not only talk to current and former editorial staff — including our editor-in-chief, as well as the author of the “Dissolving the Dead” and I have gone back to look at research timelines and more. And, although Graeme Bayliss did not actually do the interviews or write the story until much later, he did, in fact, pitch it — in June 2015 — to the then managing editor — a month before your pitch arrived. He had also — inspired by a short article he had read — done some early research (I actually have seen the dated Google records) in order to pitch the story internally. So the response you were given to your pitch at the time – perfunctory as it was, was the simple truth. We did, in fact, have a story about that very thing in the mix already, so we cannot agree that your pitch — excellent as it was — was the basis of “Dissolving the Dead.” We all agree, however, that your pitch was timely and that the idea was obviously a good one.
We also all agree that our communication with you was woefully inadequate. In fact, the editors who read your pitch should have called you or written to tell you exactly what was on the sced here and involved you or even assigned the story to you. Instead the managing editor at the time decided to stay on the course he was already on. However frustrating this may be in retrospect, it was his prerogative.
I am copying Jon Kay on this because I know he, too, wishes the response to you at the time had been very different. Again, your pitch was excellent and we very much hope you will give us another chance. I know Jon is eager to talk to you about a few stories he is assigning and is also eager to hear your ideas. I can promise you that he will be very forthcoming with details of what we are currently working on, what is in our mix, and where all the possibilities for future stories lie and that all future communication will be much more, well, helpful and detailed.
Truly — Shelley
While many Montrealers were celebrating the 50th anniversary of their transit system (STM), I was protesting it. Instead of cheering on the STM on October 14, a group with reduced mobility, elderly people, and our allies fought against the discrimination we faced both in the media and within the system itself.
Meanwhile, reporting on accessibility and disability is often inaccurate, relies on stereotypes, or just doesn’t exist. Leading up to the anniversary, many in Quebec media wrote celebratory takes on 50 years of the metro. But the exclusion of accessibility coverage mirrors the 50 years disabled Montrealers have been discriminated against.
In Montreal, bus ramps are not deployed a third of the time while the STM falsely advertises a fully wheelchair accessible bus network. The metro is equipped with elevators only at 10 of the 68 stations.
When, right before the anniversary, the Montreal mayor announced that 14 more stations will become accessible, French and English journalists lauded the news. CBC and CTV were the only outlets providing a critical take. Despite activists being skeptical because of past failures, the mayor’s announcement went largely unchallenged.
That lack of skepticism spilled over into the anniversary coverage. None of the French-language media outlets covered the accessibility protest. Only one article that I could find — in Le Devoir — mentioned lack of elevators as one of the faults Montrealers find with the metro system. Out of the English language media outlets, CBC and Global TV both covered our protest. They shared the perspectives of some people at the demonstration and basic information regarding the STM, but I personally reached out to journalists at both of these outlets before the protest.
Instead, there was coverage comparing the Montreal system to other Metros from CBC and Le Devoir. Neither mentioned accessibility despite Montreal having the least accessible subway system in Canada and the U.S. But it’s mostly when disabled people actively reach out that accessibility is covered. In “The network of the future in six steps” on La Presse+ none of the six steps address accessibility.
Other coverage focused on the metro’s history. In this CTV report, a metro enthusiast and historians are interviewed, who romanticize the metro enormously. A short Vice Quebec video shared the work of a young photographer who won an international prize for his photos of the Montreal metro. We are reminded that a lot of people don’t appreciate the beauty of the transit system. As the young photographer says, “there’s a lot to love about the Montreal metro,” the shot focuses on a long staircase in one of the stations.
While these stories do draw on my heartstrings, I don’t feel nostalgic for a time when people who looked or moved like me were even more excluded from transit and public life than they are today. A time when the ableist future was being built, brick by brick, track by track, in the belly of the city that boasts a metro like a ‘lifeline’ to the city.
There is no lack of topics to cover, either. There are over 50 human rights complaints currently filed against the STM about systemic discrimination against disabled people at the provincial human rights commission. There’s also a class action lawsuit filed by the disability rights organization RAPLIQ. One route, the 747 has had completely inaccessible buses reintroduced to the line. The STM’s website says, “Passengers must climb six steps to reach their seat. Coach buses are not equipped with an access ramp.” This means the STM is actively contradicting their “100% accessible buses” claim.
The celebration itself was held in an inaccessible metro station. After an outcry from transit users with reduced mobility, Transport Mesadapte, and RUTA (the group representing paratransit users) STM said they would make the Place-des-Arts station accessible only for the day of the anniversary. “On this occasion, the site for the festivities will be temporarily accessible via Place des Arts building for people with reduced mobility.” Why aren’t more reporters asking about the other 364 days of the year?
Without broad and well-researched media coverage of transit accessibility in Quebec — and nationally — we’re looking at more of the same as we approach a presumably romanticized and ableist future. Sure, we’ll have new cars and cellphone service on the metro, but people who can’t do the 80-odd steps up and down at most stations will be excluded from this part of public life. It has been 50 years with little progress.
***
A year after CBC Radio-Canada reported allegations of police sexually and physically abusing Aboriginal women in Val-d’Or, Quebec, the broadcaster is getting sued for $2.3 million. As first reported by La Presse, forty police officers have filed the defamation lawsuit claiming their reputations have been tainted by the reporting.
According to the La Presse article, the police are arguing the CBC Radio-Canada reporting upset their relationship with the community and tainted the reputation of the officers who do not have sexual abuse allegations against them. They also call Radio-Canada’s reporting biased, inaccurate, and incomplete. The Provincial Police Association of Quebec, who’s funding the lawsuit, did not have an English-speaking spokesperson immediately available for comment. If they become available, this story will be updated.
For its part, Radio-Canada stands by the reporting. In a statement, the broadcaster says they reject the claims made by Val-d’Or police and intend to fight them in court.
“Winner of the Michener Award, the most prestigious award in Canadian journalism, and produced in accordance with CBC/Radio-Canada’s Journalistic Standards and Practices, the report Abus de la SQ: les femmes brisent le silence was of undeniable public interest and Radio-Canada committed no fault in airing it on its investigative news program Enquête. It therefore rejects all claims made by police at the Sûreté du Québec’s Val-d’Or detachment in the civil suit filed against the Corporation.” says the Radio-Canada statement.
The report uncovered two decades of alleged sexual abuse against Aboriginal women in the Quebec community. The women said police officers would trade drugs or alcohol for sex and paid the women to keep quiet. Other women said they were beaten and raped by the officers. After the revelations, the Montreal Police opened an investigation the allegations.
“The Sûreté du Québec has never officially denied the allegations made in the report,” says the Radio-Canada statement.
***
jane@canadalandshow.com
Correction: A previous version of this story said Val-d’Or is a small community outside Montreal. It’s not. It’s a six-hour drive away from Montreal. We regret the error.
The ruling party in Saskatchewan has received more than $100,000 in donations from media companies and associations in the last 10 years. The $117,585 has come from television and radio, newspapers and industry journals and all of it has gone disproportionately to the Saskatchewan Party.
The bulk of the donations came from one source, Rawlco Radio. Since 2005, Rawlco has donated nearly $99,000 to the Saskatchewan Party, according to provincial elections records. Over the same period, it’s given the provincial NDP $1,456. The company owns six stations in the province, including the only two privately owned news talk stations, 650 CKOM and 980 CJME.
Executives at Rawlco did not respond to repeated requests for comment. They, therefore, couldn’t say why the company donated the amounts it did, or how it decided which party to donate to, or if some of those donations were in the form of event sponsorships or if they were all direct donations. Executives also didn’t say whether they’d made listeners aware of the donations. They also didn’t say whether a media company donating such a large amount to a political party might create a conflict in its political coverage.
Should Rawlco executives answer these questions, or say anything at all, we’ll update this story.
CANADALAND verified figures of Saskatchewan Party donation filings posted to Elections Saskatchewan’s website and independently looked at documents submitted by the NDP to the provincial elections agency*.
Rawlco was an outlier in the size of its donations, but it was not the only media company to donate to the Saskatchewan Party.
The Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association, an industry group representing more than 80 newspapers throughout the region, has donated nearly $3,500 to the Saskatchewan party since 2006.
Margaret Hasein, the SWNA president, disputed that the figures constituted donations.
“SWNA does not ‘donate’ to political parties,” Hasein said in an email. “The president will attend events such as a golf tournament, or a premier’s dinner. There is a registration fee for this which the political party deems as a donation. We attend the events we are invited to attend. For the years in question, the NDP has not invited us to any of their events, neither has the Liberal Party nor the Green Party.”
But Elections Saskatchewan considers giving money to a party in the form of a registration for a political event — sometimes known as a fundraiser — to be a donation and requires parties disclose such intakes of cash.
“It is viewed as an opportunity to forge relationships and network,” Hasein said.
The premier’s dinner is an annual event put on for some 2,000 grandees and schmoozers to have a nice meal in nicely lit hall and listen to a nice keynote speech from the very nice premier. Since 2007, that’s been Brad Wall, who heads the Saskatchewan Party.
Media don’t need to buy a ticket to get into the event. It’s open to reporters, who cover the dinner every year, usually focusing on the premier’s speech.
CTV, for example, typically sends a reporter, but in previous years CTV has also paid for tickets to the event.
From 2007 to 2015, it paid about $7,000 to the Saskatchewan Party. Over the same period, CTV also gave $1,878 to the NDP. A spokesman for Bell Media, which owns CTV, said in a statement the money was for tickets to events such as the premier’s dinner. “The CTV sales team purchases tickets to many local events to entertain clients and support the community.” Scott Henderson said in an email. “The amount spent on tickets totals a few hundred dollars per event.”
Henderson said no one from CTV News attended the events as a guest. “CTV News operates independently from the CTV sales team,” he said.
Sunrise Publishing, meanwhile, donated some $3,600 to the Saskatchewan Party over the 10-year period from 2005 to 2015. The company produces several industry magazines including Saskatchewan Business Magazine and the Saskatchewan Mining Journal. Several requests for comment to Sunrise’s publisher went unanswered, so we can’t say whether the money was for event tickets or something else.
The Western Producer, an agriculture-focused news outlet, made a one-time donation of $360 to the Sask. Party in 2010. Current publisher Shaun Jessome said since he took over in 2012 it has been his policy for the publication not to make any donations to political parties.
***
@robert_hiltz
*CANADALAND did not look at the filings for additional parties, as no party besides the NDP or Saskatchewan Party has won a seat in the provincial legislature since 2003. The earliest donations records posted for the province start in 2005. If another party claim seats, or even a seat, in Regina, CANADALAND will revisit fundraising documents filed by that party. In the meantime, we decided to keep it simple.
After a disastrous interview with the Globe and Mail’s Denise Balkissoon on race in Canada, Vancouver radio station CKNW host Ian Power has been fired, according to Balkissoon herself.
Hi everyone. Ian Power has been let go from CKNW. We’ll be doing an episode of #ColourCode about this incident in a few weeks. https://t.co/lxeu0TTGVv
— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) October 13, 2016
It was last week that Power hosted Balkissoon on his show. The conversation quickly devolved into an argument, for which CKNW has apologized.
The interview in full:
I was on @CKNW Vancouver last night, discussing the CBC-Angus Reid survey on assimilation. Things got…intense https://t.co/vxkOpTiOej
— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) October 4, 2016
Thank you. Program director Larry Gifford called me as well and he was very sincere. He said that Ian Power plans to call me too. https://t.co/oD8WE9Z4Ok
— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) October 5, 2016
Now, it looks like Power was taken off the air. CANADALAND reached out to CKNW program director Larry Gifford and Ian Power, but has not immediately heard back. We will update the story if they get back to us.
Balkissoon said her information came from both the station and Power himself. Pudget Sound Radio also reported that Ian Power is gone, and his contact page on the CKNW website was shut down.
Balkissoon told CANADALAND she will save her thoughts on the ordeal for the next episode of the Globe and Mail podcast Colour Code, which she co-hosts with Hannah Sung. But she has also written a column after the interview, in which she examined the idea of “white fragility.”
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editor@canadalandshow.com
Last week, The Georgia Straight fired Colin Thomas, a theatre critic with a 30-year career. He explained what happened to him in a blog post, which he allowed CANADALAND to republish:
I just got fired from The Georgia Straight. Thirty years. No warning. No compensation.
Last Tuesday, I emailed arts editor Janet Smith telling her what shows I thought I should review. Instead of the usual confirmation from Janet, I received an email from editor Charlie Smith saying that he and Janet would like to meet with me to discuss “some things that are happening here [at the paper].”
“Jesus,” I thought. “I’m getting the boot.”
As we sat at a table outside the Be Fresh market and café on West 1st Avenue, Janet and Charlie took pains to explain that letting me go was not their decision. The pressure came from unnamed “higher ups.” They had fought the decision to release me, they said, but lost. Charlie was particularly kind about saying how much he appreciates my work as a critic. He also told me that I could be public about anything that was said in that meeting.
“Was there a problem?” I asked. They said the reason I was being let go wasn’t clear to them, but there may have been a confluence of factors.
Charlie pointed out that the paper is experiencing financial challenges and that it was probably easier to get rid of me than a staff person.
Janet said that there’s a lot of pressure on editorial to find fresh ways to do things.
Janet also said that “there have been complaints from some companies.” “What complaints?” I asked. “You know: that you never like anything,” she answered with a laugh. I replied that it’s very hard to do good theatre and that I figure, if one show in three is worth recommending, that’s a good average. Then she added that some unnamed complainants feel that I am sometimes too hard on younger artists. (There is nothing I enjoy more than championing younger artists.) She gave an example. It was one of the worst shows of the year.
Janet said she thought that the door was only closed on reviewing, that I might still be able to write previews or other articles. Charlie said that he would gladly give me a recommendation or connect me with potential employers. I asked if I could have a couple of months before being laid off so that I could have some time to adjust to the loss of income. In the meeting, Charlie said he’d ask. Two days later, in response to an email inquiry, he wrote: “As Janet indicated, the company is not going to purchase reviews.” He confirmed that I would still be welcome to pitch previews and other articles. Writing previews for the Straight has become an increasingly minor part of my job there and is no longer significant in terms of income.
But I’m not going away. I love the theatre and I love writing about it. I’ll be launching a new initiative. Watch for it. Until then, I will continue to post reviews on this blog.
See you at the theatre.
ADDENDUM:
I have received a message from Charlie Smith. He remembers one part of the conversation differently than I do. Here’s what Charlie had to say: “Hi Colin, I believe I was the one who said you were sometimes harsh on younger artists. I know for a fact that I cited the play that you didn’t like. If you can adjust your post to reflect that I said this rather than Janet, I would appreciate it.”
AND FURTHERMORE: If you’d like to stay abreast of what’s happening with the new project, feel free to befriend me on Facebook. Lots of smart people started to do that before it crossed my mind that that might be a good idea.
University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson has been in the news this week for taking a stand on behalf of suffering pronouns everywhere. His claim that a proposed change to Canada’s criminal code and national anti-discrimination laws to protect “gender identity or expression” could result in charges for anyone who refuses to call transgender people by their preferred pronouns has been covered by CBC, CTV, Vice, the National Post and Yahoo News.
“All it will do is produce a huge tangle in the legal system and a lot of ill will, and I think most of that will eventually be directed against people who are visibly different,” the psychology professor said on “This Morning.”
One problem with Peterson’s theory: it’s flat-out wrong, according to lawyers and academics who spoke to CANADALAND.
Bill C-16, whose full text can be found by Googling “Bill C-16”, would add just four words — “gender identity or expression” — to the list of factors like race and sex that government agencies and businesses regulated by the national government can’t use to discriminate. The same words would also be added to a section of criminal law (which anyone can find online) that forbids advocating genocide.
In the same way that people aren’t routinely locked up for using racial slurs, it’s also extremely unlikely they’d be jailed for referring to a trans person who prefers to be called “they” as “he” or “she.” Richard Moon, a professor at the University of Windsor who studies freedom of speech issues, said remarks have got to “be really extreme in character” before they qualify as criminal hate speech.
Using a pronoun a transgender person doesn’t like, “as offensive and distasteful as it is, would likely not be something that could be prosecuted under the criminal code,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, a lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association who runs the group’s equality project. “I would find it hard to believe” a prosecutor would file charges on that basis, she said.
Yet few journalists have challenged Peterson’s claims, which he also made in a YouTube video which has been viewed over 40,000 times. In a recent broadcast of the CBC’s “As It Happens,” interviewer Carol Off even stated outright that the bill would ban using the wrong pronouns to refer to trans people:
CO: What you are proposing, that you will not use pronouns, may become something that’s a criminal offense. Are you aware of that?
JP: Of course I’m aware of that — that’s exactly what I wrote the lecture about.
Peterson didn’t respond to interview requests via email, Facebook and Twitter, and Off declined to comment through a CBC spokesperson.
The bill does instruct judges to sentence people more harshly when gender identity-based hatred is a factor. That gives prosecutors more power if they press charges in a case like X v. Sugar Daddy’s Nightclub, where a transgender person who uses the men’s bathroom sought financial damages for being dragged out of a stall, called transphobic slurs, and beaten.
Bill C-16 would also give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to impose civil penalties, or fines, on businesses for discriminating against transgender people. But Moon and Kyle Kirkup, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said several provinces banned gender discrimination by businesses years ago. Bill C-16 would just apply those same standards to federal agencies and federally regulated industries, Kirkup said, like banks and telecoms.
Even in provinces without those laws, human rights tribunals have interpreted bans on sex discrimination to protect trans people as well, said Andrea Zwack, an attorney who frequently represents businesses.
“There is not great concern on the part of employers on this point, as most progressive and aware employers already prohibit discrimination on this basis in their workplaces,” she said.
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BREAKING: The Globe and Mail learns that refugee claimants fleeing from conflict zones have more complicated histories than those who have settled in one peaceful state for centuries.
Last week, the Globe reported that the Peterborough Member of Parliament, Maryam Monsef, was born in Iran, not Afghanistan like her mother led her to believe. This was promoted by some outlets as a sort of earth-shattering revelation, with undertones that maybe, just maybe, she knew about it all along and chose to say nothing for political gain. But the Globe’s report has a lot less of an impact on Monsef’s so-called “political narrative” than the tone of the coverage would lead you to believe.
While breaking the story, Robert Fife wrote, “This revelation contradicts a key narrative that Ms. Monsef has built ever since she entered public life as a local politician in Peterborough, Ont., and when she ran for Parliament in the 2015 election.”
The Toronto Star’s Tonda MacCharles wrote, “The dramatic life story and political narrative of the woman hailed as Canada’s first Afghanistan-born cabinet minister, Maryam Monsef, shifted dramatically,” later adding that Monsef’s attempt to clear up the confusion was instead a “process of incorporating the newly revealed details of her background into a revised political narrative.”
But Monsef’s “narrative” has hardly changed since the revelation. It’s still true that she:
lost her father to the war,
was never an Iranian citizen,
is an Afghan citizen,
spent two and a half years in Afghanistan directly before fleeing, and
left in 1996 after the Taliban captured Herat, her home at the time and where her parents married.
The only difference is that Monsef was actually born about 200 kilometres from where she thought she was, and only because her family was fleeing violence.
Monsef wrote in a statement that her mom didn’t tell her the truth because “she did not think it mattered. We were Afghan citizens, as we were born to Afghan parents, and under Iranian law, we would not be considered Iranian citizens despite being born in that country.” The plight of Afghan refugees in Iran is well-documented, and the conditions they endure make Monsef’s story a far cry from some elaborate hoax.
Going beyond the specifics, though, Monsef’s case is not unique. Much has been written about the lost personal histories of Afghan refugees in particular. The executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, Janet Dench, told The Canadian Press, “Constantly you hear stories of how people, as they’re growing up, the veil is lifted on certain things and they realize that certain parts of what they’d been told may have been to protect them.” She added, “Seems to me that’s part of the refugee experience.”
Yet the Globe article — and many others — failed to make this clear. There were no interviews with scholars, experts, or even refugee organizations which could have contextualized Monsef’s story. The result was that Monsef’s case was inaccurately portrayed as a unique form of deception, instead of an unfortunate but overwhelmingly common by-product of migration.
This failure to contextualize is especially troubling given that xenophobic fear-mongering is becoming the norm. Monsef has already faced a vitriolic response with critics, connecting the dots the Globe report put in place, calling her a professional victim, and former Peterborough MP, Dean Del Mastro, claiming she “scape goated [sic] her mother.”
Politicians have also jumped in, with Michelle Rempel, a Conservative MP, using the opportunity to criticize Canada’s immigration system, and giving credibility to journalists who promote bizarre conspiracy theories that undesirable Muslims are getting into the country and slowly taking it over.
Journalists can’t control the reaction their story garners but they also aren’t oblivious to the backlash stories will create. The Globe article was irresponsible journalism, which has served as a cheap political point for xenophobes across the country.
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@DavideMastracci
