2016 was another awful year for media in Canada.
Legacy newspapers continued their slow march to oblivion, laying off dozens of journalists in markets big and small. Postmedia executives took bonuses as its employees took buyouts. Reporters, editors, and photographers from Nova Scotia’s Chronicle Herald entered their second bitter winter on strike. The Guelph Mercury and the Nanaimo Daily News, two of the oldest regional newspapers in the country, ceased publication.
In a grasp for survival, Canadian newspapers stuck out their hands, hoping for a government bailout.
Maclean’s was diminished to a monthly schedule, where it will be slowly starved to death along with a handful of titles Rogers Publishing was unable to either sell or kill.
An owl was fucked to death in the fiction pages of The Walrus.
We covered it all and much more, but one media story dominated the traffic at CANADALAND: the sexual assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi. We know this because three of the top five most-read stories on our site were about the disgraced former Q host.
Here’s what you read the most this year:
1. Why Did Jian Ghomeshi Keep Lucy DeCoutere’s Letter?
The former CBC host kept DeCoutere’s handwritten letter to him for 13 years. She was never his girlfriend. They never had sex. Given what was heard at Ghomeshi’s trial, it’s hard to imagine he was carrying a flame for her. So, CANADALAND publisher Jesse Brown asks, why did he hold on to it for more than a decade?
2. Let’s Talk About How My Job at Bell Gave Me Mental Health Issues and No Benefits
Bell makes a big show every year of how much it cares about mental health issues with it’s “Let’s Talk” campaign. But what’s Bell doing for its own employees? Karen K. Ho tells her story of needing help while working as a “permalancer” for the media giant.
3. Thoughts on Lucy DeCoutere from Jesse Brown
“At the time she came forward, Lucy had no reason to expect anything but scorn, doubt and anger from the public. She did it anyway.” A brief tweetstorm from our publisher on the strength required of DeCoutere to publicly take the stand against Ghomeshi.
4. We Found Out How Much the CBC Really Pays Mansbridge
Publicly, the salary listed for CBC’s chief correspondent is in the $80,000 range. But that can’t be right, can it? We found out what he’s really paid.
5. When Your Friend Is On the Stand at the Ghomeshi Trial
Writer Stacey May Fowles tells the story of what it was like to be there with, and for, DeCoutere in the courtroom as she testified.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
EDITOR’S NOTE: APTN questioned Joseph Boyden’s claim to Native ancestry in an investigation posted to their website Friday headlined “Author Joseph Boyden’s shape-shifting Indigenous identity.” Boyden did not agree to an interview by APTN reporter Jorge Barrera, instead requesting they participate in a sharing circle. Boyden also provided a written statement to APTN defending his claims:
“Over the last few decades I, along with some siblings, have explored my family’s heritage. We’ve uncovered and traced a fascinating and personal genealogy, a genealogy often whitewashed of our Indigenous ancestry due to the destructive influences of colonialism…. While the majority of my blood comes from Europe and the Celtic region, there is Nipmuc ancestry on my father’s side, and Ojibwe ancestry on my mother’s.”
Robert Jago was one of the researchers who found evidence to question Boyden’s claims to Indigenous ancestry.
CANADALAND asked Jago to expand on a number of his tweets. His piece follows.
Two days ago I was given the opportunity to guest host at the Twitter account @IndigenousXca; it’s a shared account that each week is hosted by a different First Nations person. It’s a larger and more influential audience than I’m used to, and I chose to use it to bring out into the open what a lot of us Natives have been saying about Joseph Boyden privately, that we question his Native identity. What led many of us to think this is that the way in which Boyden has described his indigenous background is confused.
On his Speaker’s Bureau Profile, where you can hire Boyden to give his signature speech titled “The Aboriginal Experience”, Boyden is described as Metis, an identity he also claimed when he won the 2005 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award and its $5000 prize. At Carleton University’s Voicing Aboriginal Stories conference, Boyden was described as Ojibwe. To CBC Aboriginal, he presented himself as Anishinabe and Nipmuc. APTN’s Jorge Barrera dug into Boyden’s lineage, and found nothing to substantiate any of these claims.
I've prepared a video to explore this issue some more. 30 pic.twitter.com/bMvrjTgKP8
— IndigenousXca Archived (@IndigenousXca) December 23, 2016
Boyden first came to my awareness a few years ago when I was dating a native woman named who shared a name that appeared in Boyden’s work.* This woman is a brilliant, and driven, PhD student in a field that Boyden effectively colonized with his loose retelling of the stories of Kateri Tekakwitha and Jean de Brebeuf.
Through her I got to see the Boyden effect up close. Boyden is very prominent, and a darling of Non-Native Canada. When he takes on a topic of importance to First Nations people, he drowns out other indigenous voices. For her it meant seeing herself and her work disappear from internet search results, replaced by Boyden’s work; work which Native writers such as Hayden King have criticized for their tired stereotypes of First Nations.
What brought me back to him and the issue of his identity was a tweet by Margaret Atwood in late November:
Confirmed @josephboyden that Steven Galloway is #indigenous + was adopted. @ubcaccountable Well known but not so far mentioned in the convo
— Margaret E Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 24, 2016
That tweet, bestowing indigeneity on former UBC professor Steven Galloway was part of her response to the controversy surrounding the letter that Boyden, a former UBC instructor, wrote in Galloway’s defense (covered by CANADALAND in more detail here). Galloway was fired after an investigation by UBC over claims of sexual impropriety.
I found that tweet to be literally, shout-at-the-screen enraging. In part because of the low regard it showed for First Nations people (was he assuming that we would overlook sexual harassment because the accused was “one of us”?), but more because Joseph Boyden seemed to have given himself the right to hand out “#indigenous” identity to whomever he pleases. Instead of treating it as a valuable inheritance that our parents and grandparents suffered and fought to maintain, Boyden trivialized it and cheapened it.
Many others were upset too:
https://twitter.com/GwenBenaway/status/801996378570444804
It seems like @MargaretAtwood is trying to make some weird lateral violence argument? (it's not rape culture/sexism if he's indigenous?)
— Gersande La Flèche (@gersandelf) November 25, 2016
https://twitter.com/BinesiM/status/801900079942684672
Fuck you, Atwood, and fuck you, Boyden. I am so absolutely done with you both.
— âpihtawikosisân (@apihtawikosisan) November 24, 2016
Following that controversy, Native people started more actively sharing information on Boyden and his background — working to answer the question: “what gives him the right?” It’s from that research that I discovered “Injun Joe.”
File photo of Injun Joe’s teepee.
There is no shortage of people who play Indian for notoriety. Grey Owl, Ward Churchill, and countless figures throughout history. For every white family that had a great grandma with high cheekbones, there was someone to spread the news that she was secretly a Cherokee Princess. The phenomenon was so widespread that in segregationist Virginia they had to amend their “racial purity” laws to add the “Pocahontas exception” which saved “good” white people from being lumped in with the “coloreds” and discriminated against just because they had a mythical Indian Princess in their distant past.
What native impersonators like Grey Owl and Ward Churchill shared, besides a love of feathered head gear, was a persona very similar to Boyden’s. That is to say, dour, and focused exclusively on grievance and tragedy. Look at Boyden’s Maclean’s articles about First Nations, and you’ll see that it all fits into the 3-D (drum, dead, drunk) stereotype. Contrast Boyden’s public persona with his equally safe but unquestionably Native equivalent, Wab Kinew’s. With Kinew you see more love of culture and people than focus on grievances.
Less dour, but still reflecting the Indian stereotypes of his era, Injun Joe, AKA Erl Boyden, was a figure in the same vein as Grey Owl. He impersonated a Native in Algonquin Park in the 50s. Working from a teepee, under a sign that said ‘Ugh Indian Souvenirs’, Erl Boyden was eventually confronted by Macleans who did a lengthy expose on him titled “The Double Life of Injun Joe”.
The Double Life of Injun Joe, a Maclean’s article published in 1956.
The article showed Erl disparaging Canadian First Nations, admitting he had no Native blood, and laughing at the people who “Idiotically” took him for a real Native.
Erl’s lack of Indian blood was cited again in the reports of his trial. One day, while playing Indian in his teepee, Erl accidentally shot and killed a tourist, an event the tourist captured on film:
“Then the tall figure of Injun Joe … emerged from the trading post and slowly placed an Indian War bonnet on his head.… Slowly Injun Joe raised the rifle to his shoulder and at the second that the rifle was pointing straight at the movie camera the film broke into a white splotch and it was all over” —The Ottawa Journal, August 1, 1956
A 1956 Ottawa Journal article on the shooting death of a tourist.
Erl is a person that Boyden said he was inspired by, both by his traditional lifestyle and his love of travel and adventure. Erl’s past as Injun Joe had an early and lasting impact on the Boyden family.
“The [Boyden] family also owned an uncle’s war bonnet, and whenever kids in their suburban Toronto neighbourhood played cowboys and Indians a Boyden usually wanted the Indian part.” —The Walrus, April 17, 2014
As he’s on his father’s side, Erl is described by Joseph Boyden as either Ojibwe, Mi’kmaq, or Nipmuc. However, in every article on Injun Joe and in admissions by Erl himself, he had no Native blood whatsoever. I know some people might say that he chose to hide his Native blood because of the racism of the era, to those people I would say: the man lived in a teepee.
If Joseph Boyden had confined himself to being the official “Indian Friend” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and George Stroumboulopoulos, we wouldn’t be discussing this now. But when he took it upon himself to cheapen an identity that he may have a tenuous or non-existent claim to, then we find ourselves forced to demand that Boyden clear up his inconsistencies and prove that he has the right to speak for us.
In the “Reconciliation” Era, Boyden has taken on a very prominent role. The path that he proposes for Reconciliation isn’t one I would choose, and before Non-Native Canadians latch on to it, they should find out if it comes from an actual Native, or from a fabulist.
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@rjjago
*EDITOR’S NOTE: We removed a name from the story as the person mentioned preferred it was kept private.
Postmedia has removed a story about the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to Canada from its SUN websites after settling a lawsuit.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Wael Haddara, a London, Ont. man briefly mentioned in the story, said he sued reporter Brian Daly and Quebecor Media Inc. over an article headlined “Muslim Brotherhood under the microscope in Canada.” The SUN papers were bought by Postmedia from QMI in 2015.
A link Haddara provided to the story leads to an error page on the Toronto SUN website. The story also appears to have been removed from other Sun papers. There is no retraction, correction, or any other sign of what was once published there, or why the link has gone dead.
“I am happy that the matter has now been settled in a mutually satisfactory manner. The terms of the settlement are confidential and hence I will not be able to share any further details, other than to say I am very satisfied with the outcome,” said Haddara, a former advisor to deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi who lives in London, Ont.
When reached for further comment, Haddara said his Facebook statement was all he could say on the matter.
James Wallace, Postmedia’s vice-president in charge of the SUN papers, said he had “no comment” when asked about the story. He was also asked about the story’s disappearance, and whether an apology or correction would be issued, but only offered a “no comment.”
While the Brotherhood story can no longer be found on the Sun’s websites, CANADALAND was able to access a copy in Google cache. It focuses on an investigation by Daly into the Muslim Brotherhood’s fundraising activities in Canada. (The whole story can be read at the bottom of this post.)
Haddara wasn’t mentioned in the body of the story, but was listed at the end in a section titled “Other figures in Canada linked to the Muslim Brotherhood”:
Dr. Wael Haddara, intensive-care physician, London, Ont.
Key adviser to Egyptian president and Brotherhood stalwart Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Denies Brotherhood membership.
As president of the Muslim Association of Canada in 2011, Dr. Haddara endorsed the Brotherhood and the teachings of founder Hassan Al-Banna.
He was a founding director of IRFAN-Canada, and a board member until 2002. IRFAN was audited in 2004 and banned in 2011 for allegedly donating millions to Hamas.
When contacted by QMI Agency, he said he had no knowledge of IRFAN sending money to Hamas.
The whole story, as retrieved through Google cache:
Muslim Brotherhood under the microscope in Canada
BY BRIAN DALY, QMI AGENCY
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MARCH 07, 2015 05:00 AM CST
MONTREAL — The federal government is coming under increased pressure to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terror outfit, as more evidence piles up that the group has tentacles in Canada.
Its two main offshoots, Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, are listed as terrorist organizations in Canada.
The last Canadian organization to be added to the list is the alleged Hamas fundraiser IRFAN-Canada, which has worked closely with the Brotherhood, according to an RCMP warrant.
A source tells QMI that the Brotherhood itself, long considered the ideological godfather of Islamist terrorism, has also been under close watch by security officials.
A QMI investigation found that top Brotherhood leaders have lived in Canada for decades. They have led pro-Sharia organizations and sent money and resources to groups that the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency say are owned or controlled by Hamas.
Brotherhood-linked facilities have invited extremist speakers to Canada who defended child suicide bombers, amputation for thieves and stoning for adulterers.
A U.S. terror financing trial heard a secret Brotherhood plan for North America calling for a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.”
Stockwell Day, who served in Stephen Harper’s cabinet for five years, tells QMI that Islamist ideology is being propagated in Canada by Brotherhood “sympathizers.”
“The government really has to drill down and look at statements from the Brotherhood,” the former public safety minister said from Vancouver, where he works as a consultant.
“If they find in fact that there’s a preponderance of evidence that shows that they are actively promoting, encouraging, glorifying, killing of Canadians … then they should be labelled as a terrorist group.”
Coptic Christians, whose churches have reportedly been torched by Muslim Brotherhood backers in Egypt, asked the Harper government last year to ban the Brotherhood.
School teacher Hassan Al-Banna founded the Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, calling for a global Islamic caliphate.
Its intellectual leaders have gained worldwide renown as preachers, scholars and activists but Brotherhood supporters also have a long history of violence dating back to the 1948 assassination of Egyptian prime minister Mahmud al-Nuqrashi.
The Brotherhood creed, shared by Hamas, is: “Allah is our objective, the prophet is our leader, the Qur’an is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
While Brotherhood analysts say the group is unlikely to launch attacks on Canadian soil, there’s evidence the group is spreading extremist messages in Canada, aside from its alleged financing of terror abroad.
Documents tabled at a U.S. Hamas financing trial indicate the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) played a key role in spreading the Brotherhood message.
The Brotherhood lists ISNA U.S.A. as one of its 29 key North American affiliates. While ISNA’s Mississauga, Ont., office claims to be independent from the Indiana-based umbrella group, it shares board members both past and present with ISNA U.S.A., as well as a name and a logo.
QMI Agency found extremist materials at two ISNA locations in Canada.
A book advocating Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings was displayed at the ISNA-owned Muslim Community of Quebec mosque in Montreal.
U.S. prosecutors at the 2007 Holy Land terrorism financing trial also tabled a phone directory, seized from a Brotherhood operative, which lists five Canadians among the top Brotherhood leaders in North America.
One of them, Dr. Jamal Badawi of Halifax, is a noted Muslim scholar, speaker and television host. His name appears three times in evidence at the Holy Land trial, the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.
Badawi has publicly preached nonviolence and tolerance. However, a compilation of his teachings on jamalbadawi.org makes it clear he believes establishing an Islamic state is a duty for Muslims.
“The Qur’an is full of indications that are direct, indirect, explicit, implicit that show without any shred of doubt that the establishment of Islamic order or rule is mandatory that Muslims must establish,” the website reads.
QMI Agency reached Badawi at his Halifax home, at the same phone number listed in the Brotherhood directory tabled at the Holy Land trial.
He insisted his links to the Brotherhood are “a myth” and that “there’s no Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.”
The longtime Haligonian described his own views as “no fanaticism on one side or no looseness on the other side.”
The Prime Minister’s Office wouldn’t name the Muslim Brotherhood when asked for its official position on the group.
“Our government is taking strong action to protect law-abiding Canadians from those who wish to harm us,” PMO spokesman Jason MacDonald said in an e-mail. “The Criminal Code terrorist entity listing process is an important tool in preventing terrorist attacks from being carried out.”
OTHER FIGURES IN CANADA LINKED TO THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD:
Dr. Wael Haddara, intensive-care physician, London, Ont.
Key adviser to Egyptian president and Brotherhood stalwart Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Denies Brotherhood membership.
As president of the Muslim Association of Canada in 2011, Dr. Haddara endorsed the Brotherhood and the teachings of founder Hassan Al-Banna.
He was a founding director of IRFAN-Canada, and a board member until 2002. IRFAN was audited in 2004 and banned in 2011 for allegedly donating millions to Hamas.
When contacted by QMI Agency, he said he had no knowledge of IRFAN sending money to Hamas.
Rasem Abdel-Majid, fundraiser, Mississauga, Ont.
General manager of IRFAN-Canada and its predecessor, the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS).
Attended a secret Brotherhood meeting in 1993 at which Hamas funding was discussed, says an RCMP warrant.
U.S. officials say IRFAN was part of the “the Global Hamas financing mechanism.”
Calls to Adbel-Majid were not returned
CHARITY ENDS AT HOME
Aside from IRFAN, two other Canadian charities with links to the Muslim Brotherhood have had their status revoked, or been denied charity status:
World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) was a donor to Brotherhood-linked groups in Canada. It was delisted in 2012 for alleged ties to Saudi-based organizations that funnelled money to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
ISNA Development Foundation (IDF) was delisted in 2013 for allegedly giving more than $280,000 to an agency linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamist group that’s an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
DISCLOSURE: Wallace was my boss for a time at Postmedia’s Editorial Services in 2014. We got along well enough, and he even gave me, and everyone else in the building, a raise one time.
The Walrus Foundation’s paid subscription numbers were over-inflated in two government grants filed with the federal Heritage Department this year.
In the foundation’s Canada 150 grant application, The Walrus claimed the magazine has a paid circulation of 60,000, while an independent audit shows the paid readership has declined below 40,000.
In the magazine’s 2016-2017 application for a federal publishing grant of $291,850, a program officer at the Heritage department noticed “the subscription seem[ed] to be over evaluated.” The officer noticed that the new circulation report had “changed dramatically in different categories” from the 2015-2016 report (exact figures were redacted from documents obtained by an access to information request).
Screenshot of an email to The Walrus from the federal Heritage department, regarding the magazine’s circulation numbers.
The Walrus magazine’s circulation and marketing manager Bryan Maloney apologized for the discrepancies in a follow-up email. “Sorry for the oversight. I used the previous year’s form as a guide, not taking into consideration that audit revisions.”
Screenshot of an email sent by The Walrus magazine’s circulation and marketing manager Bryan Malone.
According to brand audit reports of an independent auditor of Canadian publications, Canadian Circulation Audit Bureau (CCAB), The Walrus’s paid circulation has steadily declined from its 2009 Overall circulation of about 48,000. In the 2013-2014 report the average paid copies per issue were 44,392, 39,002 of which were paid subscriptions. The magazine had 35,075 individual paid subscribers, the other 5,147 multi-copy same addressee issues were corporate subscribers supplying waiting rooms, lounges and lobbies. The magazine also sold an average of 5,390 copies from magazine stands each month.
In another grant application with Canadian Heritage, this one for $650,000, the foundation claimed inflated circulation numbers once again. The Canada 150 grant was awarded to the foundation for hosting the Walrus Talks in 2017. In the Walrus Foundation’s application staff wrote the magazine has “a paid print and tablet magazine readership of 60,000 [and] a readership of approximately 250,000.”
A screenshot from The Walrus Foundation’s application for a Canada 150 grant.
In CCAB’s 2014-2015 report the total paid copies per issue had dropped to 42,538, paid subscriptions were down to 38,257 (32,800 individual, 5,457 multi-copy same addressee), and single-copy sales were down to an average of 4,281 per issue (some months seeing single-copy sales as low as 2,135 and 2,698).
The Walrus’s circulation continued to decline in the CCAB’s next six-month report, for the period ending in March 2016. Average paid copies were down to 39,383, average paid subscriptions slid to 35,414 (individual 30,314, multi-copy same addressee 5,100), and single-copy sales were down to an average of 3,969.
These reports have numbers well below foundation’s claim of a paid circulation of 60,000.
Casting the foundation’s inflated numbers further in doubt is CARDonline’s (another auditor of Canadian publications) measurement of the magazine’s web traffic at 160,000-185,000 unique visitors per month, well below the Walrus Foundation’s stated 250,000 visitors.
Walrus publisher Shelley Ambrose and circulation and marketing manager Bryan Maloney were both contacted last week by CANADALAND for comment, neither have responded to questions regarding the discrepancies. If they do respond, we’ll update our story.
The foundation also failed to deliver on some of its proposals for its Walrus Talks. In the initial application they proposed to host some of the 13 talks (one in each province and territory) in unique venues like a “naval ship, Via Rail trains, traveling geodesic domes, and historic forts.” Only the ship and one train event are now happening, with the rest of the talks being hosted in theaters and lecture halls.
The foundation’s application also said it wanted the travelling interview and lecture events to be available to all Canadians. Twelve of the talks have no entrance fee, but a VIA Rail round-trip from Ottawa to a luncheon in Montreal costs $788.70 a ticket, with a ticket just for the luncheon costing $106.60.
Heritage department spokeswoman Catherine Gagnaire said in an email “Heritage is helping to pay for marketing and promotion. The goal is to make events free of charge or to keep the price of admission low, so the events are accessible.”
Gagnaire explained changes to The Walrus Talks National Tour as common with government-funded projects: “The Walrus Foundation is following-through on the activities that were funded. Canadian Heritage closely monitors projects and is aware of the changes to the plans. It is normal for projects to evolve between conception and delivery.”
Heritage is giving the foundation $300,000 for marketing, $100,000 for travel, $100,000 for venue rentals, $100,000 for equipment rentals, and $50,000 for speaking fees. The talks are also sponsored in undisclosed amounts by: the Order of Canada, Indspire, CBC, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The Governor General’s Performing Arts Award Foundation, Labatt, CN, Rethink, Suncor, Enbridge, CPAC, and universities across Canada.
The Walrus Foundation said in its application it wanted to take the “road less travelled” when choosing locations, proposing to host talks in places “like Kingston instead of Toronto.” The Ontario talk is being held in Toronto. The other talks are being held in Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, St. John’s, N.L, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Halifax, Surrey, B.C., and Banff, Alta.
In the foundation’s 2014 donor report, which was included in its grant application, the amount of charitable government grants listed under revenue was $50,000. The total amount of government grants for the foundation in 2014 was $382,500, according to other application documents supplied to the Heritage department.
In the past, magazine co-founder Ken Alexander told CANADALAND the foundation had mislead donors by saying its circulation numbers were 60,000 back in 2009. At the time of the interview, Alexander said the foundation’s claim “was horseshit, plain and simple.”
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@GraemeCGordon
PHOTO: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr
Walrus Aid to Publisher Grant Application
Walrus Canada 150 Grant Application
Prime minister, foreign leaders among those given immediate care
‘People who write for CBC Life are not journalists,’ CBC spokesman says
“When we talk about people with disabilities, they’re either shown as inspiring models of overcoming adversity, or as people left helpless.”
Farzam Dadashzadeh took too long to file his lawsuit, the public broadcaster says
Private broadcasting is supposed to be diverse under Canadian law, but the government doesn’t require that companies publish their employment equity numbers.
Because of weak and inconsistent reporting guidelines, it is impossible to know the racial makeup of of private Canadian broadcasting—or whether their diversity expectations are being met.
Under the the Broadcasting Act, the bible of Canadian media regulations, private broadcasters are expected to serve and reflect the multicultural and multiracial realities of Canadians through “programming and employment opportunities.” About one in five Canadians identifies as a visible minority and more than four per cent identify as Aboriginal, according to Statistics Canada.
Private broadcasters share a few numbers in their diversity reports to highlight the success of their initiatives, and some volunteer corporation-wide numbers, but they don’t need to track their newsroom’s annual equity statistics. The public broadcaster keeps its own internal statistics, which show that the CBC is about 90 per cent white.
It’s impossible to compare statistics between different companies, according to Ryerson University researcher and professor Charles Davis.
“We’ve been through a hundred or so of those [cultural] reports,” Davis said, adding that while some broadcasters only file their initiatives, others report on-screen diversity, and still others behind-the-scenes numbers. “So you can’t really track it from year-to-year.
“The problem is inconsistency in the [CRTC’s] reporting requirements.”
Davis is the E.S. Rogers Sr. Research Chair in Media Management — in 2011 and 2012, he was part of a research project and follow-up roundtable that addressed the participation of visible minorities in screen-based media. He said the CRTC should eventually require companies to provide separate numbers for their media counterparts so they can track the shift, or lack thereof, in newsroom diversity. “CRTC doesn’t really have jurisdiction over employment equity, so I think that’s a problem.”
Broadcasters that have more than 100 workers file their employment numbers under the Employment Equity Act to the Human Rights Commission, and not to the CRTC. The racial makeup of Canada’s broadcasters is largely buried in the company-wide statistics of Bell, Rogers, and Corus. The diversity statistics for their media divisions aren’t broken out, so there’s no way to tell how diverse the on-air product is.
“We were interested in diversity in a creative occupation, whereas you find probably more diversity in a technical occupation,” Davis said. “So when they provide aggregate numbers, it doesn’t really show where the diversity is and where it isn’t.”
For example, BCE publishes its company-wide equity numbers every year. But it doesn’t publish separate numbers for its Bell Media subsidiary, which produces MUCH, CTV, and numerous other channels. Bell Media employees make up about 13 per cent of the BCE’s 50,000-person workforce.
A table from BCE’s corporate social responsibility report, showing company-wide diversity. Screenshot/BCE
“We publicly report numbers for Bell overall but not for specific business units,” said Scott Henderson, Bell Media’s vice-president of communications. “Reporting an overall number for Bell gives a far better reflection of our progress as a company.”
Bell’s chief competitor, Rogers — whose media holdings include City, OMNI and Sportsnet — also leaves out employment equity numbers for its media subsidiary in its report.
According to Rogers spokesperson Andrew Garas, Rogers Media employees make up about 20 per cent of the total Rogers workforce, but the Broadcasting Act doesn’t force them to publish media-specific numbers.
“The Broadcasting Act itself does not set out the reporting requirements, just merely indicates that the broadcasting system should reflect cultural diversity in employment opportunities,” Garas said in an email.
A table from Rogers’ corporate social responsibility report, showing company-wide diversity. Screenshot/Rogers
Nanao Kachi, the director of CRTC’s Social and Consumer Policy, said in an email that private broadcasters must file Corporate Cultural Diversity Reports in order to “report annually on [the broadcaster’s] progress on these diversity issues.” These documents set best practices and equity goals.
In 1992, the CRTC made diversity an element of licensing, saying the designated groups — women, Aboriginal persons, disabled people and members of a visible minority — continued to face “underrepresentation, high occupational concentration in clerical jobs and wage disparity” in the communications sector. It later clarified companies already covered by the Employment Equity Act wouldn’t need to answer for their employment equity practices at licensing.
The most comprehensive study of diversity in the broadcasting industry was commissioned in 2001, when the CRTC called upon the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to form a task force to report on the cultural diversity of Canadian television, partly to set a baseline to improve upon in the following years. Four years later, the CRTC responded to the task force’s findings and said mainstream media lacked fair representation.
“Most participants perceived Asians, the largest visible minority population in Canada, as being severely underrepresented,” the CRTC said in the notice, adding that the appearance of Hispanic and Middle Eastern people was “sporadic” while Black people were better represented thanks to U.S. programming. The most pressing issue, as noted by the task force and the CRTC, was “the virtual absence of Aboriginal peoples in all genres of programming” outside of APTN. “In 10 of 11 genres studied across two languages, the presence of Aboriginal Peoples is less than one per cent of the total,” the notice said.
More than a decade since the study, no follow-up or similar report has been commissioned by the government — according to Davis, the lack of “systematic study of on-screen diversity” since 2004 has added to the problem of inconsistent reporting guidelines. However, he said that from what he understood, the CRTC is in the process of hiring a company “to sample on-screen programs and then to figure out how to measure diversity.”
Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau is suing the crowdfunded media outlet Ricochet for defamation over a sharply satirical fake obituary.
Ricochet says while they’re confident they’ll eventually win the $350,000 suit, fighting it in court could bankrupt them. “He never contacted us, he went straight to a lawsuit seeking a ridiculous, totally unreasonable amount of money. It certainly seems like the intent here is to drag us through a long legal process which he hopes will bankrupt us before a judge ever gets an opportunity to rule on the case,” Ricochet co-founder and editor Ethan Cox said.
The obituary, posted in February, included a cartoon of dogs lining up to pee on Martineau’s grave, and another God tossing Martineau’s orphaned soul in the trash, after it’s dropped off by Death for entrance to heaven. Written by Marc-André Cyr and illustrated by Alexandre Fatta, the obituary takes aim at Martineau’s ideas and intelligence.
“His remains will be exhibited at the corner of St. Catherine and St. Laurent in Montreal. Rain, wind, dogs and birds will have the chance to turn those scraps into a homage of the infinite profundity of human stupidity,” the obit closes.
Cox said the obituary wasn’t an to wish Martineau death, but to lampoon his writing. “It was a satirical death notice, but the intent was to say that his style had jumped the shark, that his style was dead,” he said.
“[Martineau] was really unhappy about it at the time, and he published a column complaining about it,” Cox said. “So he used his platform to respond and that was that, and it was all done.” Martineau never contacted Ricochet to request a retraction, and the only direct correspondence they got from him was the lawsuit, Cox said.
Martineau could not be reached by CANADALAND for comment. As always, if we hear back we’ll update our story.
One of the cartoons featured in the satirical obituary of Richard Martineau. Alexandre Fatta/Ricochet
Cox said over the summer Ricochet received a notice from the Quebec Press Council a complaint had been filed about the obituary. The council said in the letter they’d dismissed the complaint and there was no ethical fault in the obit, according to Cox.
The same press council has censured Martineau for his work. “In two separate decisions upholding complaints against the columnist, the council found he had used “discriminatory words and expressions of prejudice” towards Muslims and others,” a press release from Ricochet says.
In addition to writing his Journal column, Martineau hosts a program on the LCN cable news network in Quebec. Martineau was a vocal supporter of the Quebec Charter of Values, pitched by the Parti Quebecois in the last provincial election to ban government employees from wearing religious attire—including hijabs, turbans, and too-large crucifixes.
Martineau’s history was all the target of Cyr’s piece, which portrays him as a commentator past his usefulness. “When a person without too much intelligence is unable to respond to rational reasoning by another, they must caricature the position of their opponent by denigrating it to a level intelligible to him,” Cyr wrote in French. “To do this, Richard Martineau used his essential strawmen: the ‘Muslim-terrorists,’…the ‘violent-unions,’ the ‘frustrated feminists,’ the ‘dictator’s pressure groups.’ ”
Martineau has long been a free speech advocate, but not quite an absolutist. When Quebec comedian Mike Ward was ordered by to pay $35,000 to a handicapped boy featured on reality TV he joked about, Martineau supported the fine.
“You can not say you test the limits of freedom of expression, and then bawl because we told you that you have exceeded the permitted limits!” Martineau wrote. “No freedom is absolute, all rights have limits, and the law is the same for everyone.” But, Martineau has also chastised the press council for reprimanding him for making up a quote he called obvious “caricature” and “satire.”
Before the case goes before a judge, Ricochet is looking to crowdfund $50,000 for a legal defence fund. As of Monday afternoon, they’d raised nearly $20,000.
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DISCLOSURE: My mother-in-law is a columnist at the Journal de Montréal and a colleague of Martineau’s.
editor@canadalandshow.com