Thank you, Marc-Philippe.
Mr. Chairman and members of Parliament, I'd like to look at this bill from the perspective of a journalist. I have worked with the investigative unit of the CBC in past years. One of the main stories we worked on for years was about adverse drug reactions, the sickness and death that could be caused by pharmaceutical products. It was an investigation that involved confidential sources, access to information requests, and it eventually won 10 Canadian and international awards.
I'd like to present a hypothetical analysis of how an access request with this kind of a topic might work currently under section 68.1, or in the future under Bill C-461.
As you know the sector that most uses access to information is the business sector, so in my example let's say an access request is made by a pharmaceutical company. It wants access to my e-mails, reporters' notebooks, even confidential sources. It wants access to perhaps my strategies to do interviews, my travel plans, and things like that—all the processes involved in collecting an investigative report. Under the access request as it currently works under section 68.1, the exclusion process, which has been clarified by the Federal Court, is fairly straightforward. My confidential sources are completely out of bounds. The court has ruled here that the CBC's right of exclusion is absolute. As for my notebooks, the e-mails, the research materials, the CBC would refuse to disclose them because they relate to journalism, by definition.
The Information Commissioner now has the right to review all these documents nonetheless, but she would likely agree because, again, the materials are clearly journalistic in nature. The pharmaceutical company could go to court, but I think the courts would side with the CBC, and my sources, my notes, my research, my investigative broadcast would be protected, and so would the CBC's inherent right to freedom of information.
This is not the case if Bill C-461 goes through. What would happen there? Under the bill's exemption, all my materials, even my confidential sources, would be on the table. Nothing is protected, not even sources, which the Federal Court and the Supreme Court have recognized as an essential component to free expression. For each piece of my material the CBC would have to prove that disclosure would harm the corporation's journalistic, creative, or programming independence, and that word is critical. It's where it gets very messy too.
The CBC's independence as discussed in the Broadcasting Act, and as the sponsor of the bill outlined it last week, almost always concerns the issue of the CBC's independence from government and Parliament. However a pharmaceutical company eager to know what we are finding out about the deadly side effects of one of its drugs could argue in court that the release of my journalistic materials, even sources, in no way compromises the CBC's independence from government and Parliament. The release would damage my credibility, the CBC's journalistic integrity, and quite possibly subject us to a lawsuit to prevent the material from even being broadcast.
In such a scenario what reporter in good conscience could promise he or she could protect the source? Without that protection what whistle-blower would approach us with a story of corruption? The CBC would be stripped of much of its ability to conduct public service journalism. The public broadcaster would lose its inherent right to freedom of expression.
In the same way we have deep concerns about Bill C-461's amendments to the Privacy Act. The exemption here is again based upon harm being done to the CBC's journalistic independence from government. Under these changes a person being investigated by the CBC, perhaps a doctor, or perhaps a Mafia boss in Montreal, could request all information about himself in the possession of the CBC. The CBC would be forced to turn over information about criminal activities, about this Mafia don, even before it was broadcast. No other media outlet would be subject to such a process. Again great harm would be done to the CBC's integrity, its ability to function in the marketplace, its very freedom of expression.
Mr. Chairman, both these changes to the access law and to the Privacy Act are ill conceived. They are not necessary. In the name of accountability they would cripple the public broadcaster's ability to hold those in power to account. In the name of access to information, one of the foundations of freedom of expression, the bill would damage other important freedoms of speech: the freedom and the duty to protect sources, and the right of the CBC to its editorial freedom.
Thank you, I'll turn it back to Marc.