Good afternoon.
Allow me to introduce myself: I am Brian Myles, President of Quebec's Professional Federation of Journalists, or FPJQ. To my left, I am joined by Mr. Claude Robillard, who is our Secretary General.
The federation represents 2,000 journalists in Quebec. It is one of the biggest associations of its kind. It is not a union. It is an association which includes executives, salaried workers and independent journalists who rally around the noble cause of diversity of information, freedom of the press and the public's right to information.
For the FPJQ, the issues at stake in this bill are not so much access to information and transparency at CBC/Radio-Canada, but the protection of sources and of freedom of the press. These values are very important to us. Parliament decided a long time ago to give the country a public broadcaster. The very existence of CBC/Radio-Canada is not what is being called into question today. At the federation, we continue to believe that Canada needs a public broadcaster to encourage a diversity of voices.
Over the years, this corporation has played an invaluable role, in particular in investigative journalism. In Quebec currently, as you know, the Charbonneau Commission is investigating corruption and collusion in the construction industry. However, if these journalists—and first and foremost those of Radio-Canada—had not been on the case, this commission of inquiry which is revealing inappropriate expenditures that are now totalling millions of dollars—soon to be billions—would never have seen the light of day.
We feel that at all costs, we must prevent the public broadcaster from being weakened in any way. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is independent, and this must not become a hollow concept, an empty expression that is useful in beautiful speeches: rather, it must be a fact of life in daily reality and in the management of the day-to-day affairs of CBC/Radio-Canada.
Parliament already has two far-reaching and very important powers, since it determines the annual budgets of the corporation, and appoints the members of the board. The CRTC is then responsible for holding the corporation to account. It has considerably improved its record, which, it must be said, was somewhat disappointing in terms of access to information. This independence is what makes the difference between a true crown corporation which practices journalism, and a phoney institution that could eventually sink into shallow surface journalism, if not promotion or propaganda, as is the case in certain dictatorships.
A public corporation cannot consider practising journalism today without this independence from the state, and private broadcasters must enjoy a similar autonomy with regard to editors or bosses. The bill weakens CBC/Radio-Canada's situation in relation to its competitors. The message being sent is that the protection of sources is less important at CBC/Radio-Canada than at other broadcasters.
Since the Supreme Court ruling in the “MaChouette” affair, the famous case of Daniel Leblanc, a journalist at The Globe and Mail, there is now a test to protect sources in Canada. This is the famous Wigmore test, under which a source may be divulged before a court of justice, but only as a last resort. Moreover, it must be proven that disclosure will be more beneficial to uncovering the truth than silence. As the courts and the Supreme Court have said, we must always ensure that the high value of investigative journalism is protected.
Two very important elements underpin the mandate of CBC/Radio-Canada, and they are the Broadcasting Act, which guarantees the corporation full independence in matters of journalism, and the Journalistic Standards and Practices of the CBC. That document expressly states the following: “We are independent of all lobbies and of all political and economic influence. We uphold freedom of expression and freedom of the press, the touchstones of a free and democratic society. Public interest guides all of our decisions.”
These are the values that must be paramount when studying the bill. By going from an exclusion—that is to say the current standard—to an exemption, we run the risk of weakening the protection of sources. Mr. Carty spoke earlier of pharmaceutical companies that could want to appropriate secrets. I have no trouble believing that in the current context in Quebec, engineering firms and construction contractors would try to find out who is investigating them and would try to obtain information even before any investigation was concluded or made public.
The risk is that people will eventually want to have access to journalists' notes, and will want to know who they had dinner with, how much time they spent covering an issue, who they are investigating, and what network or contacts they are using to work on a project. Ultimately, an investigation could be nipped in the bud before it was even begun.
You must know that investigative journalism is not an easy or simple genre. There is a lot of preliminary background work that has to be done, whether it concerns the selection of topics, the identification of potential sources and the contacts that will lead us to speak to a source, taking us eventually to the ultimate source, who may confirm or infirm the original thesis.
This cannot be an open process, it cannot be brought to fruition in real time, in the full public light of day. There has to be a minimum of protection—if not of secrecy—and of discretion if the investigation is to go forward. This can be compared to baking a cake, if you like to cook. If you put a nice cake in the oven and open the door after two minutes, your cake will not rise. This bill means that the door will be opened on investigations that are underway and they will literally be snuffed out.
What collective benefit can there be to weakening an important news voice, a voice that has provided us with great investigations that have received international awards, a voice that has allowed us to shed light on numerous scandals? Whatever government is in power, there is no advantage in doing that.
We believe that in its current form, the bill does not offer sufficient guarantees to adequately protect the sources of CBC/Radio-Canada journalists. With this mechanism, people will always be turning to executives—those responsible for access to information—or to a superior court to force the disclosure of journalist's notes. Ultimately, as my colleagues have said, CBC/Radio-Canada journalists will not be able to guarantee their sources the same degree of protection as do journalists who work for other, private media.
Unfortunately, there isn't much to be done. I don't see how an amendment to the bill to exclude journalistic sources will save the day. It seems to me that the proper route to follow—and that is the sole recommendation we are making—is to vote down all of Bill C-461. We, the members of the federation, have always defended the principle of protecting sources. If Parliament feels that we need a law to protect sources, I urge our elected representatives to hold that debate. We will be pleased to come and testify about our experience and make our suggestions, but, please, if you must raise as serious a topic as the protection of sources, do so for all of the journalistic community. Indeed, in this day and age, no investigation worthy of the name is conducted without resorting to confidential sources and journalistic material.
Thank you very much.