I fear that we may be sending a somewhat tainted message to potential whistleblowers. The journalists at Le Devoir and La Presse, and their colleagues in private media, benefit from a full level of protection, as the Supreme Court has indicated. It recognizes the importance of preserving investigative journalism and limiting as much as possible the number of cases where it is necessary to disclose the identity of sources. Indeed, anonymous sources are protected in Quebec by the Wigmore test. If you want to blow the whistle, where will you turn if you have important information? Will it be to the organization that has the weakest protections, or to the one that has strongest ones? The choice seems obvious.
Moreover, we have to be careful to focus not only on the source, that is to say the person who is speaking anonymously. An investigation is a process. Often, we meet with certain sources, who will not necessarily be a part of the final cut or the final report, but they will have allowed us to connect up all of the dots.
As you know, the Watergate scandal was not revealed after a single meeting with Deep Throat in the basement parking lot. The work came together after multiple elements were connected.
When the trainers hired by the FPJQ talk to us about investigative journalism, they compare it to painting by numbers. It is very important to preserve the whole of that undertaking and to consider the protection of the material and of the process, as well as the people involved.