Mr. Speaker, the firing of Ottawa Citizen publisher, Russell Mills, because he failed to conform to the national editorial policy of the owners of CanWest Global should cause politicians and regulators to have second thoughts about whether media convergence and concentration is in the public interest.
Having authorized an article and an editorial critical of the Prime Minister, Mr. Mills was forced by his corporate bosses to run attack editorials in the Ottawa Citizen contradicting the position taken by the paper. Then he was fired.
This whole sorry story shows alarming immaturity on the part of the Aspers, the owners of CanWest, who appear not to have the foggiest notion of the concept of press freedom in a democracy.