All right, thank you. Now that I know how much time I have, I can choose from among the notes I have prepared.
First and foremost, I would like to commend my colleague, the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, on his excellent initiative. He has worked very hard on something that is essential to improving our quality of life. This bill allows journalists to refuse to disclose information or a record that has not been published unless it is of vital importance and cannot be produced in evidence by any other means.
This bill is balanced. It protects sources and consequently the practice of journalism. It also takes the public interest into account. It does not create a privileged class of people—journalists—who could write or say anything with impunity. On this subject, Claude Ryan, the eminent editorialist for Le Devoir, once said that the threat of imprisonment meant that a journalist had to think twice before attacking someone's reputation without valid proof.
This bill concerns a matter of principle: the credibility of the journalist, but also of journalism. Imagine a situation where people with valuable information did not dare to pass it on to journalists.
Lawyer Marie Claude Pedneault did an excellent job for the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, as my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin mentioned earlier. I invite anyone who is interested to read her report. I borrowed from it heavily in preparing my speech for today, not because I wanted to plagiarize her, but as a tribute to her. I essentially took factual information from her report. Hon. members will understand that any political comments I make are my own.
First and foremost, Ms. Pedneault gave specific cases where the journalistic source was problematic. The most famous case in the past 30 years is obviously the Watergate case, and the best-known journalistic source in the world was called Deep Throat. Everyone knows about that case, and I do not need to say anything more about it.
More recently, 30 years later, there was the Valerie Plame affair in the United States. The journalist’s crime was to have refused to reveal, to the commission of inquiry looking into the Valerie Plame affair, the name of the person who told her that Ms. Plame was a CIA agent. Right now, the New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, is behind bars, most likely in New York State. She will have to stay there until the end of the deliberations of the grand jury responsible for the inquiry. This is not right, you will agree.
My NDP and Liberal Party colleagues have spoken of other cases. There is Juliet O'Neil of the Ottawa Citizen. In January 2004, 20 RCMP officers searched her home looking for documents she had quoted in her newspaper and that talked about the alleged relations between Maher Arar and some terrorist groups.
There is also the case of Ken Peter of the Hamilton Spectator, of whom we have heard plenty from our NDP colleague. And in August 2004, Pierre Jobin told about the imminent transfer of mentally ill people in the Duberger area of Quebec City. Fortunately, the judge examined the situation and said that revealing the names ran the risk of irremediably affecting Pierre Jobin’s ability to get information in the future from confidential sources. As may be seen, judges sometimes choose to protect journalistic activity because the public’s interest is not directly at stake.
The trend in the U.S., however, is very worrying, because in recent years there have been more subpoenas issued to American journalists than there were in the previous 30 years. The chief reason is the fact that George Bush’s government is not very transparent and that a preferred way of publicizing an irregular situation or wrongdoing is to let a journalist know about it anonymously.
The Bush administration always takes the same approach. Journalists receive a subpoena, they are forced to testify and they are forced to give the name of their source.
American judges, following in the footsteps of George Bush, take a hard line—