BY Al Donato

 

We worry about eroding rights for press in countries like Russia, Egypt and even the United States. But we need to pay attention to what's happening at home.Al Donato

On 2017;s World Press Freedom Day, prime minister Justin Trudeau stated that journalistic freedom was “widely recognized and respected in Canada.” But our track record tells a different story.

In his father’s time as the nation’s leader, press freedom was enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Over 30 years later, legal media protections have made slow progress. For doing their jobs, the Canadian media faces invasive surveillance, the risk of imprisonment, and government obstruction.

An annual index from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) revealed that press freedom in Canada had plummeted. The 2017 report card by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) gave Canada failing grades over surveillance of journalists and a lack of protection for whistleblowers.

While journalism is not a crime, journalists can become criminalized. This was never more apparent than with the wrongful conviction of journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was sentenced to seven years in a maximum security prison in Egypt. The Egyptian-born Canadian, along with his Al-Jazeera colleagues, became international examples of what happens when journalists are jailed for being journalists. The CBC documentary Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free covers his tumultuous fight for freedom, at times both overlooked and endangered by the Canadian government. 

Since his pardon and release, Fahmy and wife Marwa Omara have dedicated themselves to The Fahmy Foundation, advocating for the unjustly detained. “Canadians are being jailed for crimes they didn’t commit. And journalists are being thrown into prison and killed, not just in the Middle East, all over the place,” Fahmy told the CBC. 

Canada is no haven for press freedom

Canada ranked 22nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index, falling four spots from 2016. Canada’s press freedom ranking dramatically dropped 10 spots, from eighth to 18th place, in 2015. This followed what RSF called a “Dark Age” under former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and its tight-lipped media policies, the two-time recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Code of Silence award.  RSF didn’t mince words for 2017, blaming a “series of scandals” for Canada’s current standing.

One scandal involves VICE reporter Ben Makuch, who may be jailed for refusing to grant RCMP access to his records from a 2013 interview with an alleged ISIS fighter. After an Ontario Court of Appeal decision upheld the RCMP’s request, Makuch told CBC’s As It Happens that he and Vice Media are prepared to appeal the Supreme Court. “It is inconceivable that we have to stand here today in Canada, calling on our government agencies to respect press freedom,” Fahmy said in a press statement, speaking on Makuch’s circumstances. “Such breach of our rights as Canadians and journalists sets a dangerous precedent.” Most recently, VICE Canada released a statement asking for the RCMP and Canadian government to stop pursuing Makuch’s records, since it was discovered that the alleged fighter died in late 2015.

• MORE:
• Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free
• Signs that press freedom is under threat
• What I learned about press freedom from Mohamed Fahmy

Justin Brake was arrested after covering an Indigenous-led protest at a Muskrat Falls construction site for The Independent in 2016. News of his custody was met with outrage from several press freedom advocacy groups. Brake, who faces up to a decade in prison if convicted, has pled not guilty to contempt and mischief charges, with his civil charge hearing pending. "If there's a conviction here, and journalism is criminalized when journalists have to tell stories of public significance on private property … that closes a lot of space in Canada where stories cannot be told,” Brake told CBC.

The report also criticizes Montreal police for spying on seven journalists. News broke in late 2016 that police used search warrants to access the journalists’ outgoing/incoming phone records. One of the journalists, La Presse’s Patrick Lagacé, was being tracked via his iPhone’s GPS.

Shield laws, which have provided legal safety measures for journalists in the U.S. and European countries, don’t yet exist in Canada. Laws that explicitly protect source identities are absent too. That may change with the Journalistic Sources Protection Act. Put forward as Bill S-231 by Conservative senator Claude Carignan after the discovery of Montreal police surveillance, it proposes amending both the Criminal Code and the Canada Evidence Act to protect the privacy of journalists and their sources. By becoming Canada’s first national shield law, it would make a journalist’s communications and notes harder to seize by law enforcement.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/press-freedom-in-canada-is-under-attack-too

 

 

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The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), a major international diaspora organization, announced on Tuesday that it had asked a court to issue an injunction to prevent the Canadian government from returning a German-made gas turbine that Russia says it needs to deliver natural gas to Germany. 

The group said its effort together with local allies to lobby the Canadian government failed to stop Ottawa from reaching a deal with Berlin on the key piece of equipment. As a result, the UWC has asked the Federal Court of Canada to intervene.

 

The turbine in question was used to pump Russian natural gas to Germany via the Nord Stream undersea pipeline. The Russian gas company Gazprom sent it to the manufacturer, Siemens Energy, for routine maintenance, which was done at a plant in Montreal. However, anti-Russian sanctions imposed by Canada barred the company from returning it. 

Last month, Russia said it had no choice but to decrease the flow of gas into Europe via Nord Stream by roughly 60% due to the missing piece of equipment. Germany initially decried the decision as political before later scrambling to negotiate a sanctions waiver from Canada, which the UWC wants the Canadian court to scrap.

“We cannot supply a terrorist state with the tools it needs to finance the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people,” said Paul Grod, the UWC head, apparently referring to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

 

The organization’s leader called Russia’s decision to limit the capacity of Nord Stream “energy blackmail” and said there were “better ways to resolve Germany’s gas supplies needs than simply caving in” to Moscow. Namely, “existing pipelines in Ukraine … could serve as a conduit for gas to Germany,” he explained, calling on Berlin to pressure Moscow into using the Ukrainian transit route.

The UWC objections to the Canadian decision are aligned with those of the Ukrainian government. Both warned that Ottawa was creating a dangerous precedent that would erode Western anti-Russian sanctions.

The Congress, which is based in Toronto, originated as a Cold War-era organization representing the Ukrainian diaspora living outside of the Soviet Union.

Many Ukrainian nationalists, including those who joined forces with Nazi Germany when it invaded the USSR in 1941, later fled the advancing Red Army and found shelter in countries such as Canada. Declassified CIA documents have shown an extensive record of recruiting such people for a guerilla campaign against Soviet Ukraine after the war. Modern Ukraine portrays war-time nationalist leaders as heroes and downplays or denies the crimes that those individuals and their forces committed. 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/558909-ukrainian-diaspora-turbine-canada/

 

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President Vladimir Putin signed a bill into law on Thursday making countries that restrict or ban Russian media subject to retaliation.

According to the law, “if a ban (restriction) is imposed on the activity of a Russian media outlet within the territory of a foreign state,” the prosecutor general and deputies may apply similar measures to that country’s media outlets operating in Russia, resulting in “the termination of the correspondents’ accreditation,”revoking of registration or licenses, and the closure of offices.

The ban could be lifted “only after the elimination of the circumstances which served as the basis for its adoption,” the document states.

The new law also allows the prosecutor general and deputies to withdraw the registration or terminate the broadcasting license of any media outlet in certain circumstances. 

These include the distribution of false information, discrediting the activities of Russia’s armed forces, as well as demonstrating clear disrespect “for society, the state, and the official symbols of the Russian Federation.”

Dissemination of “information containing calls for the organization and (or) participation in unauthorized public events,” as well as calls to impose sanctions on Russia and its citizens, could also lead to suspension and potentially a ban.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/559000-media-law-retaliation-foreign/

 

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As Canada’s federal government opens the tap for military spending, one in four Canadians are going hungry. Soaring living costs are making groceries unaffordable. With few signs that help is on the way, struggling Canadians are being asked to survive on meager government support, while war profiteers are set to get rich on the back of a military-spending boom.

In a recent interview, Jan Reynolds, a resident in Guelph, Ontario, who lives on federal Old Age Security (OAS) payments, explained to me that she currently has just $30 per week to spend on groceries. This means she cannot afford many basic items, such as bread and eggs.

“I get tired, because I know I’m not, at times, getting enough nutrients,” said Reynolds, who is currently eating just two meals per day amid soaring grocery prices and ever-rising housing costs. She is among the 23 percent of Canadians who say they aren’t eating properly because they don’t have enough money to buy food.

Amid worldwide inflationary trends, Canada’s latest consumer price index update showed costs for groceries were 9.7 percent higher in May 2022 than in May 2021. Prices for vegetables rose 10.3 percent and costs for meat increased by 9 percent year over year. The cost of gas spiked 48 percent year over year, and shelter costs rose by 7.4 percent.

As explained by David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the rising costs of living are being caused by two main factors: higher input costs — driven by both supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine — and corporate profits.

The second factor, Macdonald explains, is fueled in large part by corporate oligopolies — such as large grocery chains — that wield pricing power to not only offset input costs but to also pad out their profit margins. In many sectors, corporate profits have trended upward since the start of the pandemic recession.

The Cost of Weapons

The war in Ukraine — and its global impact on living costs — is showing no signs of ending anytime soon. Western countries continue to show little interest in facilitating peace talks with Russia while pouring billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into the region. Since the start of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion, Canada has committed $650 million worth of direct weapons transfers and other military aid to Ukraine at a volume and speed “unprecedented in recent Canadian history,” according to the antiwar monitoring group Project Ploughshares.

It’s not only direct weapons transfers to Ukraine that have fueled Canada’s ballooning military spending, however. The 2022 federal budget hiked the overall military budget by upward of $8 billion, an increase that was initially projected to bring the share of Canada’s GDP military expenditures closer to the 2 percent figure demanded by NATO. In April, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) flagged a further $15 billion of “unexplained military spending” in the budget.

Still, these increases were not enough for NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who released a report last month suggesting that Canada’s military spending will decline as a share of GDP this year. The NATO report did not explain the reason for this estimated decline, or whether the $8 billion spending increase in the federal budget had been considered. According to the PBO, the federal government would need to increase military spending by another $75.3 billion before 2027 to meet NATO’s target.

Regardless of that target, correctly dismissed as arbitrary by some opposition members of Parliament, militarization is very much on the rise in Canada, and the price tag is soaring.

War Pigs at the Public Trough

In March, the federal government announced it was in the “finalization phase” of procuring eighty-eight new F-35 jets from American weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. This acquisition was green-lit in spite of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promising on the election campaign trail of 2015 that he would not buy the planes. The price tag for the fleet of glitch-prone jets is officially pegged at $19 billion, but critics of the purchase have argued that the true lifetime cost could be as high as $77 billion.

Government officials have branded the F-35 purchase as necessary for defending Canada’s Arctic region, with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine commonly invoked to justify purchasing the new stealth jets. However, Canadian military officials themselves have admitted that the risk of a Russian incursion in the Arctic region is currently “very low.”

 

Arctic defense is also commonly referenced in narratives seeking to justify increased spending on NORAD, the joint US-Canada aerospace and maritime military command. In June, Canadian defence minister Anita Anand announcedthat plans to “modernize” NORAD would cost Canada $40 billion over two decades. This estimate comes with no guarantee that costs won’t run even higher. The cost for the modernization program had originally been estimated between $10 and $20 billion.

The NORAD modernization plans have prompted a flurry of lobbying activity this year by some of the same weapons manufacturers that have enjoyed ballooning stock prices on the back of the Ukraine war. Those arms dealers are now seeking lucrative NORAD modernization contracts with the Canadian government.

Oil and gas companies have also used the Ukraine war as a pretext to lobby the feds for even more favorable trade policies. These companies are the very entities that are responsible for a large portion of the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the climate crisis that poses a very real threat to the Arctic region.

The cost for a fleet of fifteen new Canadian Surface Combatant ships, meanwhile, has skyrocketed to $100 billion from an original estimate of $26 billion in 2011. Irving Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of the billionaire family–owned Irving conglomerate, is also asking for an extra $300 million in public funds to upgrade its manufacturing facilities to fulfill the contract.

Fat for Weapons Contractors, Lean for the Poor

In a June speech addressing inflation, Canada’s finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, who also serves as deputy prime minister, re-announced $8.9 billion in financial support as part of an “affordability plan” that the federal government had already pledged in the 2022 budget.

Direct support measures included boosting a refundable tax credit for people on low incomes, indexing federal benefits like OAS, which were already insufficient to cover basic costs, to inflation. OAS will also be boosted by a further 10 percent for those aged seventy-five and over. At age seventy, however, Reynolds won’t be eligible for that extra increase.

The Liberal government is also promising a means-tested dental care program and a long-awaited $10 per day childcare system. Neither of these measures will be fully rolled out until 2025, an election year.

Additionally, the Liberal government is introducing a onetime low-income “housing affordability payment” of . . . $500. For perspective, that sum covers less than one-third of one month’s average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Guelph, where Reynolds lives. In a country beset by some of the highest housing costs in the OECD, the idea that this is a meaningful fix is laughable.

The hard times are particularly visible to those who volunteer in meal programs and food banks. Teresa Ganna, who helps run a church meal program in Newmarket, Ontario, says that before the pandemic, around thirty-five guests would visit for food on a typical night. Now more than one hundred guests regularly come in for meals, including families with small children. “It means that there are children going hungry,” Ganna notes.

For those living on fixed incomes, she continues, it is impossible to absorb the rising costs of food that are fueling supermarket chains’ surging profits. “If they are living on a very limited income, they’ve got a lot less to spend on food,” said Ganna.

Speaking to CBC News on June 26, Freeland explained that she believes it is time for the federal government to balance existing support for low-income Canadians with “fiscal restraint.”

“I have to strike a balance. One is supporting Canadians with affordability challenges and the other is fiscal restraint, because I don’t want to make the Bank of Canada’s job harder than it already is,” Freeland told CBC. She did not mention military spending.

For the Trudeau government, “restraint” evidently does not apply when it comes to lining the pockets of weapons contractors and fueling the war that is worsening the global cost of living crisis. Poor and low-income Canadians, on the other hand, are expected to go hungry while the war profiteers get rich.

 

 

 

READ MORE:

https://jacobin.com/2022/07/canadian-military-spending-inflation-hunger

 

 

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