“People believed his lies. Everything he said was bullshit, from top to bottom.” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
April 27, 2024
There was a media bunfight last week as National Post Managing Editor Carson Jerema lambasted Parliamentary reporters Althia Raj of the Toronto Star and Catherine Tunney of the CBC for their coverage of Pierre Poilievre’s roadside visit to a New Brunswick carbon tax revolt camp where some participants had ties to the far-right insurrectionist outfit, Diagolon.
Weighing in, Poilievre tormentor-in-chief Rachel Gilmore posted a video report tracing the connections between some of the tax protesters and Diagolon.
The Diagolons in question are one of the few right-wing groups that Poilievre has publicly repudiated (for threatening to sexually assault his wife). He notably has not disavowed an endorsement from US conspiracist Alex Jones and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Ottawa convoy protesters in 2022.
All of that is grist for the mill in the CBC news story (Poilievre enthusiastically identifying with Convoy-style voices) and the Star’s opinion piece (Poilievre’s associations with those voices alienates a lot of Canadian voters).
The Post’s Jerema thinks it’s all left-wing journalism and especially believes the CBC manufactured a smear story. Coming from the Post, which has gushed a daily flow of anti-Trudeau political columns since at least 2015, it’s a bit rich.
But you be the judge, the columns and story are linked above.
An observation from MediaPolicy.ca: Jerema criticizes the wording of the CBC story lede —-that Poilievre “is facing questions after stopping to cheer on an anti-carbon tax convoy camp”—- as disingenuous since most Canadians were blissfully unaware of the isolated tax protest and didn’t have any questions about Poilievre’s unscheduled pit stop until the CBC reporter said they might.
The very experienced Jerema no doubt recognized this journalistic convention as the near-cousin of “some say” that relies on the assumption that some members of an informed public likely have an opinion on a controversial news item. It’s not great journalism, but hardly a new or partisan phenomenon.
In fact, these kinds of gotcha stories are legion in “watchdog” reporting, otherwise known as investigative journalism. The journalistic assumption is that political guilt by association, or implied wrongdoing (with the news subject being allowed to offer rebuttal comments), is fair ball. Let the reader judge.
Poilievre’s past comments and uninhibited comfort with far-right groups, however you perceive those, are a legitimate political story that Canadians appear to be interested in. Were the Prime Minister to repeat one of his known foibles (pick one) he’d get the same treatment.
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Judging from the public debate and media coverage of cultural policy in Québec, you can expect that every federal and provincial political party is going to be expected to do something about the outsized consumption of English-language streaming and social media content by francophone youth.
The anxiety level is palpable. La Presse’s well known arts columnist Mario Gerard reported from a recent conference at the University of Montréal with a dire description of young people’s waning consumption of French language culture in Québec and francophone nations across the Atlantic:
So, when I hear about measures and laws, I say yes. We must act on all fronts. Provincial, national and international. But above all, let’s do it in a concerted way. These laws will not settle everything, for sure. But we must give ourselves the means to fight against this beast that is suffocating us.
Gerard reported that the federal Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge and the Québec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe are speaking in categorical terms about the need for regulatory action. It’s doubtful Québec voters are going to be satisfied with words.
A good guess is that St.-Onge and Lacombe are already having private conversations about action, money, and that oh-so-tricky topic of federal-provincial jurisdiction.
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Two weeks ago MediaPolicy posted about the demoralizing performance of Heritage Committee MPs in passing up an opportunity to engage Bell CEO Mirko Bibic in a policy discussion, opting instead for a belligerent hazing.
Bibic’s interrogation by MPs was a command appearance following Bell’s decision to shore up its share price by protecting dividends at the cost of mass layoffs.
Here’s the follow up no-nonsense commentary from telco industry analyst Mark Goldberg and also former Bloomberg reporter Theo Argitis publishing on the conservative website The Hub.
By the end of his column, Argitis manages to boil it down to this pithy advice for MPs:
In an ideal world, we get cheap telecom services, minimal regulation of the internet, and robust news ecosystems financed by the telcos. In the real world, at least one of those objectives may need to be abandoned. Policymakers get to decide which one.
To round out the story, here’s a good investment story from the Globe’s Tim Kiladze on the BCE balance sheet, share price and dividend payout going forward. Some useful context.
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