Climate change amendments to the National Building Code will cost new homebuyers up to $30,000 on average, the Commons natural resources committee was told yesterday. MPs opened hearings on Code revisions planned for 2030: “Until we talk real numbers, we can’t talk reality.”
A former Conservative candidate who won a record $650,000 defamation award against the National Post says election monitoring of Twitter falsehoods should include scrutiny of mainstream media. Federal Election Commissioner Yves Côté is monitoring social media to enforce a federal law prohibiting false statements against candidates.
“It is not unknown for the mainstream media to get it wrong,” said Arthur Kent, a Calgary journalist and former NBC foreign correspondent. “Every day they publish material that first appeared on Twitter and Facebook. Monitors should be looking at mainstream media, too. It’s an echo chamber now.”
“We are going into a federal election and an Alberta campaign in 2019, and Canadians as citizens depend on news media to be our first line of defence against election campaign disinformation,” said Kent. “The public should know.”
The Alberta Court of Appeal on May 25 awarded Kent $200,000 in damages and $450,000 in costs over a 2008 Post column that ridiculed his candidacy for the Alberta legislature. The article Alberta’s Scud Stud A ‘Dud’ On The Campaign Trail by then-columnist Don Martin called Kent “self-absorbed”, a “problem candidate”, “television eye-candy” and “campaign bad boy”. The item was published 17 days before the election. Kent lost by 1,012 votes.
Court records showed the Post refused to publish Kent’s rebuttal, and kept the defamatory article in its website archives more than four years after Kent sued for damages. The Court ruled the column exaggerated negative references, did “not meet the test for truth or reportage”, and was based in part on an apparently fabricated quote from an unnamed source.
The Court also faulted Post lawyers for failing to promptly disclose evidence in the case, including a confidential 2008 email from Columnist Martin to a Progressive Conservative campaign organizer that asked, “Any more dirt?” Concealment of emails “represented a fundamental breach of the respondents’ obligations,” wrote the Court of Appeal.
Martin quit the newspaper in 2010 to host the CTV News Channel program Power Play. Kent in an interview said neither Martin nor the National Post ever apologized. The newspaper did not appeal the Court order.
Can’t Publish False Statements
“I have to tell you these people are not accountable,” said Kent. “This was a grueling legal marathon. As someone who lived it for 10 years, I feel an obligation to say, here is what we experienced.”
Kent in a letter to Alberta Elections and Commissioner Côté wrote, “The Postmedia-Martin rulings represent a compelling argument that your offices have a new role to play in administering open, fair and impartial elections. Our team’s experience in 2008 foreshadowed a reality now stalking every election: Standing for office in the internet age means a reputational free-fire zone of a nature unforeseen by 20th century regulatory bodies.”
Côté in an October 19 notice Social Media Analysis Services said his office will hire monitors in the 2019 federal campaign to watch “social media content including, but not limited to, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, chatrooms, message boards, social networks and video and image sharing websites.” The Commissioner’s office yesterday said it did not plan general monitoring of mainstream media.
Under the Canada Elections Act section 91, “No person shall with the intention of affecting the results of an election, knowingly make or publish false statements of fact in relation to the personal conduct of a candidate or prospective candidate.”
The law followed a 1997 Canadian Police Association billboard campaign described by one Liberal senator as “vicious”. The campaign ads depicted serial murderers Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo alongside photos of eight Liberal candidates who “voted to give these killers a chance at early parole”, said the billboards: “On June 2, it’s your turn to vote.”
Then-Transport Minister David Anderson, one of the eight named candidates, called it “a new low in public debate”. The billboards referred to a Commons vote on the so-called faint hope clause, a provision of the Criminal Code allowing convicted murderers to apply for parole after 15 years.
By Staff 
Federal risk management of fisheries appears “shot full of holes”, a Liberal MP yesterday told the Commons fisheries committee. MPs reviewed a critical audit that faulted the Department of Fisheries for weak supervision of salmon farming: “The aquaculture industry demonstrates a deep lack of transparency.”
Federal tariffs on U.S. metal imports have only hurt Canadian consumers and manufacturers, a factory owner yesterday told the Commons trade committee. Cabinet last July 1 imposed 25 percent duties on American steel and 10 percent on aluminum in retaliation against identical U.S. taxes on Canadian exports: “Does our government care?”
The Department of National Defence yesterday said it will hire real reporters to pose fake questions in a staff training session to expose “media techniques”. The department did not comment on the cost of the fake news exercise, or identify journalists who agreed to participate.
“Journalists are required to prepare interview questions ahead of the training sessions,” the department wrote in a notice Journalists Role-Playing Professional Services: “The training requires the participation of journalists to simulate appropriate media interviews.”
Fake news training sessions are scheduled at the Defence Public Affairs Learning Centre in North York, Ont., a federal facility that trains military spokespeople and staff “in a risk-free environment to prepare for successful media engagements and interviews”. Role-Playing said full-time reporters will be paid to pose as fake reporters in workshop sessions, then critique staff on how well they perform in simulated interviews and news conferences.
“Journalists share their observations with the instructor who will provide feedback to the candidates,” wrote staff. “At the end of the session, journalists offer their observations to the training coordinator for future sessions.”
The budget was not detailed. The military did not reply to Blacklock’s questions.
Fake news workshops are intended to train military employees to “understand the media and social media environment”, learn how to “negotiate an interview”, and maneuver through pitfalls they might face in disclosing information to the public. “Recognize and respond to different types of questions and techniques used by media,” said Role-Playing.
“The contractor should use the following media techniques and types of questions that could be expected on the subject of the interview in order for the spokesperson to practice bridging techniques: the loaded question; the hypothetical question; the opinion question; the statement; and the silent treatment,” wrote staff.
“To support the training, the contractor must provide journalists that will conduct an analysis of the media landscape specific to each spokesperson’s topic, and practice interviews with the specified spokesperson using relevant, credible and challenging questions in the formats specified by the instructor,” the notice said.
The Canadian Association of Journalists, a volunteer trade association, did not comment. “It’s not just in wartime situations that reporters find themselves ‘embedded’,” the Association wrote in a 2014 report of its ethics advisory committee How Close Is Too Close? “Where is the journalist’s primary loyalty?” said the report. “What would the public think?”; “Applying any one of these tests might raise a red flag.”
By Staff
Airports and airlines will see new mandatory regulations on accessibility next year, the CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency last night told the Commons human resources committee. Enforcement will include fines for non-compliance: ‘It is a fundamental human right.’
Federal departments and agencies have paid out $135,092 in damages to employees who did not receive paycheques, according to newly-released Public Accounts. The Public Service Alliance of Canada has requested a general compensation fund for employees affected by the failed Phoenix Pay System program: “No worker should be forced to sell their vehicle.”
The Commons yesterday rejected a motion to examine postal banking. Critics noted debate occurred as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began rotating strikes to press contract demands on management: “We do not get great service, but we are well served by the banking industry.”
Cabinet yesterday said it may seek a wider Code Of Conduct on internet and TV service providers’ sales practices. Federal data show 1 in 4 Canadians still suffer bill shock five years after regulators first introduced a consumers’ code for wireless subscribers: “It’s basically a cartel, let’s face it.”
A $2 million taxpayers’ loan to a green technology company created a single job, according to Access To Information records. The loan to a money-losing Québec firm was awarded a year-and-a-half after it received an outright grant of $2.4 million: “We are grateful.”
Street language is okay on TV political talk shows, a national broadcast council has ruled. The decision follows “insulting” remarks by a former co-chair of Ontario’s failed Liberal campaign: ‘He could have used equivalent terms such as ‘idiot’ or ‘goofball’.”
Parks Canada says it may rewrite rules to amend speech gag regulations under the Canada National Parks Act. MPs and senators on Parliament’s scrutiny of regulations committee called it a breach of the Charter of Rights: “You know what? We’re just going to leave it the way it is.”
Nuclear safety officers cruelly caricatured as donut-eating Homer Simpsons must meet rigorous fitness tests, says the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The agency in a notice spelled out annual physicals for staff including stair-climbing and knee bends wearing a 20-lb. safety vest: “These standards must be met.”
A Saudi airline is suing the Canadian Transportation Agency for legal costs in scheduling, then canceling a hearing over a $2,500 fine. “The Agency under its current leadership seems to be on a crusade against airlines,” said a lawyer in the case.
Members of the Senate trade committee yesterday expressed skepticism over claimed benefits of a new Pacific trade pact. The government’s own data suggest the treaty could result in job losses, said one legislator: “Why should we all get on the bandwagon?”
