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First published at True North on July 23, 2019.

Bureaucrats in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada were “monitoring” social media posts and Reddit threads for “misconceptions” about immigration last summer.

Internal emails obtained exclusively by True North under Access to Information reveal a team of 12 communications and social media staffers reporting and conducting “detailed analysis” on tweets posted not only by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel and People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier, but also ordinary Canadians.

The documents date to August 2018, when Bernier took aim at “extreme multiculturalism,” sparking a national discussion about manufactured diversity in Canada.

One of the key issues from the emails involved a Reddit thread discussing a Toronto Sun article about refugee housing at a Radisson hotel. The “social care” team lead with IRCC said in an email that the thread “had become bigoted in nature. The vast majority of popular comments were extremely negative in tone.”

 “The comments are unfavorable to the Prime Minister and government, and are also very un-sympathetic (sic) to those claiming asylum,” he wrote.

In another email in the chain, a staffer says her department will “continue to monitor” the Reddit thread, which is still online though closed for commenting by moderators in the r/Canada subreddit.

“The conversation provides some indication of public sentiment on housing asylum seekers,” the staffer wrote. “As discussed earlier, this underscores our advice to focus on numbers on the storyline and gives an indication of the types of misconceptions we might need to address going forward.”

She directed one colleague to share the information with the Privy Council Office, which is the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister’s Office. She also assigned someone to prepare notes to brief the deputy minister, the highest ranking bureaucrat in Canada’s immigration department.

The document also contains a two-page chart of tweets from Canadians critical of the government on immigration, labeled by whomever compiled them with descriptions such as “Condemnation of the Trudeau government” and “Commends (Maxime Bernier” for standing up for Canada/rails against diversity and irregular migration.”

All of the tweets tagged Bernier and the department’s official Twitter handle, the report noted. It’s not known how the government is storing or using the database of tweets it’s amassing through this “public environment scan.”

These emails prove the public service is monitoring private citizens’ social media comments critical of the government – and sharing them with the Privy Council Office.

They also show that Rempel’s and Bernier’s tweets about immigration last summer triggered enough backlash that the government needed a dozen people to work to address “misconceptions,” suggesting they believe anyone criticizing the government’s ham-fisted approach to running immigration by virtue signalling is wrong, and in need of a dose of the state narrative.

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First published at SteynOnline on July 16, 2019.

The British government has imposed a nine-month jail sentence on Tommy Robinson. Egregious as that is, it’s made all the more so by the fact that just a few miles away from his sentencing, the very same government was co-hosting a global summit on journalistic freedom.

I had no idea the British delegation’s leader, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, had also added Minister of Irony to his list of titles (which I hope will not include “prime minister” any time soon, but that’s for another column.)

As I wrote a couple of weeks back, Robinson has been in the crosshairs of the state for reasons that have nothing to do any real crimes, but rather for how his coverage of Muslim grooming gangs exposed the establishment’s silence.

This political class was also conspicuously silent about Robinson’s ordeal during the two-day Global Conference for Media Freedom, which featured much vaunting of western governments’ supposed commitment to free speech without any demonstration of it. Though that may have been by design. It’s much more enjoyable to sip cocktails and hang out at a ritzy London summit than to actually do anything.

The conference was co-hosted by the UK and my own country, Canada. Furthering the affair’s devotion to ironic hypocrisy, I was at one point barred from attending a press conference by Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, because the room selected at the 16-acre facility was “too small” (though it had room for a three-person Al Jazeera crew and nearly a dozen others from mainstream Canadian media outlets.)

To my surprise and pleasure, the mainstream media journalists unanimously threatened to walk out of the event if Freeland’s press flak didn’t let everyone in. It was only I and another conservative journalist, Sheila Gunn Reid of Canada’s Rebel, who were apparently going to be the wafer thin mints of the press conference, though in the end we were both allowed in after the protest forced the conjuring of a larger space.

Had this happened at any other conference, I doubt the government would have caved. They may be censors, but they’re shrewd enough to want to avoid the “journalists banned from covering press freedom summit” headlines. But the whole thing was a farcical charade, paying only lip service to free speech.

Hunt gave a glowing introduction to Malaysian communications minister Gobind Singh Deo, calling him a press freedom trailblazer despite his push for the Malaysian government to censor the internet and maintain “extra-territorial” prosecution powers for online hate speech. The trigger for this call was a British blogger making a turban joke.

Singh Deo was in good company though as Pakistan’s foreign minister also had a speaking slot, during which no one brought up the myriad Pakistani journalists who’ve wound up behind bars (or worse) for the crime of journalism running afoul of the state or Qur’an.

The most consequential of the sessions were closed to the press and public, as I learned when I was ejected from one of them after naively assuming I could cover it. On the agenda was a multilateral meeting of the government representatives present to discuss how they intend to implement the matters raised at the conference. Closed-door democracy, basically.

It’s tough to be amused by western governments’ collective channeling of Monty Python when these are the people who can legislate away free speech with the strokes of their pens, and don’t hesitate to do exactly that.

Instead, Britain and Canada wished only to point fingers at the most extreme examples of journalists facing persecution to distract from their own abysmal records on free speech domestically. Such as Canada’s desire to revive section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, or the United Kingdom’s “online harms” white paper calling for regulation of social media companies who allow users to post “harmful” material on the internet.

Robinson’s sentencing literally commenced during a panel by Hunt and Freeland entitled “What is media freedom: why is it important?” Yet his case – the kind the politicians and NGO representatives at this summit would be decrying had it happened in any other country ­– elicited only awkward stammering whenever I asked about it.

Robinson wore a “convicted of journalism” t-shirt to his sentencing hearing, after which he was ushered out the back door of the Old Bailey to be taken to jail. Whatever one might think of him, there’s no denying he’s remained steadfast through not only the death threats and physical assaults sustained because of his coverage, but even staring at a nine-month sentence that will keep him locked up during his three kids’ summer break from school.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a western journalist who’s staked as much as Robinson, though his government prosecuted him. May it be a cautionary tale: the values and freedoms governments loudly proclaim are always conditional.

When I asked Freeland how she justified standing beside a Malaysian state censor at a press freedom conference, her answer was that it “is not meant to be a gathering of angels.”

Mission accomplished, in that case.

First published at True North on July 11, 2019.

At what was supposed to be a conference promoting freedom of the press, the Canadian and British governments demonstrated they’re more interested in a glossy show of support for press freedom without conducting themselves in a way that fosters it.

I’m in London, UK for the first ever Global Conference for Media Freedom, co-hosted by Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s foreign ministers, Chrystia Freeland and Jeremy Hunt. Despite the summit’s mission, several sessions were completely closed off to the press and public, and the politicians running things were been scarcely available to journalists.

Things got so bad that at one point the entire delegation of Canadian journalists threatened to walk out of a scrum with Freeland after learning I and another commentator, The Rebel’s Sheila Gunn Reid, would be denied access.

Freeland’s media liaison initially blamed what she said was the small size of the room booked for the scrum, though refused to consider requests to hold it in another section of Printworks, the 16-acre facility playing host to the conference.

The principled stand from reporters and crew for CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, Global News and Al Jazeera was truly appreciated. I’m sure we have numerous ideological differences between us, but there was a shared recognition that the hypocrisy on display from Freeland was unacceptable and threatened all media present, not just the two of us being expressly excluded.

Their decision to not participate in the scrum unless all covering it could left Freeland’s office with no choice. Her staff caved, and every outlet got a question, albeit with no follow-ups allowed.

I’ve no idea what Freeland had to fear as an experienced minister and former journalist herself. I asked my question without issue and she answered it; the exchange is precisely what the interactions between the media and politicians are supposed to look like. It just shouldn’t have been such an ordeal to get to that point.

The scrum was significant because only two pre-selected Canadian journalists were permitted to ask questions of Freeland and Hunt at a brief media availability on the first day of the conference. No private interviews were granted with either, and there were no other media access opportunities.

After a Thursday morning plenary session, Freeland was quickly extracted to a closed-off hallway as several staffers formed a human wall between her and the media.

Media were not allowed in the room for what may have been the most consequential part of the conference, a session with government representatives from around the world on “how to sustain the impact of the (Defend Media Freedom) campaign after the conference.”

I was kicked out the room moments before the event was to begin, by two polite aides who threatened to “escalate” matters if I didn’t leave.

I’m aware that freedom of the press is not an all-access pass to every meeting, just as it doesn’t conjure private access with a cabinet minister on demand. The issue here lies in that Canada, along with the United Kingdom, is speaking to the world about press freedom while refusing to honour the commitments it expects from other countries.

It was hypocritical, and cannot stand.

As the sessions went on, several speakers referenced George Orwell’s writings on totalitarianism. In fact, conference attendees on their way into the building had to walk by a large Orwell quote stencilled onto the side of a shipping container.

Orwell’s warnings on censorship and press freedom have been prescient. It’s a shame the conference’s organizers didn’t realize they were the ones about whom he was writing.

First published at True North on July 11, 2019.

As the second day of Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s first ever Global Conference for Media Freedom, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt honoured a Malaysian politician he says is on the front lines of standing up for press freedom.

Malaysia is pursuing a “moralistic approach” to journalistic freedom involving regulation and legislation to deal with “fake news,” Malaysian communications minister Gobind Singh Deo said in his remarks Thursday morning.

Hunt didn’t mention that less than a year ago Singh Deo called not only for strict regulation of online speech, but also enforcement powers reaching even those not living in Malaysia.

Singh Deo appeared on stage alongside Hunt and Canada’s foreign minister Chrystia Freeland as part of the plenary session kicking off the London conference’s final day.

Last September, Singh Deo said hate speech legislation needs to have an “extra-territorial” approach, triggered by a remark made by a blogger living in London that took aim at a Malaysian police chief’s turban.

The British-born blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, had said the chief’s “turban must be too tight that it restricted the flow of blood to his brain.”

Singh Deo said it amounted to an attack on all Sikhs.

“It deserves nothing less than the highest degree of condemnation,” Singh Deo wrote. “It undermines the most basic values we Malaysians uphold, which is mutual respect for each other.”

Though the same post went beyond simply calling for a more respectful society.

“We cannot and must not allow such attacks against any one of us to go unnoticed,” he added. “This is an example of why it is we need to push ahead for laws which regulate hate speech. These laws must also focus on more effective and efficient extra-territorial reach so as to facilitate the prosecution of persons who commit such offences from overseas here in Malaysia.”

Singh Deo also said in March that he was mulling a new law that would hold news outlets responsible for “inflammatory remarks” made by people commenting on their news stories.

“Freedom of expression does not mean (freedom) to promote lewd, vulgar or sexist comments,” he said, according to a New Straits Times article.

First published at True North on July 10, 2019.

Only pre-approved journalists could ask questions of the Canadian and British foreign ministers at the first ever Global Conference for Media Freedom.

I didn’t make the cut.

As Canada is co-hosting the conference, it was agreed that two of the questions at the media availability capping off the conference’s first day would go to Canadian journalists.

Six Canadian outlets are covering the event: CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, Global News, The Rebel, and True North.

In an email thread, Freeland’s office asked the journalists (not including those from the Rebel) to decide amongst themselves who would get to ask the questions. In a cordial exchange with my colleagues from the other outlets, it was agreed that CBC’s Derek Stoffel and I would each get a question in.

Freeland’s representative was not included in this discussion, though was sent an email with the two final names, of which she accepted receipt.
Ten minutes later, however, she emailed me privately to say there would only, in fact be time for one question from a Canadian, because the British Foreign Office’s press team had already filled the other spots.

As a conservative commentator, I was of course skeptical while understanding the plausibility of a genuine tightening of the schedule given the scale of this event.

However, Hunt’s office hand-picked a second Canadian journalist to ask a question of the ministers.

At the media availability, a CBC’s Stoffel was called on to ask a question. So was CTV’s Melanie Nagy.

Hunt had joked about the importance of taking unscripted questions from the media at a media freedom conference, though it was entirely pre-determined who would get to ask them.

He read the names and outlets from a list. The reporters on the list had been placed in front row seats by aides before the start of the event (so the second question wasn’t an impromptu addition).

Hunt’s office made the decision, one of his aides confirmed. Though she assured it was a misunderstanding and not a political decision.

I was told Stoffel wasn’t present when pre-selected journalists were being seated, but Nagy was. So out of a desire for a Canadian voice, she was given question privileges, but when Stoffel arrived shortly before the event began, he was accommodated to honour the original arrangement.

This doesn’t, however, address the initial claim of there simply being no time for an additional question. I had assured Freeland’s representative earlier in the day that I had no intention of an “ambush” of Freeland. I received no reply to this, despite otherwise pleasant exchanges throughout the day.

In actuality, the British government chose a mainstream media reporter to fill a spot when the Canadian media delegation had agreed to allow an independent correspondent – me – to ask a question.

I don’t fault the CTV reporter for this; she was specifically invited to ask a question and posed a great one to both Hunt and Freeland.

It’s only the first day of this two-day conference and I’ve made a request for an interview with Freeland which may be accommodated tomorrow.