Court ruling a major setback for public's right to know, CAJ says
Excerpt:
OTTAWA, Feb. 29 /CNW/ - The Canadian Association of Journalists is gravely dismayed by a regressive appeal court ruling that requires the National Post to surrender leaked secret documents in the Shawinigate affair to police.
Today's Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that the right to protect confidential sources is superseded by the police need to investigate alleged crimes overturns a landmark Ontario Superior Court decision that struck down an RCMP warrant against the National Post and reporter Andrew McIntosh in September 2002. Police allege leaked documents detailing a controversial loan to a Quebec hotelier in former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's riding are
forged and seek to analyze them for fingerprints and DNA to identify the
source.
"Today's decision is a major setback for press freedom and the public's right to know," said CAJ president Mary Agnes Welch. "It would effectively require journalists to become agents of the state, which will put a chill on whistleblowers and other people of conscience who would bring matters of profound public importance to light." The ruling is the latest in a series of attacks on the use of confidential sources in Canada, Welch said.
"The legal standard in Canada should allow any journalist to protect the identity of their confidential sources, period. This is woefully absent from our laws and jurisprudence, which is what can lead to rulings like this one," Welch said....
"The physical materials in this case go to the core principle ofprotecting confidential sources," Welch said. "Police are on a witch-hunt to root out a whistleblower who exposed important and embarrassing information, and they are trying to use forensic tests to do it. If that isn't an attemptto subvert the relationship between journalists and confidential sources, Idon't know what is."
Welch noted that whistleblowers who do reveal information often do so at great personal and professional risk.
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