CANADA

Refusal by judges to recognize the right of journalists to keep the identity of their news sources confidential and the question of public access to city council meetings became issues of concern to the media in Canada in recent months. In November, an Ontario judge found reporter Ken Peters of the Hamilton Spectator in contempt of court for refusing to obey a court order to name a person present at a 1995 meeting in which he received sensitive documents. Peters was covering municipal affairs when he met with two people and obtained documents alleging serious problems at the St. Elizabeth Villa retirement home in Hamilton . He then wrote a series of articles based on the documents. The retirement home is suing city officials for $15.5 million Canadian dollars, saying comments contained in the documents were defamatory, negligent and breached their public duties in the wake of allegations about poor care and abuse of residents and staff. Superior Court Judge David Crane ruled on December 7 that Peters' promise of confidentiality at that meeting did not extend to the second person present, and ordered him to name that person. Peters refused, arguing that to do so would indirectly reveal his source. Judge Crane said it was the media's insistence on protecting the confidentiality of news sources that forced journalists to break the law. Media organizations saw the judge's ruling, which included an order that Peters pay the court costs, amounting to $31,600 Canadian dollars , as a dangerous precedent. Peters said he plans to appeal. In Ottawa , in mid-December the Chalottetown city council voted 7- 3 in favor of opening committee meetings to the media, but added a long list of exclusions, including pre-budget debates, reports and presentations to the council, as well as any meeting an organization may want to keep private. A CBC reporter had been asked in April to leave a committee meeting. The CBC countered by filing a formal request to have all committee meetings open to the public. In early December 2004, Aamir Arain, resident editor of The Pakistan Post , which circulates throughout Canada and the United States, said he had received an anonymous death threat on his cell phone after his newspaper ran a news item, based on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police report, in November concerning a drug bust in Toronto that implicated influential members of the local Pakistani business community. Advertisers later reported being pressured, which Arain said had caused a 30 percent drop in advertising revenue. Agreement was reached in January to halt criminal and civil proceedings against author and journalist Stephen Williams that had begun two years earlier following a series of police raids on his home. Following a lengthy and costly court battle, Williams accepted a plea bargain offered by the government and received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to a single charge of breaching a publication ban. He was given three years' probation and ordered to perform community service. The unusual dual criminal-civil prosecution of Williams involved 97 criminal charges for allegedly violating a publication ban concerning the trial of serial killer Paul Bernardo. It was feared the prosecution would send a chilling message to journalists and writers who express criticism of police and judicial actions in Ontario and be a dangerous legal precedent. n late February, media groups called for a public inquiry after a journalist and police commission chairman were targeted by Edmonton police in what was seen as an unwarranted drunk driving sting last November at a Canadian Association of Journalists function at a downtown Edmonton bar.