Canada

CANADA In the last year there have been several cases of journalists coming under violent attack because of what they have written. The first was the murder of the publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times just prior to the elections at the largest Sikh temple in North America. It is believed the killing may have been carried out by extremist members of the Sikh community. But the crime remains unsolved and threats against the newspaper continue. In a related incident, a reporter of a mainstream daily newspaper in Vancouver was given police protection after her life was threatened over her coverage of extremists in the Sikh community. A veteran reporter with the French-language daily Le Journal de Montreal in Quebec was shot in the parking garage of the newspaper just one day after the publication of his latest article on organized crime. The reporter covered turf battles among Quebec’s biker gangs and the most recent article, which included photographs of local gang members, reported that the Hell’s Angel’s biker gang and the local Mafia were purging themselves of troublesome elements. The reporter has recovered from his injuries and police are investigating. On the legal front, recent amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code empower a court in criminal matters to issue a reporting ban to protect the identity of victims and witnesses. Previously, cases decided before and after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms emphasized the importance of open justice and refused to allow such reporting bans unless necessary for safety. The new development is expected to be challenged under the Charter. There is a growing number of examples of individuals utilizing human rights legislation in an effort to regulate press activity. One instance was a complaint under the “equal provision of services” provision in the Ontario Human Rights Act brought against a newspaper in an effort to compel it to refer to Christian Poles in its stories on the Holocaust or Polish Jews. Despite the newspaper’s protests, the Human Rights Commission found that it has jurisdiction over newspapers and over Press Councils. However, the Commission did find that an order compelling the newspaper to include content would be inconsistent with the free speech protection in the Human Rights Code. But the Commission refused to address the argument that it does not have jurisdiction over content published in the media. The right to personal privacy is an emerging legal issue in Canada. There is, however, very little privacy jurisprudence to date, with case law arising primarily in those provinces that have enacted legislation protecting personal privacy.