Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrines the freedom of the press. Moreover, the country’s courts and democratic institutions frequently herald the autonomy of the news media, noting that reliable information is “integral to a functioning democracy” (Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, 2017: 1). According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, 49 per cent of Canadians think the media does a good job in monitoring the powerful (Newman et al., 2019).
In 2017, Canada adopted a so-called shield law to protect journalists from revealing confidential sources. The Journalistic Source Protection Actwas approved unanimously by both chambers of Canada’s parliament. Before the law, Canadian journalists had to convince a judge that protecting their confidential source had merit. It was up then up to the court to decide if the journalist must name their source. The new law shifts the burden to judicial authorities to convince a judge that the journalist’s information cannot reasonably be obtained through other means and that the public interest in the information outweighs the importance of eroding the freedom of the press (Taylor et al., 2017).
When it comes to the autonomy of CBC News, there remains a contentious issue concerning the transparency and accountability of appointing the public broadcaster’s President and CEO (under the Broadcasting Act, the president is the chief executive officer) and Board of Directors. The CBC/Radio-Canada Board is composed of ten members, plus the chair and the president and CEO, all of whom are appointed by the governor in council (federal cabinet), as outlined in Section 36 (2) of the Broadcasting Act (Canada, 1991). This framework calls into question the ability of CBC/Radio-Canada to maintain its arm’s-length independence from the sitting government (Taylor, 2017). The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau reformed the selection of the board in 2017, creating an independent advisory committee to appoint broad “experts in broadcasting and digital technology, representatives of cultural sectors from across Canada” (Houpt, 2017).
