Press freedom in Canada restricted in 2024, says U.S. State Dept. report

The U.S. State Department's annual global survey of human rights included "credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression and press freedom" in Canada during 2024.  

2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Canada | U.S. Department of State | Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor | Executive Summary 

"There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in Canada during the year. Significant human rights issues included credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists and activists.... The law provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right. An independent media, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for media members, although significant curtailments of press freedom remained.

• The law criminalized 'hate speech' in any public place and defined it as communication that incited hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement was likely to lead to a breach of the peace or communication that willfully promoted hatred against any identifiable group, other than in private conversation. The maximum penalty was two years’ imprisonment.
• The public media and majority of private media were substantially dependent on government sources of funding for their activities. Government intervention in the media market favored means of communication that did not diverge from government-suggested bounds of political speech, and government policy and practices often disadvantaged independent media. 
• The government used a variety of mechanisms to fund public and private sector media in the country, ranging from direct grants and tax credits to mandatory payments and funds collected from broadcasters, streaming services, and news platforms, but distributed or regulated by the government. News organizations faced direct and indirect pressure to conform their political speech in order to gain or maintain access to these funds, leading to self-censorship. Independent news organizations that did not take government funds faced a substantial market disadvantage.
• During the year, the Online News Act of 2023 came into force. The law required large digital media platforms pay news businesses when their content appeared on the platform. The law empowered the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to set mandatory bargaining guidelines between platforms and news businesses and to otherwise enforce and set regulatory guidance for the act, including codes of conduct and eligibility of news businesses to participate, powers which could be used to discriminate against political speech or disfavored independent media outlets.
• In September, a Federal Court judge upheld the government’s decision to disqualify an independent news organization from journalism tax credits. The organization was one of the few in the country that produced critical reporting on the government’s response to protests of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
• In March, the government announced a grant of 58.8 million Canadian dollars (CAD) ($43.2 million) to extend the Local Journalism Initiative to 2027 that funded media organizations to hire journalists or pay freelance journalists to produce civic journalism for “underserved communities” across the country. The funding brought total government support for initiative to CAD 94.7 million ($69.6 million) over eight years since its launch in 2019. Independent media organizations without access to these funds faced increased market pressure. The Changing Narrative Fund revenue stream of the initiative, announced during the year, prioritized funding for hiring journalists in the 'Indigenous, Black, racialized, ethno-religious minority, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ communities,' discriminating against journalists who fell outside of these favored categories.
• In January, Edmonton police arrested Indigenous journalist Brandi Morin on assignment with Ricochet Media for obstruction for conducting interviews with residents at an Indigenous-led homeless encampment when police arrived to dismantle the encampment. Police detained Morin for several hours, although Morin had identified herself as a journalist. Authorities dropped charges against Morin in  March after prosecutors determined no public interest was served in pursuing the case.
• In May, a member of parliament of the governing party and other officials allegedly attempted to use supposed security threats to impose unreasonably high security charges (more than the costs of the events otherwise) on two independent media organizations’ events. The organizations alleged that they were targeted for their political speech and had a lawsuit pending.
• Rather than participate in government-mandated bargaining, some American digital platforms announced that they would no longer make news content available to Canadian users, leading to substantial censorship of news content including local news content. The opposition party described the Online News Act as a government censorship law, because of its effects on the character and quality of the country’s news reporting.

Chris Barber and Tamara Lich. CBC photos.

• A trial of two organizers of the 2022 'Freedom Convoy' concluded during the year. A verdict was still pending at year’s end. In response to the 2022 convoy (which protested draconian lockdown measures that substantially damaged the communities and economic livelihoods of many Canadians), the government took the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act, leading to large-scale social media censorship and debanking. In January, the Federal Court ruled that the government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The federal government appealed the decision.
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) continued its legal efforts to block an independent news outlet’s Access to Information request for CBC’s communications with American social media platform Twitter (now X) dating to 2018. The news outlet previously published investigative reporting alleging that the CBC exerted pressure on Twitter/X to censor it and other disfavored news outlets over political speech.

Read more: https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/canada