Michel Cormier is executive director, news and current affairs, at Société Radio-Canada
The revelation that Quebec's provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, gained access to the phone records of Radio-Canada's star investigative reporters has sent a shock wave through our organization.
The outrage we feel is compounded by the fact that a judge approved the SQ's request to go back five years into those phone records, thereby possibly revealing the identities of confidential sources that led to many exposés and to a commission of inquiry into Quebec's construction industry.
The ability of a journalist to guarantee to a source that his or her identity will not be disclosed is a fundamental tenet of investigative journalism. Otherwise, few people would risk coming forward with information that serves the public interest. This principle has been recognized and validated by the Supreme Court of Canada.
As of now, the reasons invoked by the SQ to justify access to our phone records, as well as any information pertaining to those phone numbers, remain sealed in court documents.
A number of media organizations have announced their intention to petition the court to get some of these documents unsealed, in an effort to make public the reasons invoked by the SQ to gain access to journalists' phone records.
We at Radio-Canada oppose that request for the simple reason that it may expose some of our sources. In other circumstances, we would join with our colleagues to gain information from the courts that is in the public interest.
But in this case the commitment we made to hundreds of sources to make sure their identity is protected takes precedence over the need to reveal the motives of the SQ.
The efforts of the Sûreté du Québec to look at five years of phone records goes beyond a single case, and suggests that it may have gone on a fishing expedition. Many of our sources, past and present, have expressed concern that their identity might be revealed, even inadvertently.
There is a further element to our position. The Quebec government has launched a commission of inquiry to look at the behaviour of police forces and actions they took to gain access to journalists' phones or phone records.
This commission, we believe, is a more appropriate setting to expose and explore the SQ's motivations in getting access to the private phone records of our journalists. Witnesses will testify under oath. The commissioners can also decide to shield information that is not pertinent to the inquiry, such as the identity of confidential sources.
The revelations about the Sûreté du Québec's spying on journalists has shaken the faith people have in dealing confidentially with the media. Our intention is to take all the steps necessary to maintain and rebuild trust, so that the type of investigative journalism that our Radio-Canada teams put together day in and day out emerges intact from this crisis.