The Peterborough Examiner

Bizarre ideas on display at police spying inquiry

- ALLISON HANES La Presse Allison Hanes is a Montreal Gazette columnist. ahanes@postmedia.com

If a female reporter gets a scoop, she must be sleeping with her source.

If a male cop talks to a female journalist, he must be trying to have sex with her.

If one reporter calls another, he must be feeding him or her an exclusive — even if they’re competitor­s.

This is apparently the enlightene­d thinking of some of Quebec’s finest, according to affidavits and testimony from police before the Chamberlan­d Commission on the protection of journalist­ic sources.

Officers from the Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal force and the Laval police have recently described for the inquiry how their suspicions, assumption­s and prejudices have figured into their investigat­ions, mainly internal probes on leaks from within their respective forces.

These offensive and strange ideas are alarming in themselves, betraying a Neandertha­l mentality toward women and a major lack of comprehens­ion about the workings of the media. But just as grave is the admission that idle and lascivious gossip has been used as the basis for criminal investigat­ions that led to snooping in journalist­s’ phone records and undermined the role of the free press in a democratic society.

As Radio-Canada investigat­ive reporter Marie-Maude Denis put it, appearing Thursday before the Chamberlan­d Commission, five years of her phone records were scrutinize­d by the SQ based on little more than grist for the office rumour mill. So much for the Supreme Court of Canada’s rigorous test for determinin­g when it is appropriat­e to override protection­s for journalist­s’ confidenti­al sources.

Laval police used similar unfounded arguments to target 98.5 FM crime and courts reporter Monic Néron to find out how she got a scoop on a big drug bust.

Both Denis and Néron are excellent journalist­s who do important work informing us all about matters in which the public has a tremendous interest. But according to the SQ, if an officer was in contact with Denis, they must have been having a liaison. If Néron got details on a major operation, it was because the officer who revealed the informatio­n “was thinking with his penis” and wanted to “bang her.” (Those are the actual words a Laval investigat­or used in a sworn affidavit).

That these kinds of attitudes exist among some of those sworn to serve and protect bodes ill for all women they come into contact with, from fellow officers to victims of crime.

While sexist logic isn’t being applied to their male colleagues, reporters of both sexes have neverthele­ss been subject to other bizarre assumption­s by police.

An SQ inspector testified to his belief that journalist­s feed each other exclusives, even if they work for competing media. That curious rationale was employed by Montreal police to obtain 24 warrants to monitor months of columnist Patrick Lagacé’s phone records, even though he didn’t publish a single article using the informatio­n at the origin of the internal probe.

As any journalist will tell you, reporters from different media may be friends, but they jealously guard their hard-won scoops.

Police have brought enormous resources to bear and cast a very wide net under the pretext of flimsy and feeble proof. That should be alarming, not only to journalist­s, but for society. It has had real consequenc­es on investigat­ive reporting, both Lagacé and Denis said, noting a chill effect on whistleblo­wers. But it also has grave implicatio­ns for the fundamenta­l rights of all Quebecers.

“This doesn’t so much worry me as a journalist, this frightens me as a citizen,” said Lagacé.

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