Trudeau needs to care about democracy for a change

Many have complained that Justin Trudeau acted undemocratically when he abandoned his election promise to replace our current first-past-the-post electoral system with a more representative system. However, an issue that is vastly more crucial to our democracy is the existence of a free press — and here Mr. Trudeau’s studied indifference has been shocking.

It has become all too clear that many newspapers across Canada are on the ropes. Indeed, it would seem that the newspaper industry as a whole is faced with relatively imminent extinction. This should be a matter of very grave concern to us all since much of the news on the internet is derived from newspapers, as also is a significant portion of television news.

Of course, democracy itself requires freedom of information.

Although Mr. Trudeau’s government commissioned the Public Policy Forum to study this issue, its final report — including 12 core recommendations — came out over a year ago. And unfortunately, as pointed out in a recent column by John Honderich, chair of Torstar Corp., the Trudeau government has either ignored or rejected virtually all the recommendations.

It is my hope that Record readers will rally around their newspaper, as well as around the issue of the continued existence of newspapers themselves. Given the importance of newspapers for the content of internet (and other) news sources, it is clear that our very democracy depends to a significant extent upon such newspapers’ existence.

And a word to Mr. Trudeau: Your scrupulously cultivated public persona is that of a caring politician. How about caring about democracy for a change, sir? Jordan Moar

Waterloo