Canada

VICE Media Canada have joined forces with a coalition of civil liberties organizations to launch a campaign to raise awareness about VICE News Journalist and Cyberwar Host Ben Makuch’s fight to protect his sources from RCMP interference.

“If I don’t have a lawsuit against me now, it’s not for a lack of trying,” Quebecois comedian Mike Ward joked in front of a Montreal audience in 2009. Fast forward to 2016.

IFEX members call on Prime Minister Trudeau to put human rights, especially free expression and press freedom, at the heart of the Canada-China relationship.

As police seize the laptop of a reporter from a major Canadian publication, doubts emerge over the future of journalist independence in the Great White North.

OpenMedia takes on a Canadian court decision on Google searches that could impact the way people around the world find their information.

Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident and programmer, was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 2008. Today, he is still trapped in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, thousands of miles away from his adopted country of Canada.

Over the past year, CJFE has been engaging directly with the government to advocate for a full review of the legislation and a repeal of the unconstitutional aspects. CJFE is now asking Canadians to stand in support of their privacy and free expression rights.

Information and privacy commissioners from all 10 provinces, the three northern territories and the federal Office of the Information Commissioner have come together to propose the creation of a legislated duty to document that would apply to all public entities.

This ruling sets a dangerous precedent and deals a blow to press freedom and the integrity of journalism in Canada, forcing the essential investigative function of the press to be put at the disposal of law enforcement.

You may be surprised to learn that libraries are some of our best allies in the defence of access to information, privacy, and intellectual freedom. But this is nothing new, because these rights have always been fundamental to what libraries stand for.

Developed in collaboration with Amnesty International and the Fahmy Foundation, the Protection Charter lays out 12 practical steps for the government to reform and strengthen its mechanisms to protect Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with close Canadian connections from serious human rights violations in other countries.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels,” wrote H.L. Mencken. “For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

The right to hide an anonymous source’s identity is important because some stories might never be told without insiders who could face serious consequences if it became known that they gave information to a reporter.

A number of organisations and concerned supporters have called on the Canadian government to act on behalf of one of its citizens, Monika Mistry, to help her Bangladeshi husband recover in safety from a brutal attack he suffered in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

PEN Canada presents “Free Expression Matters” a series that breaks down free expression issues in Canada. For this first installment they take a look at defamation and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP lawsuits).

Freelancers and independent journalists are writing major stories in the public interest, but they often find themselves on precarious footing if contracts they’ve signed do not include provisions for defending against libel lawsuits.