This election, journalists in Canada got distracted. Political spinmeisters set the agenda, and many journalists followed. Covering polls and PR stunts, we often missed election-worthy stories, alienating some voters.
The biggest issue — why a third of adults don’t vote — remains a mystery. Why did 78 per cent or more vote in Ottawa-Centre and Saskatoon-Grasswood, but only 55 percent in Calgary-Forest Lawn and Windsor West?
In 1958, 1962 and 1963, Canada’s population was half of today’s 35 million; our voter turnout was above 79 percent, according to Elections Canada. Voting is mandatory in 23 countries including Australia, where 94 percent voted last time. In Canada it’s voluntary.
Yes, we got 68 per cent of voters out, up seven from last time. Yet we didn’t find out why 8 million adults abstained. These non-voters are the single biggest “party” in Canada, trouncing the Liberals (6.9 million votes), Conservatives (5.6 million), NDP (3.4 million) and Greens (606,000). Are these 8 million abstainers too confused, alienated, overworked or traumatized to vote? Who are they? Shouldn’t we help them?
Reporting The Agenda, Not The Facts
Maybe we’re disconnecting potential voters. They might have high rents or mortgages, insecure employment or worrying personal debt, but we focussed on the national debt. Instead of discussing foreign ownership of Vancouver homes or Alberta oil fields, we opined about “old stock Canadians” and a traditional Islamic headscarf. Remember the recent hubbub over temporary foreign workers? Somehow they disappeared from headlines — while continuing to work and pay taxes, with no voting rights.
I suspect the abstainers don’t trust us. Why should they, when we have also lost faith in our owners and managers? Postmedia has devalued journalism by running front-page ads or unbalanced hit pieces in their papers. Is ad revenue worth the loss of respect and credibility, as well as subscribers? Truth is our stock in trade. If we can’t get this right, why should anybody pay for our work?
Globe and Mail editor-in-chief David Walmsley’s illogical editorial, urging us to vote for the Conservatives but not Harper, spawned ridicule on Twitter and at least 858 Facebook comments. For fun, try reading his acrobatic sentences aloud with a Monty Python accent.
TV networks annoyed us by running obnoxious ads that blatantly smear candidates like “Just-Not-Ready” Justin Trudeau, twice-elected MP for Papineau. Networks don’t allow tobacco companies to tell viewers that smoking is healthy. They should also reject attempts to misrepresent opponents. They can still earn revenue by allowing “sunny ways” ads.
We should transcend the notion that our reporting is somehow “balanced” by propagating lies from all sides. We didn’t have to play along with Harper’s “ka-ching, ka-ching” Price-is-Right gimmick, which misrepresented Trudeau’s platform. If we show videos that distort perceptions, we should also run subtitles citing the other side’s actual policies. Without reality checks, voters get confused and misled. No wonder 8 million people didn’t vote.
We also shouldn’t report polls as facts. Pollsters suggested the NDP, then the Tories, then the Liberals, would likely form minority governments. Only one polling company, Forum, predicted a Liberal majority. NDPers claim that a poll-addicted media built up a false narrative of the NDP as front-runners who then lost momentum. Conservatives feel likewise. We need to focus on problems and solutions, not horse races.
Forgetting The Expats
How many abstainers work overseas? The “foreign affairs” debate omitted a crucial issue: how the government treats veterans, expats and travelers. The Globe‘s Mark MacKinnon reported 1.4 million expats lost voting rights. Donald Sutherland’s rant generated more than 1,000 comments. But it wasn’t a campaign issue.
Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, jailed in Egypt, said Harper didn’t help him. In her Globe piece about journalist Dave Walker’s suspicious death in Cambodia, Leah McLaren wrote that Ottawa isn’t legally bound to help us overseas. Diplomats have privately told me they lack authority or funding to help Canadians wrongly jailed, expelled, robbed or murdered.
Instead of delving into the China slowdown or global asset bubble, the debate focused on Syria, as if Canada is a superpower that can sway Assad, Putin and Arabian royalty. Citing Department of National Defense figures, the Ottawa Citizen reported that we bombed Syria only four times — 0.15 percent of the Allied total.
Excluding Women’s Issues From The Conversation
How many abstainers are women? Canadian women rank among the world’s greatest athletes, musicians, executives and aid workers. Yet the Globe, which employs some of the world’s best female journalists, excluded Elizabeth May from their debate, infuriating at least 600,000 Greens and others.
Somehow, women’s clothing upstaged poverty, day-care centers, health care and some 1,200 missing or dead Aboriginal women. No wonder only 88 women won seats, ranking us about 50th in the world in the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments behind Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bolivia and Burundi.
The Long Campaign
Were abstainers just bored of the long campaign? Maybe, and so were many journalists. Should we shelve democracy because it’s not click-bait? As leaders flocked to the Vancouver battleground, Canadian Press in British Columbia moved stories about “superhuman bodies” and “imposter snow helmets.” Did anybody follow-up on Ian Young’s SCMP Hong Kong story about a Chinese fugitive’s dealings with BC Liberals?
Fear of Fraud
Maybe abstainers suspect it’s all a sham anyway. Electoral fraud? That only happens in Africa or Russia, right? We didn’t call the “home renovations” scheme or “infrastructure spending” promises what they are: vote buying. We didn’t chastise the Greens, like the NDP in Quebec in 2011, for parachuting candidates into unfamiliar ridings. Worshipping democracy, we treat Elections Canada like omniscient priests and don’t demand they crackdown on crooked attempts to redraw ridings or bribe us with our own cash.
Who are these officials, anyway? Are they actually discouraging us from voting?
The Tyee reported nearly 100,000 ballots in 2011 were rejected in an election marred by “robo-calls”. This year, ballots ran out in six First Nations communities. Tyee writer David Ball said he saw ballots with “printing errors“, one of at least eight cases nationwide. The Globe‘s Doug Saunders tweeted that officials sent him home twice to fetch “better” ID with his middle initial. (I suggested he present his middle finger). The Fair Elections Act is unfair and we should demand its overhaul.
The new Canada Fair Elections act has forced me — a fully registered voter — to walk home twice to produce sufficient ID to vote
— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) October 19, 2015
Lack of Local Candidate Coverage
Perhaps abstainers don’t vote because they don’t know who to vote for, and we aren’t helping them. We focus on Steve, Tom or Justin but tell voters little about the local candidates whose names appear on ballots. Did local issues get much coverage? I’m not sure. I got distracted.
The whole system needs a rewrite. Canadians demanded political change and they want media change, too.
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Canadian journalist and author Christopher Johnson has traveled in more than 100 countries and recently covered Ukraine, Syria, Turkey, Thailand, Philippines and Japan for CTV and many others. The CAJ nominated his site Globalite Magazine for Best Online Media in 2014.
In the piece, Erickson makes several allegations about Teneycke meddling in Sun News programming, planning to fire 50 per cent of the staff for not being Conservatives, and personally intimidating her. Erickson wrote that former cabinet minister Lynne Yelich told her the Sun News Network is “a great idea but you’ve got to get rid of Kory Teneyck. It will never work as long as he’s running it.”
CANADALAND spoke to eight of Andrew Coyne’s colleagues who provided context for his time as editor. Coyne himself declined to comment for this piece.
CANADALAND has learned that though Coyne the editor has signed off on an official National Post Harper endorsement, Coyne the columnist planned to endorse a different candidate under his own byline. But the National Post won’t run it.
CANADALAND read through community newspaper coverage so you don’t have to. Here’s what we found.
Citizen Vrooman Episode 3 – Will the high guy convince the drunk guy we should legalize pot?
The Globe and Mail has published a huge feature on Thomas Mulcair, written by Jeffrey Simpson, and it’s nothing like the tender, eight-page backrub Ian Brown gave Justin Trudeau in the same section one week ago. Trudeau got the benefit of an interview. Mulcair did not, despite offering to talk to the Globe, twice.
We’ve finally figured out how to get the media to treat climate change like an emergency.
After Short Cuts #41 – Ugliest Election, CANADALAND received a letter from a listener sharing his experience of being Muslim in Canada. We asked Hamza Wajid whether we could publish it in full. With Mr. Wajid’s permission, here is what he wrote to us:
Dear CANADALAND,
I am writing this email as a response to your last podcast Short Cuts #41 – Ugliest Election. I hope to give you the perspective of a Muslim Canadian if you are interested.
To start off, a little bit about me. I am a Canadian citizen, my family came to Canada from Pakistan when I was 4. Hence, I have no memory of a time when I was not in Canada so I might as well have been born here. Today I am a 20-year-old university student.
Throughout my upbringing I realized quickly I was a little different. My family went to the mosque on Fridays not church on Sundays. I celebrated Eid, not Christmas (though I enjoy having both days off). However, I never felt like an outsider. I always felt like another member of a multicultural country. Until lately, the idea that I was not a real Canadian or that because of my religion I was less loyal to Canadian values never crossed my mind or my family’s mind.
Even the citizenship ceremony I went to was a great experience for my family. To be honest, I was in grade 4 when it happened, so for my brother and me it was just a random event where we sang O, Canada. My father, however, remembers that day fondly. He remembers a citizenship official telling him to never forget his culture when he becomes Canadian, to never forget his mother tongue (Urdu), but to cherish it. Being Canadian does not mean one gives up who they were, being Canadian means adding who you are to this country. A country built by people from all over the world.
Sadly, all of that seems to be a memory. Today, my culture is seen as “barbaric.” Today, my mom who wears a niqab is afraid to go out without me or my father. Today, I sometimes hesitate to say who I am or where I am from — something I once said without a care in the world. This prime minister in an attempt to stay in power has demonized my family and many like me. Many in my community feel anger and confusion over what has happened, but I only feel sadness. I used to tell my cousins in the USA about how much better my country was in its behaviour and actions, but underneath this prime minister I can’t say that anymore.
Let me conclude with two points.
First is to say that I do acknowledge that my community, Muslims, have real issues to deal with. We have internal demons in our community: sexism, homophobia, and extremism to name a few. I feel future generations of Canadian Muslims like myself must work to eliminate those demons. My letter here is not meant to say that we are innocent people being picked on in this country for no reason at all. Rather I mean to say that the climate in the country has changed. It used to be that our community was pushed to become better in an encouraging way. We were never told that we had to give up all of our religion to be real Canadians, but now that is that case. Today we are seen by the government as a community committing barbaric cultural practices and we are seen as a dangerous group of people hell-bent on imposing Sharia law. Never mind the fact that we moved to Canada seeking the same freedoms as everyone else.
Secondly, and lastly, I would like to say that my sadness is still not absolute. I firmly believe that the vast majority of Canadians are still the kindest and most loving people in the world. I would never want to live anywhere else, nor would I want to call anyone but Canadians my fellow citizens. My letter here is meant to address the actions of this prime minister, his government, and his loud minority.
Thank you for your time.
Hamza Wajid
P.S. Though my mom wears a niqab she is not an uneducated woman under the control of my dad (as many would assume). At least in my family my mom calls the shots and my dad follows, it fits their personalities. They both have the same level of education. They are both pharmacists who studied at the same school. Though my mom does not work, she could write a few exams and get licensed like my dad and easily make a good living if she wanted to.
After nearly two years in prison, Mohamed Fahmy is finally free after being pardoned by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He was imprisoned by Egyptian authorities on widely denounced charges of spreading false news.
