Reporters have no constitutional right to offer their sources blanket confidentiality, Canada’s Supreme Court said in a landmark ruling on Friday.
In the first pronouncement of its kind, the court ruled by an 8-1 majority that journalists could offer sources protection, but that if prosecutors subsequently demanded to know who those sources were, the courts would decide the merits of confidentiality promises on a case-by-case basis.
“No journalist can give a secret source an absolute assurance of confidentiality,” the judges said.
The ruling is a defeat for the National Post newspaper, which had demanded the quashing of a police search warrant for a document and an envelope given to one of the paper’s journalists by a confidential source in 2001.
The Canadian Association of Journalists said the ruling was “a significant blow to every journalist’s ability to protect whistleblowers.”
The document purported to show former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien had leaned on a federal bank to approve a loan to an ailing hotel that owed his family money.
Chretien and his lawyers said the document was forged and complained to police.
The judges said promises to keep sources secret had to be balanced against other important public interests, including the investigation of a serious crime.
“In some situations, the public’s interest in protecting a secret source from disclosure may be outweighed by other competing public interests and a promise of confidentiality will not in such cases justify the suppression of the evidence,” they said.
The National Post had argued that in cases where there was a dispute over whether a source could remain secret, the onus should be on prosecutors to show why a criminal probe was more important than a promise of confidentiality. The court disagreed.
The court did make clear that in some situations the public interest in protecting a secret source from disclosure could conceivably outweigh other competing public interests.
“In those circumstances the courts will recognize an immunity against disclosure of sources to whom confidentiality has been promised,” it said.
Police wanted the document and the envelope to look for evidence such as fingerprints or DNA that could help identify the source.
The National Post, which estimates it has run up a legal bill of C$850,000 (US$820,000) on the case so far, said the battle had been worth fighting.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS