J-Topics

by Steven Zhou

With a new parliamentary majority, Stephen Harper hopes to pass an omnibus crime bill (consisting of at least eleven individual bills) in order to re-write current legislation, and deliver on the government’s tough-on-crime platform.

Unofficially referred to as the “lawful access” bill, it is the most important piece of legislative business for the Tories after the budget. Debate has arisen in regards to its far-reaching implications, from increased police powers to issues of freedom of expression.

By Stuart Soroka, Patrick Fournier, Fred Cutler and Dietlind Stolle

The election campaign is over, and there are a number of other things we can start to worry about. Why, you might ask, should one of those things be freedom of the press?

Canadians, after all, are rather well off in this regard. In Freedom House’s 2010 index of press freedom, Canada ties for 26th, placing it well within the 69 countries where the press is “free.” In contrast, there are 127 countries in which the press is only “partly” or “not” free. The constraints the media face in Canada are, by international standards, rather limited. But this doesn’t mean we should take press freedom for granted.

Canadian Journalist for Free Expression (CJFE) is celebrating the centenary of International Women's Day on March 8, 2011, by highlighting the work of four female journalists who have courageously worked under difficult and often dangerous conditions: Jila Baniyaghoub from Iran, Li Jianhong from China, Irina Khalip from Belarus and Jineth Bedoya Lima from Colombia.

In a victory for civil liberties, privacy and the rule of law, a New York federal appeals court reinstated a case that challenged the constitutionality of legislation that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2008. The FISA Amendments Act, which allows the government to eavesdrop on communications without a probable-cause warrant, retroactively legalized wire-tapping authorized by former President George W. Bush and also gave immunity to telephone companies that cooperated.