RPJ News Team
A Sunday panel discussion on the state of political journalism in Quebec highlighted several stark differences between the province’s media culture and how news media operate in the rest of Canada.
And there was a strong message to all conference participants that gaining a better understanding of the features of Quebec journalism and society will serve all Canadian news professionals — those in the industry and those aspiring to join it — as they grapple with issues such as political polarization, misinformation, national unity, Indigenous resilience and a host of other challenges.
The conversation was guided by moderator Omayra Issa, Ottawa-based CPAC news anchor and former national reporter with CBC News who began her career with Radio-Canada in Saskatoon and once anchored the program Téléjournal Sasktachewan.
The four panelists were National Post reporter Catherine Lévesque, Le Devoir columnist and editorial writer Marie Vastel, Le Devoir columnist Emilie Nicolas and Christopher Curtis, the founder and editor of the independent investigative news outlet The Rover.
Lévesque explained that political journalists in Quebec have an expectation of open access to politicians and that, for example, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been forced to undergo more questioning from news media in French Canada despite his controversial avoidance of national reporters from major Canadian news outlets on Parliament Hill.
Politicians from Quebec “will always stop and talk to reporters because there is this expectation,” said Lévesque, recalling how she once told Poilievre’s handlers prior to an event in Quebec that even if they plan to avoid inquiring journalists “you are not going to get out of this.”
Nicolas, an anthropologist who has been a columnist for the Montreal Gazette, described how Quebec’s political journalism environment is distinguished by a “star system” in which politicians frequently appear — and are directly questioned — on popular television programs hosted by comedians and actors.
“That translates into really, really blurry lines between journalism and entertainment,” she said.
And that blurry line sometimes poses ethical dilemmas, she added, when hosts are “making jokes but they’re also interviewing ministers.” It’s an approach to covering issues and personalities, however, that she said “drives young people’s interests in politics” more than conventional, high-brow journalism.
Politicians from English Canada who venture into Quebec in search of votes frequently have “no idea what they’re getting themselves into,” said Nicolas. “You need to be cool.”
Poilievre, she added, “hasn’t figured this out.”
The panelists were in firm agreement that the federal Conservatives’ relentless talking point in English Canada about defunding the CBC will be a non-starter in Quebec if the slash-and-burn message is extended to include Radio-Canada, which continues to enjoy high levels of public trust in Quebec.
“If you touch Radio-Canada, you touch on the survival of French news,” said Nicolas, adding that there’s a feeling in Quebec that “we exist because we have a public sphere in which we exchange ideas.”
It’s that strong attachment to Quebec’s media environment, she added, that serves as a bulwark against the influences of American politics, polarization and rhetoric.
“If Canada is going to have an immune system” against those influences, she said, “it’s Quebec that will be a big part of that immunity.”
Vastel highlighted a range of issues — Medical Assistance in Dying, gun control, public health — in which Quebec residents have views that sharply diverge from those held in other parts of Canada.
“The whole culture of Quebec is misunderstood” by many journalists outside of the province, she said.
Vastel expressed concern that while Quebec has so far resisted the worst aspects of conspiratorial thinking and right-wing political extremism, the challenges facing credible news organizations that push back against misinformation makes the province vulnerable.
“We are lacking in fact-checking our stories, in calling experts,” she said. “We’re short-staffed and we don’t have money.”
Quebec residents “still trust media . . . but that’s not a given for years to come.”
Vastel noted that the strong support shown for the Conservatives in polling across Canada does not currently apply to Quebec. She said the next election could, in fact, see the Bloc Québécois sweep most of Quebec’s seats and even form the official Opposition in the House of Commons, as it did after the 1993 federal election under founding leader and former federal Conservative cabinet minister Lucien Bouchard.
“That would be quite the interesting dynamic,” she said, adding that the “rivalry” for votes between Poilievre and BQ leader Yves-François Blanchet — “a very good communicator” — isn’t likely to play out in Quebec the way it may in other provinces.
Curtis said Quebec’s historical preoccupation with when to hold the next sovereignty referendum has created vacuums in media coverage of other issues that mean more to citizens’ daily lives: “We’ve fallen behind on so many other important conversations,” he said, citing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples as a prime example.
He summed up the attitude of Quebec residents on that issue with their imagined reaction: “We’ve benefited from colonialism, too? I thought we were the good guys!”
But the oversights, he added, have extended to the state of roads, schools, hospitals and much more.
“Politics is so much more about who is being affected by policies,” he said. “It’s about the real shit.”