Public instances of threats and intimidation of women in public life have intensified in recent weeks, with significant examples of abuse targeted toward politicians — most recently, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland — as well as activists and journalists.
For weeks, a group of journalists, particularly journalists of colour, have publicly shared a series of private, anonymous emails they’ve received. Those emails contained specific, targeted and disturbing threats of violence and sexual assault, as well as racist and misogynistic language.
“It was very insidious, and the language around it was a perversion of some progressive language that was used to basically abuse and torment us. Also, we were told we were put on a list of journalists to be silenced,” Erica Ifill, a columnist for The Hill Times and a podcast host, told CBC Radio’s The House for a segment that aired Saturday.
The online harassment crossed over once more into an in-person encounter on Friday, when Freeland faced a tirade of verbal abuse during an incident in Grande Prairie, Alta.
In a video circulating widely on social media, several people, one of whom is filming, are seen approaching Freeland as she and several others walk through Grande Prairie’s city hall toward an elevator.
During the brief encounter, the man yells at Freeland, calling her a “traitor,” a “f—ing b—h” and telling her to leave the province.
The couple are told to leave by others in the building and eventually exit out to the parking lot.
Freeland, who was born in Peace River, about 200 kilometres from Grande Prairie, was on a multi-day tour of Saskatchewan and Alberta, meeting with officials, businesspeople and workers.
She acknowledged the incident in a tweet on Saturday.
“What happened yesterday was wrong. Nobody, anywhere, should have to put up with threats and intimidation,” Freeland wrote.
“But the Alberta I know is filled with kind and welcoming people, and I’m grateful for the warm welcome I’ve received from so many people in Edmonton, Grande Prairie and Peace River over the past few days. One unpleasant incident yesterday doesn’t change that.”
LISTEN | The House hears from journalists, activist, targeted by online harassment:
CBC News: The House18:02Toxic harm online — what can fix it?
The House hears from two journalists of colour and an activist who have been targeted by harassment online. Then, experts Emily Laidlaw and Yuan Stevens dig into what government legislation could do to stem the tide of online toxicity.
Harassment condemned by politicians
The actions in the video have been widely condemned by politicians and others across the country Saturday. Conservative leadership candidate Jean Charest called it “gross intimidation” and “dangerous behaviour” in a tweet. Former Liberal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna called it “beyond the pale.”
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney referred to the incident as “reprehensible” and Conservative MP Dan Albas said, “What our Deputy PM experienced yesterday has no place here in Canada.”
The verbal harassment and threats directed at Minister <a href=”https://twitter.com/cafreeland?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@cafreeland</a> during her visit to Alberta yesterday were reprehensible.<br><br>If you disagree with a politician, by all means exercise your right to protest. But screaming threatening language & physical intimidation cross the line.
In an interview with CBC News, Grande Prairie city councillor Dylan Bressey said the encounter was “completely ridiculous.”
“Something we’re seeing Canada-wide — and our community isn’t immune — is that there are people who feel disenfranchised, and are angry and are scared, but they’re expressing it completely inappropriate ways that don’t help anybody.”
Legislation just one piece of the puzzle: expert
Harassment has long been a problem for Canadians in public life, especially women. McKenna, for example, was at times forced to have additional security because of harassment she received, and many other MPs have revealed threats made against them.
One of the most extreme examples of online harassment played out in London, Ont. recently, when transgender activist and Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti was forced to leave the country after a campaign of harassment that included an instance of “swatting” — when a threat of violence sent under her name but without her knowledge led armed police to show up at her door and arrest her.
London, Ont.-based Clara Sorrenti, known as Keffals on the online platform Twitch, says she’s faced repeated harassment, and even her family has been targeted, so she’s decided to leave Canada for a time. (Michelle Both/CBC)
Prior to the 2021 election, the federal government introduced legislation aimed at protecting Canadians from what it calls online harms, but that bill died when the election was called, and, after widespread critique, new legislation is back in consultations.
Legislation governing how social media platforms grapple with harmful content is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to online harassment, said Emily Laidlaw, Canada research chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary. Reforms to the legal system, education and other policies areas like cybersecurity and privacy were all important as well, she told The House.
“It’s across all kinds of different law and social silences that we need to tackle online harms, and that’s actually what makes it so difficult,” Laidlaw said.
Yuan Stevens, a lawyer who specializes in human rights and technology, likened the issue to smoking, in which education and awareness led to both legal changes and a shift in public attitudes.
“I think a holistic effort will be needed in Canada that isn’t just ban this, prohibit that, punish that,” he said, but instead one that tackles attitudes toward people of colour, women, LGBTQ people and others and addresses the “root causes” of harassment, threats and violence.
Canadian journalists, politicians and others, especially women, have been targeted by high-profile and disturbing instances of harassment, threats and intimidation. (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images)
‘It’s psychological warfare’
Ifill, The Hill Times columnist, described how the campaign against her and other journalists appeared to be targeted, expanding from a few people to a group of more than a dozen, many of them people of colour.
“Each email they become more intricate. They are creating scenarios based on our past work to torment us with,” Ifill told guest host Ashley Burke.
“It’s more than just an e-mail. It’s a concentrated effort. It’s psychological warfare.”
The pattern of harassment of journalists is incredibly alarming and completely unacceptable. This type of behaviour has no place in our society. No journalist should ever be threatened for doing their job.
Raisa Patel, who previously worked with CBC News, including for The House, was one of the journalists who spoke up in support of colleagues and then received an email of her own.
She told Burke that while the emails contained racism and misogyny, “Several of us felt no reaction to that element to these emails because that’s something that we’re used to receiving as female and racialized journalists. But what was particularly alarming was the targeted nature of this campaign.”
The journalists said they also struggled with police responses, including difficulty reporting the incidents in the first place and convincing police to take action.
“It was very difficult to try and get police to see the very co-ordinated nature of this campaign and some of the more serious threatening elements to it. Since we’ve gone public, I think that process has improved somewhat,” said Patel.
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
