Last week, Canada daily The Globe and Mail reported that Canada’s national security and intelligence adviser Nathalie G Drouin and deputy minister David Morrison shared sensitive information with The Washington Post about alleged Indian interference in the country.
Now, Justin Trudeau’s government and the two officials are drawing flak for sharing those inputs with an American daily before informing the Canadian public and before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public with claims that Indian government agents were linked to homicides, extortions and other criminal activities in Canada.
On Tuesday, Drouin admitted to leaking sensitive information on India’s alleged interference in the murder of Sikh extremist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar to Washington Post, stating it was done because “they felt it was necessary”. Drouin and Morisson made the statement while appearing before the Foreign Interference Commission on Tuesday, according to Canadian newspaper National Post. The political opposition in Canada has slammed the duo for revealing the information which was otherwise not released to the Canadian public.
“We made a strategic decision to engage a respected international news outlet that had already published on the subject to ensure the record was straight and that our side of the story would be widely heard,” Drouin said, adding that it was aimed at shoring up Canada’s international case to its allies.
The Globe and Mail’s report had come days after a Washington Post report, which was based on anonymous sources, accused Home Minister Amit Shah of approving such operations. The Globe and Mail’s report also said that “the intelligence was not to be reported until RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme held a news conference on Thanksgiving Day”.
Why did the paper name the sources?
But why did The Globe and Mail name the two officials who were quoted anonymously in the Washington Post report?
Jon Allsop, who edits The Media Today newsletter for Columbia Journalism Review, has analysed the questions surrounding the issue in his latest piece.
“One paper naming another’s anonymous sources is not common, let alone in a splashy front-page story. ‘As with any capital city, there’s a lot of second-guessing; we read stories that break news, and if it’s an unnamed source, there’s a lot of speculation about ‘Who is that?’ Steve Scherer, a former bureau chief for Reuters in Ottawa, told me – but he’s never seen such speculation make print, and told me that he’d never have been allowed to put a comparable story up on an international newswire. And the Globe’s article did not sit well with some journalists,” he wrote.
“On X, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Canada bureau chief at the New York Times, wrote that it was ‘really disturbing and strange to see a national Canadian paper out the Washington Post’s sources.’ Others (including Scherer) speculated that the Globe may have acted out of jealousy after being beaten to an explosive story. There were suggestions that the paper had made a mountain out of a molehill – unnamed officials, after all, brief reporters all the time – and that it would have run the Post’s story if it had been the paper briefed.”
Allsop noted that others saw things differently – “arguing that the issue was one not of professional pride, but of exposing hypocrisy on the part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government when it comes to the dissemination of sensitive information”.
“‘The story speaks for itself and has nothing to do with personal jealousy,’ Robert Fife, the author of the Globe’s article, told me in an email. ‘I have enormous respect for the Washington Post. The point I was making is that national security officials who provided intelligence on China’s foreign interference activities to the Globe were branded as criminals by the prime minister. He had no problem authorising his national security adviser to provide similar intelligence to the Washington Post. When it benefits him, it’s okay. When it embarrasses the government – and eventually leads to a public inquiry – then the leaks are criminal.’ (Asked for comment on the Globe’s story, a Post spokesperson told me that the paper does not discuss its newsgathering practices.)”
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