The Supreme Court of Canada will render its judgement Friday on whether a journalist’s communications with a self-described Canadian member of ISIS must be handed over to the RCMP.
In 2014, Vice Canada reporter Ben Makuch communicated with Farah Shirdon, who had left his home in Calgary that year and travelled to Turkey to join the terrorist group.
Shirdon had surfaced in a propaganda video ripping up and burning his Canadian passport. “With help from Allah, we are coming to slaughter you,” Shirdon said in the video.
After Makuch published articles on his chats with Shirdon, the RCMP asked a judge for a production order that would force Vice and Makuch to turn over all the communications. An Ontario judge signed the order, but Makuch refused to hand over the chats. He appealed and lost. The Supreme Court of Canada later decided to hear his case.
“Trying to force me to give up information to them is, in a way, setting a precedent that could be very, very troubling for journalism in this country,” Makuch told CTV News outside the Supreme Court in May.
“That’s essentially making us into investigators for them,” he added.
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression said in a press release that the production order “intrudes upon the protected zone of privacy journalists and media organizations must enjoy in order to effectively gather and report the news.”
Vice lawyer Philip Tunley argued in court that such production orders create “a chilling effect” on the media because they make sources afraid to speak with journalists who fear their confidential communications will be used against them in court.
The Crown argued in written submissions that a test used by judges to decide whether to grant production orders “is a principled and flexible framework” and prevents a “chilling effect.”
“There was an urgency to the search in the sense that it was necessary to seize and preserve the evidence in the event that he returned back to Canada,” federal lawyer Croft Michaelson told the court in May.
Shirdon was charged in absentia with terrorism-related offences in 2015 and some believe he was killed in an airstrike that year.
With files from The Canadian Press
