SCHEER: With Unifor and media bailout, Trudeau stacking deck in his favour

Unifor National President Jerry Dias holds a press conference regarding the ongoing CAW talks in Toronto on August 11, 2016. Canadian auto parts companies and their unionized workers are criticizing an influential business group for urging the Liberal government to move forward quickly with a revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership.Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union which counts amongst its members nearly 12,000 journalists, is engaged in a campaign to help re-elect Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada in this fall’s election.

This is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.

Last November, Unifor’s Twitter account posted a photo of its executive board, led by President Jerry Dias, with the caption: “Welcome to Andrew Scheer’s worst nightmare.”

In case that wasn’t clear enough, the tweet itself left no doubt as to what Unifor is up to. “Unifor’s National Executive Board started planning for the federal election today @Andrew Scheer…”

They want me to lose the election. And they want Justin Trudeau to win it.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves the Elysee presidential Palace in Paris on May 15, 2019. (Charles Platiau/AFP/Getty Images)

That’s fine.

My problem isn’t with Unifor. I may not agree with their politics, or the blatantly partisan manner in which they spend their members’ hard-earned dues, but Canada is a free country and our laws allow Unifor to express itself however its elected leaders deem fit.

My problem is with Justin Trudeau.

Last fall, Trudeau announced he’d found $600 million for what is essentially a bailout package for the news industry.

This was rightly and roundly criticized at the time — mostly by veteran, reputable journalists themselves — based on the rather simple notion that the government shouldn’t choose who gets extra money to cover its re-election campaign.

But Trudeau was only getting started.

He announced the recipients of his bailout package would be decided by two different panels he would appoint and that the aforementioned Unifor — already campaigning to get Liberals re-elected — would sit on one of them.

In other words, between launching partisan attacks against Conservatives, Unifor will help decide how the government will support news organizations covering the election at Trudeau’s invitation.

The implications on freedom of the press and government interference in elections are obvious. Conservatives have spent this week pointing them out and demanding Trudeau change course.

Mr. Dias, in an editorial published in this newspaper earlier this week, bizarrely equated this to an attack on the media itself.

It is nothing of the sort.

Journalists themselves are perhaps the biggest victims in all of this. Trudeau has put them in the impossible position of accepting money that was partially decided by a group campaigning to get him re-elected.

When it comes to Unifor, they can choose to either represent their members on an independent panel or to campaign aggressively against a particular political party. They can’t do both.

Mr. Dias laments the struggles the news industry faces, but he should know that the prime minister dragging journalists into his ongoing efforts to stack the deck in his favour does nothing to help.

The fact is, this is far from the only time he’s used the power of his office to tilt the playing field in his direction.

While he and his ministers fly around the country making billions of dollars in pre-election spending promises, he has brought in pre-election spending caps on opposition parties that limit the reach of our message.

He has failed to close loopholes in election financing laws that have allowed Liberal-friendly foreign interest groups to funnel money into Canada during election campaigns.

And he has unilaterally imposed a new process for determining the format for leaders’ debates, once again appointing a panel to decide how debates will proceed rather than allowing the parties to negotiate.

It’s clear, less than four months away from the start of the campaign, that Trudeau has no confidence Canadians will give him another term in government in a fairly fought election.

And on that point, we agree.

— Andrew Scheer is the Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada

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