Pepper in our eyes: the APEC affair

To be fair from the outset, a final report on the APEC incident, as of the time of this review, has yet to be issued, and the concerns raised about the possible infringement of constitutional principles remain allegations. Certainly, none of the contributors to this book claim that unlawful protests should be permitted, and no one claims that governments should not take certain precautions to secure the safety of visiting government officials. However, it is a credit to the contributors to this volume that they did not take Prime Minister [Jean Chretien]'s November 1997 advice, in his response to questions over the RCMP's pepper-spraying peaceful protestors, and just "relax a bit in the nation" (41). Rather, the book reflects serious concerns about the uncertain status of civil liberties in Canada--concerns shared by members of the UBC Law Faculty, whose joint letter to the Prime Minister complained that the UBC campus during APEC had become a "Charter-free zone"; and concerns that possibly the incidents during APEC represented one of the more egregious transgressions of civil liberties in Canada since Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in 1970 (78). Terry Milewski's commentary, "The Force of Journalism," is particularly worthy of attention. Milewski was and remains the CBC-TV's Vancouver-based reporter, whose coverage during and after the APEC summit angered the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The PMO criticized Milewski and the CBC, alleging journalistic bias and inaccuracies. Milewski recounts the ordeal in detail, including his reporting on CBC's The National, his permanent removal from the story by CBC management, and his ultimate exoneration by the CBC ombudsman, the late Marcel Pepin. The excerpts from the ombudsman's report make for particularly compelling reading: contrary to the contentions of both the PMO and CBC management that Milewski's reporting represented a breach of ethics, Pepin countered, "that he could have a penchant towards respect for basic rights and be constantly skeptical regarding official explanations does not constitute, in my opinion, a breach of conduct" (158).