Skip to content

Opinion: Is city council using the pandemic to hide from local media?

A column from Jason Antonio regarding city council
CC 3 copy
Moose Jaw city council, including councillors Brian Swanson, Chris Warren, Crystal Froese, Mayor Fraser Tolmie, councillors Scott McMann, Heather Eby, and Dawn Luhning.

It appears the coronavirus pandemic has provided the perfect excuse for city council to conduct more business behind closed doors or at least be less transparent than usual.

Let’s make this clear: the provincial and federal governments have both said the media is an essential service during the coronavirus. This means the media should still have access to all council meetings and news conferences, even if reporters are spaced apart two metres as is recommended.

This city council conducts too much business in-camera already. How will a vote from executive committee’s closed sessions be known if media are excluded from the building? We would only find out two weeks later by reading the minutes or from a news release.

Case in point: the media only learned about phase 5 of the cast iron replacement program when one reporter stuck around to the end of the closed meeting.

The issue of accessibility arose on March 17, when city hall sent out a news release saying council meetings would continue but would be closed to the public. There was no mention about the media, so the Moose Jaw Express and MJ Independent questioned whether reporters still had access.

In reply, city hall said media could attend, as long as journalists assessed their health and signed a waiver saying they had no symptoms of COVID-19.

“The city is committed to being as transparent as policy allows … ,” said city hall.

What was also concerning was the news release said Shaw Cable would not broadcast regular council meetings during the pandemic due to staffing issues. Although the municipality can't force Shaw to film anything, it is city hall’s responsibility to ensure it has a reliable backup plan so citizens can view meetings to see what decisions were made and how council voted.

A similar problem arose during the 2020 budget deliberations in December when Shaw Cable refused to broadcast the discussions since they were on Wednesday nights instead of the usual Monday evenings.

City hall addressed this issue for the March 23 regular meeting by broadcasting it live on its YouTube page. It was only later that Shaw decided it would show the meeting, but only use one camera with a wide shot.  

During a news briefing on March 19, Mayor Fraser Tolmie said Moose Jaw would follow all instructions from the provincial government when dealing with the coronavirus. The briefing was broadcast live on the municipality’s Facebook page but not its YouTube channel, which was experiencing technical difficulties.

City hall’s approach to news briefings changed on March 26, however, when media were told they could only participate by phoning in; there would be no in-person attendance. The Express and Independent vociferously pushed back against this ridiculous demand, but city hall refused to budge.

The sound quality during the news conference was poor, while it stuttered at certain points and made it difficult to hear certain words.

Council’s first meeting under the new provincial rule of fewer than 25 people in a room was March 23. The mayor and three councillors attended physically, but were seated further apart; three councillors and the economic development officer attended by video link; six members of city administration were seated throughout the gallery; and the Express and Independent represented the media.

It took a city hall IT technician about 20 minutes to link all three councillors into the meeting. This shows that technology is not always reliable. While the city clerk said media could watch online if necessary, the video quality is not always good and it’s not always possible to see how council votes.  

This pandemic appears to be giving council the perfect chance to act secretively and to control the message even more from its meetings. We live in a critical time; reporters should still be allowed to report the facts accurately and truthfully without being inhibited. That means we should be allowed to attend — in person — all council meetings and news conferences.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.  

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks