It's obvious why violence is growing in Canada

Welcome to Hub Headlines.

Today's program features the best commentary and analysis published in the Hub for March 12.

Up first is Steven Staley, writing on why its obvious violence is growing in Canada.

We have tolerated hatred for far too long.

When will it end?

When will we stop tolerating the growth of hostile mobs roaming our streets and the escalating

cascade of violence it has bred?

When will we stop pretending that this poison can spread indefinitely without consequence?

When will we protect those who are clearly being targeted?

It will end when we stop it.

In just the past week, three synagogues in Toronto were shot at.

The business of an Iranian dissident was also targeted.

So too was the United States Consulate.

Violence were issued as they always are.

Politicians condemned the violence.

Police promised investigations.

Community leaders expressed concern.

Yet, as of this writing, no one has been arrested.

No violent networks have been unearthed.

And no one is safer today than they were before these attacks.

When we tolerate brazenly breaking even our most serious laws, we announce our weakness

and invite escalation.

These attacks were not just predictable.

They were inevitable.

Hatred that has tolerated gathers confidence.

It tests the boundaries.

And when those boundaries prove weak, it escalates.

For months, Canadians have watched the same spectacle unfold.

Demonstrators chant openly in praise of terrorist organizations.

Jewish institutions require police protection.

Jewish students report harassment on university campuses.

Full mobs rampage through Jewish neighborhoods.

A society that tolerates open hatred should not be surprised when hatred becomes violent.

Each incident is dismissed as unfortunate but isolated.

The truth is simpler.

The state has been signaling weakness and villains feed on weakness.

Consider Toronto the epicenter of much of this crime and violence.

A shockingly large portion of the city's police officers spend their days pacing around

construction sites.

Paid duty assignments have turned large swathes of the police force into highly compensated

traffic cones.

While mobs chant for violence and synagogues are shot at, uniformed officers stand beside

orange pylons guarding half-dug intersections.

The same paralysis infects our prosecutors.

Charges are routinely dropped against individuals who openly violate the law while inciting hatred

and intimidation.

And when offenders are caught on camera, even when the evidence is overwhelming, the

cases quietly disappear.

The public is told nothing and the instigators return to the streets emboldened.

That weakness becomes even more troubling when one considers who may be exploiting it.

Canada formally lists Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity.

Yet credible reporting has suggested that hundreds of individuals connected to the IRGC remain

in Canada without meaningful restriction.

Pause for a moment and absorb the absurdity of that.

Canada has banned the IRGC on paper while tolerating its presence in practice.

And these people are not hiding quietly.

They are acting.

Earlier this year, Australian authorities began investigating a wave of synagogue arsons.

At first, the attacks looked like the work of local extremists, vile but domestic.

Officers soon discovered something else entirely.

The attacks were connected to a state-sponsored plot linked to Iran.

We know about this because Australian authorities pursued the network behind the attacks and

exposed the foreign handguiding them.

Where is the similar investigation in Canada?

Is it happening?

If so, what are the results?

If not, why not?

Refusing to connect the dots is dangerous.

It should rarely advance by force alone.

It advances by permission.

When mobs chant for violence without consequence, they grow larger.

When synagogues are vandalized without arrests, the next attack grows bolder.

When members of a terrorist organization move freely within the country, the designation

itself becomes meaningless.

The Jewish community understands this dynamic instinctively because history has taught

the lesson many times before.

The Semitism rarely appears first as violence.

It begins with tolerated hatred.

It advances through tolerated intimidation.

Violence follows when the perpetrators become certain that no one intends to stop them.

Canada is now somewhere far along that progression, which leads us to the darker question I began

with.

What exactly would it take to force action?

Would it require a bond eye on bathurst, a mass casualty attack outside a synagogue

or Jewish school?

Would it take something so horrifying that even our famously hesitant political class

could no longer avert its gaze?

That question should trouble every Canadian because the answer is no longer obvious.

For years, we have drifted toward the comforting fiction that Canada is immune to the hatreds

that plague other countries.

That our polite national temperament somehow shields us from the uglier currents of history.

But left alone, hatred does not moderate itself.

It must be confronted.

Even law is sufficient to stop this.

We lack only the will to do so.

The first responsibility of the state is the protection of its citizens, and what is required

to tackle this metastasizing problem is obvious, albeit difficult.

Every resource available from our criminal justice system must be brought to bear to investigate,

prosecute, and expose the criminal networks operating in our streets.

No charge should be spared, and none dropped.

Most organizations must be treated as terrorist organizations.

Their operatives should not live comfortably within Canadian cities.

Ultimately, this requires the hard force of action to back up our well-intentioned words.

Laws against intimidation and incitement should be enforced without hesitation.

Police should be deployed to confront violence and arrest those who commit it.

Not babysit construction pylons.

And they should be supported by the full might of our intelligence services in that important

work.

Civilized societies do not negotiate with violent mobs.

They stop them.

The choice is ours, and it's long past time to make it.

That was a commentary by Stephen Staley.

He is the director of fault lines.

You can read the full text of his article on our website, the hub.ca.

Our second essay is by Harrison Lohman, writing on how the Canadian government is deciding

who's a journalist now.

In a functioning democracy, the relationship between the media and the government involves

constructive tension.

It's what allows us to hold power to account.

Journalists ask difficult questions.

Governments however reluctantly answer them.

This symbiotic relationship relies on a simple premise.

The state does not get to decide who qualifies as a journalist, who gets to ask it questions.

But when that relationship becomes increasingly controlled by the state, accountability is

replaced by favoritism.

We are now seeing this play out in real time.

In 2019, when the Trudeau government introduced sweeping payroll subsidies for private Canadian

media, with tens of millions channeled through a designation called a qualified Canadian

journalism organization, or QCJO, those involved assured the public this was merely a fiscal

mechanism.

Our goal was to clearly identify the news outlets eligible for this particular government

program, and not to try to determine some kind of status as an approved journalism organization,

wrote those who built the program.

It would not, they promised, become a press badge.

It would not determine who gets access and who is left out.

Critics meanwhile warned we were at the peak of a slippery slope that would see a tax

measure become a journalism licensing regime.

Today, we are rapidly sliding down that slope.

The media pages for two of Canada's largest federal departments, global affairs Canada

or immigration, refugees and citizenship Canada, or IRCC, and you will see media accreditation

guidelines stating that public servants will only answer journalists who fall under QCJO

designation, or criteria similar to it.

In other words, the government is using a subsidy program administered by the Canada Revenue

Agency to decide which reporters get their calls returned.

That sink in.

The same government that writes the media checks also acts as the bouncer for who is allowed

in to have their questions answered.

Cabinet appoints the members of the so-called independent advisory board that recommends which

outlets receive the designation.

It then makes the final decision as to who is funded.

In doing so, the government defines the criteria for what constitutes journalism.

Therefore, the government is not just subsidizing the press, it is defining it and accrediting

it.

The consequences are concerning.

First, this creates a two-tier media system, outlets that play by these rules and accept

its money get better access.

Those that do not are relegated to the status of supplicants, filing freedom of information

requests, while subsidized competitors enjoy the velvet rope treatment.

It can be hard to hold power to account when you cannot get through the door.

Second, it incentivizes further dependency.

If access to government is contingent on holding the QCJO label, then even skeptical outlets,

like the hub, which qualifies but does not use government funds to support its journalism,

will feel pressure to seek the designation and the subsidies that come with it.

The result is a gradual creep toward a media ecosystem that is increasingly state-funded

and state-sanctioned.

Third, it stifles innovation.

The QCJO process, with its bureaucratic mainstream traditional definitions, moves at the pace

of a glacier.

Journalism today moves at the pace of a lightning bolt.

By the time the bureaucracy has decided what counts as legitimate news, the public has

already moved on to new platforms.

Said differently, the government is using its accreditation power to freeze in place

a particular model of journalism, one increasingly ill-suited to how Canadians, especially young

Canadians consume information.

All of this is happening with barely a murmur from the mainstream press.

Why?

Because the mainstream press is, in large part, the beneficiary of these subsidies.

News organizations receive $65 million a year from the public purse.

They may not like to talk about it, but they have come to rely on it for their survival.

When your payroll depends on the government, you undoubtedly think twice before biting

the hand that feeds.

Meanwhile, the truly independent outlets, the dwindling few that have refused subsidies

on principle, are left to do the job journalism is supposed to do.

Ask uncomfortable questions.

It is sad that it has fallen to small outfits like the hub and black locks reporter to surface

stories like these.

The major outlets that should be leading the charge are silent.

What is to be done?

The first step is for the government to recognize the fundamental problem.

The CRA's designation was never meant to function as a press pass.

The Carney government should state clearly that QCJO is nothing more than a category on

a tax form.

Their departments should open the door to a variety of journalistic outlets, not just those

on the government payroll.

While global affairs Canada and the CRA won't answer my questions on this, after receiving

some media attention, it appears IRCC may be realizing the error of their ways.

Before broadly, Canadians need to ask an uncomfortable question.

Do we want a media ecosystem funded by, defined by, and privileged by the state?

Or do we want a press that is truly independent, messy, uneven, undefinable, but free?

Government has an obligation to answer to the public.

It does not have the right to decide who speaks for the public.

That was a commentary by Harrison Lohman.

He is the hub's managing editor.

You can read the full text of his article on our website, the hub.ca.

That's it for today's edition of Hub Headlines.

We hope you enjoyed the program.

Hub headlines is produced by Alicia Rao.

This program was narrated by automated voices.

Thanks for listening.