Reporters frustrated by lack of access to Prime Minister

La Press Canadienne reporter Lina Dib says PM Stephen Harper hasn’t come in the front door to QP for months.

The Hill Times, January 28th, 2008
By Meghan Moloney

If you ask around, La Presse Canadienne Hill reporter Lina Dib says people will likely describe her as a "persistent and annoying reporter." But that doesn’t bother her. What does bother her is the lack of access to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Cabinet ministers. She’s got a lot to say about that. Ms. Dib came to Ottawa in 1997 after eight years with Radio-Canada, during which she worked in Winnipeg, Montreal, and finally as the national correspondent in Toronto. She spent nine years as a Parliament Hill correspondent for TVA. In May 2006, she left TVA to work at Nouvelle Télé-Radio, which has since been "re-branded" as La Presse Canadienne, the French arm of Canadian Press. She met The Hill Times for an interview at her office last week.


Why did you switch from TVA to NTR?

"Because of my family life. Because I have a kid who was going to start school, and so that meant homework and I wanted to be home at a reasonable hour, which you don’t do when you work in TV. You’re often stuck in the evening. And I didn’t want to do any more election campaigns because I didn’t want to be leaving anymore, I didn’t want to be doing any more trips. So I negotiated a different kind of work schedule. I get my summers off, all of that too to enjoy my six-year-old."


How did being a parent change you as a reporter?

"I don’t know as a reporter, but as a person who’s working, you don’t care about work as much, definitely, and you’re more involved in your private life, and you have different sets of values. You don’t think that work is just the ultimate goal–happiness being the ultimate goal. Happiness is easier to find with people who love you, be that they’re small or big, and not from your job."


Do you mostly write copy stories or are you ever on the radio?

"Yeah, I’m on the radio. Actually I work for the radio French service, the Canadian Press, so yes, I write copy–mostly short copy, and I do news reports. We used to be called NTR, then we were rebranded as La Presse Canadienne, radio or print service. I’m not even sure they say print anymore, because it’s mostly an internet service."


How did you find the transition?

"I used to work in radio before. I came to TV from radio, but that was–when I was working in radio, we were still slicing tape. I worked for Radio-Canada for eight years. I worked in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto. So the main difference is the technology of it now. But other than that, I’m still doing the exact same job–I’m still asking the same questions to the same people. It’s lighter because you don’t have to wear the makeup anymore. You don’t have to care about your hair anymore. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same job."


What’s your biggest scoop so far covering federal politics?

"I’m not much of a scoop person, more of a stunt person. Things kind of happen–I remember one Liberal convention here in Ottawa where I ended up being, totally by coincidence, in a room where I could hear a speech that Jean Chrétien was giving, you know, not for reporters’ ears. So that made a bit of noise."


Did you end up publishing it?

"Yeah. It was all about the Clarity [Act in 2000], and how he was happy that he had done it and people had said it was going to create a backlash and that didn’t happen, so you know, he was kind of bragging about it. There were some famous quotes saying that the sovereignty movement was like a sick dog. He was very colourful. Other little things like that, for some reason things kind of happen. But I don’t have any stars in my desk about incredible documents people slipped me in brown envelopes, like in the books."


Are you particularly proud of something you’ve reported on?

"I’m particularly proud of the coverage, and have happy memories of the coverage I did on the Middle East trip of Jean Chrétien’s in 2000, mostly because I speak Arabic. I’m Lebanese, so the whole thing, the whole area really interested me. That was quite a trip, because things just kept happening there again. And because of that edge I had, because I could speak to people other reporters couldn’t, because I could actually catch stuff happening that other people wouldn’t get access to. So I was very proud of that, plus I was enjoying myself. On the stop in Lebanon I got to see my family. That was like the ultimate coverage. It was kind of a nightmarish trip for the PMO. It did not go well. He stumbled a lot, it was kind of like one mistake a day. It made a lot of noise in the media here at the end of it. People were complaining about–a Senator wrote a mean letter about me being not a nice reporter."


What’s the biggest issue today in federal politics in Quebec? In Canadian politics?

"Well, the two very timely issues, the thing that everybody’s been talking about is mostly the manufacturing and forestry crisis. It got all of Quebec in a very bad mood last week or two weeks ago. And I think Afghanistan is definitely something on people’s minds, although maybe not so much in the day-to-day obsession of people in Québec. In the past year if you look more closely at Quebec politics, people haven’t been as impassioned with lots of things, because they’re comfortable, their economy is going well–they have their little fights, they had that whole accommodement raisonnable thing that got them totally–their focus was nowhere near Ottawa. At some point, the veiled vote thing got them a bit excited because of that other accommodement raisonnable noise. But maybe now with the economy crisis for these two sectors, if it gets bigger, affects more people. And Canada as a whole, everybody’s talking economy right now. Maybe I’m optimistic, but I have trouble believing that we’re really heading into troubled times. But I’m no expert."


What are some other major news stories you’ve broken?

"The thing is, you keep forgetting them, because when you’re in them they seem to be so huge and then two weeks later, nobody remembers, especially now that the news cycle is just so fast. I don’t know, anything that had to do with Quebec was always big, especially because of the employer I had. So there was the Clarity Bill, when it went to the Supreme Court. Just covering the politics–the whole Martin-Chrétien quarrel, that brought a lot of excitement. Elections of minority governments–all that stuff."


What do you like the most about your job?

"Actually, I like the laughter. I usually enjoy my day. I have a lot of fun with the people I work with. It’s just the general ambiance that I like. I like hanging out with–not with everybody, but with most of the crowd of the press gallery."


What do you find the hardest?

"Getting out of here in time, running out the door at a quarter to 5, because I absolutely, absolutely want to be home before 5:30 p.m. Budgets–I hate budgets. Although I was really good in math at school, when there’s a dollar sign next to the mathematics, for some reason I become dumb. I hate covering budgets. That’s probably my ultimate nightmare. And it comes back once a year!"


How do you find dealing with the Conservative government, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Prime Minister?

"I don’t find it, because I don’t have any dealings with them. They don’t return calls. They hardly return emails. It’s just annoying and frustrating. I just do the job with the information I gather, and if they’re not in the story, well, I can’t do anything about it. Their point of view can’t get in the story if they’re not there. And they haven’t been there."


Are you able to get interviews with Cabinet ministers? Are they accessible?

"If I hang around at caucus, sometimes I catch some of them off guard. I caught Stockwell Day once in an elevator, where it was the first time he acknowledged that there was torture in Afghanistan, and that was just me and him in the elevator. Probably that’s the stuff I’m most proud of. I’m kind of a persistent, annoying reporter. If you ask around, that’s what they’ll say about me. So there’s just nothing else you can do. They’ve been taking back corridors, back doors. Stephen Harper hasn’t even come in the front door to QP for months now. So, I mean, if they’re hiding, what can you do? I try not to get emotional about it, because it’s just a job. But I don’t think it’s the most democratic way of doing things. It doesn’t change much to my life, except that it makes my job a little more frustrating."


When you were dealing with past governments, did you have these kinds of problems or did you find it more accessible?

"No, they were accessible. They weren’t nicer–it’s not about being nice and being chummy with them. It’s about being there, because when you’re elected and the people of Canada pay your salary, you have to answer questions, you have to say what you’re doing. And the only way you can tell people what you’re doing is–sure, you can put up stuff on the internet, on your website, but the only way you can be questioned back in a more critical way is to answer reporters’ questions. And they’re not answering reporters’ questions. I mean, I don’t think my relationship with the Chrétien PMO was ever good. But it’s not about entertaining a good relationship. I’ve had not a good rapport with the Bloc Québécois at some points also because they didn’t like the coverage I was giving them.

"It’s just about being there. So now we’ve been barred from Cabinet for two years. The whole gallery. The way things worked in the old days is that Tuesdays were Cabinet days, so they were on the third floor and reporters would just stand there and try to catch ministers on their way in or on their way out and ministers could stop or not stop and answer questions. And it was the same for the Prime Minister–he would come out or not come out. It was the same at Question Period. Now at Question Period, you’re just asking questions of the opposition, because the ministers never come out, or almost never come out. The opposition [MPs] get all the ice, so I’m sure they’re glad about that. Sure, there are clips that you could pull out of Question Period of the Prime Minister, or of the few ministers who speak French, but you don’t always want to put out the line. As a reporter, your job is to ask the tough questions and to get answers to those. So we get to grill the opposition, once they’ve done their show at QP, but we don’t get the ministers or the Prime Minister."


What do you think of the whole issue of the list and the Prime Minister’s Office having control over the list of questions and reporters?

"The Canadian Press does not go on that list. I wouldn’t go on a list, even if the Canadian Press decided that from now on they’re going on a list. I’m not sure that I would have questions for a list. No, I find that totally wrong. There were several ways that the gallery explored how to deal with it, the biggest problem being that the gallery cannot unite."


What’s the biggest challenge of reporting on the current government?

"Accessibility. Sometimes the silliest stuff that you need, the less controversial things–you used to pick up the phone, call [a] department, and say, ‘I want to know, you just put out some release, and I want to have more information.’ Now you get a phone call back saying, ‘I got your call–what is your deadline?’ It’s now. And then you get the call back–‘Now I know your deadline, what are your questions?’ Well, no. Give me someone to talk to. And then they’ll call back again–‘Can you email me your questions?’ So now, we’ve kind of lost the reflex of picking up the phone and calling to ask the government, what exactly do you mean by this or by that? Because they don’t answer. And that’s definitely challenging. So some stuff just doesn’t get reported, because you can’t get satisfying answers."


What do you think the impact will be of these trends on governments to come?

"When this whole affair started, I can’t remember who but some reporters went around all the opposition leaders and asked, ‘If you get power, will we have access back to Cabinet?’ And they all promised that they would. Now, that was when the whole fight or quarrel began, so will anybody remember what they had promised–I don’t know. I think it’s definitely a slippery slope, and not just with this government but for journalism as a whole. And I think the most annoying thing is not that they’re doing this, but how easily some of us have accepted this new order of things. Some people find in this order of things... they find something good out of this situation because it serves them. Obviously the PMO has chosen some news outlets to feed information to. Governments in the past have always had their corridors of information–you knew some reporters were being fed more easily by the PMO or by opposition parties or whatever. That’s always been the case."


Do you think the CBC was too severe in its punishment on one of its national reporters, Krista Erickson, who fed questions to a Liberal MP? Or is there a fine line between pushing a story with MPs and going too far? What are your thoughts?

"In the past 11 years, I have never given advice to a politician. You know, sometimes you hear their questions in the House or some story gets out and you think, ‘Why don’t you ask them this?’ And I think it’s totally inappropriate for reporters to go and whisper questions in anybody’s ears, or answers in anybody’s ears, because there’s this divide. I really look at the Hill as an us-and-them thing, and I can’t cross that line. I can’t be one of them. I don’t ever want to be one of them. I’m weird that way, I’m not comfortable in social gatherings with politicians–I don’t go to those, whoever sends out the invitation, I don’t go to those. I’ve been once, because I was president of the gallery, to Stornoway. I thought, okay, I had to show up. I just hate the whole thing.

"I find it hypocritical. I don’t want to be friends with them, I don’t want to have drinks with politicians. I’m just not interested. For me, it’s about a job and I know that a lot of reporters establish other kinds of relationships and get stories–I’m just not comfortable with that. It’s just the way I am. I don’t think [the CBC] was too severe."