On Wednesday evening in Ottawa, the Writers’ Trust annual Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing will be awarded at the Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa. We asked each of the shortlisted authors the question: What do you think is Canada’s biggest weakness in terms of the dissemination of information, and how do we deal with it? The responses from the nominees (excluding Jane Philpott, for Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada) are as follows.
Tanya Talaga (The Knowing)
Society as a whole has a problem with where “news” and “journalism” comes from. Anyone can pick up their phone, post something they see to their socials or YouTube, with no context or explanation of what is going on from a trusted source. That post can become viral and become the news.
Without a challenge of perspective, without even knowing if the image or post is AI generated or written by a human being – and what their own agenda is – democratic society begins to become unhinged. Movements start; ideologies form. And based on what?
So, how do we deal with this? You can’t put the cat back into the bag, but making sure kids are taught media literacy in school, how to navigate opinion from fact and where to get it from, would be a start.
Alasdair Roberts (The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century)
Canada’s current weakness is a lack of national dialogue about the future. We understand that the world has changed – that we are in a “hinge moment,” as Prime Minister [Mark] Carney says. We ought to be having a countrywide conversation about what comes next. What challenges will face the country over the next 30 years, and how will we face them.
We talk about “building Canada,” but we can’t build without blueprints. Unfortunately, we’re not in good shape to have this conversation. Our political parties are built to manufacture short-term campaign promises, not long-term visions. Our national media are weaker than they used to be. And our governments have abandoned useful tools for dialogue like royal commissions.
In short, we need to invest in conversation. Sovereignty and democracy mean nothing if Canadians aren’t enabled to make informed choices about what Canada should become.
Alasdair Roberts: We’re missing a vision for Canada
Stephen Maher (The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau)
I started working in 1989 at the Grand Falls Advertiser in Newfoundland. It and the next six papers I worked for are now closed. I then worked for The Chronicle Herald, which was then independently owned. It is now owned by Postmedia and no longer has an Ottawa bureau. Postmedia, where I next worked, is a shadow of its former self. Maclean’s, which was a weekly with an Ottawa bureau, is now monthly and has no reporters on staff.
Broadcasting is not faring much better, and all our big book publishers are foreign owned. The old models are broken, and Canadian governments and businesses have not demonstrated inspiring creativity or commitment to creating new ones.
One proposal: Stop taxing royalties earned by Canadian writers, artists and musicians up to $100,000 a year. It would cost the treasury little and would make it easier to earn a living producing Canadian culture.
Raymond Blake (Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity)
Our greatest vulnerability lies in our emotions. Canadians must recognize that politics is a contest of narratives: Leaders construct stories, and citizens choose one. National narratives and stories political leaders construct do not always reflect the realities facing the nation.
Canada has starkly contrasting stories to draw upon and leaders have been selective historically in which stories they tell to define Canada. Words matter. Information matters. The speeches and rhetoric of political leaders are rarely neutral. Providing information, especially through speech, is a form of political action.
Through words and language, political leaders seek to stir the nation’s spirit and bring citizens to accept their vision for Canada while rejecting others as they hope to meet new challenges and opportunities. What are citizens to do? Evaluate political information with their heads, with reason and careful analysis, not with their hearts where passion and emotion dominate and careful analysis is absent.
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
