Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

Jill Winzoski is a name you probably don’t know. Time you met her; she is a canary in the mine of Canadian journalism.

Up until October 19, Jill was a reporter with the Selkirk Record in rural Manitoba. Now she is unemployed. No one ever tells you why these days. There is that sudden pain between the shoulder blades, and off your horse you go. But Jill knows how she lost her job. It was politics, in the person of her local MP, the Conservative member for Selkirk Interlake, James Bezan.

A word or two on Bezan. In university, he specialized in livestock technology – how to make cattle more amorous! (I jest.) He put all that book-learning to good use on the family farm near Teulon, Manitoba. He became CEO of the Manitoba Cattle Producer’s Association. When the BSE crisis struck in 2003, he switched to selling crop insurance. An adaptable guy, with a great wife and three beautiful daughters.

In 2004, Bezan successfully entered federal politics. Late at night, the PM dreams about MPs like Bezan: he was against the doomed Wheat Board, voted against same-sex marriage, and opposed the now-defunct gun registry. In fact, it was Bezan who announced the destruction of data (except related to Quebec) from the long-gun registry in Parliament.

That’s a major bone for a future Big Dog in the neo-conservative scheme of things.

In the 41st Parliament, Bezan made a stand against tanning beds. He introduced a bill that would prohibit people under 18 from using them. In government, he has chaired several standing committees (are any still on their feet?) and is reputed to be someone Stephen Harper has his eye on. There is one other thing to note: James Bezan, media analyst, doesn’t much like Jill Winzoski.

Like legions of rookie reporters on small town papers, Winzoski has covered a lot of things that wouldn’t necessarily set the heart racing. And though she had nothing against covering Halloween, she was keenly interested in national politics. Stories like the sinister shutdown of Canada’s world-famous Experimental Lakes Area got her attention. Her readers, including card-carrying Conservatives, liked her spunk and enjoyed her writing.

James Bezan, not so much.

“This MP has complained about my articles for a while now, pulling his advertising from the [Selkirk] Record and other local papers over news stories or letters to the editor that were critical of the federal government. I was instructed about six months ago to refrain from any articles about the federal government, and complied – albeit with some degree of disgust – in the interest of keeping my job,” Winzoski recalled.

Jill’s bosses probably thought that their problems with the Harper government were over. After all, if Jill didn’t criticize the Conservatives anymore in her newspaper writing, how could the man who had saved young teenagers from tanning beds take issue? The answer comes down to a single word – petitions. The people who asked Jill to forgo writing about federal politics had forgotten to tell her that sending or signing petitions on matters unrelated to Halloween was also forbidden.

And that’s how the federal MP got back on her case.

Jill sent a petition. She had been signing and sending petitions to Ottawa for two years as a citizen without complaint or reprimand at work. And she didn’t just send her petition against the China/FIPPA treaty to her member. She sent a copy to Darth Vader Central, otherwise known as the PMO. Naively, she had placed her hand into a basket of asps.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Jill’s termination meeting on October 19 – a meeting that had been previously scheduled to work out the terms of her staff employment at the Selkirk Record. James Bezan responded to Jill’s petition in a way that would have made Chairman Mao spill his tea. The way Bezan saw it, the deal was like a fortune cookie without the fortune. A few hours after Jill submitted her email petition to the big cheeses in Ottawa on October 18, (the day before she was fired), Bezan responded to her with an email of his own. Remarkably, he took her side:

Dear Jill, Thank you for sharing your concerns and expressing your apprehensions regarding the bid by China National Offshore Oil Co. (CNOCC) to take over the publicly traded Canadian oil company, Nexen. This is an important subject that I am quite concerned about… I would like to note that I am strongly opposed to this deal, and I have raised my concerns directly with Cabinet as well as with the Prime Minister. As I have stated to my colleagues in Cabinet, due to China’s dismal record on human rights and freedoms, I take particular exception to allowing a state-owned company from China to purchase a Canadian company. The communist Chinese government continues to fail to grant even the most basic of human freedoms to its citizens, as they strip away their national wealth to invest around the world. CNOOC’s past possible human rights abuses and failure to report oil spills is something I am also very concerned about… As a Conservative, I am in favor of keeping markets open in Canada, however I do not support allowing state-owned and state-controlled enterprises to take over publicly traded Canadian companies, as these state-owned and controlled business [sic] are not on the same level playing field as other free enterprising corporate entities. Markets should operate in a manner that allow [sic] for fair and proper investment. State control, through financial manipulation and investment, do [sic] not allow for openness or fairness to the average investor. Large amounts of state investment distort markets for all other participants, while limiting other opportunities. It is important to note that although caucus members such as me personally oppose this deal, should Minister Paradis feel the Nexen bid meets all requirements under the Investment Canada Act and the Competition Bureau Act, there is little that can be done to stop it…

Sincerely,

James Bezan, MP.

Chair, Standing Committee on National Defense.”

For a moment, things looked good for Jill. It wasn’t quite a staff job endorsement, but it was a lot better than being prohibited from writing about federal politics in the Selkirk Record. But just when she began to think the worm may have turned, another email landed on Jill’s computer. It was from James Bezan’s office and they wanted their original email back. Bezan’s secretary, Dana, took the fall for the initial email

“I apologize for that,” she wrote. “It was my error, unfortunately I forwarded the wrong response. This response in the correct one.”

As it turns out, James Bezan wasn’t strongly opposed to the sale of Nexen to CNOOC after all In fact, there is no mention in his seven-paragraph, second “Dear Jill” email to either economic misgivings or human rights concerns. What did appear sounded remarkably like what was coming out of the PMO. It was as if the temporarily courageous ghost of MP David Wilks was abroad again in the land.

“Our Conservative government is committed to creating the right conditions for Canadian businesses to compete globally…Our government’s ambitious pro-trade plan is opening new doors for Canadian businesses in dynamic, high-growth markets like China…”

Though his first email denouncing the deal was very serious, MP Bezan found time for unintended humor in his second kick at the can:

“Our Conservative Government has introduced an unprecedented process for putting Canadian International Treaties to the scrutiny of the House of Commons….”

It was almost as if James Bezan had become the young girl in The Exorcist. Somebody else was doing the talking, and Bezan’s personal take on something as important as a major government policy was unwanted. Or maybe his office had just figured out who “Jill” was. In any case, Jill didn’t realize that just like writing about politics or forwarding petitions, asking questions was also forbidden.

“Dear James,

This is very different from your first response. Why? Your constituent, Jill”

Of course, there was no direct reply. But the MP did find time to write an email to the Selkirk Record. It was not a booster letter for Jill, but word that he was through dealing with the paper because of what he deemed to be biased coverage. A day after Jill forwarded that petition, she was sacked by the partner who manages the Selkirk Record, Brett Mitchell. During their termination meeting, Mitchell read from an email the MP had sent him, which included Jill’s petition letter to the PMO.

Like all good reporters, Jill wanted to know exactly why this had happened. She asked her editor, Donna Maxwell, for a copy of Bezan’s email to the paper that had been read to her during her dismissal by Brett Mitchell.

“Brett doesn’t want me to send the email that Bezan sent, so I can’t. Sorry. He [Bezan] copied your form letter and said that he doesn’t want to work with the Selkirk Record because of our reporter’s bias, in a nutshell…this is a tough time for you, and it is for me as well. I hope that we can work together again some time in the future and I know that nothing I can say now will help. I wish things were different…Sorry again.”

Jill had already conducted interviews for future stories in the Selkirk Record but was locked out of the system before she could retrieve works in progress or contacts.

As for James Bezan, MP for Selkirk Interlake, he is awash in tears, arguably of the variety crocodiles shed. It was never his intention to get Jill sacked, just to get the government’s message out without the inconvenient intervention of journalism, free speech, or dissent. Poor man, he had never been forced to go so far before as to ask for a new journalist. And it goes without saying that Jill is free to express her concerns to her MP as she sees fit..

Just not in print.