A nearly 1,000-word newspaper opinion piece written by Montreal lawyer Bernard Amyot in 2008 in which he called columnist Patrick Lagacé a pseudo journalist and accused him of lacking rigour is raising hackles in 2017 just as the Quebec commission of inquiry into police spying on journalists launches its work.
That’s because Amyot is the chief prosecutor of the commission that’s charged with investigating the surveillance of journalists by Quebec police, and Lagacé is a central figure in the matter.
Revelations last fall that Montreal police had spied on Lagacé’s smartphone to discover his sources sparked the scandal and brought denunciations by journalism organizations around the world. The scandal prompted the Quebec government to set up the commission to formulate recommendations to protect journalists’ sources.
The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec said on Friday that it’s calling on the commission to replace Amyot. The lawyer’s comments against Lagacé in the 2008 commentary, published in The Métropolitain, raise doubts about his neutrality, the organization says.
“We’re disappointed and worried,” FPJQ president Stéphane Giroux said.
“He (Amyot) is in charge of figuring out what happened. But now we know that he doesn’t like Lagacé. What does it say about his … neutrality? We’re extremely concerned. I feel as president that if Mr. Amyot was hostile to Lagacé when he accepted the mandate (with the commission), he should have said so right up front.”
Amyot did not return a call on Friday.
The commission, meanwhile, was not aware of the FPJQ’s concerns and will respond next week, commission spokesperson Anne Dongois said.
Amyot’s focus in his 2008 piece is Lagacé’s criticism in a La Presse column of then-departing federal Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion.
“The ‘columnist’ Patrick Lagacé fired his venom in an attack altogether gratuitous and without foundation against Stéphane Dion, and this at a time when he was more hurt and vulnerable than ever, namely on the very eve of announcing his resignation as head of the Liberal Party of Canada,” Amyot’s piece begins.
“Lagacé, who is neither a journalist nor analyst, all the same claims the right to preach to everyone, however without deigning to impose on himself, in a measured and rational manner, the necessary rigour to debate ideas.”
Amyot also wrote that Lagacé isn’t accountable to anyone, uses “the usual clichés” and “spits his venom” on Dion.
The rant against Lagacé isn’t the only opinion piece that Amyot has penned that criticizes the media, Giroux said.
In an open letter published in Droit Inc., a legal profession publication, in 2012, Amyot takes a pot shot at the media even though the letter is a 300-word denunciation of the then-head of the Quebec Bar Association for a statement he had issued during the Quebec student strikes at the time, saying student associations were democratic.
“Less than 30 minutes after issuing your press release,” Amyot wrote in the open missive to Louis Masson, then president of the bar, “you’re already the laughing stock of the media who also wonder, for once rightly, where you were hiding for three months….”
Amyot ends the piece with: “Shame on the Quebec Bar Association, and shame on Bâtonnier Masson!”
“The FPJQ put its entire trust in the commission,” Giroux said, “and we cannot have a single doubt about its neutrality.”
