Earlier this week, I held a press conference in Ottawa to lay out a series of allegations of foreign interference in the Alberta referendum campaign. No media came. Well, almost none. There was one observer from a right-wing Alberta publication. But none of the major national outlets bothered to attend. I’m not surprised. They never show up.
Someone asked me why I bother holding press conferences at all. For me, it’s simple. I believe that presenting evidence on issues like foreign interference in the democracy of our country should be done in the national press gallery in Ottawa. I believe that Canadians deserve transparency and answers. This work matters. If the media don’t bother to attend, our team takes the clip and shares through Meidas Canada and Meidas Touch. The information gets out and the video will reach hundreds of thousands of people. But it wasn’t always like this on the Hill.
When I was first elected, the press gallery was a powerful and sometimes sullen fiefdom. Journalists were focused on the issues and on holding politicians to account. If you showed up thinking you could provide spin and glib commentary at a press conference, you’d be taught otherwise. There was nothing like the so-called “murder questions” from the tough buzzards in the fourth estate. But those days are gone. Parliament has been redesigned so politicians can avoid the “perp walk” of facing tough media scrutiny. The press rooms have also been stripped of staff. The veterans were sent into early retirement, to be replaced by lower-paid interns and young, untrained scribes. Last month, the legendary Bob Fife of The Globe and Mail hung up his boxing gloves for the last time. I was surprised to receive a request to provide a video thank-you for his years of service. My message was funny but accurate. I described a typical encounter. I’d be walking away from Parliament when my phone would ring. If it was Bob Fife, I always froze. To answer was the great unknown. He might be calling about the latest scandal or to share evidence he had dug up. Or it could be about issues in my own party. My first instinct was always to pretend I didn’t see the ringing phone. But that never worked with Bob. So eventually I would pick up and hope to get off easy. That’s when the hardball question would be thrown. There was no point trying to spin him or to deflect. His job was getting at the facts, and I respected him for it. I always told Bob exactly what I knew. It was like getting the murder question thrown at you by Richard “the badger” Brennan or Julie Van Dusen. Kristi Kirkup was more diplomatic, but she always drilled home. You couldn’t outrun these people. They built their careers on accountability and fairness. Fellow resisters, I write this because more and more people have tuned out the national pundits who don’t seem to be willing to tackle the issues of the moment. This is why I started The Resistance and Meidas Canada. It is about providing information and helping people feel they are part of a larger conversation in an age of AI slopaganda and lazy, understaffed mainstream journalism. Since launching just over a year ago, we’ve published over 385 essays, worked with grassroots resisters to hold 30 Resistance Tour events from one end of the country to the other, and built a global Substack community of 77,500 readers. Meidas Canada Network is now the largest independent news platform in Canada with 241K subscribers and growing every day. What’s even more extraordinary is where people are tuning in from: every Canadian province and territory, every U.S. state, and 144 countries around the world. I could drive those numbers higher by going for rage bait, but I think of what mentors like Bob Fife. I believe it is important to back up what you say. It is important to dig deeper to determine if the latest online drama actually happened. We are a very small team covering both The Resistance and Meidas Canada Network, and we might not always get it right, but the integrity of the project matters to us. We rely on paid subscriptions so we can do the work of being out there, meeting Canadians, and sharing their stories. We don’t receive any outside funding. Everything we do is powered by you. If you like what you read, I’m asking you to consider supporting us by upgrading to a paid subscription. It would make a huge difference. Paid subscriptions mean we can do more, reach further and sustain this work. But if you aren’t in a position to upgrade, it’s ok we thank you for sharing and being part of the conversation. This is public engagement and the essays and full archive will always be available to whoever wants to read.
If you’d like to make a one time contribution beyond a subscription, please get in touch with our team at info@charlieangus.ca We are going to keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. Thank you. — Charlie If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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