Delivering the Robert Stewart Memorial Lecture to members of the Montreal Press Club last Monday evening at the Atwater Library, Trudeau said Reporters Without Borders hasn’t been able to obtain its charitable donation status, “because the government says we’re political, because we’re fighting for human rights.”

The irony, as one member of the audience pointed out, is that Canadian political parties are allowed by the government to issue receipts for tax purposes when they receive contributors’ donations. In France, Reporters Sans Frontières has a charitable status, as does the organization’s branch in Italy.

Trudeau remains mystified as to why Reporters Without Borders Canada can’t get charity status, since Amnesty International Canada has it. Like RWB, AIC also defends political prisoners and promotes human rights.

In the latest press freedom index Reporters Without Borders issues annually, Canada slipped from 13th to 19th place. At least two reasons for that, said Trudeau, were that Canada did away in 2004 with any protection of journalists’ sources that existed prior to then, and access to information is being made increasingly difficult by the federal government.

In the last year-and-a-half, he maintains, the government has resorted more and more to a clause in the access to information act, covering international relations, alliances and national security, and they regularly refuse to release information on these bases. “Well, that may be because there really are cases of national security,” he said. “But it may also be that they’re trying to control the information.”

Trudeau added that he found it “strange” how Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, “has now taken his obsession for controlling things to the point where he has events as the prime minister of Canada to which the media are not invited, but his cameramen are invited and they send out their version of the event to the media.”