Immerse yourself in Canadaland’s newsroom for four months and produce your first audio journalism feature for national broadcast. Grow your skills while taking your project from pitch to publication.
The Canadaland Audio Journalism Fellowship is a paid program ($43/hour) offering two early-career audio journalists a four-month placement in Canadaland’s newsroom this fall. During this self-directed opportunity, Fellows will work alongside our team of seasoned audio storytelling professionals. Each successful applicant will research, report, script and produce an audio piece from start to finish with some support from our newsroom team.
To find out more and to apply, click here.
Applications close July 10th.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
On August 20, 2021, Canadaland published The Children’s Crusade, the first episode of a podcast series entitled The White Saviors. In that episode we stated that Theresa Kielburger had placed hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to a children’s charity in a family bank account. This was unfounded. We were wrong to have published it.
Canadaland wholly retracts its statement about Ms. Kielburger. We apologize unreservedly to her for the harm caused by our publication of it. Canadaland has agreed to pay substantial damages to Ms. Kielburger.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
Last Sunday, hundreds of Jews in Toronto drove to a secret location and stood in line as bomb-sniffing dogs, leashed to guards from a private Jewish security agency, trotted past their purses and backpacks. Attendees paid upwards of $229 to spend the first truly beautiful day of spring inside a vast suburban event space, listening to academics and journalists discuss the current crisis facing Jews, and what might actually quell it. After three years of failed campaigns to curb antisemitism, a new global strategy was defined in Toronto at the first World Symposium Against Antizionism.
Anyway that’s how I would cover it, had I been there as a reporter and not as a panelist. But there are many other possible angles:
Ben Shapiro was the headliner. Shapiro is a red-hot, bold-faced name in the press right now, the focus of an excoriating feature in New York magazine, which itself became the subject of a plagiarism scandal. His name in any headline guarantees big emotions and big interest. And there he was, right in Toronto’s backyard, available for anyone to cover.
Influencer and academic Gad Saad was there, too. His buzzy book, Suicidal Empathy, is currently the number-one nonfiction bestseller in Canada, and its core premise was recently embraced by Elon Musk. Saad also recently announced on Joe Rogan’s podcast that he is leaving Concordia University in Montreal for a new gig (in Mississippi, of all places). That yields three clickable names and a strong Canadian angle for one possible story, up for grabs to anyone who wants it.
A more critical take, perhaps suited for a progressive news outlet, might focus on the decidedly conservative bent of the whole affair. Are Canada’s Jews moving toward the MAGA right? Are supposedly anti-racist journalists (including yours truly) hypocrites for sharing a stage with right-wing populist pundits? Were the Arab and Muslim speakers at the event being co-opted by Zionists? Should politicians even allow figures like Ben Shapiro to set foot in Canada? Anyone wanting to take a shot at this event had plenty to work with.
There were so many choices. But so far, with the exception of the National Post, Canadian legacy media has made a different choice: to ignore the event entirely.
Instead, the CBC and The Globe and Mail found space for wire stories about Canadian protesters on a Gaza flotilla who were detained by Israel.
The Toronto Star and CTV News ran wire stories about ultranationalist Jews in Jerusalem chanting racist slogans.
Yet none of these outlets (all of whom were invited) sent a single reporter to an event that took place just a short drive from their respective newsrooms, an event that deeply affects people living here, in the country these organizations ostensibly cover.
Why? It’s not because the event wasn’t newsworthy or because their audiences don’t care. And no, it’s not because these organizations hate Jews. It’s because what took place at that conference last weekend fundamentally contradicts the narrative that Canadian media has been telling, day in and day out, since October 7, 2023.
In this narrative, antizionism is a legitimate political movement and antisemitism is an unfortunate but unrelated issue. Canadian Jews are portrayed as passive victims who eternally “feel unsafe.” But it’s always hard to say who or what is making them feel that way, and even if we do know some of the culprits’ names, it would apparently be improper to publish them.
For Canadian Jews to come together and actively identify antizionism as the specific force of hatred and violence that afflicts them is an occurence that shatters the media’s narrative, one they have deeply invested in.
Naya Lekht is a co-founder of Stop Antizionism, one of the two groups that organized Sunday’s event. Here’s how she explains the conspicuous absence of the Canadian media:
“A tree fell in a forest and no one was there to hear it.
This was a landmark event, not because we came to relitigate Israel facts or debate Zionist history, but because we came to name something. To examine antizionism as a distinct ideological phenomenon: the defining scourge targeting Jews in the West for the past two decades.
This symposium did not offer them the story they know how to tell, nor the one they wanted to tell. There was no Jew on the defensive, fending off antizionist libels. The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully. And that, apparently, stumped them entirely.
The silence is its own statement.”
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
We love everything about live events, and we’ve been doing them for years. But we have a new commitment to bringing Canadaland across the country with one major change: Our events are now FREE for Canadaland supporters. All you have to do is show up!
Not a supporter yet? There’s no time like the present. You can become a supporter for just $9.
We have so many exciting live events lined up, and we are looking forward to coming to a city near you very soon. This page is the best place to keep track of where in Canada we are doing live shows, panels, meet & greets, and more. Browse our upcoming events, and be sure to check back often as we update this page.
Don’t see anything in your city? Let us know where we should visit next!
The Nuance: Everyone’s Mad at the University
Date: Wednesday, Sept 30th at 7pm (Doors at 6pm)
Venue: Al Green Theatre (750 Spadina Ave, Toronto)
Picture a university campus.
Do you see a place of learning, growth, and spirited debate? Or an echo chamber where free thinking goes to die?
An institution that represents the best of humanity’s impulses? Or a machine designed to extract wealth from unsuspecting, wide-eyed youth?
Ask around, and you’ll get no shortage of opinions — even from people who haven’t stepped foot on a campus in decades. But have universities really lost their way, or have our expectations of them become impossible?
Author Stephen Marche is joined by novelist Randy Boyagoda to discuss one of our favourite cultural punching bags, asking not just what’s gone wrong with our campuses, but why we keep expecting them to solve all of our problems in the first place.
This is The Nuance. Don’t expect a debate, expect a better kind of conversation.
Canadaland supporters get in for FREE. Already a supporter? Claim your free ticket here using code F26Canadaland.
Doors will open at 6:00 pm.
Past Events:
Canadaland Politics: LIVE from Halifax
Date: Thursday, June 18th at 7pm (Doors at 6pm)
Venue: Halifax Convention Centre (1650 Argyle St, Halifax)
Becky Druhan has been somewhat of a firebomb in Nova Scotia politics this past year, abruptly quitting the NS Progressive Conservative Party over what she called “a difference of principles.”
She became an independent, but now she wants to lead a devastated party to go head-to-head with… her former boss. What the hell is she thinking? What does she know that we don’t?
Host Noor Azrieh will ask her in a live sit-down interview at the Echo Podcast Summit in Halifax
If you think it’ll be awkward, don’t worry, we’ll break the tension with comedian Clare Belford, staff writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Join the Canadaland Politics team for this exciting live show. Supporters get in for FREE.
Doors Open at Canadaland (FREE)
Date: Saturday, May 23rd from 10am to 3pm
Venue: 401 Richmond St West, Unit 376 (Toronto)
Every year, over 150 buildings open their doors to the public. This year is no exception.
Come visit the Canadaland newsroom at the beautiful 401 Richmond building in downtown Toronto. We’re offering studio tours, a meet and greet with your favourite hosts, and a chance to be on the show!
The Nuance: Chrystia Freeland on Globalization
Date: Sunday, May 24th at 7pm (Doors at 6pm)
Venue: Al Green Theatre (750 Spadina Ave, Toronto)
Introducing: The Nuance, a live speaker series in partnership with the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre where award-winning author Stephen Marche will bring audiences into thoughtful conversations on topics that deserve a closer look.
Our first guest will be former MP and current Advisor on Economic Development of Ukraine, Chrystia Freeland.
Globalization promised a more open, prosperous and well-connected world. So why does it feel like the opposite happened? Chrystia Freeland and Stephen Marche will discuss if globalization is failing us or if we are failing it… and why it might be worth saving.
Join us at the Al Green Theatre on Sunday, May 24th at 7pm.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
When Jagmeet Singh told Canadaland earlier this year that there was no “plan B” if he didn’t become Prime Minister in the recent election, I assumed he was just being a politician and dodging the question. But he meant it. Turns out there was really no plan for what came next, and now they’re living with the consequences.
The NDP is in the fight of its life. They’re down to seven seats, and even those seven feel like they’re held together with duct tape and a group chat no one reads. They fought over who should be the interim leader. They fought over so-called “purity tests.” And they just could not get it together and vote together on budget day.
This is the state of the party that someone now has to inherit. A party with no clear direction, no united front, and no recent wins to point to. Oh, and they’re in debt. And yet… five (delusional? brave? your pick) people still want the job. Five people who have looked at this mess and said, “I’ll take it from here folks.”
Here’s who they are, and how each of them thinks they can actually pull that off:
Heather McPherson
McPherson is the only candidate who has actually won a federal seat – twice – and she did it in deep-blue Conservative Alberta.
She says rebuilding the NDP isn’t guesswork; they’ve done it before with year-round organizers, shared resources, early candidate recruitment, and volunteers country-wide.
It’s that strategy that she credits for helping elect Blake Dejarlais in 2021.
McPherson’s core message is about opening up the party. She’s the MP who warned against “purity tests,” a phrase that pissed off some of her caucus colleagues. But in our interview, she was unapologetic about what she meant.
“There have been folks who don’t feel welcome because they don’t have all the words,” she says.
“We’re a party that started with farmers and urban workers coming together. And if you talk to farmers and urban workers in this country right now, they maybe don’t feel welcome at our party.”
She positions herself as a unifier, someone who can bring climate activists and oil workers into the same room without treating either like the enemy.
“Those conversations are tough, but there’s not a single New Democrat in Alberta that I’ve met that doesn’t believe there’s a climate crisis, that doesn’t believe that we have to deal with the climate. And there isn’t a single person in Quebec or British Columbia who I think doesn’t worry about whether or not they have a family-sustaining job,” she said.
McPherson also argues that the NDP needs to stop trying to be a fix-everything-for-everyone party. With Canadians drowning in affordability and housing crises, she says the party needs to focus its message and stay there.
“Affordability and housing. We need some discipline on that.”
Avi Lewis
Lewis doesn’t think the NDP is anywhere near ready to govern.
“We’re certainly not forming government anytime soon,” he says. “One of the things that really pisses people off about politics is when people pretend they’re going to be prime minister in a minute, and I think it’s a time for straight talk from the NDP.”
Instead, Lewis frames the job ahead as a multi-cycle rebuild. Right now, he’s focused on regaining party status and is hopeful the NDP will win up to 50 seats next election.
Central to Lewis’ rebuild is a “clearer, sharper offer,” one he says is rooted in moral clarity rather than message-tested consultant-approved politics.
He’s especially critical of the party’s overreliance on technocratic communications. He says, “If we just get the right words that have been tested and have been proven to work on people, and we say them over and over and over and over again in the same order, that’s how we have our breakthrough. And I don’t think that’s what works in politics today.
Another central component to his rebuild, he argues, is reconnecting with two groups of voters in particular that he thinks the party left behind: the working class in the suburbs and voters in rural Canada.
“The suburbs are where the multiracial, multigenerational working class lives,” he says. “Rural Canada is absolutely key to a climate-safe food economy…I actually think it’s a mistake to abandon the rural parts of every province just because they’ve gone blue in election after election.”
Rob Ashton
Ashton is a longshoreman turned union president who has never held political office and wears that as a badge of honour.
“I’m not a politician type,” he says. “ If you look at me, if you listen to the way I speak. I swear. I used to swear a lot more than I do now, but I swear. I like whiskey. I like beer.”
Rob says he never grew up with money or power. He promises to wear his work boots in the House of Commons, and pitches himself as someone who won’t break faith with the people he comes from – workers.
“Never going to turn my back on it [the working class]. Because if I ever do, I know the members of my union will kick my ass.”
He believes the NDP’s future hinges on whether working-class Canadians can trust them again. Right now, he says, they don’t.
“We have to earn the trust of Canadians,” he says, “the NDP has got to stop wanting to be like the other parties.”
He thinks the party has become too careful to say what it actually believes. Instead, he wants an “unapologetically loud” labour-anchored NDP that stops ceding class politics to the Conservatives.
“We have to be screaming at the top of our lungs that we’re not going to take the liberals and the conservatives pretending to be for workers, or pretending that they got the best interests of Canadians when actual fact, they just want to hold our heads under a bucket of water and wait until we’re begging for breath.”
Tony McQuail
McQuail is a Quaker, a lifelong anti-war activist, and has run five times federally to no avail.
His message is about serious systemic change.
People, he argues, have lost faith in a system that doesn’t represent them. “Over half the people don’t vote, and half the people who do vote have their votes thrown out on election night because they don’t get any representation because of our first-past-the-post system,” he says.
McQuail wants a united coalition between the Green Party and the NDP, and believes Canada needs to stop growing, and that “we are growing ourselves off the planet.”
On the topic of the military, he proposes a non-violent, citizen-led national defence that disengages from US militarism.
McQuail also wants the party to stop sending “vacuous emails” and start educating its members on real solutions. “Sending out information that helps us know how we could actually solve these problems [homelessness] and how other countries are doing it, and actually start building an informed membership.”
Tanille Johnston
Johnston says becoming Prime Minister isn’t the point, at least not right now.
“I’m not focused on being Prime Minister,” she says. “I think it’s an unrealistic goal.”
For Johnston, the real job is “rising [the party] from the ashes,” and to do that, she wants to start by apologizing.
“A lot of time in community, a lot of time listening to where folks felt left behind, where previous candidates felt like they were ignored and just kind of left in the dust by the party and apologizing for those missteps, apologizing for those faults that we need to take and own.”
She says people drifted away from the party because of how long the NDP held onto the supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals.
“It’s probably going to be decades before we live that [supply and confidence agreement] down, to be honest.”
Johnston argues the NDP needs to stop running candidates in ridings where they can only split the vote, and instead wants to cooperate with the Greens.
She believes her background gives her an edge: “I understand why rural ridings feel like they’ve been left behind. I bring a vastly different lens to this work as an indigenous candidate, as a much younger candidate… And I’m from a rural riding, like born and raised rural.”
Top graphic by max collins
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
Mark your calendars folks! We’re doing ANOTHER call-in show Thursday, October 30th, 2025.
This time, we’re asking: What do you think the media consistently gets wrong? And when we say media, we’re including ourselves.
Everyone’s an expert (or at least knows a lot) about something — whether it’s your job, hobby or just something you happen to be passionate about. And we’re sure you’ve been frustrated by media coverage of that thing before — whether that’s a topic being oversimplified, a scientific article being misinterpreted, an important nuance being lost, or your province’s name constantly being mispronounced. So come set the record straight: tell us what the media always gets wrong, and we can all learn a thing or two.
The call-in period will be Thursday, October 30th, 4-6 PM EST. When the time comes, head over to www.callinstudio.com/show/canadaland. You can also dial in at 888-401-7056.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
Here’s our annual look at what we’ve been up to, how the company works, and where our supporters’ money goes.
Feel free to also have a glance at our reports from previous years.
And to help fund Canadaland, click here.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
Generative A.I. is a rapidly evolving and unprecedented technology that is affecting the way newsrooms around the world operate. However, we found most news organizations’ policies and guidelines around their use of A.I. unspecific, unclear and unsatisfying. In an effort to both guide our team and clarify our processes to the public, we took a stab at writing a set of policies and practices that align with the values and concerns of our staff and our audience.
Here is Canadaland’s Policy on the usage of Artificial Intelligence in our newsroom.
To hear more about the thinking behind these guidelines, you can listen to this episode of Canadaland’s bonus show, Off The Record.
And if you want to support Canadaland, click here.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
You can also have a look at our 2023 Transparency Report here.
Episode: “How Canadian Voters Could Sway the U.S. Election” (November 5)
CORRECTIONS: (November 5)
Episode: “The Hate U Post” (March 12)
CORRECTION: (March 18) This episode’s description originally stated that the proposed Online Harms Act would permit “users to sue each other for hate speech online.” In fact, it would allow the Canadian Human Rights Commission to consider complaints related to allegedly discriminatory online speech and to refer such complaints to the quasi-judicial Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Episode: “Why Government Is Addicted to Cigarettes” (January 22)
CORRECTION: In a previous edition of this episode, the guest Max Krangle said that, to account for tobacco revenue loss, income tax would have to increase by 10%. Host Jesse Brown, misinterpreted this and asked if that would mean that tobacco revenue accounts for 10% of total tax revenue. Krangle mistakenly agreed. That exchange has been removed.
Episode: “The Crucible of Confinement” (June 5)
CORRECTION: We stated in this episode that this was Zakaria Amara’s first interview with a member of the press. But it was in fact his first broadcast interview since his release. We regret the error.
Episode: “The Missing Piece for International Students” (January 25)
CLARIFICATION: (January 31) Canadaland would like to clarify there are other requirements to maintain a permanent residency in Canada. One such example is a residency requirement. While there are some exceptions, individuals generally need to have spent at least 730 days (the equivalent of two years) in Canada over the previous five years.
Episode: “No Sex Please, We’re Albertan” (February 8)
CORRECTION (February 8): This episode originally described Susan Kim as a member of British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly, and suggested that Premier David Eby allowed her to continue in her role after she apologized for casting doubt on the use of sexual violence by Hamas. Kim is in fact a Victoria city councillor who added her name to a late-October open letter that made reference to “the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.” While Municipal Affairs Minister Anne Kang called on Kim to apologize (which she subsequently did), and declined to call for Kim’s resignation, Premier Eby himself did not weigh in.
Episode: “Mulroney: One of Canada’s Most Divisive Prime Ministers” (March 7)
CLARIFICATION (March 18): While the Investigative Journalism Foundation’s Open By Default database includes roughly 20,000 records released by federal departments and agencies in response to access-to-information requests, The Globe and Mail’s Secret Canada project is broader in scope, encompassing summaries of more than 300,000 requests made to over 600 federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal institutions across the country.
Episode: “The Musk of Censorship” (March 21)
CLARIFICATION: When Jesse reads from Bill C-63 Online Harms Act 17 he says “”A person may, with the Attorney General’s consent, lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit hate speech.” He meant to say Section 17 “refers to existing parts of the criminal code that govern hate speech.”
Episode: Did Beijing Tamper With the Globe and Mail? (June 20)
CLARIFICATION:(June 21) An unclear statement in an earlier version of this episode could be interpreted to mean that Shree Paradkar spread messages advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel, which she did not. This statement should have been that Shree Paradkar spread messages from someone (Amanda Gelender) who has advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.
Episode: Pierre Keeps it Hot After Trump Gets Shot (July 18)
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this episode, we incorrectly referred to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as “Allison Smith”. An updated version of this episode has fixed the error.
Episode: “Pretendian Hunters” (June 4)
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this episode stated that “the Pamunkey Indian Tribe is the only federally recognized tribe in the state of Virginia” Since publishing it was brought to our attention that The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is one of seven federally recognized tribes in the state of Virginia.
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
A Minister in Mark Carney’s new cabinet bullied, humiliated and harassed a subordinate while working in a previous role at a community college, Canadaland has learned.
Rebecca Chartrand currently serves as the Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs, and Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. Chartrand is a Liberal Member of Parliament for the Churchill—Keewatinook Aski Riding in Manitoba. This is the first public office Chartrand has held.
In 2019, she worked at Red River College in Winnipeg, as Executive Director of Indigenous Strategy.
According to an independent review that Red River College commissioned from a law firm that year, Chartrand engaged in conduct that:
“Amounted to personal harassment in that over a period of time, the manner in which she engaged with [the complainant] and the approach used to assign work and manage [the complainant’s] performance, constituted conduct which was severe in that such conduct could reasonably cause an individual to be humiliated or intimidated and was repeated, and had a lasting, harmful effect on [the complainant].”
Canadaland has obtained two separate documents about Chartrand’s conduct at Red River College. The one noted above is from December 19, 2019, and contains the results of an investigation conducted by law firm Rachlis Neville LLP. It contains a summary of the investigation as explained by Curtis Craven, Director of Human Resources for the college at the time.
The letter goes on to offer mental health support to the complainant.
This document states that at its time of publication, Chartrand was no longer employed by the college. When asked for clarification, Red River College told Canadaland that Chartrand resigned in December of 2019 to pursue new opportunities. They did not comment on any other aspect of this story, citing privacy concerns.
Rachlis Law (known as Rachlis Neville LLP in 2019) did not respond to our request for comment.
Allegations
The second document is from September 25, 2019, and titled “CONFIDENTIAL COMPLAINT SUMMARY.”
It’s a Human Resources document, listing Red River College policies allegedly violated by Chartrand and indicating that the college determined that Chartrand did indeed engage in the behaviors described in “retaliation” against the complainant.
The document contains 18 allegations of workplace conduct violations by Chartrand. Among them are: an allegation that Chartrand told the complainant’s direct reports that they need not recognize the complainant’s authority, an allegation that Chartrand negatively interfered with the complainant’s career and reputation, and that during a conference trip, Chartrand assigned to the complainant a 50 page presentation, due in two days. The presentation was never used.
Survey
Canadaland interviewed the complainant, whose name we have agreed to not include due to possible consequences on her career.
This former employee of Chartrand says the workplace troubles started with a controversial survey that Chartrand’s department gave to prospective Indigenous students in 2019.
The survey was intended to evaluate how much financial assistance prospective students would receive. It included questions to students about their drug and alcohol use, and gave multiple choice options that suggested homes characterized by neglect and domestic violence.
Some students quickly and strongly objected to the survey, resulting in local news coverage.
Prospective students interviewed by Global News in 2019 said they found the survey insensitive and supportive of harmful stereotypes.
Chartrand issued a media statement after the survey was publicized, saying:
“This is a new pilot project and the survey has been a work in progress. The survey received by the media is an earlier version that was revised when concerns were raised. To date, the survey has been used on a very limited basis and all information collected has been destroyed. The College recognizes that more work is needed in order to develop an assessment tool that is effective and culturally sensitive.”
The survey is also referenced on the Complaint Summary, dated several months after the Global News story. It says Chartrand was found to have told “the complainant [Chartrand’s] trust was broken in the complainant because the Complainant didn’t support the student assessments.”
The complainant told Canadaland that she urged Chartrand to reconsider the survey, but was ignored, and then began to experience harassment from Chartrand.
Multiple sources who worked at RRC during this time say at least one person was terminated after the survey was published, and at least one resigned in frustration over its handling.
Years later, and soon after Chartrand’s appointment to Cabinet in 2025, a former Red River College student, Kyle Van Rösenhoff, published a comment about the survey incident to Facebook.
“How quickly people forget that she was fired from her job, for allowing this inappropriate survey to be distributed to Indigenous students at RRC in 2019,” Rösenhoff’s post read. “Watching old news clips and her apology is not believable at all. But I’m sure she’s a changed person and doesn’t have those views on Indigenous people anymore.”
Red River College has stated to Canadaland that Chartrand resigned, rather than being terminated. Rösenhoff did not respond to our request for comment on this story.
Chartrand, at this point an MP-elect, responded on Facebook, writing “I need to makes (sic) a public statement.”
She accused Van Rösenhoff of slander and “lateral violence,” and solicited information from others about where he lives and works.
An “Open Letter Regarding Online Behaviour by MP-elect Rebecca Chartrand” was posted to Facebook on May 2, 2025.
The author, Mihskakwan James Harper, identifies himself as the fiancee of the man targeted by Chartrand, and a former member of the Liberal party. The letter is also signed by one Kyle Ross. In it, Harper accuses Chartrand of trying to intimidate his fiancee for “engaging in civil critique”. He demands a public apology from Chartrand and a statement from the Liberal Party.
Since we started reporting this story, the name on the associated Facebook page has changed from Chartrand Rebecca to Wapinoong Chartrand, and the post has been removed from public view. Wapinoong is her traditional name.
Chartrand’s former employee tells Canadaland that she tried to alert the Liberal Party to the finding of workplace bullying and harassment during the 2025 federal election campaign. She says they never responded to her.
In response to our requests for comment, a Liberal Party spokesperson sent the following statement to Canadaland:
“Canadians expect all political parties to do their due diligence on all prospective candidates, and the Liberal Party of Canada has a rigorous process to appropriately conduct such reviews.”
For reasons of confidentiality, we do not comment on the specifics of individual candidates’ applications,” and referred us to Chartrand’s Chief of Staff.
Subsequently, Chatrand’s Chief of Staff issued the following statement:
“Minister Chartrand is committed to fostering a healthy work environment for all persons in the workplace, characterized by collegiality and mutual respect. The Liberal Party of Canada maintains a rigorous due diligence process, in which Minister Chartrand participated in the course of becoming a candidate.
Regarding the social media post referenced, Minister Chartrand deeply regrets the language and tone she expressed. She unreservedly offers her apologies for the language of the post.”
We’ve extended the deadline for our third annual Fellowship program.
An update to our podcast, The White Saviors
“The lens was not on the Jews. It was on the bully.”
