Robert Fife has spent nearly five decades reporting on Canadian politics, developing sources, exposing wrongdoing, and holding powerful institutions accountable. He recently stepped down as Ottawa bureau chief for The Globe and Mail, although he plans to continue mentoring younger journalists and pursuing the occasional scoop.
During our conversation, Fife spoke thoughtfully about the decline of local journalism, political bias, media subsidies, foreign interference, and the responsibility reporters have to scrutinize power.
But one subject produced a noticeably sharper reaction: Liberal MPs using the CBC to publicly criticize their own government while remaining anonymous.
The CBC had reported that members of the Liberal caucus were frustrated with Prime Minister Mark Carney and his cabinet over their approach to fossil fuels and the possibility of a new pipeline. According to the report, the MPs had expressed those concerns in a letter, but the CBC did not publicly identify them.
Fife was unimpressed.
He said he would not have published the story without identifying the elected officials involved. In his view, MPs who are willing to criticize the direction of their government should also be willing to place their names beside that criticism.
“If they don’t have the balls to put their names out publicly,” Fife said, he would either have refused to publish the story or obtained the letter and identified its authors himself.
He went further, calling the MPs “cowards” for criticizing Carney while avoiding the political consequences of doing so.
Elected Officials Are Not Ordinary Sources
Journalists rely on anonymous sources for many legitimate reasons.
Public servants may risk losing their jobs for exposing misconduct. Whistleblowers may face legal, professional, or personal retaliation. Political staff can provide information that the public would never otherwise receive. In some cases, protecting a source is the only way to reveal corruption or institutional failure.
But elected members of Parliament occupy a different position.
They have public authority, parliamentary privilege, taxpayer-funded offices, and a direct responsibility to explain their decisions to voters. When MPs criticize major changes in government policy, particularly on an issue as consequential as pipelines and fossil fuels, Canadians have a legitimate interest in knowing who is making the argument.
The identities matter because the criticism may reflect regional interests, internal leadership struggles, ideological divisions, or efforts to pressure the prime minister without accepting responsibility for the consequences.
Without names, the public is left with political intrigue rather than political accountability.
How many MPs were involved? Which parts of the country did they represent? Had they previously supported the government’s direction? Were they expressing a principled policy disagreement, protecting their seats, or attempting to influence Carney through the media?
Those questions cannot be properly examined when the participants remain hidden.
When Politicians Use Journalists
Fife’s criticism was not limited to the unnamed MPs. It also reflected his broader concern that politicians continually try to use journalists for their own purposes.
“Ottawa is a place where you’re going to be used,” he explained.
Political figures approach reporters because they want something. They may want to damage a rival, advance a policy, pressure a leader, test public reaction, or shape how an internal disagreement is understood.
That does not mean their information is false or unimportant. It means journalists must understand the source’s motives and decide whether publishing the information serves the public or merely assists one side of a political battle.
Fife warned that reporters require a moral compass because access can gradually turn into dependence. Journalists may begin to value private calls, invitations, relationships, or insider status more than their duty to the public.
Once that happens, reporting can become a vehicle for political strategy rather than a check on political power.
“Getting co-opted is not journalism,” Fife said.
That distinction is central to understanding his objection to the CBC story. The unnamed MPs received the benefit of publicizing their opposition without accepting the cost of publicly challenging their leader. The CBC received an internal political story. But Canadians were denied information necessary to judge the disagreement for themselves.
The arrangement worked well for the politicians. Fife questioned whether it worked for the public.
Anonymity Should Come With a High Bar
The debate is not whether journalists should ever use anonymous sources. Much of Fife’s own reporting depended on people providing information privately.
The real question is what threshold should be applied.
Anonymity should generally be granted when the information is important, cannot reasonably be obtained on the record, and the source faces a credible risk for revealing it. Even then, journalists should verify the claims, explain why anonymity was granted, and provide readers with enough context to assess the source’s credibility and potential motivation.
It becomes more difficult to justify when elected officials are using anonymity to promote a political position they are unwilling to defend publicly.
A whistleblower exposing corruption and an MP complaining about government policy are not situated in the same way. One may have no institutional protection or public platform. The other holds public office precisely to represent political views and make difficult decisions.
Fife’s concern is that anonymity can become a shield for powerful people rather than protection for vulnerable sources.
Journalism Must Create Accountability
Fife’s career at The Globe and Mail has been defined by stories that powerful people would have preferred remain hidden.
His reporting helped expose the SNC-Lavalin affair, foreign interference in Canadian democracy, questionable Senate expenses, security concerns involving Huawei, and Canadian university partnerships with Chinese military institutions.
In each case, the essential purpose was accountability. Who exercised power? Who benefited? What happened to public money? Were political or corporate relationships influencing decisions that should have been made in the public interest?
That same standard should apply to political reporting about internal government disputes.
If politicians wish to challenge the prime minister’s direction, they should be allowed to make that case. A healthy political party should contain debate, disagreement, and competing perspectives.
But elected officials should not expect journalists to provide the megaphone while also providing the hiding place.
Fife’s reaction may have been unusually blunt, but the principle behind it was consistent with the journalism he has practised throughout his career: powerful people should not be permitted to avoid accountability simply because anonymity is convenient.
A free press must sometimes protect its sources.
It must also recognize when those sources are attempting to protect themselves from the public.
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