NEWSLETTER: The Lengths They'll Go to Avoid Answering Simple Questions

Friends,

I received an email last week from Martin Lukacs, the managing editor of The Breach.

He was angry about our investigation into the timeline surrounding The Leap's closure and The Breach's launch, the nine months of silence after workers unionized, the abrupt shutdown, the new outlet appearing six days later without a union, and the personnel who migrated from one to the other.

His email made serious accusations. He called our reporting “verifiably false” and “conspiratorial.” He said we made “no effort” to seek comment, and suggested we were confused about basic facts about who worked where and when.

I responded promptly—well, after rescuing his email from my junk folder—and engaged with his concerns in good faith. I acknowledged where he raised legitimate points about outreach. I accepted his correction about the timing of his personal departure from The Leap Manifesto in 2016, years before the organization The Leap even existed.

And then I asked him the questions that mattered:

• What happened during those nine months between union certification in June 2020 and The Leap's closure in March 2021?
• Did bargaining commence? If so, when?
• Why was no agreement reached?
• Why did The Leap close rather than negotiate a first contract?
• Why did The Breach launch just six days later?
• Why did it launch without a union?
• Why does The Breach happen to have much of The Leap's staff as editors and columnists?

Simple questions. Straightforward questions. The kind of questions any journalist would ask when presented with this timeline.

His response?

More indignation. More corrections around the edges. More demands that we defend our methodology. But still no answers.

Let me address one of his corrections directly, because he has repeated it publicly, and I want the record to be clear.

Mr. Lukacs claims I confused Katie McKenna—the former Co-Executive Director of The Leap—with Cara McKenna, an Indigenous editor who worked at The Breach.

This is false.

Our article states clearly: “The Leap cited three reasons for ceasing operations: its non-charitable status in Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the departure of Lewis and executive director Katie McKenna.”

That is accurate. Katie McKenna was the executive director. She left. We reported that. Elsewhere in the article, we state: “Martin Lukacs and Cara McKenna were listed as editors, with Lewis later identified as a contributor.”

That is also accurate. Cara McKenna was an editor at The Breach. We did not say she was at The Leap. We did not confuse her with Katie McKenna. We reported two distinct facts about two different people with similar surnames.

Mr. Lukacs can disagree with our interpretation of events. He can criticize our failure to contact The Breach directly, a point I have acknowledged and accepted. But he cannot manufacture a factual error where none exists simply to discredit our reporting.

The pattern is clear.

When confronted with uncomfortable questions, Mr. Lukacs, Avi Lewis, and his followers do not provide answers. They do not produce records of bargaining sessions. They do not explain the nine-month silence. They do not address why The Leap closed rather than reach a contract with its unionized workers.

Instead, they attack. They nitpick. They accuse us of confusion and conspiracy while offering nothing substantive in return.

This is not how someone with nothing to hide behaves.

If our reporting were truly “verifiably false,” the remedy would be simple: show us the proof. Produce the exchange of proposals, demonstrate the good-faith bargaining that occurred, and explain the timing in a way that refutes the appearance of union avoidance.

No one connected to this story has done any of that, including Mr. Lukacs.

What he has done is send emails to members of my team—whose information is not public—filled with indignation, corrections around the margins, and demands that we justify ourselves while the central questions remain unanswered.

I was firm in telling him that if he cannot provide substantive answers, I will cease correspondence. In the meantime, our reporting stands on the documented public record: the certification, the nine-month gap with no evidence of bargaining, the closure, the six-day launch, and the personnel (including Mr. Lukacs) who appear on both sides of that dividing line.

These are facts. They are not conspiracy theories. They are not “malicious assertions.” They are questions that deserve answers from anyone else who was present during those nine months.

If the answers exist, produce them.

If they do not exist, then the questions become more urgent.

I will keep you informed as this develops.

— Will Adams
Editor, The Provincial Times