The desk
A small desk, a long paper trail
Canadian Herald is an independent national affairs publication based in Ottawa. We write for readers who would rather see the instrument than hear about it: public servants, provincial officials, lawyers, students, and households that want to know where a number came from.
Founded 2014
Ottawa, Ontario
Independent · reader-funded
01 · Why the desk exists
Coverage that starts where the decision is written
The Herald began as a clipping file. Three reporters on the Parliament Hill press gallery kept a shared folder of orders in council, committee dissents and tribunal reasons that never became stories, and noticed that the folder was more useful than the briefings. In 2014 the folder became a publication.
The editorial position has not changed since. A national decision reaches a household through a specific instrument, administered by a specific level of government, under a specific authority. If a reader cannot name those three things after finishing a piece, the piece has failed, however well it read.
We are deliberately small. Five standing desks, one standards editor, a picture desk that works from the archive and from original photography. We do not run wire copy, we do not publish sponsored material, and we do not take a position on which party should govern. We take positions on what a document says, and we show the clause.
Readers arrive from search, from newsletters that cite us, and from the occasional citation in a committee brief. That is the intended audience: someone doing work, holding a file, or trying to understand a decision that has already been made.
02 · Masthead
Who is on the desk
The desk is eight people and a small group of contributing researchers. Bylines appear on filings; the standards editor signs the corrections register.
- Editor
- M. Tremblay
- Deputy editor
- A. Okonkwo
- Parliament and procedure
- J. Bélanger
- Courts and tribunals
- S. Ramachandran
- Provinces and transfers
- K. Whitecloud
- Data and documents
- L. Fenn
- Picture desk
- R. Duquette
- Standards editor
- P. Arsenault
Freelance researchers are credited in the filing they worked on. Where a filing depends on a single source’s documents, that dependency is disclosed at the foot of the page.
03 · Funding and limits
How the desk is paid for
The Herald is funded by readers: voluntary subscriptions, a small amount of syndication, and classroom licences for the reference pages. No advertiser has approval over a filing, and no sponsored copy runs on the site. We do not sell audience data, and the site carries no third-party tracking scripts.
The limits follow from the size. We cannot cover every riding, every tribunal and every municipal-federal agreement. We cover the places where the paper trail is rich and routinely unread, and we say so when a subject falls outside the five desks.
What the desk will not publish
- A claim about a document that the reporter has not read in its current version.
- A number without its issuing table, its fiscal year and its denominator.
- The identity of a private individual who has not entered public life, including in court and immigration material.
- Unredacted personal data from a filing, even where the filing is public.
- Speculation about the outcome of an investigation before a charging document exists.