The government of Quebec on Thursday called for a public inquiry into reports that police in the French-speaking Canadian province had spied on prominent journalists, with the revelations sparking public outcry across Canada, according to dpa. The controversy began Monday, when French-language newspaper La Presse reported that Montreal municipal police had spied on popular columnist Patrick Lagace over a period of several weeks in 2016 to determine the identity of his police sources. According to the report, Montreal police had obtained at least 24 warrants to monitor all incoming and outgoing calls, texts and messages from Lagace's smartphone and had used the device's GPS system to track his whereabouts. On Wednesday, Quebec provincial police revealed that they had kept tabs on six prominent investigative journalists in 2013 in order to fish out their sources for a report on a corruption scandal in the province's construction industry. The latest revelation forced Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard to upgrade a commission of inquiry, created to investigate the Montreal-Lagace case, into a full-blown public inquiry with the power to call witnesses and hold public hearings. The outrage over police action in Quebec quickly reverberated not only in the province but also across Canada and internationally. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called reports about surveillance of journalists in Quebec "troubling" and said he received assurances from federal and national police and intelligence officials that no spying on journalists occurred on the federal level.
