Talk:Accurate News and Information Act

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Accurate News and Information Act/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Arsenikk ^(talk) 14:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Some comments:

• You say "drove at least one newspaper out of business". Does the source say which one?
• The sentence "Says Finkel, finding fault with both sides of the Aberhart-press feud," needs to have "stated" or "wrote" or something with a colon, if it is the sources of the quote below.
• Some small copyediting. (fixed)
• "Ultra vires" needs to be wikilinked. (fixed)

To small matters, and the article will pass as good. Nice work so far :) Arsenikk ^(talk) 14:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review and copyedits. Unfortunately, the source does not name the newspaper, so there's not much I can do there; I think there's value in stating that one was driven out of business, even if we don't know which one, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise. On the Finkel quote point, can you explain why this is necessary? I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'd just like some explanation of why you're right. Sorry for being a cantankerous fart. Steve Smith (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've read the sentence a dozen times, and I cannot see how it creates a transition between the "finding" and the quote. Or to put it this way: I cannot see how the sentence says that Says Finkel says the quote.

Oh, okay; I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that a colon was required, which doesn't seem right to me, when it's just that my writing was unclear. "Says Finkel, finding fault with both sides of the Aberhart-press feud," is an inversion of "Finkel says, finding fault with both sides of the Aberhart-press feud" or, more likely, "Finkel, finding fault with both sides of the Aberhart-press feud, says". It is a little cutesie, though, so I'll go ahead and change it to something more straightforward. Steve Smith (talk) 15:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Good, then we are agreed, and I will pass the article. As always from you, nice work, and if I must say, a rather scary article. I honestly though no-one could dream up introducing such censorship in a "free" country. Arsenikk ^(talk) 16:08, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

introductory paragraph

I find that the first sentences start by giving background instead of stating the outright nature of the act. I believe the background should come later. Frankman (talk) 00:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, actually, and have made some changes: [1] What do you think? Steve Smith (talk) 00:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Act or bill?

If this never became law, why is it an Act rather than a Bill? jnestorius^(talk) 21:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

When bills are drafted, they're given names that include the word "act", notwithstanding that they're not actually acts until passed by the Queen in Parliament. Consider a Wikipedia article about a movie that was never made: if it needed to be disambiguated it would probably be done with "(film)", and over the course of the article it would likely be referred to as "the movie", even though it really doesn't become a movie until there are actual actors and camerafolk involved. Steve Smith (talk) 21:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

As well as the title of the article and the name of its subject, there are various references through the text to "the Act" or "the act" rather than "the Bill". If it is the custom in Canada to refer to Bills as Acts, this should be stated and clarified, because it may be confusing for those of us from the UK and Ireland, where this is definitely not the practice.

See for example this article from today's Irish Times about the Civil Partnership Bill, named as such and referred to as "the Bill" in the course of the report. The legislature's webpage on the Bill does likewise. The various drafts begin: "CIVIL PARTNERSHIP BILL 2009 / BILL entitled AN ACT TO ... 1.—(1) This Act may be cited as the Civil Partnership Act 2009...." In other words, although the Bill refers to itself internally as an Act, externally it is referred to as a Bill.

It is true that in the English language, the concepts "completed movie" and "unproduced movie" are both subsumed into the word "movie"; but it is not (necessarily) the case that "act passed into law" and "bill proposed" are both subsumed into "act".

BTW the names of articles in Category:Proposed laws of Canada are mostly with Bill, though some have Act. Most look like still-active proposals, but Canada Well-Being Measurement Bill and Naval Service Bill are not, so I guess the present article belongs in the category too. jnestorius^(talk) 22:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, the alternative would be calling it Bill 9, which doesn't seem very helpful. As for calling it "the Act" as shorthand, that just follows from the page title. Steve Smith (talk) 03:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

No it doesn't. You could start

The Accurate News and Information Act was a Bill ....

and then continue "the bill"... jnestorius^(talk) 12:58, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:URFA/2020 and additional sources

Hi article pagewatchers and @Steve Smith: I am reviewing this article as part of WP:URFA/2020, an initiative to assess and improve featured articles that were promoted before 2016 and to ensure that they still meet the featured article criteria. One of the criteria is that the article is well-researched, so I looked to see if there were additional sources printed since this article's promotion, and found some new sources:

• Peter Bowal, "Whatever happened to ... the Edmonton Journal and freedom of the press in Canada" [2]
• Alfred Thomas Neitsch, "A tradition of vigilance: the role of Lieutenant Governor in Alberta" [3]
• Haigh, Richard, "The Kook, the Chief, Some Strife and the Lawyers: William Aberhart and the Alberta References of 1938" [4]

I found these after a quick search, so I imagine that there are additional sources to consult. The sources also talk about the arguments used in the Supreme Court case on this bill: since this bill was ruled unconstitutional for different reasons from the other bills refered to the Supreme Court in Reference re Alberta Statutes, I think more information is needed on this court case. Is anyone interested in adding more information to this article? If not, I think it should be sent to FAR. Z1720 (talk) 21:07, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

In preparing for this article's FAR, I have found some additional sources that I think should be consulted:

• "Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework" [5] (this source says that this act was commonly referred to as The Press Act, so searches for that phrase might be warranted, too).

• "Federalism and the Charter" [6]
• "Most Dangerous Branch" [7]

I will make mention of the above sources in the FAR. Z1720 (talk) 14:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)