Issues raised by ethnic press essential reading for government, Kenney says

TORONTO – The immigration minister says he was too busy during the last federal election to pay attention to ethnic media clips.

But otherwise Jason Kenney calls the ethnic press the most important reading he does each morning.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press show that Kenney’s department spent close to $750,000 over three years keeping tabs on ethnic media sources.

The oversight continued during the 2011 federal election raising questions about whether the information gathered could have been used for partisan political purposes.

But Kenney says the contracts his department signs for monitoring services don’t contain provisions for the service to stop if the writs are dropped.

And he says the Conservatives purposely increased their budget for ethnic media monitoring since coming to power because they were missing important issues being raised by those communities.