The unionized employees of the Halifax Chronicle Herald have been on strike since January 22. The aim of management is to bust the union. Since the walk-out, the newspaper has relied on scab labour.

The product, however, has taken a quality nosedive. This account shows how sewer-pipe low the current replacements have been willing to go. The original Chronicle Herald story—written anonymously—combined hysterical racism with child abuse, as the paper went after elementary schoolchildren for allegedly choking classmates with chains and shouting “Muslims will rule the world.” The reported kid perps were identified as Syrian refugees. This story really had it all, without a single verifiable source to back up any of its claims.

Needless to say, the piece attracted the attention of scabrous bigots like Arnie Lemaire (who runs the “Blazing Cat Fur” blog), and was retailed by Ezra Levant’s “Rebel” effort and Robert Spencer’s “Jihad Watch.” But—whoops!—the story began to get walked back, piece by piece—and now has disappeared entirely, replaced by an apology.

We can soon expect dark insinuations from the Usual Suspects about the caving of the Chronicle Herald to sinister “pressures.” More likely, of course, the owners putting out this rag didn’t want to get caught in possible lies, based upon hearsay and bogus sources. And perhaps some of the players—let’s be fair—re-thought going to town on young children, whose physical safety at school may now well be threatened whether they did anything or not.

But it is safe to say that none of this would have happened had strikebreakers not been used in the first place. The message from management was clear: profit, not ethics, was the newspaper’s primary concern. Why should we be surprised, then, when the sub-standard writers they hired off the street took their cue from that?