44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am truly pleased to be here today to talk about the online news act.
I want to take a moment to express my sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of my friend and colleague, Jim Carr. Jim served Canadians with pride and dedication. He will be profoundly missed.
As I have been saying from the beginning, with Bill C-11, the online streaming act, and with Bill C-18, the current bill, Canada is leading the way. The whole world is watching. On the surface, the bill we are debating now is simply about ensuring fair compensation for Canadian media, but the issue is actually much bigger than that.
It is about protecting the future of a free and independent press. It is about ensuring that Canadians have access to fact-based information. It is about protecting the strength of our democracy, one of the most important legacies that we can leave to future generations, who will see the Internet and new technology play an increasingly larger role in their lives.
When the Internet first came along, we thought it was amazing. It was, and it still is. We were suddenly able to access information from around the world in a few simple clicks. Suddenly, we had an infinite number of possibilities at our fingertips, and we still do. We all love that.
That being said, it also brought incredible challenges.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we create, search and consume content, especially when it comes to news. Right now, our news sector is in crisis: 468 media outlets, newspapers, television, radio stations and news websites, closed between 2008 and last August, 84 of them since the beginning of the pandemic.
Why is this happening? More and more Canadians are turning to digital platforms like search engines and social media networks as gateways to find news. At the same time, the number of Canadians who read their news in print or watch it on TV is rapidly declining.
Right now, the news is largely disseminated by these platforms, but the companies creating that news are not benefiting from it as they should. The impact on our press has been devastating.
The numbers speak for themselves. Since 2010, about one-third of journalism jobs in Canada have disappeared. In the last 12 years, Canadian television stations, radio stations, newspapers and magazines, which depend on advertising revenue, have lost $4.9 billion, even though online advertising revenue in Canada surpassed $10 billion in 2021. The lion's share of that $10 billion went to the tech giants, which pocketed 80% of the revenue. The digital platforms dominate the advertising markets, so they can set their own terms, which are often unfair. In the midst of all this, the media has lost its economic influence. Right now, the digital platforms have absolutely no incentive to fairly compensate the media for its content.
The status quo is not an option and it never will be. There is absolutely no doubt that a free press, an independent and thriving press, is absolutely essential to our democracy.
We all rely on timely and accurate news to make rational decisions, to counter disinformation and to fully participate in our democracy. In these challenging times, we need it more than ever.
The pandemic gave us a strong reminder that access to quality information could literally save lives.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the global protests inspired by Mahsa Amini are also devastating reminders that we must never ever take our freedom, our democracy, for granted. We must fight for it every day.
Dominant platforms have a responsibility to support news and journalism in our democracies. Tech giants have a choice to make, and I want to work with them. We want to work with them, but we must act now.
What will the online news act do? It will help build a fairer news ecosystem, one that supports a free and independent press, one that will hold the tech giants accountable to Canadians.
How will it work? The act proposes a simple, practical and market-based approach. It is not complicated. Digital platforms will have two options. Either they enter into fair agreements with news media, or they will be forced to negotiate based on specific criteria.
The agreements will have to satisfy seven criteria. First, the digital platform must pay fair compensation to the news media. Second, an appropriate portion of the compensation must be used to support the production of local, regional and national news content. Third, the agreements must show that they defend freedom of expression and journalistic independence. Fourth, the agreements must contribute to the vitality of the news sector. Fifth, the agreements must reflect the diversity of the Canadian news sector, including with respect to language, racialized groups, communities and local characteristics. Sixth, the agreements must support independent local news businesses in Canada. Lastly, the agreements must contribute to the vitality of indigenous news outlets.
News businesses would also be able to negotiate collectively, giving smaller news outlets more bargaining power. This is extremely important. If platforms and news outlets are unable to reach voluntary agreements, then, and only then, would the act mandate negotiation, with final offer arbitration as a last resort.
Members may say that this model is very similar to the one introduced in Australia, and they are right. However, we have learned from its experience, considered the feedback from stakeholders and adjusted it to fit our Canadian context. As I have said before, Canada is paving the way.
Canadians expect us to act to protect their local journalism and to do so transparently.
This is a complex task. We are hearing concerns and criticisms, and that is normal. Unfortunately, we have also seen misinformation in connection with the bill.
Our job as a government is not to stand up for the web giants or repeat their talking points like the Conservatives are doing. Our job is to be there for Canadians. It is the right thing to do. We will face challenges, because we are breaking new ground and that is never easy.
The online news act is one piece of a large and complex puzzle that aims to build a safer, more inclusive and more competitive Internet for all Canadians.
I have spoken with my G7 colleagues about all of this and I can say one thing: The whole world is watching Canada right now.
I hope that together we will rise to the occasion. We must never take our democracy for granted. We must do whatever it takes to preserve it. This is why I am asking all colleagues in the House to support this legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, Bill C‑18 has been introduced at last. I would be remiss if I did not mention from the outset that we have been waiting a long time for a bill to help local journalism and our media. This is a good thing.
One could say it is a shame it took so long. Here it is 2022, and it is not as though web giants showed up just last week. They have been around for years. It took the government a very long time to take action. Now, I can only hope that we will manage to get Bill C‑18 passed so it can come into force.
That said, Bill C‑18 has some issues, such as the requirement to have two journalists to be eligible for these agreements. Many news media organizations have just one journalist. More and more of our cities and towns, including some in my riding, are becoming media deserts.
Does my colleague really think that Bill C‑18 will be enough to resurrect them and bring media back to places that do not currently have any, or are there any further measures his government should take? I think more measures should be taken, but at least the Bloc Québécois will vote for this one.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I also want to thank the Bloc Québécois for all the rigorous work they did on Bill C-18 and for their support of the bill.
As I have said many times, this bill is not a panacea or a goal in itself, but it is an extremely important tool that essentially calls on the dominant platforms, the ones that control a substantial portion of the market and advertising revenues, to contribute to the production of local content. Many news media outlets, including radio stations, newspapers and television networks, have shut down. The bill needs to ensure that platforms also contribute to the growth of local journalism, especially smaller media outlets in the various provinces and regions, including of course in my colleague's riding. That is why Bill C-18 is so important.
It is not the only one, since the government has brought forward several other measures to support a free and independent press, including the payroll tax credit and other programs.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008. At least one-third of Canadian journalism jobs have disappeared. The member spoke a bit about this. We know it is vital that Bill C-18 includes small-sized media outlets. However, we are hearing from unions, like CUPE national, for example, raising concerns of layoffs. When the NDP proposed the amendment in clause 29 to require news organizations to publish a list of the number of journalists employed, the member's party voted against it.
Can the member explain to the chamber today why that is?
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to represent my community of Kelowna—Lake Country and speak to Bill C-18, which proposes a regime to regulate digital platforms and act as an intermediary in Canada's new media ecosystem.
In order to understand what this really means, it is like coming across a newspaper left in a coffee shop, waiting room or staff lunchroom. Dozens or hundreds of people might read that paper throughout the day, even though it was only purchased one time. Should the readers be required to send money to the newspaper each time it is read? Of course they should not. That would be ridiculous. However, the outline of what I just said forms the basis of this Liberal bill, Bill C-18.
The Liberals claim that Bill C-18 would uphold the survival of small community publications and newspapers. The government and the largest organizations say they are looking out for the little guys, but in most scenarios it always seems to be the little guy who ends up losing.
Bill C-18 would allow the news industry to collectively bargain for revenue from social media platforms that the government says are “stealing” journalistic content through users sharing links with friends, family and followers. However, like much of the current government's supposed small business policies, it would be the most prominent companies that would benefit the greatest. The more content they put online, the more money they would make with no effort.
The notion that linking articles is the equivalent of theft has already been ruled out by the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Abella wrote in Crookes v. Newton, a decision ruling that says links do not carry commercial value. She said:
Hyperlinks are, in essence, references, which are fundamentally different from other [aspects] of “publication”....
A hyperlink, by itself, should never be seen as “publication” of the content to which it refers.
Conservatives believe in a robust local media ecosystem in this country. Should a Canadian newsmaker or collective group of small publications seek to negotiate with Facebook or Google for revenue, they could do so. Smaller organizations are always more nimble. We see this whether it is a municipality versus the federal government or a local credit union versus a bank.
The news industry is in transition with publishing methods and business models. Like its sister regulation in Bill C-11, this bill seeks to reject that kind of innovation in favour of a one-size-fits-all approach and enrich old, outdated and predominantly large organizations currently being outrun by technological change. Also, just like in Bill C-11, the Liberal government has called upon what it appears to view as its most agile, efficient and modern government agency, in their minds, to do this: the CRTC.
The government's prescription of new and continuing roles to the CRTC has stretched its mandate beyond all recognition and ability, and there are many questions on definitions in this legislation and how it would be implemented.
The CRTC is an agency that took over a year to produce a three-digit mental health number. The CRTC had no proactive oversight or risk assessing of telecoms that potentially could have mitigated the massive Rogers outage.
Its 500-plus employees are already charged with the management of large portfolios, including cellular networks, data plans, advertising standards, television services, radio broadcasting, closed captioning, described video, satellite content and now, with Bill C-18, the entire Canadian online news and digital industries. If Bill C-11 is passed, the CRTC will also be asked to measure the Canadianness of 500 hours of uploaded videos posted to YouTube alone every minute.
The government originally tried to shy away from the CRTC's role in this legislation. Now, we hear that the heritage minister is openly promising to “'modernize' CRTC so it can regulate Big Tech” with an unexplained $8.5-million price tag. Bill C-18 would massively stretch the already massive mandate of the CRTC, which one could argue it is already not fulfilling. Peter Menzies, the former CRTC vice-chair, states, “It seems like they [Canadian Heritage] want to have the most expansive, most intrusive, most state-involved legislation in the world in everything they do.”
The CRTC would have a central role in the government's prescribed arbitration process, starting with selecting the pool of arbitrators and ending with the ability to impose settlements outright. The large digital platform negotiations with every Canadian media outlet needs to be completed within six months or then forced into arbitration.
Can the government credibly claim that such an arbitration process would favour small regional publications over giants such as Torstar, Postmedia, Bell, Rogers or the CBC? No, it cannot, which is why, in a technical briefing with reporters, the Minister of Canadian Heritage’s staff acknowledged that the largest beneficiary of this legislation would be the CBC, a news organization the government publicly funds.
Here is how it would work: In this legislation, news outlets would be paid based on content shared or streamed. All the state-owned CBC would have to do would be to livestream 24 hours a day on the likes of Facebook or other platforms, and it would be raking in the cash. Small producers do not necessarily have the content or capacity to do this. This, in fact, would rank up these large organizations even higher due to the amount of content they would put on social media, and it would be funded by the structure of the legislation. The CBC’s advertising revenue is low compared to its massive budget, so this would be an easy way to bring in the cash with literally no effort.
We have heard the government cite Australia as the model to follow. However, our research shows complaints have been made by small media publications in Australia about its news media bargaining laws, the same laws the Canadian government is seeking to copy here.
In a submission to the Australian senate economics committee, the Country Press Australia association, a bargaining group of small regional publications, precisely the kind of group the large media organizations and government say would likely emerge to represent smaller publications in Canada, said of Australia's own Bill C-18, “The Bill is weighted to large media organisations and does not take into account the ongoing need for a diversified media across Australia.” It also said it “could in fact lead to an outcome that is opposite to the intention of the bill, i.e. a reduction in media diversity”.
I am very concerned with the unintended consequences that would be created by this bill, especially with the largest of organizations and the Canadian state-owned media being the biggest benefactors. Sports media companies such as The Athletic have found innovative ways to uphold local sports coverage under the umbrella of an international publication.
Copying Australia's homework would not help us very much if it has already gotten a failing grade. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd testified that Australia’s legislation would be “enhancing the power of the existing monopoly”. Joshua Benton, the founder of Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab, called it “bad media policy”. The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, said laws like Australia’s could make the internet as we know it “unworkable”. Vint Cerf, another founding father of the Internet, once attributed its astonishing economic success to two words: “permissionless innovation”.
Regulations such as Bill C-18 are a permission, and they are the swiftest killer of innovation and the greatest tool of existing media powers to kill competition. We can forget Internet searching as we know it. Calling upon the threadbare CRTC to enforce a dysfunctional Australian-like media policy would do nothing to help the small media markets in places such as my community of Kelowna-Lake Country. It would make permanent the actions of the government to bail out legacy media giants from their own business model mistakes and lack of nimbleness.
If the government was so interested in ensuring that small, regional and rural media have their share of ad revenue, it should stop pumping millions into mainstream media, which gives them the ability to reduce advertising rates and remove $1.3 billion a year from state-owned media. If it is so valued by the Canadian public, it should be able to attract advertisers and fundraise, just as other public broadcast organizations do around the world.
The biggest winners in this legislation would be the biggest media outlets, which is why we see them advocating so strongly for this. In my life experience, anytime I hear the largest of organizations say they are looking out for the little guys and they have their best interest, it is always the little guy who ends up losing.
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect there is widespread support in recognizing that tech giants, whether it is Google, YouTube or Facebook, which really dominates the social media industry, get billions of dollars in revenue every year, and a lot of their sourcing comes from news agencies that are finding things difficult. There is a sense of unfairness there. This legislation would ensure there is a higher sense of fairness. The creators and news agencies are reporting on the news, and their content is being utilized by these giants, which are not paying anything for it.
Do the member and the Conservative Party believe that Google, Facebook and other giant conglomerates have a responsibility to pay for some of the creative journalism we are seeing in our communities?
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Madam Speaker, I, in turn, congratulate our colleague from Sarnia—Lambton for Saturday's happy occasion. I wish her many years of wedded bliss.
I heard my colleague express some concerns about the eligibility of news businesses. I just want to distinguish between Bill C‑21, which we have also been hearing a lot about, and Bill C‑18. Unlike the first bill, in Bill C‑18, the government did not include a list of businesses that are excluded or included.
On the contrary, the bill has a list of criteria that businesses must meet to be eligible. This clause was improved by an amendment that requires eligible businesses to also follow a code of ethics based on fundamental principles of the journalism profession.
I want to know if my colleague, who voted against this amendment with her Conservative colleagues, believes that this amendment actually guarantees that eligible businesses will be serious, rigorous news businesses. I would like to hear what she has to say about that.
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Madam Speaker, 50 years ago there were metal boxes on city street corners where, for 25¢, one could buy a newspaper. Each box had a window showing the top half of the front page if it was a broadsheet and the whole page if it was a tabloid. If one wanted to read anything more, one had to put a quarter in the box and remove a copy of the paper. In our cities, it was common to find three or four such boxes for competing newspapers on the same corners of the downtown of any city. Those newspaper boxes are, for the most part, long gone as the nature of the news business has changed.
Home delivery, one of the mainstays of the newspaper industry, has declined drastically. These days, most people get their news online. The news industry has changed in how news is gathered and changed in how it is delivered to consumers. Gone are the days where most people subscribe to home delivery for the morning and the afternoon.
For those in the news media, the challenge has always been to provide a public service while ensuring sufficient revenue to continue their function. Canadian journalists and publishers have always risen to that challenge.
This is not the first time technology has upended the news industry. As television became popular in the 1950s, many feared the end of print publication or journalism. Newspapers survived the challenge posed by this new medium by concentrating on in-depth reporting, which television, with its constraints, could not do. Quality journalism was still possible back then.
One could say that Google and other search engines function today as the newspapers did in the 1970s. They show the headlines but not the whole story. They provide a link for people to click on. Facebook, the other online giant the Liberals seem to be most concerned about, does the same thing. Providing a link that allows people to access and use websites could be considered by some to be a public service or an aid to the news industry. If people want to read the full article, they have to follow the rules set by the news organizations that publish it.
In the early days of the Internet, many news organizations placed their material online free for anyone who wanted to read it. Most of those now allow limited access to non-subscribers. In some ways, one could argue that the news industry should be paying the tech companies for attracting readers to their articles or their content.
Facebook and Google sell advertising on their websites and have lots of advertisements. Perhaps some of that might have gone to other media in the past. Given the way the Liberals think, it is possible and only natural that the government wants to intervene in what would be a private commercial industry.
Canada's Conservatives believe that the Canadian news media should be fairly compensated for the use of its content by platforms like Google and Facebook. The issue here is how that should happen and what should be the role of government, if any, in the process.
Media companies could inform Google and Facebook that linking to their news sites is no longer allowed and that breaking that rule without permission would be a copyright violation. Media companies deserve compensation for their work, and some have negotiated agreements with the tech companies for the online use of their content, which has me wondering why government feels the need to intervene.
The government, which has in the past shown its willingness to give taxpayer dollars to the news industry, does not seem to understand the difference between public and private. One would think that a billion dollars a year to the CBC would be enough to exempt it from receiving more money under the bill, but it is not.
This is flawed legislation. It seems as if this government has taken a worthy idea, which ensures that Canada has a healthy, free and vibrant press, and brought in a bill for which the ramifications have not been considered.
Why is the CRTC being given oversight? Despite what some Liberals may think, the Internet is not broadcasting. Print media are definitely not broadcasters. Where is the logic in asking the CRTC to oversee something when it neither has the expertise or the resources to do so? Is this all about building a new bureaucracy? Indeed it is.
The online news act is supposed to protect the struggling Canadian news industry. How could anyone disagree with such a noble purpose? Would this bill solve any problems, or would it create new ones? How would fair compensation be determined? Who would be compensated under this act and who would be excluded? Why should a government agency be making such determinations?
The tech giants have widened the reach of Canada's news organizations by bringing their materials to the attention of the people who might not otherwise know of them. I am sure this increased audience has been beneficial to all sides. Mechanisms already exist through which media can be compensated by those using their materials. We have a Copyright Act. Some companies have come to an agreement with the tech giants, so why is more government needed?
There is no need for this bill, except that the Liberals love to meddle in things that do not concern them at all. What other areas does the government wish to shove itself into rather than letting companies work out their own agreements?
If these technology companies feel there is value in linking to Canadian news organizations, why can they not negotiate contracts without government interference? If Canadians are turning to these tech companies for news, then the companies need to find a way to provide content. Short of starting their own news organizations, which strikes me as an unlikely possibility, they have to turn to existing news organizations. If they find value there, they will pay for it. It is very simple.
This bill defines a news outlet as “an undertaking or any distinct part of an undertaking, such as a section of a newspaper, the primary purpose of which is to produce news content”. It is a very nice definition. Those words, however, do not reflect reality. This is a dispute about money, pure and simple.
Producing news content may be the goal of those in the newsroom, those seeking to produce quality journalism for the public good. It may even be why a given publication was first founded, but is not the reason for its existence. The reality is that news outlets, like the big tech companies, exist to make money. This bill is about who gets the biggest slice of the advertising pie, pure and simple.
If news organizations perform a service by keeping the public informed about important issues, that is, in many ways, only a by-product of the business. Those running news organizations are rarely, if ever, journalists themselves. If news organizations thought they could make as much or more money by publishing only chocolate cake recipes, they would do so. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.
Bill C-18 is flawed and probably unnecessary legislation, which puts it in line with the rest of the current government's legislative agenda.
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Madam Speaker, Edmonton was the place I had my start in journalism in 1998 at the Edmonton Journal, and at the time there were several newspapers in town, along with several radio stations and several TV stations, which were all producing news for the city of Edmonton. Over the past 20 years, the media landscape has really shrunk. There is not the same number of journalists out on the street reporting the news.
This is because of what the Public Policy Forum calls “vampire economics”. Facebook and Google take 85% of the funding that used to go to news for advertising. That now goes to Facebook and Google, and at the same time, they take the content produced by journalists and distribute it for free. What we have learned is that, yes, Facebook and Google are making deals with these outlets ahead of legislation similar to Bill C-18. They did it in Australia. They are doing it now in the U.S., and in Europe they are also considering similar legislation.
These are deals that are completely without government influence. They are business deals between organizations and Facebook or Google, so there is no government interference, and what we have learned is that Facebook and Google probably would not make these deals, if the legislation were not already on the table.
I am wondering if the member opposite agrees that it is a huge threat to our democracy to see this demise of journalism in our—
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member has read the latest report from Australia, which has just reviewed its similar legislation one year in and found that journalism was supported. In fact, the smaller outlets in Australia did better in comparison to the larger organizations, and it has been a success. I am wondering why the member thinks it would be different in Canada.
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Madam Speaker, our party is not beholden to Facebook, and we are not beholden to Google. We do not take our marching orders from big corporations like that. We are not listening to special-interest lobby groups and informing our policy decisions based on that. Too often, we see that from the Liberal side of the aisle.
As I outlined in my speech, this is talking about our small-town news and print media. Quite often they are the best at providing the most up-to-date local, relevant information that people want to see and hear. They do appropriate and proper journalism.
What we are seeing from many of these large organizations is basically government-subsidized opinions. That is not what Canadian taxpayers want. What they want is to see better respect for the taxpayer dollar, but also to have media outlets that are going to provide them with true, accurate and reliable journalism. That is what our small-town papers do. They are the ones that are going to be left out, and the bill would do nothing to help those people.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
As this is very likely the last time I will rise to speak in 2022, I want to offer my condolences to the friends and family of the Hon. Jim Carr. I also want to wish everyone happy holidays, including you, Madam Speaker.
That being said, my colleague spoke a lot about the importance of local media. As I said before, representatives from the local newspapers La Voix de l'Est, La Pensée de Bagot and the Journal de Chambly, and even Radio M105, a great community radio station that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, all came to see me to say that legislation was required and action absolutely needed to be taken.
The Liberals have invested a lot in ads on GAFAM and other platforms, and the Conservatives are pushing for a form of libertarianism on social media and with GAFAM. This goes against the importance of news reporting that respects a code and aligns with what journalism should be. Journalism is about providing information on local current events and reporting real news, not disinformation.
What does my colleague think about the importance of local media for democracy and for a healthy news ecosystem?
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Madam Speaker, as a proud journalist for almost 25 years and having worked for Charles Clark newspaper in High River, I would say that journalists face, much like politicians nowadays, a lack of public trust. We saw that with the Liberal bailout of the media several years ago, and I know many of my constituents are questioning the integrity of journalists.
When there are government subsidies or government bailouts of the free press, what impact is that having on community trust when it comes to Canadian journalism?
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