44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, my Conservative colleague's question gives us some idea of the mood and the positions taken in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage during its work on Bill C‑18. It was pretty specific and pretty clear.
Throughout this study, the web giants went to great lengths to tell us that news was not that valuable to their businesses. Sabrina Geremia, a vice-president at Google Canada, somehow managed to tell us, during a memorable, pathetic and pitiful committee appearance, that last year, Google linked to Canadian news publishers over 3.6 billion times and that this traffic drove $250 million in value. When the web giants tell us that news has no value, well, if 3.6 billion clicks have no value for Google, they should shut down, because that does not make any sense.
With the urgently needed passage of Bill C-18, however, we know that the media will be able to negotiate and be compensated for the content that they and newsrooms create in Quebec and Canada. We have seen the closures, however. In his speech, the minister spoke about newsroom closures and the elimination of journalism jobs.
If Bill C-18 is not enough to keep newsrooms open and journalists employed, is the Minister of Canadian Heritage prepared to accept the Bloc Québécois proposal to create a fund to support journalism in Quebec and Canada?
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- Jun/19/23 6:15:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will answer with a fact. I will take the emotion out for a moment here. This legislation states that, even to be considered for CRTC approval to enter into these negotiations, a news business has to show that it has a minimum of two journalists. Many local newspapers or ethnic media newspapers do not have two journalists. That means they would not even be considered by the CRTC to qualify. When I state that local media and ethnic media will be left out in the cold, I state that as fact.
While I understand there may be a few niche outlets that could benefit from this legislation, the vast majority of local and ethnic newspapers will not benefit.
The committee heard testimony from Steve Nixon, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association. He said that they only have four publications out of 56 that would benefit from this legislation. That leaves 52 out in the cold. It means they are unlikely to make it because of the imbalance that would be caused by this legislation.
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- Jun/19/23 6:18:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for the NDP just stated that the NDP brought forward a motion asking that there be allowance for news outlets with 1.25 or 1.5 full-time employees to be considered. I am curious if one person would be doing the work of 1.25, 1.5 or 1.75 full-time employees. They would not. Two journalists would work that amount of time.
My point still stands. This bill is designed such that, if an outlet has fewer than two journalists, it would not be considered.
To correct the record for the member, because I am sure he would not want to mislead anyone, it was Conservatives who brought forward a motion calling for a minimum of one journalists and for an outlet to be considered based on that premise. The NDP voted against that common-sense Conservative motion asking for the consideration of outlets with only one journalist.
The NDP insisted that there be a minimum of two. Whether those are two people splitting one full-time job or two people splitting one and a half jobs, I guess that is up to the outlet. Nevertheless, there have to be two individuals for the outlet to be considered. That is just not the case in so many of these local regions.
Further to that, I will just raise that this is rather rich for the NDP members. They are socialists. They very much like to complain that people are not making enough wealth. They like to see government handouts and things of that sort. Their arguing that two journalists should split a job that is one full-time job or one and a half full-time jobs is rather concerning to me. I was advocating that there be two journalists, each with full-time wages.
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Madam Speaker, there is never a dull moment in the House. It truly is incredible. There is always some event or other that grabs our attention.
I am very happy Bill C‑18 has reached this stage. I am happy, but I can promise my colleagues that there are an awful lot of people at media outlets in my riding and pretty much everywhere in Quebec, not to mention everywhere across Canada, based on our conversations with stakeholders, that will let out a big sigh of relief when we finally pass Bill C‑18.
I would humbly like to dedicate my speech to the 1,300 workers in the news sector whose jobs were cut at Bell Media last week. We talked about it here in the House. I would like to spare a thought for two of them. I am sure that many of my colleagues have some in their ridings throughout Quebec and Canada.
Martin Brassard, a journalist with 35 years of experience at Bell Media, in my colleague's riding, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, lost his job to the cuts. Back home in Drummond, Louis‑Philippe Harnois‑Arel, a talented young journalist full of potential and promise who worked on the Bell-owned Noovo news desk, was also among those who lost their jobs because of these cuts.
Mr. Speaker, you may not have had a chance to read today's news yet, but in today's Le Devoir, Boris Proulx reports that my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood hinted that Bell's decision to cut 1,300 jobs and close six radio stations may have been part of a plan, made in cahoots with the government, to force the adoption of Bill C‑18 this week.
I wondered what kind of movie script we were playing out. Have we really got to the point where we believe that a company will fire 1,300 people just because we want to push through a bill that is long overdue and that was obviously going to pass in the coming days or weeks anyway?
Honestly, I think that is going a little overboard with the conspiracy theories. I wanted to say it. I really admire my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood. I sit with him on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which we co-chair. I know that he loves the media industry and that before becoming an MP, he had a career in the media, as did I. He and I will definitely have an opportunity to talk about it again.
To provide some context, the media, and especially the news media, has been struggling for many years. Facebook and Google in particular appropriate the news stories, the news content, without paying royalties or compensation for the material produced with hard work and passion by newsrooms.
In the early 2000s, red flags were already being raised regarding the presence of the web giants, the major corporations that were taking up more and more space on the Internet. The government decided at that time to exempt them from the Broadcasting Act, to exclude them from those regulations. Perhaps the government was short-sighted. I do not want to criticize the decisions made back then, because they were based on the information available at the time, but I think the government could have shown a little more agility. The government may not have given itself sufficient freedom to re-evaluate its position over time.
For years, the news media in particular, but also the cultural industry, have been sounding the alarm and urging caution because these giants were taking up more and more space, and warning that the space taken by these giants was hurting them, eating into their revenues and putting jobs at risk.
That is exactly what has happened over time. Successive governments were warned, but no one ever bothered to lift a finger or consider whether something should be done for the news media and the cultural industry.
As I said earlier, I was in the media before switching to politics. I also worked in the private sector, always with some connection to advertising. For years, I had a front-row seat to the impact this new player in the advertising world was having on the market. For example, representatives would come to us to sell us advertising and explain that it was more profitable for us to buy advertising space from them than from the digital platforms, even though the digital platforms were offering rock-bottom prices compared to traditional media. Obviously, it was very tempting for all kinds of companies to choose the option of switching to digital media, to Google and its ilk.
Today, more than 80% of advertising revenue is generated online. The market has been cornered primarily by Google and Facebook, which, again, pay no royalties. They pay nothing to the people who produce the content. They get to monetize that content and use it to sell their advertising.
On top of that, they collect data. We know that data is even more lucrative than advertising. They are really raking it in and not leaving anything for anyone else. Journalists are slowly seeing their work picked up by digital media, and high-quality reporting by talented journalists is ending up being shared on Facebook or Google in search results. Not a penny goes back to them for that, and not a penny goes back to the media that paid to produce it.
This makes no sense to me. We urgently needed to address the calls from news media and implement legislation that would impose not specific amounts or a payment, but rather a framework for negotiations. Bill C‑18 does not tell companies that they have to pay a certain amount. What Bill C‑18 does is tell companies that they have an obligation to negotiate in good faith within the legislated framework. That is what Bill C‑18 is all about.
It is a bit of a stretch to say that this will give one party an advantage over another. It is going a bit far. I think this bill could likely be improved and it will not solve all of the problems. That is obvious. The news media have fallen so far over the past 10 or 15 years that Bill C‑18 alone is certainly not the solution. However, it is definitely a step in the right direction. We are certainly sending the right message to the web giants by telling them that they cannot cannibalize our news outlets' content and our cultural content.
It is urgent that we pass this bill and it is urgent to see what impact it will have so that we can then put measures in place to help media outlets—
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