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House Hansard - 216

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 216 - Jun/19/23
Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)
  • Jun/19/23 5:25:34 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-18 
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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Context: House Hansard - 216 - Jun/19/23
Hon. Pablo Rodriguez
  • Jun/19/23 5:27:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to extend my warmest and most sincere thanks to my colleague, who just spoke about his work on this important bill. I think that there has been productive and very professional co-operation between the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberal government. The hon. member referred to the value of the content produced by our media. What our media outlets produce does have value. When we give an interview in a newsroom, as every one of us has done, what the interviewer does has value. What the researcher did has value. What everyone does has value. What the window washer does has value. All of it has value. The web giants exploit this work. It helps them ensure that people spend a lot of time on their devices. It attracts a lot of eyeballs and creates financial value by allowing them to sell advertising. However, they are not sending any money to newsrooms in return. It is completely imbalanced. The reason the government has proposed this approach rather than the Bloc Québécois's approach is that we want to be as far removed as possible from all decisions. What we are doing is simply providing a space for the web giants, the newsrooms and the media outlets to all sit down together to negotiate fair value between them. That is what we are doing, rather than creating a fund, appointing a manager and so on. That is essentially the reason behind our approach, but I thank my colleague for his very important work on this.
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