44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I appreciate everyone's questions. Earlier, I was in the lobby with a colleague. We were talking about how the process required to come up with a law that makes sense and that meets the requests of all regional media is long, cumbersome and sometimes tedious.
I would like to point out something important. When the flooding in Baie‑Saint‑Paul happened, residents got information from community radio stations and community television stations. They got updates in the local newspaper, Le Charlevoisien.
At the moment, the staff at these media outlets are struggling. They are always on tenterhooks, wondering whether they will close their doors or be able to stay afloat. That is what Bill C‑18 is for. It provides a foundation. After that, the government will have to collaborate with us to consider the possibility of a new fund, because all these small media outlets have been in financial peril for too long. There will have to be a fund.
I would like to know if my colleague is open to a fund for media outlets that are at risk—
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Madam Speaker, I believe that my colleague and I agree that we absolutely must protect our local media outlets. There is currently a crisis. People are losing their jobs, and we must stand up for them.
Bill C-18 is a good step, but unfortunately it will not fix everything in this time of crisis. That is why the Bloc Québécois, and especially my colleague, the member for Drummond, is working very hard to ensure that a special fund for local media is created.
Recently, media outlets in our ridings contacted us again about this matter. I am thinking of the Voix de l'Est, Granby Express, Journal de Chambly, Val-Ouest and M105. They are closely following the debates on Bill C‑18 and want an additional fund to give them a boost. All these media outlets need an extra boost.
I would like to know if my colleague's government is prepared to go that far, on top of passing Bill C‑18.
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Madam Speaker, I completely agree that journalists and small media outlets need support. At the same time, Bill C‑18 gives them the autonomy to negotiate directly with major tech companies. Some do not want money from the government.
We must continue to talk about all the ways in which we can support journalists, but I believe that Bill C‑18 is a good start.
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Madam Speaker, I have an unbelievable fact. Here is what the Conservative Party said:
Canada’s Conservatives will:
Introduce a digital media royalty framework to ensure that Canadian media outlets are fairly compensated for the sharing of their content by platforms like Google and Facebook.
They even make reference to Australia and France. This is what the legislation is doing. I heard the critic say, “Do not answer it.” I hope she does answer.
At the end of the day, how does the member justify going to her constituents, campaigning on doing what Bill C-18 is doing and, then, voting against it? It sounds as though the member is either being intimidated by giant tech or just selling out with the rest of her party.
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Mr. Speaker, what I find really interesting is that Facebook has said it will no longer share news on its platform once Bill C‑18 passes. That means that news and local media will no longer have a voice. That includes Quebec media.
I think that it is very important for my colleague to consider the impact of Bill C‑18. The fact that Facebook will no longer share local news will have an impact on Quebec.
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The question is on censorship and what the Prime Minister considers he is doing in a positive way to influence media in his favour. This is the way I phrase it: Who does not get the money and who gets the money? This is from an article entitled “Sue Gardner: Bill C-18 is Bad for Journalism and Bad for Canada”. On who does not get the money, she says, “This process will benefit big legacy media companies at the expense of startups and indie publishers.” She goes on to say, “Meanwhile, many small and indie publishers are actually excluded from C-18; the bill excludes operations that employ fewer than two journalists, and excludes those ‘primarily focused on a particular topic’ in favour of those that make general interest news.”
That is a question we have to ask when talking about control. Small publishers are much harder to control, and big media is a lot easier to control. Just give them millions and billions of dollars and away we go.
Let us talk about who is getting the money. The same article says:
If news organizations became dependent on money from the platforms to sustain their operations, as they surely would with the passage of Bill C-18, this dependence would create an incentive for them to pull their punches in how they covered the platforms.
That is an example where media might say it does not want to go after someone because, after all, they are writing the cheques.
What is even more concerning, based on what I have alluded to regarding the control of big tech, is the control of government. This is from the same article:
For journalism to be trusted, it needs to be—and perceived to be—independent from government, and willing and able to be critical of government.... Bill C-18 deepens government involvement in the industry. This creates an incentive for the industry to be soft on the government, and it will further reduce trust in journalism.
That is not from me; that is from this writer. They continue: “And anything that reduces trust in journalism is dangerous—especially right now.”
I started by talking about who gets the money. Let us look at what the money looks like.
I have an article by Samantha Edwards entitled “What to know about Bill C-18, the proposed law that could affect Canadian news publishers”. It states:
A report from the PBO said of the around $329-million the bill would generate for news outlets, around $247-million would go to broadcasters such as the CBC, Bell, Shaw and Rogers.... “The fact that three-quarters of the money will be going to broadcasters, some of which are the richest companies in Canada, plus the public broadcasters which are heavily subsidized already, undermines the government’s whole premise of the bill”....
What is the temptation? I have already talked about it. The temptation, of course, is about somebody writing cheques for millions and billions of dollars: Is the media going to be as truthful to the public as it should be when reporting about them? What is its first goal? Is it to provide news and truthfulness to Canadians? Right now, the government is saying that if the media wants a big cheque, they have to say this or that. We know the Prime Minister is already about control and wants to control what people say about him. Will he use this as a heavy stick? I believe he will.
We have already talked about the control that Bill C-11 gave to the CRTC. The CRTC is influenced by the Prime Minister and cabinet. It says it clearly right in the bill. I have an article from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute entitled “Extortion, Dependency and Media Welfare—The Liberals’ Bill C-18”. About halfway through, it states, “Those in favour have no qualms about creating a news media industry permanently dependent upon the good graces of the two most imposing powers in the lives of citizens these days: Big Tech and Big Government.” As a former chair of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, I saw how powerful big tech was and is, and the government working together with these guys is a really scary thing for those who care about freedom in the country. I will go on: “All involved will huff and puff self-servingly, while the [Prime Minister's] government happily renders media companies ever-more dependent on federal funding.”
It is not me saying this but articles that are concerned about the very same measures that this controlling Prime Minister, who has already implemented a censorship bill, is now trying to use to covet those two big entities so as to have the narrative go his way.
One interesting bit of testimony I saw when I was doing some research, because I knew I would be speaking to this, was from Liberal Senator Paula Simons in her speech from the Senate debate. Here is a clearly Liberal senator, a former media person, who is very concerned about what this bill brings if passed. I will read a couple of her quotes.
“More than that, I’m asking if it’s wise. How independent can the Canadian news media be if they are so deeply beholden to the goodwill and future economic success of two foreign corporations?” She is referring to big tech in this instance.
She goes on to quote Mr. Greenspon, from 2021, at a Senate committee: “...inviting the platforms to negotiate deals with individual publishers can badly distort the information marketplace. People have expressed concerns for decades that advertisers influence news agendas.” This is exactly what I have been saying. This is a person who has been in the industry her whole life. He went on: “They have massive public policy agendas of their own, including tax policy, regulatory oversight, data, et cetera.... You are here to strengthen the independent press, not to create new dependencies.”
Here is another quote from the senator: “And are we comfortable giving unprecedented new regulatory powers to the CRTC to intervene in the business of print journalism and to require mandatory media codes of ethics, given the free press has never before been subject in any way to the authority of the CRTC?”
I will finish with this. Who controls the CRTC? We already heard that it is cabinet and the Prime Minister. Members heard my question, the question that I started with: Does the Prime Minister want to control what we see and hear about him on the Internet? Absolutely, yes.
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Madam Speaker, what the member just asked me would be funny if it were not so scary.
This is from a Liberal senator appointed by the Prime Minister: “And are we comfortable giving unprecedented new regulatory powers to the CRTC to intervene in the business of print journalism and to require mandatory media codes of ethics, given the free press has never before been subject in any way to the authority of the CRTC?” That is from a Liberal senator.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could provide what the Conservative Party meant in the last election when it had incorporated into its platform that a Conservative government would “Introduce a digital media royalty framework to ensure that Canadian media outlets are fairly compensated for the sharing of their content by platforms like Google and Facebook.”
What did the Conservative Party mean when it made that statement?
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Madam Speaker, I can tell members what we did not mean. We did not mean this flaming dumpster fire wreck of a bill that the government is ramming through, in spite of hundreds of people and millions of Canadians saying they do not want it.
I offered solutions the government could have taken that Facebook, Google and other media companies already put on the table, such as creating funds that would go directly to investigative journalism instead of going to the rich corporate executives and shareholders of a few dying media companies.
If the Liberals want ideas for it, we are happy to provide them, but we will be doing that on that side of the House when our party is government.
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Madam Speaker, this is exactly the type of misinformation the Liberals want their controlled media sources to spread to Canadians. The reality is that, when he raises that issue of Australia, Australia amended its legislation so that Facebook and Google could work with journalists to create deals to support journalism in ways that go directly to journalism, outside of the legislative framework, understanding that they cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach. The Canadian government has been ramming through this bill without amendments, and I have to ask why. I think it is because its members want their colonial downtown voices of Toronto to keep controlling the media and keep shutting out voices.
The parliamentary secretary is a member from western Canada. Do members know that there are no members from western Canada in the Parliamentary press gallery? There might be one, but I think it is zero, and we have to change that, so we should be looking at ways that other witnesses suggested. Certainly that is what the Conservative Party would be suggesting to support journalism instead of lining the pockets of wealthy corporate executives and their shareholders, who are hoping Canadian tax dollars will squeeze out the last vestiges of their dying business models, which we have no responsibility to pick up.
We need to be supporting young diverse voices as they enter the career of journalism in a way that is accountable to Canadians' free-speech rights.
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Madam Speaker, when one lives in an echo chamber of legacy media, one starts to believe one's own nonsense, and this is what we are seeing now.
Why on earth would Conservatives support a solution that only gives 25% to small and independent journalists, the thing we wanted to solve with this bill? Why on earth would we support something akin to Australia that is not like Australia? The member opposite brought this up, but the substantive provisions of the Australian code have never been applied.
This bill is not what was in the platform, so he can stop misinforming the House and get back into his echo chamber, where he is happier.
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Madam Speaker, would the hon. member like to explain why their party consistently neglects to protect small start-up, independent online publishers and news media outlets in Canada?
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Madam Speaker, I am much in sympathy with what I have heard from the Conservatives around Bill C-18 to the extent of whether it will solve the problem. I am not hearing us identify the problem of social media outlets like Google and Facebook and the others having eviscerated the news media in this country, not necessarily by putting their content up without paying for it but by actually getting rid of the business model our newspapers used to rely on, like classified ads. The newspapers used to be able to rely on a source of income that is no longer there because foreign enterprises not paying taxes in this country have created a different marketplace that provides access to Kijiji and so on. I wonder if the hon. member has any comments on whether we could replace the word “platforms” with the word “publishers” and solve this problem.
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Madam Speaker, when a piece of legislation would support certain media giants that are affiliated with and support the narrative the Liberal government is putting forward, and would throw other smaller media to the curb, that would be a form of censorship. That is with respect to one part of the member's question.
As to—
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Madam Speaker, the answer is quite simple: This bill will not do that. Although there are a few small publications that will benefit from Bill C-18, the vast majority of local and ethnic media will not.
During the study of this bill at committee, Steve Nixon, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, made this point. He said that only four out of the 56 publications will benefit from this legislation.
The PBO has stated, as I mentioned in my speech, that 75% of the money will go to the CBC, Rogers and Bell. This government does not want to help small publications, and neither does that member's party.
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Madam Speaker, if I understand my colleague correctly, the Conservatives are against the idea of CBC/Radio-Canada and other public media outlets benefiting from this because they are publicly funded businesses. They also said that smaller media outlets would not benefit.
The legislation could be amended to provide more support to smaller media outlets. Would my colleague agree that multinationals like Google, Meta and others need to be regulated and that, otherwise, they will stifle smaller media outlets and traditional media?
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Madam Speaker, in my riding there are 13 weekly newspapers. The NDP voted against a number of them receiving it because one person is the proprietor, owner and reporter. The NDP voted against our amendment to support small local media in my riding.
I think the MP from Saskatchewan would probably respond, as it is similar in her riding, but the NDP voted against that.
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Madam Speaker, since 2008, we have witnessed over 450 media outlets of all different forms virtually disappear. We recognize these media outlets as having value; they are important to society, to our communities and to democracy. We have legislation before us that has support virtually across the board, from local communities and larger communities to political entities, including all of those inside this House, with the exception of the Conservatives. The Conservatives refuse to recognize the value of the legislation, which is modelled after what we have seen in Australia and France.
My question for the member is this: Why does he believe everyone else is thinking it would be healthy for our communities to preserve these systems into the future? Why does it have to be the Conservatives who are right, when it appears they are dead wrong on voting against this bill?
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Madam Speaker, Facebook's decision to block Canadian news targets major media outlets—
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