44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, this is not about a power imbalance but the refusal of the legacy media to innovate. It is not up against links, as Facebook and Google do not advertise newspaper links; rather, it is up against Kijiji, Craigslist and, in Petawawa, even Jennifer Layman's Forward Thinking, where everyone in the valley goes to advertise or find a job.
What this is really about is preventing news from getting to the wider population through the end result of not having news links on Facebook or Google. This means that Canadians do not get all the news that is going on.
Why does the minister want to stifle the debate on the ability of Canadians to learn what is going on in their own country? What do the Liberals have to hide?
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Madam Speaker, when a journalist loses their job in a region like Côte-Nord, it is not just serious, it is tragic. The news that comes from community media or other small regional media outlets, which are often newsrooms run on a shoestring budget, is vital.
It is these news media outlets, which are often run by passionate people covering three or four jobs in the radio station or the small local newspaper, that transmit critical news to residents. If this service disappears because Google and Facebook act in bad faith and neglect these media outlets in negotiations or simply skip over them and ignore them under any pretext, such as a lack of money, something absolutely must be done. We need to be there to support them and help them survive.
It is not the size of the media outlet that is important, or the number of journalists in the newsroom. As I was saying, they too must be saved because they are essential. Whether there are one of them or 12, they provide a service to the public that must be maintained at all costs.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's work on the committee, but I remember that the Conservatives put forward an amendment to have one newspaper reporter. He lists many papers, and they are not the non-daily papers in my riding. I have many who are single, yet he voted against having a single reporter qualify for this.
He takes great pride in talking about the worker bees and that we got it to one and a half but I am asking this: What about the ones in my riding? There are not any of the papers he has named in my riding. He has named papers in major cities, not in the small communities that I support.
Why did he vote against our amendment to support the small weekly papers like in my riding?
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Madam Speaker, I do plan to expand on that point shortly, but before I do that, I want to provide a bit of a different perspective on how important Bill C-18 is. It needs to be placed in the real world context to see how it would protect our national community news agencies and media. It is so very important.
I often will go to a lot of events, as members on all sides of the House do. Often it is the community news people who are at those events, taking pictures, doing interviews and so forth. If it is a local basketball game or championship game at a local high school, it will be the local newspaper that highlights it.
I go to many different types of ethnic events. Whether it be the Pilipino Express News Magazine, Filipino Journal, Punjabi Today or CKJS radio, these community-driven news agencies, newspapers, radio and media are reporting on the things taking place. There are pictures and everything else incorporated.
While visiting constituents in their homes, I often see that they have a newspaper produced in the community. They will show me where their son or daughter's name is in that community newspaper or where a local community event is being profiled in the paper.
It does not matter whether people are from urban or rural communities, whether they are from the east or the west or up north, these small news agencies play a critical role in our community development and society as a whole and, absolutely, 100% with respect to our democracy. One of the fundamental pillars to a healthy democracy is to have a healthy media. That is why the minister of heritage has often talked about the importance of supporting journalism, supporting those news media outlets.
I believe the minister referenced the year 2008, a year when just under 500 media outlets of different sizes from different areas of the country completely disappeared. We should all be concerned about that. Local media is how we often find out about the birth of a child, or that someone has died or an announcement about a parade to be held in our community It is often how we will hear about grand openings and so many other things. Not to mention that elected officials will often take political accountability by providing writing or commenting through local media.
I want people who are following the debate to understand just how important it is that we as a government are here to support our media. We are not the first government in the world to do so. We have heard about Australia and France. I believe that many countries around the world are following the debate on Bill C-18.
I am disturbed by the Conservative Party's approach to this legislation. All of us should be. Is it working with the giant tech companies ? Has it been intimidated by the giant tech companies?
The member for Kingston and the Islands raised a quote. I would like to reinforce that. For my Conservative colleagues across the way, I suggest they look at that election platform, the platform that they shared with millions of Canadians in the last federal election.
Page 155 of the 2021 Conservative platform, which has a picture of the former leader on the front of it, says, “Canadian media is in crisis. The loss of digital advertising revenue to American tech giants like Google and Facebook is putting local newspapers out of business, costing Canadian jobs, and undermining our ability to tell local, Canadian stories.” I agree with that. In fact, if I did not tell people it was coming from the Conservative platform, I would feel very comfortable making that statement.
I will continue to read from the Conservative platform. It says, “Canada’s Conservatives don’t believe that the solution is for the government to provide direct funding to hand-picked media outlets”, and I disagree with that as I see the value in CBC and I will provide further comment on that shortly, “something that undermines press freedom and trust in the media. Instead, we will secure a level playing field for Canadian media, ensuring that Canadians are paid fairly for the content they create while encouraging the creation of more Canadian media and culture.” I have some difficulty with some of the things in that statement, but the Conservatives raise the importance of the issue.
It goes on to say, and this is the platform's bold statement, “Canada’s Conservatives will: Introduce a digital media royalty framework”, and that is what we are debating in Bill C-18, “to ensure that Canadian media outlets are fairly compensated for the sharing of their content by platforms like Google and Facebook.” If members were to review Hansard and the debate we have had on this, what are the two platforms we are talking about? Google and Facebook. This legislation is, in essence, taking what is in the Conservative platform.
It goes on to say, “Adopt a made in Canada approach that incorporates the best practices of jurisdictions like Australia and France.” Members on this side of the House have said that. The legislation and establishment of the framework is based on what has come out of Australia and France. Our legislation goes even further. It would ensure there is a higher sense of accountability and transparency.
Let us go back to the last federal election. In that election, Conservative candidates, 338 of them, had a platform document. Every one of them campaigned on that. The legislation we are debating, what we are proposing to do with this legislation, is fulfilling something they committed to doing. I would have thought the Conservative Party would have supported Bill C-18.
Why are the Conservatives not supporting it? We listened to the critic. We listened to a few other Conservatives. We get the impression that they have been intimidated by giant tech companies like Facebook and Google. What is the other option? That they agree? What about the commitment they made to Canadians? This is in opposition to that.
This is not the first time. They did the same thing on the price on pollution. They made a commitment and they broke that.
I would argue that this is not the same Conservative Party from the past. This is very much a Reform Party and maybe even further to the right than the Reform Party was. This is what Canadians need to be aware of.
Why would the Conservatives not want to protect the national interest and give more strength to our democracy by supporting Bill C-18? They have gone out of their way to protect those giants. I would be disappointed if the government were to back down because Facebook says it is going to pull its news ads. I am not a computer tech person. I know there are all sorts of things people can do through the computer and maybe they have ways they can pull out the news ads; I am not 100% sure how that works. However, what I do know is that I am not going to be intimidated, whether by Google or Facebook. If Facebook operators believe that they do not need those stories in order to sustain the type of growth that they have experienced and wealth that has been generated because of journalism that has been utilized through their companies at no cost, I will stand by Canadians. I am going to stand by our democracy. I am going to stand by the jobs and the importance of that industry because I recognize its importance.
The Conservatives have now said they are going to pull all stops out. They do not want this legislation to pass and they have been very clear on that.
I had posed a question in regard to the budget implementation bill when the leader of the Conservative Party had a big press conference. In the press conference, he said he was going to speak and speak. He has unlimited time on the budget implementation bill. He was going to continue to speak until ultimately the Prime Minister backed away and changed the budget, even though hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing through the budget implementation bill in order to support Canadians. A few hours later, that kind of fell flat. Why was that? It was because not only did the Liberals see through the charade, but opposition parties outside of the Conservatives saw the charade and the propaganda stunt that the leader of the Conservative Party was trying to pull off.
Just yesterday, with respect to Bill C-42, the corporations bill, the Conservative Party actually supported the legislation. Everyone supports the legislation. However, the Conservatives want to apply that very same principle in terms of what they want to apply to Bill C-18, and that is to prevent government legislation from passing. Therefore, the Conservatives continue to put up members to speak and if it were not for time allocation, again, that legislation would not have been able to pass.
Now, the Conservatives are shocked or at least surprised that the government has brought in time allocation on Bill C-18. They should not be surprised. After all, they just need to look at their record; they try to frustrate the House of Commons, to deny Canadians the opportunity to have legislative measures that are going to protect their interests. We have consistently seen that from the Conservative Party. The Conservatives put their political party and their fundraising ahead of the interests of Canadians.
Let us listen to the first question, when the Minister of Heritage was answering questions as to why time allocation was necessary. The first person up for the Conservative Party asked why the government was bringing in time allocation, saying that they should be allowed to have all of their members speak to the legislation.
They should do the math. If every member speaks, that means how many hours of debate? How many more hours are there before the summer recess? It is not a question of whether the Conservatives will allow the legislation to pass before the summer break, they want to kill the bill. They do not want the bill, period, end of story. That is their intention.
That is why I posed a question to my Bloc friend. The essence of the question was whether the member believes that the Conservatives, had we not brought in time allocation, would have allowed this bill to pass before the summer recess. If the member from the Bloc were to be honest with the chamber, he would probably recognize that the Conservatives have no intention whatsoever to pass this legislation, definitely not before the summer break. If we did not have at least one opposition party supporting what we are doing, this legislation likely would not see the light of day in terms of its passing.
I need to remind the Conservatives, as they like to remind us, about the last election and there being a minority government. In a minority government, we have to continue to be focused on Canadians, delivering legislative and budgetary measures and working with the opposition. Fortunately, most opposition parties have a more co-operative attitude and recognize that they too have a role to play in a minority government. It is not just the government's responsibility.
The only party that has failed to recognize that fact is the Conservative Party of Canada. It continues to believe its only role is to prevent legislation from passing. Then it criticizes us for bringing in time allocation motions and trying to limit debate on important pieces of legislation or budget measures. It is hard to take Conservatives seriously on things of that nature when we see them delay time and time again, such as with concurrence in committee reports. One of my favourites is when a Conservative stands and moves a motion for another Conservative to speak. Then there is a vote, which causes the bells to ring. Instead of debating, they try to determine which Conservative member should filibuster or they decide we are done for the day and move a motion to adjourn, again causing further delay. These are the types—
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that, in her view, the government should not interfere with this free market that rules our media world, yet the message I am hearing from community media, like the local newspaper in my community, is that it wants this. It is struggling in the face of these big tech giants that are not going to tell the local stories in Smithers, Burns Lake, Fraser Lake and Prince Rupert. They are just not going to do that. Community media wants to find a viable way to ensure it has the business case to deliver those stories to the people who need to hear them. People came to me, met with me and said they want precisely what is delivered by this bill.
What would my colleague say to them if they came to her with that message?
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Madam Speaker, my Conservative friends are very good at criticizing, but they offer very little by way of solutions to real problems. For all the years that we have been talking about fighting climate change, we have constantly criticized the government, and rightly so, because the Liberals are absolutely useless at fighting climate change. However, the Conservatives do not offer any meaningful solutions to real problems.
The revenue sharing in Bill C‑18 is a real problem. In my riding, there is a weekly newspaper that had 10 journalists five years ago. Now there are only two left. How can they cover all the events? There are six federal ridings and there is simply no way they can cover all the regional news, which is extremely important.
What solutions does my colleague have to offer for this problem that is real and widespread across Canada?
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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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