Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, I think this is the issue of contract flipping that you are referring to.

[Translation]

Yes, the Canada Labour Code has been amended to extend equal pay protection to workers when the contract moves to a new employer. This will ensure that workers affected by a new tender are not paid less than the amount set out in their previous collective agreement for the same or similar work. This provides more security and better protection for workers. Thank you for the question.

[English]

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: In this job, that’s probably the most loaded series of questions that I have ever heard in my career. There is absolutely no way, senator, I am going to comment on any of it. With all due respect — I think you appreciate why — I respect the table. I have learned to bite my tongue in this job — it is not easy for a Newfoundlander to do — but I do it because I want a deal. If you want a deal, then my job is to shut up and let them do the deal.

I am hoping no one has to brace themselves for anything. I obviously know parties on both sides of the table. This — just for the interests of senators — is not something that actually falls under my purview even though I have the title. It is the President of the Treasury Board; she is on one side of the table. The Public Service Alliance of Canada — led by a very proud Newfoundlander, Chris Aylward — is on the other side of the table. The best deals happen at the table. They do not come from the lips of the labour minister, even in this august chamber.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Thank you, Senator Cotter, for your very interesting speech.

I read the bill carefully in preparation for your speech. You said one word that struck me. You said that it was a framework to move forward toward something. I also noted that the legislation is scheduled to come into force no more than 12 months after the bill is passed. I noted that the government must report on the consultations six months after the legislation comes into force and that the government must table a report on the proposed regulations in both chambers within one year of the legislation coming into force. That already means a delay of perhaps two years.

In the briefings you had with the department, was there any discussion of a realistic time frame for the first cheques or benefits to reach recipients? I suspect there could be an election within the next two years.

[English]

Senator Cotter: In one respect, if I may say, Senator Dalphond, the occurrence of an election will be rendered somewhat irrelevant, because the framework will be in place and the department will carry on putting the program together. I hate to use a golf analogy, but I’m a 30 handicap at predicting elections, so I’m happy that it’s off to the side.

The message I keep hearing, which is informal and nobody is prepared to make an absolute commitment, is that it will be possible to do the negotiations and put the regulations in place in 12 months, hopefully. Once that happens, I think benefits can begin to flow.

There will be an application process as the bill is presently constructed, so it does mean that people will have to apply. However, the language people talk about is a 12-month period, and I hope that’s correct; I hope that’s the longest it is.

Senator Downe is right that we have an important job to do. We need to do it in as timely a way as possible, because my feeling is that each month that goes by pushes the time by a month, and that means tens of thousands of Canadians remain in poverty for one more month. It’s really important for them for us to do the best we can do.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Minister, this time my question is about a federal domain, airports. Service providers in the cleaning and security sectors were replaced. When that happened, the new contractor rehired people but did not offer them the same working conditions because there was no continuity of employment. Has this situation been remedied? I believe so, in accordance with the regulations, but if not, will it be done soon?

[English]

Senator Simons: What I heard from small publishers is that they would like changes in the mailing rate to make it easier to mail out their weekly papers. They are also really frustrated because Canada Post is outcompeting them in the flyer business. Now, flyers are not sexy, but they were the economic backbone of a lot of newspapers large and small, and what I hear from newspaper publishers is that Canada Post gives such great rates that the newspapers cannot compete. Now, Canada Post has a right to compete in the marketplace, but again, we have to consider the consequences of all these decisions.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, we were also shocked at the devastation caused by an earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria this past Monday, leaving more than 19,000 dead and many more injured.

Our thoughts are with the people of Turkey and Syria as they mourn those they have lost and work to recover from this horrific tragedy.

Honourable senators, please join me in rising for a minute of silence in memory of the victims.

(Honourable senators then stood in silent tribute.)

[English]

Hon. Yonah Martin: Minister, last week the Canadian Union of Brewery and General Workers sent a letter to the Prime Minister and Minister Freeland regarding the 6.3% inflation-based increase in federal beer taxes scheduled to automatically go into effect on April 1. The letter reads, in part:

We are headed into a recession. The Federal Government must avoid making the situation worse. It cannot rigidly stick to policies that raise prices and fuels higher inflation, which is exactly what raising federal beer taxes by 6.3 per cent will do.

Minister, what do you have to say to the 350 unionized workers employed at the Molson-Coors brewery in Toronto who may be very nervous about the security of their jobs due to the Trudeau government’s high tax policies? How does a massive increase to this tax help Canadians working in the brewing and alcohol beverage sectors keep their jobs?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, we were all shocked and saddened to learn of the tragedy in Laval, Quebec, which left two children dead and a number of others injured.

Our thoughts are with their families, as we express our condolences for those lost, and our hopes for a full recovery by the injured.

Honourable senators, please join me in rising for a minute of silence in memory of those children who did not survive this tragic incident.

(Honourable senators then stood in silent tribute.)

Hon. David M. Wells: Minister O’Regan, welcome back to the Senate.

My question to you is related to your responsibilities as Minister of Labour and minister responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador, and it is about the energy transition. It is in two parts.

One is the just transition that we hear so much about. To be clear, the just transition — the front part of that is the phasing out of the oil and gas industry, which we’ve heard from your government. Can you tell us how that phasing out of the oil and gas industry is “just” for the Newfoundland and Labrador workers on all our offshore rigs and for all our onshore suppliers, who have gone through education to learn about their craft and get well paid and keep that money in their families and keep our communities alive and, in fact, fill the coffers of our province? That is the first part.

The second part relates to a comment from your cabinet colleague Associate Minister of Finance Randy Boissonnault, who said the cost of this will be $100 billion to $125 billion a year up until at least 2050.

Given that Canada has — that contributes to 1.5 —

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Welcome to the Senate, minister. My question is about a subject that you’ve already addressed, anti-scab legislation. I gather that the consultations are over. You said in October that they would end in December.

I have a specific question. You will undoubtedly look to the experience of Quebec and British Columbia. Are you planning to prohibit the use of both replacement workers working at the company and third-party subcontractors? In certain disputes, instead of hiring scabs, the employer has subcontracted the work to external companies.

[English]

Senator Miville-Dechêne: To my knowledge, since this crisis began, the Copyright Act has not been enforced in relation to articles that are shared because, yes, links are often shared. I don’t think the Copyright Act is the appropriate mechanism to protect journalism. I know this mechanism is used in France. We’ve been much more inspired by the Australian model, which has been successful in mitigating the crisis to some extent. We noticed that in Australia —

Hon. Pamela Wallin: I just have a quick comment, really, in response to some of your comments. Of course, we’ll discuss this endlessly at committee.

Speaking with local newspapers in my area, I heard that one of the things that troubles them is that while government, on the one hand, has agreed to pay them money, therefore compromising independence, they have also stopped 100% of their advertising in these local papers, which was a genuine and arm’s-length source of income. So if they wanted to support these news operations in small communities, they do have a mechanism.

Senator Simons: I would be delighted to take a question. We’ll pop like jack-in-the-boxes.

Senator C. Deacon: I wonder if you have thought at all about how new online platforms like The Logic, BetaKit or investigative journalism platforms that deliver podcasts, like Canadaland — how those sorts of models fit into the world that Bill C-18 imagines, because they seem to be fighting their own fight in a dramatically different media landscape. I just wonder if you have contemplated that. Thank you.

Senator Miville-Dechêne: I can’t see into the future, but for now, the government is giving tax credits. These tax credits have helped the media outlets that survived the crisis stay afloat, but they are at their limit. Obviously, these agreements with platforms are welcome and are helping newspapers like Le Devoir prosper more than it would have otherwise. However, who says that Google will still be around in 20 years? I believe I am out of time.

[English]

Senator Bovey: Thank you, Senator Cotter. I’ll be very brief.

In your speech, when you were going over the bill itself, you talked about the fact that there would be provisions for reconsiderations, reviews and appeals. Were those the right words, and are those in the cases of people being denied the benefit?

Senator Cotter: I have just pulled out the language here. The relevant provisions under section 11(1) read, “(h) respecting reviews or reconsiderations of decisions made under this Act;” and “(i) respecting appeals;”

So there’s an expectation that a model of reconsideration will be put in place and also an arrangement for an appeal process.

Senator Klyne: I have trust in the minister as well but, again, I have to hearken back to 2022, when the Saskatchewan government clawed back payments from people with disabilities. I think we’ll see a repeat of that unless we have some type of formal agreement before we go forward with this. I don’t want to stall it, I don’t want to see it slowed down, but we need some assurance to make sure that this goes to where it’s intended. I do want to see that happen. If there is anything I can say or do, please call on me.

Senator Cotter: I’m desperate not to run out of those five minutes. Senator Black in our Agriculture Committee often puts up his hands to get us to stop, and I was hoping that wouldn’t happen here.

The positive feature of this is that those agreements need to be negotiated and made public. It was a requirement in the bill; it was an amendment. You and I will be able to have a look at those agreements and see whether they are rich enough and strong enough to achieve the goals that you and I are looking for here. It will occur after the bill is passed, but it probably has to be in that fashion. I don’t think we have too many other options, but at least we get a good look to see whether the expectations and the commitments of the minister — and to the extent that I’m making any kind of a commitment, my commitment to you and people with disabilities — will be honoured. We can verify or unverify. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Seidman, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Audette, seconded by the Honourable Senator Mégie, for the second reading of Bill C-29, An Act to provide for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation.

Hon. Amina Gerba: According to data published by Statistics Canada in January 2023, two years after earning a bachelor’s degree, the employment income was lower among racialized graduates than non-racialized graduates.

For example, among women, West Asian graduates earned 16% less and Arab graduates earned 15% less than non-racialized women. Among men, Black, Southeast Asian, Filipino, Chinese and Korean graduates had the lowest employment incomes, earning from 11% to 13% less than their non-racialized counterparts.

Minister, what is the government doing to ensure more inclusion and fairness in the processes for recruiting racialized graduates in our country?

[English]

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, with all due apology, I wish my French was advanced enough on this subject that I could offer an answer in the language in which you have asked me.

Let me just say that in answering this question, I will get back to you with particulars on exactly what we are doing. I do not think there is any argument about where we want to be. I do not think that we have any argument about the goal. But I would like to get you a more detailed answer on precisely how we plan to get there, aside obviously from employment equity and other reports and legislation that we are working on.

I will get back to you on that.

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Honourable senators, I rise at second reading of Bill C-18, the online news bill. This bill is important to me personally because I spent many years in the world of journalism.

For starters, the crisis is real. Over the past 14 years, 469 newspapers and news organizations in Canada have closed up shop. The majority of the surviving media organizations have been through cuts that have eviscerated newsrooms. Bill C-18 is clearly not a solution in search of a problem. We really do have a big problem, and the government is right to tackle it.

There are many reasons for this crisis, but nearly all of them have to do with the internet revolution. Over the past 25 years, traditional media, which used to have a monopoly on broadcasting information, lost their exclusivity to multiple competitors: online ads, foreign media, government sites, streaming platforms, countless specialized sources for things like weather forecasts, sports scores and financial news, audio and video-sharing platforms, news and opinion blogs and, lastly, social media platforms, which pounded the last nail into the coffin.

Today, traditional media organizations are facing a profound crisis that affects both their profitability, now that advertisers have left, and the value they add, since so much content is available elsewhere.

Some say that the media has not been able to adapt and is simply a victim of technological change, similar to how the typewriter disappeared when computers became ubiquitous. Others add that the traditional media outlets are the victims of their own inertia and arrogance, and that they deserve their fate.

It gives me no pleasure to say this, but there is some truth to that. Many didn’t see the threat coming, and for a long time, they believed that the competition from online media and social networks, sometimes called the “barbarian invasion,” had no value and would not interest anyone. Accustomed to the comfort of their monopoly, some media outlets looked down on new platforms, different models and alternative paths, and were unwilling to take a hard look at themselves, rethink their offerings and adapt.

However, that is not the whole story. Many Canadian media organizations, big and small, young and old, have been trying out innovative approaches for 20 years. In Quebec in particular, the media landscape changed dramatically with the emergence of not-for-profit agencies or cooperatives, as in the case of Les Coops de l’information. La Presse has gone exclusively digital, and the hybrid subscriber model is working for Le Devoir. Experts such as Sue Gardner and Jean-Hugues Roy have noted that a lot of experiments are under way, and even though there are no conclusive results yet, this could be the key to the solution.

However, we mustn’t confuse traditional media with journalism. We can criticize our media and also have legitimate concerns about the future of journalism. While some organizations have lost their aura and their influence, the importance of journalism has remained intact and is as big as ever.

Whether reports address the need to expose lies, scandals, corruption or cronyism, the essential character of journalism is no less great today than it was 25 years ago. In any free society, journalism is a public good that needs to be protected and supported. As the Washington Post‘s slogan goes, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

That being said, investigative work or analysis has the same public value regardless of whether it is done by CBC/Radio-Canada or by a new online journalism platform and whether it is broadcast on the radio, on television, on Twitter or on Facebook.

What is important to Canadian society is that organizations, no matter which ones, have the resources to deliver quality journalism and that the content reaches the public. In other words, Canada needs a robust and diverse news ecosystem that fulfills its role as the watchdog of democracy.

With Bill C-18, the government is proposing a response to the financial difficulties facing journalism in Canada. The government’s proposed solution is quite simple and is directly inspired by the Australian model. Given that the media have lost their advertising revenue to major platforms such as Facebook and Google, these companies should pay the media to publish their content. It is a pragmatic solution. Rich companies will support companies that have become poor.

[English]

For some, Bill C-18 is nonetheless on the wrong track because it is based on a fiction, namely, that Google and Facebook “hurt” the media by making their content available. Media expert Sue Gardner sums up this criticism well:

. . . that premise makes no sense. We know that because news publishers have always been able to opt out of appearing in Google search results, and they don’t. In fact they do the opposite: they vigorously compete to maximize their presences on Google and on Facebook. News publishers want to appear on those platforms, because that’s where people are finding news.

For these critics, the reality is that Google and Facebook offer their users a huge variety of content — of which the media is only a small portion — and the media profit more from the platforms’ referencing than the latter profits from news content. It is possible, but nobody knows. The figures are not public.

The solution for some media experts would be to tax Google and Facebook and set up an independent fund to support journalism.

In an ideal world, setting up a fund would be an easier option, but in reality this is not the avenue the government has chosen for reasons that have to do, apparently, with our trade agreements. As senators, we are called upon to vote on the bill before us. It is possible to improve it, but impossible to rewrite it in such a fundamental way.

I see a number of issues to be addressed in our review of Bill C-18.

First, there is a fundamental question of the expectations of the parties. For large digital platforms, negotiations should focus on the commercial value of the content and services exchanged. In other words, what is the value of news content for Google and Facebook, and how much revenue do those platforms generate for news organizations? For the media, on the other hand, the logic seems different. Some consider that the major platforms should finance up to 30% of their operating costs. This approach is more likely a subsidy than a commercial deal.

To align the expectations of the parties in future negotiations, it would be useful to clarify the objectives of the bill.

Then there is the issue of eligible media. Amendments in the House of Commons have already broadened the admissibility criteria to include small, non-profit community and Indigenous outlets, including those owned by journalists. These broadened criteria mean that we went from about 200 to more than 650 organizations potentially admissible under Bill C-18. This is a welcome expansion because the important thing is to support journalism no matter where it is practised, and not to support only mainstream media. On the other hand, we must ensure that by broadening the scope, we do not open the door to people who do not practise real journalism, but who focus instead on lobbying, fictional or intimate narratives, personal growth or entertainment.

Questions also arise regarding the platforms targeted by Bill C-18. Even though the definition of “digital news intermediary” in the law is very broad, we know that it only covers Facebook and Google at the moment. But we also have to think about the future. Already, Facebook is threatening to block the sharing of Canadian news on its platform if Bill C-18 is adopted. If Facebook carries out the threat, will the bill only target Google? In that case, will this new financing mechanism for Canadian media depend on only one foreign platform? This would be a peculiar situation.

It will also be important to consider the use of funds received by the media. This is a very delicate question, because the government does not want to interfere too much in what it presents as private negotiations. This is a consequence of the approach adopted. That said, the bill won’t be of great assistance to journalism as a public good if the amounts received from Google and Facebook are directed to shareholders or interest payments rather than to hiring journalists, upgrading platforms and to conduct investigations. Much more transparency is needed in this bill.

Questions also arise about the long-term viability of an approach that makes Canadian media partially dependent on foreign private companies that can change or disappear at any time.

[Translation]

In conclusion, Bill C-18 addresses an issue that has a real impact on the democratic health of our country.

Today, even innovative new platforms can’t be profitable without public support, with some exceptions. Excluding CBC/Radio-Canada, many newsrooms are hanging on by a thread.

The Transport and Communications Committee, of which I am a member, will have its work cut out for it. We will have to come to grips with the implications and its limitations of the bill, and perhaps suggest improvements. As with Bill C-11, Bill C-18 is a legislative foray into the ever-changing world of the internet. In the medium term, it is difficult to assess the impact of the measures being put forward. There will inevitably be a process of trial and error, and adjustments will be necessary. However, in my opinion, this effort is certainly more commendable than inaction.

Thank you.

[English]