44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, something that the legislation would actually do is require that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to publish a list of digital news intermediaries and news businesses that are eligible under the online news act.
Throughout the legislation, it talks about the CRTC's role with the overall principle and objective of ensuring that we have a higher sense of fairness in regard to revenue and how that revenue could be distributed. Hopefully, the industry is able to do it in a consensual manner. If not, there are ways we can ensure it does.
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Mr. Speaker, we have a wonderful thing in the free market, and we need to allow companies to flourish. I mentioned one example from Saskatoon, and there are many more.
We have a radio station in Saskatoon, 650 CKOM. John Gormley runs a show there, and he does a great job. He has managed to figure out how to use social media to his advantage. I am quite certain they make a great deal of money from their programs, and it is possible for this to be done.
Sure, there needs to be a way to share revenue, but as I said, the concerns here come back to control and the way the government has allowed its fingers to be in this process with an ability to promote or unpromote certain things based on the whims of the Government of Canada.
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- Dec/13/22 2:59:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, during the pandemic, the government's job was to help businesses keep their employees on the payroll. Now that the programs have ended, the Canada Revenue Agency has an auditing job to do. We are going to do that, as promised. The work is going well. The goal is also to recover the amounts owed to our workers who also worked and paid their taxes during the pandemic.
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Uqaqtittiji, the member talks about the slice of the pie. In 2020, big online web giants gained $9.7 billion in online advertising. That is the size of the pie we are talking about, and Google and Facebook benefited from 80% of that revenue. Because smaller online platforms such as Isuma TV and Nunavut TV do not have the same negotiability that Google and Facebook have, the bill is quite important to those smaller platforms.
Does the member not agree that those supports for those smaller platforms are needed to fight against big platforms such as Google and Facebook, which are making at least $9.7 billion a year in advertising revenue?
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Uqaqtittiji, what I do like about this bill is it would provide a role for the CRTC to assist in the negotiation process between web giants and other providers. As I mentioned earlier, web giants are showing profits in revenue of $9.7 billion a year, so they can take advantage any way they want. There are smaller broadcaster platforms that do not have that same revenue, that need the assistance for the negotiation process that is so important and critically needed. A great place for it to go is to the CRTC to make sure there is fairness. Does the member not agree that fairness is absolutely necessary?
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Madam Speaker, I want to share a few statistics. Fully 98% of Facebook's total revenue comes from advertising sales; Google and Facebook take 80% of all digital ad spending; and Meta, the company that owns Facebook, generated $193 million in revenue in 2021, thanks to journalistic content, of course.
Meanwhile, let us remember that local and regional media are scraping to get by. However, we know that, if there were a framework that forced that revenue to be shared, then according to a 2020 News Media Canada report, publishers could recoup $620 million, which could support 700 journalists.
Let us also remember that, in Canada, Facebook earns 35 to 58 times more from media outlets than it pays them.
Is that not a clear imbalance and a gross injustice?
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