44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague. I very much enjoy working with him on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
I enjoyed his description of journalists and what they do for our society. I wanted to ask him what he thinks will happen if we do not adopt Bill C‑18 and if we do not support our journalists. What will happen to our democracy?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is also on the Canadian heritage committee.
I really love that he highlighted how well this legislation worked in Australia to support smaller news outlets and how the big tech companies fought back with intimidation tactics. We are even seeing similar intimidation tactics here in Canada from those same big tech giants. At our committee, we saw some of those intimidation tactics.
However, we are hearing the Conservatives using those tactics as some sort of justification to not go forward with this legislation, saying, “Oh, Google blocked the news, so we better get rid of Bill C-18.”
What does the member think of the tactic being used by the Conservatives?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to answer the member opposite by saying that yes, I have worked in newsrooms. For more than 20 years I worked in newsrooms.
I also sit on the heritage committee. I know that this legislation is possible because it is already working in a similar form in Australia, supporting small local news outlets in Australia.
Bill C-18 creates a framework so that news organizations have the power to negotiate with big tech. There is no money coming from government. There is no money going to government. In what world could one call that a subsidy?
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-18, the online news act. As members have heard, I am a former broadcast and newspaper journalist, and I am also currently a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Therefore, this bill really is important to me. I am very proud of the work that we did as a committee and that we are one step closer to this legislation's actually passing now that we have received amendments from the Senate.
I am so grateful for the work of the Senate, and I would like to thank the senators for their thorough debate and their thoughtful consideration of the legislation. I would also like to thank my colleagues on the heritage committee for working collaboratively across party lines and listening compassionately to all the groups and individuals who came to committee to tell us just how important Bill C-18 would be for them.
Before I get into the substance of the Senate amendments, I would like to explain why this bill is so crucial for small local Canadian news outlets. These outlets at one time told the stories in and about every little corner of our country, but they have been shuttering, one after the other, and the trend is accelerating. I witnessed it first-hand in my more than 20 years as a journalist, surviving mass layoff after mass layoff and watching talented and bright colleagues have to go off and find their next dream job.
Just last week, Bell Media laid off some 1,300 employees from its broadcast division on Parliament Hill. We lost journalists like Joyce Napier and Glen McGregor. These journalists are institutions within this institution. Their deep knowledge, gained from years of experience, and the context they bring to their reporting has been lost. It is a loss to us who work in this place and it is a loss to our constituents who are trying to understand federal politics.
It is not just in Parliament buildings in federal and provincial capitals where journalists have become scarce. It is our city halls, our courtrooms, our legions, our school boards and our local sporting events. We used to have reporters in all those places, listening to people, sharing stories and giving us a real sense of community. They are mostly not there anymore.
As we have heard already today, since 2008, more than 500 Canadian news outlets have closed in 335 communities across Canada. Three hundred and fifty-nine of these are community newspapers. Sixty-three closed since the start of the pandemic.
Since 2010, the number of jobs in the newspaper industry saw a 45% decrease. Thousands of journalism jobs have been lost permanently from all the mediums. This means that many communities do not have local news to rely on. They are left unaware when they could have helped someone in need. They are left in danger when there is an impending natural disaster. They have no way to know how their city, or province or country is performing, whether there is corruption or a policy that causes harm to vulnerable people.
News producers told us at committee that news had never been profitable, that it was expensive, that it was hard work. It takes a person at least a full day, sitting through meetings, coming up with an angle, conducting interviews and writing a story for print or broadcast, just for one piece of content. However, news is so valuable that it was always worth the trouble. Companies would advertise. There were classified ads or obituaries. News producers could survive. Now all those sources of revenue are gone.
Eighty per cent of all advertising revenue goes to Google and Facebook, two companies. They do not employ journalists or ask reporters to gather news, but the content produced by reporters is still important to these online giants. These are the stories people share on Facebook. This is the data scraped from the Internet, when artificial intelligence is being developed. The news content creators are dwindling, but the content itself is going further than it ever has before. What happens when we do not have any more reporters to share our stories? Democracy dies in darkness, as I am sure members are aware.
In order to secure a future for local news, we must ask Facebook and Google to pay their share, to contribute to Canadian journalism. We must ensure that we continue to have journalists and that they are paid fairly for their long, uncomfortable, highly scrutinized and yet sorely needed work. That is why we need to pass Bill C-18. This bill would require the tech giants to fairly compensate publishers for the content distributed on their platforms.
My riding of Hamilton Mountain is particularly well served by local news outlets. There are radio stations, magazines, local web-based reporters, The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton Mountain newspapers and CHCH TV, with hard-working reporters, editors, photographers and a myriad of other people with the skills required to make it all work, ensuring that the people of Hamilton know when there is something they need to know.
Bill C-18 would help smaller outlets. They can work together to negotiate collectively with big tech giants. Bill C-18 would require these tech giants to broker deals with smaller outlets. If a fair deal cannot be reached, the negotiations would move to final-offer arbitration.
We need to acknowledge and mitigate the threat that tech giants pose to our local news outlets based on the balance of power they hold. We need to empower and strengthen our local news teams. Most news organizations in Canada, which produce journalism as already defined under the Income Tax Act, will be eligible for the online news act, whether they are big or small, local or national.
This is bigger than just Canada. We are following in the footsteps of other countries, such as Australia and France. The online news act is based on the Australian model, where digital platforms that have a bargaining imbalance with news media are required to make fair commercial deals. As we saw in Australia, collective bargaining was essential for ensuring that small publishers got good deals. That is why this legislation does the same. Other countries are watching what we in Canada do in order to follow in our footsteps, because they also see the dire need to protect their journalism.
Regrettably, there has been a campaign of misinformation surrounding this bill. Tech giants have tried to convince small news outlets that Bill C-18 will hurt them. The opposite is true. This bill is good for local news. News producers maintain their freedom of expression and their editorial and financial independence. Bill C-18 is about supporting fact-based local Canadian journalism in a fair digital marketplace.
To hear tech giants and opposition members spread misinformation about this bill really gets to me. It is appalling. I have heard this called a “link tax”. There is nothing in Bill C-18 that makes platforms pay per click. There is no tax. The government is not collecting any money. Now more than ever, as we face rampant disinformation and lost trust in our institutions, we need quality, fact-based, objective news reporting at local, national and international levels.
The intimidation tactics that we have seen from tech giants are quite troubling. From February 9 until March 16 of this year, Google ran tests that dangerously blocked and censored news from more than a million Canadians. When Google ran similar tests in Australia, it blocked access to other institutions too, like a hospital and a shelter for women escaping violence. Instead of directing people to those sources, Google directed its algorithm to promote sources of questionable quality, sources known for conspiracy theories, for example.
When Google uses tactics like blocking Canadians' access to news and information, it fails to be a reliable service for consumers. By running tests that block access to news, Google is hurting Canadians and damaging Canadian democracy. Rather than being good corporate citizens and working with legislators, tech giants have been trying to strong-arm and intimidate us. There is derision in lieu of thoughtful, meaningful engagement with the parliamentary process.
Our government supports journalism, full stop. We have the local journalism initiative, the Canada periodical fund, the journalism tax credit and the digital news subscription tax credit. With Bill C-18, we are taking another step to encourage, support and stand up for our local news outlets.
A free and independent press is absolutely essential to Canadian democracy. I am proud of the work I did for more than 20 years as a journalist. To come full circle, I am equally proud of the work we have done as a committee and as a government on this piece of legislation.
Let me just talk briefly about the Senate amendments to this bill. I am encouraged that we agree with the majority of amendments made by the Senate. Out of the 12 it suggested, we accepted 10. It is very reassuring.
The government respectfully disagrees with amendments four and five. These changes would undermine the objectives of the bill, which focus on encouraging fair deals. The amendments would narrow the scope of the bargaining process between platforms and news outlets. We cannot add an amendment that would limit the ability of news publishers to negotiate fair compensation with large tech giants. A main component of this bill is a fair and independent framework for Canadian publishers and journalists to bargain with tech giants. Amendment five would improperly benefit the platform at the expense of the publisher.
Once again, I thank my colleagues at the Canadian heritage committee and thank the Senate for its thoughtful deliberations.
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Madam Speaker, this government really believes in supporting journalists and sticking up for them in the face of intimidation tactics by tech giants.
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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, that is a very important question. I did meet with stakeholders who were indigenous journalists. They told us about how important it was for them to tell their stories in their own way from their own voice and to not have a definition of journalism imposed upon them that would not feel natural for their lifestyle. We incorporated their suggestions into our legislation. I thank them again for their input, because it led to very valuable amendments to this legislation.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that Canadians take their news in all forms. Like many people, I enjoy reading lots of news from online journalism sources.
What people need to know is that the government is not getting involved in censoring the Internet. There is nothing like that at all. All this legislation does is allow news organizations in Canada to have a business negotiation process with tech giants for an exchange of goods where they both benefit.
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