- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Drummond
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $108,134.67
- Government Page
- Dec/12/23 2:42:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the recent economic update, the government announced that it would increase the tax credit for newsrooms from 25% to 35%, which is very good. Even if that does not solve the media crisis, we know that it will help.
It will help, but only print media. Unfortunately, television and radio journalists are not eligible.
It is clear to us that Bell Media, Quebecor and Cogeco are struggling too. Electronic media outlets are all struggling.
Will the minister make the tax credit for newsrooms available to electronic media as well?
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- Dec/1/23 11:54:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was so nice of the member to explain the agreement. However, that was not the question. I was talking about CBC/Radio-Canada and funding, but I am sure we will come back to that.
Another thing the minister can immediately do is ensure that there are no further job cuts in the media. That will enable struggling online, radio and television media to have access to the 35% tax credit for journalists that print media already have access to. Bell Media, Québecor and Cogeco Media have asked us to do this in recent days. She needs to do it before the holiday break, before we see more newsrooms closed and the diversity of information pay—
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- Nov/3/23 11:40:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hundreds of job losses at TVA will inevitably impact news in the regions. There will be fewer journalists, fewer editors, fewer studios, less airtime, and smaller teams with fewer resources. Add to that the fact that print and local media are in crisis, and we have the perfect recipe for our regions to fall off the radar.
Meanwhile, it is clear that the Online News Act is about to hit a wall.
What will the Minister of Canadian Heritage do to protect television, radio and newspaper news outside major urban centres?
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- Oct/17/23 3:07:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives may not applaud as vigorously for me. I agree with my colleague that the CBC and Radio-Canada do outstanding journalistic work, and that must be protected. Journalists, however, know how to use loaded words. Journalists know how to describe the despicable acts committed by Hamas on October 7. That is their job.
However, CBC management's directive is something else entirely. It looks a lot like censorship. CBC higher-ups are actually muzzling the press. They are taking a political stance. That is absolutely not the broadcaster's mandate. Yes, CBC management is independent, but I do want to ask the minister the following question.
Does she think that, as a matter of principle, CBC management should be getting involved in journalists' work?
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- Oct/17/23 3:04:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we hear a lot of talk about the CBC's upper management these days, but never for the right reasons. There was the n-word incident, then there was the podcast translated in Paris because, as everyone knows, the Quebec accent lacks international appeal. The latest is a memo to reporters reminding them not to call Hamas terrorists. We all know that Hamas's horrific attacks constitute terrorism. Journalists know it, and they also know how to use words, even the most loaded ones.
Will the minister remind CBC management that newsrooms must remain absolutely free not only from political influence but also from ideological influence?
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- Sep/19/23 2:15:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Métro Média, the company that owns Journal Métro and 16 other local newspapers, is declaring bankruptcy. It is ceasing operations. Over 70 people, including about 30 journalists, are losing their jobs. This is yet another blow to Quebec news, which has already been very hard hit.
The closure of a local newspaper hurts in many ways. Obviously, it affects access to local information, a key component of a healthy democracy. It also affects the connections a newspaper helps build in a community, the fundamental role that newspaper plays in the development of a sense of belonging in a city, region or neighbourhood. Diversity of information and the local perspective offered by local media cease to exist.
Sixteen local newspapers are closing their doors. That is devastating for our communities, for the journalists, for information and for democracy. We need to do more to protect our local media. Clearly, what we are doing now is not enough.
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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 think that every form of journalism that respects the fundamental rules of integrity, independence, meticulousness and respect for people and sources is essential. In-depth reporting by investigative journalists striving to dig deeper into the stories is also essential, and we need to keep it alive as well.
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Madam Speaker, there is never a dull moment in the House. It truly is incredible. There is always some event or other that grabs our attention.
I am very happy Bill C‑18 has reached this stage. I am happy, but I can promise my colleagues that there are an awful lot of people at media outlets in my riding and pretty much everywhere in Quebec, not to mention everywhere across Canada, based on our conversations with stakeholders, that will let out a big sigh of relief when we finally pass Bill C‑18.
I would humbly like to dedicate my speech to the 1,300 workers in the news sector whose jobs were cut at Bell Media last week. We talked about it here in the House. I would like to spare a thought for two of them. I am sure that many of my colleagues have some in their ridings throughout Quebec and Canada.
Martin Brassard, a journalist with 35 years of experience at Bell Media, in my colleague's riding, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, lost his job to the cuts. Back home in Drummond, Louis‑Philippe Harnois‑Arel, a talented young journalist full of potential and promise who worked on the Bell-owned Noovo news desk, was also among those who lost their jobs because of these cuts.
Mr. Speaker, you may not have had a chance to read today's news yet, but in today's Le Devoir, Boris Proulx reports that my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood hinted that Bell's decision to cut 1,300 jobs and close six radio stations may have been part of a plan, made in cahoots with the government, to force the adoption of Bill C‑18 this week.
I wondered what kind of movie script we were playing out. Have we really got to the point where we believe that a company will fire 1,300 people just because we want to push through a bill that is long overdue and that was obviously going to pass in the coming days or weeks anyway?
Honestly, I think that is going a little overboard with the conspiracy theories. I wanted to say it. I really admire my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood. I sit with him on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which we co-chair. I know that he loves the media industry and that before becoming an MP, he had a career in the media, as did I. He and I will definitely have an opportunity to talk about it again.
To provide some context, the media, and especially the news media, has been struggling for many years. Facebook and Google in particular appropriate the news stories, the news content, without paying royalties or compensation for the material produced with hard work and passion by newsrooms.
In the early 2000s, red flags were already being raised regarding the presence of the web giants, the major corporations that were taking up more and more space on the Internet. The government decided at that time to exempt them from the Broadcasting Act, to exclude them from those regulations. Perhaps the government was short-sighted. I do not want to criticize the decisions made back then, because they were based on the information available at the time, but I think the government could have shown a little more agility. The government may not have given itself sufficient freedom to re-evaluate its position over time.
For years, the news media in particular, but also the cultural industry, have been sounding the alarm and urging caution because these giants were taking up more and more space, and warning that the space taken by these giants was hurting them, eating into their revenues and putting jobs at risk.
That is exactly what has happened over time. Successive governments were warned, but no one ever bothered to lift a finger or consider whether something should be done for the news media and the cultural industry.
As I said earlier, I was in the media before switching to politics. I also worked in the private sector, always with some connection to advertising. For years, I had a front-row seat to the impact this new player in the advertising world was having on the market. For example, representatives would come to us to sell us advertising and explain that it was more profitable for us to buy advertising space from them than from the digital platforms, even though the digital platforms were offering rock-bottom prices compared to traditional media. Obviously, it was very tempting for all kinds of companies to choose the option of switching to digital media, to Google and its ilk.
Today, more than 80% of advertising revenue is generated online. The market has been cornered primarily by Google and Facebook, which, again, pay no royalties. They pay nothing to the people who produce the content. They get to monetize that content and use it to sell their advertising.
On top of that, they collect data. We know that data is even more lucrative than advertising. They are really raking it in and not leaving anything for anyone else. Journalists are slowly seeing their work picked up by digital media, and high-quality reporting by talented journalists is ending up being shared on Facebook or Google in search results. Not a penny goes back to them for that, and not a penny goes back to the media that paid to produce it.
This makes no sense to me. We urgently needed to address the calls from news media and implement legislation that would impose not specific amounts or a payment, but rather a framework for negotiations. Bill C‑18 does not tell companies that they have to pay a certain amount. What Bill C‑18 does is tell companies that they have an obligation to negotiate in good faith within the legislated framework. That is what Bill C‑18 is all about.
It is a bit of a stretch to say that this will give one party an advantage over another. It is going a bit far. I think this bill could likely be improved and it will not solve all of the problems. That is obvious. The news media have fallen so far over the past 10 or 15 years that Bill C‑18 alone is certainly not the solution. However, it is definitely a step in the right direction. We are certainly sending the right message to the web giants by telling them that they cannot cannibalize our news outlets' content and our cultural content.
It is urgent that we pass this bill and it is urgent to see what impact it will have so that we can then put measures in place to help media outlets—
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Madam Speaker, my Conservative colleague's question gives us some idea of the mood and the positions taken in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage during its work on Bill C‑18. It was pretty specific and pretty clear.
Throughout this study, the web giants went to great lengths to tell us that news was not that valuable to their businesses. Sabrina Geremia, a vice-president at Google Canada, somehow managed to tell us, during a memorable, pathetic and pitiful committee appearance, that last year, Google linked to Canadian news publishers over 3.6 billion times and that this traffic drove $250 million in value. When the web giants tell us that news has no value, well, if 3.6 billion clicks have no value for Google, they should shut down, because that does not make any sense.
With the urgently needed passage of Bill C-18, however, we know that the media will be able to negotiate and be compensated for the content that they and newsrooms create in Quebec and Canada. We have seen the closures, however. In his speech, the minister spoke about newsroom closures and the elimination of journalism jobs.
If Bill C-18 is not enough to keep newsrooms open and journalists employed, is the Minister of Canadian Heritage prepared to accept the Bloc Québécois proposal to create a fund to support journalism in Quebec and Canada?
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- May/9/23 9:23:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was looking forward to my turn to speak.
I want to congratulate the member for Abbotsford on his speech.
The current chair of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation appeared today before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Here is another example of someone willing to testify about this foundation who either has no conscience or has done very little self-reflection. Perhaps it would help him to have a conscience if he took a look, hard look in the mirror.
That said, Mr. Johnson appeared before the committee and said that everything was fine. There was never a threat of interference. CSIS had never sounded the alarm or warned of any risk of Chinese interference through the foundation. He found a way to throw former CEO Pascale Fournier under the bus. He denied just about everything she said. He also lambasted the media. Edward Johnson was a member of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's team in the early 1980s. He was also a senior executive at Power Corporation. Obviously, he is not the kind of person who likes to pull strings and stay close to the circles of power. I found it interesting that he was lambasting the media for their work on this.
I would like to ask my Conservative colleague if the Conservative Party sees that as a good opportunity to ensure that Canada's news media is well protected by robust laws so that we have quality journalism and support journalists in this investigative work.
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- May/3/22 2:16:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, these are tough times for the press.
In Ukraine, journalists are being bombed to death. In Russia, journalists have to go into exile or let themselves be put in jail, where they are silenced for telling the truth about the war. Journalists, columnists and bloggers everywhere are being imprisoned, threatened or killed.
The planet is warming, the pandemic is lingering and war is raging in Europe. Now, more than ever, we need a free press. We need to be informed.
In Quebec and in Canada, on social media, journalists are increasingly the target of insults, bullying and threats.
I call on our fellow citizens and all democracy-minded people: Let us work together to protect the free press. Let us not allow intimidation to prevail over information.
There can be no free press without newspapers. I therefore call on the government to provide more support to our local and regional weekly papers. This matter is urgent.
On this World Press Freedom Day, I thank journalists for their essential work.
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