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Rachael Thomas

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Conservative

Lethbridge
Alberta
Voting Attendance: 65%
Expenses Last Quarter: $131,565.29

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 216 - Jun/19/23

Jun/19/23 6:18:49 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, the member for the NDP just stated that the NDP brought forward a motion asking that there be allowance for news outlets with 1.25 or 1.5 full-time employees to be considered. I am curious if one person would be doing the work of 1.25, 1.5 or 1.75 full-time employees. They would not. Two journalists would work that amount of time. My point still stands. This bill is designed such that, if an outlet has fewer than two journalists, it would not be considered. To correct the record for the member, because I am sure he would not want to mislead anyone, it was Conservatives who brought forward a motion calling for a minimum of one journalists and for an outlet to be considered based on that premise. The NDP voted against that common-sense Conservative motion asking for the consideration of outlets with only one journalist. The NDP insisted that there be a minimum of two. Whether those are two people splitting one full-time job or two people splitting one and a half jobs, I guess that is up to the outlet. Nevertheless, there have to be two individuals for the outlet to be considered. That is just not the case in so many of these local regions. Further to that, I will just raise that this is rather rich for the NDP members. They are socialists. They very much like to complain that people are not making enough wealth. They like to see government handouts and things of that sort. Their arguing that two journalists should split a job that is one full-time job or one and a half full-time jobs is rather concerning to me. I was advocating that there be two journalists, each with full-time wages.

302 words

Context: House Hansard - 216 - Jun/19/23

Mrs. Rachael Thomas

Jun/19/23 6:15:26 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I will answer with a fact. I will take the emotion out for a moment here. This legislation states that, even to be considered for CRTC approval to enter into these negotiations, a news business has to show that it has a minimum of two journalists. Many local newspapers or ethnic media newspapers do not have two journalists. That means they would not even be considered by the CRTC to qualify. When I state that local media and ethnic media will be left out in the cold, I state that as fact. While I understand there may be a few niche outlets that could benefit from this legislation, the vast majority of local and ethnic newspapers will not benefit. The committee heard testimony from Steve Nixon, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association. He said that they only have four publications out of 56 that would benefit from this legislation. That leaves 52 out in the cold. It means they are unlikely to make it because of the imbalance that would be caused by this legislation.

180 words

Context: House Hansard - 195 - May/11/23

Mrs. Rachael Thomas (Lethbridge, CPC)

May/11/23 2:08:11 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, as if censoring what Canadians can see, say or hear online was not bad enough, the Liberals had to go even a step further. That was this past weekend at their convention. They decided to put forward a policy that would require journalists to give up their sources in order to be published online. It was not enough to censor Canadians at large; they had to target journalists. Imagine this for a moment. Imagine what would happen if journalists had to be vetted by the government in order to release a story on, say, donations given by the Beijing government to the Trudeau Foundation, or foreign interference in our elections, or the many, many ethical breaches of the government. I wonder what would happen if journalists had to be vetted in order to release those stories. They probably would not go public, which begs the question, is the government simply acting pre-emptively in order to get ahead of future stories they know will be coming? Why is the government so hell-bent on censoring the media?

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Member of Parliament

Rachael Thomas