- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Bow River
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $127,198.82
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, in my riding there are 13 weekly newspapers. The NDP voted against a number of them receiving it because one person is the proprietor, owner and reporter. The NDP voted against our amendment to support small local media in my riding.
I think the MP from Saskatchewan would probably respond, as it is similar in her riding, but the NDP voted against that.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's work on the committee, but I remember that the Conservatives put forward an amendment to have one newspaper reporter. He lists many papers, and they are not the non-daily papers in my riding. I have many who are single, yet he voted against having a single reporter qualify for this.
He takes great pride in talking about the worker bees and that we got it to one and a half but I am asking this: What about the ones in my riding? There are not any of the papers he has named in my riding. He has named papers in major cities, not in the small communities that I support.
Why did he vote against our amendment to support the small weekly papers like in my riding?
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member for Drummond. On the committee, we shared similar philosophies and asked lots of questions.
The member has many small communities in his riding, as I do. We heard that of most of the money, maybe upwards of $350 million, 70% to 85% had already been negotiated to go to the big guys, like Bell, Rogers and CBC. What does the member think might be left for our small publishers, like the one-reporter papers? The Conservative motion to support those was voted against.
What does the member think might be left for some of the small papers with one journalist, which I know he has in his riding?
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Madam Speaker, we have just heard some comments about newspapers in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but not one of those are in my riding. I talked to those newspapers and asked what they wanted, and they told me. They are independent and do not belong to that group. They want the $60-some million back that would be given to the foreign nationals. They want that money for advertising, the 30%. They do not want that to be given to internationals.
Also, when the minister said that we supported tech giants, he should go to committee and listen to my comments about big tech. It was the Liberals who agreed with me on big tech, while hammering away at it. You did not find me in the committee supporting big tech. We did not do it. I did not do it. The Liberals agreed with me on how I opposed the big tech. Therefore, when you keep saying that things like that, you should listen to the committee and my comments.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague's speech is interesting, as I see that my colleague is much younger than I am, yet some of the things he talks about are from a long time ago. It is interesting that in February, for example, vinyl outsold CDs, which is a change that is happening.
I have a challenge with what the member is saying. I sat on the heritage committee for Bill C-10 and Bill C-18. Bill C-18 talks about money transfer, but it does not talk about the CRTC. That is the challenge that I have with Bill C-11. The Liberals could do the monetary thing but not involve the CRTC. People understand support for artists and understand royalties or whatever they want to call it. However, why involve the CRTC?
Back when Bill C-10 was passed, it was without that “user-generated” part. It was in there and the Liberals took it out. However, why do we need to involve the CRTC if they keep talking about monetary support going to the artists? The Liberals quote a lot of professional organizations that like the money, but why are they not talking about the artists themselves and a mechanism for where the money would go? In Bill C-18 they talk about where the money goes. Why do we need the CRTC? If they want the money to go to artists, why is that not what they are doing?
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Madam Speaker, I appreciated the time that the member and I worked on the indigenous committee together. She brings a unique perspective, and I very much appreciated working with her on the indigenous committee.
She is exactly right in saying what the amendment did not do, which was go far enough to fix that. That is what we worked for. It was an amendment that would have given that type of production the ability to negotiate, but it has been left out because it does not qualify.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is just what I said. I am not sure what he missed in that, but I said this is a piece of legislation that is going to leave them crumbs to do what the member wants and what I want. It is not going to leave them what we think they deserve. This legislation is just not going to do it.
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Madam Speaker, I always appreciate a question from the member across the way.
I do not have any problem following the bouncing ball, like that one we see in the hockey games, where we watch the ball and which cup it ends in, and people figure it out and get to win a prize. I can follow that one. The member needs some more practice at that one because I can follow that bouncing ball.
I will give another example of where the legislation had a problem. Where was the indigenous piece in this?
In my father's weekly newspaper, there was a gentleman. He was a war veteran, indigenous, from the Kainai reserve. He started a weekly newspaper with support from my father, a weekly paper, the first one on the Kainai Blackfoot nation, and it was a struggle. This piece of legislation did not have it in there. Why not? Why was it not there?
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Madam Speaker, several of my colleagues have spoken in the last day and a half about a member who is no longer with us. Over the number of years I have been here, we have lost a number of members in different ways. It is not just a member from one group or one caucus. It is a member of the House. We are 338 members and it is one of us. We all know the role that we have here. We know the commitment people make to be in this position. It is an honour and a privilege to do it, but we all understand the loss when we lose one of our 338 members. It is always a hardship. I recognize the challenges we have as members and losing one of us is a tragedy for us all.
Moving onto Bill C-18, I had been on the heritage committee before but I came back onto the committee when it was just getting to the bill itself, the amendments and going through the legislation.
There probably is not a heritage minister who I have not seen in committee at one time or another. They all know I speak about weekly newspapers. I talk about how important they are in Canada. There is probably not a heritage minister who does not know that I would be up here talking about weekly newspapers and supporting how critical they are to our communities.
The bill's purpose refers to including the sustainability of news businesses and independent local ones. In my riding I have a minimum of 15 papers, and some other ones that people would say are not weekly papers, in communities in my riding.
These are phenomenal pieces of communication that are important to the riding and important to the communities. We saw what was initially set out in this piece of legislation, as I came to be back on the heritage committee, and there were many amendments that could have made this piece of legislation much better, but it was not improved.
That is the challenge in being on the committee. We are trying to work through it. Our job is to improve legislation. This bill could have been improved, but it was not improved enough.
I have many community newspapers in my riding. We have had Brooks Bulletin since 1910 from one family of three generations. The Strathmore Times goes back to 1909. The Bassano Times is more recent, from 1960. The Three Capital Hills paper is 107 years old. The Vulcan Advocate is from 1913. The Drumheller Mail is from 1911.
These are long-standing weekly papers in the community. They are very important for those communities. They really were hopeful that this legislation would be something that could help them. I have talked to a lot of the papers individually and in groups. They said that we should work for them and make this a piece of legislation that will support them. They are weekly newspapers.
I know my colleague to the west of me has worked for a weekly newspaper. It is an interesting challenge. My father had a weekly newspaper that I had the opportunity to spend time working at, especially during the summers when I was not in university.
It is often a one-person or two-person operation. People are working those deadlines to get those news stories out. They are getting out in the community and taking pictures. They are rushing to make a midnight deadline so the paper can be produced and they can go home before the sun comes up. They can get that local story out and get the local activities out that need to be promoted in the community. This occurs all across the country.
My riding happens to be home to the Brooks Bandits. The Brooks Bandits are a junior hockey team. There are 132 teams in this country in many of the smaller communities. Who covers those 132 communities? It is the hardest hockey championship to win in this country. The teams are in the smaller communities, like Okotoks, Drumheller and Brooks. The Brooks Bandits have won that championship three times in the past. Who is covering that? It is not the CBC. It is not Bell Media. It is the local newspapers.
One could say that it is just local hockey players. Well, guess what? Who was the MVP in the Stanley Cup? It was Cale Makar. Where did he play? He played for the Brooks Bandits. Nobody in the major media paid any attention to him until he was the MVP. That is the level of coverage that local communities do. For the 132 teams across this country, for example, and for many people sitting in the House, those teams are covered by weekly papers.
The weekly papers often have one or two employees. One of the amendments that I was asked to work on was for the owner-reporter, which was the one reporter working there, to qualify for this. Under the legislation, there had to be two journalists, and the owner-operator could not be one of them. What nonsense for weekly newspapers. They are often ma-and-pa operations. Often the editor-owner is a writer and has one other person writing with them. We did get an amendment that reduced it from two to one and a half, but that was not enough. Bassano Times is a one-person operation of a newspaper in that community of 1,200. It is one person, and it does not qualify for this.
The legislation could have been better. It could have met the purpose that it is was set out for, but it does not. It does not do what we need for weekly papers.
I mean, we have heard already that the money was on the table. Am I out there saying that Google, Meta and Facebook should be paying? Absolutely, and we have said to put the money in a pool and let us get it negotiated. Obviously, 75% of the money is gone. People have figured out that they need to negotiate. However, it is Bell, Rogers and CBC that got 75% of the money already. I do not think the Toronto Maple Leafs and that hockey team need more money. That is not what it was for.
This was for supporting journalists at the weekly papers that are the lifeblood in our communities. Those are the reporters of those single papers who are out there on the weekend, out there on a Saturday night or a Tuesday night, and on Sunday, they are writing the stories. Those newspapers do charity advertising for charities in our communities. Communities in Bloom, which is all across this country, is an example. Local papers are writing stories about how great their communities are doing, such as Communities in Bloom, and they doing it often for free. That is how they get promoted. Weekly papers are very crucial, as is this particular one.
As many ministers have known, I have asked, “Where is the money for your advertising?” Many ministers said to me, “Well it is decided by every department where their advertising dollar goes.”
I have said, “I have had many weekly papers where 30% of their income, because they are small, used to come from government advertising, and that is gone. Where did the Canadian taxpayers' money go?”
It went outside of our country to Facebook and Google. To me, that is hypocrisy. We should be advertising in media productions and weeklies in our own country. That is where the dollars should have gone.
I support the idea of creating the fund, working at it and getting it divided up. Obviously, 75% of it could be done without any interference from the CRTC. However, the weekly paper associations have told me that they would be lucky to get $400 or $500 out of this deal a year. All that will be left are crumbs. They will be working hard to get those crumbs, which is all that is going to be left for our weekly papers. This does not make sense.
What it was set out to do could have been better, but it is not, and that is why it is a challenge for me, for our journalists and our weekly papers.
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Mr. Speaker, last week I met with representatives from independent newspapers who have concerns about Bill C-18.
The government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into foreign online advertising giants Facebook and Google, not local, independent, southern Alberta-owned weekly papers, like the Brooks Bulletin, Strathmore Times, The Chestermere Anchor and the Crowsnest Pass Herald.
Bill C-18 dictates that media companies must be “qualified Canadian journalism organizations”. Many independent papers run their own reporting, editing and publishing and do not qualify. Independents that do not qualify as “Canadian journalism organizations” also miss out on the labour tax credit and the news subscription tax credit.
Weekly papers play an important role in municipalities to inform residents in our communities. We should be supporting Canadian weekly papers, not leaving them behind in favour of billion-dollar conglomerates.
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