Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Motion No. M-423 which states:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of establishing a commission of inquiry to examine the concentration of print media in Canada.
I must start by registering a regret. My regret is that this motion does not go far enough. It does not go past the discussion stage to the action stage, to the legislation stage.
I for one, and I speak for the New Democratic Party, believe that we need media concentration legislation in this country now and that we needed it 20 years ago. Media concentration has been studied and studied. I have two studies here in front of me which I will refer to momentarily.
To show how long media concentration has been debated in this Chamber I point to Hansard of December 11, 1970.
Tommy Douglas rose to ask Pierre Trudeau about the three volume, 1117 page study which was the Senate special committee on mass media report, sometimes called the Davie report:
In view of the findings of this committee that the profits earned by media corporations, that is by broadcasters and publishers, are, in their words, extraordinary and astonishing, and in view of the evidence of the growing concentration of power in the hands of fewer and fewer media corporations, what actions does the government propose to take?
While Hansard does not record gestures, the answer was an obvious shrug.
The Liberals in the Senate spent over two years studying corporate concentration in the media. They discovered it was a problem requiring government action. The Liberal response was do nothing.
In 1980 another study was launched by the Liberals, the Kent commission, this time in response to the simultaneous shutdown of the Ottawa Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune , wiping out over 185 years of journalist tradition in Canada.
This eloquent report starts with a quote from a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States:
Freedom of the press from government interference does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests.
The royal commission on newspapers reported in 1981 and, surprise, media concentration is a problem requiring government action, not more studies.
Specifically, the Kent commission called for halts to further concentration, with limited divestment relating to cross ownership in different medias and the divestment of the Globe and Mail from Thomson. It said that a newspaper owner should either be national or local.
Another key set of recommendations in the Kent report was designed to protect the editorial independence of the newsroom from the interference of the boardroom through the use of an independent board to hire the editor of the local paper and the establishment of a central press panel which would oversee the independence of the newsroom. The government response at the time, a Liberal government headed by Pierre Trudeau, was a little more encouraging. It flew trial balloons in the form of a draft bill on the watered down press council with limited divestment. Then it blew the balloons out of the water and did nothing.
It is worth noting that the minister who tried to do something about this, James Fleming, was removed from cabinet. He then tried to have a private member's bill pass on the same topic. It was a bill that was strongly opposed by his Liberal colleagues. I notice a pattern of behaviour here. Liberals study and then Liberals do nothing.
The problem of corporate concentration in the media is in crisis. Conrad Black, the Star fighting for the Sun , Global and Shaw carving up WIC, these events will continue to escalate unless the government acts now. Unless the government does something now and unless the government makes a real commitment to protect Canadian media at upcoming trade talks, Canada can expect to see the eventual takeover of media giants like Baton and Global by American giants like NBC and CBS. We need government action now.
Where do we start? I spoke to Tom Kent in recent weeks. When he wrote his report 34% of the daily newspapers were in the hands of one chain. With the launch of the National Post Conrad Black now owns about 55% of Canadian dailies. Given that, I asked Tom Kent what recommendations from his report were still doable given the rise of Conrad Black and since then the Star wars in Toronto. Mr. Kent felt that the future he predicted had come to pass and therefore the divestment options are probably not available. He strongly felt that the setting up of independent committees in the newsrooms to protect the paper from boardroom interference was still doable but also more important than ever.
I also spoke with people who know the media business like Gail Lem, a former journalist and now an organizer for the communications workers, and David Robinson from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It is clear that there are things that the government must do now to control the situation.
The government can and should ban newspaper owners from owning broadcasting corporations. The government should also ban any further concentration and cross ownership dealing with the weekly newspaper sector.
The government can implement the sections of the Kent commission dealing with the press rights panel and the newspaper advisory committees for all daily newspapers. This does not cause government interference. It protects editorial independence of content.
The government can place controls on the foreign ownership of all media companies in Canada.
The government must re-fund the CBC so that Canadians have a strong independent standard voice across the country.
The government can and must encourage community organizations of all types to participate and buy their local weekly papers, stopping the massive concentration of weekly chains and making weeklies truly community papers.
The government can instruct the CRTC to force cable stations to have a higher level of standard, community run programming on its community channels.
The CRTC, as part of the current exercise it is conducting, should also be asked to advise the government on controls which may be placed on the cross ownership of media corporations as they relate to the new medias which are emerging daily on our computer screens.
In conclusion, I regret that I will not be able to support Motion M-423 because it falls far short of what is required now. I believe that the member moving this motion is sincere and concerned. I also think Canadians are concerned about media concentration. We all want a free press. We all know, almost instinctively, that having the ownership of the press in a very few hands threatens freedom of the press. What we need now however is not more study but action.