Canadian Heritage committee  I'm afraid I don't know enough to answer. It may be that there's a case that it's the best means of reaching Canadians with information that the Government of Canada wants to communicate, in which case the trade-off there might make it worth continuing to use those platforms to reach Canadians in the same way that The Hub and others want to reach Canadians.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would just say two things in response, Madam Chair. First of all, I'm slightly more optimistic that the industry is transforming itself in a way that connects it more closely to its audience. I think that extends from smaller organizations like The Hub to some of the major legacy players, which may have moved only slowly in this direction but are now moving in it.

Canadian Heritage committee  If that is a predacious problem in the market, then I think there will possibly be a role for public policy and obviously a role for the players in addressing it. Again, I find myself more optimistic. I subscribe to multiple outlets, precisely because I want to read what they're producing.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would say there are inherent trade-offs to everything we're talking about. I think the other witnesses raised serious challenges that policy-makers in Canada and elsewhere ought to focus on. There are trade-offs in all the choices before us. One upside that I wouldn't want to go underexplored or underconsidered is the democratization of news that has occurred over the past 20 years.

Canadian Heritage committee  Respectfully, I think we precisely don't know where we're going. That is why government should be cautious about intervening in the market in favour of one particular content format or business model or approach to journalism. This process is uncertain. I couldn't begin to tell you what future sustainable journalistic business models will look like.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the answer is yes. We're building large-scale philanthropy from foundations that support us, and we're also increasingly building a network of individual donors and subscribers who want to pay for our content. We think that's not only a sustainable business but also a useful means of ensuring that our content is responsive to and reflects what audiences want.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would say two things in response, Ms. Chair. First of all, we can talk about the risks to the public's trust of media organizations, which, on one hand, are responsible for holding to account governments and big tech for many of the reasons outlined by the two other witnesses.

Canadian Heritage committee  One of the challenges, MP Thomas, that news start-ups face in terms of building an audience and building awareness in the marketplace is, of course, finding different channels to reach that audience. Up until now, for The Hub—and I think others have testified similarly—Meta and Google have been a major part of that process.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Ms. Chair. Thank you, committee members, for inviting me to participate today. As the chair said, I present to you in my capacity as editor-at-large at The Hub, an online Canadian news organization that I co-founded nearly three years ago. We publish a combination of opinion commentary, standard news reporting and a series of podcasts.