Canadian Heritage Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[Catherine Edwards]

These digital media centres would teach not just audio and video production, as in the past, but also web design and gaming. Their content would be distributed not just on cable TV, but over the air, on satellite, on the Internet, and on mobile devices. This $150 million is enough to fund 250 digital community media centres, restoring service to all communities of 5,000 people or more and to many smaller communities as well.

The CRTC did not heed our request. To prepare for the CRTC's most recent local and community TV policy review, we teamed up with community radio, as well as online community media and the gaming community, to propose a single coherent policy to bring community media in Canada into the 20th century. This research and policy proposal was distributed to you in both official languages.

The relevance of digital community media centres to your study is threefold.

First is skills training. The mere existence of the Internet doesn't mean that everyone knows how to use it or that journalistic standards are met. The community sector can produce an hour of content for less than one-tenth of what it costs in the public and private sectors—$500 compared to over $6,000—because we leverage volunteer labour and community infrastructure, but it still takes facilities and professionals to train the public.

Second is more media for more communities. At the recent CRTC hearing on local and community TV, we heard that there are public and private TV stations in just 59 Canadian cities, almost all having populations over 100,000. Even if a news fund were created from the $150 million currently earmarked to support community TV, for example, as some parties have proposed, it would primarily support existing big-city stations, and everyone acknowledged that such a fund would at best be a band-aid, not a long-term solution.

CACTUS's proposal to create a community access media fund, on the other hand, would lead to the reopening of not just television studios but full multimedia production and training centres in almost 200 Canadian population centres in addition to the 59 biggest. No other sector can make this commitment to you. Community media can serve francophone minorities in small to mid-sized markets and in at least some of our more than 500 first nations. The 2012 report from this committee, entitled “Emerging and Digital Media: Opportunities and Challenges”, endorsed our call for digital community media centres.

Third, it would restore diversity. As you've heard from Professor Winseck, Canada's media ownership concentration is extremely high. The more concentrated it has become, the less sense it has made for the same large entities to control the so-called community sector, whose mandate is to provide the very diversity of voices that were lacking.

Our recommendation is that Canada needs a new vision for community media that will equip our citizens and youth with the digital media skills they need to generate their own content, to compete internationally, and to have meaningful dialogue with one another that's not limited to 132 characters on Twitter or fragmented platforms such as Facebook. The community sector offers the biggest bang for the buck to reflect our communities in all media. The money is there; it just needs to be deployed effectively.

Therefore, our recommendations are, first, the Department of Canadian Heritage should develop a digital community media policy for Canada that includes old and new media; second, we should create a community access media fund to support community-operated digital production centres; third, we should direct BDU subscriber revenues for community TV to this fund; and last, the service delivery via the fund and community centres needs to be coordinated with four other ministries, which include the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Economic Development and the Ministry of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour regarding the digital skills training mandate, the Ministry of Democratic Institutions regarding the civic and democratic mandate of community media; and finally, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Communities, because community media centres represent significant infrastructure.

Thanks a lot for doing this study. It is much needed. We look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to the question and answer period. It begins with seven-minute questions from everyone, but that includes the answers, so I'm hoping that everybody will be as concise as they can.

We begin with Mr. Breton from the Liberals.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses for joining us and for their presentations.

Some situations are concerning. Ms. Blais and Mr. Bolduc, you mentioned the decline in media sales—

[Catherine Edwards]

Could I have an earpiece, please? I can't hear you.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

You mentioned the drop in sales and the importance of local news for our democracy. I certainly share your viewpoint on that. I live in the Eastern Townships. My riding is in the region, which has traditional local media. I am very concerned to hear that there is 88% less local content in our media.

We have 20 municipal councils. All the community organizations are involved in fundraising activities and our athletes are accomplished. However, we hear increasingly less about what is happening in our community. Clearly, we hear about what is happening in Quebec City, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Montreal's south shore, the major urban centres and so on.

Could you elaborate on the main solutions that could be implemented right away? You talked about a tax credit, but is there anything else you can think of?

[Denis Bolduc]

Actually, we must find a way to encourage the media to produce local news. We are seeing the same trend as you have so accurately described, and we are concerned. For a number of years, we have seen the importance of local news decline.

I started in 1985 as a journalist for the Journal de Québec. I stopped in 2011. At the time, whether for the Journal de Québec, Le Soleil daily newspaper, the TVA network or Radio-Canada, we would go throughout the regions, in the Lower St. Lawrence or elsewhere, to cover local news. Today, it takes major news to have reporters leave cities and urban centres. Otherwise, they no longer go out. We share your concern on this.

By looking at the situation, we see that incentives are a must. Companies talk about money. So we must find a financial incentive, which is why we are proposing the simple solution of a tax credit. If, in terms of local advertising in traditional media, a company in a small town has an advertising budget of $50,000 a year and receives a tax credit of, say, 20%, perhaps it will still choose to invest its $50,000 of advertising plus the 20% in more advertising. That would get the wheels in motion and encourage media to produce local news.

I think the incentive must be financial, which is why we are proposing those kinds of solutions. It is all well and good to talk about principles, but we are concerned about the quality of the information. That is why we mentioned a code of ethics in our brief. Those things must go hand in hand.

Businesses are increasingly asking news professionals to produce more news on several platforms and to spend less and less time on fact-checking the news, but to increasingly feed content to all sorts of platforms. For our part, we talk about the quality of information, which is not a major point of discussion for big businesses. We are concerned about quantity, but we are also concerned about quality.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

We know that the media and telecommunications sector is undergoing an incredible technological transformation and the use of digital technology is growing. There are two sides to that. It is easy to bring information to our regions from everywhere that has nothing to do with the people. At the same time, the new generations, and even we, are consuming more and more of it.

What is the impact of digital platforms? How do you see this growth in relation to the broadcasting of local information?

[Nathalie Blais, Research Advisor, SCFP-Québec, Canadian Union of Public Employees]

Let's first distinguish between digital delivery, broadcasting on digital platforms and digital production.

We have been producing digital content for 20 years. So there is no issue with the production. The issue has more to do with the variety of digital platforms that must be provided with content. As Denis said earlier, it takes a single journalist a lot longer to feed content to a number of platforms than to produce a piece of news and deliver it on media such as television or a newspaper. Journalists have less time to do all the fact checking.

There is also the technological impact. Given that devices are easier to use, journalists are now also camera operators and editors. Sometimes, they are asked to broadcast remotely. We can only imagine what that means. In the past, this meant that they spent an entire day on a story, but now, the story takes one-third of the day. They spend the rest of the time on editing, sending the story and making sure the technology works. So once again, there is a loss of quality.

That is why we are proposing a payroll tax credit. Since their revenue is dropping, the media outlets are cutting jobs and rationalizing by using the technology at the expense of quality. It's not because of bad intentions. It's because the system is leading information in that direction.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now I would like to go to Mr. Waugh, for the Conservatives.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for these community television policies, all 170 pages at 2 a.m. today.

I've been adamant in these meetings about dollars to dimes—and we are hearing this every time somebody comes to this table—and the heritage must fit in somewhere. We just heard from Bell. We all know the situation there.

I will say for Bell, if you don't mind me saying so, that they did buy CTV for one thing: content. They need content. That's why they bought it, so don't feel sorry for them. There was a reason why they bought CTV: because they needed content for people, for their websites and their television stations and so on.

Ms. Blais, you talked about a payroll tax credit. How is that going to work? Just bring us up to date.

Everybody who has come to the heritage committee wants a handout. Whether or not it's the local news improvement fund that they had, everybody wants a pot of money, and I don't know where it's coming from. Now you've proposed another one here today. Fill us in on this, because that is the issue that we have faced here for three months from people. It's that there is or isn't a pot of money, but we need another pot of money. Where is this payroll tax credit coming from?

[Nathalie Blais]

The concept is simple.

We wanted to get away from the idea of a direct fund for news. We then looked for a solution that would provide funding based on responsibilities. Yes, we are proposing a tax credit. The money would come from the government, but the tax credit would lead to results.

We see that there are fewer and fewer journalists in the regions. They cover what is happening around news stations, but they are less and less likely to step away from the station or newspaper. To encourage this regional coverage, we are proposing a payroll tax credit. Right now, in the media outlets where some of our members are working, local staff are losing their jobs for the sake of centralizing production. For instance, in the next few months, TVA will centralize production in Montreal for the Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières stations. As a result, people in the regions will be losing their jobs.

If jobs are lost in the regions, their economy is weaker. That is why we believe that a tax credit, even if it meant the government spending more money, would be an asset for the regional economy.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I would agree with you that the quality of news reporting has slipped over the years. I would absolutely agree with each and every one of you who is talking about that. Does community media fill that? I see a revival in community newspapers across this country, and local radio is doing very well in most communities. Where do you fit in on this?

[Catherine Edwards]

The purpose of community media is exactly to enable, to be that bridge for ordinary citizens who are producing content—we see that all over the Internet—but content that is not necessarily properly researched, that does not necessarily meet journalistic standards, and does not necessarily have good production values and quality. The purpose of a community media organization—for example, in your riding—would be to enable people who want to create content to learn how to make a good story, to research it properly, and to allow both sides of the story to be reported. They can come in and learn those skills, learn how to use cameras, and learn to post it on a web page properly footnoted.

That's what community media does. It enables the average person to meet those journalistic standards. That wouldn't happen on its own with just an open and free Internet. That's why community media organizations are still tremendously important. Not everybody has those skills. Even the tech-savvy kids who run around with camcorders, as you say, don't necessarily have journalistic training. That's what community media provides.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Is it a relic or a renewal?

[Catherine Edwards]

It's definitely about renewal. It's every bit as relevant as ever. Back in the day, when community radio and TV were instituted, they were teaching media skills training on the latest media of the day at that time. It's even more complex now. You still need to know how to create audio, to edit, and to shoot and edit video content, whether you're distributing it on television or in all these different platforms that Nathalie talked about.

Now we have genuinely new media. Gaming has taken over in terms of the size of the film and television industries in Canada. There are new skills and there are new platforms and tools that are going to keep proliferating. For Canadians to keep up with that, to create their own content but also just to do things like fill out their tax return, there has to be somewhere where people can go for lifelong digital media skills training at the community level.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Who would you partner with? Or do you need to partner with anybody? I'm just looking at my community. The food bank does a lot of it. They deal with that.

Do you need to partner with anyone?

[Catherine Edwards]

Yes, absolutely.

For example, John Savage is sitting in the back here. He's with the Ontario Library Association. They're introducing “makerspaces”. You may have seen them in recent years. I see them more in Ontario than in Quebec. In the last four or five years, public libraries have been offering green screens and cameras to the public, and you can borrow editing systems.

The missing link is that they don't have the staff or the vision for a 24-7 production schedule to reflect a community back to itself on a consistent basis. It's still a bit ad hoc.

Municipalities need to have seats on community media centres, and local cultural organizations and professional associations need to have seats on community media centres to give them artistic and journalistic leadership. The beauty of a community-run not-for-profit is that you can get all the important local associations involved, including the chamber of commerce, for example, so that the community resource can be leveraged to serve the whole community.

[André Desrochers]

In Quebec, to support the core mandate of community television, the Government of Quebec provides financial support to community television stations that produce four hours of news programming a week. The amount of that support is between $25,000 and $35,000. Community television stations that broadcast on the Internet receive between $8,000 and $10,000 a year in financial support.

Our proposal is to create community media centres that bring together all the platforms, including radio and television. In the Sherbrooke area, where there is currently only one community television station, in Waterloo, and MAtv that produces some news content, there could be as many as four community media centres in the Estrie region that could reach out to the entire world. At that point, local news could reach a larger number of people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Desrochers.

That's it. We're finished, Mr. Waugh.

Mr. Nantel, you have seven minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for being here this morning. You have presented a very different view from that of the folks from Bell who gave their presentation earlier. This all makes a lot of sense and needs to be addressed.

Mr. Desrochers, I find your idea very interesting. This is not the first time we have heard about it. In my region, community media have this type of coming together. It is often an issue to find a place and so on.

Don't you think a choice needs to be made regarding the coming together? Potentially, by coming together in urban regions, we move away from local communities. Isn't the crux of the issue supporting the coming together without creating white elephants so that we don't ultimately end up with one single community television station for a large area such as the Outaouais?

[André Desrochers]

Our plan is to set up structures that respect the choices of communities. For a community of 5,000 residents that brings together perhaps four or five municipalities such as the Qu'Appelle River valley in Saskatchewan, the idea is not for community media to become big MAtvs and to dilute local news, but rather for the communities to take charge and, if they wish, their community television and radio stations can work together. We don't want to impose anything. We want community media to agree on what they want and that, in a region such as Vaudreuil-Soulanges, they can partner up. If the neighbouring region wants to be separate, that's fine too.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Furthermore, the mandate of Canadian Heritage is to support this type of initiative to weave the social fabric of communities. I invite you to visit the site GoGaspe.com. Perhaps you have not heard of it, but we have received representatives from anglophone community media who told us about the site GoGaspe.com. That is a similar type of centre, but more virtual.

I would now like to turn to the officials from CUPE.

As I just said, this initiative seems to fall under the responsibility of Canadian Heritage. What strikes me about you who represent the workers is that we have an industry that is hurting. We may talk about communities that are underserved locally, but the industry is hurting. In an industry, there are employees and you are representing them. I am constantly criticizing the failure of the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to address industry challenges. We are not talking about heritage and culture, we are talking about employees who used to do a certain job every week and who suddenly must shift to another type of job. If there is a sector in which people's quality of life has changed, and the people have moved from a cushy job to freelance and jump from one contract to another, yours is it, isn't it?

[Denis Bolduc]

Yes, and increasingly the media are trying to use subcontractors and to ensure that jobs aren't unionized anymore. Most of these places are unionized. We've been seeing this trend for several years now. Information is not a product. It isn't like Hygrade sausages. Everyone wants them, everyone eats them, but when we stop eating them, nobody wants them anymore. We can draw a parallel like that.

When you start to neglect local news for primarily financial reasons, you convince yourself that people want news about the province or the whole country. When we requested this study at the start of the year, we had doubts that the local news would have an impact on participation in the municipal elections. We verified it, and we confirmed that it was possible to establish a correlation between the quantity of news produced locally and the rate of participation in municipal elections. The document even indicates that the same may be true in federal elections. We compared 2011 to 2015, and we noted a trend, but that it was not proven to the same extent.

There was an historic dispute at the Journal de Québec, a 16-month lockout. You mentioned that people in media are suffering right now. Yes, that's true in the case of the Journal de Québec. There was also a dispute at the Journal de Montréal afterwards. There have been a lot of unions in the media industry in Quebec that might not have had disputes, but that were asked to make major concessions. They made them and now have to work in a very different environment. They are facing increasing pressure, and the possibility of having people from the outside, who are not unionized or subject to a code or ethics or who are less—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one and a half minutes.