Evidence of meeting #14 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
They will have to wait to respond to that, Ms. Dabrusin. Your seven minutes are up.
You can respond to that on the next round.
We're going to move now to a three-minute round only. We'll start with Mr. Van Loan.
If there's a Liberal who wants to take advantage of those three minutes, please let me know.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Mr. Grewal, you talked about an attack in 2009. What was the motivation behind it?
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
We still don't know. The police have never—
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
At that time, there were a couple of issues going on in the community. There are always conflicts. There is a conflict between the the Indian and Sikh communities from a long time ago. There were a couple of issues about that going on at the time. There was some pressure to cover those issues, and some people thought that I wasn't covering them in the way that they were thinking about it.
I believe it's that, but I still don't know. The police are still investigating. I get in touch with them regularly to ask if they've found anything. I'm getting no answers.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
I'm wondering about national ad agencies. Do either of you have them in your organizations? If I'm Procter & Gamble, there is one national ad agency that looks after my account. Do you have a national sales rep to deal with this?
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
I do have two sales reps who deal with them, but still I fail to get the corporate sector. Here's what has happened in the past. When we we start getting the corporate or national ads in our paper, another paper, an English paper, would pop up in the community, and their marketing team would be much stronger than ours. Their paper is run by the biggest media group and it would start saying that theirs is the South Asian newspaper that covers the South Asian news and goes to the South Asian houses. They took that over. When we were were to get national advertisements, there was another one. The national mainstream media started their own South Asian newspapers, then we failed in front of them.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Mr. Bilinsky, what about your organization? Do you have a national ad agency that can look after your newspaper?
Managing Editor, New Pathway Media Group
I would imagine so. We have probably a greater disconnect from the national advertising market than the Punjabi media. I would encourage the national advertisers to look more closely at ethnic markets such as the Ukrainian one, because there is some untapped potential. I think there is a big opportunity in terms of advertising and coverage in the ethnic community media, because the mainstream market is so competitive and ethnic community issues are covered much less. They're—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'm sorry about that.
Now we have Mr. Samson for the Liberals for three minutes, please.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses for coming to make these presentations today. It gives us a very important perspective for our study.
I have a question that you can answer yes or no, as long as you provide some examples to back up those two possible replies. Do you find that CBC/Radio-Canada programming reflects the points of view of the various ethnic communities?
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Can you give us some examples? Are those points of view less well reflected now? Were they previously? Can you comment on that further for us?
Associate Editor, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
I think they are making a hard effort to get to the core of what the community issues are. We do not have resources to get to the core of the bigger issues. They have difficulty in reaching out to ethnic communities. They don't understand the nuances of the ethnic communities and how we behave. Our cultural behaviour is still outside of their comprehension.
Managing Editor, New Pathway Media Group
There needs to be more of a two-way street, I think, between the mainstream media and the ethnic media.
No, they have not covered the ethnic communities a lot. They can turn to us for explanations, for the details, or they can do it themselves, but they have not looked into our communities very closely.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Madam Chair, can I ask another quick question?
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Mr. Kailey, can you tell us what you think is the biggest challenge that the ethnic media faces?
Associate Editor, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
I think the hardest threat or the challenge to our survival is the revenue. We do not have enough resources to sustain us. Whatever resources that are at our disposal today, they're failing us. Every single day, they are shrinking.
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
For us, it becomes more passionate. We're doing it passionately rather than just looking to make a lot of money out of it. This is the way I look at my media house now. I cannot make a lot of money if we're running just this ethnic media, but it's my passion to connect my community to the mainstream community, to bridge the gap. That's what I've been doing for the past 15 years through this daily newspaper.