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.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would also like to thank the members of the committee and the witnesses. We will soon have to leave you today.
Mr. Grewal, you mentioned that the IPTV channels, broadcasting around the clock, seven days a week, constitute one of your fiercest competitors. They are taking over your readership. Is that really what you said? Can those channels go out and look for advertising revenue?
9:40 a.m.
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
I meant to say that IPTV boxes, with those TV channels that are coming up every other day, are not taking my readership away, but they are taking my advertisers away. That's the difference.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
This is precisely the question. Do they sell local advertising on IPTV?
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
I don't know about anyone else around the table here, but this is the first time I have heard about this. This IPTV channel comes out from where? Where is the programming done?
9:40 a.m.
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
They are running their programming or TV channels from a local city, from Brampton, from Toronto.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
My God. Okay, does this affect...? I guess the answer is yes, because I was wondering. To me, I think that clearly all the witnesses we have had here have told us about the advertising market slowing down for them in favour of the electronic, but for you, besides this IPTV phenomenon, I would be under the impression that your communities and your businesses have a very solid approach to talking to the audience, to talking to the community, through you. Are your sales of advertising declining?
9:40 a.m.
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
Yes, they are declining, and there's other print competition that I have. The majority of their advertisements are from so-called fortune tellers. We call them “babas” or pundits, who run their ads to tell people their fortune.
Almost 60 or 70 advertisements—almost one full section—in those weekly papers are from so-called fortune tellers, and I don't run even a single misleading ad in my newspaper. That's a principle of my media house. If they are saying that they will fix anyone's problem in 17 hours or 10 hours or so, no, I do not run those ads in my media outlets. I just run ads from local genuine business people in my newspaper. That's another blow to my media house.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I have one question to ask.
The Canadian periodical fund was set up in order to help people in newspapers and/or digital programs who face challenges in reaching their local community groups. It's there to help them. Do you think this periodical fund actually has adapted itself to suit the needs of ethnic communities? If it hasn't, what suggestions do you have that could make that change or that we should be recommending for this to really help you with your specific needs as ethnic media?
I'll ask Mr. Grewal and Mr. Kailey, and then I'll go to Yuri.
9:45 a.m.
Editor and Publisher, Canadian Punjabi Post Inc.
My media house never applied for that fund. I've heard about it. It's about $25,000 or so that we can get from the government to run our media house, which is just maybe a drop in the bucket. It doesn't change much, and there's maybe a lot of paperwork, but I never tried for that.
The suggestion I have for this committee is to start, as I said in my presentation, to subsidize the journalists who can produce Canadian content in all languages. They can be hired by us, with part of their salary paid by us, while part of their salary should be subsidized. This way, we can engage our community better with the Canadian content. That's my first suggestion.
Second, just as the government funds the CBC, there must be that sort of funding for the ethnic media papers.
I also had a suggestion about the Canadian Journalism Foundation. There should be an engagement between the ethnic media groups and the CJF. The CJF or any other organization like it must be supported in order to engage these media persons in the ethnic communities so that they will understand how important it is to provide proper information to the community. I think only one or two persons who are running media houses now are educated in media or have a journalism degree. The majority of them have just the tenth grade or the twelfth grade and they are running these media houses.
To run a barbershop, you have to have a barber's licence, but to run a daily newspaper or a radio program, which is providing such important information to the community or leading the community in a way, you don't need any kind of training. You don't need any kind of licence to run that kind of house.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
Managing Editor, New Pathway Media Group
Yes, I agree with Mr. Grewal that there might be many different methods of supporting ethnic media. You might want to think about relaxing certain criteria for the ethnic media in terms of the subsidy to make the subsidy bigger, or you might think about at least partly funding other things. I agree completely that we need professional journalists to increase our coverage to make it more professional, and you might think about probably funding some other cost items such as, I don't know, distribution, or for us to be able to print more colour pages. It's stuff like that.
Basically, any kind of help would be useful for us, because we are probably even worse funded.... Our advertising market is much smaller than it is for Punjabi media, and because it's so small, any kind of help would be useful.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
I want to thank Mr. Kailey, Mr. Grewal, and Mr. Bilinsky for helping us out today. What we heard from you is very, very interesting, and I think it gives us room for thinking about how we deal with ethnic communities. Again, thank you.
We will wait for the change, then, about a minute, for the new group to come in. I want to let the committee know that we have votes at 11:15, so we're saved by the bell, so to speak. Thank you.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Order. We now have with us the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, with Mr. Saras and Mr. Tajdolati.
Let me tell you what will happen. You will have 10 minutes between you to deliver your statements, your presentations. You can split that 10 minutes any way you like, and then we will go to questions and answers. Thank you very much. Please begin.
9:45 a.m.
Thomas Saras President and CEO, Head Office, National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada
Thank you very much for the opportunity to meet you.
Some of you, of course, I've known for centuries, although you're not as old as I am, and for some of you, I'm glad you're the new blood of Canadian politics.
The National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada represents about 800 publications from all over Canada and about 150 producers of TV and radio. The organization has a history of about 30 years. We are working for the benefit of the members of the organization, as well as making sure that Canadian interests are also served by our members.
To add to whatever the previous speakers said, I want to bring it to your attention that I sit on committees of the United Nations about media. I want to tell you there is no such thing as receiving from government official recognition in terms of being a journalist. In fact, for someone to be a journalist, it is not even required that they finish university or high school. They have done so because of the differentiations between the western world and some African countries, where sometimes journalists do not finish high school, and they are recognizing them as journalists—and I mean the United Nations. I want to bring that to your attention, because this plays a vital role in the development of the ethnic media and ethnic journalism.
Over a period of years, in 2009 and in 2013, we organized educational seminars with the help of some institutions in Toronto. We brought in people from all over Canada. That was, of course, with the support and help of Canadian Heritage, to which I want to express one more time our thanks. Another thing I want to bring to your attention is that, until five years ago, the so-called “publishers support” was aimed only at the mainstream media, either francophone or anglophone. The ethnic press was totally out of this.
Finally, in that period of about five years, I met the then minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore, who also used to be a member of the media before his public life with Parliament. I explained to him the challenges and the difficulties we were meeting, and he accepted that, and for the first time, five years ago, thanks to James, this fund was expanded to also include ethnic media publications.
In the very first year, they put it at about $1 million for the ethnic media. Let me tell you that at that time the amounts the fund was carrying were about $67 million for the magazine industry and about $23 million for the non-daily Canadian papers. From all of that fund, they gave us only $1 million.
Finally, because my members didn't know what exactly they were going to meet, they tried to get into the fund, and they got only $700,000 in total. For the rest, as always, there was a gap of $2.5 million, which was going directly to Rogers' publications such as Chatelaine or Maclean's. Maclean's was receiving $2.5 million in support, if you can call it that, and my members were receiving $8,000 or $9,000.
Last year, this fund went up for the magazines to $53,404,285. For the non-daily papers, they distributed $15,433,313. From those amounts, we received $700,000 for the ethnic magazines—for some of them, I put it around—and about $700,000 for the non-daily papers. The rest, about $70 million, again went to the so-called mainstream media.
Last year, we discussed this situation time and again with the authorities at Canadian Heritage. In a multicultural society, this does not seem to be very fair.
I'm doing this job. I'm a journalist, and I've been a publisher for 50 years. As a matter of fact, I don't have a house. Many others can't have.... I don't know how I survived over the period of 50 years. We discussed that. Canadian Heritage finally came out and said they would try a survey to see what exactly they were going to do. A survey was done by Canadian Heritage, and the Carleton University school of journalism conducted the survey.
10 a.m.
Liberal
10 a.m.
President and CEO, Head Office, National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada
They came out and said that, as well as the mainstream media, the ethnic press should be supported by the Canadian government. I have the executive summary here. I can leave it with you, Madam Chair, if you wish. They came out with recommendations that we should be more active in the sphere of Canadian support. That's how the situation is today.
Previously, I heard that we were asking for support from the government. Let me tell you that three years ago, each publication was receiving about $8,000 in government advertisements. During the last two years of the previous government, we didn't receive even a penny. I met the Prime Minister and explained to him how vital even that penny is to the ethnic press, but it seemed that the environment of the PMO was not convinced about that, and we didn't receive anything.
The problem is that I don't know the policy of the new government or the new minister. All I know is that if you are not going to help the ethnic press, the ethnic press eventually is going to die, as it is dying daily.
10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Mr. Saras. We have finished your 10 minutes.
Now I will go to a question and answer period. Each person will have seven minutes. That means seven minutes for questions and answers, so please, everyone, be as concise as you can in either one.
Mr. Vandal will start for the Liberals.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Saras.
One of the themes of these hearings is how the concentration of media ownership affects different sectors. Could you tell us if your sector is affected by media concentration in Canada?
10 a.m.
President and CEO, Head Office, National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada
I believe that we are the only democratic media outlets. If you go to the mainstream media, five families control the whole anglophone Canadian media. To some extent, they even interfere with the francophone media.
In our case, each one of us has his own outlet. He is working independently and trying his best to serve his community and Canada as a country. The problem we are doing is that.... We are receiving news from the Canadian government, and we give that news to our communities in the mother tongue of the publication, whatever it is. On the other hand, we are bringing the problems of the community to the attention of the Canadian authorities or the Canadian government.
This problem has nothing to do with us. They are doing everything for the dollar. My people are doing it not because of the dollar, but because they spent probably months and years in jail back home, and here they want to continue to do something that they loved and continue to love.
Thank you.