Evidence of meeting #29 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 media.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Geist  Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
April Lindgren  Principal Investigator, Professor, Local News Research Project, Ryerson University School of Journalism, As an Individual
Jean-François Bernier  Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
Helen Kennedy  Director General, Broadcasting and Digital Communications, Department of Canadian Heritage
Luc Marchand  Director, Periodical Publishing Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage

11:35 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Right at the end of your presentation, you talked about the line of inquiry into why communities group together. Can you elaborate? I don't think you had a chance to finish that one.

11:35 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

Sure. I was hoping for a question, actually.

Lines of inquiry we're going to pursue come out of studies that have been done elsewhere. In the United States, for instance, one of the things they've noted is that living in the shadow of a major media centre might be a problem. For instance, work that's been done on New Jersey and the problems they have there and the local media ecosystem there suggests that having New York overshadow you and swoop in to do an interesting story once in a while may have some bearing on undermining the vibrancy of local media. They might siphon off some advertising potential. That could be one problem. It could be something that's happening in Brampton and Oakville, and it's something we're going to take a look at.

Income also seems to be an indicator of how well a local community is served. Again, in New Jersey, they did a study of Newark, which has a poorer community that is more diverse, a middle-income less diverse community, and then a more affluent community with very little diversity. The more affluent community had more local news sources and more local news coverage that was focused on that community and relevant to that community in terms of critical information needs. There's been a list drawn up of what the critical information needs are, and they measured that.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

You can elaborate later, I'm hoping. Thanks very much.

Now we go to Mr. Nantel from the NDP.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Lindgren, feel free to speak in English. I don't mind.

If you have a thought to finish, please don't hesitate.

11:40 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

I just wanted to point out a couple of other factors that might have bearing on how well a community is served.

There's been work in Europe that suggests that the existence of a good local newspaper might be a factor in the quality of the local news available. This research was done in Denmark. They said that newspapers aren't necessarily mainstream media anymore, because the vast majority of people don't subscribe to newspapers anymore, don't rely upon them necessarily as an information source, and don't even think of them as an important information source, but the argument is that newspapers actually play what is called a keystone role in the health of the local news system.

By that, they meant that they cover political affairs more than the television station does, more than the radio stations do, and in many cases more than most online sites do. They're providing that sort of base record of what's happened in the community. Moreover, their coverage is often picked up by the local radio, the local television, and potentially local online sites. They're not major players in terms of circulation, but they are players in terms of influencing what's happening and the vibrancy of the local news coverage in that area.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

I understand what you are saying about the mushroom effect. In Longueuil, which is in my riding, there is a community radio station, a newspaper, a community newspaper, radio and community television. They are all under Montreal's mushroom. I look at my local newspapers, and I have actually brought a few copies.

I would like to ask you whether our journalists are prepared to face that environment, which is very different from what it was when I was at Concordia University, 30 years ago. Are courses provided to explain to young people that they will not have a job with a pension plan for 25 years, for life, at the same place, as their professors may have had?

Could you give me a brief answer?

11:40 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

It's true that current journalism is different for many young people starting out today, but we do offer them training that is different from what they used to get.

I'm teaching a course to new master's students. For part of the stories they're doing for me this term—first of all, it's covering a local award in the city of Toronto—they're going to be tweeting a story as well as reporting on it, and they're going to be shooting video as well as reporting on it.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

They're multi-tasking.

11:40 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

Absolutely. They're learning how to multi-task.

We also have a course on entrepreneurialism. It's teaching them how to be entrepreneurs in their own right. There are lots of examples of opportunities in the news business that we never knew existed five years ago.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

We're so much in a rush, and we have so little time. I hope I will have a second chance to speak to Mr. Geist, but the one thing I need to ask you is how the NewsKamloops site came to be closed. If I'm not mistaken, there was some local hope for it as a news hub.

11:40 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

It was a local news reporting site. It was started by some former journalists who worked for the newspaper. I don't know. I haven't had a chance to talk to any of them yet, but I'm assuming it had to do with the financial viability.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

Now I'll come back to Mr. Geist.

Thank you, Mr. Geist, for being here.

Obviously, you know your stuff. You have been a reference for many people who are observing or who are players in the market.

For many industry people, you are among those who have adopted the “if you can't beat them, join them” approach. The idea is that the system is coming, digitalization is coming, borders are crumbling, and so protectionism must be set aside.

As we have seen, this study has been of great interest to many people. That has been the case with industries because it has to do with jobs, and on our side, we have a market that is currently being overtaken by international companies. I would like to point out in passing that, since our last meeting, ADISQ has requested support so that it could deal with its current situation with streaming content. Rogers is basically turning to online activities and trying to get rid of Châtelaine and L'actualité, which are intended for markets that are less profitable for the company because those markets are smaller.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

You have two minutes.

11:45 a.m.

NDP

Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC

Mr. Geist, yesterday's newspapers talked about the Conseil québécois du commerce de détail, which was in Ottawa. The story was covered in Le Devoir, Le Droit and Le Soleil. Everyone is currently reeling from these paradigm shifts.

In the 1970s, quotas were proposed for broadcasting, news visibility, current events and culture. Back then, would you have liked your industry and our cultural distinction to be protected from the rest of the world, or would you have said, if you can't beat them, join them?

11:45 a.m.

Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Michael Geist

Thanks for the question.

It's hard to know what I would have said about it when I was eight years old. I don't know if I'm sure what I would have said in protecting some of the Canadian institutions you're referring to.

I think, though, that where we adopted more protectionist measures or measures that recognized a scarcity of either availability of, let's say, airwaves or things like that, important national policies and priorities needed to be reflected in the system when you had those limitations built in. It was unsurprising, I think, and largely appropriate to try to establish some measures to ensure that Canadians would see their country reflected in a system where there were those limitations.

What has changed in the decades since we adopted many of those policies is that, as everyone knows, we are in an era of abundance, not of scarcity. The fact is that there is in a sense too much choice, which then proliferates or disperses the potential revenues to so many players that it makes it difficult for certain individuals to succeed, at least in the way they did before. It is unquestionably transformative and represents a real challenge. I think it's also still at a really early stage, even when you look at those various headlines.

I see a lot of news that can be seen as quite discouraging, and it certainly is for many. At the same time, it suggests that what we are seeing is a lot of experimentation. We are at early days here. Coming in with new legislative solutions at a very early stage of trying to figure this out is one of the things I'm trying to caution against.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

Thank you very much, Dr. Geist.

We go now to Mr. O'Regan for the Liberals.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Seamus O'Regan Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL

Thank you.

Let me pick up from where my colleague from the NDP was talking about the system in shock.

Failing John Oliver from HBO's Last Week Tonight appearing before this committee, I'll quote him on a superb piece that he did on the future of journalism, in which he said:

Now that level of confidence is almost tempting fate. He is like a citizen of Pompeii saying, “what I love about this city is how volcano proof it is.” Not a year goes by without our having to have our horrified reactions captured in ash forever.

He brings up a very good point about the importance of local news, which he describes as the media. He says:

It's pretty obvious without newspapers around to cite. TV news would just be Wolf Blitzer endlessly batting a ball of yarn around....The media is a food chain that would fall apart without local newspapers.

This is a good way to look at how often newspapers are cited and where stories begin.

What I found more chilling, and he cited this, was a similar hearing that is happening south of the border at Congress. David Simon appeared. He is the creator of the critically acclaimed show The Wire. He was a beat reporter at city hall in Baltimore before that. He never lost those lessons. His description is more chilling. He says:

The next 10 or 15 years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption. It is going to be one of the great times to be a corrupt politician.

His argument is that unless you're at that level where property is zoned, where development is determined, then you're not going to figure out the rest of it. I know myself that I can't watch Spotlight. I haven't got through it. I find it too frustrating, because that in-depth investigative journalism that's incredibly important to a democracy doesn't exist anymore.

John Oliver said:

A big part of the blame for this industry’s decline is on us and our unwillingness to pay for the work journalists produce. We’ve just grown accustomed to getting our news for free...Sooner than later, we’re going to have pay for journalism, or we are all going to pay for it.

It does come back to a point that we spoke of earlier, and that's revenue. When we talk about copyright, and as my colleague was speaking of, an aggregation, I think any journalist wants his or her pieces to be read or to be seen or to be heard as much as possible. As you've said, that's not the issue; the issue is how you make a living from it. How do you pay for excellent journalism?

I congratulate you both on your presentations today. Yours have been some of the most substantive we've heard. The difficulty we're having is attempting to square that circle. It's a question of “show me the money”.

Do you have any further thoughts on revenue particularly?

11:50 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

There doesn't appear to be, at this stage anyway, a single magic bullet, and I doubt that one is on the way.

You've heard all the suggestions, such as tax changes in charitable status for foundations. In the United States, there is quite a bit of experimentation going on with foundation funding, trying to figure out how to create more sustainable local news ecosystems in different communities. However, the approach they're taking is not to subsidize the production of news, but to subsidize experiments in creating more sustainable business models.

You can subsidize the news, and then when you stop subsidizing the production of news, the whole thing falls apart. The idea and the approach they're taking is to subsidize experiments in, for instance, something as simple as creating a document and a website on basic media law that local start-ups for online organizations can go to.

Those are sort of microscopic interventions, but that's the level of experimentation that's happening out there and the thinking about how to approach this problem while the whole business model issue is still being worked out.

11:50 a.m.

Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Michael Geist

To be honest, your question gives me almost a sense of déjà vu. I appeared before lots of committees when we were debating copyright for the better part of a decade. That question was essentially the same one that was being posed by the music industry or by the movie industry, something like, “Can't you do something about copyright to save us?”

It turned out that we did reform copyright, but in the successes that we've started to see in some of those sectors, whether on the video side or the streaming services—recognizing that there are still concerns about allocation—the fact that business models began to emerge ultimately had practically nothing to do with copyright.

There's been the suggestion that somehow copyright fixes a revenue problem in which the systemic problems are far deeper and have very little to do with control over your product. Some believe that is what copyright tries to do, although I think it's much more about balance. It isn't copyright that fixes these issues. There is the notion that if only we provided stronger protection for people who are writing, there would be new jobs. The systemic problems that I've tried to articulate and that this committee has heard for the last number of months that underlie what's taking place—more choice, more possibilities, and this disaggregation of revenue going out to so many places—that's not fixed by copyright. I think it is fixed, or at least addressed in part, through some of this experimentation when we begin to see some of the kind of journalism that you're talking about, though we don't necessarily associate it solely with a newspaper.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Seamus O'Regan Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL

Ms. Lindgren, first I want to thank you. We've heard lots of evidence of a particular kind, but you've given us very recent and empirical data, which is key. It will figure into our final report. There's no question about that.

As an educator, you spoke about the different ways in which you're teaching journalism students. My concern is whether there is a marketplace for that. Is there a financial reward for the advancements they make in journalism school, albeit an adjusted one?

11:50 a.m.

Prof. April Lindgren

Very good students are still finding jobs. That is the first point that I would make. They are not necessarily jobs for life—they might be a one-year contract—but some students are still finding jobs.

Everybody is experimenting now. One of the things we're experimenting with is giving our students tools as entrepreneurs so they can go and start some of these enterprises and can use the digital media to create news businesses and go from there.

Again, there is no single answer, but the idea is to imbue in them the skills they can use to go out and undertake this so that they know how to manage an entrepreneurial idea. I think that's one of the avenues we're taking.

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

Thank you very much.

I think we've come to the end of this session. We're not going to have time for a second round.

I want to thank the witnesses very much, and I want to thank the members for having some very excellent questions. It has been a very good session.

I'd ask the committee to take about a minute to go in camera. We have something to discuss with regard to our budget.

[Proceedings continue in camera]

Noon

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry

I call the second part of the meeting to order. We welcome the Department of Canadian Heritage.

We have with us Jean-François Bernier, director general, cultural industries; Marthe Bujold, director, strategic policy, broadcasting, and digital communications branch; Helen Kennedy, director general, broadcasting and digital communications; and Luc Marchand, director, periodical publishing policy and programs. Welcome.

I'm sure by now you know the drill. You have 10 minutes shared by all of you to present, and then we will go to the questions and answers.

Who will be speaking first? Monsieur Bernier, please begin.

October 6th, 2016 / 12:05 p.m.

Jean-François Bernier Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage

Thanks for the invitation.

Nearly six months ago, my colleagues and I—the Canadian Heritage group of representatives—were the first ones invited to appear before your committee, as you were beginning your study on the media and local communities. Since then, you have probably been able to appreciate the complexity of the subject and the diversity of perspectives.

When we appeared, last February, we provided an overview of the newspaper industry and its challenges, especially those related to changes in consumer behaviour, revenue losses, the impact of the digital era, and the emergence of different business models. We finally talked about the federal government's policy toolbox.

We understand that, at this stage in your work, you would like to ask the department representatives other questions. However, before we do that, the document that has been distributed to you contains certain initiatives I would like to talk about because, since February, measures have been taken, and I would just like us to have the same information.

First, you have likely heard people talk about changes in the industry on several occasions.

How do we know the quality of journalism? Is everything that we're reading on all those websites true?

A partnership was announced a few weeks ago between Twitter, Facebook, and 20 other media companies. It is designed to improve the quality of online news. I guess the message here is they are not stupid either, and they realize everything that is circulating on their platform is not necessarily accurate or reflective of reality.

Facebook has also launched Instant Articles, which is essentially a model whereby publishers post content on Facebook, and Facebook shares the ad revenues with those publishers. There's Facebook 360, a video application incorporating virtual reality technology, and it is used by many publishers.

When we talk about Amazon and Facebook and Netflix, the word that always comes with it is “algorithm”. Facebook has modified its algorithm to avoid what we call “clickbait”. Essentially, clickbait means that whenever there's sensationalist news or a sensationalist event, it appears in flames on Twitter or on the various platforms, but at the expense of accuracy, so Facebook has changed its algorithm to avoid such clickbait.

With regard to Postmedia, we've certainly heard in the news that Postmedia has restructured its debt, and the company reports that they want to invest any savings from the restructuring in their digital projects.

Mr. Nantel talked about the restructuring of Rogers, which has divested itself of some newspapers and decided that some of them will be available only online. Changes have been made at Rogers.

Last week, you heard from a Quebec newspaper coalition. The representatives put forwards a host of proposals, including a fund to help with the transition. You are talking about a tax credit. Those are all the kinds of measures you have probably heard about through other individual presentations.

What Mr. Geist was saying earlier about copyright is interesting, as the coalition's list of suggestions included the strengthening of the Copyright Act to protect journalists' copyright.

So it's a proposal submitted to the federal government. About 10 days ago, VICE Media announced that it would expand the scope of VICE Québec.

I admit that this is a bit of a

my favourite highlight, because when I was reading this article, I saw that VICE Quebec was saying that they care about local news. It's not often that we hear news sites like this talking about the importance of local news, so I just want to draw your attention to that.

The Department of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada—I can't get used to this name; it used to be Industry Canada, but now it's ISED—have procured a fairly important contract with the Public Policy Forum to provide the government with expert advice on the newspaper situation. They've run some research, round tables, and we're waiting for their report sometime in December with some policy options, just so you know that this is ongoing.

You have probably noticed that Hon. Mélanie Joly has launched public consultations on Canadian content in the digital world, and I'll ask if Helen wants to address this aspect at this point.

Thank you.

12:10 p.m.

Helen Kennedy Director General, Broadcasting and Digital Communications, Department of Canadian Heritage

Thank you.

I am here to provide you with an update on the consultations on Canadian content in a digital world.

In terms of process, there was a pre-consultation launched in April 2016 with the release of a document and an online questionnaire to get feedback on the issues of importance to Canadians. That ran until May 27, and we had approximately 10,000 participants. In terms of high-level results, 85% of respondents said that it was “somewhat” or “very” important to have access to Canadian content in a digital world, and 88% of public respondents said that it was “somewhat” or “very” important to have access to local content in their communities.

Those are obviously findings of interest to the committee.

The minister has also appointed an expert advisory group to support her in June. The group will carry out its mandate until February 2017. They operate as a sounding board for the minister. They provide insight into policy directions. They do not have any decision-making authority, nor are they required to draft a formal report.

The second phase of the formal consultations was launched in September with a consultation paper and a web portal, as well as the results of the pre-consultation survey. The scope of the consultations includes information and entertainment content as presented on television, radio, film, digital media and platforms, video games, music, books, newspapers, and magazines.

What are we trying to achieve in terms of the consultation? I'll quote from the actual documents that have been published.

While it's about evaluating the existing ways, we support creators and cultural entrepreneurs to adapt to a new environment, strengthening Canadian content, creation, discovery and export in a digital world and empowering Canadian creators and cultural entrepreneurs so they can thrive and contribute their best to Canada's economy and quality of life.

Strengthening Canadian content creation, discovery, and export in a digital world means creating pathways to markets so that creators can share compelling and engaging stories that positively shape an inclusive and open Canada. It means that Canadians take pride in their creators and actively seek out content produced by Canadians in both official languages and that Canadians can participate in our democracy by having access to high-quality news, information, and local content that reflects a diversity of voices and perspectives. Abroad, it means that global audiences are drawn to content produced by Canadians because it is unique and world-class.

Above all, it means we value the social and economic contributions of our creators and cultural entrepreneurs, recognizing that creativity is at the heart of innovation and key to a strong middle class and Canada's success.

If you want to participate in these consultations, there are a number of in-person events being held in six cities across Canada. The schedule is posted on the website. One has already been held in Vancouver. Coming up are Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Nunavut. Some of those events will be on Facebook Live, and Canadians of all walks of life can submit ideas and stories via the web portal. They can also submit any ideas on how to promote and support Canadian content in a digital world.