Evidence of meeting #3 for Canadian Heritage in the 43rd 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.
February 26th, 2020 / 4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
We could provide, with the department, a list of media organizations—
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
Do you mean for publicity?
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Yes, you gave out over $595 million. That is what the number was.
Liberal
Jean-Stéphen Piché Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
This amount is the estimated impact of the tax measures that were put in place—
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
—so there is no list of eligible organizations. That's going to be part of the tax process—
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
—that will be managed by the Canada Revenue Agency in the first eligible year, which will be 2019 and then 2020.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
This is an estimated value of the tax aspect, so this is not money given out.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
If I may, that is one element of the assistance to media that we're providing.
The other is the $50 million for local journalism. We will be able to provide you, at the end of the year, with a list of organizations that have received money, how much they have received and so on and so forth.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Mr. Waugh, I'm going to have to cut you off there only because I made a slight mistake earlier. I want to apologize. I said “split time” and I used six minutes. It was actually the five-minute round, so—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
I was just going to say, God forbid I shortchange anybody, but Mr. Shields, I will give you an extra few seconds in there. You have about half a minute or so to do your questioning.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here, and I appreciate your staff, whom we have met before, being here. I think you have tremendous staff with you and I hope you listen to them because I think they're very good.
Liberal
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
They have heard from me before.
Your staff will know, I have seven weeklies and no dailies in my riding, and there are two or three people—they're mom-and-pop operations—who don't qualify for a cent. They're not subscription based, so that rollout is killing the weeklies in my riding because they will be gone. They will be dropping dead. Your rollout kills all of the print media in my riding. I understand what you did with that rollout for the big ones. It kills my weeklies, every one of them, and it will. They're done. They're dropping.
We've been through that before. Your staff knows this. I've had the publications here.
In the broadcast and telecommunications report, there are words such as, “fair”, “reasonable”, “trusted”, “accurate” and “reliable”. I did wander through law school at one time, and I know what “legally liable” is. Police, when they are investigating something and there are witnesses, take statements from everybody they can get, because they know everybody's statement is different, and then they try to figure out, from all of those statements, what has happened.
Those words scare the hell out of me. They're subjective and they're in that report in a number of places.
What is your response to those kinds of words in that report?
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
I'm not sure I understand specifically what you're....
As I said earlier, this is an independent commission that was—
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You're looking at it, so you will see those words. What is your response to seeing adjectives that are very descriptive and very subjective?
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
As I said earlier, we are looking at every single recommendation that this independent body has made to us. The way forward for us is not something that will be by the Ministry of Heritage or by myself. We are working in collaboration with the Department of Justice as we move forward, so obviously anything we would be putting forward would have to pass the test of the law.