Thank you very much.
Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. It's my honour to join you today to make a representation on behalf of Unifor.
My name is Julie Kotsis, and I am chair of the Unifor media council. Unifor is one of Canada's largest unions in the media sector, representing more than 10,000 media workers, including members in broadcast television, newspapers, digital news publishing, film and TV production, and graphics and printing.
While you consider all of the important evidence you've been gathering through the standing committee, I'd like to share another critical perspective, the experience of journalists and media workers and how the future of local news and the people who make that news has been thrown into crisis by the disruptive influence of tech giants.
In my time at the Windsor Star, I have witnessed a profound and troubling transformation of the newspaper business in Canada. Canada's newsrooms are shrinking. Other newspapers have gone through the same painful downsizing. Just as an example, in 2009, Unifor's membership at the Toronto Star totalled 610. It was down to 178 in 2022. The same is true for broadcast news.
This year alone, more than 100 Unifor members in the broadcast segment lost their jobs. We know that not everyone is concerned that journalists and media workers are losing their livelihoods. What should concern everyone, however, is the impact that the loss of local news has on the fabric of our democracy. Local news is how Canadians learn about the world and what's going on around us. It's one of the ways that we hold governments and corporations accountable. Local news is how we gather vital information about natural disasters like this year's forest fires or floods.
While this is, perhaps, an obvious point, what puts journalists and media workers at the heart of this discussion is that they are the ones who create local news. They have the training, experience and professional standards to provide high-quality, fact-based journalism.
We've heard some experts and witnesses framing this discussion as the fight for the free flow of information online and the very notion of a free and open Internet. Even if this discussion was about the very notion of a free and open Internet, tech giants like Google and Meta are the very last organizations we should be looking to for guidance.
This committee has already heard countless examples of how the tech giants control what we access online using opaque and ever-changing algorithms that they hide from users and regulators and protect at all costs. They collect our data and sell it for profit. They control every aspect of online advertising, frequently allowing for the proliferation of toxic and hate-filled harassment and abuse on their platforms. I will tell you that a great deal of that harassment and abuse is aimed at journalists and media workers, including members of Unifor.
I would like to take a moment to talk about the harassment of journalists and media workers. This is an issue that our union takes very seriously. In February of this year, we released a comprehensive discussion paper called “Breaking the News: Media Workers Under Attack”. As part of that discussion paper, we undertook a membership survey about harassment and abuse.
It won't surprise you to know that, according to Unifor media workers, messages on Facebook and Twitter were a key vehicle for harassment and abuse by members of the public. Unifor media workers know that the argument about a free and open Internet is a red herring. To reiterate, this is really about the ability of governments to enact meaningful rules and the willingness of the tech giants to abide by those rules. To put it plainly, our members are used to standing up to powerful global corporations and, as good trade unionists, we know that we must stand up to bullies together.
In fact, I'd like to return to some basic union principles as I wrap up my comments. For us, solidarity is about finding common ground and standing together, even if not all of our interests are totally the same. We know, all too well, that one worker standing alone against an employer is almost powerless, but when we come together, we have collective power. We respectfully encourage elected officials and the federal government to work together in solidarity and with jurisdictions around the world to establish rules that will rein in the unchecked power of the tech giants.
Thank you.