Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Do you have the documents in print, Clerk, or do you...?

The clerk is sending them now.

We'll suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We can resume.

Mr. Lawrence, did you want to suggest an adjournment?

I need unanimous consent. We don't debate it, but I do need unanimous consent.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

We were scheduled to end at 1:00 p.m. Could we adjourn the meeting?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Do I have unanimous consent for this?

I'm sorry, Philip, there is no unanimous consent.

We'll call a vote on the motion to adjourn.

(Motion negatived: nays 7; yeas 4)

We'll continue with the meeting.

Go ahead, Mr. Noormohamed.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Madam Chair, I move that we suspend the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. Do I have unanimous consent to suspend the meeting? I just want to get a clear sense of where the committee wants to go.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

The meeting is going to be suspended, but I want to let everyone know what that means. When we come back to our next meeting, this will be where we pick up—on that amendment from Mr. Noormohamed.

Thank you. The meeting is suspended.

[The meeting was suspended at 1:05 p.m., Tuesday, December 5]

[The meeting resumed at 8:22 a.m., Thursday, December 7]

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Welcome once again to meeting No. 103 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

We are resuming Tuesday's meeting, which had been suspended.

I would like to acknowledge that this meeting is taking place on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

We have a hybrid meeting today.

Because we were suspended, I can do the housekeeping.

Do not take pictures of the meeting.

Please wear a mask if you can, even though it's not required. It is a health issue that you should consider.

Don't forget to direct your questions and/or discussions to the chair. You cannot speak until I recognize you.

We're starting where we left off at the last meeting. We have an amendment that we were considering from Mr. Taleeb Noormohamed from the Liberals.

Would you like to speak and move your amendment? Everyone has it now.

Thank you.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Everyone has read it, unless folks would like me to read it.

What Mr. Champoux put forward, I think, was an excellent starting point. The minor modifications we've made to it are really to ensure that those who know the space best are convening the group and that those who know the space best are ultimately driving it, and not government, in that sense, although we also ensure that levels of government are invited to engage and to participate in the conversation.

My hope is that this is something we can all agree on, because we've all expressed a desire to be able to do that. With those minor modifications, if we can bring this forward, it will advance the work we all need to do as a group, and it can meet all our objectives and interests on the subject. That's really all I wanted to say on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Mrs. Thomas.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

The member's adjustments to this motion are probably well-meaning, but I'll just point out what this does.

It says that “the committee undertake a study to determine the appropriateness of the national news sector to hold a national forum”. In other words, the committee will determine if it would be appropriate for stakeholders within the national news sector to hold a forum to discuss their challenges and overcome them.

Why would it be up to the committee to determine whether or not it's appropriate for stakeholders to host that forum? That's not for us to dictate. We don't get to determine whether or not that would be appropriate. If they want to do that, they can do that. It changes this motion entirely, because it is putting the power in our hands to determine the appropriateness of the national news sector—

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, the original motion actually said “That...the Committee undertake a study to determine the appropriateness of” the national news sector....

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

No....

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It says, “undertake a study to determine the appropriateness of...a national forum on the media”.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I'm sorry, but it was always the committee that would undertake the study to determine the appropriateness, just so we're clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I would like to say that, as this reads, it is the committee deciding whether it's appropriate for the national news sector to hold a forum. There's a grammatical change that may need to be made for this to make sense. That's all I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting that it is necessarily out of order but that, actually, grammatically, it doesn't make sense because this committee does not have the ability, as Ms. Thomas said, to decide what anybody does in Canada in terms of sectors.

That's how it reads, so if you have a grammatical change, Mr. Noormohamed, can you consider it?

Mrs. Thomas, if you would like to continue, go ahead.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

I would just bring that to the committee's attention. I don't know that it was the intent of the mover, but that is, in fact, how it reads now. I don't believe it's appropriate for this committee to determine whether or not it would be appropriate for stakeholders within the national news sector to hold a forum to talk about their own challenges and to resolve their own issues. I think that's their determination.

Now, should this committee wish to be involved at a governmental level and to engage in that conversation with stakeholders, that would be a more appropriate motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Champoux, go ahead.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I find Ms. Thomas's remarks very interesting.

I want to explain what the initial nature of the motion was. I don't think that the government should undertake this study or that it's up to parliamentarians to do so. However, I do think that someone somewhere should send a signal that this study is essential. That's basically the spirit of the initial motion. The idea is to say that a process of reflection should be established, a forum created and a national forum held on the state of the news sector.

I actually assumed that, once the committee had completed its assessment, we would entrust the industry people with the task of conducting their own national forum and that we would obviously provide a framework, not a framework for discussion or a direction, but the necessary wherewithal to conduct that study, independently; which goes without saying.

Whatever the case may be, I think it's up to the industry people to consider the matter, conduct that self-assessment and determine the attendant challenges. I think the industry people know they need to identify the means that should be used to address present and future challenges.

In that sense, I think that Mr. Noormohamed's amendment is helpful. It goes one step further, as it were, in the thinking I wanted us to do together. I ultimately think the way to go is to say that it's the industry people who should frame the issue, hold meetings and conduct the self-assessment. I have no objection to adding a little more clarification, but I think these are things that we can do when we assess whether it's appropriate to hold a national forum, which will constitute the mandate that the committee adopts for the brief study we'll be conducting pursuant to my motion.

That's why I think this amendment is entirely acceptable. If we want to proceed this way, we can do so quickly. We'll have time during the four meetings planned for this brief study to determine, as Ms. Thomas noted, how the industry people can organize and hold the national forum with the support they may possibly need from the government and parliamentarians. If they can do so independently, then so much the better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Mr. Waugh, on the amendment, please go ahead.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

On the amendment, thank you, Madam Chair, along with Ms. Thomas, for pointing out the issue here. A lot of us have been around this table for many years. We've seen many news agencies come—newspapers and, not as much, radio, but certainly a lot of TV. A lot of them don't get along with one another, to be quite frank with you, especially in the TV industry.

I've been around here a long time. I'm not sure I can support this. For the last eight years, I've heard these news agencies coming here crying and saying this and that. It's interesting, because when I look at Bell Media and others, they own Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, and they could open their wallet and have the best baseball player in the world signed this week. It will be interesting to see how they will spin that on their media platform. I've heard enough from the media organizations. If they want to do this, they can get together. I know that, especially in the television end of it, there is no love lost between CTV and the CBC. There is no love lost between French television and the CBC. There is no love lost between Global, Corus, CTV and CBC. If they want to get together, which they probably would do in Palm Springs or Florida, because that's where all the owners end up, they may do so of their own accord.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Waugh.

I now go to Mr. Noormohamed.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I find it remarkable that those who talk about not wanting government to have overreach and how the government should not decide how the private sector governs its functions now say that it should be government and Parliament that decide what is appropriate for the media, and that the committee should then determine its terms of reference.

I think Mr. Champoux's comments are absolutely important. If you think about this in the context of what we are trying to accomplish here, if we have—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

On a point of order, I would just point out that we were simply speaking about the amendment that was made. It was actually the Liberals who moved the amendment that this committee would determine the appropriateness. We actually believe that government should stay out of it.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

That's debate.