Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 14th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we go to the Conservatives and Martin Shields.

You have five minutes, please.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. We appreciate your input as we study this issue.

In a sense, we had 1774 brought up earlier. I go back to what's called the yellow journalism era. When newsprint became very cheap and it was yellow, the proliferation of newspapers and the territorial wars to get coverage on the newspaper stands were huge. I think we're in a similar time frame. We're in a totally rapid change, so I'm going to go to OpenMedia and talk to Mr. Hatfield.

Will rural, small media survive in whatever form? Can it survive?

[Matthew Hatfield]

It's not looking very good right now. I don't think it is. I live in a small, rural community in Canada called Salt Spring Island, and we're very blessed to still have a local paper. It makes a huge difference to the way the community understands and relates to each other.

There needs to be a very serious study on whether some level of public support is needed, but we need to take that problem head-on as a single, coherent problem. Some of my concern is how news has been supported to date. There are a lot of small, piecemeal and quite complicated programs all adding up to a pretty significant level of funding that doesn't necessarily go where it's needed and doesn't necessarily close the news gap, but is very non-transparent to ordinary Canadians.

So many people in our country are starting to worry that the news is fundamentally beholden to the federal government or to tech platforms, and we need to make it extremely clear that's not the case through a single system that anyone can audit for themselves.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you. I appreciate that the voice of authenticity in our rural communication is important.

Mr. Palmer, what is your opinion on that same question?

[Philip Palmer]

I think it's critical that transparency be at the forefront, as well as independence from government. I'm not sure how one does that, but that is the objective here. The present mechanisms deny that. They do not permit it with any ease, and it's the big players, rather than the print journalists, that are going to benefit from what we now know about the Google fund for Canadian media.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

Going to Village Media and expanding a bit on that, in a sense it's not just those small ones that may have been there for 100 years, but we're talking about new ones, as well, that are small.

Do you see that there's...? Can it survive in the structure of government-funded, big tech running, basically, what we see and read?

[Jeff Elgie]

Obviously, I hope we're proof that local media can survive and thrive in this environment. When we speak to rural, our smallest community would be about 10,000 people, and we go up to communities with about 150,000 to 200,000 people.

Certainly, we are able to access some government funding programs, which help with our expansion, but I think in the world where we find ourselves now—in particular with Meta out of the industry—the ability to accelerate the launch of a new digital community publication has been significantly set back. I fear that, while I expect we will see more local rural newspaper print closures, the business model now of starting up a digital publication is going to be more difficult.

Obviously, we are living proof that it is possible to create these kinds of publications and be sustainable.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

If you had one recommendation for the committee that you would like us to see, what would it be?

[Jeff Elgie]

Get Meta back.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Palmer.

[Philip Palmer]

I would endorse that. Get Meta back.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Hatfield.

[Matthew Hatfield]

Don't make news production follow the algorithm. We don't need news that is viral and emotionally activating. We need quality journalism.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Martin.

I now go to the Liberals and Pam Damoff.

You have five minutes, please.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Donovan, my colleague Mr. Noormohamed asked you about the misogynistic hashtags that the Leader of the Opposition used, and you didn't get an opportunity to respond to that. I'd like to give you a chance to respond.

[Dr. Joan Donovan]

I had been researching Facebook for a very long time, and YouTube as well. When it comes to the misogynistic hashtags, it's not just that someone is using a hashtag. What a hashtag represents is a content tag that allows the algorithms to connect different pieces of content with each other. Anybody who is using that hashtag might get recommended to you as the next video op. Particularly, what we know about misogyny is that it's alive and well online.

The harassment of women, women of colour and women who are journalists is almost of an epidemic proportion. This is all about silencing women in their online fields. We have seen misogynistic attacks, and not just political ones. We do know that women and women of colour experience disproportionate harassment. It can also be a way to foment rage against women. We know that has happened numerous times through these misogynistic hashtags that create these online communities.

I want to take one second to address something that hasn't come up related to getting Meta back. Canada should be looking at rewarding non-profit news. In the U.S., if we were to turn many local publications into non-profits, they would stand a much better chance of sustaining their businesses if they were operating in that model—and not just in the tax model but also in the model of what news is for, which is to serve democracies.

Thank you for allowing me to make that comment.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you for your comments.

Mr. Riekeles, you talked about the funding that big tech is doing that is disguised as something quite innocuous. It really reflects similar tactics used by big tobacco in funding research on smoking and vaping. The anti-abortion movement also appeared to be funding innocuous organizations and crisis pregnancy centres.

Do you think there should be more transparency and disclosure in what big tech is funding?

[Georg Riekeles]

Absolutely. Those parallels you point to are absolutely correct. This is about doing business in darkness. Democracy hurts in darkness, as we heard before.

First of all, I want to commend the House for doing this study. You are picking up a task where other parliaments have failed, notably, the European Parliament. Much of what is going on is the capture of our democratic processes and, to some extent, the corruption of our democratic processes. Corruption has a legal meaning and requires substantiating evidence for that. It also has other meanings, if you look at the dictionary, which are about manipulating processes, creating difficulties, etc. That's the way I'm using that word.

What we've seen in the EU are the unacceptable practices of subversion and influence over what is supposed to be democratic decision-making. This has been highlighted by the leading lawmakers involved. That is based on my own, but also on a Corporate Europe Observatory report on this. For instance, the Digital Services Act rapporteur wrote to the President of the European Parliament asking for action to be taken.

In earnest, nothing of consequence has happened. The real reason for that is that, due to a lot of this policy-making in the wider expert community, big tech's influences and subversion practices are in a sense une histoire qui dérange, an inconvenient story to avoid dealing with.

In my view, what needs to be done is to go much further in terms of transparency. Tech regulations today are often understood in terms of enforcing a strict competition regime or rules to keep privacy invading platforms in check. That is not enough. Regulations also need to to be against the tech sector's capacity to influence private institutions, civil society and policy discourse.

This is what I call building an effective tech control system. For instance, in terms of transparency registers, one needs reporting. I would say reporting project by project, euro by euro. Interference strategies need to be systematically monitored and counted.

That's what happened, again, with the push-back against big tobacco. It wasn't—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I must ask you to wrap up, please. We are well over time for this particular round.

Thank you, Ms. Damoff.

[Georg Riekeles]

—just big tobacco. That involved public research programs and peer-reviewed journals and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Riekeles, I'm afraid that we are well over time for your answer. Thank you.

I'll go over to the Bloc for two and a half minutes, please.

Martin.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, are we not at the beginning of the third round?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry. We're going to a new round.

Rachael, you have five minutes, please.

I'm sorry about that. That was just a—

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

On a point of order. I believe Mr. Champoux was mistaken, and it's his turn, and then mine.

I am challenging the chair.