Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 13th, 2024

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Keep up your work, Ms. Brin.

Thank you.

[Colette Brin]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I'll now go to Mr. Champoux.

You have two and half minutes, Martin.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Ms. Brin, the World Economic Forum recently published a major survey on risk perception. I don't know whether you are familiar with that survey.

[Colette Brin]

Yes, I am.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

One of the survey's subgroups reported that one of the major concerns, one of the major global challenges, in the next ten years will be precisely disinformation.

You say that education is a way of combatting disinformation. Do you think we are capable of combatting disinformation as things now stand, without there also being regulation or some kind of oversight by governments? I am talking about not just here, but everywhere in the world.

[Colette Brin]

There are measures that depend more on regulation in Europe, in particular, in other contexts that you are certainly familiar with. In those cases, they tend more to address the role of the major platforms, rather than trying to legislate in a specific way. Germany, for example, orders that content be removed. However, we can see that there are all sorts of problems associated with enforcing those laws. Just like for the platforms' moderation policies, there is always the risk of doing too much and censoring legitimate, useful content, or of acting once the harm is done.

I think we have a problem that we cannot solve in a debate like this. There is a more fundamental problem of trust and ecosystem. I quite like Ms. Lindgren's idea that people have a directory of sources in their community. It is not a matter of just saying that if you want information, there are these sources, and assume that people are aware of them. The idea is to support sources that are doing rigorous and complete work, whether in journalism or other types of information. I think we need to be open to a variety of scenarios like this.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Fortin, it has been said several times that we have to make sure that Canadians, the actual users, are central to our concerns. Do you have any solutions that might work for how to go about getting people interested in quality information again?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have six seconds.

[Jaky Fortin]

The people would have to be part of the information, that is, they would have to be offered information that relates to them personally.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I didn't think you would be listening so closely to the Chair's directions. That was very concise. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fortin.

I will go to Niki Ashton for two and a half minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you.

I will be following up on the question on media deserts, I hope, in my next round.

I want to go to a question for the Canadian Media Guild on journalists and media workers who have lost their jobs.

We know, of course, that the Canadian Media Guild represents 6,000 workers in the Canadian media, and with the recent layoffs announced by both the CBC and Bell, your work couldn't be more vital.

When Catherine Tait, the CEO and president of CBC, visited our committee recently, she mentioned how the across-the-board 3% cuts directly contributed to the job cuts the CBC has been implementing. If the announced job cuts go through as proposed, there will be fewer people working for the CBC than even in the darkest days of the Stephen Harper government.

What role do you believe cuts to the CBC by the Liberal government have played in the loss of jobs for journalists?

[Annick Forest]

Governments throughout the years, whether they're Conservative or Liberal, have made cuts to the CBC at different times. The Canadian government likes us when they're not in power. They don't like us when they're in power because journalists criticize or shed light on the work that's done by the people in power. Of course, there's a lot of stuff being done.

I want people to remember that it's not just CBC; it's CBC/Radio-Canada, so if there are any job losses, they will be on both sides. Our members at CBC/Radio-Canada have a job to do. They're trying to fulfill the mandate given to them by the Canadian government, and they cannot do that work if they don't have the tools or numbers to do that work. If there is a mandate and we want people to fulfill that mandate, we have to give them the tools to do the job.

We do advocate for good, stable, long-term financing for CBC/Radio-Canada, for sure. They cannot plan long term, and they cannot continue to do the very important work they do if they don't have stable financing. Media workers need to be remunerated at the level of the important work they do. Like any other Canadian across the country, they have been taking a salary decrease throughout the years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Forest.

We'll now go to Kevin Waugh from the Conservatives.

You have five minutes, Kevin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

There is no trust in the media today. I'm going to be honest. I was a broadcaster for over four decades. It's lost today, Ms. Gardner. We've even seen the president of the CBC hold her own forum in Toronto talking about a lack of trust in her own organization, along with Torstar.

The public has lost faith and confidence in the media. I don't know if they will ever come back, but once you lose them, people go elsewhere for their information.

Would you care to comment on that?

[Sue Gardner]

I would, and I really appreciate what you just said. I found it very refreshing because it's extremely true.

When I was planning to come here, I had to cancel an appointment with my audiologist. I ended up talking to the receptionist about why I was cancelling, and she told me that she thinks the government being in any way involved with the news media completely destroys her trust in it. She is no longer interested in the news media at all and does not listen to the news or follow the news in Canada.

That's a random person, but I think the stats are that a bit more than 50% of adults in this country don't trust the news media. There are reasons for that lack of trust, and the trust has to be earned back.

I think we are talking a fair bit about the supply side of the problem here and in general. In these conversations, we talk about how we can ensure that enough good-quality journalism is made and that conditions are such that it can be made. I think that is a worthy conversation, but there's also a really deeply interesting conversation to be had about the demand side.

Why aren't people consuming the news? Why are they turning away from consuming the news? I think there are many reasons for it. Some of them have nothing to do with problems inside the news industry itself. Some of them have to do with the explosion of consumer choice. There are many options and ways you can spend your leisure time, and consuming the news is no longer a shared thing we do together. It's not modelled for us in the same way that it used to be. It's just on your phone now. Your kids may not know that you're consuming news, so maybe they don't pick up a news habit, and so on.

There are many contributing factors, but we know that people feel alienated from what they perceive as people in positions of power and authority, which include the news media, politicians and elected representatives. They don't feel like those people have their backs and are acting in their interests, and that's why they don't consume news media. That's a really serious issue.

You can build it. If they don't come, what good does that do anybody? We all have an interest in an informed citizenry, a population that understands what's going on around it. That's to everybody's benefit. When a whole slew of people—half the people—are falling away from that and not participating in it, that's a society-wide problem.

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

Let me add this. Statistics Canada released today that 13% of English speakers have a high trust in media and 23% French speakers.

Anyway, in June, when Bill C-18 passed, I knew right away that Bell Media was going to cut. I'd worked for them. I knew their strategy. That same day, they went to the CRTC and said they wanted out of local news. It was that same day. I was criticized by the Bloc in the House for that comment. When I went out, I explained my position on Bill C-18 with the three or four cameras outside the House.

Mr. Champoux took a shot at me in the House about Bell Media. Ms. Gardner, you support me. You made a comment here that Bill C-18 would also reduce Canadians' access to journalism. Bill C-18 was a bad idea from the start.

Can you expand on the article you wrote to support me in June when I predicted that Bell Media would no longer exist?

[Sue Gardner]

I did not write that article to support you, but yes, there were a number of people—me included—who did think Bill C-18 was misguided from the get-go, for many different reasons. I think I said early on, as a lot of people said early on, that Facebook was not bluffing; Facebook was going to stay out. They did stay out, and that reduces Canadians' access to news.

Bill C-18 will not bring into the industry the money it was originally predicted it would bring into the industry. I think one of the estimates was $100 million from Google, minus whatever administrative costs are involved with that and minus whatever the value of the deal is they currently have, which people are guessing is something like $25 million.

It's going to bring in a bit of money to the industry but nothing on the scale of what was originally envisioned. The cost of it is very real. People here have alluded to the idea that Facebook is a wasteland. Well, that is part of why Facebook is a wasteland, if in fact it is. They felt they had no choice. If you want to see less of something, you tax it, and Bill C-18 brought you less of things for that reason.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gardner.

I'll now go to Patricia Lattanzio from the Liberals.

Ms. Lattanzio, you have five minutes.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, thank you for your presentation, Ms. Brin.

You spoke about the Canadian component of the Digital News Report 2023 survey. Could you forward your report to the committee, and can you give us a few of your conclusions?

[Colette Brin]

I gave a few of my conclusions in my opening remarks, but I do not have the document with me. This annual survey, which contains a lot of data, is carried out in collaboration with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford. From year to year, we see a decline in people's trust and interest in the news, as your colleague said. This year, the aspect that struck me was really the decline in interest in the news, which was somewhat the subject that Ms. Gardner discussed earlier with Mr. Waugh. People are turning their backs on the news. It is not so much that they are getting news elsewhere as that they are completely switching off from news. There are really no new sources replacing the traditional media.

In 2022, we saw an increase in this active avoidance of news, not just in Canada, but in several countries. Certainly, we are overloaded with news and 2022 was a very difficult year for news, with the war in Ukraine and the end of the pandemic. We were all gutted, if you will forgive me for saying that. We see that people are turning their backs on the news. Why? That is what I was trying to say in my presentation. I think that is really the most important question.

There are practices it is worth considering that can be used to give people local information, information that offers hope and solutions. Certainly the most productive forms of journalism are also the forms that are expensive and complex to implement. People like scientific information, explanatory reporting that helps us understand things and—forgive me—goes beyond politicians insulting each other. People like reporting that helps us understand the world we live in, that helps us work on solutions together, and, of course, that relates to people's daily lives. There are things that are hopeful. There are formats on the new platforms that seem to work well, that we therefore need to continue exploring.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Your organization works mainly with the Quebec actors. What do you think the challenges are that the Quebec media are facing? Are those challenges different from the ones facing the national media? If so, how are they different?

[Colette Brin]

The Quebec media were protected from the crisis for a long time by the size of the market, by a combination of assistance programs, and, in particular, by the language barrier and cultural identity.

However, we are increasingly seeing that changing; I would just mention the use of the big streaming platforms, for example. Here, we are not talking just about information, but about media content in general. People are turning to other sources, or rather, turning away from traditional sources. We see how trust in the information sector is also declining in Quebec, while it is traditionally higher among francophones than among anglophones.

There are unique challenges in Quebec. I am a Quebecker by adoption, but I too am Acadian, and I was Franco-Manitoban in my youth. I think that Quebec has a lot of resources and creativity for coping with this. We have a provincial government that is very committed to this issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.