Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 13th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting No. 110 of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

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

The meeting today is, of course, in a hybrid format. We have a lot of people appearing virtually. I want to remind you of some rules we follow when we have virtual meetings.

Pursuant to the Standing Orders, one thing I'm going to ask you to do is not take photographs of the meeting, please. Screenshots and photos are not permitted, but you can get them online later on after the meeting.

As to public health authorities, for those of you not wearing masks, we are not mandated to wear them, but some of us should wear them in order to not get the flu and the new COVID virus.

Just to remind those of you online and in the room, we have powerful microphones. If you have any devices sitting in front of them, they can give feedback. That can hurt the ears of the interpreters, so be careful about those things. When you are speaking, please address your questions and responses through the chair.

That's about it. I don't think there's anything else I wanted to say.

Today is our first meeting on the study of the national forum on the media.

Thank you, Mr. Champoux, for this study.

We have, virtually, April Lindgren, professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Jen Gerson, co-founder of The Line and independent journalist.

From Centre d'études sur les médias, we have Colette Brin, professor, department of information and communication at Université Laval.

We have Jaky Fortin, assistant director of studies and student life, École supérieure en Art et technologie des médias du Cégep de Jonquière.

We have Annick Forest with us from the Canadian Media Guild.

You all have five minutes to present. I will give you a 30-second shout to tell you when you only have 30 seconds left. Remember, if you don't finish everything you want to say, you can elaborate on it when you get questions. Don't be worried if you don't finish in five minutes.

I will begin with Ms. Gardner's opening statement.

You have five minutes, please.

[Sue Gardner, McConnell Professor of Practice (2021-22), Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University, As an Individual]

My name is Sue Gardner. I am the former head of CBC.ca, the English language website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I am also the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates Wikipedia. I have been dabbling recently in public policy, including a recent stint as the McConnell professor of practice at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

Further contextualizing myself, I started my career three decades ago as a journalist. I've worked in radio, television, print and online. I've been a practitioner. I was a working journalist for a long time. I was also a boss of journalists, and a critic and observer of the news media.

I have researched and written pretty extensively about public media specifically in Canada and elsewhere around the world. I have been working in the digital realm since about 1999, and very much my whole career has been part of what we sometimes call the digital transition. So that's me.

I am here representing only myself. I see your role as trying to advance the public interest, and I see my role as trying to help you do that.

You are here, I think, considering whether to provide support or encouragement to the news industry to stage a forum of some kind on the news media—what it needs in light of the crisis. I want to start by agreeing that there is a crisis, and I think you have a role to play in helping to solve it.

I have three quick thoughts for you on how I think you can approach that. This is in the nature of opening remarks, so my goal here is to lay out areas that maybe we would want to talk more about.

First, I think whatever you end up doing, it's really critical for you to be extremely precise about the nature of the problem you are trying to solve. I think the problem is not that legacy media organizations are having difficulty or are going out of business, and I think the problem is not that journalists don't have enough job security or cannot pay their rent or their mortgages.

The way I see it, the problem is that this country right now is not producing enough depth and breadth of journalism to the point where the citizenry can be appropriately informed and power can be appropriately held to account. That's the problem that I think you should be aiming to try to solve. How do you support the conditions in which good journalism can be made?

Second, I've had the sense that the digital policy that's been developed over the last couple of years has been driven perhaps too much by the needs and interests of industry. I decided to run the numbers to see if my sense of that was correct, and I think I am right. I looked at the current Parliament witness appearances to this committee, and by my count 77% of those appearances have been people who represent industry or industry workers. That's people who represent media companies, unions, trade associations and professional associations.

If you look at the Senate committee, you see their numbers are pretty similar, and if you look at lobbyist communications with the heritage department, those numbers are also pretty similar. I have the sense, from watching your previous meetings, that you may have general agreement that you should stay out of the driver's seat and should let the news media drive when it comes to solving these problems.

I want to inject a note of caution into that. I can see why you would believe that—to let the experts handle things—but I think it is actually a mistake, because I think you have different roles and you have different goals. If the industry leads, it is going to centre its own interests, and that is not what you want. What you want is to centre the public interest, so it's important that you guys keep the authority to do that. I think it's your job.

My last point is that until pretty recently, it's been the case that digital players have been largely invisible to you, and vice versa. I feel like we saw this in the Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 hearings, where digital first creators were turning up at committee meetings for the very first time.

During the current Parliament, by my count, only 12% of witness appearances to this committee have been digital players. What that means is people from companies like Google, Netflix and Apple, digital first creators, people who do YouTube and Twitch, academics who study digital stuff and people from digital-focused civil society organizations like OpenMedia or the Internet Society. That's a lot of people and that's a broad array of digital players, but all of them put together count up to only 12% of the people who have come to speak with you here.

I would urge you, when you're considering these questions, to rebalance where you're putting your attention.

I'm going to wrap it up there. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Gardner.

The next witness will be Jen Gerson, co-founder of The Line and an independent journalist. Ms. Gerson is online, I think.

You have five minutes. Please begin.

[Jen Gerson, Co-founder of The Line and Independent Journalist, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for having me at this committee. I'm a bit of a problematic creature and one of those persnickety digital first creators Sue was referencing.

Just to follow up on Sue's comments, I agree with what she said, and I think people who are trying to fix these problems and regulate in the space are often conflating the difference between the business of journalism and the act of journalism. They're related problems, but they're not the same problems. If you can't fundamentally understand why the businesses failed, you're going to fall into the trap of trying to throw more money into a failing industry or problem as opposed to thinking from the public interest perspective: How can we improve the acts of journalism to ensure the public interest is being served here? It's a very different framing of the problems we're facing, and I think it requires a very different mindset.

Further to what we're here to discuss, I feel like I'm at a bit of a disadvantage, because when we talk about a national forum on media, I'm not strictly sure what's being proposed. I find myself, as a result, in a very rare position of not having a strongly held opinion on it. That's very unusual for me, so you're going to have to forgive me.

I think that, in principle, having a national forum to discuss the issues facing news media and the democratic deficit that's going to come from that crisis and is coming from that crisis could be a really great thing. I'm not sure why this committee needs to approve that if what we're proposing here is that the news industry itself forwards such an idea, which members of the government would be a part of, or who should be putting it together. That strikes me as a fairly logistical challenge to solve. My ideal for that kind of forum would be that it has a really wide diversity of opinions, brings a lot of different ideas to the table from a public interest perspective and is open to a lot of different potential solutions for which the government could be helpful.

My fear is that a national forum wouldn't really be used as a forum to discuss these things in an open way, but would be used as a PR exercise to drum up public support for a foregone conclusion. If you're going to create a national forum to create support or to manufacture the concept of support for writing legacy media organizations ever-bigger cheques, that would be a waste of time. If that is the conclusion everybody is working toward, then why are we wasting our time here? Just write the cheque. That's my concern with where this is going to go.

That being said, I think it's about having a really open discussion about the problems facing media. Talk about those business issues and where the public interest factors are. If you want to have a discussion about further public funding for media or turning the private media into the public media—which is essentially the path we're on right now—then let's have a really candid, open conversation about what that's going to cost the taxpayer and over what time frame. A forum could be a great opportunity to do all that, provided it's being done with a really open spirit and in a good-faith way.

I don't have anything else to add there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gerson.

I'll go to April Lindgren, a professor at the school of journalism in Toronto. Ms. Lindgren, go ahead.

[Professor April Lindgren, Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University School of Journalism, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'm a professor of journalism at the Toronto Metropolitan University. Thank you for inviting me here.

I run something called the Local News Research Project. In that capacity, I've been tracking developments in local journalism since about 2008.

I'm not going to list all of the recent announcements that add up to bad news for people counting on local journalism to keep them informed. I think everybody has a pretty good idea of that.

I will say that there's no obvious silver-bullet solution to the challenges that news media in Canada—or anywhere else, for that matter—is facing. News organizations are casting around for alternative business models at a time when people are disengaging from news, when social media outlets are playing a lesser role in referrals to news organizations, when advertising is down and shows little sign of recovery and when Canadians' willingness to pay for digital news has actually been declining. I think this is in large part because what they're being offered is not great, so why would you pay for it?

Like Jen, I'm a bit confused about the nature of the forum. I thought I would focus my comments on the appropriateness of the government providing support for the news sector, how that might play out in a discussion and what should be talked about.

I do think that there is a role for this conversation, if only to help Canadians understand that they are getting less and less access to the news they need to effectively participate in the democratic process, engage with their communities and navigate daily life. The government's own polling last summer showed that more than half—I think about 56%—of people surveyed thought the number of news media outlets has stayed the same over the last 10 years. This changed when participants were presented with some data on how many outlets have closed. When they were armed with that knowledge, 47% of people said it was a matter of some concern.

That data, by the way, came from the Local News Map, which I run. Our most recent report showed that more than 500 local news outlets have closed in the last 15 years. Three-quarters of them were community newspapers. Only half as many have launched over the same period, most of which are, not surprisingly, digital players. I think they're playing a growing and important role in the news landscape—the local news landscape in particular.

Another issue that I think needs to be talked about in the context of what role government has in supporting local news is to ask if government actually has the information it needs to make informed decisions about the policies it's adopting. For instance, we don't really know where there are true news deserts where no local news is available in Canada, despite all of the conversations about that. How is good policy going to be developed out of that if we don't actually know where the needs are the greatest? How can that situation be rectified? I think that's a headache for news organizations.

We also don't know what news organizations exist at the community level across the country. Pick a place on the map. We have no idea what's going on there in terms of the providers of local news. Again, could we create a searchable directory, first of all for the purposes of policy-making, but also, even more importantly in an increasingly complex world, so that local people can go somewhere and find out sources of local news that they can go to directly?

My next suggestion is that whatever form the forum takes, there should be a serious conversation about the role of the CBC at a time when news outlets are closing shop, scaling back services and telling Canadians that they can't afford to cover news in their communities while also satisfying the needs of their shareholders. What will the local landscape look like if the CBC English-language service is defunded in the way that's being proposed by the Conservative Party of Canada? Do we think that for-profit media is going to go on a massive hiring binge in that aftermath to fill in the gaps?

Also, what does cutting millions of dollars from the CBC budget—as is currently under way—mean for local coverage? We have yet to hear that from the CBC.

When I talk about what I mean by an informed discussion about the role of the public broadcaster, I'm talking about a place where we can actually talk about the growing body of academic literature that links strong public media to a bunch of benefits. They've been shown to produce news that's more diverse and has more substance than their commercial counterparts. Public media also tends to produce programming that more broadly serves poorer communities and more disadvantaged populations that for-profit media tend to neglect.

There's research showing that public media and government-subsidized private media are actually no less critical of government than non-subsidized, privately owned media. Have a look at the National Post.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds, Ms. Lindgren.

[Prof. April Lindgren]

Postmedia has received lots of money from the federal government in recent times, and I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's a friendly partner to the active Liberal government.

I don't have any sweeping suggestions for solving the problem of media, but I do have some specifics we can talk about later on in the question period that are at a more granular level.

I'll just leave it there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Lindgren.

I'll now go to Colette Brin, who is professor at the Centre d'études sur les médias.

[Colette Brin, Professor, Department of Information and Communication, Laval University, Centre d'études sur les médias]

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your reflection on the state of the media in Canada and their future. This issue has been at the heart of my work as a scholar and educator at Université Laval for over 20 years now.

Since 2020, I have chaired the Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures with the Canada Revenue Agency. This experience has enabled me to become more familiar with the diversity of the Canadian media landscape and to participate in the implementation of an innovative public policy measure to help traditional print media that is fully digital.

Today, I am speaking to you in my capacity as Director of the Centre for Media Studies, a non-profit research and knowledge transfer organization founded in 1992.

I will reiterate what others have said, that this debate you are having with us and with Canadians, on the issue of news and media, needs to be focused first and foremost on the public, on its needs and interests. That may seem simple, but it bears repeating.

Access to reliable, comprehensive and quality news on public affairs is a fundamental condition of democracy — again, simple — but it is also a very old problem. I think we can all agree that the current situation is quite dire. Today, we are facing a crisis that is unprecedented in terms of the speed and complexity of the transformations under way, whether technological or economic, not to mention malevolent interventions into news content.

It is first and foremost an economic and structural crisis, but also, and increasingly, a crisis of confidence and a crisis of the relevance of journalism to the daily lives of citizens. It is probably this last point, the relevance of news to Canadians, that concerns me most. Why bother trying to rethink the business model or rebuild public trust if information isn't present in their everyday lives, if it's not really important to them or, worse, if they actively seek to avoid the news?

May I suggest, then, that you consider citizens as the starting point and the end point of this discussion. This is not to minimize the precarious situation of journalists, companies, unions and the journalistic community as a whole over the past few years, and particularly over the past year. Cuts have been made in the thousands. On the contrary: the working conditions and financial health of the media have a direct impact on the quality and quantity of news. We must support them, but by keeping the needs and interests of citizens in mind first, I believe we can more clearly target the best means of action.

Since 2016, the Centre for Media Studies has been the Canadian partner of the Digital News Report, an annual international survey of news practices and perceptions on various platforms. We have also produced a number of qualitative studies on citizens' information practices, particularly those of young adults. You are likely aware of the trends that have been observed through this work.

Over the past ten years, digital platforms have overtaken television as the main mode of news consumption, and social media have become the default source for many people, even if the majority of respondents have a rather negative perception of these platforms when it comes to news.

We also published a survey conducted last September among Quebeckers on the suppression of news on Meta platforms, following the enactment of the Online News Act. This study showed that most people were aware of this measure, that they were affected by it, and that a third had already adopted different practices for keeping informed. Respondents also felt that government had an important role to play in ensuring access to quality information.

What, then, might measures geared to citizens' information needs look like? Increased support for local news media—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Brin....

[Colette Brin]

Do I still have 30 seconds left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 43 seconds.

[Colette Brin]

Okay.

This could be increased support for local and regional news media, including community media, both print and broadcast, to ensure that everyone has access to local information. It also takes targeted support for efforts by the media and other civil society organizations to bring information closer to the interests and consumption patterns of target audiences, especially young people.

I will refrain from commenting on tax credits, since I am directly involved in that. However, for my students and journalists, I would add that continuing education and paid internships aimed at developing the relevance of journalism to citizens are needed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. You can elaborate as you get questions, Ms. Brin.

I'll now go to Jaky Fortin from the École supérieure.

Go ahead, Mr. Fortin.

[Jaky Fortin, Assistant director of studies and student life, École supérieure en Art et Technologie des médias du Cégep de Jonquière]

Good afternoon.

Since 1967, Cégep de Jonquière has been a pioneer in technical training in communications and media. We introduced a three-year college degree offering a choice in three fields: journalism, radio and television production. It is all offered under the same roof in Saguenay—Lac‑Saint‑Jean, at École supérieure en art et technologie des médias. Some 50 years later, the programming has evolved with Quebec's media industry. For the current 2023-24 school year, there are 850 students in all three of our programs.

We are training the talent of tomorrow. École supérieure en art et technologie des médias is the largest French-language media technical training school in the country. The current upheaval in the media world certainly has us very concerned, since we work in this field. Our media represent our culture, our identity and our democracy. They tell our stories, reflect the greatness of our country, challenge things and help develop free and critical thinking for our democracy. In an era of disinformation and globalization, our mission to train the next generation is even more important. Cégep de Jonquière is rooted in the Saguenay—Lac‑Saint‑Jean region, which is known for its strong journalistic presence. We have many written, television and radio media.

I will give you a tangible, recent example of the effects of the crisis in the wake of Bell's decision, announced last week, to cut broadcasting positions. On Monday morning, when I was driving to work, on one of the two Bell stations, the regional news update had been replaced by a “local” update from the Montreal network. The three news headlines of the day were about Trois‑Rivières, which is 330 kilometres from Saguenay, a trial in Chicoutimi, which affects us, and the variation in temperatures in Gatineau, Montreal and Sherbrooke. There was nothing about the ice fishing situation in La Baie, or the wind park in Mashteuiatsh. These stories were in the daily morning newspaper, but no one was talking about it on the radio.

It is true that the media is suffering the effects of the current crisis nationally, but it is local news that will be affected the most in the short term. That is already the case. On February 29 and March 1, we will be rallying all the media players from the 11 regions of Quebec at a summit to reflect on solutions for the future of regional news. We will talk about funding, options and the role young people can play in the media industry. We believe that as a higher education institution we can play a leading role in hosting all the parties to discuss this together: employers, employees, unions, government members, students, stakeholders, and more. Ultimately, quality news will benefit everyone. That being said, will this summit on the future of regional news solve everything? Even with my usual optimism, the answer is no, but it is a small step in the right direction.

In the face of the current crisis, we need to be able to establish a dialogue and propose innovative and sustainable solutions. What is more, there needs to be a shift from the quest for higher profits and the rhetoric that prevents any progress or change. Our media will have no choice but to change their approach to move forward. Doing more with less is good in theory, but not likely viable in the long term for our society. We need to use the necessary changes as vectors for developing and doing things differently together because we are strongest when we come together, not when we are isolated. This is not just an issue for the company leaders or for their employees or the government.

News is a fundamental right in our democracy. It is incumbent on everyone to be behind this idea. In a discussion with a teacher last week, she reminded me that the most democratic countries all had plenty of active media that is free to question things. When media is limited and discreet because the press is not free, that is a sign that the country is not very democratic. Is that where we want to end up?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Jaky Fortin]

We are proud to say that we live in a democratic country where every voice can be heard. That is lucky, but it is also a common responsibility. It is important to act now, to support our media and ensure a future for our international, national and regional news. We need to preserve this freedom of thought, freedom to question and criticize based on our values and heritage. We need to restore journalism's reputation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Our final witness is Annick Forest, national union president of the Canadian Media Guild.

[Annick Forest, National Union President, Canadian Media Guild]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Annick Forest. I am a francophone, an Acadian and a Quebecker. I am the National Union President of the Canadian Media Guild, a union that represents 6,000 media employees across the country.

[Annick Forest]

The Canadian Media Guild is grateful for the opportunity to address this matter of great significance to Canadians and a pressing concern for its members, who are media workers. It is the crisis in the Canadian media sector stemming from the dominance of foreign digital companies.

The CMG believes that safeguarding Canadian media jobs, protecting quality Canadian journalism and guaranteeing the availability of Canadian content will ensure the vitality of the Canadian media sector. As a cornerstone of our democracy, Canadian media plays a crucial role in informing, engaging and empowering citizens, but this mission can only be realized with a robust and resilient workforce. Media workers are the backbone of our information ecosystem, tirelessly researching, reporting and disseminating news and stories that shape public discourse.

I am a media worker with 30 years of experience. I started working when we were cutting tape to do radio, and I finished, before I started this job as president of the CMG, doing digital news editing. In a sense, I was the person editing the stories that went online on the Radio-Canada website in the west of Canada. I have, we have and media workers have gone from one type of media to the next type of media to the next type of media. These are different mediums. What's important is the message. The mediums will keep changing.

As president of a union representing Canadian media workers, I believe that protecting our labour rights within the media industry is paramount. Safeguarding media workers' rights to fair wages, safe working conditions and collective bargaining upholds the dignity and well-being of these workers and fortifies the integrity of our media institutions.

Misinformation and disinformation pose profound challenges to the integrity and credibility of Canadian media. They erode public trust, disrupt democratic discourse and undermine the credibility of legitimate news sources. We believe that by fortifying the resilience of Canadian media against the threats of disinformation and misinformation, we can safeguard the integrity of our democratic institutions and ensure that Canadians have access to reliable, trustworthy Canadian information.

The CMG believes that to preserve and celebrate their culture, Canadians must have access to stories told by members of their communities. Bringing Canada to Canadians is the mandate of some public broadcasters, but it's the daily goal of all Canadian media workers. Media outlets such as TVO, APTN and CBC/Radio-Canada play a vital role in shaping and reflecting the unique identity of our nation by offering platforms for Canadian voices and perspectives.

A Quebecker and Acadian, I grew up in Dieppe, New Brunswick. Our culture was fuelled daily by the media that talked to us about us and did so in our language. It is a gift that is still not offered to all Canadians.

I had hoped that Bruce Spence, the president of our APTN branch, would be by my side today, but that was not possible. I humbly speak on his behalf and that of our APTN members, whose job it is to report on events and issues relevant to their audiences from a perspective they cannot get from mainstream news media outlets.

The CMG supports Bruce's belief that every tribal group in the country should have its own APTN—its own media network—regionally and locally so that languages of every tribal group and the societal concepts that go with them are spoken and learned in the home of its members no matter where that home may be. The work done by APTN is essential to supporting aboriginal culture and ties into the recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Annick Forest]

Okay.

I'm not going to talk about securing funding sources for Canadian media, as that is vital for a diverse and vibrant media landscape.

I'll go right to our recommendations. I ask that the forum explore public funding mechanisms, innovative financing models and partnerships for public and private media; that the forum explore avenues to protect each community with the media workers and mediums they need so that their voices are heard and their stories are told; and that the forum examine possible avenues to uphold quality Canadian journalism, including media literacy, education and how to impose greater accountability on creators and distributors of information. The CMG further recommends that the forum examine how to best support aboriginal Canadians who wish to become media workers.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you and present you with our thoughts.

I'll leave you with one last thought that I think is very important. It's not just about the medium. It's about bringing a message to Canadians. When you make rules, laws or whatever decisions you might make, don't think about only television and radio. It's not about airwaves. It's about bringing a quality message to Canadians. The way that message is brought to Canadians will change, and right now, people are looking at different sources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Forest. You can elaborate later on when you're asked a question.

[Annick Forest]

I will be happy to do so. Thank you.