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.