Thank you for inviting me to take part in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's study.
My name is Éric‑Pierre Champagne, and I am the president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, or FPJQ, the largest association of journalists in Canada. With some 1,600 members, the FPJQ brings together freelancers, employees and managers in all areas of media communication: reporters, researchers, filmmakers, communicators, columnists and news photographers. Since 1969, the FPJQ has stood up for a free press and the public's right to know, giving journalists a voice wherever necessary. I have been a journalist for some 30 years. I have spent more than 22 of those years at La Presse, where I specialize in environmental issues.
Thank you for taking an interest in the future of media and journalism. I am here to share the perspective of Quebec's journalists. It is their job to inform the public in an increasingly difficult environment. I want to underscore the importance of keeping in mind the real issues we are facing. The media crisis is much too important of a societal issue to be summarized in a few clichés. The truth is that journalism is more important than ever in an increasingly polarized society. Also true is that fewer and fewer of us are doing this increasingly challenging work. In a decade, from 2010 to 2020, our workforce shrunk by 23% in Canada. I'll ask the same question Amélie Daoust‑Boisvert, a professor of journalism at Concordia University, asked: If Canada's justice system had lost a quarter of its workforce in 10 years, would we remain indifferent?
As we lose journalists year after year, the world is becoming more—not less—complex. The skill set and knowledge required to do the job continue to grow. Meanwhile, the number of people doing the work is shrinking, as is the time in which to do it. Is a journalist's job that hard? The answer is yes. The bar is high. Like elected officials, we do our job in the public eye. In just a few years, the climate has gotten worse. What used to be rare has become normal, as we face harassment and hate unlike anything we've ever seen. The pressure on journalists is tremendous. Despite all the challenges, we keep practising a profession we consider vital in a democratic society. The men and women doing this work deserve respect.
As we now know, the media business model is broken. Some 80% of digital advertising dollars in Canada go to web giants Meta and Google. Those revenues and profits leave the country never to return. That leaves 20% of the advertising pie for Canada's media organizations to share. Think about it. Name one industry that could survive such a drastic drop in revenue.
Producing news content isn't free. Tuesday, Colette Brin, a professor at Université Laval, told the committee that producing quality news is expensive. For lack of better data, here are some 2018 figures courtesy of Unifor: covering a straightforward news item costs $331, covering a complex news item costs $935, and producing an investigative report costs $10,710.
As our media outlets continue to inform the public in the face of the storm, we struggle to hold our own against the foreign giants. In a letter that appeared today in La Presse, the chair of the board of Cogeco, Louis Audet, illustrated that clearly. In 2024, advertisers can still deduct advertising dollars spent on foreign digital platforms like Meta for tax purposes. That is absurd as our media outlets die a slow death.
While those in the media look for solutions—and, I assure you, they are looking—it's important to keep in mind why we need media and journalists working to inform the public.
In its latest report, the World Economic Forum identified disinformation as one of the biggest global risks in the next few years. What a troubling—if not terrifying—prospect as artificial intelligence systems take hold.
Here is a chilling statistic. According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fake news spreads six times faster than real news. Think about that.