I'm talking about going into digital and starting brand new, Chair. Leaving an established media company and starting a new company is a big risk.
I noticed what you and a lot of people did, and I just want to say thank you for your work and for your advocacy here today. Many people are obviously paying attention to the work you're doing. You're rewriting the entire business, so thank you for being here today.
I want to turn my attention to Ms. Paradkar.
I found your opening very intriguing because you talked a lot about trust. MP Shields talked about trust as well.
I think you brought up some statistics on politicians and reporters, so I started to think about politicians. There's been a massive movement to subsidize politics over the last couple of decades. If a person makes a political donation in this country, that person gets a subsidy. If they donate $400 federally, I think they get 75% back. Then I believe there's a movement in many different places.... In Toronto, for example, there's an allocation from city coffers back as a direct rebate to the donor. Even political parties get federal subsidies.
They did this because back in the old days, really rich people controlled politics. When you were talking, I started to think about the fact that in media there are big interests involved. We've gone from back in the old days when the news barons had control, to these super-companies—Apple is three times the size of the Canadian GDP—that control narrative. They have a lot of influence.
I think we need to revisit the entire way we do things.
You talked about looking at the not-for-profit model and you brought up AI. Not only are these companies using AI to create content based on old content and sources that reporters like some in the room have written before, but they can take the content and put it on different platforms and profit off it as well.
Do you have any other models you can share with us? I'm assuming if there was a forum on media, this would be a place where new models of doing business would come forward. Beside the not-for-profit sector, have you heard of any other models that have come forward to revisit the way we do news in this country?