Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 18th, 2022

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. McKay, my last question for you has to do with this idea that Bill C-18 would level the playing field. That's one of the things the minister is trying to promote as his messaging or his talking points with this. However, we've heard subsequent testimony that this is actually not the case. For example, Jen Gerson of The Line said that Bill C-18 will actually “favour incumbent media players over innovative models, small outlets and news start-ups.” In other words, it will continue to award the big players or legacy media with a whole lot of money, but local newspapers and smaller sources of media, particularly those with fewer than two full-time employees, will be put at a great disadvantage, so in fact it doesn't level the playing field.

I realize you're not in that business. You're the tech company that is going to help promote these individuals or give access to their news sources, but I'm wondering if you can give your thoughts on this, as well as the possibility of this bill doing.... I guess I want you to discuss or talk to me about tipping the scales and what this legislation will do to facilitate greater favour towards legacy media and perhaps a disadvantage to the smaller guys.

[Colin McKay]

The legislation before us addresses a policy challenge that was identified two years ago: the threat to existing journalism organizations in Canada. It attempts to create a regulatory framework to address that.

We heard today, from the other witnesses, that there are many strategies and possible solutions to help bridge into a future generation of journalism.

Not only is Google an advertising platform, but we're also a partner with journalists. Through our Google news initiative, we are working with them, as Mr. Myles described, to understand how readers are changing their behaviours, and how to capture revenue and information from that behaviour. For us, Bill C-18 addresses an immediate problem, but, as Mr. Scott identified, it does not solve for the future.

That's the challenge before you today.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

You have 15 seconds left, Ms. Thomas.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Jamison, I invite your response to this question, as well. I think we're out of time for this round, but I'll get to you next time.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you.

It is now the Liberal Party's turn.

Ms. Hepfner, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Cal Millar.

Cal Millar is my former boss at CHCH news.

I appreciated the rundown of the history of CHCH, from your perspective. As you know, I started there in August 2001 and worked there right up until my election last year. I witnessed first-hand a lot of those changes you mentioned.

I guess it was 13 years ago when Channel Zero took over CHCH. When I started, we were under the Global banner. At some point during that summer, we heard from Global that we would go black, as a station, if they didn't find a buyer for us within a month. Channel Zero stepped up, became the knight in shining armour, and took over CHCH.

What we saw was an expansion of news coverage under Channel Zero. We were live news, seven days a week. We had, I think, more local coverage than anyone in North America. We managed that for.... It was an exciting time. The newsroom was full. There were people at the courthouse. There were people at city hall. There were people knocking on doors and talking to people in Hamilton. It felt like really important work.

It only lasted for a couple of years like that, Cal, and I'm wondering if you can talk about the business decision that ended live news every day. When we saw mass layoffs once again at CHCH, I was one of the few to survive that, and we cut the coverage back down.

What was going on behind the scenes? What happened?

[Cal Millar]

Thank you, Ms. Hepfner.

This is a great opportunity to talk about that history. When we decided to make the acquisition of CHCH in the early part of 2009, the CRTC had, at that time, already determined that local news was under siege and in crisis. It feels repetitious to talk about local news still being in crisis 13 years later.

The CRTC, under then chair Konrad von Finckenstein, devised something called the “local programming improvement fund”. Knowing that money was going to be there, we were able to, first, make the decision to acquire CHCH, and reorient it toward local news. We were able to, as you said, expand news coverage to all day, all the time, because part of the quid pro quo in accepting that money was us having to hit certain benchmarks of local news. We expanded the news offering. We had market success in the expanded news offering.

Unfortunately, when the then chair moved on, there was an interim chair for a short period of time. That commission made a decision to discontinue the local programming improvement fund completely, so we went from having a subsidy for local news to having no subsidy whatsoever. It happened very quickly. In a matter of two fiscal years, the money went from substantial to nothing. To your point, what we had to do for the second time—and I don't know about “knight in shining armour”—was step in and make tough decisions to ensure that CHCH would survive.

Fortunately, a couple of years later, the commission realized this was a bit of an overstep—I think I would call it an “error”. By the end of 2017, if I have my date right, the ILNF, the independent local news fund, was established. That, again, gave us the ability to staff up, increase the number of hours of local programming, and serve our audience and community in a way that was missing in the previous two years.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Can you talk about the importance of CHCH to the communities of Hamilton, Halton and Niagara, and how it has led to the extremely high viewership numbers?

Can you also expand that to talk about the experience of the pandemic and what sort of reaction you got from communities for the service that CHCH provides?

[Cal Millar]

I'd be happy to do that.

Perhaps I'll do it in reverse, because the pandemic.... I'll start with the specifics and go out to the global. I may let Greg comment a bit on that in the global sense.

On the specifics, through the pandemic, we were live and on the ground. We were interrupting programming at all times, because we knew that our community wasn't served by any other news outlet. There is a Torstar local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, which has some editorials in our area. However, we cover an area that covers Niagara, Halton and Hamilton, and even up toward Kitchener-Waterloo, and there were no other immediate television broadcasters in that area to be able to deliver the news of what was happening on the ground as we were experiencing shutdowns and as we were experiencing mounting illnesses, deaths and COVID cases.

We took it upon ourselves, as did many other local broadcasters across the country, to interrupt as necessary. We would run the Prime Minister's news conferences. We would run—

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'm sorry, Cal. I'm running out of time.

Can you sum it up for us? You saw viewership grow during that time, I understand.

[Cal Millar]

Absolutely. While we served the community, viewership was through the roof, because people needed to know what was happening. We provided that service.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you, Mr. Millar and Ms. Hepfner.

Since the entire Bloc Québécois delegation on this committee is currently busy chairing the meeting, with the permission of my colleagues on the committee, I will allow myself the opportunity to ask the witnesses one or two questions at the end of each round.

For now, it is the New Democratic Party's turn.

Mr. Julian, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to say you are doing a very good job. I am certain the committee will allow you to ask the witnesses your questions in turn.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here.

To begin, I have a question for Mr. Myles, from Le Devoir.

Mr. Myles, you talked about the four agreements that Le Devoir has signed with MSN, Apple News+, Meta and Google, respectively. Are you prepared to disclose the outcomes of those agreements?

Of course, transparency is an issue of which much has been made in the testimony we have been hearing for several weeks.

[Brian Myles]

The agreements were signed by two private enterprises and are subject to confidentiality clauses, and so I cannot tell you the answer today.

However, I reiterate that we are going to adhere to the legislative environment and the legislation that results from the passage of this bill. The bill provides that the CRTC may access the content of agreements to ensure that they are fair. In that event, Le Devoir will be happy to be a responsible Canadian business.

With that said, I would like to add certain qualifications, to assist in understanding. A lot of information in the public domain has circulated, so I what I am going to tell you is not confidential. There are two methods of bargaining: the negotiations can deal with the digital impact for a news medium or with the cost of labour in a newsroom. Australia took the approach based on labour, and I believe that is the most promising one.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Are you at least able to disclose today what the impact of those agreements has been on Le Devoir in relation, for example, to the number of journalists or to editorial capacity?

[Brian Myles]

I would reiterate that these agreements are confidential. However, the reason we made the effort of signing them is that it was important. It has enabled us to take a significant step forward in our digital transformation.

Le Devoir's model is unique. We base our operation on subscriptions, which represent two thirds of our revenue. We have a strategy that seeks to diversify revenue and we have at all times exercised prudent management. When it comes to financial management, our organization wields an iron fist in an iron glove. All of these things must be considered as a whole. The subscription-based model, even for the digital version, the business agreements, tax credits, and prudent management are all factors that have made it possible for us to increase the number of journalists in the newsroom from 50 to 100 in barely four years.

The agreements with companies like Meta, Google and Apple News+ enable us to establish good relations, understand each other better, and discuss the exemplary practices to be adopted. That is invaluable.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

You made some suggestions for improving the bill.

The one relating to the importance of linguistic duality is one I will understand.

You also talked about the duty to have an exchange of information. Can you tell us a bit more about that recommendation?

[Brian Myles]

People say all the time that data is the oil of the digital age. Take the example of an application environment like Apple News+. When someone subscribes to Apple News+, they become a customer of Apple News+, and Apple, not Le Devoir, retains their email address.

Without the email address, we are unable to build a direct relationship ourselves with a user community, so it is important that a minimum of that kind of data be sent to us, so we can understand what our audience segments are in the digital world and so we can also grow them and bring them into our ecosystem, instead of sharing them in the Google or Meta or Apple ecosystem.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Myles.

I'm now going to turn to Mr. Jamison.

Thank you so much for being here. I'd be interested in knowing which publication, which newspaper, your family has been involved with for three generations.

Also, I deeply appreciate your comments around Bill C-18. What I gather from both your appearance and the appearance of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association is that there is broad support in Alberta and Saskatchewan for moving ahead with Bill C-18, including other measures, and we certainly understand that. Your point about how time is of the essence is extremely important.

This is a message, of course, for my Conservative colleagues: When they have newspapers representing about half of their caucus supporting Bill C-18, I would hope they would be on board as well.

You raised the issues both of transparency and of not leaving out smaller publications. What amendments would you suggest in terms of the bill to ensure that very small community publications are included? Should the threshold of two journalists be lowered so that community newspapers at all levels, even in small communities, can benefit?

[Evan Jamison]

Our family is involved in Great West Media. That originally came out of the St. Albert Gazette, which is our flagship newspaper. My grandparents purchased the Gazette in the late 1960s. Then, through the 1980s and 1990s, we acquired other papers across the province, mostly in rural areas throughout Alberta. We also operate a printing facility here in St. Albert. It serves many publishers across Alberta and northern B.C.

The question around eligibility and small publishers has been a difficult one, because we have many of them. There are many small communities across Canada, and especially here within Alberta, that are served by pretty small operations. Small can be good. Many of them do a tremendously good job. Many of them are family-run operations of brothers and sisters and whatnot.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Please conclude your answer quickly, Mr. Jamison.

[Evan Jamison]

I'm sorry.

It is really difficult as to how you get below that two-journalist threshold. We understand the difficulties of how you keep some limitations on a program so that you are trying to deal with quality news operations. I don't know if we have a good answer on how you actually deal with really small operators under a Bill C-18 type of scenario, other than using these other programs that have been in existence and that have helped these operations survive.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you, Mr. Jamison.

Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Before moving on to the second round of questions, if the committee permits, I would like to ask the witnesses a few questions myself.

Mr. Myles, in your opening remarks, you said that we had to be concerned with linguistic duality. Obviously, we are very familiar with the Canadian context: there are two official languages, French and English, and there are official language minority communities.

What can Parliament do to ensure that linguistic realities are taken into account in bargaining between media and the giants of the web?

[Brian Myles]

We must first call things what they are and pay real attention to them, in order to accomplish something appreciable. I stress that we, the francophone media in Quebec or outside Quebec, are always in an anglophone North American ocean. When we bargain with Silicon Valley companies, even though those companies have representatives in Canada, sooner or later we end up bargaining in another language and the cultural referents are not the same.

In order for the vitality and fragility of francophone culture to be understood, the CRTC must have a duty to ensure that linguistic duality is genuinely respected, and the CRTC must be given the necessary resources to do this.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Earlier, I heard one of the speakers talk about the Local Journalism Initiative. I know you are on a jury that evaluates the projects submitted under that program. We often hear certain people say that small players might be at a disadvantage in negotiations, in the context of the legislative measures that will result from the passage of Bill C‑18.

Does this kind of program have to be reviewed to make sure that the small players in the media industry are not continually trying to survive, and are instead able to regain a bit of vigour? How do you see that?