Thanks for the chance to jump in here.
I couldn't agree more that the future of Canadian journalism is going to come from the network of small journalism organizations and journalist start-ups that are innovating the model of news. There's absolutely no doubt about that in my mind.
That being said, the idea that we should be pitting and positioning small publishers and independent publishers against the large publishers as if they have fundamentally different objectives, values and financial interests is, to me, a disappointing side effect of the implication of the debate we've been having about Bill C-18. I think we have to move beyond that.
Are there legitimate concerns that small publishers and independent publishers have raised about this bill? Of course.
I think that lowering the eligibility criteria to include owner-proprietors makes a ton of sense. The allocation of money is also a bit tricky because at the moment, if you have a baseline fair allocation that's prorated by FTE or prorated by the amount of journalism that's being done, the bigger players are going to get more. Now, is that 75% or 60%? I don't know the exact way that was measured and what we're including in that in the PBO estimate. However, of course, the big publishers, if they have a lot more journalists, are going to get a greater percentage of the money. Does that mean that getting a significant subsidy for a one-person or two-person operation isn't a meaningful contribution to that small operation, one that potentially allows them to innovate and continue to grow? I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.
The final thing that's really important to note is that, right now, the status quo is important because, of those independent publishers, only a small fraction are getting deals right now. I think this scenario, particularly with the collective bargaining provisions and the provisions that allow for people to be added to collective agreements after the fact, would include a much wider range of small organizations, if not anybody who wanted it, just like QCJO does.