Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of the witnesses, not only today's but those from the weeks in which we have been discussing Bill C-18. This is the last day that we will have witnesses come to our committee. I want to thank those who have forwarded amendments, because today is the last day that we can have amendments ready, as in two weeks' time we will be going through the amendments here in the heritage committee.
I just want to clarify this and actually state it on the record, Madam Chair. I want to be clear here that over the last couple of months Conservatives have had a number of problems with Bill C-18 and we've expressed them.
I also want to say, Madam Chair, that we support the principle of requiring the web giants to pay more to compensate Canadian news media, particularly the struggling local newspapers throughout this country. That is why, on this side, we invited the Saskatchewan newspapers association. That's why we also had the Alberta news association come here, which said that 50% of their membership in Alberta would not qualify. I knew, because of my province, that up to 70% to 80% of my province would not qualify for Bill C-18.
I am going to quote Marie Woolf, who did a fabulous job yesterday in The Globe and Mail in pointing to one of the errors. The Davidson Leader newspaper sold a couple of years ago for one dollar. That's one dollar. She did a story with Dan Senick, who bought it. They have a subscription of 60% to the Davidson Leader newspaper. Everybody wants to find out who died, unfortunately, and the obits are number one in that newspaper. They also put that on Facebook, which should be paying for that. l just wanted to say that I was very happy with that article.
Everybody was quoted yesterday: the Liberals, the NDP and me. It's true: We're really worried about the state of local journalism in rural Canada, not just in Saskatchewan or Alberta but throughout this country.
Let's start. I think I'm going to start with the National Ethnic Press and Media Council.
It's the first time we've had you in front of us, Maria. This is a developing one. We know the Liberals want to have massive, robust immigration. You know, sometimes the local media in our country take a while to catch up to ethnic media who have people coming into this country.
How are you going to deal with Bill C-18? How is your industry going to catch up and make sure that new people coming into this country in fact get the message from your membership? Can you explain that?