Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon. My name is Maria Saras-Voutsinas, and I'm here today representing the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada.
Our organization's membership runs the full gamut of press and media, television, radio, hard copy, and online. Our members are communications entities with professionally trained journalists who publish primarily in a language that is neither English nor French. We publish dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and so forth in non-official languages. Our reach, given Canada's birth rate and immigration policies, is currently 23% of the potential user market. That demographic is the only growing one according to Statistics Canada.
You have heard from tech experts, digital giants, and mainstream media on the impact of the transition to digital consumption of communications and entertainment content. It continues to be a valuable exercise. None of it is new.
Governments are trying to balance the playing field and we applaud this initiative. We do not want you to leave our members behind; we are just as impacted as the mainstream media. We have always competed for advertising dollars to survive.
Advertisers, including governments, turn to digital platforms. For context, the government spent more on Facebook and Instagram advertising last year than all print publications combined, both mainstream and ethnic. To appreciate the impact, consider the testimony of one of the Meta executives before this committee. His company draws over $200 million per annum from Canada, yet it produces no content.
We feel that Bill C-18 is asking those digital giants to recognize the virtual partnerships they have with content creators like our members, whose growth results in the increase of the reach of those platforms.
We would feel more confident if we knew the rules going in and not after the doors are closed on Bill C-18. That includes the conditions everyone must meet to be at the table. Our members can and will meet them.
We are also asking you to put in an amendment to Bill C-18 to allow owner-operator journalists to count toward the journalist minimum, so more ethnic and rural publishers can negotiate collectively.
The pandemic was, and is, an incredibly turbulent time for ethnic news publishers. Readership surged but advertising cratered. A number of publishers had a very tough decision to make between continuing to report the news to minority-language groups who needed vital pandemic information, or cutting their losses and shutting down. I'm very proud that the vast majority of our outlets decided that providing vital health information to their communities was paramount, and they published, even though it was at a loss.
Being able to bring news to your community, which sometimes may not have a strong grasp of English or French, brought our publishers a lot to provide. It helped new and established immigrant Canadians find a place for themselves and feel more connected to their community.
We think it is crucial for democracy that Canadians have access to news, including those who consume their news in non-official languages. There is an imbalance that needs to be addressed between large digital platforms and the local news outlets that produce the content that provides platforms with value.
We strongly believe that the framework of Bill C-18 can and will include support for ethnic publishers, who need the help now more than ever.
While we are encouraged to see that the digital giants have signed deals with select outlets in Canada, we are very troubled that none of those outlets have been with ethnic media. It is clear Meta and Google will not willingly partner with the ethnic press to ensure that compensation is equitable. That is why we're asking for Bill C-18, so that our membership may have a fair negotiation to be paid for their content.
I have heard from so many members of my own Greek community about what a difference having Canadian news in Greek has meant to them. Many of those readers felt invested in our country, sought English and French classes and later became Canadian citizens. That is what the news can do: It can take people out of isolation and better explain their neighbours, their province, and their country, and that is good for democracy.
We have been working closely with our colleagues at News Media Canada and we agree on an approach that is fair and equitable and benefits both small and large publishers. We are one industry and proud to stand together to ensure that Canadians have access to reliable news in the language that they are most comfortable with.
Thank you all for your time, and I'm looking forward to the discussion.