Thank you, Chair.
I want to chime in and say that I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of how news works. I think if there is any lack of trust in news today, it's because there are not enough journalists. There are no journalists left.
Back in the day, we always had editorials. We always had opinions in the newspaper, but we'd also have a couple of hundred journalists who were in the courtrooms. They were in city halls. They were out on the streets. They were at the crime scenes. We don't have that anymore, and that's what this bill is trying to address. It's trying to get more journalists into news organizations, so that we have more news and we have more good news, so that there's more variety, more opinions and more different people reporting.
When we see that hundreds of news outlets have closed in this country since 2008, we see the argument that “Well, a couple of hundred other online news organizations have popped up in that time”, but what we don't see is that they're not news. They're not gathering news. They're publishing only opinions. We have a proliferation of opinion organizations out there, publishing their opinions without people going out and reporting the news.
I will not be supporting this amendment. I don't think it's necessary. Journalism organizations have codes of conduct that they follow. They have laws that they have to follow. They have to understand what they can do in a courtroom. They have to go before the CRTC if they don't follow all of the proper journalism standards. These are things that are taught in journalism schools and in newsrooms across the country.
I think that's all I have to say.