Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I'm not speaking specifically to the subamendment; I'm coming back to the amendment itself. I have enormous respect for Mr. Housefather. I feel he's a tremendously learned member of the committee, but I do not buy his argument, despite that it is very effectively put forward.
In the examples we've seen—for example, in the Australian example—you don't have news organizations working in bad faith. What we do see is a real attempt by big tech to look for exemptions.
I don't want to filibuster this. We have so many other amendments to work through that I'm not going to intervene again on this one, but I would say that the amendment that was proposed in the testimony from the independent online news publishers of Canada is an effective amendment. I do not buy the argument that somehow news organizations will operate in bad faith. That's certainly not the track record we've seen from the Australian model.
I think the online news publishers of Canada are making a huge difference in my community. I'll just mention this, Mr. Chair. We went from four community newspapers to two, devastated by the amount of ad revenue that was taken by Facebook and other digital news intermediaries. The independent online news publishers of Canada have re-established two of those, so we've seen a doubling of the local news that is produced.
I'll give a shout-out to the Burnaby Beacon and the New Westminster Anchor, two publications that are making a difference in our community.
I think that the idea that big tech has an incentive to negotiate with all eligible news businesses is a good one. There are a wide variety of subamendments we could propose to solve a problem that I don't believe is a legitimate one, certainly based on the Australian model. I think this is a legitimate amendment, but we will see how the committee feels, and I think we should move fairly rapidly to a vote.
I did not intend at all that this become an amendment that we would spend a lot of time on. I think the positions of each of the parties is already well known.