Thank you.
Let's be really clear here. I recognize that the members opposite enjoy launching baseless attacks against this side of the table. Allowing for paragraph 11(1)(b) to remain in there, such that it would be up to the cabinet to determine “any condition” to be applied with regard to an exemption, would actually put news businesses in danger, because they wouldn't know under what conditions DNIs could move forward with an exemption.
Those conditions could be, for example, that the CBC had entered into a negotiation or Bell had entered into a negotiation or any of these big companies had entered into negotiations, so therefore an exemption would be granted. How would that help ethnic media? How would that help our local newspapers? Allowing this paragraph to stay in there and allowing for such vague criteria to be implemented by cabinet actually puts the little guys in danger.
Let's be really clear about what's going on here. It allows for this government to show favouritism towards the big media companies that push out their story and it puts the little guys in danger, because they could be prevented from entering into negotiations with DNIs because DNIs could be granted the exemption.