Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
This is the last NDP amendment, so I want to take a moment to thank the legislative team and my team. Doris Mah and Shawn Hughes have done an amazing job. I thank the clerk, the legislative clerk, the analysts and you, Madam Chair, for working through what is a very complex bill. It is undoubtedly a better bill after we added all these amendments. I think it's fair to say the bill is substantially improved and we should all be proud of that.
Amendment NDP-32 was suggested by the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University. They do terrific work on issues related to technology and democracy in media. They raised concerns about the Australian model being overly opaque by design. News outlets had no idea what metrics or benchmarks were being used to guide their negotiations.
The bill currently has transparency requirements peppered throughout it. No doubt, there is room for increased transparency. Currently, the online news act requires annual data sharing. In order for news outlets to make more informed decisions in real time, they need aggregated, audited market data released at regular and more frequent intervals, not just annually, as the bill currently prescribes.
What this would do is add the following new clause:
86.1 As soon as feasible after the end of each quarter in each fiscal year, the Commission must publish on its website a quarterly report containing audited data on the Canadian digital news marketplace in an aggregated form, including data on the number of agreements entered into under this Act and the commercial value of those agreements.
This aggregated data, of course, is something that preserves confidentiality, which a number of people have raised as a concern. It provides for the transparency that is so vital in ensuring the success of this bill. We want to regenerate our local journalism. One way to do that is to make sure the market data is available in an aggregated and audited form.
I move NDP-32.