Thank you.
Mr. Julian moved an amendment to the original motion. His amendment expanded it to include Meta and Google, and now we have subamended it to put the head of the CBC, Catherine Tait, back into it.
Arguably, we've now expanded the scope of this study quite significantly. The chair has ruled it in order, and so it's the motion as amended, and then as subamended, that we're discussing, and it has been permitted to stand.
My concern is that this committee is overstepping its boundaries in terms of what its scope of study should be. We have the ability, and even the mandate, to hold the CBC to account because it is the public broadcaster of Canada. It is paid for solely by public dollars, and it is the responsibility of the House, then, to hold the CBC to account.
To hold the CBC to account is different from telling the CBC what to report. Those are very different. The way we hold it to account is by inviting witnesses to come to this committee and asking them questions, and for those individuals to then provide responses.
To bring Ms. Tait is absolutely essential, because she is the head of that organization. In fact, she just recently had her contract extended for an additional 18 months. Clearly, then, some confidence has been demonstrated toward Ms. Tait, and her organization, in the news broadcast, is making some decisions that are quite alarming to a number of members here at this table and, more importantly, to members of the Canadian public.
I would like to highlight my main concern in all of this when it comes Ms. Tait and the way that she is choosing to lead the CBC, because I do think that there are some things that deserve the utmost consideration here at this committee . That is why it is so important that she not be omitted from this need for study.
Ms. Tait, the head of the CBC, recently published an article, on October 18, talking about how trust in journalism is diminishing, and therefore it is incumbent upon journalists to report in a way that is fact-based. In this article, she uses the phrase, “fact-based reporting” over and over and over again. She talks about how the news needs to be accurately reported.
What I find interesting, though, is that she came out with that article only after the CBC actually ran with a number of falsehoods in their articles, so I would have to ask, what about these facts? What about the fact that hundreds of people were slaughtered in the night? What about the fact that 40 babies were beheaded? What about the fact that women were killed, raped and paraded through the streets? What about those facts? What about the fact that since 2002, Canada has listed Hamas as a terrorist organization?
