Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2023

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I will share my time with Mr. Julian.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Mr. Julian, you have three minutes and 45 seconds from Mr. Noormohamed.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank my colleague.

It has recently come out, of course, that Meta and Google receive over a billion dollars of indirect subsidies. The Conservatives have never said a word about that. Over a billion dollars is a ton of money.

Are you aware of that? Do you think that Meta and Google in some way bend to government will, with over $1 billion in indirect subsidies?

[Catherine Tait]

I think they're demonstrating quite the contrary.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes, so I think what is clear, Mr. Chair, is that the Conservative attack, or rage machine, fell on the rocks today. They ran out of questions and simply were not able—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I have a point of order.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Mr. Shields has a point of order.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I object to the statements that he's making and the words he is using about labelling the Conservative Party.

Thank you.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Chair, I respect Mr. Shields, and I will withdraw this. Mrs. Thomas should be doing the same thing with her despicable attacks against CBC journalists and some of her comments today.

Mr. Chair, given that we are nearing the end—and I certainly appreciate the extra time that was given—I want to move the following motion. It was circulated as a notice of motion. I move:

That the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage affirms:

That CBC/Radio-Canada journalists and crew members are risking their lives every day in the Middle East covering the Israel-Hamas conflict and the horrific events impacting Israelis and Palestinians.

That CBC/Radio-Canada journalists have received or been nominated for over 200 prestigious national journalism awards in the past five years, such as Canadian Association of Journalists Awards, Radio Television Digital News Association National Awards, National Native Media Awards and National Association of Black Journalists Awards.

That the independence of CBC/Radio-Canada journalists from political interference, is protected in the Broadcasting Act Sec 46(5), which states that—The Corporation shall, in pursuit of its objects and in the exercise of its powers, enjoy freedom of expression and journalistic, creative, and programming independence.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you, Mr. Julian. Before debating your motion, I respectfully ask the committee's permission to thank Ms. Tait, Ms. Williams and Ms. Meloul for coming here today.

Dear witnesses, we are going to debate a motion. I think we're getting to a point where no questions are going to be directed to you. I want to thank all three of you for being here this morning. Thank you for your candour and for answering all the questions, even the most difficult ones. We appreciate you being here.

We can start debating Mr. Julian's motion.

Mr. Julian, I'll turn it over to you.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's very clear from the testimony today.... I will say again that the Conservatives just basically ran out of speed, given that the facts were very clearly affirmed—

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

I have a point of order.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Mr. Julian, Mr. Aboultaif has a point of order.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think you should suspend until the witnesses leave the room. Then we can go in camera. That's reasonable.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

You're absolutely right, Mr. Aboultaif.

We'll take a short two minute break.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

I call the meeting back to order.

Mr. Julian has the floor to discuss his motion.

Go ahead, Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I don't intend to go long on this. We've been experiencing a Conservative filibuster for the past month. You'll recall that Conservatives were saying we needed three hours with the CBC president on Israel-Hamas, and after half an hour they stopped asking questions about Israel-Hamas. Very clearly, that was wasted time.

I believe we need to come back to the important committee report, which is on safe sport. Witnesses believe that we need to move forward on that. It's been delayed for a month because of these incessant filibusters from the Conservatives.

I'm not going to take a lot of time on this. The Conservatives gave up asking about Israel-Hamas after half an hour. The reality is that, I think, it's because of the strength of the facts that are on CBC's side. The facts are that they are risking their lives every day in the Middle East, covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The facts are that CBC/Radio-Canada has received or been nominated for over 200 prestigious national journalism awards in the last five years. These are the top journalist prizes. They have received prizes because the journalism has been factual and it has been updated. The CBC News organization does everything that a news organization should do and upholds the international standards that we also see reflected in CNN, BBC and Agence France-Presse.

It's not at all the approach of the Fox Entertainment network, which makes things up. They've admitted in numerous court cases that they just make up stuff, yet that seems to be the model that some members of this committee want to see.

Most importantly, Mr. Chair, the final clause on the independence of CBC, and protecting that from political interference, is actually something that was adopted by Parliament. Subsection 46(5) of the Broadcasting Act states:

The Corporation shall, in the pursuit of its objects and in the exercise of its powers, enjoy freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence.

That is vitally important. The idea of the Fox Entertainment model, where you can make stuff up all the time, is not the approach that Canadians want to see. They want to see a profound journalistic endeavour.

The reality is that if anybody in Canada doesn't like something, like an article that is archived on the site—it has been updated by numerous other articles but they don't like the original article—they can appeal to the ombudsman. There is a process. That journalistic independence is protected, but the public can weigh in. Canadians can weigh in.

As we've heard, over a billion dollars in indirect subsidies go to Meta and Google. We've seen numerous subsidies going to big business. What CBC does in return for the public subsidies is ensure the top level of journalistic credibility. Over 200 prestigious national journalism awards attest to that.

Mr. Chair, given that CBC/Radio-Canada has indeed received more than 200 prestigious awards; given that everyone, including all parliamentarians, should protect it from political interference; and given that we know full well that these journalists are risking their lives every day right now to cover the conflict between Israel and Hamas, I hope that this motion will be passed unanimously.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Before moving on to the next speakers, I would like to point out, to dispel any lingering doubts, that the meeting has remained public. We are not in camera right now, because we're debating Mr. Julian's motion. We're not yet on the report item on the agenda.

For those who were wondering, the meeting is still public.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Thomas.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

I would simply offer an amendment to Mr. Julian's motion, an addition, which is that at the end of his motion, it would read:

That the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage affirms that the CBC published a false headline based on disinformation from Hamas, a criminal terrorist organization, that incorrectly stated that Israel was responsible for the explosion at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

And that, the committee call on the CBC to apologize to the Jewish community and all Canadians for spreading this dangerous disinformation and to publicly correct the record and to report this finding to the House of Commons.

I am happy to send that amendment to the clerk for it to be translated into French and made available to the members at the table.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

Ms. Thomas, while you do that, we will suspend the meeting for a few minutes. Let's try to do this as quickly as we can.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

I call the meeting back to order.

Please note that we are still waiting for the French translation of the amendment. We have the room until 10:30. If we receive the translation of the amendment before then, we can decide whether to suspend or adjourn the meeting.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I have another committee meeting to go to. I move to adjourn.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

You can't move to adjourn on a point of order, Mr. Julian.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Martin Champoux]

The clerk of the committee is telling me that I am right. I'm still not used to being right as often as this, Mr. Julian.

I'm sorry. You can't ask to adjourn on a point of order.