Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Éric‑Pierre Champagne and I am the president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, ou FPJQ. I have been a journalist for more than 30 years and I have been working at La Presse since 2001. I have been covering environmental issues for a dozen years.
With me is my colleague, Stéphanie Mac Farlane. She is vice-president of the FPJQ and editor-in-chief of Le Canada Français, a weekly founded in 1860 that serves the Saint‑Jean‑sur‑Richelieu region.
The FPLQ has about 1,400 members working in various media professions. We are the largest association of journalists in Canada.
The first message I want to stress today is that without journalists, there is no journalism.
From every side, we often hear that journalism is dead. Nothing can be further from the truth. Despite the many difficulties, excellent journalism is very much alive in Quebec. I would even say that the quality of journalism in 2026 is superior to what was being done 10 or 20 years ago.
There are many examples, but I will provide just one as an illustration. Fifteen years ago, there were only a handful of investigative journalists in the media. Today, all the major media outlets in Quebec have investigative teams, not just a single journalist, regularly publishing stories of great public interest. Local and regional media, as well as new media, are also publishing impactful investigations, despite the lack of resources at their disposal.
Everything is far from perfect, but it must be admitted that true journalism is still very much alive, despite the many obstacles. In my view, that is a testament to the adaptability and resilience of the journalists in the Quebec media.
We at the FPJQ believe that the information produced by professional journalists is essential in a democratic society. In these times of polarization and disinformation, with artificial intelligence sweeping everything before it, we need journalists and quality journalism more than ever.
And yet we are facing a global phenomenon: the media business model is broken. At the moment in Canada, 70% to 80% of advertising revenue goes into the pockets of two foreign giants, Meta and Google. Let me ask you, what industry would manage to survive under those conditions? Those two giants have war machines that are allowing them to literally strangle the Canadian media ecosystem.
Nevertheless, public assistance, both federal and provincial, has helped to reduce the damage. Without that support, the picture would be very different.
We completely understand that, in the current financial situation, it is difficult for our governments to do more. They have to juggle a number of different priorities. That is why we are astonished to learn that advertisers can still deduct their publicity expenses on foreign platforms. The measure is in place as a way to promote Canadian media, but we fail to understand why corrections have not been made for foreign platforms, despite the repeated requests from the FPJQ and from other players in the media industry. Doing so would cost the Canadian government absolutely nothing.
The Online News Act, imperfect though it is, has produced results. Today, about 450 Canadian media organizations are sharing at least $100 million from Google. It is high time for Meta to stop its detestable blocking of news on its platforms and pay Canadian media their fair share. We are asking the government not to negotiate a cut-rate agreement with a giant that spreads disinformation on its platforms.
Adapting copyright to this digital age also has to be done faster. Above all, our media must be protected from having their content destroyed by the giants of generative artificial intelligence. We too often forget that producing information comes at a cost, a significant cost. We cannot allow the tech giants to usurp journalistic content without the slightest compensation.
The overall situation remains a concern. In some regions of Quebec and Canada, we are slowly beginning to see media deserts. As you know, nature abhors a vacuum, so it will be quickly filled, probably with artificial intelligence, with all the dangers that entails.
The dangers are real. They are the elephant in this very room, one might say. So I invite us all to look beyond our partisan interests in order to serve the public interest that is so essential in this time of great upheaval.