Canadian Heritage Committee on April 16th, 2026

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Meanwhile, however, in this universe where information can be gathered from different sources, confusion remains. Something is not really clear; people cannot distinguish between a journalist and, in this case, Mr. Morisset, who does not do journalism. He has never claimed that he does, but that's not really the way people will perceive him.

I know I will not have the time to go deeper in this round. But I think it is part of a broader discussion we should have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Waugh, you now have the floor for five minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is our fourth meeting on the state of the journalism and media sectors. That's about eight hours.

On how media ownership impacts fairness in media, I'll go to you, Mr. Menzies. You've had three decades in newspaper. You were with the CRTC as vice-chair for four years.

When I look at the National Post, it's owned 62% or 63% by a hedge fund in the United States, by Chatham Asset Management in New Jersey. That was, I think, a turning point in this country. All of a sudden, the newspaper industry, the major newspapers in many cities, changed when that happened. I don't have to tell you that when you go down Deerfoot Trail, you can see that the iconic Calgary Herald building has now been sold. The letters of the Calgary Herald are off the building. It's now a U-Haul facility.

I would like your thoughts on media ownership. How could we let a hedge fund from the United States buy our most precious newspapers in this country?

[Peter Menzies]

First of all, I sort of cross myself every time I go by that building.

How? The companies were emerging from bankruptcy under Canwest. That was how Postmedia was initially set up. The ownership structure has changed over the years. I suppose it happened for the same reason that subsidies became popular. It's because the companies were too big to fail. Politicians don't like massive failures on their watch, so you tried to get the best deal you could, even if it wasn't a great deal.

In terms of the ownership set-up, when you have a hedge fund, you have an entirely different financial model. You need to feed the beast. That becomes a priority. There isn't time for long-term thinking. There isn't time for long-term structures and that sort of stuff. You need to make those payments, and you need to make them on time. That becomes the priority. That can be a big issue.

If you have a proprietorship ownership, like The Globe and Mail, you can appeal to the owner to be patient, hang on, not lay people off and try to invest in journalism. I think that approach has generally worked pretty well for The Globe and Mail.

Essentially, if you have a free press, it means you can be whatever you want. The only time it makes a difference is now that the government has gotten into funding, government and people such as yourself, Mr. Waugh, have to look at it and ask what is being funded here. Is it a hedge fund or news?

That is why I think that one of the ways out of that is to get around to funding the consumer. Let them choose what they want to read or not read. Subsidize that through tax credits to them. Then the market can actually work, and you get some sort of feedback. You get a flow-through impact to successful operators.

In my 30 years in the business, who owns what and how was never the government's business.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

When you were on the CRTC for the four years.... You had 10 years there as an adviser, along with Konrad von Finckenstein. I was at Bell Media. Telecommunications companies like Bell and Rogers all of a sudden started buying assets in this country.

Where do you see that? You were there during Bell Media's taking over of the CTV network. You were there when others, like Rogers, started to do Sportsnet and so on. Where is the fairness in that? Is it just that the telecommunications companies, like Bell, Rogers and so on, have deep pockets and can do whatever they want?

When you were at the CRTC, was it kind of a rubber stamp, when in fact they did buy the CTV network and others?

[Peter Menzies]

They can't do whatever they want, because they make a transactional agreement with the CRTC. The CRTC gives them a licence, and in exchange for that, they agree to follow certain guidelines and certain rules. That's what happens with all broadcasters—

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Let me say this, though. I come from Saskatoon. Bell Media no longer has a weekend local newscast. When I was there for 39 and a half years, we had a noon, a six and a late night. We no longer have a weekend newscast.

I will challenge you on the CRTC, because I've had Ms. Vicky Eatrides in this room. The CRTC no longer follows up with local television news, checkmarking what their licence was supposed to do. It's changed from when you were there for 10 years to where it is today. It's too busy with other things going on.

The CRTC, as you know, was radio and television. Now it is trying to regulate the Internet. There is the problem. You were there. You could hardly do radio and television. I just gave you one example of Bell Media not fulfilling its contract of doing local news in Saskatoon and Regina on weekends at six and 11:30 at night.

[Peter Menzies]

Sure. That happens. They probably wanted to stop because nobody was watching it—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

I'm sorry. We don't have time for that answer.

Mr. Menzies, I don't mean to cut you off. I think Mr. Waugh made his point himself. I gave him some time to finish his statement.

I will turn now to Mr. Ntumba.

The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My greetings and thanks to our distinguished witnesses.

The work that we are doing is very important for the state of media in Canada.

Mr. Champagne, earlier you were talking about ethics. Could you talk to us about the media crafts, and journalism in particular? I am somewhat echoing what Mr. Champoux was saying: Have we not reached the stage at which you really feel that an organization should be established to oversee the general state of the media in Canada, to follow up when required, and to make sure that the code of ethics applies to all?

[Éric-Pierre Champagne]

I can't really speak for the rest of Canada because our organization is primarily based in Quebec. So let me tell you about Quebec, because I have no detailed knowledge about the situation in other Canadian provinces.

We have the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, the FPJQ, but we also have the Quebec Press Council, which you must also know. It's a self-regulating system. The council is basically made up of journalists, of media employers, and of representatives from the public. It handles complaints. When complaints about journalistic work are filed by members of the public, they are heard by a committee representing the three groups I have just named. They check for breaches of ethics. Any penalties are moral in nature. The penalties are not financial or of any other kind. But I know no journalist who likes to receive a black mark from the press council.

To my knowledge, the Quebec Press Council system is quite unique in Canada. I can't think of an equivalent anywhere else. So we have to celebrate the dynamic nature of the Quebec media industry and the way it regulates itself. It's not perfect, but is still a cut above anything else in the rest of Canada, or in the United States, where things are worse.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Mr. Lamoureux, you represent independent journalists but I feel that your work has connections to the media. Let me harp on a bit more about establishing a professional body.

Take doctors and engineers as an example. When their professional bodies give them a black mark, they do not want any others.

If journalists also ran the risk of a black mark on their record for not following the ethical rules, would it not be an incentive for them to do so?

[Samuel Lamoureux]

As Mr. Champagne said, we have the Quebec Press Council as well. We have not talked about it before. So, if you wanted, you could make government assistance conditional on membership in the Quebec Press Council. That would be quite an easy way to guarantee some kind of independence.

However, I do not think that it would be useful to have a professional body. The quality of the journalism is determined by the readers. Do the people read and interact with the journalism? The relationship between readers and journalism is a unique one. For the entire history of journalism, there have always been official media and alternative media, people who want a closer relationship with the community. There has also even been literary journalism, meaning authors writing books of a journalistic nature. Journalism can also be a literary technique that authors can borrow.

Creating a professional body serves no purpose. We already have the press council and it would be quite possible to make any government assistance conditional on membership in the council. All questions about pseudocontamination and all debates would be settled if we did something like that.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Mr. Menzies, earlier, you talked about subsidizing the consumer rather than the media. Could you explain exactly what you mean?

[Peter Menzies]

Well, I think you could enhance the tax credit for buying a subscription, or you could make it purely tax-deductible in the same way you would make a charitable donation tax-deductible.

Say you gave each family, each household, 1,000 dollars' worth of tax credits per year that they could spend on subscriptions. They could spend it on a subscription to Le Devoir, La Presse, The Globe and Mail or whatever they chose. You subsidize their consumption of the news. There's money going to the consumer to choose, money that, again, flows through to the publishers, because they get the money from the subscription. However, there is no association, then, between government and the publisher. It's an arrangement between the government and the consumer. It's there to promote for the government, if the government wishes, the public good of having a well-informed public, but it's agnostic in terms of where they spend it. If it's a qualified Canadian journalism organization, I suggested a different way to do that.

This way, people are free to consume the news that they want, and government can subsidize the behaviour that it wants without putting the publishers in a conflict of interest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

The floor now goes to Mr. Généreux for five minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thanks also to the witnesses. What we are hearing today is really fascinating.

Mr. Champagne, in your opening remarks, you mentioned “real journalists”. What is your definition of journalism?

[Éric-Pierre Champagne]

Defining a “journalist” is always difficult. However, when I talk about journalists, I see them as reporters who verify facts, who present the public with those facts, explain them and make them accessible. That's what journalists do. It has nothing to do with giving one's opinion.

This does not come as a surprise; I have said it publicly in a number of forums. As I see it, there are too many opinion pieces in our media and I have no problem saying so, even though I am president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec and I work at La Presse. Above all, I want to represent journalists and reporters; that is what's important to me. The public does not want to be told what to think. They want to be given the facts, they want a clear picture of an increasingly complex world. As I see it, that's what journalists do and that's what journalism is.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Ms. Reid, do you have the same definition?

“What is a journalist?”

[Sheila Gunn Reid]

Journalism, I believe, encompasses opinions. It does first-hand news gathering, analysis, investigation and access to information, but I also believe that it does involve opinion journalism. Every major newspaper in this country has an editorial section, and we would not say those people are not journalists.

What I think distinguishes a lot of the truly independent journalists from government journalists in this country is that they're honest about their political biases. They don't try to obscure them in the way we see at the CBC or the Toronto Star.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

Mr. Lamoureux, did you understand the question I opened with?

[Samuel Lamoureux]

How do we define journalism?

I would say that journalism means reporting news with a view to the public interest and striving for the truth. Basically, that's it.

Ms. Villalba, you can give us your opinion too, if you want.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

“Journalists” from Rebel News have just done an interview with the leader of the Parti Québécois. I put the word in quotation marks because people here may not believe that they are journalists, which isn't necessarily my opinion. The interview made a lot of waves, so to speak, in other generalist media, like Radio-Canada, for example.

How do you see that? It was in the headlines last week.

I make no secret of the fact that I have been a “Radio-Canada guy” from birth. I still listen to Radio-Canada every day. It's where I turn for my information. However, I saw the reaction in the world of Quebec journalism, in La Presse and on Radio-Canada specifically.

Mr. Champagne, how do you interpret that reaction? My impression is that the division between left and right in the world of Quebec journalism was made plain last week when this happened. Do you share that opinion?

[Éric-Pierre Champagne]

No, not at all. The problem is that Rebel News is always referred to as a publication on the right and that is why it is not accepted and its journalists are not recognized. That's not the problem at all.

Mr. St‑Pierre Plamondon has a perfect right to talk to whomever he wants. I certainly respect that. He has the right to meet with someone from Rebel News as well as people from other media. He won't hear any criticism from me about that.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC]

It caught my attention when I saw Mr. Dumont's reaction on TVA, and when thePrime Minister went to Radio-Canada and the host, Mr. Masbourian, thanked him for his trust during the interview. I feel that it showed that kind of relationship that the public generally makes with subsidized media like Radio-Canada, which receives $1.4 billion.

Let me take another tack now. Radio-Canada receives $7 million from the fund provided by Google. Do you agree with that? On Monday, we had witnesses here who said that small, private, regional TV stations are on their last legs. They are forced to reduce all their costs and to move heaven and earth in order to survive, while an organization that is already subsidized to the tune of $1.4 billion gets $7 million more. Do you see that as reasonable?