Canadian Heritage Committee on April 21st, 2026

[Martin Simard]

The future of regional journalism rests on [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[Technical difficulty—Editor] innovation. The media must continue to evolve, adapt their formats and invest in digital technology in order to reach audiences wherever they are. [Technical difficulty—Editor] traditional formats, but rather enriching them. Radio, for example, remains a powerful medium in the regions. It can naturally integrate into new platforms.

Second, proximity is our greatest strength. No algorithm can replace the [Technical difficulty—Editor] relationship of trust built up over time with the public. The future belongs to media outlets that can remain deeply rooted in their communities.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] can't be built without a favourable environment. The public broadcaster, Radio‑Canada, currently benefits from such considerable financial resources that it has become virtually impossible [Technical difficulty—Editor]. This poses an obstacle to the recruitment of journalists. For its part, independent television in our regions receives generous contributions for independent television news. Meanwhile, the new radio news fund remains unfunded, given the elimination of the digital services tax. In some regions, even subsidized community radio stations have more financial resources than private radio stations, leading to unfair competition.

Public policies have played a role in ensuring a level playing field among local players, subsidized players and large international platforms, which remain unregulated. The funding of journalism, access to digital revenue—including Canadian government revenue—and the recognition of the role of regional media must remain priorities. It isn't right that the Canadian government funds print media journalism through a tax credit, while electronic media such as radio stations must remain on the sidelines. [Technical difficulty—Editor] situation in its latest budget.

At Groupe Radio Simard, we firmly believe that the regions aren't on the fringe of the news business. They're at the heart of it. [Technical difficulty—Editor] our regions shape the Canada of the future. We can't let only national content reach people in the regions, nor can [Technical difficulty—Editor] source of local and regional references for our communities. Investing in regional journalism means investing in the democratic, economic and cultural vitality of our country.

In closing, remember that the future of the media won't be [Technical difficulty—Editor]. [Technical difficulty—Editor] will be determined by our collective desire to preserve quality information and a diversity of voices accessible to everyone, everywhere [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[Technical difficulty—Editor] is just as important.

Thank you for your attention. We're ready to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Finally, all the way from Port Moody, we have Cathy Cena, with Tri Cities Community TV.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Cathy Cena, Executive Director, Tri Cities Community TV]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning and thank you, committee, for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Cathy Cena. I'm the executive director of Tri Cities Community Television in British Columbia. I've been involved in community television and local journalism for over 11 years as both a host and a community-based journalist.

I'd like to begin by offering an important distinction. While many organizations participating in the local journalism initiative are traditional broadcasters serving what are often called “media deserts”, we represent a different but equally important gap. We are an access-based community television organization operating in what I would describe as a community television desert.

In many regions across British Columbia, such as Kelowna, Kamloops and Penticton, residents have access to community television through providers like Rogers, but here in the Lower Mainland, despite its being one of the most populated areas in the province, there are no equivalent opportunities for community-driven television. That gap matters, because community media is not just about broadcasting. It's about participation. It's about giving people a platform to share their stories, their perspectives and their voices.

At Tri-Cities Community Television, we serve Coquitlam, Port Moody and Port Coquitlam—communities where many important stories go unreported by larger media outlets. In many ways, our region has also become what is often referred to as a news desert. There is limited consistent coverage of local civic issues, municipal decision-making and the work of community organizations. These are the stories that directly impact people's daily lives. Too often, they are missed.

Through our work, we will fill that gap. We amplify local voices. We highlight non-profits. We cover elections, and we create space for meaningful conversations that would not otherwise exist. Local journalism is not about delivering information. It's about connection, accountability and community identity. When people see themselves reflected in local media, they feel engaged. When local government is covered, there is greater transparency. When community organizations are highlighted, they are supported. Without this, communities become disconnected.

Despite the importance of this work, community media organizations like ours face significant and ongoing challenges. We operate with limited and unstable funding. We lack long-term sustainability models. We are meeting increasing demand with fewer resources, and we are navigating a rapidly changing media landscape.

Programs like the local journalism initiative have been incredibly valuable. They have allowed us to expand our journalism and better serve our community. We also recognize the support of broader federal programs, such as the Canada periodical fund and aid to publishers, which play an important role in sustaining Canada's journalism ecosystem.

However, these programs are not a complete solution for organizations like ours. In fact, our organization is currently facing a critical challenge. Just a few years ago, Telus acknowledged that we were exactly the type of community-based organization that they should be supporting: one that works with volunteers and produces programming about what is happening in our community. Since then, the funding has been cut, and that loss has had a real impact. It has placed pressure on our ability to sustain programming, support our team and continue participating fully in initiatives like the LJI.

We are now seeking additional funding, not just to grow but to maintain essential operations, including arts and culture programming and program management. Today, I would respectfully encourage the committee to consider a few key actions: continued and expanded support for community-based media; stable multi-year funding models that allow organizations to plan and grow; recognition of community media as essential infrastructure within Canada's media ecosystem; and investment in training and development for local journalists, particularly in underserved regions.

Community media is where stories begin. It's where people feel seen, heard and connected. In many cases, it's the only place where stories are told at all. We are not just reporting on our communities. We are part of them.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you very much.

We will go to questions from MPs now, starting with MP Waugh.

You have the floor, sir, for six minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all.

Mr. Gonez, welcome back. Should we save old media?

You mentioned that the traditional legacy media is dying slowly now. We just heard from Bell Media that they're losing $40 million a year in their newsrooms across the country. I'd like your thoughts on that.

[Brandon Gonez]

The difficulty with organizations like Bell and other traditional broadcasters and legacy players is that they're tied to an old model of doing things. The advertising market has shifted. How they're spending dollars has shifted. What I witnessed was that there was an opportunity to create an example of what innovation looks like in this country. Unfortunately, what happens a lot in Canada is that our systems and our industries end up being monopolized with a few key players and innovation gets pushed to the side.

I wanted to give something a try and it worked. It worked really well, but regulation like Bill C-18 came into play and caused a huge roadblock to that innovation. Again, the intention was good. We want a strong journalism industry in this country that is reflected at all sides of the ecosystem—traditional, digital, all the things—but what Bill C-18 did was inadvertently put more harm on digital players who took that risk to innovate and safeguarded legacy players who didn't innovate fast enough.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

You have 20 people hired. What's your advertising budget per year? What do you get in advertising?

[Brandon Gonez]

In terms of revenue, we are anywhere between $1.5 million to $3 million.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

I'm going to move to Bell, if you don't mind.

Full disclosure: I did work for CTV, as Mr. Gray knows. We were there forever, but I decided to move on. I saw the landscape changing, and I have to be honest with you, Mr. Gray, I don't recognize CTV Saskatoon anymore. We don't have weekend news out of Saskatoon anymore. The noon was cancelled. You cancelled that in February 2024, other than in Toronto, for the country.

You're right. We've seen a major shift in Bell Media. You claim you're losing $40 million a year, and if that is the number you're still losing I see your cuts are still coming. I do see you're promoting news on Crave. I'm going to throw this out. Are you going to go to digital and get rid of cable?

Is Bell Media now, because you are bleeding so bad in all the newsrooms across this country, going to go digital and leave the cable subscription out of it now?

[Richard Gray]

That's a great question you ask and it's a very difficult one to answer because the movement of audience has been very gradual. The movement of advertising dollars has been very gradual. We have had to endeavour to meet the audience where it wants to see our product, when it wants to see our product. We have been pivoting resources to digital over the course of the last number of years. Quite proudly, I think we've been doing it very successfully. As I said in our opening statement, we are the number one digital publisher in this country. That was not the case two years ago at all. We weren't even close.

News continues to be a very labour-intensive business. It's labour-intensive on the broadcast side because of continued exhibition requirements that we must make as a result of conditions of licence. The hidden component of its labour intensity on the digital side is that every digital platform requires the manipulation of the product so that it fits from a display standpoint. It's not as simple a process as creating a single news story and firing it out on multiple platforms. Every step of the way, every individual platform requires some degree of customization.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

I would agree with that. I see you got rid of a lot of your radio stations. I see NFL football now, an American product, on CTV stations on Thursday and Sundays. I'm not sure.... I even asked the CRTC if that was allowed. I have a subscription to TSN; I pay for that. CTV is free. Now you're putting American football on Thursday nights, which eliminates the local newscast in many regions across this country. We have no newscast now at all locally on the weekends.

I see you're trying to get out of local news. I really do. When you bleed $40 million—I'm right—you're going to make more changes like those you made in February 2024. The staff across the country are really down because they're looking over their shoulders the next day, fearing that you're going to make more cuts at Bell Media.

[Richard Gray]

There is no question that fear exists in our operations, and it's not just our operations. It is in broadcast and conventional media as a whole. Even the digital players and platforms, both here and south of the border, have had to make substantive staffing cuts in recent years.

With respect to our commitment to local, we remain very dedicated to it. As I said in our opening remarks, we create 20,000 hours of local news across the country every year. Yes, we have eliminated weekend newscasts. We did that because the audience had dropped off. Over a five-year period of time, we had seen a 38% drop in our weekend news audience. You mentioned noon news. The drop there was even larger, at 43% for adults 25 to 54 over a five-year period. As I said earlier, we have pivoted resources to digital. We're trying to meet people where they're looking to consume news.

The last thing I want to add relates to staffing numbers. We continue to have a very healthy staff complement at our local news operations across the country. Our local English-language news operations employ almost 700 people from coast to coast. In Quebec, it's an additional 235 people. Those remain sizable numbers. As I said, we remain deeply committed to covering local news.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Al Soud, you have the floor now for six minutes.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you all for joining us today.

Mr. Gonez, I'll admit that you've completely shifted my round of questions with your opening remarks.

I represent the beautiful and growing riding of Mississauga Centre. It sits in one of the fastest-growing and most diverse regions in the country. It is not a small city by any metric. That said, much of its coverage is unfortunately subsumed under Toronto. There is quite a bit in what you've said that I think speaks to the differing perspectives that define exactly why we're doing this study.

Traditional media is struggling to keep pace with where Canadians are actually going. The audience has moved, but policy has not fully followed. There is no policy infrastructure to help start-up media businesses scale.

These are all really interesting pieces. It speaks to something I've brought up in the context of committee on several occasions, which is that younger audiences increasingly consume news differently. It's less tied to geography and more to platforms and personalities. A previous study I was quite keen on was on the parasocial relationship between social media influencers and those who consume or watch.

How does your model reflect that reality better than traditional outlets?

[Brandon Gonez]

Our model is built off of a lean cycle that allows for speed, authenticity and the democratization of access. Before the digital transformation and the rise of digital platforms, in terms of being able to access information or to be purveyors of information, you had to either have a licence from the CRTC or buy a cable package. Today, all you need is what we all have in this room, which is a cellphone. It allows anyone with that device—whether you're on dial-up or high speed—to access information.

My only goal, and it's why I got into this industry, was to be a steward of good information. That is it. I wanted to see the most number of people receive information in the ways that they need to receive it, and I wanted to do it in the most authentic ways. That's part of the DNA of Gonez Media. We actively reflect our audiences, whether they look different or whether they have different political views. We don't stray away from that. We believe that a healthy democracy should incentivize a healthy debate and a healthy ecosystem.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

On this idea of being a steward of good information, independent outlets often succeed in engagement, but there's often an assumption that they struggle to sustain resource-intensive journalism, like investigations, without scale. Do you find that is accurate? Do you find that is a reflection of what we do see on the ground from a journalistic standpoint?

[Brandon Gonez]

I would say that in the start-up phase, it doesn't matter if you're a digital start-up or any new business in any industry, you're going to have your challenges finding the resources to scale. Yes, there is some truth to that, but there are many examples of digital innovators who have the ability to still do investigative journalism. They've built their business model being able to monetize off of platforms.

However, as I mentioned, legislation like Bill C-18 basically pushed Meta—which owns two of the platforms that Canadians utilize the most—out of the room. That put up a major roadblock in terms of monetization. That impacted digital media companies, which are the future of this ecosystem, and put them more at risk. It has impacted the ability for growth, the ability to tell more stories, the ability to expand and the ability to reflect more Canadians. It's had a whole negative impact on the industry.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

That's interesting.

Back in January, on Now Toronto, you said, “there was something missing.... For the community...for more authentic stories.” Could you expand on this? Are we not finding people where they are? Are stories not localized enough? What is missing from local stories?

[Brandon Gonez]

One of the reasons I started Gonez Media was that the traditional media industry was contracting, so there were fewer opportunities. That means there were fewer opportunities visually, fewer opportunities of thought and fewer perspectives in the room. There was more concentration.

As Canada continues to grow in population and continues to diversify, I wanted to see a difference of thought and experience, not just based on your location in the country but also based on perhaps different income brackets that you may have grown up in. That is all-important to having a healthy democracy, a healthy media ecosystem. When we look at the platforms and the ability to access those platforms, whether as a consumer or as a producer of content, it democratized that.

I have to go back to Bill C-18. It has placed a major roadblock. I also want to make sure this committee is fully aware that for three years now, with Bill C-18 in place, credible news sources, however you think about them, whatever part of the political spectrum they are on, have lost the ability to connect with Canadians on the two biggest platforms they use every single day. Less credible voices, which have no news ethics and no journalism ethics, have filled that void. We have basically ceded our responsibility. All of the outlets, whether legacy or not, have lost three years of building relationships with 40 million Canadians.

[Fares Al Soud, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for joining us today.

I'll follow my friend Mr. Waugh's earlier example of transparency. I worked for Cogeco and Bell Media. Over 35 years ago, I worked with Mr. Lorrain. At the time, he was the morning host at the radio station where we worked, CH Le Nouvelliste in Trois‑Rivières.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the meeting on this important study.

I'll start with you, Ms. Jamet. You spoke earlier, in your opening remarks, about a topic that we haven't talked about enough in this study. We've talked a great deal about the measures proposed, such as the Canadian journalism labour tax credit—we'll come back to this—but not about media deserts. You touched on this issue. The regions of Quebec are particularly concerned about this matter.

Last week, we met with people from the television industry, specifically RNC Media Inc. and Télé Inter‑Rives ltée, to talk about the independent local news fund. This fund has an easily solvable problem. I think that the minister should take action in the coming days. At least, I hope so.

That said, I would like to talk about the disappearance of regional newsrooms. The situation is critical. I think that Mr. Pineault will also agree, because you manage regional radio and television stations with newsrooms.

I would like to hear a bit about the potential impact of the disappearance of even the smallest newsroom in Quebec, where few remain.

Ms. Jamet, what are your observations on this topic?

[Caroline Jamet]

Thank you for your excellent question, Mr. Champoux.

As you rightly pointed out, media deserts are certainly a growing phenomenon.

We can see the impact on society in terms of civic engagement and voting. The evidence confirmed that, in cities where the media outlets have disappeared, people show less interest in politics, vote less and become more polarized. We can also see that these constitute cities where, even on an economic level, the impact is felt.

This trend towards media deserts is certainly a serious problem. I can tell you that Quebeckers are taking notice. We commissioned an SOM study, which I spoke about earlier. This survey revealed that 60% of respondents noticed the decline in local news, that they consider this news important and that radio stations play a major role in this area. They're the only ones providing this news.

In Chibougamau, for example, we're on our own. The same goes for Alma and Roberval. Radio stations and media outlets are involved in society. They not only provide news, they also rally the community. This helps boost all communities on an economic, cultural and political level. These are key roles. Here in Gatineau, we have a French‑language talk radio station that also plays its part.

As a society, we must take an interest in these things. As Mr. Gonez said a few moments ago, given the current misinformation out there, foreign platforms are taking up more and more space. In particular, their algorithms make this information, which is often misinformation, more visible.

As a society and as a democracy, we need to address this and make changes to support the private media industry.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

We know that nature abhors a vacuum. The disappearance of quality information leaves room for all kinds of disinformation and misinformation, which are clearly abundant.

Mr. Pineault, do you have anything to say about this? You also have the challenge of providing a great deal of regional news on television, perhaps even more so now.

[Jean-Philippe Pineault]

I agree with Ms. Jamet.

I would even add that studies have shown that the cost of public services rises in regions with media deserts. The media outlets are no longer in a position to play their watchdog role when it comes to questioning political decisions.

I would even say that, in some ways, it's a matter of public safety. I remember that, during the forest fires in recent years, it was difficult to provide in‑depth information on how to escape a fire, for example, or on how people should behave in order to stay safe during these events. The news media couldn't post information on Facebook or Instagram, for example.

So, in some ways, it's even a matter of public safety.