Canadian Heritage Committee on April 23rd, 2026

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

We are still talking about the regions today. In your view, when CBC/Radio-Canada arrived in more remote regions, was that part of the reason that private media, like Medicine Hat News, had to close, or did something else happen?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

I am troubled when a station closes its doors. They are stations we have worked with. I remember a time when some of them were even Radio-Canada affiliates. So my relationship with those regional stations goes back a long time. They contributed to the market and they were always there. Yes, it's a disaster.

However, it comes as a result of economic conditions, not of Radio-Canada's activities. That is what the people who operate those stations say.

When we were in a position to find solutions ahead of time, we did. We did it with Envol 91 FM. It was not a private station; it was a French-language community radio station in Manitoba. It was going through some extreme conditions and was in danger of having to shut down. We found a viable and sustainable solution that takes its economic situation into account but does not further disrupt the market.

You should know that we are also in a market with other infrastructure providers. So, when we share infrastructures and provide everything at no cost, others will say that we are engaged in unfair competition. We have to find a balance. In the case of community radio or local services with little economic impact, we try to find win-win solutions for everyone.

It's not like we started that work last week, but we are still at the early stages. In my discussions with my colleagues in senior management, and with the teams in regional stations, I have to open their eyes to solutions that may be off the beaten path.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Mr. Diotte, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Ms. Bouchard, in your opening remarks, you mentioned Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. That's where I'm from. Many years ago, I started my career in broadcasting there at the CBC TV outlet. Unfortunately, that outlet is now gone; it has closed.

CBC gets almost $1.6 billion, so why have you abandoned smaller markets like Sault Ste. Marie and those in Alberta and throughout the country?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

I was part of the CBC back then. I was in the legal department. I wasn't in the field or in local newsrooms, but I remember how tragic it was that we closed down so many operations in smaller markets to concentrate on one station per province.

This was done back then for reasons of financial constraints; there were cuts to our appropriation. I don't fault the administration of the day, but it is a constraint that has harmed our ability to serve adequately.

Now, instead of building stations, which would make no sense, we are creating bureaus. We are creating capacity for local reporting and multiplatform broadcasts so that we can get stories locally and then use digital, FAST channels or newsletters to publish those stories and reach the local market.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Switching topics a bit, there is a recently published book by a former CBC producer, David Cayley, titled The CBC: How Canada's Public Broadcaster Lost Its Voice (And How to Get It Back).

It examines recent coverage by CBC News, and Mr. Cayley points out two major recent events in which the CBC identified the “correct” political line and embraced it without hesitation or exception. He said that CBC badly failed in its coverage of COVID and the truckers' convoy; he alleges that CBC treated truckers as enemies of the state.

We've also heard in this committee discussions about how the CBC has covered the war in Gaza, and that it has a distinct anti-Israel bias.

What do you say to Canadians who say the CBC is biased in its coverage?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

My colleague described the processes we go through and the standards we uphold. Journalism is a daily process. It evolves every day. I don't think we can characterize our reporting in any other way. It's a process, and we are accountable to citizens for that process.

I don't believe our reporters are pursuing a particular agenda. They are seeking the truth. They are double sourcing their information. They are doing a lot of fieldwork, which is a luxury, I have to say, because we are publicly funded. It is important that we have foreign correspondents and envoys who are interviewing people living through some of these conflicts and some of these situations.

Field reporting is really important, because that's how the public can see for itself what is going on.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

What do you say to criticisms of the three things I mentioned, including the convoy and COVID?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

We are a public institution, and we are subject to opinion and criticism. I will uphold the right of anybody to have opinions about our coverage, but I will stand by the quality of our journalism any day.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

We also heard from Peter Menzies, a former CRTC vice-chair, who said that he thinks objectivity is an enormous challenge for public broadcasters, and he feels that most of your reporters are centre-left.

What do you say to that?

[Marie-Philippe Bouchard]

Our reporters are held to standards. They are not pursuing an agenda, and they are not pushing their opinions. They are basing their stories and their broadcasts on facts that they check. People can have opinions about it—that's fine—but it doesn't change the nature of the work we do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Myles, you have the floor for five minutes.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody, for being here today.

My question is for Mr. Schween and Mr. Millar.

Many of us were elected in 2025, so we didn't live through the Bill C-18 years in terms of its establishment. We've come to this committee, and we've heard about some of the challenges, particularly with Meta's decision to remove Canadian news content and the impact it's had on a number of institutions, organizations and businesses.

You spoke to its importance, so particularly for those of us who were elected in 2025, what was the original intent of that bill, and why is it still so important to you? You mentioned that you're concerned about its future. Maybe we could go back and talk about its intent and where it's working.

Obviously, the Meta challenge is another thing, and we can talk about that as well.

I'd love some insight.

Thank you.

[Calvin Millar]

Thank you for the question.

Bill C-18 was argued before this committee to a great extent. My colleague Ms. Bouchard touched on the fact that the compensation from Google—they are the only ones paying into it right now, as you alluded to—is compensation. This isn't government funding. It isn't even funding out of a philanthropic issue. This is money to recognize that, for the better part of 20 years, the online services have used our content—often without attribution and certainly without compensation. The establishment has been crucial.

It isn't enough. It doesn't replace or fairly compensate us fully, but it is a heck of a good start.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Mr. Schween, do you have anything to add to that?

[Rod Schween]

As Cal points out, we don't operate in a walled garden anymore, and we have a level of competition that's unprecedented. We still live in a regulatory world, in a lot of cases, that was designed and put together at a time when we did operate in a walled garden.

As a colleague of mine in our company likes to say, we have way more people chopping at our tree, and you've heard about the impact of the loss of advertising.

Bill C-18 isn't perfect, but it is the mechanism we have in place at the moment. What I'm really worried about is that the measures in place will get set aside through ongoing trade negotiations, as well as the delays caused by them and the impact the delays will potentially have on LITS members and other media companies across Canada. This is going to be catastrophic.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Mr. Frame, I think you spoke to this as also being a matter of principle. I think you speak about this as a matter of principle in terms of copyright. Maybe we can speak to that a bit as well.

[Angus Frame]

You're specifically talking about—

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

It's with regard to Bill C-18 and why it was established in the first place. I think that's part of what's getting lost a bit in this conversation, especially for those of us who weren't here through those years of establishing it.

[Angus Frame]

The way I think of Bill C-18 is that it's payment in lieu of licensing agreements for copyright-protected material. Google uses material to their business benefit without formal permission, and Bill C-18 is a negotiated settlement in order to compensate for that behaviour.

I would argue that it's working. I think Cal and Rod noted as well that money is flowing to publishers. It's being used to put journalists on the street, telling the stories for Canadians. It's a strong and courageous piece of legislation that is supporting the industry and making a difference to us.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

What is the appropriate response when Meta decides to take all the news content from Canadian sources?

[Angus Frame]

I have a different view of the Meta situation. I think they used Canada for theatre. Meta has been backing away from news globally. My publishing colleagues in many different geographies around the world have all experienced significant drops in traffic referrals from Meta, and specifically Facebook, which peaked in 2018.

Facebook—Meta—was moving away from news, and Canada just presented a moment at which it could be dramatic about it, make some noise and create a false impression about the value of their platform and the importance of it. It was part of a global strategy they were rolling out, and we were just a convenient pawn in a narrative they were creating.

[David Myles, Liberal, Fredericton—Oromocto, NB]

Has it negatively affected your business?

[Angus Frame]

The impact on traffic from Facebook was most notable in our community sites.

We developed a number of fairly robust community groups, discussions and traffic channels that were built on reliance on Facebook, and we have had to work very hard to replace that lost traffic—we've done so successfully—and to create direct relationships with our readers, our audience.

We are doing that successfully, but this absolutely had a dramatic and negative impact on traffic, most clearly on the smaller community sites at Torstar.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you.

Mr. Champoux, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.