Thank you very much, Chair.
Good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to speak about Canada Post.
News Media Canada represents 550 news titles across Canada, everything from large national newspapers to two-person independent weekly community newspapers. I am joined today by my colleague, Murray Elliott, from Olds, Alberta.
Before I begin, let me state the obvious. Canada Post is not financially viable without significant changes. Absent a wholesale restructuring, it will continue to lose millions of taxpayer dollars a day.
At the same time, Canada Post is an important national institution. Like our newspapers, its stamps tell the story of Canada and Canadians. By way of example, in 2021, Canada Post unveiled five stamps that celebrated five of Canada's great editorial cartoonists. One example was Terry Mosher of the Montreal Gazette. Aislin, as he is known, depicted a beaver sporting a hockey jersey with a maple leaf playing a bear whose jersey said CCCP.
I cannot stress enough how important Canada Post is as an important distribution vehicle for many community newspapers across Canada, especially in rural and remote parts of the country. We deeply appreciate the work that the thousands of postal employees do to get our newspapers to Canadians despite rain, snow, sleet or hail. However, the current leadership of both Canada Post and CUPW have shown a disregard for community newspapers. They seem to have forgotten that we are customers, and well-paying ones at that.
Let me cite two recent examples where publishers, many of whom are small businesses, have been harmed. First, as of January 2024, community newspapers with commercial inserts are no longer exempt from Canada Post's consumers' choice program, which allows Canadians to opt out of receiving junk mail. Like advertisements on the pages of a newspaper, commercial inserts or fliers pay for the content our journalists produce in those newspapers.
Let me be clear. Community newspapers with a flyer from the local grocery store or hardware franchise are not junk mail. Here is what the impact of that decision looks like on the ground. The loss of $120,000 in annual flyer revenue to a community newspaper supports three jobs. Without that revenue, those three jobs are at high risk. This arbitrary decision was made with zero stakeholder consultation or economic and social impact analysis. We hope Parliament will direct Canada Post to reverse this decision.
Second, the recent decision by CUPW in September to escalate strike activity by neither processing nor delivering unaddressed flyers called neighbourhood mail, whether intended or not, held our community newspapers hostage. It deprived many Canadians of fact-based and fact-checked information that our journalists produce. Again, let me stress that community newspapers are not junk mail.
While some of our publishers have service issues with their local postal station, these are generally isolated. Canada Post has dramatically improved its resolution process in the last few years. For that, I would like to single out and thank Mark Nailer and Julie Plouffe from Canada Post's commercial mail division. They are always extremely helpful and responsive.
You may ask, “Why don't you just abandon print and go digital? Wouldn't that solve your distribution problems and your reliance on Canada Post?” With foreign tech giants creaming most of the digital ad dollars in this country, the economics of digital just don't work for many. Digital ad dollars may be able to support large operations with scale or niche publications devoted to unpaid commentary, but we still need print ads and flyers to support a newsroom of full-time local journalists who do the painstaking work of covering the cops, courts and city hall. Real news costs real money.
Speaking of digital ad dollars, I would encourage this committee to examine federal ad spending. The government's agency of record is doing what is easiest and most profitable for it. In 2023-24, the government spent more than $76 million on advertising. Of that, less than $1.4 million went to all print publications in the country combined.
Taxpayer dollars should be spent in Crowsnest Pass, not in California, and on companies that deliver facts rather than those whose algorithms foment misinformation and disinformation. The government should follow the province of Ontario's lead and announce in its upcoming November budget that it is setting aside a minimum of 25% of ad spending on trusted news brands. That is something this committee would appreciate as it would come at zero additional cost to the taxpayer.
Thank you very much. Murray and I would be pleased to answer your questions.
