Evidence of meeting #85 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was twitter.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Editorial Page Editor, La Presse
It's a grey area. Despite asking every single time, we never manage to get an answer.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Perhaps the committee should include that aspect in its copyright discussion. It might be helpful.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Do you think television broadcasters should be mandated to broadcast the debates?
Editorial Page Editor, La Presse
Would you mind repeating the question?
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Do you think television broadcasters should be forced to broadcast at least one debate during an election campaign?
Editorial Page Editor, La Presse
I wouldn't want to say definitely one way or the other, but it's an excellent question.
I mentioned the municipal election in Montreal a month ago. The incumbent mayor decided that only one debate would be held and that the chamber of commerce would organize it. Radio-Canada and TVA weren't pleased with that level of control and opted not to broadcast any of the debate. It was a missed opportunity for democracy.
It may be worthwhile to seriously consider whether at least one broadcaster should be required to broadcast the debates. As for whether everyone should, that is up to you.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
I will now turn to the Twitter representative.
Ms. Coyne, thank you for being here.
I have a very quick question for you. I've always observed that on Twitter there are very few undecided voters, and when you're talking about using all the data coming from Twitter, the campaign with the best digital organization then has the best performance, as opposed to the best reaction from the public.
Do you have a reaction to that observation?
Senior Manager, Public Policy, Twitter Inc.
Twitter is unique in that you don't have to identify who you are. That's really important in a lot of democracies around the world, where it's important to have an open communication platform.
When it comes to debates and how we track our data, it's also important to understand how those measurements play out. You may respond to something with a hashtag and I may just say the political party, but we're both talking about the same event in the same time period, so we're able to take that aggregate number of key words and look at when people are responding and make conclusions about what moment they are responding to.
Often those are the opportunities to persuade somebody, and campaigns and parties are often on Twitter during debate too, finding those persuadable people who are tuning in to learn more.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
This is for Ms. Coyne, and maybe for Ms. Lau as well. I'm not sure.
You talked about involvement in debates in other countries. You listed a few. What best practices or lessons can we learn from these other countries that you would want to share with us?
Senior Manager, Public Policy, Twitter Inc.
I think it's always important to inform the voters. Tell them how to tune in. Have a hashtag on the stage so that they know what to look for. Have a username on the podium so they know how to connect with them. Often a handle is the same across multiple platforms, and that's a great way for people to learn more about them and get involved.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
My question was about whether you have experience with a specific country whose model we should be following and looking to.
Senior Manager, Public Policy, Twitter Inc.
I have the most experience with the U.S. elections.
This year we saw a lot of innovations around live-streaming debate. In New Jersey there was a governors' debate that we partnered with, and they had multiple media partners. They took questions from Twitter users both before and during the debate.
That's a best practice: allowing people to tweet before the live event, but also to tweet during it if something really encourages them to get involved. They took those questions live, and we also covered what people responded to at the end of the debate through Twitter data.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Lau, did you have any final comments before I hand it over to Ms. Tassi?
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
All right. Thank you.
I'll pass the remaining time to Ms. Tassi.
Liberal
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
I'll reduce it to one question, then. My question's going to focus on the input that you can give us with respect to the structure of the commission or the commissioner.
Ms. Lau, listening to your comment about the changing digital world, and, Ms. Coyne, your comment with respect to Twitter and how engaged people are, what input could you give us with respect to how we structure this commission or commissioner to allow for the most optimal engagement and flexibility so that we can in fact reach the audiences through all these advancing social media?
Editor-in-Chief, HuffPost Canada
I have a very basic suggestion, which is a commissioner or participants who actually use all of the tools we're talking about—someone who in their daily life doesn't have a TV, doesn't have cable, and can give on-the-ground advice as a user.
I would also add someone with a digital journalism background in order to bridge the needs of broadcasters as well as digital outlets.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
You're suggesting a commission, and part of the panel or the board of that commission comprises individuals of the kind you have identified.
Senior Manager, Public Policy, Twitter Inc.
From Twitter, we encourage working with media partners who have access to the debate, and we want to make sure that happens on Twitter as well. I have a few numbers to cite from political events this year, and the young audiences that they bring in.
In the U.S., the presidential inauguration had 6.8 million unique live viewers, and 70% of those were under age 35. Having these unique audience opportunities to get new voters into the process through regular government events, but also political debates, by live-streaming on Twitter, as well as having the commitment that it's going to be open for any broadcast partners to stream on Twitter, would be our recommendation.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I want to follow up on that last comment from Ms. Coyne about the availability of a live stream. I get the impression that's something that I suspect this panel would support: generally, the ability to take a broadcast and stream it live.
I know our friends from La Presse mentioned doing it without labels or a broadcaster logo on it. I'm curious. We do have CPAC as our national political broadcaster. If CPAC were to be tasked with organizing an English and French debate, would your three organizations support having CPAC directly tasked with organizing and then providing that stream live to any and all people, whether it's for a nominal fee or whether it's free of charge? Is that something that would be supported by this panel?
