Industry Committee on May 29th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

All right. We're going to suspend, and we'll be back right after the vote. I believe we have about 20 minutes to get back to the House to vote.

Thanks, everybody. We'll be back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're back.

Thank you to our panellists for sticking around while we did our duty and went to vote. We're going to get right back to our questions.

Mr. Sheehan, you have five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much. My first question will be for John Hinds.

On May 8, the Fédération nationale des communications, which advocates for news and media professionals, made a number of recommendations to support the remuneration of Canadian journalists. They suggested something to us about a new category for protected work that would be called “journalistic works”, as well as the establishment of a collective rights society charged with defending the copyright for journalists and working to ensure fair compensation.

To begin with, can you give the committee a sense of how the remuneration of Canadian journalists has evolved over the last 10 years?

[John Hinds]

Most Canadian journalists are covered by the collective bargaining process, and I think there have been fairly stable wages. The challenge we've had is that we've lost a lot of journalists. We continue to lose newspapers across this country almost daily. We've lost 23 of the newspapers in Saskatchewan over the last two to three years, and, as you know, in places such as Guelph and Nanaimo, and of course in Ontario there were some recent closures. The remuneration is not the issue in the sense of current journalists. It's really the lack of jobs, if you want....

The other challenge we see is with the renewal of the profession. When you're in a profession, people are in the jobs, and there are no new jobs created. It's really hard to bring young people into the profession. Again, it's becoming harder to attract people into the profession because of the precarious environment. I think that would be where I would go on that.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

It's interesting. In terms of your comment about the print media, I think lately we've seen that somewhat in northern Ontario through Sault Ste. Marie. We've seen the decline of the other media as well. Television is now centralized in Sudbury, where they have some reporters. CBC used to have a stringer and now they don't. But there has been a rise of some of the Internet companies, like SooToday, that also have a presence in Guelph and in Thunder Bay, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with them.

One of the differences as well, it seems to me, is that some of these Internet companies that are starting up aren't necessarily unionized and don't have a collective agreement—

[John Hinds]

No.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

—and they have different revenue streams that they're trying to work on.

I've watched the evolution of SooToday and the Sault Star. The Sault Star is trying to pick up some of the Internet presence. To get to my question, one of the things the Sault Star will do, say, is put out an article and then share it with Facebook and Twitter.

Has there been any thought about any kind of compensation? Facebook loves it, and the Sault Star must want to do it as well, because when I share with my x number of followers, there it is. Are there any thoughts or discussions about how any kind of compensation could happen by using social media and, if you will, the traditional forms of media?

[John Hinds]

Yes. I think everybody recognizes the value of social media. I think we all see those articles on social media, and newspapers put a lot of their content on social media. I think that's a voluntary thing. What we're more concerned about is the compensation model when it's not done voluntarily. Using social media vehicles to drive audiences is one thing, I think, and that's essentially voluntary.

Google is another example. I mean, there are a lot of them. If you talk to Village Media, which owns SooToday, you can see that they have a very effective relationship with Google.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Yes, they do.

[John Hinds]

Interestingly enough, in a lot of cases, they don't use Google ads. They sell their own advertising in the Soo and in those communities, because you just can't make enough money on the Google ads. They're selling their own ads but they're using a lot of the tools, many of which are free. It's the classic frenemy discussion that our members have with it, but obviously social media is absolutely key to the future.

The challenge we find is about retaining the brand, though, because I think one of the things you see is that even if you talk to people and they say they get all their news from X social media site, they're actually not getting their news there. They're getting the news from a journalistic brand. I think that's a really important connection to maintain in a world where really all you have is your intellectual property and your brand. I think part of the scraping and part of the non-licensed content distribution destroys that brand connection with the reader. If you get it on social media, and it's put there by the brand, the brand is there. It's a Globe and Mail story, say, on Facebook and that's clear, but it's not the generic story, one where you don't know where it came from.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

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

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon.

My question is for Mr. Béland.

You talked about your organization's mission, but I have a slightly more specific question for you.

Can you tell us to what extent you use the open access content produced by Wikimedia compared to more traditional publications, such as written works? Could you explain the difference between the two?

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

Do you mean how we, as Wikimedia Canada, use it?

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Yes.

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

Actually, we use the written content as a reference for Wikipedia, for example, but we don't use the content itself. We never copy that content; we don't even use fair dealing. Everything produced on Wikipedia is under free licence.

I don't know if that answers your question.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Yes. So it's open access content.

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

Not only is it open access, but we give everyone the right to use and modify it as they see fit.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Could you tell us a little more about your relationship with YouTube?

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

We have no official relationship with YouTube. Having said that, as I mentioned in passing, Google and YouTube have big problems with fake news, as everyone knows. These companies announced that they would use Wikipedia extensively as a reference to counter fake news. This shows that Wikipedia is a reliable source.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

So you don't have a direct link to YouTube, but do you act through Google?

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

We don't have a link with Google either.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

So your open access content is broadcast on YouTube at the same time as on other platforms.

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

Exactly.

For instance, Google and YouTube may decide to use our content. Since we give everyone the right to use it, even for commercial purposes, these companies have the right to use it and they do.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

In your recommendation, you want the Government of Canada to make publicly available research and studies conducted by government agencies, researchers or public servants. Currently, these documents are subject to copyright.

You said that in the United States, documents like this were accessible. Does that mean all U.S. government documents?

[Jean-Philippe Béland]

It includes everything published by the U.S. federal government. State governments have their own regulations, just as here in Canada, the provinces have their own regulations. However, everything produced at the federal level is in the public domain as soon as it is published, including scientific research.