Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this motion. It goes to the heart of something that affects all of us in our country.
A strong democracy is the ability of the people of a country to freely elect individuals who can represent the interests of the public, and for those individuals to come to a democratic house such as this one and fight for those issues that are important to the people who elected them. That is our responsibility, but suppose something happened to sever that. Our ability to drive an idea forward into action is predicated in part on a free and open media, where diverse ideas are allowed to be put out in the public, to be lauded or excoriated, depending on the quality of the idea and its synchroneity with the desires and wishes of a free public.
What happens when that triangle is affected negatively? What happens if we do not have a media that is open, free and with diverse ideas? What happens if elected members are unable to do their job in driving ideas forward into action?
Sadly, that is what has happened in our country. Part of the blame I believe goes to the CRTC in its inability to prevent the media centralization and concentration that has occurred over the last several years. There are four large groups that control all the mainstream media in Canada. We can pick up newspapers from any areas in the country and we will find the exact same story. There may be a series of media outlets but the stories are identical. A story written by one reporter who works for a corporation which owns a series of the mainstream media will be put in all the media outlets and therefore, the public will only be exposed to that one idea.
That is not healthy for the country. It is not healthy for journalism. In fact, the Canadian Association of Journalists has said very clearly that journalistic independence has been affected and that consolidation in the media has created a culture that demands that journalists file the same story over the airwaves. One story will go to large areas of the public, and the public does not have access to other ideas.
There has also been a shift in the quality. Rather than dealing with hard issues that affect Canadians' day to day lives, we are living in an era of infotainment, which is what the public is fed. This presupposes that the public is dumb and bovine, which is actually ridiculous. The public thirsts for ideas. They want people to fight for what they want in various areas. Not being able to do that erodes the morale of the public and makes people understandably jaded. If members of the public do not feel they are able to effect change, then they will pull back and will not engage the pillars of our democracy.
The government must get a handle on this. It cannot allow the concentration of the media to continue. It must put into place avenues that allow a broad diversity of views. It cannot allow this narrowness that takes place.
With respect to the infotainment that is pushed forward, we hear about Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or a rapper's mother who sadly has died. However, I do not believe that those issues which are trotted out in the press at length are more important to Canadians than a senior who cannot get medical care, the mid-level, middle aged couple who cannot find a place for their elderly parents in a seniors home, the addict on the street who cannot find care, the psychiatric patient who cannot find mental health care, and individuals who live in poverty, the low income people who are struggling to put food on the table to feed their children and themselves.
Putting food on the table, getting education for their children, having money in their pockets, having a brighter future, access to health care, and good infrastructure are concerns that Canadians have. Those things are more important to them than reading about Britney Spears' latest adventure.
The inability to put ideas in front of the public and engage the public to move those ideas forward is a significant detriment to the future of our country. It makes us all less than what we could be.
It is heartbreaking. As elected officials we see people across party lines who have a plethora of great ideas to help Canadians. Nobody has a hammerlock on good or bad ideas. We all have ideas. The tragedy of the House and the structure in our country is that we as elected officials do not have the ability to drive those ideas forward as the public expects.
In my province of British Columbia the three leading dailies are owned by one group. The Globe and Mail editorial board, for example, made a decision five years ago not to publish editorial pieces by members of Parliament, except under extraordinary circumstances. A newspaper cannot criticize MPs for not having ideas on one hand, but on the other hand not publish their ideas when they are given.
A case in point: A very thoughtful journalist wrote a piece asking why we are not seeing more ideas about the mission in Afghanistan. I wrote a piece that same day which by two o'clock was in the hands of the Globe and Mail. It did not publish the piece because it does not publish opinion editorials by members of Parliament.
I called and reminded the Globe and Mail that that was the eleventh op ed piece the paper had received in the last year on solutions for the mission in Afghanistan. I asked how in good conscience the paper on one hand could criticize us as members of Parliament for not having ideas, but on the other hand not allow us to have those ideas published in the paper when we are working hard to offer the best solutions.
In the end, maybe they are not the best solutions, but if we have a proper system, it will inspire people to come up with better ideas, to justifiably criticize those ideas and say, “I have a better idea to put into the mix”. Ultimately we would be able to bind the best ideas we have in our country, feed them through the system and implement them for the betterment of our public. That is our job. That is how the system should work, but the system is not working in that way. It should. A government should work with all parties to enable that to happen, not for the interest of any specific government at hand, but for the larger objective to enable us to fight for the issues, ideas and solutions that our public needs.
Every one of us knows people in our ridings who struggle day to day to put food on the table, to build a future, to have some hope, to get medical care, to live. All of us know people like that. People ask us why they are not seeing ideas and action in these areas and why we are not able to put forward solutions and get them implemented when it makes sense to them. We need a system that allows that. We can work together in that area to make it happen for the good of the House, for the good of our democracy and for the good of our nation, most importantly.
All of us have heard some wonderful ideas from very smart people in the public. They come to our committees and offer those solutions. People in the public service have great ideas and yet those ideas sit in a sinkhole not to go anywhere. That is not in the public interest. That does not serve the public well.
The government can work to enable the CRTC to allow a broad diversity of ideas. It would not only be healthy for our democracy but it would be healthy for journalists. All of us know the heart-wrenching environment that journalists work in today. Journalists themselves would say they would love to put fascinating ideas forward but their editors would not tolerate it. There is a notion that the media has to put forth issues that either bleed or have some other horrific conflict laden issues surrounding them. Why?
In Al Gore's book Assault on Reason there is a great quote. He lamented that if the issue bleeds it leads, and if it thinks it stinks. That is not a very good assessment of our world. It is not the way it should be, it is not the way it ought to be and it is not the way it has to be.
We can build something better. We can build something stronger. We can have a House that enables Canadians to work through their elected officials to implement those solutions that affect the day to day lives of the people we serve. That is our job and our duty. We can only do it if we have an environment in this House where ideas are taken seriously, where those ideas can be moved into action rather than sitting forever in a swamp and going nowhere. We also need a media which, at times, is prepared to print the ideas that are out there for what they are and let the public judge whether those ideas are good, bad or mediocre.
We will live and stand by what we put forward. We will live and stand by what we do. That is a healthy democracy. People will or will not elect us based on the quality of our actions and the quality of ideas that we implement to serve the interests of our communities and the interests of our great nation. That is what our duty is. That is the system we ought to have.
I would implore that the government work to enable the CRTC to have that diversity of views. If we do not arrest this constriction of the media now, we will not be able to have the nation we could have. Our Canada would be less than what it could be. I would implore the government to do that. If ever there were a legacy that would serve the country for decades to come, it would be that.
In the interests of the public, in the interests of the House of Commons, in the interests of journalists who enter that profession to serve and to put ideas forward so that those ideas could have an effect and a public that would benefit from that, the government needs to implement those solutions. A failure to do that would make our country less than what it could be.
Last, with regard to the comments made by the Bloc, as the Canadians that they are and we are, I would hope that they would look into their souls and see that the culture and language of Quebec as the cultures and languages that we have in all our provinces are better as a sum than what we are as individuals. Together we are a stronger nation. All our cultures and languages are stronger and protected and enrich us all if we are able to live and work together in an environment of tolerance and understanding. To look at this as a them versus us environment would weaken all of us. It would weaken Quebec. It would weaken British Columbia. It would weaken every province. The importance of a federal government is to enable cultures and languages to thrive.
The member from the Bloc Québécois said that Quebec is not a bilingual province, and I assume she meant that it is a francophone province. Does she not forget the Cree who live in the northern regions of Quebec? Does she not account for the anglophones who live in Quebec? Or the immigrants who come to Quebec for many reasons? What about them?
Every province has a milieu of different cultures and languages. It is obvious to say that French is the dominant language in Quebec, but why would she take an exclusionary attitude toward the people of her province by saying that Quebec is only one narrow thing and it is only defined in one narrow way.
Is it not stronger for us all to be defined in a broader way, with a greater diversity and a greater milieu of cultures and languages? Of course it is.
If Quebec were to separate and become an independent country, as the member suggests, and engage with the United States, as previous leaders of the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois have said, do they really think that the culture of their language would be strengthened?
Ottawa and the Canadian people put more money into the province of Quebec than into any other province for the protection of language and culture. Nothing compares to that whatsoever.
If Quebec were independent, it would engage with the United States. Does the member from the Bloc, or the Bloc Québécois or the Parti Québécois leaders, or the people of Quebec truly think that the people of the United States would care whether or not they are going to speak in French? They are not going to speak in French. They will speak in English.
The discourse that would take place between Quebec and the United States would not be francophone based, not based on the Quebec French culture, it would be based on using the English language and a culture that would be primarily that which we see south of the border.
The reality of it is that the culture and language of Quebec would actually be weakened through independence than if it were to stay in the milieu of Canada that strengthens all of us.
I want to say to the government in closing that there is the issue of a lack of media diversity and the lack of the ability of MPs to do their jobs that all of us desire with full hearts. We must be able to do our jobs. By not being able to do our jobs, we weaken our democracy, weaken our country, and we do not serve the Canadian public well at all.