Mr. Speaker, it seems that the member for Winnipeg North thinks Stephen Harper was too close with, too generous to or too supportive of the media. That is not a criticism I have heard from Liberal members before, but we hear all sorts of criticisms from the Liberals that come from all sorts of different directions, and it is hard to keep track of what they are saying.
A bit of time has passed since I gave my speech before question period, but I will discuss what I talked about in my speech and I will explain the motion we are debating, and then maybe other Liberal members will have some questions.
The member did not address the fact that his government is giving $600 million to a fund that is going to be controlled by a panel that includes Unifor. We will have explicitly partisan people, who are loud and proud in campaigning for the Liberals, involved in distributing money to journalists.
If the government is in favour of defending an independent press, then it should listen to what the press is saying because, as I quoted in my speech, many of the leading independent thought leaders in Canadian political journalism are sounding the alarm about the approach the government has taken.
Let us take this partisan interference out of journalism. We can debate specific policies, such as government advertising. Obviously, every government advertises through the media in some form, which is not particularly novel, but the fact that the government has put partisan people in a position to dole out this money should be very concerning to those who care about preserving the independence of the press.