moved:
That the House:
(a) take note of the importance of a free and independent press to a healthy democracy;
(b) express its belief that it is inappropriate for partisan political actors to pick winners and losers in the media in an election year;
(c) condemn the inclusion of Unifor, a group that has taken and continues to take partisan political positions, in the panel that will oversee the distribution of the $600-million media bailout; and
(d) call on the government to immediately cease trying to stack the deck for the election with their media bailout and replace it with a proposal that does not allow government to pick winners and losers.
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today. This subject is a personal one for me. I will disclose my conflict of interest right off the bat: I was a journalist for 20 years. That means I probably know what I am talking about. At issue here is the importance of ensuring the freedom and independence of the press.
I am very proud to say that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Thornhill, who is also former journalist. I am sure he will explain his experience. However, I have to remind him that he was there for the induction of Robert Stanfield and Pierre Elliott Trudeau as leaders. He was a correspondent during the Vietnam War. When I was a student in his class, I remember quite well the famous interview he had with Sir John. A Macdonald. It was a really important part of journalistic history. That is a joke; please do not quote me on that.
What we are talking about today is the freedom and independence of the press. The Liberal government came up with this proposal to give some $600 million of taxpayers' money to its hand-picked media organizations mere months before the next election. We are looking at a clear case of unacceptable partisan political interference targeting one of the founding principles of our democracy, journalistic independence. As I said in my intro, I was a journalist for 20 years, so I know what I am talking about.
Having worked as a journalist for many years, I know that people sometimes try to influence journalists by presenting their ideas and explaining why they are right. I have no problem with that. However, that is not the same as people telling journalists they can probably give them a few million bucks to help their company.
Journalists are human beings. Expecting independence of them in response to such a proposal is totally unrealistic. That is why I think the Liberal government's approach is disrespectful of journalists and a serious threat to journalistic independence. Moreover, their $600-million proposal will in no way resolve the underlying problem with the media.
What do the Liberals plan to do? They plan to take $600 million of taxpayers' money to help the media industry, which is currently in crisis. We acknowledge that there is a crisis in this industry as a result of technological changes. I do not remember the last time I paid for news by buying a newspaper. I always have free, up-to-the-minute access to the news on my smart phone.
The industry is facing a new reality, and the Liberal government chose to take taxpayers' money and invest it in the media companies it chooses.
We do not think this is the right thing to do. The government is choosing who will receive taxpayers' money, and on top of that, this will not even fix the underlying problem with traditional media, in particular print media, which is that people have access to massive amounts of news for free. That is how things worked at the time. I remember delivering the Le Soleil newspaper when I was a kid, about 40 years ago. The newspaper was thick on Wednesdays and even thicker on Saturdays. Now, Le Soleil, which is published in Quebec City, is much thinner than it was back then, and this has nothing to do with climate change.
We need to be careful here. We think the government is offering a band-aid solution that does not fix the real problem. This is indeed a problem, but it is nothing compared to the problem the Liberal government manufactured by appointing Unifor to the panel. Unifor is a politically partisan and engaged union whose avowed mission is to ferociously attack the opposition. The panel members must decide who is right and who is wrong, who will receive millions of dollars and who will not.
What is Unifor? It is a union that apparently represents over 12,000 people who work in the media. However, it is not the only union that represents media workers.
On November 14, 2018, at 4:40 p.m., those folks sent out a very evocative tweet that really gets to the root of the issue and shows the Liberal partisan political agenda hidden behind the media bailout. This bailout will be paid with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money.
On November 14, 2018, at 4:40 p.m.—and the time matters—Unifor president Jerry Dias tweeted the following:
“Unifor’s National Executive Board started planning for the federal election today.”
I cannot show the photo that was posted, but it was a black and white photo of the five main Unifor leaders. It replicated exactly what Maclean's had posted just a few days earlier on the same platform.
It said, “The resistance: Welcome to [the opposition leader's] worst nightmare.”
Indeed, the opposition leader's name was mentioned, but I cannot say it in the House.
Unifor took a partisan political stance against the official opposition, and yet it represents journalists. They have been chosen by the Liberal government to sit on the panel that is going to decide who will get the hundreds of millions of dollars. Obviously, that makes no sense.
I said earlier that the time mattered. It was on November 14 at 4:40 p.m. that Jerry Dias sent out his tweet clearly indicating that he was campaigning against the official opposition. At 5:46 p.m., so about an hour later, David Akin, an eminent journalist, reacted strongly by distancing himself from his union, Unifor.
“I am a member of [the] union as a condition of my employment and I cannot stress enough how stupid an idea this is for a union that represents journalists.”
That was the reaction of an honourable man, a dignified journalist of integrity who understands that his union representative should not meddle in the political debate, because he is a journalist. Journalists must be impartial and independent from political power of any kind and any party. In this case, Unifor has entered the political arena without even consulting its own members. That is also insulting.
That is why we are fiercely condemning this approach and, above all, the fact that, of the hundreds of Canadian unions that represent journalists, the Liberal government picked the one that has directly stated that it is the Leader of the Opposition's worst nightmare. One could not be any more partisan or compromise journalistic independence more seriously. That is exactly what the Liberals have done.
Fortunately, experienced people have distanced themselves from this. According to Chantal Hébert, who is well known in the worlds of politics and journalism, among the ranks of political columnists, many fear it is a poison pill that will eventually do the news industry more harm than good.
Others have also spoken out. According to Andrew Potter, an associate professor at McGill University and CBC correspondent, the reality is actually worse than anyone could have imagined. He said that an independent body staffed entirely by unions and industry lobbyists is a real disaster.
Andrew Coyne wrote that it is quite clear now, if it was not already, that this is the most serious threat to the independence of the press in this country in decades.
Will the Liberals' strategy really help the media? No. The Liberals are appointing Liberal Party friends and enemies of the opposition leader to the panel that will pick the winners and losers in the granting of the $600 million that the government intends to give the media without actually resolving the fundamental problem it is facing. This strategy shows how loose the Liberals' ethics really are.
I would like to remind members that the Liberal Party has been in office for almost four years now, and this is the fifth time that this government has been investigated by the Ethics Commissioner. Never, in the history of our country, has a sitting prime minister been investigated and found guilty of breaking the ethics rules.
From my perspective, this attempt to distribute $600 million to the media without truly helping them, while appointing Liberal partisans who are against us to the panel in charge of distributing this money, shows that the Liberals have flexible ethics.
The same goes for the infamous SNC-Lavalin scandal. When an honest, integral and clear decision was made by the justice system, as prescribed by law, the Liberals interfered in the justice system for partisan purposes because they were unhappy with the decision and because the Prime Minister said that he was an MP from Montreal and he had to be re-elected. That is what the Prime Minister and his henchmen actually said.
These unedifying examples show that this government has very flexible ethics. The example we are raising in today's motion only proves it, with the Liberals appointing an ultra-partisan group, Unifor, to a so-called independent panel. Unifor has avowed to destroy the leader of the official opposition, saying that it was the Conservatives' worst nightmare. That is totally unacceptable. That is why we are calling on hon. members to support this motion that seeks to safeguard journalistic independence.