Debates of June 3rd, 2019

Human Organ Trafficking

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to bring forward today.

The first petition has to do with Bill S-240, which would combat the scourge of forced organ harvesting that takes place worldwide, but in particular in China. The bill was presented by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan as his private member's bill, and this petition is in support of it.

Afghan Minority Communities

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the other petition I am bringing forward is in support of Afghanistan's hard-pressed Sikh and Hindu minorities.

The petitioners call on the government to create a special program to allow these minorities to receive private sponsorship to come to Canada directly. This would give them the opportunity to call Canada home and therefore receive a place of safety and refuge.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, Bill S-214, an act to ban cosmetic testing on animals, be deemed read a second time and referred to committee.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent of the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—News Media Industry

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has five minutes remaining in questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the Conservatives would choose this topic for debate today, especially given former prime minister Stephen Harper and his government gave tens of millions of dollars not once but every year to news magazines. Not only that, Stephen Harper and his government would determine which ones would receive the money. I am sure people following the debate sense a bit of hypocrisy in this.

Could my colleague across the way explain to Canadians why Stephen Harper chose to support news magazines to the degree of tens of millions of dollars every year? At the same time, could he provide some thoughts regarding the Conservative Party's most current position on providing a tax credit to the media industry as a whole? Do the Conservatives support that initiative today?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

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.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member and I all I can say is if Conservatives ever talk about the family farm the way they talk about media organizations, they would quickly change the talking points they used. They talked about not supporting an industry that is going through technological change, not supporting family-owned industries and not supporting small industries in small communities.

The media sector is not a bunch of journalists. The media sector is a bunch of small businesses, small businesses in communities right across this country, and it is not just journalists who work in those companies. There are receptionists, producers and editors. There is a whole network of supply chains that go all the way back to the resource sector and the pulp and paper mills in this country.

When we talk about providing support to a sector of the economy, none of which are direct supports for content and all of which are charitable donations, tax cuts and a series of other measures that help consumers access Canadian media that have nothing to do with a journalist's paycheque, why can Conservatives not support small businesses in local communities, why can they not support part of the supply chain that is tied to the resource sector and why can they not support small, independent family-owned businesses that sustain communities right across this country? Why is it journalists that catch their attention, when every other small business in this country seems to get their support?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my friend across the way has a habit of debating things in the House that he clearly has not read about, because he is not aware of what this motion is about. The motion is about the inclusion of Unifor in the distribution of funds.

Yesterday he went after me on Twitter, saying that I had put Bill C-81 at risk of not passing because it might not have time to go through the Senate. Actually, he did not know that when we were debating Bill C-81, it had already passed the Senate, and we were debating Senate amendments. He has a habit, without reading or understanding the detail, whether it is Bill C-81 or this motion, of taking strong opinions and attacking people.

Let me be very clear for the benefit of the member: This party will always stand up for small businesses. We do not accuse small business owners of being tax cheats; we create a competitive environment that is beneficial for small businesses and entrepreneurs, which includes journalists. That does not include having Jerry Dias at Unifor involved in deciding who gets a government bailout. That is not something that we see as part of an agenda to advance and protect small business.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Toronto—Danforth.

I am very pleased to be here to speak to a subject that is extremely important to our rural and francophone communities, and I will be talking about today's motion from that perspective.

I agree that a free and independent press is important and even essential to a healthy democracy. That is why our government showed leadership by announcing measures that will enable Canadians to continue to have access to reliable newspapers. Later this year, Canadians will be called upon to choose their next government. As is the case with every election, they will count on a reliable, independent press to keep them informed of the major economic, social and environmental issues facing our country, so that they can make an informed decision.

Can members imagine an election campaign with no press coverage? Would that really be a step forward for democracy? The answer is obvious. Similarly, would Canadians really be better off if we did not have a strong and independent free press to keep an eye on what governments and public institutions are doing and to hold them more accountable? Once again, the answer is obvious.

We would have to search very hard to find a healthy democratic system that does not have a free and independent press. Conversely, it is unfortunately all too easy to compile a long list of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to which the idea of a free press is a totally foreign concept. Those who criticize what our government is doing say that a laissez-faire approach is the best solution to guarantee the freedom and independence of the press. They are the same people who criticize CBC/Radio-Canada. They think journalists can be bought and corrupted. These conspiracy theories are insulting to Canadian journalists, who deserve better than these kinds of prejudices.

We on this side of the House obviously do not feel that way. We respect journalists and their work. We have faith in their integrity, and we know they are professionals. We also strongly believe that a bankrupt press is not a free press. That should be obvious. The print media industry is going through a serious crisis. Over the past decade, more than 200 community newspapers and about 40 daily newspapers have shuttered. According to Statistics Canada, over 10,000 journalism jobs disappeared during that period. This crisis is picking up speed. In the industry, cost-cutting and layoffs are not the exception, they are the norm, and that goes for both small media outlets and the bigger players.

For instance, The Globe and Mail, the largest daily newspaper in the country, just recently announced cuts in order to reduce its operating costs, which amount to $10 million a year. No one in the industry is immune. Since 2008, overall annual revenues in Canada's newspaper industry have decreased by 42%. This decrease is primarily due to the loss of more than 60% of advertising revenues. In 2017, Canadian newspapers were taking in $1.7 billion less in annual ad revenues than they were 10 years earlier. This is a huge loss that is undermining the viability of the entire industry. More and more advertisers are moving away from the printed word and turning to the Internet to place their ads, but Canadian online media platforms are getting very little of this new windfall.

This transformation in the media environment is having a direct and significant impact on the quantity, quality and diversity of reliable journalistic content that Canadians have access to. Many communities across the country are seeing less journalistic coverage of matters of public interest. Access to local news has become especially compromised in many rural communities as a result of the many closures and job cuts.

On that issue, people talk about government responsibility, not only at the federal level, but also at the provincial level and, more importantly, at the local level. It is extremely important that we have a free press active in our communities because it is the sole guardian of the responsibility of local governments back home, in our small communities. I want to emphasize that point, because this is a serious threat to the health and sustainability of our democracy.

If we do nothing in the coming years, other newspapers will close their doors, the number of journalists covering public interest issues will continue to decline, and the health of our democracy will face a growing threat.

Our rural communities will be hit first. Our minority groups will be devastated, especially linguistic minorities such as the people of Prescott—Russell, most of whom are francophones living in a minority community in Ontario.

This is the worst possible time to throw in the towel. Unlike those on the other side, we will not surrender to market forces. We know that, in this day and age, Canadians tend to turn to the Internet for a variety of content, including news. We also know that the accuracy of the information available on many sites, typically those of foreign origin, is questionable, to say the least.

Everyone knows that social networks can be astonishingly effective at spreading fake news and launching misinformation campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion. Now, more than ever, we need trustworthy news sources to offset the misinformation and fake news articles proliferating across the country.

Our government promised that any action taken to support journalism would fully respect the independence of the press. We kept that promise and we will continue to do so. Many western democracies have had policies and programs in place for decades to support the print news media without interfering with the independence of the press. If others can do it, we can too.

Our government's approach involves setting up an independent panel of experts to identify and refine the eligibility criteria for the tax measures to support journalism. We believe that it is important that the panel reflect the diversity of the industry and its various sectors by representing both employers and employees, and that it also reflect our society's linguistic and ethnic diversity.

This approach will make it possible to implement fair and effective measures to support journalism, while respecting the independence of the press. In my opinion, it is clear that the official opposition's motion must be rejected by the House. We believe in an independent press, but we need to support it in the coming years.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated listening to my colleague's comments and one of the points he was making about the loss of revenue in the newspaper industry.

I wonder if the member might know the amount by which the federal government has decreased its advertising support for the newspaper industry in the last four years. I believe it has shifted a tremendous amount of its advertising to the Internet and has taken away that revenue source from the print media.

Does the member have any idea of the advertising dollars the federal government has removed from the print industry and put into social media in the last four years?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member would know, of course, having been here for more than one mandate, that this particular policy of moving advertising to the Internet started under his own government.

With respect to the issue at hand, we want to support an independent press, and bankruptcy is simply not an option for an independent press. That is what we are talking about here. That is what is important to keeping our democracy accountable.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his important speech, particularly since, in his riding, the Franco-Ontarian fact is, of course, very vulnerable and must always be promoted and protected.

I would like to know where small newspapers and local weeklies stand. Did the people who run them feel reassured by the government's announcements? If the member has any time left, I would like him to tell me why the Liberals took so long to present solutions that were looked into two years ago in a number of reports submitted to the government.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

Obviously, conditions have changed over the decades for newspapers. Journalists used to attend press conferences, for example. Earlier in my speech I mentioned the importance of having journalists hold local governments to account. Here in Ottawa we are lucky to have a national press, but local governments do not always have this platform. It is important to ensure that they have these platforms and this obligation to be accountable at the local level.

Indeed, local papers have managed to survive and yes, they will benefit from some of the announcements we made. However, we still have a long way to go to ensure that we have a reliable and independent press in Canada, especially in our official language minority communities.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in today's debate we are hearing people, especially on the Conservative side, talk and complain about the fact that a union has a voice at the table.

What does my friend from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell think about having employers, unions and companies at the discussion table so that we can get the whole picture of what we need to do?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Toronto—Danforth for her question.

It is important that all sectors be represented at the table, including employers, francophone journalists and Canada's ethnic media. It is important that these people be at the table.

It is also important to include unions that represent those working in the area. I think that all the criticism of the union that will represent one in eight voices is unfounded. It is important to have them at the table. We must not take away the unions' and the workers' right to have a voice at the table.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Conservative opposition motion presently being debated.

The issue of how to properly support the media is something I have had the opportunity to work on and think about quite deeply over the past years while I have been here in Ottawa. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. When we started, one of our first studies was in fact on local media. It was an in-depth study where we really looked at what we should be doing. We heard from media across our country, from the unions, the employees and business owners. They all spoke to us about a need to ensure that we continue to have a vibrant local media across our country.

I would like to thank the chair of the committee at the time, the member for Vancouver Centre, as she led us through the study. We made 20 recommendations. Included in those recommendations were the very items we found in budget 2019 about making changes to the tax act to allow not-for-profit media foundations to have charitable status, and tax credits. It is nice to see work being done at committee and how that can translate into policy going forward.

As well, when we were doing that study, there was a report by the Public Policy Forum called the “Shattered Mirror”. Interestingly, as a part of that report, they also included a review entitled “the Copyright Act's fair-dealing rules to strengthen rights of news originators to control their intellectual property” as one of their recommendations, as well as some of the recommendations we had in the committee report on that. It is interesting that the “Shattered Mirror” report reflects future work that was done by the committee. I am now the chair of the committee. We have also studied copyright rules and made recommendations on that issue.

I have the newspaper delivered to my house every day. It is funny, but I was reading the newspaper and thinking about what we were going to saying in the debate. It is not a fossil. Newspapers are not fossils. This a way that Canadians get the news that we rely upon. It has an important role in raising civic awareness and keeping Canadians informed. No matter what the size of the communities that we live in, no matter our distances from larger population centres, we rely on important local news to make decisions, to see how we look at the world, planet and our local communities.

Canadians still rely on newspapers and other news outlets today. We have just changed a lot of the way that we do it. As I mentioned, I was reading a newspaper this morning in its physical form, but more and more people are scrolling from article to article rather than turning from one page to the other. In fact, Canadians are among the most engaged and best-informed citizens globally. We should be proud of that.

In international surveys, such as the well-respected Reuters Institute digital news report, Canada ranks highly in consumption and trust in news sources. For example, in 2018, Canada ranked fifth out of 37 countries that were surveyed for trust of the news that people read. More importantly, the numbers for Canada are rising. There was a 9% increase in trust from the previous year. The survey also showed that a majority of Canadians, 60% to be precise, are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the Internet when it comes to news. That is really important. Canadians are concerned about making sure they are getting news that is in fact true, with the whole issue of fake news having become something of a concern.

Another well-known measure of trust in the news is the international Edelman trust barometer. This annual survey confirms digital news survey results concerning trust. There was an increase of 8% in Canadians surveyed who declared trust in the news industry. Traditional news outlets, like newspapers, ranked the highest, at 71% level of trust, while news via social media was at the bottom, with 31% of trust from Canadians. Most importantly, 21% of Canadians consumed news regularly compared to the previous year. Clearly, the world is increasingly faced with misinformation and social media bots, and Canadians are relying more and more on trusted news outlets to deliver honest and independent reporting on the issues of the day.

The challenge that these outlets are facing is not one of trust levels, but it is rather about how we are consuming our news. It is the economic model that has been radically altered, and we are hearing that from creators across industry. Today when we are talking about the news, we are talking about a massive shift towards online news consumption.

Today, only 9% of Canadians pay for online news, according to a writer survey. Canada ranks 27 out of 37 countries surveyed in that respect. Much needs to be done to encourage higher rates of online subscriptions, and that is what is so interesting about the steps being taken. The fall economic statement of 2018 included measures to specifically encourage Canadians to subscribe to digital news outlets. The statement addressed that shift directly.

With that type of model, providing measures to encourage Canadians to subscribe, the choice remains with individual Canadians as to whether or not to take a subscription with one outlet or the other. They still have the choice. Some outlets are more conservative and some have been endorsing the opposition party over the last four cycles, and then others are more progressive. It is up to Canadians to choose which one they want to subscribe to. That is the model that has been put out there.

We are also providing tax credits to these news outlets for the cost of employing professional journalists. That is important. We need to ensure that we have support for these journalists. These tax credits are available to all of the qualified journalistic organizations in the news industry, regardless of the scope or the lean of their reporting.

As has been said from the outset by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Canadian Heritage , any government action in support of news media will rest on the principle of ensuring respect for the independence of the press. That is why we are putting together an independent panel to advise on the criteria that should be applied to define these qualified journalistic organizations.

To ensure the independence of the panel from any influence of government, eight non-governmental organizations were each asked to provide the name of one individual they believe has the necessary qualifications and expertise to contribute to the work of the panel. All eight organizations represent part of the news industry.

Four of them represent the owners and publishers of news outlets: News Media Canada, representing daily and community newspapers and online news sources; the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, representing the multicultural and multilingual press; the Quebec Community Newspapers Association, representing English-language newspapers in Quebec; and the Association de la presse francophone, representing French-language news sources in the other provinces and territories.

The other four represent journalists and employees, who also have an important stake and a vital role in the future of the news industry. They are the Canadian Association of Journalists, Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, Fédération nationale des communications, and Unifor, which represents more than 10,000 employees in the news media sector.

The objective is to hear the voices of all professionals involved in the sector: employers, publishers, official languages communities, ethnic media, big and small organizations, freelancers and bloggers. We do not just want CEOs around the table, but a diversity of voices.

It is clear that the Conservative opposition is merely playing politics with Canada's journalism and news sector, to the detriment of our democracy. They have a track record of doing so. In 2015, they made a special effort to have Postmedia newspapers across Canada endorse the Stephen Harper Conservatives, over the objections of staff and employees. The Conservative Party also bought the front page of these newspapers in the days before the 2015 election, deliberately misleading Canadians into thinking that the political advertisement was journalism. That it not how an independent press works.

It is clear that the Conservatives, regardless of the compelling human and democratic arguments in favour of supporting our struggling news sector, will continue to unabashedly play politics with the topic.

That is why I am opposing this motion. I will be focusing, with the House, on the important issues to Canadians. We have many issues that we should and could be debating. To be debating the composition of this committee is not the proper use of our time.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely wrong in how she characterizes this issue. Nobody on this side is saying that there should not be freedom of the press to print and write the articles and the opinion editorials it needs to. We simply think that the government should not be involved in the business of the free press.

At committee, finance officials said that no blogger will be eligible for this. They said that no owner-operated news outlet will be eligible for any of this. In fact, most start-ups will be automatically eliminated just by virtue of how start-ups begin.

One thing I also want to mention to the member is that this issue was brought in through an omnibus budget bill.

It is the first time, that I can find, that the Canada Revenue Agency will not be directly involved in the administration of a tax credit. The government is setting up a partisan panel, with Unifor on it. Does the member have another example of a tax credit that is not administered directly by the CRA?

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting that this partisan panel being referred to has eight different associations as part of it. I would be surprised if any of these eight members would like to see themselves characterized as partisan. In fact, these are the people responsible for our democratic news. Different organizations and newspapers may have leanings one way or the other, but if we are characterizing our newspaper sector as partisan, as represented by these eight organizations that represent all sides and all parts of our media, that is a problem.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech and excellent work at committee, where we discussed these issues at length.

I will not ask her why we had to wait until the last minute because I have already asked that question many times today. A lot of people are wondering if they are going to pack up next weekend because the parliamentary session is almost over. It cannot believe that we are tackling this issue today, but the Conservatives wanted to raise it.

Is my colleague surprised by the Conservative belief that choosing a union such as Unifor to represent the views of workers and others is some kind of a game?

I find it appalling that they waited until the last minute, just before the election, to introduce such a highly debatable motion.

Is she surprised by the Conservative belief that unions do not look favourably on the Conservatives and do not believe them to be on their side?