Mr. Speaker, I have been enjoying some of the conversation I have heard this afternoon. Some of it, I am not quite so sure about.
My father owned a weekly newspaper. I remember many times, when he would write specific things in the newspapers, people would come in and say, “I disagree with what you wrote as the owner-editor of that paper.” He would say, “It is my paper. I will print what I want, and I will say what I want. If you want to buy the paper, you can buy it. I will sell it to you, and you can say what you want.” Now, that is an independent weekly newspaper.
In my riding. I have seven editor-owned newspapers. I have spoken to many of them in my community in the last few weeks.
I am going to be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Shepard, who will be very intelligent as he follows me. I am the set-up guy here.
On this particular issue, I heard a colleague on the other side saying that they do not want to support the news on social media because it is fake news. Then it was suggested that that is where the Liberals are putting their advertising dollars. They are supporting social media with fake news while they want to support print news with real news. They blamed the Conservatives for doing that. Where are the Liberal advertising dollars going?
If Liberals really believed that the print media was the real news, why did they not shift their dollars from social media to it? They are saying that social media is fake news. I found that really interesting.
The member said to talk to my constituents, and I did. I spoke to the editor-owners of these newspapers. They are not happy with this piece of legislation. It talks about a piece for subscriptions, but for rural, independently owned newspapers, their subscription base is small. They deliver widely to all the constituents who follow their newspapers; it is not by a subscription base. They tell me that the amount they would get out of that subscription piece would be negligible.
Again, my constituents have looked at all the pieces of this one. Liberals have said that I should talk to my constituents, and I have talked to the editor-owners of these papers.
I have talked to my constituents. What has happened recently has been the Liberal government compromising on SNC-Lavalin and Mark Norman, as just a couple of examples. My constituents say that they do not trust that the government will be any different; it is not trustworthy to give money to media.
When I have talked to a lot of constituents in the past, they, as well as many from Alberta, ask, “Where is the support for the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs in the oil and resource sector?” They are saying that the government wants to give hundreds of millions to the news media, which does not support any of my constituents, but where is the support for the oil and gas guys? I met a number of them on the weekend, and they do not have a job.
Where is the support from the Prime Minister who wants to get rid of the oil sector? He wants to support media, and my constituents do not believe he is anything but untrustworthy. The Prime Minister continues to build mistrust with constituents because of this program.
Long before Confederation, the free press was used to distribute government-friendly propaganda. Some people might remember the history of newsprint as it started. The industry was started in order to do that.
Now we have a free press that holds the government to account without patronage, but this gives them more patronage. It took a lot of determination and bravery to cultivate the truly free press that we have compared to what we had before Confederation. The legacy of these pioneering individuals who took great personal risk to develop a free media must not be squandered, and yet that is exactly what the government seems to be doing.
Like with SNC-Lavalin, the Prime Minister is operating in an ill-advised way, without regard for the integrity of our institutions. Again, simply put, it should not be up to the government to decide which media outlets receive money and which do not. It is an obvious conflict of interest that strikes at the very principle of free press, picking winners and losers in the media. It is almost unbelievable that the government would proceed down this path. We have seen what the consequences will be. They are going to choose, picking winners and losers, with this unbiased panel.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage said that his independent panel will be free from any direct political influence. He told me in committee, “I'm not going to name the panel and I'm not going to tell them what to do.” Canadians can be forgiven for wondering if the current government can really be trusted to avoid political interference. Even if it did, the events of the past week have proven that this whole scheme is inherently flawed.
Unifor is a panel member. Jerry Dias of Unifor referred to himself and his colleagues as the resistance against Conservative politicians. Unifor, which is poised to actively campaign against our party, will be involved in deciding who receives grant money in the media. Jerry Dias will be able to weigh in on who is a real journalist and who is not. He will be positioned to decide if the content that a journalist has been publishing merits government support. Do they see why people are a little concerned that this is not another trustworthy activity? We do not need to wonder what kind of content Unifor will prefer; we already know what Mr. Dias would prefer.
This scheme fell apart almost as soon as it was launched. The government, at a very minimum, must go back to the drawing board. This whole mess needs to be undone, and not just because it creates massive conflict of interest between the government and the free press that is supposed to be covering it. The large chains need to adapt their business model to a changing industry landscape.
We all know that a decline in traditional newspapers has been going on for a long time. It has been coming. It may not have any easy solutions. I remember talking to the editor of the Edmonton Journal 15 years ago and saying it was changing. The editor said it was not going to change, that social media will not have a place. Ten years ago, I talked to the editor, who said that it was not going to change. I wonder where that editor of the Edmonton Journal is now, as it has changed drastically.
We all know that the decline in traditional papers is coming, but one solution that certainly will not work is subsidizing the same old business model that has been failing for decades. The government is looking at something that obviously did not work and has decided to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on sustaining it. It defies logic. In my riding, it is another example of an untrustworthy use of taxpayer money.
As I mentioned to the minister in committee, the way that the criteria are designed is going to ruin local weekly papers. This is not going to support the independent editor-owned papers. There is no money to support them. What the independent editors asked for was the advertising dollars that the federal government has.
They will be bought up by the chains, and this will ruin them. They will become chain newspapers that will not be covering local events. We have seen what chain weekly papers do in rural areas. The editors fill them with all sorts of standardized stories from across the country. There is no more coverage of the municipal government; it is gone. There is no more coverage of the high-school basketball team winning games. There is no more coverage of the independent non-profit charities working for things in the community. Those things will go. This is what happens when we have independent weekly newspapers. They are at risk.
As has been said a number of times by the other side, it is the independent newspapers that are at risk. I have met with the editors in my community. These are editor-owned papers, and they do not qualify under these criteria. They know they are the most at risk of losing their papers, and the communities will be the ones that lose the most. They are the lifeblood of the communities. They do not necessarily cover national news. They do not necessarily cover what the federal government is doing. However, they cover what is happening in their communities. This bailout will not help them.
I understand that a second panel has been named that will follow a similar process and attribute $50 million to regional outlets. These are not regional papers; they are local papers. That is what the major chains do. This will not stop the major chains from flexing their muscles with their shiny new government subsidies. This bailout is not designed to foster an independent press. Plain and simple, it is meant to prop up big failing chains. Local media were an afterthought. There is no local news, no innovation, no common sense.
In conclusion, this is not right. It is a flawed process. It should be eliminated. If the government wants to look at subsidizing, this is not the way to do it. The local weekly papers in this country that are independent and editor-owned do not qualify for the subsidies. They will not get anything out of this. This is a flawed process. It needs to go.