Mr. Speaker, I respect the previous speaker for his experience in local media, which I have some experience with myself.
This reminds me of several years ago, about seven or eight years ago, when we were the third party at that time, or maybe even the opposition. I remember that there was an argument over the Canadian firearms advisory committee. One of the big beefs the Conservatives had at the time was that there was no representation from firearms owners. A lot of people on our side were saying no because, they said, those people were mostly Conservatives against the gun registry and so on and so forth. I remember a bunch of us on the other side saying, “No, that's not right. They should be involved. They are firearms owners.” Then on the other side, they were saying that a lot of law enforcement should not be involved because they were more pro-Liberal or pro-NDP.
I find it kind of odd now that all a sudden there is this voluminous amount of self-righteousness coming from across the way. I will say this, without being too nasty or putting too fine a point on it, and perhaps it is too late: let us take Unifor out of this for just a moment.
Quite frankly, Unifor did not always agree with me. I had many fights with Unifor, especially as its predecessor, when it was known as the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. However, it did a lot of work on behalf of journalist organizations.
If we take just Unifor out, and not the others, is it still a fundamentally sound program from which local media could truly benefit?