Canadian Heritage committee  It's been a privilege to be involved. Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, there's no doubt in my mind, with the Australian code and what I understand is in Bill C-18, that you are going to get growth in smaller publications. This does give them the ability to do that. Certainly, some of those Country Press Australia organizations are going to use some of that money to be much more sophisticated digital players as well, and that will help them grow.

Canadian Heritage committee  On the companies involved with Country Press, the 180 media organizations with Country Press Australia, I would certainly urge the committee to get in touch with them. From my understanding—I'm sorry I can't share this and I realize that it's what I said before on the improvement of the Canadian bill—I think they got more money per journalist than anybody else.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that's right.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's right. It's banded together as an industry association. It has about 60 owners of those 180 publications. It's just that, an industry organization. It's absolutely not a conglomerate. Each of those 180 businesses is very small and, as I said, there are about 60 owners.

Canadian Heritage committee  The problem is that there have been a lot of confidentiality arrangements. We have the numbers. I have the numbers, because the ACCC had conversations with many of the media, trying to get a ballpark estimate of where things were: “not above this, not below that”, those sorts of conversations.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. Google and Facebook do need media. There's just no doubt about that. Obviously, Google does more clearly, but Facebook also does. They used to call it News Feed and it's now just called Feed. I think there's an obvious reason why they've changed that name, but they want eyeballs and they need media because people will do searches on both Facebook and Google.

Canadian Heritage committee  Understood, Chair. Roughly half of them got together and bargained collectively, and the rest have done deals individually. It's been their choice whether they feel they have the capacity, but the really small ones had to bargain collectively. That's worked fine.

Canadian Heritage committee  As I said, Google has done deals with essentially everybody—large, medium and small. Facebook has done deals with the four larger players and I think virtually all of the smaller players, but there are a few very small ones left out. They've certainly done deals with Country Press Australia, and they've done deals with Australian Community Media.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's my fault, I fear.

Canadian Heritage committee  It has transformed the journalism landscape in Australia. It's gone from pessimism to optimism. We have different readouts on where the money's gone. I mentioned the Guardian and a 50% increase. The Guardian is a new player to Australia. They're a middle-sized player. They're of course backed up by Guardian U.K.

Canadian Heritage committee  There's no doubt about that. There's a lot of misinformation around. Google has done a deal with everybody who's eligible, and Facebook just about, although there are some weird exceptions. In terms of the smaller players, in my view, Country Press Australia, which I think has about 180 very small publications—you're talking about a couple of journalists in many of them—got by far the best deal per journalist.

Canadian Heritage committee  From my point of view, one improvement could be a bit more transparency. I was at the ACCC. Through the ACCC and my own contacts in touch with all the media companies, that's why I'm able to be completely confident that the deals were well over $200 million. They were well over that before the most recent round of deals, which I think someone referred to, but a bit more transparency in aggregate terms about how much money is being paid and where it's going would be helpful, provided it's at an aggregate level and not disclosing individual deals.

Canadian Heritage committee  Look, I haven't been through it line by line, but I think the high-level aspect of transparency—again, provided it's done at an aggregate level—is an improvement, yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  Look, I think there are some misunderstandings around. I mean, what's really happened here is that Google and Facebook have interposed themselves between media and their audiences. There's no doubt that Google and Facebook benefit from news media. You don't have to advertise against it to benefit; you just get eyeballs to your site.