Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 6 - Evidence for January 31, 2005, Morning meeting
VANCOUVER, Monday, January 31, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 8:40 a.m. to study the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Honourable Senators, welcome to Vancouver.
[English]
It is really wonderful to be here as we begin a series of hearings that, over the course of this week, will take us to Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg, as well as this wonderful city, and we have all been looking forward to this trip. We know that we will get a great deal of useful information out of it, and I am sure that, like me, you all look forward to the opportunity to hear from members of the public later today, beginning at approximately 4:15 p.m.
[Translation]
As you know, the committee is studying the Canadian news media and the role that the State should play in order to help them remain healthy, independent, and diverse, in light of the tremendous changes that have affected media in recent years — notably, globalization, technological change, convergence and increased concentration of ownership.
[English]
Our first witnesses today are Janet Ingram-Johnson, Secretary of the Media Union of British Columbia, Mr. Patrick Nagle, a famed journalist, and Mr. Ian Mulgrew. Welcome to the committee. We understand that the common thread that links you, apart from just general interest in the topic, is that you were involved in the Citizens' Forum on the Media, which was held here in this room, was it not, in 2003, and that you will tell us about it during your introductory remarks.
I am sure that you understand our drill: We ask you to keep the introductory remarks to about 10 minutes so that we will have a chance to ask you some questions. As you know, we are trying to cram in as much as we can today, so we really will have to respect our timing quite rigorously. Which of you will lead off? Ms. Ingram-Johnson, the floor is yours.
Ms. Janet Ingram-Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer Media Union of British Columbia: Senator Fraser, thank you very much for allowing us to come today. I am speaking as the elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers' Union of Canada, Local 2000, but also as a journalist with more than 30 years' experience on three continents: Europe, in my native Britain, Africa and North America. CEP Local 2000, also known as the Media Union of B.C., represents some 2,200 print and allied workers throughout the province. I shall be basing my submission on my knowledge of the print medium but linking it to electronic media where appropriate.
First, with respect to your Key Question No. 1, the amount of news in circulation rises and falls in direct proportion to the number of journalists available to report it. This was brought home to me as a rookie reporter in Britain before the computer age when the lead item on BBC Radio's Christmas Day news was a bus crash in Australia in which about 10 people were killed, none of them tourists or Britons. Much of the world, certainly the English-speaking world, was celebrating Christmas and the news simply was not being covered.
Sadly, as far as news gathering goes in this province, Christmas Day in B.C. now appears to fall on many more days than just December 25. Newspapers, owned almost exclusively by three large corporations — CanWest Global, David Black/Torstar, and Hollinger/Horizon — compete primarily for advertising revenue and do not compete at all to serve the public interest. The largest of the three, CanWest Global, also owns TV stations in all the major markets of the province and it has recently confirmed that in March, this March, it will launch a new daily tabloid in Vancouver, and I quote, "in order to reach new advertising markets."
Turning to your Key Question No. 4, media ownership changes and consolidation here in B.C. — and again, I am speaking mainly of CanWest — have cut local editorial resources to the bone, while large chunks of capital are siphoned off to places such as Winnipeg to please shareholders and pay down corporate debt. It would appear a common consensus that media owners are entitled to make money, but the eight to 15 per cent return that was good enough for former owners has now risen to a lofty 30 per cent with CanWest. Having one reporter file a single story to a community paper, three daily papers and a couple of TV stations owned by a single corporation may be how CanWest thinks it is serving the public need, but the citizens of B.C. think otherwise, as is evidenced by falling circulations and a loss of public trust.
I would say that the arms and legs of B.C. journalism are still working, in a rather disjointed fashion, but the heart has been transplanted elsewhere. I will refrain from commenting as to where the brains might be.
CanWest's combined newspaper circulation in B.C., not including the National Post, is 4,019,194 out of a national circulation total that includes the National Post of 9,150,562, which is a sliver under 44 per cent, according to statistics that we have posted on CEP's media website. Not only is CanWest the dominant player in B.C. media, B.C. is the dominant player in CanWest's print empire. It owns the two dailies in the main city, Vancouver, and the daily in the capital, Victoria.
You will hear evidence today elsewhere of the effects of declining resources on the amount and variety of news and information in the public domain. One of the most serious complaints is the lack of political reporting. If you would refer, now or later, to your transcript of our May 2003 Citizens' Forum in Vancouver — and yes, it brought 130 people to fill this room on a sunny May afternoon, people who just walked in off the street because they heard about it and were concerned about the quality, or lack of quality, and lack of diversity in our media. I would point you to two highlighted quotes addressing this very issue, one on Page 18 by a Vancouver city councillor and journalist/ businessman, Peter Ladner, and the other on Page 32 by former Vancouver Sun reporter, Charles Campbell. I believe the committee will find many other helpful comments in our forum transcript.
The two Vancouver dailies and the two former Victoria dailies — the Victoria Times and the Victoria Daily Colonist were merged into the Times Colonist in September of 1980 — used to assign reporters to cover the meat and potatoes of the B.C. legislature, while their marquee columnists provided the desserts. The Sun used to have as many as four reporters on the legislature beat and The Province regularly had two. The Times and the Colonist both had one full-time reporter, backed up by a second while the government was in session. After the Times Colonist was created, the paper continued with two full-time reporters and a columnist.
Both Vancouver papers now rely on political commentators to cover the legislature — columnists Vaughn Palmer for the Sun and Michael Smyth for The Province — while picking up snippets from the Times Colonist or Canadian Press. Regardless of the undeniable value of columnists to the public interest, to rely on commentary and analysis instead of objective fact-gathering is alarming. Again, the more reporters to cover anything, the greater the public interest is served.
The Sun and Province newsrooms, in their heydays, used to have a combined total of 760 reporters and editors, according to Marc Edge in his 2001 treatise on the history of Pacific Press. Even into the 1980s, The Sun counted an editorial staff of around 200 and The Province about 165. Current Sun staffing is around 120, with only a tiny contingent of general-assignment, city-side reporters. The Province has a total contingent of 106 on a good day, and both these sets of figures include part-timers. Around 20 journalists were cut from The Province staff in 2003 alone. The Times-Colonist has lost 10 reporters since 1993, and the list goes on.
In response to and combining your Key Questions 4 and 11, Vancouver once was just one of our major Canadian cities to have two or more daily, competing, English-language papers. However, unlike Winnipeg or Ottawa, where deals were done to eliminate the competition, or unlike Montreal, where the competition folded, the competition in Vancouver combined in 1960 under the aegis of Pacific Press, now called the Pacific Newspaper Group. One of the restraints the Competition Bureau imposed on Pacific Press was the separation between editorial, advertising and circulation departments, which over the years has boiled down to being simply a separation of the two newsrooms, as the advertising and circulation departments merged.
While superficially remaining apart from each other, the Sun and Province newsrooms are now linked directly to CanWest Global's BCTV station, which for some years has been the dominant TV station in this province, and now goes by the somewhat awkward name of Global TV for B.C. News lists are exchanged between newspaper and TV newsrooms. Print reporters appear on television. TV reporters write for the papers. If BCTV knows what the Sun and The Province are doing every day, and the Sun and The Province know what BCTV is doing every day, it follows that the Sun and The Province must have a pretty good idea of what each is doing every day. Not only does this appear to breach the firewall established by the Competition Bureau, it also appears to reduce what could be vibrant, varied coverage to a homogenized, colourless soup.
Such is the abysmal state of democratic media here in B.C. One could drone on all day about its many ills, but instead I will turn to the vital question you are asking here: What can be done about it, and are regulations needed and/ or possible? I believe that there are parallels between the lifting of foreign-ownership restrictions and the absence of local-ownership restrictions. If placing and keeping handcuffs on foreign corporations is thought to be good for Canadians, then why would not placing handcuffs on our own national mega-corporations be good for local communities? Why should B.C. interests come last? Why should any local interests come last? Is the threat of foreign multinationals' draining resources and Canadian content from our national fabric any worse than CanWest Global draining resources and B.C. lifeblood from the provincial fabric?
Canada has a population of 32 million, and has 307 members of Parliament, roughly one per 104,000 inhabitants. Britain, with about double the population, has a very similar ratio of MPs to people. Where the two countries differ greatly is in the number of newspapers and other news media they have and how those media support themselves. There are vastly more publications and other media per capita in Britain than in Canada. There are at least a dozen national newspapers in Britain. Here we have but two.
The UK is one of the smallest countries on the planet, so historically it is been easy to distribute printed material quickly. Canada is the second-largest country on the planet, so historically it is difficult, and has been difficult, but the Internet age is rapidly narrowing that gap.
However, another major difference that has not changed with the Internet age is that, historically, some of the major news media in Britain have relied more on circulation than on advertising to keep themselves alive. Some, of course, have always been advertising-driven. Here in Canada, all our main news media are advertising-driven. This did not matter quite so much when newspaper publishers were journalists, when content was king. Now publishers come from advertising or marketing backgrounds, or are called general managers as in TV, and advertising is the only game in town.
You will hear this afternoon from David Beers, a journalist and university teacher whose main day job these days is as editor of The Tyee, an online newspaper which is not owned by one of the major corporations and does not want to be so owned. The Tyee struggles for funding as it tries to swim upstream from the corporate media. However, rather than conventional funding from the top down, in the CBC-grant mould, I think there should be a political will to drive The Tyee's circulation from the bottom up by offering tax incentives or rebates to paid subscribers. Granted, this would benefit higher-income earners more than the poor, but studies have shown that ownership of information does increase with material wealth, while libraries and suchlike try to fund access for the less well off.
I conclude my submission with the thought that, in a balanced, diverse and civil society, government by the people for the people has a duty to create and preserve conditions in which all citizens' interests are well served and are not dominated by the player who has the most money to buy the most toys. Also, as is sometimes forgotten, advertisers are readers too.
Thank you very much indeed for permitting me to speak.
The Chairman: Thank you. Who is next? That is it? Did either Mr. Nagle or Mr. Mulgrew wish to add anything? Mr. Nagle?
[Translation]
Mr. Patrick Nagel, as an individual: I would like to thank you for coming here today, your visit is a real honour.
[English]
I am here in the same capacity as I was many months ago in this room. Then I was the independent chairman of a public meeting convened to address the same questions you raise today, and I am still independent. While our previous day was organized by the Media Union, Simon Fraser University and the IMPACS NGO, the participants were far more diverse and far more questing than I could have believed. I was very touched and heartened to witness the breadth of public participation in the event and hope you will recognize the powerful public interest your committee has generated.
The union's resources have provided a transcript of that event for you, and apart from a few niggling typos, I can tell you it is a full and accurate account of the day. You will also be delighted to know that I have no intention of rerunning my part in that transcript, but I would like briefly to direct you to a couple of matters arising therefrom and to add a couple of my observations derived from current events. Once again, I have to add the disclaimer that all my comments concern print journalism. My only qualification is 50 years of newspaper and magazine experience in Canada. Print is the only medium I know and understand. To this day, I do not own a television, but that may be a problem.
First, I ask you to remember that history matters. The formation of Pacific Press here in 1957 set the stage for everything that has happened since to daily newspapers across the country. The Restrictive Trades Practices Commission, or "Combines" investigation into the matter was inconclusive and, by 1960, there was no turning back. From a historical perspective, it would be interesting if Senate researchers could find a cabinet minute on the subject or some policy document of the time — hitherto, to my knowledge, unrevealed — that would show whether the Government of Canada ever considered then what the impact of the Pacific Press merger would have on the future of daily newspapers in Canada.
Second, I ask you to remember the finding of the O'Leary commission, little regarded nowadays, but it dictated that the content of magazines, and by association newspapers, was a commodity that could be regarded as being dumped into this country at cut rates. In other words, content did not matter; the cost of production did. That regulatory concept applies to this day if a report on your committee proceedings in Ottawa is correct. I am quoting from a news story here that states:
The Competition Bureau's former acting director, Gaston Jorre, told a Senate committee studying Canadian media that the Competition Act is not designed to address —
— and I quote directly:
— 'the diversity' or 'a diversity of voices.' Jorre said that from a policy perspective, the most important players are advertisers.
This is a terse but accurate summary of a daily newspaper's regulatory regime in Canada. With that background, I ask you very seriously to beware of trying to improve the regulatory regime. The history does not support that idea.
Third, in the matter of costs, and this is a very serious matter to me, I note the price of newsprint is more than $600 per ton and rising. This is the most basic cost of doing business in newspapers. The more paper costs, the less news there is in a paper. It is as simple as that. However, even such hard-headed business practice cannot explain to me, as a Vancouver Sun subscriber, why the newspaper does not maintain even one full-time legislative news reporter in Victoria. I know of no precedent here, or of an example elsewhere in Canada, where the principal newspaper in a province is not represented in the legislative press gallery. I know all of the arguments about readers' wants and business costs, but this situation is truly a matter of content, and the newspaper fails in this regard. This is an election year in B.C., so I hope no one thinks I am being rude when I observe that if, by some miracle of political prestidigitation, a New Democratic Party government were elected in May, the Vancouver Sun's legislative bureau would be open for business again in a heartbeat.
Finally, and specifically in regards to your first question, I would ask you to look closely at our previous colloquium or whatever, on the intervention of Carol Cole. As a researcher in health and information at UBC, she expressed considerable dismay at the quality of reporting on health issues in all levels of Canadian media. I would support her in her research if I could because this is obviously an area where there is a serious lack of appropriate amounts and quality of information. For the record, I am not young. From an entirely personal perspective, I would say the intention of the current emphasis on health and medical reporting is to frighten the wits out of people, not to inform them.
Thank you again, and as with the other panellists, I would welcome your questions.
The Chairman: Thank you. I would observe that the transcript that you sent us was, indeed, interesting. I read it last night. I read all of it. You mentioned typos. I remember that Mr. Cellucci's name, for example, was mistranscribed. However, it was interesting, and we do thank you for it, although thick, as you would expect of a proceeding that went on so long. Mr. Mulgrew?
Mr. Ian Mulgrew, as an individual: Madam Chair and senators, thank you very much for inviting me this morning. It is a pleasure to be here.
I am here as a working journalist. I was invited because I was part of the organizational structure that produced the forum, and I wanted to come primarily to share with you my experience as a non-fiction writer in Canada who has worked in most of the mediums for most of the main proprietors, publishers or broadcasters.
You are hearing a lot of big-picture material and you will, I know, receive a lot of statistical information and other data to show how the media market has changed in Canada. Having reviewed much of it myself in the last couple of years, I find that a great deal of it is very negative and, on the face of it, quite depressing, if you are a social democrat who believes in vibrant public discourse. However, in appearing before you today, I would ask you to keep a lot of that in perspective. I think there is a natural inclination among all of us to believe that the sky is falling, and I wanted to give you a view from the ground. I would like you to be aware that what I am sharing with you is my experience; it is specific, it is unique and it is different from that of my peers, especially those who work in Toronto where there is fairly vibrant competition among newspapers and media.
Let me, then, tell you how things have changed for me and what I think about that, and why I think certain things have happened. I think it will reflect on the questions you are posing, but perhaps not in the way you expect.
I got into journalism just after your precursor, Senator Keith Davey, announced that newsrooms were the graveyards of broken dreams. At that time, I was a teenager, married with two kids, who had a job working the line in General Motors, and I did not have a journalism certificate or a degree, and a little newspaper in Northern Ontario gave me a job. I would also like to tell you that the good senator was completely wrong. The assembly line might have been the graveyard of broken dreams but I found Canadian newsrooms full of passionate and engaged people. Then when I arrived at The Globe and Mail at the end of the 1970s, I had the incredible privilege of working with Victor Malorek, Yves Lavigne, Michael Harris, J. Scott, Oakland Ross, John Fraser, Christie Blatchford, and journalists from The Star and The Sun and elsewhere that we met in those days, and I see Mr. Munson sitting over there, whom I count among them — who were incredibly passionate about their craft. You know, much has changed but that hasn't changed. I still work with people who are like that: Kim Bolan, David Baines, Salim Jiwa, Lindsay Kines, Lori Culbert — I could go on.
Still, not only has the ownership environment changed, but the culture of journalism and the demographics of newsrooms has certainly changed. As you have heard, and when I arrived in British Columbia, there were a handful of reporters from the Vancouver Sun stationed in Victoria to cover the legislature, along with a columnist. Over at 12th and Cambie, the paper had a City Hall bureau and a City Hall columnist, and today we cover both pretty well by dispatching news reporters from our newsrooms. Now, in part, that is an economic decision for sure, but I would also suggest to you to keep in mind that it is also a change in the way governments function, and hanging around the halls does not really get you as much as it used to. Also, the politicians and the reporters do not spend most of their afternoon in the bar, so, there has been a cultural change.
Journalism has changed in the last 30 years, some for the better, some not. I left for about half a decade primarily because I got tired of fighting with Southam editors who did not like my points of view or my work. However, I have to tell you, I also had fought with Globe and Mail editors about my points of view and my work, and even today I fight with editors about my points of view and my work. I am not sure that ownership has had anything to do with my fights. In fact, I am pretty sure it has had none, other than when Roy McGarry did not like my writing about his constitutional position.
In any event, times have changed. Newspapers find it difficult to maintain specialized staffs. I do not think that is as a result of ideological ownership, and it is not that newspaper journalists do not care as much about covering things in the same way. It is that they exist in a different environment. Newspapers and their relationship to the community have changed, and not just in terms of their ownership. In terms of the way the reporting staff and journalists relate to the community has changed. Economic pressures, technological change, the fight for eyeballs with television and the Internet have all created this very different world. It is a busier world. It is a noisier world, and newspapers and their journalists must attract customers to survive.
We can do more in our newsrooms today because of technological change. Therefore, pointing out sometimes that we have fewer journalists does not necessarily mean that we are doing a worse job. I happen to think that, in many ways, newspapers are livelier, more visually appealing and more entertaining than they ever were. We are more informative and more thorough in some ways. We do a better job of pleasing the retina and ratcheting up the "got'cha" quotients.
Surprisingly, on the whole, I believe the cadre of journalists today is better educated and better trained than it used to be. There are fewer opportunities for people like me to write their way into the craft as a result, and more emphasis on advanced degrees. Is that better or worse? I am not sure. However, more and more we have abandoned the old role as agents of record, as the authors of the proverbial first draft of history, and today we more and more often offer an interpretation, a specific point of view and a way of seeing the world.
Competition among journalists helps stoke passion and helps create an intellectual environment where good work is produced, and the community benefits from the enlivened public discussion. I believe that, and I have seen it everywhere I have worked. Toronto, I believe, is a more intellectually happening city than Vancouver today because it has media competition. However, I also would point out to you that just as there are fewer journalists today, there are fewer places for them to interact. There used to be press clubs in every city, locales where journalists would argue about the day's coverage and where the glue of the profession was forged. Those are gone. That says something about the culture of journalism. I believe journalists today, in most cities in Canada, lead an increasingly isolated professional life. Most must go out of their way to invest in their own professional development. In single-employer environments, advancement is up the corporate ladder and not to somewhere else where your skills are in demand. In Toronto, journalists can still walk across the street and the salaries for columnists and marquee players reflects that. In Vancouver, where do the journalists go? Or in Victoria? We also live in an environment where middle-aged coworkers are bought out and where publications are being founded where only writers and editors under 30 are being hired.
As I said to you, the media is not what it was. They do not play the role they once did and decisions are made across corporate platforms now. Promotions are within the company, and loyalty to the market is less rewarded than loyalty to the chain. However, that seems normal to me. That is certainly the way it worked at General Motors. It is the way it works at IBM, too, I am sure.
I have it very good. My employers allow me an incredible amount of freedom, to range widely and write freely. We do not always see eye-to-eye, but I really appreciate their support. Nothing much has changed for me, no matter who I have worked for: Thompson, Southam, Conrad, the CBC or the Aspers, when it came down to questions about individual stories or journalistic decisions.
The long, ideological reach of ownership is impossible, I would say in most cases, to discern in the day-to-day operation of our newsrooms. It makes itself felt in the larger, more long-term decisions about strategy, direction and corporate spending, and those are for more difficult issues to address, and I do not envy you your task.
It seems to me that those who have run the media for the last few decades have taken us down the path of the entertainment model, for good or ill, and everyone has done it. You just have to look at the lighting on Peter Mansbridge and the use of music and other tricks that were once the purview of Irv Weinstein and Eye Witness News. Today, more time is spent generating graphics and photographic elements in stories than in their compositions. Changing ownership I do not think will change that. Allowing room for new owners and other owners, I think, might help and I urge you to listen to those who appear before you with models for doing that. I do not see any panacea, however.
Canadians can have appropriate amounts and quality of information about international, national, regional and local issues, and that includes relevance, lack of bias and inclusiveness, as you are concerned about, but they have to get off the couch. I do not think motivating any ongoing engagement by adults in their community is possible through government edict or by changing the laws. Older and younger Canadians do access information in different ways, and that seems self-evident and a truism to me too, even though it has great import for academia and for media studies. I However, I do not think that that is a new issue or a new problem. I believe that what is truly important is that each generation has to learn for itself. Story-telling and the need for public discussion, transparency in government and public affairs, are among those ineffable ideals that each of us has to come to on his own. Many of us do not see eye-to-eye on the quality and breadth of what we want, and I am sure economic subsidies, directly or through some sort of tax-friendly instrument, will help provide more variety in the marketplace. However, I ask you to parse carefully the issues because, even on the ground, the fog of this war is dense and thick.
The Chairman: Just before I go to questions, I would just like to clarify something, Ms. Ingram-Johnson, and the data you were giving about newsroom staffing. Were the numbers you were giving FTs, full-time equivalents, or were they just a head count?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: They were head counts. The current ones are head counts. The old ones, I do not know. It was quoted in Marc Edge's book as — I would imagine, in those days, it was pretty much full-time.
The Chairman: Probably, yes. Does this include everybody? Does it include photographers, copy clerks, everybody?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: It includes everyone in the editorial function, not the messengers or —
The Chairman: Very well, and last question: I am assuming that The Sun and The Province are entirely paginated, that there is no composing room for the news pages?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: Correct. There are compositors working in ad. building, but that is it.
The Chairman: All right, thank you.
Senator Munson: Good morning, it is great to be here. First of all, Patrick, when did you become so resolutely independent? No, seriously, I am just curious, should government — I will ask a direct question with all this preamble: Should government step in and break up the control of these media barons?
Mr. Nagle: I see no way, senator, that this could be done. The key now, in ownership, is the ownership of a television license. It is not, it is not a newspaper proprietor's game anymore. The media conglomerate now prevails in this country to an extent that I would never have believed possible, even 30 years ago. You would have to go back to the CRTC and apply the regulations that were in existence and somehow were overridden on cross-ownership. If you go back to the Kent commission, they were very precise on this matter, that it should not be allowed and that existing cross-ownership should be disentangled. How you would do that, at this late date in all our lives — you are much younger of course — would be beyond me to conceive in any fashion that would not be entirely disruptive of both the political process and the existing commercial process.
Senator Munson: On the issue of foreign ownership, and anybody can answer this question, how do you see that lifting the restrictions would help Canadian journalism, Canadian democracy, and where, specifically, should the restrictions be? How much should a foreign company own a Canadian entity?
Mr. Nagle: I have argued for years that you could improve some competitive aspects of Canadian media by permitting foreign ownership. As a prediction, I can say that it will happen because of the way that the international structure of commercial operations is now carried out. It is sometimes called "globalization." I am uncomfortable with that idea, but there is a North American framework that is growing on us. There are very good European media corporations — just like there are very good European breweries, senator — that are buying into the Canadian system.
My whole point would be that the media in this country has become a totally commercial transaction and should be treated as such.
Is that an adequate answer for you?
Senator Munson: Yes.
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: Foreign ownership of the existing media, as it would affect this province, I see quite clearly as being no different from national ownership of the existing media, CanWest or Ganette. It does not make much difference. How it affects the diversity and people's access to the media is what is important, which is why I raised in my submission that if you are looking at protecting — and that is one of the things you are looking at — our media from foreign takeovers, then you should be looking at the local model, too.
Senator Munson: I am sure there are lots of questions here but I am just trying to get a mood in Vancouver with the single ownership in this city and how it affects society here in terms of, are there less voices for democracy, or is there a single voice?
Mr. Mulgrew: I would say that discussion and public debate in this city are less lively than they are in Toronto; that the perspectives are not as varied, and that they do get reduced to one side or the other, and that is why you are forever hearing of polarized British Columbia and polarized Vancouver. I have to tell you, this is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country, and I believe that the opinions here are as diverse too, but the nature of the media narrative in this part of the world is such that the viewpoints get boiled down to those who are on the one side of the issue and those who are on the other.
Senator Munson: Do you personally —
Mr. Mulgrew: Yes, I personally do not think it is good. I think it is a bad thing when we do not hear and we do not include even the fringe voices in the discussion and the debate. I think it leads people to believe that the world is run by homogenous, large entities, "us and them" sorts of thinking, and I do not believe that is a good thing for democratic societies.
Mr. Nagle: In response to the specific question here, the situation in Vancouver is quite marvellous. The number of small presses, ethnic presses and alternative mediums, print mediums, is very high and very admirable, in my view. How you can speak to the notion of a political voice in such a diverse output of print mediums is uncertain to me, because it has been, up till now, very straightforward in the ability of people to start up a newspaper and make it work to their own satisfaction.
The confused situation of the bad years of labour relations at Pacific Press led to the emergence of a very successful collection of suburban weeklies and twice-weeklies. The lack of reporting on cultural diversity has led to the development of language newspapers in the various languages of the ethnic communities. There is now ethnic television of some character. I know nothing of this matter, either.
However, the matter of political discourse, which is something that we were all engaged in at one time or another, is quite foreign to a huge segment of any kind of media consumption nowadays. This is very quickly reflected in voter turnouts. There are huge numbers of people, regrettably, turned off by the democratic process. That is where I would like to get back to a more traditional kind of journalism, which in my memory did engage people in the political process. I really do not want to come across as a geezer who is lamenting the loss of the good old days. I am tremendously enchanted by the —
The Chairman: Surely a sage.
Mr. Nagle: Well, that is a weed where I was born.
Senator Phalen: I am not sure whether or not it is a supplementary, but my question relates to what has been said.
Much has been said to this committee regarding the concentration of media ownership, especially in the Vancouver marketplace. CTV, CBC and CHUM all provide local newscasts, yet statistics provided to this committee by the Centre for Media Studies show that the local supper hour newscasts on CanWest BCTV is watched by more than 75 per cent of viewers. I guess my question is, if the marketplace for media ownership is such a community concern, why do only 6 per cent watch CBC? I mean, what is wrong? If we have a complaint that these people control the media, yet all of the people, or 75 per cent, watch their programming, how do you account for that?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: We cannot speak much to the electronic medium, but your figures do surprise me somewhat. I think BCTV has been losing a lot of market share. If you talk to people who are experts in the electronic medium, you will find that 6 o'clock is no longer the time when everyone sits down and watches the news. People will get it in real time, and they will get it on the Internet. What the TV stations owned by CanWest are doing, as well, is looking for market share, and they cross-promote each other. In other words, each broadcast will end with, "and in your paper tomorrow will be..." I am sorry, I cannot answer your question. CBC does an excellent job. I am surprised that you say it has only 6 per cent market share.
Mr. Mulgrew: Could I answer? I would like to add something. Is that alright?
The Chairman: Who is speaking? Mr. Mulgrew. Very well. It is just that I am asking everyone to be very concise.
Mr. Mulgrew: I will be very concise. There are some very real reasons why BCTV dominates this market. Some of it relates to stuff like, for instance, hockey kicks the CBC newscast all over the map and so people do not get their regular fix of news, so they have, for instance, problems establishing habits; but more than that, BCTV has always run its newscasts based on the entertainment model: very Americanized, very in your face, and with very little regard to the needs for public discussion which have driven the CBC programmers. As I have said to you, you cannot make people get up off the couch to take what is good for them, and all you are pointing out to me is that, gee, people do not want what is good for them. Well, yeah, that is true.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This has been most interesting this morning. There is a list of questions that I have, and I do not know how much we have time for. The chair will have to decide how much time there is to answer them.
The first question that alarmed me, because I am a physician first and foremost, Mr. Nagle, was your comment about the reporting on health. You said that it was just to frighten the hell out of you, or something like that. Maybe I did not quite get it right, but it was more or less like that. I wondered if you were talking about local papers or national? That concerns me. My impression of at least one of our national papers is that there has been very broad and every-increasing coverage, whether we are talking about cancer or drugs or nutrition. I really would like to have a little bit of expansion on that comment.
Mr. Mulgrew, you did not mention young people particularly, and I found your remarks so excellent that I wondered if you would talk a little bit about young people in the media. You spoke of alienation among westerners, and my question was whether it reflected Western alienation in general, and how much the media has to do with that. Those are two quite different questions, I believe.
Mr. Nagle: I can answer my part of the question, senator, very briefly, and that is, if you can find Carol Cole, or I will find her for you, she researches this topic at the University of British Columbia, and her presentation to our original panel struck me so forcefully, I brought it to your attention this morning. If you so direct me, I will find her and refer her to you.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you.
The Chairman: The second one?
Mr. Mulgrew: Young people are an especially difficult problem for newspaper and other media at this point, especially media that are dominated by unions because, as we have gone through economic downturns, our work forces have been reduced and we are left with a bunch of middle-aged white people, primarily like me, and that is not really a good thing. Thus you get a lot of middle-aged white people like me sitting around newsrooms going, "Hey, what's hip? What's current? What's happenin'? How should we deal with people?" I have to tell you, we are so out of touch, it is not funny.
We then have got two problems: How do we attract young people into journalism who are not getting in because of professional barriers? That is something we have to work out in our collective agreements. In other parts, in another way, there is, as I was saying, a cultural problem with the young people we are attracting. In the '70s, the people like me who came into the profession were people like Victor Malorek and Michael Harris, who had very big social consciences, who wanted to shake the cage and change things. Today, we have people coming into the profession who, as I say, generally come in with advanced degrees, with far greater ambitions, in terms of their career arcs, and they are looking at the glamour end of the industry and ending up on CNN with Christiana Amanpour and the kind of salaries that that generates. Thus we have two problems: There is a cultural one that I do not think anybody can address and that we just have to live with, and then there is the structural issue of how do we attract more young people and get them into the profession when there are clearly some real barriers in existence to them getting into the big newspapers.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I did want also your opinion on —
Mr. Mulgrew: Alienation?
Senator Trenholme Counsell: — getting young people to read papers.
Mr. Mulgrew: Pardon me?
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I did also want your opinion on —
Mr. Mulgrew: That is right. I hate to tell you this but that is just about the change in generations. I have children who are in their 30s who do not read newspapers, who get all of their information on the Internet. That does not bother me. The idea that the tactile experience may die is not a great issue for me. I see that we are just arguing about the form of the information, the form of the opinion. You can put my opinion in any form you want. What matters is that I have a place in which to express it, and that I have a place for it to be distributed, and that the discussion is ongoing. That we may move or see the locus of public discussion move from the print medium, which has been the dominant medium for 200 or 300 years, to the electronic medium or the electronic forums, I am not sure is a real concern for democracy so much as it is just a generational change that some of us old farts have to get used to.
The Chairman: Some of us are even older than you, Mr. Mulgrew.
Senator Eyton: I want to say thank you for being here and that I enjoyed your remarks. Particularly, Mr. Mulgrew, I am personally happy that you left the General Motors assembly line. I think that was a wise decision, and you have obviously done very well with it.
Another observation is that I was curious this morning to find, outside of my hotel room door, there were no papers hanging. That is very rare. In some cities — in Toronto, in particular, you might expect two.
Senator Chaput: We got one.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: We got one.
Senator Eyton: Then perhaps they just do not deliver to Conservatives, but I did not have one outside my door.
I have the strong sense, for a variety of reasons — partly my business exposure and partly I seem to be coming out here to British Columbia and to Vancouver and Victoria very frequently over the last few months — that the province is on a roll; that there is significant investment, there are new people, there is an upbeat to the natives here and the conversations I have with them. In fact, several groups I am associated with are making significant investments in this province. In that environment, may that not represent part of the solution? It seems to me, when you have money and you have new people, then you have existing advertisers who spend more and you get new advertisers and new businesses and new consumers, and the whole thing kind of feeds on itself. British Columbia may be blessed in this regard, so I would like you to comment on that.
Mr. Mulgrew: I think you are absolutely right, and I certainly think that you are hitting the nail on the head. I want to be here to tell you that I believe in the marketplace. I am a commercial writer. I might be a journalist but I am a commercial writer. I go where the people pay me the most to write what I write, and the best thing for producing more competition is a richer, more varied marketplace with more advertisers and more people who can fund their points of view. That will definitely be part of the dynamic that changes this province and helps public discussion. No question about it, I completely agree.
Senator Eyton: Can I also direct that to Mr. Nagle, because you mentioned a richness, a variety here in the press, and I am sure some of that comes because of the factors I have mentioned.
Mr. Nagle: No question, senator, in terms of a business model. If the political model is compared to the business model, they are not congruent. There are things about business that have to be challenged in the public interest. At the moment, there is not a very large public debate about the value of business to the province. The media model and the political model have been subsumed to the business model and, as a consequence, I personally feel a lack of good information about where business and the public interest coincide. I do not believe personally that an unvarnished business model is in the best public interest. The old line is a very straight one that by far and away the best cost-benefit business is unapprehended burglary.
Senator Eyton: That makes me nervous.
The Chairman: Just before we let you go, I would like to come back to you, Ms. Ingram-Johnson, on the matter of covering the legislature. You said that The Sun and The Province, which are still essentially the newspapers of record for B.C., no longer have journalists permanently assigned to bureaux at the legislature, and by "journalists" I mean reporters. Columnists, yes; reporters, no. Surely, though, they must cover the business of government in some way. What do they do? Do they send in people for the great set events: budgets, throne speeches? Do they have specialist reporters whose job it is to cover changes in a specific field of government policy? What do they do?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: There are no longer any specialists. There are not — they are talking about setting up a legislative bureau for CanWest where CanWest will feed the information from British Columbia across the chain. That is not the same thing as providing news of local interest to the people who live closest to the legislature. What they have done — and it is an economic convenience — is that Victoria still provides some coverage. They have reporters there. Therefore through the convergence model — and I hate that word "convergence" — but through that model, they are able to use the people in Victoria to cover the Vancouver papers or the B.C. papers. Of course, Victoria is looking after its own interests, so unless you have something that is applicable across the spectrum, it will not be of particular interest to Vancouver. Canadian Press still has some coverage, but it is diluted, it is diminished; it is not varied and, as you know, anyone can stand outside a press or a media scrum and cover that. It is making the contacts, living there, having people trust you in politics that leads to the good stories.
The Chairman: Then how do they cover matters of substantial impact on the public that involve some form of government input, the pulp and paper, the forestry business, fish, fisheries? What do they do?
Ms. Ingram-Johnson: I see Pat has his hand up here, so I will let him jump in.
Mr. Nagle: Well, briefly, Madam Chair, the industries you describe are headquartered here in Vancouver and are covered by Vancouver-based reporters. The matters of policy, in my experience of recent times, are not addressed in any fashion that satisfies me. That is, in advance of something happening, you want to have a report of what the tendencies, what the trends are, in the policy areas. There are no such reports available from Victoria, in my experience, right now.
The day-to-day news, the scrums and so forth, are covered by the Victoria Times-Colonist news bureau, who are stretched, in my knowledge, to their absolute limits in getting to all the areas where spot news is occurring.
The thing I would point out, just because I have wanted to say this for a long time, is the "convergence model," that is just a code word for syndication. The Aspers made their fortune in syndication, honestly and straightforwardly. They are now applying that syndication model to their new empire, and it will not work, I promise you. You cannot do reruns of legislative reporting. You know, you cannot say, "W.A.C. Bennett's greatest hits on Page 1 today." It just does not work. I mean, this is not "M.A.S.H.," is what I am saying.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I am cutting you off, it is true, not because the point is not important, and you made it with memorable clarity, but because we have encroached already on the time of our next witnesses, and greatly to my regret.
Therefore, I have to thank you all very much for being with us. It has been a really fascinating launch to our time in Vancouver, and we are very grateful to you all: Mr. Nagle, Ms. Ingram-Johnson, Mr. Mulgrew. I know that other senators were getting ready to jump in, and I am very sorry about that, too.
I will invite our next witnesses to come forward. They are from the Vancouver Chapter of the Canadian Association of Journalists, frequently known as the CAJ, and they are Ms. Deborah Campbell, president of the chapter; and Ms. Deborah Jones, a member.
Welcome to the committee. Perhaps I should just take time quickly to remind the senators that the CAJ is not a union. The CAJ is an association of journalists focusing on journalism in the purer sense. We are very glad to have you with us. Now, you know the drill. Try to keep your total introductory remarks to 10 minutes so that we can then come back to you with fascinating questions.
Ms. Deborah Campbell, President, Vancouver Chapter, Canadian Association of Journalists: My name is Deborah Campbell and, as was mentioned, I am president of the Vancouver Chapter of the CAJ. The CAJ represents 1,400 media professionals in Canada. It is the main body representing journalists in Canada, and we do a lot towards educating journalists and professional development, and also lobbying on behalf of journalists on specific issues that affect their profession.
In examining the state of the media in Canada, you are addressing an issue that is of fundamental importance to democracy, and I appreciate that those issues have been raised already this morning. What we know about journalism or news is intertwined with the rise of democracy, because democracy is the idea that citizens must participate in their own governance, and in order to do so, they need accurate and comprehensive information about what it is important to pay attention to. If there are crimes being committed against society, against humanity or against the public purse, it is the duty of journalists to inform the public and to hold those in power to account.
These days, there is a sense that the ability of journalists to fulfill that duty has been eroding. Anecdotally, in hearing from many journalists, not only in the chapter but across the country, I detect that a note of despair has crept into the dialogue among journalists and writers. We often use the term "investigative journalism" to refer specifically to a certain type of expensive and time-consuming investigation, but in actual fact, all real journalism is investigative. We have a lot of what is called "infotainment," content provision, but that sort of thing is not really worthy of the term "journalism" which implies a social good, an essential guidebook to what is happening in the world around us. It is a sign of how important this role is that when we have corrupt governments, they generally try and control the press or put a damper on the free press.
Lately, there is also a lot of talk about alienation from news watchers and from a news audience, and specifically from youth who seem not to be paying attention; to feel as though what is being reported is not relevant to their lives. There is a sense of alienation.
We have reached a point in Canada where the feeling is that journalism is under siege, that much of what we call journalism is actually being generated by press releases that are basically sent out to spin stories rather than to uncover them, or stories about celebrities or odd and strange things going on that really do not have a lot of relevance to Canadians and how they operate in the world. A great deal of it is news from elsewhere, written by people from other places, recycled wire copy; nothing new, not really news.
The question then becomes: Has news become just a product meant to sell us something, or to deliver an audience to advertisers? Does it have a duty to inform people about what they need to know to effectively participate in society, to be effective citizens? What happens if it disappears? Does democracy go with it when citizens are denied the tools they need to make informed decisions?
It has been mentioned this morning that we have an extremely concentrated environment here in Vancouver, and certainly that is the talk of most journalists when they are together and on their own. As you know, one company here, CanWest Global, has a near-monopoly on print media, owning three out of four of the daily papers here and both of the local dailies; also owning Global Television and CHTV; and, according to their website, owning 22 local dailies across British Columbia, about a dozen in the Lower Mainland alone. Therefore the result is that. although we do have a fairly lively ethnic press, the papers of record are all owned by the same company.
Vancouver is a test case for something that seems to be a broader trend across North America, that there is a consolidation of ownership going on. It is a microcosm and it is worth looking at, especially as we enter a time when fewer and fewer owners control the flow of information, specifically when there is a temptation for the bottom line to take precedence over the public interest.
One example that a lot of writers and journalists like to point to of what can happen when one company controls the flow of information is the leaky condo scandal, and if you spend much time in Vancouver, you will know that you will see the netting on these condominiums and you will hear the stories of the billions of dollars that have been spent in this real estate scandal. At the time, of course, condominiums were also the largest advertisers for a lot of the real estate sections of newspapers, and unfortunately, the story got almost no attention. There were a few exceptions. A few articles were written, but largely, emphasis was on the bright side of buying a condo and not on the thousands of people who were launching lawsuits against developers, and so forth. This is just one small example of the kind of thing that can happen when there is too much attention paid to the bottom line and there are no other publications that are competing for a news audience.
Journalists have estimated privately that they think that the local dailies have downsized by about 40 per cent in terms of editorial staff since the 1980s. I think people try to do more with less, but often they do less with less. Specifically, they end up having to spend a lot less time doing what is called "investigative journalism." Specifically, the number of political reporters has been downsized and consolidated. Although aboriginal affairs and land claims are the biggest economic and social issue in B.C. across all of the critical resource industries, there is not a single dedicated reporter covering it at the local dailies, nor is there a labour reporter at either paper, a dedicated labour reporter, nor is there a dedicated legislature reporter, nor a dedicated environmental reporter, nor a dedicated fisheries reporter. The Province has no forestry reporter but there are lots of entertainment and sports reporters.
Now that we know there is a new daily paper in the works that is being aimed at young people specifically. However, insiders are saying that no journalists will be hired to work at this paper. It will be copy editors and layout people who will recycle stories from elsewhere. Is it any wonder, then, that young people are disaffected? There is an argument that new media provides lots of alternatives, but if you look at the statistics, most people go to the same websites that are owned by the same media companies. Unfortunately, the new media that is out there do not have the money to put into quality journalism, to paying professionals to do investigative journalism. It is just not there.
In Toronto, three companies own the three major dailies and so they have to compete, so three different reporters will have to go cover a story and we will at least hear three different angles on it. There is an opportunity for a depth and a breadth of coverage and a diversity of viewpoints. Not everyone sings the same note. Currently in Canada we are seeing a shrinking diversity of voices and a lack of what could really be called "journalism."
Canadians are being denied important information because too few people have too much control. Of late, the CAJ has had to issue a statement urging CanWest to drop a new freelance contract that would seize all rights from independent writers and journalists, including moral rights, meaning that these independent voices would lose all control over their work. By taking moral rights, CanWest would be able to change or alter a story in any way, to use it in advertising copy, to change the views expressed without the author's permission. Where are these journalists and writers to go if they do not like it?
This is the problem with media monopolies. If we do not allow monopolies in other markets, if we say it is bad for the consumer and bad for the quality of the product, why do we allow it in such a crucial and sensitive area as the realm of information by which we, as Canadians, navigate in the world? How easy it is, in an environment like this, to put forth opinions as if they were facts and to have them go unchallenged? This sort of near-monopoly situation is particularly detrimental to suppliers, in this case writers, journalists and photographers because, without any competition in the market, suppliers simply have no way of increasing their revenues, which have already been under downward pressure for years. If their viewpoints do not fit with the viewpoints of the company in question, they have nowhere to go.
We are seeing a lot of people drop out of journalism altogether. A lot of really good journalists are dropping out altogether, or moving or working for European or American public publications. I often hear from reporters who feel that they have been pressured, subtly or overtly, to ignore certain stories or cover others that they believe have very little news value. Although the practice of national editorials seems to have ceased, journalists are still being discouraged from expressing views contrary to the owners' views. I do not think this is anything new, but I do think that it is a new situation where you only have one or a very small handful of owners to choose from. Clearly, this is not in the public interest or in the interest of diversity or freedom of the press.
Now we have heard that CanWest is planning to open a book publishing wing. This is an area with very high start-up costs that will not be easily open to other competition.
What exactly can we do about this situation? In the United States, a company is restricted from owning both a newspaper and a TV or radio station in the same city. In the United States, a company may not own two TV stations in one market. The kind of cross-ownership that we experience here is simply not tolerated. These rules are in place to prevent one company from monopolizing control of the media because it is acknowledged that information is far too important and otherwise too open to abuse. Why cannot Canada, a far smaller market than the United States, do as much to prevent monopolistic practices? We need the kind of antitrust legislation that prevents the consolidation of power over such a precious commodity when it is crucial to the functioning of our democracy. Thank you for the opportunity to address you.
Ms. Deborah Jones, Member, Vancouver Chapter, Canadian Association of Journalists: Thank you for the opportunity to address you.
I have a few observations and recommendations I would like to make today. Part of them come from my role as moderator of the Canadian Association of Journalists' Listserv. It is an Internet discussion forum of about 800 journalists. I have been on that forum for about 10 years and I have been moderating it for about five.
Some of my observations come from my own work as well. I have been a journalist for about 26 years. By choice, I have mostly free-lanced, and I have held staff jobs as a desker at Canadian Press and on the editorial board at The Vancouver Sun. I long wrote for The Globe and Mail and I am one of those journalists that Deborah talks about who has mostly left Canadian media now. I am a contributing reporter at Time magazine and the stringer here for Agence France Press.
I am taking the time to talk to you today because I have a sense of despair about the state of Canadian media. I believe that we could be much better. I believe that if we were much better, I think public participation might be better, business might even be better because it would be informed, and I think politics might be a lot better. I happen to believe that the media is terribly important to a society and to a democracy. I guess that is why I have spent my life in it. I fear that currently much of the media in Canada is giving way to pressure from partisan and commercial interests.
Other people have touched on a lot of the points that I agree with, including Deborah Campbell's. I have a few comments of my own that might be a little different. There is a great deal of talk about hearing Canadian voices right now. Government measures, like the Magazine Fund, tries to enhance the amount of Canadian voices that we hear, and I do not think that they are working and I think that is one area that you might profitably tackle. One example is Chatelaine magazine. I was a contributing editor at Chatelaine for many years. For several of those years, I wrote at least half of the cover stories for the magazine. I stopped writing for Chatelaine when their advertising and marketing plan decided that, instead of covering hard news issue stories, which many of the readers said they liked, they would make more money by turning instead to sex and beauty tips for a certain demographic of young woman for whom advertisers were clamouring. That is fine, because they are free enterprise; it is an independent business. However, it seems to me that if the government wants to foster Canadian voices, if the government is going to sponsor the Magazine Fund to subsidize magazines and also to provide subsidized postal rates for magazines, there could be some criteria in place where it takes a look at the quality of the publication in terms of public information and the kinds of voices that are being heard. I think the government has not only an opportunity but an obligation to uphold a certain standard if it does, indeed, wish to foster Canadian voices rather than subsidizing very profitable businesses. I have to say that I enjoyed working for Chatelaine and I am not speaking from a feeling of sour grapes, but I chose not to write health and beauty tips. I would rather make more money in other areas if that is the kind of work I want to do.
Another thing that I have to say about the Magazine Fund is that the rate for freelance magazine writers has not gone up for 30 years. For 30 years, the top rate that a magazine writer in Canada can make is about a dollar a word. There are some notable exceptions. Walrus magazine is one of them, but it is new and such magazines are very rare. A dollar a word provides, let us say, $2,000 for an average 2,000-word story and that might take a very dedicated, good writer a whole month to produce. If anybody in Canada is serious about hearing good voices written by stellar writers, the kind of writers that you would see in the United States with, say, Atlantic or the New York Times magazine or Harper's magazine, a dollar a word simply won't cut it, and people simply won't stay in the business.
Many of my colleagues have turned to American publications or they have left the business to go and make $75 an hour writing ad. copy. I think that is really sad because a lot of people who go into this business very much care about it. They spend a lot of time educating themselves, thinking about issues, and they are terribly dedicated to the notion of the public trust of journalism. Too often, it is just simply not possible to survive in this field unless you already have a lot of money under your belt.
I would say that, even now, it is still possible for an elite freelance journalist to make the equivalent of $70,000 a year in staff salary if one works flat out and has a finger in a lot of different pies. Probably the average that a freelance journalist might make is, I am guessing, $12,000 a year, and I think that might even be generous because a lot of them, like actors who are starting out in Hollywood, would be working as waitresses or doing other kinds of jobs at the same time. Again, I would go back to the fact that the government has a little bit of a role in nudging this situation, simply by taking a look at their criteria for the Magazine Fund and the postal subsidy. A little bit of encouragement would go a very long way towards encouraging writers who tend to be awfully dedicated in the first place.
Briefly, I would like to touch on what I have observed over the years by moderating the Listserv of the CAJ. The CAJ list is not representative of the Canadian journalism community. I suggest that only about 400 members on it are actually members of the CAJ itself. It is open to the public and it is open to journalists. The vast majority, however, are journalists, students or professors, and the list ranges from publishers, including publishers of New York media, to students and everybody in between. The discussions tightly focus; there is no chitchat and it is fairly lively at times.
I sense a despair on the CAJ list about the state of journalism. Some of the issues that come up are the lack of youth participation in journalism, the decline in readership of mainstream media, the level of trust that the public has for journalists which, there seems to be a consensus, is declining, what education and qualifications journalists should have and, most disconcertingly for me over the years is that there is increasingly a reluctance by those who are employed, or wish to be employed, to speak out publicly on the CAJ list, which is a public forum. CanWest people especially seem chilled at the moment. I know this because, as a moderator who is willing to speak out, I receive sometimes five posts a week, sometimes more if there is a hot topic going on, from people who work at various CanWest's papers right across the country, including Montreal, where there was a gag order on journalists against speaking out against their employer. CanWest employees will often send information and posts to me, as moderator, for me to post under my own name. I am rather appalled that in a country that values freedom of expression, this is the case, and I think it speaks to a certain kind of corporate control of employees that the people who work within this company feel they cannot speak out. I think there is a difference between not disrespecting your employer and feeling free to express your point of view in a democratic society.
We can go on at length and complain, but there is little point in doing that without some remedies, and I would just like briefly to throw out some ideas. I think there is a very slippery slope when government tries to interfere with the media, and I am not sure that I would urge you to recommend that. I do think that there are some measures that the government could take. I have talked a bit about the Magazine Fund. I believe that the antitrust legislation and the CRTC not only have a role but an obligation in fostering the quality of Canadian media. Personally as a journalist, and speaking for myself, I believe that the CRTC is falling down in that role right now. I think that the level of concentration in Canadian media is becoming very debilitating for voices and for our society, ultimately. I would like to see the CRTC look carefully at or deny licences to companies that apply for broadcast licences in major markets where those companies also own print media. This kind of stricture prevails in many other countries, including the free market of the United States. I do not understand how Canada, and how Vancouver in particular, can have such an extreme concentration of media without anybody speaking out about it. This is also not something that the public really gets a chance to discuss because, with the concentrated media, there is almost no journalism about this topic. There is no public discussion about this topic.
That brings me to another suggestion, that government has a role to play in educating the public about media. The government often gets involved in nutritional issues. We have advertising campaigns against obesity. We have regulations on advertising of junk food, and the government is very often involved in that. I would like to see the government provide some money for schools to develop more educational programs for critical thinking about media issues. I think that is done a little bit — I am quite involved in schools myself as a parent — but it is not sufficient. Right from day one, as we do with sex education and nutritional education, I think the kind of information that young people are seeing should be discussed in an intelligent, critical way. Nobody would accuse the government of interfering with the media or stifling freedom of expression if it were to set up some kind of a program, right across the country, to get people more educated about what I call "junk media." A utopian idea would be to have a newspaper equivalent of the CBC. I do not, for a minute, believe that is possible, but I love to dream about that once in a while.
My last point is that I would urge you to protect the CBC. Senator Phalen had a couple of questions about why we should support the CBC when, clearly, the public wants to watch other publications or other broadcasters. I think that one could make the same argument about why we should support other cultural industries: ballet, arts, et cetera. The CBC, at the very least, protects the integrity of the media and the integrity of reporters simply because it has a high quality of journalism and it raises the standard.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I have been so enthralled that I have been forgetting to keep a list of people who want to ask questions. I will survey my colleagues in a minute, but I would like to ask you something myself, if I may, Ms. Jones, because of this: You are continuing, over several years' experience, with the Listserv. It has always been the case, in my experience, which goes back to 1965, that morale in newsrooms is terrible, and that is partly because of the nature of journalists. The kind of people who become journalists are the kind of people who ask questions, who tend to say, within their own environment, as they do when they are looking at the public, "This should be done better," and who say that the stupid editor does not know what is what, and who complain a lot. It is just part of the nature of the beast. In the same way that hockey players like to play hockey, journalists criticize. Is it more intense now? Has it been intensifying, in your experience, or is this just part of the great natural tendency of all journalists, at all times, to say the editors are out to lunch?
Ms. Jones: I think it is different. I have not spent a great deal of time in newsrooms. I did work at the Vancouver Sun for 18 months on the editorial board but I have watched it over the Listserv, and I wrote for The Globe and Mail for many years and had an insight into that newsroom.
I think it is different now because, yes, people are curmudgeons, and yes, journalists are complete malcontents; we complain, but what we are complaining about right now is the corporate owners, in a way that we did not before, and there is this fear of speaking out about the corporate owners because of completely destroying your career chances down the road now in the way that there was not before. I cannot give you qualitative information about that, but that is my observation over the last 26 years, and that, I guess, would come from working in various newsrooms as a long-distance correspondent, stringer, and my sense of being at the Vancouver Sun.
The Chairman: Very well, thank you very much.
Senator Eyton: I have a supplemental question, Madame Chair.
The Chairman: Oh, a supplemental?
Senator Eyton: Yes.
The Chairman: Senator Tkachuk, will you allow Senator Eyton to give a supplemental?
Senator Tkachuk: Sure.
Senator Eyton: I just want to say that your comments are despairing and a little dark and you, in fact, represent a chapter of the Canadian Association of Journalists. The question: Do you sense that your sentiments would be shared equally across this country with the other chapters? I assume there are other chapters. I did not know, but would they be shared? Can you speak nationally or do you speak for your chapter here in Vancouver?
Ms. Campbell: I am speaking for the Vancouver environment specifically, simply because that is the environment in which I work and where I talk to most journalists, and a lot of the people I talk to actually do work for CanWest as well, so no, I cannot say it is nationally. However, I can say that it extends to other CanWest operations, especially in Montreal. I spent some time there, and the atmosphere was, as you say, despairing, specifically at The Gazette. I know that a lot of young reporters as well have felt as though they have no future. I think this is quite a broad sentiment and it is not limited to Vancouver, but I think that the pressures here are more intense, so we are hearing it perhaps more vocally in this city, at least — and by vocally, I do not mean publicly; I mean within the social groups, anecdotally speaking.
Senator Tkachuk: I just wanted to talk a little about the monopoly situation, and just that so we have some context to it. I came in a little late; I flew in from Saskatoon this morning so I missed the submissions of the first group, unfortunately. However, it was around the early 1980s that the two newspapers came together under one owner, although there were two papers, so it has been that way for about 24 years. When did Global establish a third network station here?
Ms. Jones: I cannot remember the exact date but I believe they took over BCTV sometime within the last four years. I would like to make a comment, too, about the — well, if I may?
Senator Tkachuk: Sure. That is why you are here. I am just here to ask questions.
Ms. Jones: I would like to make my comment about the consolidation of the two local newspapers here. I was here in the early 1980s, not really working for the local papers but reading them every day, and after a time in Halifax, I returned here 10 years ago, and five years ago worked on staff during the time of the takeover by CanWest Global from Southam. While Southam owned a concentrated slice of the media, the difference between Southam's ownership and CanWest's ownership was astonishing. As a member of the editorial board, writing editorials on the publisher's page, there is intense control from Winnipeg on what we could and could not write. The sense in the newsroom changed, I would say, quite dramatically from when Southam, or even Conrad Black, owned the papers to when CanWest took it over.
Senator Tkachuk: Before that, then, there was only CTV and CBC, right, and Southam owned the two newspapers?
Ms. Jones: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Essentially, then, it is who owns them rather than the structure itself that is a problem, because you do not seem to think that there was a problem before when you had only two stations, of which there was only one voice besides the CBC, and then there was only one owner who owned both newspapers?
Ms. Jones: I think someone else could perhaps better answer that because I was gone for much of that time in Atlantic Canada —
Senator Tkachuk: Well, I am just —
Ms. Jones: — but yes, that would be my sense. I think that such a concentrated ownership only works when it is an ownership that has an interest in the public good of journalism.
Senator Tkachuk: Therefore a benevolent despot is what you need, or would it be something else? Would it be political? In other words, you do not like the politics, or perhaps the people do not like the politics now, compared to the politics before?
Ms. Jones: I think many people are very uncomfortable with the politics, but I am not sure that it is entirely partisan.
Senator Tkachuk: Well, why is that?
Ms. Jones: I mean, Conrad Black was fairly right wing.
Senator Tkachuk: Well, he was conservative, yes.
Ms. Jones: The owners of CanWest are also fairly right wing. I think it is a different perception of the role of the media.
Senator Tkachuk: Very well.
Ms. Jones: Though it is true that many journalists do not like the politics, I do not think that is the whole story, and that is not the story with myself. I can live with very different kinds of politics, as long as all voices are represented.
Senator Tkachuk: Well, there are about 17 radio stations here in Vancouver in the market, and I may be wrong because I do not live here either, but I think there is one, two, three news and talk radio programs, as well as a couple of all sports, outside of the music, and that seems fairly healthy. Do they have reporters covering the legislature or some of the issues that you were talking about?
Ms. Jones: I do not think they have investigative reporters, no. I go to major news conferences for Time magazine and AFP, and only in Vancouver occasionally will I see somebody from two of the AM stations here. CBC is always there. Generally, my understanding is that a lot of the AM stations, while they have talk shows and they invite experts on air or they have hosts, they do not actually send reporters out on the ground.
Senator Tkachuk: I just have two short questions, Madame Chair. There are three television stations here, one of which is CBC. Does the CBC have any market at all in this town for its local news?
Ms. Campbell: Do you mean do people watch it?
Senator Tkachuk: Well, do the people watch the news here on CBC?
Ms. Campbell: I can only speak for myself, but —
Senator Tkachuk: Do you know the numbers?
Ms. Campbell: I do not know the numbers.
Senator Tkachuk: They are not very good, from what I understand. What is CBC doing wrong that no one watches it? I just heard someone say earlier that they were at the peak. What are they doing wrong that no one watches them?
Ms. Campbell: I do not know why so many people eat junk food. It is really hard to say. I really do not know what the numbers are in terms of the CBC. I think that there is certainly a more educated audience that watches the CBC. In some ways, it has been perceived as a more elite news source. Myself, I watch French CBC, and I find actually that the quality of journalism is very high there and I would say that a lot more resources are devoted to diverse viewpoints and to investigative journalism going on at the French CBC. Whether that is about finances, I think that is probably not the case. I think it is more of a sense of priorities going on.
Senator Tkachuk: If the CBC had 75 per cent of the market, would there be better news?
Ms. Campbell: Would there be more money going towards the CBC?
Senator Tkachuk: No. Would there be better news? Would the quality of news be any better if they had 75 per cent of the market?
Ms. Campbell: Do you mean would there be changes at the CBC?
Senator Tkachuk: Well, what I am getting at is that we do have CBC here and we do have one other network here, one other owner, even though it may be sort of two networks.
Ms. Campbell: I do not think it is fair to say that the CBC is enough, or that the CBC provides everything that the news consumer needs. It is one station, and it is operating under its own budget constraints. It has a limited number of reporters, as every news organization does. What we are looking for is diversity. Certainly, TV and radio are important, but where you really get into deeper issues and have an opportunity for in-depth analysis and reportage is in print media, and print media dictates a lot of what TV and radio tend to follow. If you listen to CBC Radio in the morning, much of what they are giving you as the rundown on the daily news is coming straight out of the print media, as people who work in the industry have said, and have told me. Therefore it is extremely important that we have a healthy print media as well as television and radio.
Senator Tkachuk: I have one last question on that point. You gave a solution, Ms. Campbell. I do not like monopolies either, so I agree with you there. You did say that in the United States they do not allow one person to own newspapers and radio stations or TV stations in the same market. There are two questions, really: Should government act to prevent monopolies in each single media? In other words, newspapers, television — radio seems to be looking after itself; and second, should that action be combined with making access easier for new people to get into the market to provide more competition, especially in the electronic media, which is difficult to get into because of the CRTC and all that stuff?
Ms. Campbell: I would say "yes" and "yes." If you look at the U.S. model, one of the issues that has been faced in radio is the dominance of Clear Channel. In many of the radio stations that Clear Channel owns, they have zero employees.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes.
Ms. Campbell: Therefore, in terms of particularly news radio, it would be very easy for someone to come in quietly and take over and just simply broadcast the same thing — in other words, you could have one DJ reading the news for you for the entire country. We are dealing with that at the newspaper level now, with the recycling of content where we actually seem to be moving to a place where we have one newspaper going on across the country with a few, little individual stories here and there, usually generated at press conferences, or somebody walked out the door and a car accident happened, and that kind of coverage is going on. This is not journalism, in my view. Therefore I think we must look at the various types of media, as well as the cross-ownership issue. Your second question was — ?
Senator Tkachuk: New entrants? I thought you —
Ms. Campbell: Yes, new entrants.
Senator Tkachuk: To make it easier.
Ms. Campbell: It has long been the axiom that the free press belongs to those who own one. It is very expensive, obviously, if you are going to start a magazine or a newspaper or a radio station of any kind. It is less expensive on the Web, but you still need to pay your content providers. You need to have journalists out there doing stories, and that is expensive. As Deb Jones stated, to do a serious story of 2,000 words, you can easily spend a month on that, and often longer. Really, that is not happening anymore. Who can afford it? A few places can, but it is becoming more and more rare. There needs to be more opportunities for new voices to come in. I do not know if that means early subsidies at some point. Certainly, if the Magazine Fund is intended to increase the number of Canadian voices, then that money should be directed towards the suppliers and not simply towards the companies' bottom lines.
Senator Tkachuk: Thank you for being so lenient with me, Madame Chair. I will not take that much more time.
The Chairman: I will remember that.
Senator Tkachuk: I was just so eager because I just got here.
The Chairman: With reference to the number of reporters, senators, you may recall that in our interim report we did actually have a look at the Vancouver market, and the work that was done for us suggested that the 15 radio stations in this market have, between them, a total of 67 journalists. That is four-and-a-half journalists each, of which 15 are — 15 and 67 are the CBC. The two big dailies have a total of at least 166 journalists and possibly, according to a footnote here, another 90 or so if you add in desk editors, copy editors and the like. That tells us something about the resources available to cover whatever the news may be that day.
Senator Chaput: Merci, madame la présidente.
Thank you, both of you, for an excellent presentation. I do not like monopoly situations either, and I do not like when we mention that there is recycling of stories and recycling of the information we get as Canadians. One of you talked about the rules that exist in the United States and that would keep some of those things from happening. Do you know of other countries from whom we could be learning lessons so that we can, if we need to, either correct the situation or put something else into place? Can you tell us something about what goes on in other countries?
Ms. Campbell: Having done some overseas journalism — for instance, I have reported from Israel and Palestine — I know that the number of European journalists rigorously reporting was really shocking to me, particularly from France, and it seemed like they have a very healthy public broadcast system that puts a lot of money into international affairs reporting. I sometimes wonder if that is why the French CBC does such an excellent job of covering international affairs, if they are perhaps mirroring their coverage on the French news coverage and paying attention to some of those kinds of issues, rather than being influenced by simply the milieu in which they live. Yes, I think that the strength of the public broadcast system in some European countries is a model to look towards.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I will direct my questions to you, Ms. Jones. Apart from saying "amen" to what you said about Chatelaine — and I won't go over that, but interesting to hear it from you. I certainly have my own feelings. I want to just ask you what we can really do about the point that you made so well, about government providing more dollars to schools re: media information on critical thinking, et cetera, providing, I think you said, "programs across the country," when, of course, we all know that education is provincial. I think this is so important and I think it could make an enormous difference if, for instance, teachers were to give assignments where accessing the media was essential. I would say the printed media preferably, because I, too, use the Internet a lot for newspapers but I find it most unsatisfactory. You get little bits, but you do not get the whole picture of what a newspaper offers you.
Can you elaborate at all on that idea? I am sure that you did not just throw it out. I am sure you have thought about it.
Ms. Jones: I have thought about it, partly through my involvement in schools as my children aged. I am quite involved with one of the high schools in Vancouver, both on the school planning council, which is the policy-setting board, and with the Parent Advisory Council. The teachers at Kitsilano High School, and most of the other schools I have encountered, are incredibly enthusiastic about media education. They use newspapers in courses, from Social Studies to English, to help teach kids, and sometimes to help teach kids how bad writers can be and still make money.
I realize there is a difficulty with the federal government funding a provincial responsibility, but it has occurred to me — and I am sort of tossing off these ideas ad hoc — that there could be some kind of a federal government grant for setting up school newspapers. That has been tried at Kitsilano in the past and the resources are just lacking. I think that kind of a thing would be jumped on by English teachers and student councils. Money for the development of a media education program package could be made available.
I believe there are many different kinds of federal government programs in which children participate. My Grade 11 son is going to Ottawa in February on a federal government program, which is enthusiastically supported by his school. I would suggest a package of media materials, perhaps funding for newspapers, funding for school newspapers, and possibly even contests for essays on critical thinking about media, with prizes for kids.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: My colleague was wondering what grades you were thinking of, but I do have a follow-up question. I wanted to say that we have Prime Minister's and Governor General's awards for teachers of history — I know teachers of history. I will stop there. But maybe this is an idea that we could suggest to our Prime Minister.
However, my colleague was wondering what grades you were specifically mentioning with regard to the B.C. school situation which you know well?
Ms. Jones: I also know the Halifax situation somewhat. I would suggest starting as young as possible, once kids start writing. There could be encouragement, whether it is funding or prizes or just a media education package for kids, when they start writing, to put together small newspapers in Grades 1 to 3, even. I think as kids start to take Social Studies and become conscious of bigger, broader issues, I would suggest Grade 10 and up. By Grades 11 and 12, the pressure is intense on academic subjects. Perhaps even by Grade 9, but Grade 10 would be a fabulous year to get kids involved in newspapers.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I think you can be sure that our committee will take a note of that, but perhaps you could write a letter to our Prime Minister about establishing an award?
Ms. Jones: Very well, I will do that.
The Chairman: Always bearing in mind that education and school curricula are a provincial jurisdiction.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: We still have national awards.
The Chairman: We have national awards, I know. Senator Munson.
Senator Munson: Speaking of Nova Scotia, I lived in Bedford, and my son, who was nine, created the only Paper Mill Late News. It only lasted a year, but he put his whole newspaper together, so he started early. He is now at Ottawa U, and I am afraid he may become a journalist.
Ms. Jones: Poor guy. My son, also.
Senator Munson: Yes. The criteria based on dealing with news organizations or dealing with the government should have an obligation to set up a criteria for magazines.
Ms. Jones: When it gives the money.
Senator Munson: Right, when it gives the money and postal rates and so on. Could you explain to me specifically what that criteria could be? It cannot be a means test of any sort, but there would have to be some sort of general criteria. What are you looking at?
Ms. Jones: I have not sat down and exhaustively analyzed this point, and I think that that would be needed. I can throw out some top-of-the-mind ideas. I am not sure if that is of use to you.
Senator Munson: Yes.
Ms. Jones: I would suggest that the content be analyzed in a media, that is, in a magazine that is applying for funding. There are, I am sure, ways to analyze content for original issues coverage, original writing, lengths of stories, types of topics covered. Chatelaine is an example and Chatelaine used to hit really hard on tough issues, like aboriginal adoption or the sex trade. Somehow, there has to be a way of looking at the vast sea of sex and beauty tips and shopping coverage, and comparing that against the real stories. I can give that some thought and I can draft something on that. However, I do think that that would be something that would need to be developed over time with some strong criteria, with input perhaps by those who analyze media, perhaps communications departments at universities or —
Senator Munson: Then if you would put those on paper, I would appreciate that. I think it is an interesting proposal.
Ms. Jones: Very well.
Senator Munson: I just have a separate question on —
The Chairman: If you are doing that, would you make sure that it goes to the clerk of the committee so that we can all see it?
Ms. Jones: Very well.
Senator Munson: I really meant that, for sure. You used the word "chill" — but my conservative friends are very close. The "chill" word, do you have examples, recent examples of employees feeling what you describe as "the big chill?"
Ms. Jones: Oh, how many would you like?
Senator Munson: Just a couple this morning, just for the record.
Ms. Jones: By the way, any of you who are interested in joining the CAJ list are welcome to do so. It is open to the public and there are some politicians and various government people on it.
When CanWest was introducing its contract that Deborah Campbell discussed, the freelance contract, this was first sent to me by several people who work within CanWest, including editors who had seen it and been asked to give it to their writers. It was sent with, as always, the stipulation at the top, "Please do not put my name on this," and because I have decided that I do not want to work for CanWest again, I will be brave enough to post these under my own name as the list moderator.
The announcement that CanWest was considering getting into the book publishing business was sent to me by a fairly senior employee at CanWest, who sent me the staff memo, I believe, before it went up through CanWest, and asked me to post it on the CAJ list for discussion by journalists. Those were both in the last four or five months now, I believe.
Every time there is discussion about new employees or new developments within the company, those will be sent to me first. I cannot remember an incident of anyone, outside of a couple of people who work at the National Post, or who works at CanWest actually posting to the list, under their own name, something that is about their employer, and that includes even a general, a general comment about something going on within CanWest. That is not true of most other media. Nobody is going to come out swinging against their employer in public, but you do see people who work at The Globe and Mail, posting about The Globe and Mail, and posting stories that are appearing in that newspaper. You find a number of people at CTV posting to the list. In fact, one of my co-moderators was a person who works for CTV, David Akin, Bill Doskoch. Many people who work for many other agencies are quite frequently on the list. However, the people who work for CanWest fear that if they are seen to be associated with the list or with the CAJ, which has been critical of CanWest, simply do not have their names out there. They lurk, and their names are not available to anybody but the moderators.
The most egregious example of that was when the Montreal reporters were under a court gag order not to speak out against their employer. I am sure you remember that incident. At that time, I was getting emails fast and furiously, sometimes several a day, from people who work there. They would send e-mails to me under their Hotmail accounts and ask me to delete them immediately, and sometimes they did not even want me to post them. They just wanted somebody to know what was going on.
The Chairman: For clarification, if memory serves, it was not actually a court order; it was a management memo that was posted to the effect that it is a firing offence to take a public position that could damage your employer, or something like that. I am sure it was not a court order. It was a management memo.
Ms. Jones: You are right. Pardon me. I think it went to the courts and I cannot remember the exact details of what happened with that, but I believe it was overturned.
The Chairman: I think the union won.
Ms. Jones: Still, nobody from Montreal posts on the list.
Senator Munson: Thank you. That is all for me.
The Chairman: Senator Carney, welcome back.
Senator Carney: I got back at 9:00 this morning, but I knew if I went to bed I would never get up, so I just came right through here.
The Chairman: Senator Carney has travelled across many time zones in order to be with us today, and we are very grateful.
Senator Carney: I couldn't afford to miss this committee meeting. After all, it is in Vancouver.
I know about the CanWest contracts, because they are sent to me. I am a member of the Writers' Union of Canada and I get that kind of feed off our lists. However, while there are two other issues I want to raise, just to follow up on that one, do we have a copy of those contracts where they have rights in perpetuity?
The Chairman: Yes, we do, and they have been circulated. That is the one that says "Anywhere in the universe for all eternity?"
Senator Carney: Yes. My question is, does our copyright law, which is constantly before Parliament, not give some protection on that? Which one of you ought to answer that?
Ms. Campbell: If you sign this contract, you are waiving those rights. The copyright contract — the copyright agreement, as I understand it, does stipulate that moral rights belong to the creator, unless they waive them. By signing the contract, you waive those rights.
Senator Carney: So there is no protection?
Ms. Campbell: I am not aware of any protections. When we researched it, we did not find anything to that effect.
Senator Carney: The question I wanted to ask either one of you is, how do you respond to the argument that a lot of people are getting their news from blogs, and are blogs affected by these in-perpetuity contracts?
Ms. Campbell: Blogs are privately-run websites, so clearly they do not have to sign any contracts with themselves to put whatever information they wish to put on their website. It is a fairly vibrant environment in the U.S. in terms of blog culture, but it is run by individuals in most places in the world. It is not actually news gathering. Usually it is run by way of whatever resources that private individual happens to have and whether they are journalistically inclined or not.
In Canada, there are some blogs, but certainly very few that are devoted to news. I am really not aware of any. It tends to be more a case where a blogger will post information about a story with a link to a news website that will tell you more. I do not really see this in any way expanding journalism in this country. I do not see it having the resources to do that, or even the time. It is a hobby for most people who do it. What I do see blogs doing is introducing a forum for debate, opinion and analysis of news, and not actually gathering original news necessarily but perhaps collating information from different sources and bringing a diversity of opinion. Blogs and those who follow them are a small group, and it does tend to be a younger demographic in general that are following this sort of thing. Also, it is opinion based, so again it is very difficult to have the kind of authority that, say, The Globe and Mail or the CBC might have, or know who is checking it. Anything can go out on a blog. It can be completely untrue and it is impossible, really, for that person to be held accountable for what they are doing whereas, at least generally speaking, a known news organization has some level of accountability.
The Chairman: Yes, Deborah.
Ms. Jones: Regarding contracts, I can imagine that a blogger might be affected by a contract if that blogger works for a company where he has signed a contract already. For example, in the United States, several employees of media organizations have been fired because of material they have posted on their blogs, or because they have run blogs. Many other bloggers work for media organizations and there is a very happy relationship, I believe. I can imagine that that would be the only way that such a contract might affect a blogger who also holds a job with an organization.
My understanding of the kinds of contracts that we are talking about is that they affect the work that is submitted to the publication. Therefore if I were to sign a contract with some magazine, that would only affect what I sent to that magazine and I do not think that it would necessarily have an impact on whether I ran a blog as well.
Senator Carney: The argument that is put forward is that people, particularly the younger demographic, which does not normally read newspapers, it was explained to me on some of the research, until they start acquiring assets and want to start looking at, for example, what their house is worth and what their car is worth and things like that. The research indicates that the younger demograph do not have that compulsion to at least pick up a print newspaper. Are you saying that you do not see this trend in Canada, of people turning to blogs to get their information?
Ms. Jones: Oh, yes I do. I was addressing the contract issue specifically but —
Senator Carney: That is part of what I want to cover is the contract issue. But I also want to ask you, is the world turning increasingly to blogs to get this diversity of opinion, rather than particularly the print newspaper?
Ms. Jones: Yes. I have two young adults in my own house and I can tell you from anecdotal experience that they do not really look at a great number of blogs, compared to going to Internet websites for, I don't know, North Shore mountain biking or, God forbid, Fox, where they like to read the dirty jokes. My kids also read The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun, and I understand that that is statistically fairly unusual. However, there is a significant percentage of the teenagers that I know of in high schools who are politically and socially interested and engaged who do, in fact, read newspapers. I do not think it is right across the board that youngsters do not read newspapers, but we would like more of them to read.
Senator Carney: UBC has some research that the School of Journalism presented, that says that there is a real cut-off in terms of intergenerational views of the Internet. For instance, like my generation, I will not read a long story on the Internet. I just will not do that. I also will not read the New York Times for any length of time, but somebody under 30 will. They just have a different perception, and that is why I am pursuing this point about whether or not, increasingly, people will turn to the Internet to get their news, particularly if the journalists of today feel stifled and their creativity and their motivation to develop new stories is being stifled by contracts?
Ms. Jones: I do agree with you that a lot of people are reading the Internet. If you look at the registrations from Canada of the New York Times website, I cannot remember the numbers recently, but I recall hearing that something like 1 million Canadians read the New York Times on a regular basis, which just shocks me. I am not sure that that is true. Perhaps you should check that.
Senator Carney: Very well.
Ms. Jones: Also, the information on the Internet may not always be just the unreliable, opinionated bloggers. I think that, increasingly, people might be turning to more mainstream or established websites like the New York Times. Personally, I almost never watch television anymore because it is so slow to sit through a newscast when I can go to the CBC or the CTV website and find all the stories on the line-up and just scan them within a few minutes. You know, I just do not have the time in my life to read — to sit through an announcer feeding me a story, unless I want to see a visual.
Senator Carney: That is exactly what I am talking about, looking for those alternative sources of news. On the Internet issue, the problem of sourcing the data is for pictures too. You just do not know necessarily where the photos come from, and you certainly do not know where some of the information is. However, what impact on journalists does it have if people are directed to go to the website and increasingly do so to get the news? Does that increase job opportunities or does it increase —
Ms. Jones: I think it is in a real transition time right now. CBC announced yesterday that they are doing an online arts publication, and I read it. I do not write about arts a lot, but I read it, and I thought, gosh, you know, every so often I come across an arts story. I would love to write for the CBC, for their online arts publication. However, I am a print journalist. I do not do broadcasts.
I think increasingly we will see opportunities, as long as there is provision for quality. I would be quite privileged to write for a CBC website or The Globe and Mail website or the New York Times website. I am not sure I would want to write for Joe blogger in my back alley who asks me to volunteer an opinion on something. I guess it depends, from a journalist's point of view, on whether one would work for an Internet site. It depends on the same criteria of credibility and integrity that you would consider when writing for a print or established broadcast medium.
Senator Carney: Does Ms. Campbell want to comment on that?
Ms. Campbell: I think that there are two different issues being raised here, and one is whether there are different forms of delivery going on right now, and I think that is very true. Certainly, I get most of my news online and probably read five or six newspapers in the morning online, because I can then go and look at the Guardian; I can look and see what is happening in The New York Times, go to Aljazeera, go to the Asia Times, and what have you, and get a diversity of viewpoints. Googlenews, what do they have, 4,500 newspapers online, so that any given story probably has generated 2,000 different articles. My answer is yes, there is a diversity. This is different, though, than the number of sources from which the articles originate.
I have been talking about local sources. When you talk about getting your news from the Internet, what most people are doing is still going to the same websites, whether it is the New York Times, the CTV or the CBC website, it is not as though they are going to independent, new, news-gathering sources. I have read the statistics, and I do not have them at the top of my mind, but the vast majority of people tend to go to the same news sources that they might look at in print or on television, the ones that they are most familiar with, rather than going to new news sources. Largely, this is because many of the news sources do not have a lot of resources to put out, say, in-depth stories.
Although, I would say that there is also something interesting going on, still there seems to be this — I do not know what the word is — "compartmentalization" or a division of people looking only at the source that has their point of view. Thus there are people who will only look at, say, IndyMedia, or that will go to only sources that perhaps follow their points of view. However, I do not see a whole lot of people going to, say, blogs for a news source. It would be more of a larger body or source that people would go to.
Senator Carney: My last question, Madame Chair. Actually, one of our witnesses we are going to hear later is The Tyee, which is a completely online delivered — what would you call it — newspaper, magazine, commentary?
Ms. Campbell: It is almost like a salon-type magazine/newspaper.
Senator Carney: But some of the writers are very highly respected —
Ms. Campbell: Yes, and it has a good reputation here in Vancouver.
Senator Carney: Yes, but is that expanding? I do not know anything about the workings of it, and before we have the witnesses, do you know the people who work for that group? Can you make a living working for that entity?
Ms. Campbell: I have written for it, and I consider that part of my volunteer labour. It is certainly in no way a living, but it is really trying to increase, to bring some diversity to our very concentrated market, and I have a lot of respect for that goal.
The Chairman: Ms. Campbell, Ms. Jones, senators, thank you so much.
Our next witness will be Professor Catherine Murray, Associate Professor of Communications at Simon Fraser University. Welcome to the committee. Thank you very much for being with us. I will say to you, as I do to everyone, please try to keep your introductory remarks to 10 minutes so that we have time to ask all the question that we always have.
Ms. Catherine Murray, Associate Professor of Communications, Simon Fraser University: Thank you very much, Senator Fraser, and members of the committee. Certainly, welcome to Vancouver. We are delighted to have you here.
Apparently there are members of community television stations here who have requested to tape some of the interventions on the part of the witnesses. I have been asked to request permission for that. I certainly have no objection. As you know, Vancouver has been one of the pioneers of community television and I certainly would hope that that might be accommodated, if it is at all possible.
The Chairman: Normally when Senate committees are televised, it is part of a specific contractual arrangement.
Ms. Murray: Yes.
The Chairman: That is the way it is. That does not include, however attractive the idea may be, having occasional people come in to televise part of the proceedings. The general assumption has been that either the whole thing is taped and broadcast or none of it is. However, when we are out of town, out of Ottawa — let me just see how the Deputy Chair responds to that request.
Senator Tkachuk: I leave it in your hands.
The Chairman: Are there submissions from any other senator on that matter?
Senator Munson: I see no problem.
The Chairman: We will assume that this is an experiment, so it will be very important for the broadcaster in question to remember that, and to come up trumps in terms of not doing selective editing. I am a former editor. I know how easy it is to do selective editing.
Ms. Murray: Of course. I would also like to underline that permission would have to be obtained from any other subsequent witness, but it is fine with me. Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Professor Murray.
Ms. Murray: And also very befitting the spirit of the room here, of public dialogue. Thank you.
You have set an extremely ambitious agenda of questions. They are very tough questions. It is my intention today to address just one of them, and that is Question 9: How can the Government of Canada develop a policy and regulatory framework that encourages an appropriate diversity of news and views without harming freedom of the press?
I certainly bring some small credentials here, but I just would like the committee to know that I have served both on the electronic side and as a consultant in the private sector on the print side in the course of my career. I am also working to research, in collaboration with the School for Public Policy here at Simon Fraser University, an article that was invited by a University of Toronto volume on Policy Analysis in Canada. This article is in pre-publication form, which I have presented you with copies — and I seem to be having some difficulty here. Are you hearing me fine?
The Chairman: Yes.
Ms. Murray: — It is available to you prior to its publication this spring and I will be speaking to just some parts of it. I believe it is now being circulated to you. The article —
The Chairman: Has been circulated.
Ms. Murray: Ah, excellent. Thank you.
The article tries to address the simple problem, or turn on its head the simple stereotype that the press are merely passive vessels of the policy-makers and politicians, and it does look at the degree of independent policy investigation and formulation.
I am also bringing to your attention that, for such a large and viable medium, we really have been under-investing as a nation in research and development with respect to the media in Canada. In particular, one of the indicators I would look to would be the amount of funding, for example, allocated by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, which is responsible for funding independent research through the universities and colleges across this country. A recent study done by Mr. Mark Raboy has discovered that, in the last 10 years, despite the expansion of investment in things such as the Canada Research Chairs Program and so on in basic research, in general, very little has gone to social science investment, but that only 1 per cent of the funds in the last decade have gone to any studies in media or media governance, and this is something we believe needs to be redressed. I have joined in a consortium with four individuals from various universities, including Mark Raboy, David Terrace, Florian Sauvageau and myself, to present a case to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council that we need more collaboration across this country on media research in general and studies of media governance. That will be presented in a public session, I believe, open to senior civil servants, deputy ministers, and indeed, to you, senators, on February 17 and 18 in Ottawa. I would be happy to present further information, should that be of interest.
Let me begin by stating that media governance around the world is undergoing a major transformation due to three main factors. The first is, of course, the extraordinary pace of internationalization of media, people flows, finance flows. The second is the changing theories of the appropriate role of the state, and indeed, the space available to nation states to craft their own media policies within their borders now when so much content is, in fact, coming into the country with different imported norms and cultural value systems.
Finally, of course, one of the big thrusts, as we have been discussing this morning, is the very different changing expectations of citizens, their different values in their news culture and their patterns of media engagement.
I would just like to give a quick wrap-up of trends around the world. As you may know, in Italy they have privatized their public broadcaster. In the United Kingdom, they have combined policy responsibilities for print, the Internet and broadcast media under the office of Ofcom, or Office of Communications, and issued a call for a new kind of competitive public service Internet provider which may, in fact, be making grants to individual young journalists or bloggers direct through their arts councils, and so on. In other words, they are looking at new institutional fora for a public presence. or preserving some sort of public journalism presence on the Internet. That study will be forthcoming in the next year, I believe.
As well, countries around the world are working to entrench a convention on cultural diversity outside of the WTO, which protects the right to self-determination in matters to do with media and cultural policy. Certainly, since the tragic events of 9/11, the historical autonomy of the newspaper sector around the world has been under challenge from a range of social forces, due to new concerns about social regulation to prevent xenophobia and hatred.
I would like to draw the committee's attention to the EU's report, "Tuning into Diversity," which was published initially in 2002, and has culminated subsequently in annual conferences, which recommends a new international ISO standard for fairness and racial coverage. These are calls for a global media monitoring project which specifically will look at fairness of coverage of different ethno-cultural groups in matters to do with news conflict, and address questions of excessive racialization in the news.
If you will recall, this is something that the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' own cultural diversity task force has also indicated will be faced in Canada in 2006, and that is a challenge for a repeated national media monitoring study of race and its representation among other issues in 2006.
This, then, gives you a picture of massive change in the policy firmament. It is very volatile and there are some cross-cutting trends. There is a trend to concentration of ownership and lighter economic regulation in virtually every regime, not only in the OECD countries but around the world. That is being met with a counter pressure, with more requests to increase social regulation, particularly in matters to do with offensive content. There is increasing reliance in many countries around the world on what we would call policy instruments or soft power in regulation, rather than harder, more intrusive measures; a trend away from direct regulation in things like content quotas or conditions on spending, to indirect regulation, tax incentives and a number of other kinds of educational or other ventures.
Finally, and this is what I would like to address mostly today, there has been a remarkable increase in the rise of the call for modes of self-regulation on media industries worldwide, involving not only professional bodies but also citizens.
The focus of my talk today is on the role of the Canadian state as an enabler in today's complex knowledge society. It is my view that in the future framework for media policy, the Canadian state must look for strong, accountable, self-regulatory systems. That is not to say that some of the existing instruments or policies to do with foreign direct investment or other things should be dropped. It is, simply, that this is my focus of discussion today.
I would like to suggest that, historically, my focus will be primarily on the news media, and I would agree with statements that have come earlier this morning, that in Canada's news culture, the print media continues to lead — challenged, if you like, by the CBC journalists, but generally still not met in either private radio or private television, as far as agenda-setting news coverage would be concerned. Historically they have been lightly regulated, if at all, and there has been a history in this country of very little, minimal regulation or intervention.
There was, as a consequence of one of the last royal commission reports, the development of regional press councils across this country. Various studies have identified that they are not particularly well known to citizens. Their decisions are not widely distributed around the community beyond the initial journalists involved, nor are they widely reported to citizens. Therefore, we know very little about how effective is this process of complaint and self-regulation.
I do know a little bit more about the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council which, as you know, is responsible for the code of ethics and the RTNDA news code, and it has been moving aggressively on a public information front. It has received money from Rogers and other institutions to publish its information and findings in other languages so that third language communities can, in fact, now be aware of their right to complain and what decisions have been produced. They are trying to put online their decisions, case to case, for offensive news content. Many of the decisions, for example, have to do with race, or racism or hatred, often in the radio sector and the talk show sector. It is fair to say that citizens can find or trace some of the reasoning of those decisions, but a survey recently discovered that fewer than 40 per cent of Canadians are even aware, as yet, of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. That survey was conducted by MediaWatch.
Thus it is time to ask some fundamental questions. I happen to believe that the system of complaints and self-regulation are very important. I also believe that it is time to ask why we have separate regimes in a converging universe of both electronic and print press. I think we must also ask how they can be enhanced, how more Canadians can find out about them, and we have to understand more about the body of their decisions and what kind of role they play in the news culture of each institution, and indeed, in democratic discourse about what constitutes fair news coverage with integrity and authenticity, which is a word citizens often bring to the discussion of value of their media universe. It seems to me that we need to understand if these decisions are consistent with the Charter, and how they are organically related. We need to understand more about who is appointed to these bodies. Of course, in Europe and around the world, there is a growing call for these bodies to be rather more democratically constituted, with citizen majority or citizen peer juries, and the issuing of regular annual reports.
You can take from my remarks that I think it is time for a critical need to reassess the process of self-regulation of media in this country, its efficacy, its accountability in democratic terms, and its funding and resources. I do believe that the role of the state today has to be adjusted to include very many more players, particularly social movements and citizens, as well as industry groups and labour groups, and so on, in policy formulation.
Thus, policy today involves complex actors. I think it also involves media governance, including the self-regulatory agencies. It is important that the framework be non-traditional and it is important that the framework really include these NGOs, citizens, journalists and firms in new, more transparent public mechanisms for accountability. I suppose I am talking about a distributed model of media governance, recognizing the importance of key institutions and coordinating and evaluating the standards of journalism more expressly. In fact, I do not think standards and the discussion of what constitutes good quality journalism is at all inimical to freedom of the press. I think it makes it much more robust.
The model I am espousing is looking at enabling inputs, and it is also looking at incentives for better quality. I would simply conclude that, in addition to discussing the need for self-regulation, there are two other things that I think need to be addressed, and probably they are easily divided into two dimensions. The first is to make sure that we are mobilizing citizen awareness of the self-regulatory agencies and public intervention. This may involve something which has been discussed on the broadcast side, which is a robust model of payment of public intervener costs before public agencies to discuss important matters.
Second, I think that there is a great need for investment in research and development and I think that we need to look at arm's-length, independent media monitoring institutions. I was very encouraged to see the springing up of the McGill Observatory on Public Policy, which had a very interesting round table during the last federal election, discussing the quality of the print news coverage. It does not cover electronic media and it should, and it should probably pioneer better methods. The second is very encouraging as well. It is the Canadian Media Research Consortium, which began a small version of the public report that the Pew Trust does. I think these are very encouraging directions.
We need in this country more independent foundations interested in media, the quality of the media and media governance, and we clearly need cooperation on the part of the universities.
The Chairman: Thank you, Professor Murray. You were talking about a number of really important issues. When I was signalling you to speed up, it is not because they were not important.
Ms. Murray: I understand.
The Chairman: It was not because what you were saying was not interesting, but there are only so many hours in the day, unfortunately.
Ms. Murray: I understand.
Senator Tkachuk: I have to go back to school because I only got about half of what you said, and I am not even sure if I got that. Were you talking about the print media requiring some kind of — I don't know. Were you talking about a government organization or a more public self-regulatory organization to look at the quality and all the rest of it? I am not sure exactly what you meant there.
Ms. Murray: You are absolutely right, senator. You have captured it. I think we need a new, independent institution which brings the model of the press council into the 21st century. I think it has to represent more public citizens. I think it also has to represent a cooperation of a number of stakeholders in the media system.
Senator Tkachuk: We do not have a press council in our Province of Saskatchewan. It is, I think, the only province that does not have one. No one really cared about the fact that we have been represented by one-newspaper towns almost forever. It is a big deal when it comes to Vancouver, but it certainly was not in our province. Would this be government legislated? You are saying that the foundations and the universities and other public institutions that exist now would fund those kinds of governing councils?
Ms. Murray: Industry should also make a contribution. I think this is probably looking at a sort of three-way funding model, and novel forms of a public institution, but I would like to see it at arm's length, yes. I think it would strengthen not only the institution of the ombudsman within the firm to have a new milieu or environment like this, but it would also strengthen the rights of citizens to express their reservations about the content that they are seeing, and see that something is done as a consequence of that complaint.
Senator Tkachuk: I may come back, but go ahead.
Senator Carney: I just want to establish, Senator Tkachuk, that Professor Murray is probably one of our pre-eminent researchers in this field, in Canada at least. She is well known in B.C., and it is alright if you do not know about her in Saskatchewan.
Senator Tkachuk: Oh, I did not say that. I said that I did not understand her. There is a big difference.
Ms. Murray: I appreciate that, Senator Carney, but I perhaps can use different language.
Senator Carney: I will be a bit of a devil's advocate here, because you have made it very clear that media governance is what you are addressing, that we need new structures for media governance, and so I want to be a devil's advocate. In my opinion, press councils are the most wishy-washy agencies I have ever run across.
Ms. Murray: Absolutely.
Senator Carney: Can you tell me one time that a press council actually slapped the hands of a reporter or a paper or editor?
Ms. Murray: No, they do not. On the Broadcast Standards Council's side, which I can speak somewhat to, and I am speaking as an individual, I believe that far too many decisions are, in fact, not thought out ethically and within the context of the Constitution rigorously enough. I think this is a major challenge, and I know, since I have served as a citizen on these things, that I am not in the majority. The citizens are never in the majority on the committee. That is a question, I think, that needs to be addressed in terms of industry self-governance, and the results are never really widely debated in terms of peer review.
Senator Carney: As a citizen, you are not an average citizen in these areas because you have a lot more knowledge about them. In my devil's advocate role, let me say that it bothers me when you talk about having stakeholders and citizens and more diverse public interests participating in some sort of media governance because, to me, that smacks of leading to political correctness. The question then is, will that create a further big chill? The other question is: who will you pick to be the stakeholders? Why should their views matter any more than mine? Why would you involve the citizens, who actually are the readers of the paper, in a greater role when the issue you are addressing is the media itself, and how the media governs itself? Newspapers already have advisory councils and community groups, et cetera. What are your views on that? In my view, it would lead to political correctness, big chill or what have you, and other people could not say what they want to say without having their fingers slapped. What is your response to that?
Ms. Murray: I think you must be very careful in how you craft potential models, and there are a number of different options. I would have no objection, right at the moment, to the idea of drawing representatives from the respective advisory councils of the media organizations in some sort of election. I suppose that the creativeness we have brought to the notion of the citizens' assembly in this province is exactly the kind of thinking that we need to bring to bear on matters to do with representation and deliberation.
I see that there are sort of two elements to this body. The first and most important purpose is, in fact, to adjudicate complaints, because the news culture in this country is undergoing massive change. We will have O'Reilly 24 hours a day; we will have Aljazeera, and we will have many more different challenges from outside of the country and within the country towards "civility" in political discourse, and traditional news value to do with objectivity.
Senator Carney: Is that not up to the reader or the viewer? I mean, are you not pre-empting the reader and the viewer?
Ms. Murray: Never.
Senator Carney: My point is that I think your model could do that, and I am saying this in a supportive way. When you talk about matters of fairness, who decides what is fair? You talk about being accountable; what does accountability mean to you?
Ms. Murray: Right.
Senator Carney: In terms of "diversity," what does that mean? I think the citizens' assembly in B.C. is an untested model. We know what they have come up with, but whether it is publicly acceptable, we do not know that yet, and we won't know until, I suppose, later this year. Your idea is interesting, but who sets the criteria? Why does this group sit and that group not?
I remember a series that The Vancouver Sun did a few years ago on what was happening in Hong Kong, and within the Chinese community, which is the community I work with, many of them were outraged because they felt Hong Kong was not properly i.e., politically correctly presented in the paper. Actually, the series was extremely interesting for some readers who did not know anything about Hong Kong.
The Chairman: Professor Murray.
Senator Carney: Yes, I will keep it short: How can you respond to my questions?
Ms. Murray: These are wonderful challenges. First of all, let me be very clear: I think there is an important ethical line that will be renegotiated in this country, and that the media will be at the forefront in doing so. That ethical line will be when free comment amounts to injury, or prejudicial comment, or hate. I think we need institutions, in addition to the Supreme Court, in media governance that help us identify where harm and where injury may be found. I am confident that our constitutional thinkers, our philosophers in this country will provide us with a very reasonable set of ground rules where individual rights may sometimes be superseded by collective rights to security and fair media representation.
Senator Carney: One last question.
The Chairman: Senator Carney, you have 10 seconds.
Senator Carney: Ten seconds, very well. Where are the teeth in that? What would happen? Where is the teeth in what you are proposing?
Ms. Murray: More investment in research and development in communities' standards of taste. That is absolutely essential, and two —
Senator Carney: What is the punishment?
Ms. Murray: Enforcement. I think there need to be very many more fines when a media company is found against. There also needs to be a public — call it the good old use of "naming and shaming." I think there needs to be publications of the results of these sorts of things, perhaps on a public network.
The Chairman: Thank you. I am really sorry, Senator Carney. It is just that we are running so late. It was an obvious question, and you made it.
Senator Munson: Senator Carney asked most of my questions. How would your proposed independent body improve the quality of journalism in Vancouver?
Ms. Murray: First of all, I think it would aid in public debate. It would also provide a mechanism for the education and spread of the study of journalism and ethics in this province, which I think is critical at all levels. I also think, right now, that practicing journalists believe that the local press council is totally toothless. I also believe that citizens believe it is totally toothless, and so there is no ability to talk back. I think this would reinstate the citizen's right to talk back, and at least have somebody adjudicate and give reasons for decisions that people can agree with or disagree with, but at least are subject to rigorous scrutiny.
Senator Munson: You are in education. Would you support the previous witness's assertion that having a better educational program for young people would enlighten all of us in the deliberation of journalism?
Ms. Murray: Absolutely. I think there is a huge challenge of media literacy to be met around the world, and particularly in this country. It perhaps has been a casualty of the jurisdictional division of labour, and it certainly has not received the attention it needs to in this province.
Senator Munson: I have one other short question because of something that was said earlier this morning. I know it is not in your report but we heard earlier that profit margins in newspapers have jumped dramatically from 8 to 15 per cent to the 30 per cent range. I guess nobody argues with profit, but is that profit coming at the expense of good journalism in Vancouver, particularly with one big owner?
Ms. Murray: Let me reply as an academic would, rather than, perhaps, a politician. I would like to state that the link between editorial spending and profit, healthy profit and loyal readers, still needs to be explored empirically and demonstrated in this country. They are trying to do that with the very influential Pewg Trust in the United States. It does seem that good editorial spending, investment in investigative journalism, tracking of revenues on a regular kind of basis in the private sector, does seem to have positive value for shareholders, and we need to demonstrate that link.
Senator Eyton: I confess that I, too, shared some of at least the direction in which Senator Carney was going. I guess the number one observation, and perhaps you can comment, is that you put your presentation, or at least an important part of it, under the heading "self-regulation," but what you described seemed to be anything but self-regulation. It would seem to me it was a composite of all sorts of things, including government. The words that occurred to me, as I was contemplating where that may lead, were "mushy," "bureaucratic" or "costly," or an impediment to dissent and diversity — all of those things. I really just have one question, and that is, you have tried to describe what I think must be a very complex kind of organization, rendering some kind of opinions from outside of the industry, or largely outside of the industry. Where is there a template? What I am saying is, I have been in business for many years and, in general, the best guide is to look around and see who does it best and then try to emulate them, and I did not see anything in your remarks about someone who is doing it right. Is there any place where we can get inspiration?
Ms. Murray: Yes. Probably Britain, and probably Europe is trying to move away from a publicly funded government model, or arm's-length model, to one that is more genuinely power-shared. In the literature, some people are recommending we move away from the term "self-government" or "self-regulation" to something which is called a kind of co-management or co-regulation role. I am not much happier with that wording, either.
Senator, I do not deny that great ideas take time to refine and build, but the general essence here is that the public accountability of the media organizations needs to be opened up in the private sector, as well as in the public sector, to a more rigorous scrutiny of the quality of their product in terms of public debate, and there are a number of ways of doing that. There could be incremental proposals to improve it and there could be debate and discussion about a larger institution. Some people would say, why not attach a function like this to the CRTC? Is the CRTC not being forced down the road of a social regulator, whether it wants to be there or not, with highly controversial issues before it? My argument would be that even an institution of that sort is not quite the ideal form. I am looking for something more flexible and community based, and I also ultimately believe that you must have local inputs. There was something right about the intention of the first press council, but I think it needs to be brought into the 22nd century.
The Chairman: Again, I would like to ask you about 10 questions at this point, but we have more witnesses waiting. We are very grateful to you, Professor Murray. You have left us with a lot to think about.
Ms. Murray: Thank you, senator. May I also address just one item? Please do read two pages of the paper that were not able to be touched upon today, and that has to do with the need for access to information, which I know is already on your radar. The second is with respect to whistle-blowing for strengthening the tools available to journalists. Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you so much. I will now ask to come forward representatives of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. We have with us, Mr. Peter Kvarnstrom, and I hope I am pronouncing your name properly, President of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association; and Mr. John Hinds, the Association's Chief Executive Officer. The Association is, we are told, the national voice of the community press in Canada, and its roots go back to 1919, which is pretty impressive.
Welcome to the committee, gentlemen. If you have had time to catch your breath and open up your papers, I will remind you that we would like you to keep your opening presentation to 10 minutes because, since I know that you have been here for a while, you can see that the senators always want to ask more and more questions, and therefore we would like to use the time in that way.
Mr. Peter Kvarnstrom, President of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association: Thank you, Senator Fraser, and the panel here today.
I am president of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. The president is an elected and voluntary position. Today, with me is John Hinds, who is the CEO of our association.
I will just give you a quick background of who I am. I publish newspapers, community newspapers specifically. I started a newspaper in Sechelt, British Columbia in 1997, and I continue to do that as my regular, full-time, day job. I have also been playing an active role in both the provincial Regional Association of Community Newspapers and the Canadian Community Newspapers Association for about seven years.
Just to give you a little bit of background here, the Canadian Community Newspapers Association is the oldest media association in the country and it has been in existence since 1919. The association is a federation of seven regional community newspaper associations and has close links with Les Hebdos du Québec, the provincial association that represents the francophone community newspapers in Quebec.
As an association, we currently represent 709 community newspapers in every province and territory of the country. While we have traditionally represented English-language publications, we now have a number of members who publish in other languages, as well as a growing number of First Nations and ethno-cultural publications.
I will begin by giving you a bit of background on the industry and our association, and address some of the issues that you have raised. While most of you are more than aware of your local community newspaper, many Canadians are not aware of the industry and its importance to the Canadian media landscape. Each week our members, along with those of Les Hebdos du Québec, publish and distribute over 15 million newspapers to Canadians. The range of those newspapers is as varied as the communities they represent, from small rural papers with circulations of less than 1,000 to large, urban and suburban papers where circulations can be as high as 185,000 copies in a week. What you may also be aware of is that 71 per cent of Canadians read the last issue of their community newspaper. That is a greater reach than any other medium in this country. The fact is that community newspapers are the most popular medium in Canada, and that popularity is growing. While other media have become fragmented or regionalized, the community newspaper is, in most communities, the sole remaining source of local news, and what is more, the information contained in that newspaper is almost all locally crafted.
It is rare that you will see a wire service story in a community newspaper. The industry is also changing. The traditional community newspaper was often a "Mom and Pop" operation and relied on local advertising for support. As the market changed and became more sophisticated, the newspapers had to change. As an industry, we had to develop the tools to show advertisers and agencies exactly what they were buying, and individually we had to improve the quality of our publications, to make them more attractive to our readers.
In order to make community newspapers more attractive to advertisers, the industry has invested in a number of initiatives. A number of years ago, we set up a circulation audit service that now audits over 550 publications. More recently, we set up a one-stop, online ad. purchase system called "Community Media Canada" that allows buyers to plan national or regional advertising campaigns. Perhaps most important, we have invested in readership studies that have shown exactly who is reading our newspapers. As well, individual newspapers and companies have made large investments in technology and printing to improve the quality of our newspapers.
All of these initiatives have been undertaken by the industry with no public support. We certainly look with envy at our competitors who have access to numerous tax credits and direct subsidies, such as the Canadian Magazine Fund.
We are currently an industry with over a billion dollars in annual advertising sales, which puts us on par with radio and makes us almost twice as large as magazines. In overall advertising numbers, we now receive about 9 per cent of the overall advertising buy in Canada.
I would now like to briefly talk about the trends in our industry. One of the trends that we have noticed, over the past few years, is the move away from subscription-based products to free papers that are delivered to every household in the community. About half of our members and about 89 per cent of our circulation is now free. What has really happened is that the major advertisers in our communities, as they become more regional and national in scope, where they used to buy ads in our newspapers, they now buy or create their own publications in the form of advertising flyers, and they demand from us total market coverage. They want to go to every house, not just our paid subscribers, and it has really changed our business model in a very big way. We have had to continue to attract their business to remain viable, and so we have seen many of our newspapers drop the paid subscription model and go to the free, controlled circulation model where it goes to everybody's home.
Another trend is the move away from Canada Post as a primary delivery vehicle. In most urban areas, papers are no longer delivered by the post office, but by independent carriers. However, Canada Post does continue to be important to many of our members as a primary distribution method. They are, of course, our primary supplier of distribution services and very much our competitor in the flyer distribution business.
A further trend is the increasing corporate ownership of community newspapers. In the 1990s, corporate ownership was about 40 per cent of our industry. Currently, about half of our members are independently owned and about one-half are corporately owned. I know that many people have strong views on the benefits and the disadvantages of corporate ownership and we have debates about this in our own association where, as you can imagine, there are as many opinions as there are newspapers.
My personal view is that a change in ownership does not change the editorial content of community newspapers. Local news is still local news. I also know that many newspapers that have sold to corporations have felt that the professional and business support that they received has allowed them to publish a better newspaper. In the end, these papers may be corporately owned but they are independently operated by publishers who live in the communities that they serve and reflect the values and interests of that community. Local news remains the primary focus.
In the questions that you have circulated, you have asked whether Canadians have appropriate amounts and quality of information on regional and local issues, and whether communities in remote centres are appropriately served. My response to you is that I believe community newspapers are ensuring that Canadians do get the necessary information about the communities in which they live. On the whole, Canada's communities are well served by their community newspapers. I think this is borne out in the number of Canadians who are reading their community newspapers every week. While we see our circulation increasing, this is certainly not the case with other media. Our research has shown us that 26 per cent of Canadians are only reading community newspapers. They are not regularly watching television, listening to radio or reading a daily newspaper. I believe that they are reading their community newspaper because it gives them the information that they need.
One point that I would like to raise is how the federal government can contribute to ensuring that community newspapers continue to serve their communities well. As I stated earlier, community newspapers now receive about 9 per cent of the advertising dollars spent in Canada. The only sector that has not responded well to the improvements our industry has made is the federal government. We have seen some response as of late, and we certainly acknowledge that the federal government does seem to be placing a little bit more trust in our ability to carry the message to all Canadians, and we thank you for that. According to the latest statistics, however, the federal government only spends about 6 per cent of its advertising dollars in community newspapers. In general, it is 9 per cent across the country, 6 per cent from the federal government.
Our industry is rife with stories of how gun control was only advertised in daily newspapers in Saskatchewan. However, people out in Nipawin, for example, are not reading the daily newspapers. They are reading their local paper. We also saw that only 38 per cent of the population of Saskatchewan actually reads a daily newspaper.
Another example is of the Coast Guard advertising boating licences in the Toronto dailies and not advertising in the community newspapers that serve the cottage country well north of Toronto. We are not asking for any special treatment, only that when buying advertising, the federal government treats community newspapers the same as other media. We have seen a change in federal government advertising buying during the past few months under these new advertising guidelines, and we certainly hope that this continues.
I think this issue is also about more than advertising. As you know, the federal government has always faced a challenge in communicating with Canadians, particularly with Canadians who live in the regions in the far corners of our country. I would say one of the reasons for this is that they have neglected community newspapers as a means of communicating messages about government initiatives and programs to Canadians where they live. In other words, in getting out the message, I would submit that if the federal government were to make better use of community newspapers, they would not only strengthen communities but also be more successful in reaching Canadians, particularly that one-quarter of the population who only read community newspapers.
There is one other area where the federal government can make a real difference to the quality of information that Canadians receive. As you know, community newspapers serving communities of less than 25,000, receive postal support from the Government of Canada through a publications assistance program, or PAP. This program has been in existence since before Confederation and continues to be of vital importance to many communities in this country. Without it, they would not have a community newspaper, which, as you are aware, is often the linchpin of smaller newspapers. Our members receive about $4.5 million every year, and without it many of them would not be able to survive. There is no alternative to Canada Post in many areas of this country.
However, the program has not kept pace with the changes to the industry. As I said earlier, one of the major shifts in the industry has been away from a subscription-based newspaper to a newspaper that is delivered to every household in the community. All the research has shown that there is no difference in the number and quality of readers between a free and a paid product. If a paper switches to being a free paper, they lose the subsidy. The fact is, they are still serving the community and are still using Canada Post to do so. According to our records, about 43 papers are impacted and the cost to the government would likely be in the range of $2 million to $3 million, but this would be a worthy investment in Canada's smallest communities. This is particularly acute in communities where there are two newspapers competing against each other where one is subsidized and the other is not.
Finally, I would like to address your questions about regulation of the industry, and here I think there is unanimity in the industry. There is no permit or application process required to set up a community newspaper; no state body to regulate or supervise our industry, and I think that is as it should be. The barriers to entry in our industry are very low. Anyone possessing a computer and with a little bit of work can put out a community newspaper, and as such, as a community newspaper publisher, I need to make sure that I am serving my community well. It is the only way that I can serve myself as a shareholder or, in a corporate environment, the shareholders that are elsewhere. The competition is fierce. Since I have been in Sechelt, I have had four different people launch competitive publications. Some of them are still there; some of them have gone away, but we are kept on our toes every day. We need to put out the best product, communicating with our readers and ensuring the values that they value.
I can think of no changes in the regulatory framework that would benefit our industry or the communities we serve. Frankly, if the CRTC is any example, the regulatory burden would put many of our members out of business. The cornerstone of a free press, I believe, is that anyone has the right to publish a newspaper provided they obey the law. This has always been the policy in this country, and I hope that it will stay that way.
Our regional associations do belong to provincial press councils that do provide a forum for concerns and complaints from the public. They work well. Thank you very much.
Senator Tkachuk: Mr. Kvarnstrom, we have heard a great deal about postal subsidies also from the ethnic press. How do the postal subsidies work? A circulation weekly gets a postal subsidy because they have an addressed mailer, is that right? What would that be? Would it be first class postage, or how much off first class? How does that work?
Mr. John Hinds, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Community Newspapers Association: There is a Canada Post rate called "publications mail" —
Senator Tkachuk: Yes?
Mr. Hinds: — and at this point, they have moved to a percentage tariff over the last year, and it is about 71 per cent of the mailing cost of publications mail.
Senator Tkachuk: What, then, would it cost to mail a weekly that was a circulation paper?
Mr. Hinds: That rate only applies to circulation papers.
Senator Tkachuk: That is what I am talking about.
Mr. Hinds: It would cost about 71 per cent of their mailing cost, so it would be, I would hazard a guess, around 20 to 30 cents a copy.
Senator Tkachuk: That is what it would cost them. Normally, it would cost them, if they were mailing at full cost, about what, 75 cents or —?
Mr. Hinds: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Seventy-five cents on average? An unaddressed mailer, though, is a bulk mailer, right? Is that not a lot cheaper rate than an addressed mailer?
Mr. Hinds: Not much cheaper than publications mail.
Senator Tkachuk: Oh, really?
Mr. Hinds: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Very well, so an unaddressed mailer, then, would cost how much?
Mr. Hinds: An unaddressed mailer would actually cost more than the subsidized rate.
Senator Tkachuk: More than the 20 cents?
Mr. Hinds: Yes. This is the issue with our members who have free products, and are using Canada Post. Their mailing costs are substantially higher than our products that are circulation products which are receiving the subsidy. It does not equal out.
Senator Tkachuk: Very well, that is all I have. I just wanted to get that on the record.
Senator Carney: My question is addressed to Mr. Kvarnstrom. I am an avid reader of your newspaper when I travel on the Horseshoe Bay-Langdale ferry, and I know what a wonderful job you do in local coverage. I just wanted to address the issue of concentration. The figures that our excellent researchers have developed for us say that, in B.C., your association has 104 member papers, of whom three-quarters are owned by two owners, 62 of the papers or about two-thirds are owned by David Black, or the Black Press Group — the other Black — CanWest Global owns 16, and only one-quarter of the 104 member papers in B.C. are "independent." Therefore I am asking you, what has that concentration of ownership meant to the employment of journalists? What has been the trend of employment of journalists in the community newspapers?
My second question is, what has been the trend in the ratio of advertising to the editorial hole or space available for local coverage as you go to a free delivery system? Those are two impacts that I would like to explore.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: As far as the employees go, I often lose employees and good-quality journalists to the chain papers. Many of their papers are in the Lower Mainland and larger centres as well and they pay a little bit more and provide full benefit packages and that sort of thing. As independents, We have to, and most of us do, be able to compete in the field of retaining employees. Certainly I am not sure exactly how to answer the question, but I do not really see any difference in the quality of the journalists that they are employing.
Senator Carney: No, but as the concentration of ownership has increased, has the number of journalists employed by these B.C. member papers decreased? You have a lot of figures on advertising, readership and circulation and that, but we are interested in employment.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: I am not sure if I have a specific answer for you on that. As a matter of fact, I know I do not. The model of a community newspaper does not vary an awful lot from one community to another. We, for instance, in Sechelt, I have a full-time editor and two reporters, and then the rest of us all dig in. I will write a column once in a while and my associate publisher writes a regular column, and we have contributors from every small community on the Sunshine Coast that write more localized community content. Then, of course, we have travel columnists and birding columnists, and so on.
Senator Carney: Very well. The second question that is, as you have gone to a free delivery of community newspapers, has that increased the content that is devoted to advertising and reduced the amount of space available to editorial? I mean, if you are going to a free delivery, does it become more of an advertising flyer?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: I think that, at the end of the day, our business on the Sunshine Coast, for instance, relies strictly on advertising revenues. It is the only source of revenue that we have. We are not a paid product, except for those who are kind enough to actually purchase a paper on the ferry, and I thank you very much for that. We run at about 65 per cent advertising in the paper, and that is in a free model, and it does not vary an awful lot from the paid to the free. However, what we do find is that in order to be able to sell the advertising, the only way we can do that is to deliver readership, and readership does not come by delivering a paper free to the door. It comes by providing good community journalism, and unless we are doing that and delivering those readers, our advertisers will not support our product. Therefore it is a balance that is a sort a self-check for us, that, yes, I could run all advertising, but my readership would plummet fairly quickly and I would start to lose the advertisers.
Senator Carney: Thank you. You do an excellent job locally.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Thank you.
Senator Carney: My daughter used to be one of your correspondents from Madeira Park, so I have a personal interest in how you do.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Oh, thank you.
The Chairman: There is no harsher critic on matters of the media than Senator Carney. You say that you have three full-time staffers and a raft of freelancers, contributors?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is right.
The Chairman: What is your circulation? How many copies do you distribute, and of that, how many are read?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: We print 13,000 every week that we put out and we deliver, in other words, door-to-door delivery or in some other method; we deliver about 12,500 of those. Five hundred of them are left for paid newsboxes. On the ferries, we sell a great many papers there.
The Chairman: Do you know about readership?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Readership? In our paper, we are sitting at in excess of 60 per cent readership in the community, and that was on a sampling of 100 readers, or 100 telephone interviews only, so the statistical accuracy is a plus or minus —
The Chairman: Sure. It just gives us some kind of an idea.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Maybe I could answer more on a national basis. It is 71 per cent nationally. Right across this country, 71 per cent of Canadians read the last issue of their community newspaper.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Colleagues and gentlemen, I come from a very small town in New Brunswick and the community newspaper, the Tribune Press, is very valuable to us. You will always hear criticism, but nevertheless I consider it a very important tool, if you will, in the community for awareness of the community, for information and so on.
Given the fact that your readership, your circulation, is going up, as an association, as a group of papers across the country, has there ever been thought given to providing to the newspapers — and it would, of course, be their choice to use it — a page that would perhaps be "A Week in Canada" or "The News This Week" or something, so that people who read this newspaper, who do not read any other paper and do not pay a lot of attention to the news except perhaps to some of the sensational stuff, that it could just maybe fill a little bit of that gap? Has that ever been considered, or would it be totally out of context to have something on world news? Canadian news particularly, I am thinking about.
Mr. Hinds: One of the things we had tried as an association is a service that would provide content to our members, and we found that our members were not interested. They wanted to create their content locally. We had a number of columnists. We had Dale Goldhawk and a couple of other food columnists and humorous columnists, and we found that our members did not want nationally-created product. They wanted to create their content locally.
What we have found, and it is interesting when you see a larger story, is that with issues such as the tsunami, and development and things like that, our papers will bring a local perspective to it in terms of local individuals and links to the communities and local charities, et cetera. So yes, we have tried to engage our members on that issue, but there is a strong view that they want local content, and they want to generate that locally.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Yes, I was not referring to things like food or humour. I was really thinking about the — I guess I would call it "hard news," about government, federal government, international. Just so that people in the villages, perhaps, would know who the President of the United States is, or who the Prime Minister of Canada is, more importantly, and so on; that there would be this kind of dialogue, but I guess the answer is that it would not be something that community newspapers would want?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Again, I think it is just a matter of priorities. Every week at the end of the week on the Sunshine Coast, last week we published a 72-page paper, of which nearly 40 per cent was editorial content, and it comes down to priorities. When we were talking about national issues and international issues, we do cover them, but only as they relate to our readers and our communities and the quality of life as it exists. When the tsunami in Southeast Asia happened, we covered tsunami relief and efforts of support and the stories as they related to us locally. We continued, right through this week, four weeks of literally front page, leading stories on tsunami relief efforts, individuals who were in tsunami-affected areas who had stories to tell to our readers on their return home and the losses that they experienced. Therefore, we would carry — and we do carry — national stories as they relate directly to our community. However. what we do find is that their priority, the readers' priority, is that they want the stuff that is happening in their own community.
Really, what we perceived was that the '90s were kind of a decade for cocooning, where people were far more concerned with what was happening in their neighbourhood than what was happening in Iraq or Afghanistan. They feel very little control in what is going on out there. They do want to know a little bit about it, but what they really want to know is, what is going on about that crossing guard down at the school. Why is that person not out there? Or why are there too many bears in the neighbourhood and I am feeling threatened? Or what is going on down at town council? Why are they talking about the topics that they are talking about? Because it affects them where they live and where they are most concerned, and that is our role.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. Indulge me. I lived for a while in a very small community, one square mile, which had an excellent community newspaper, and for many years it carried about half a page of news headed "Beyond Our Borders" and "beyond our borders" meant half a mile down the road in the big city that was surrounding our tiny community. It was a superb newspaper. You are quite right. It is a very different kind of market, a very important market for building a sense of community, and increasingly, perhaps, the only place where people get that kind of news.
On a different topic, some time ago now in this committee, we had some financial analysts in to talk about various elements of the media industry, and one of the things they said was that in community newspapers, not for all papers but not infrequently, profit margins could be in excess of 40 per cent. Given your knowledge of the industry in Canada, do you think that is a moderately accurate statement?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: I think I could probably take that. In other words, I would like to own a paper like that. That would be very nice. I certainly have not heard of any instances of a newspaper that earns a 40 per cent return on revenues. I assume that is what they are talking about? I think a number that I would be extremely happy with would be closer to 20 to 25 per cent, and I think that would be at the top of the range.
The Chairman: I see.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: I am not sure where that information is coming from, but havening been involved nationally, as I said, talking to publishers across this country for the last seven years of my life and trying to better our industry, that number seems to me to be quite unrealistic.
The Chairman: Because of your position, you are talking not only to independently-owned newspapers —
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is right.
The Chairman: — but also to group-owned publishers?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is right.
The Chairman: Are they as forthcoming in their discussions with you?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Some of them are public, and you can actually get some information without having to ask anybody for it; you can just go and look at it. For instance, Black Press here in B.C., as Senator Carney pointed out, owns 63 titles, I believe, in B.C. They are associated with Torstar, which is a public company. You can go and have a look at just what they are doing.
Senator Carney: Sixty-six, we think.
The Chairman: Your microphone please, Senator Carney.
Senator Carney: Madam Chair, could we have the witness put the name of his community newspaper on the record? I think he is being very coy about naming it —
The Chairman: The Sechelt what?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Coast Reporter.
The Chairman: The Coast Reporter. Thank you.
Senator Eyton: I probably should have asked my questions at the beginning, or close to the beginning, of your presentation, but I am just curious: Who is eligible to join your association, and how does one become a member and what are the ongoing obligations?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is a really good question and probably one we should have touched on, because we do actually have some criteria. Not just anybody can belong. First of all, to be a member of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association, one must be a member of the regional association where one publishes a newspaper. For instance, Coast Reporter is a member of the British Columbia and Yukon Community Newspaper Association. In our bylaws, we set out rules for membership. First of all, you have to have published for a certain period of time on a regular scheduled basis of a minimum of 50 times a year, I believe is our current bylaw. Therefore it is for weekly newspapers, or ones that have more than one edition in a week. There has to be a minimum editorial content. We must have a front page that is newsy; it cannot be dominated by advertising. There is a percentage, and I believe it can be 15 per cent advertising, or something like that, on the front page. That allows for a banner at the bottom. It must have an editorial page sharing opinions and it must publish "Letters to the Editor," which is, I think, a critical component allowing that true community forum. Also, it must have an audited circulation. It cannot be just, you know, gee, I put out some papers. You actually have to be audited, so all of our member papers are audited circulation. There are a number of other requirements, but I think those are sort of the most significant ones.
Senator Eyton: There must be a cost attached to it as well?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: To joining the association?
Senator Eyton: Yes, and staying a member.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Yes, there is. Yes, it costs money. In our paper in Sechelt, we are paying about $600 a year to be a member of the association, and for that they are associating us with the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. We run awards, presentations where our papers are judged against our peers here in British Columbia.
We also do some government relations work. In a couple of weeks' time, I will be visiting people in Victoria to represent the interests of our industry and our individual publishers.
Senator Eyton: We talked, sort of on the reverse side, about some concentration within your membership, but I do not think I ever heard the number of members who actually belong to your association.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: The Canadian Community Newspapers Association has 709 members. I think — ?
Mr. Hinds: Yes.
Mr. Kvarnstrom: So we represent most of the community newspapers in Canada. Then if you add in the Les Hebdos ones — Originally we were an English-language association only. Now we have expanded that to allow ethno-cultural and native, or First Nations publications. However, in the meantime, there is a French equivalent of our association in Quebec, and they represent, I believe, 170 members; and then there is another association that represents all French-language newspapers outside of the province of Quebec. Thus there are three main associations that represent almost all of them.
Senator Eyton: My final question: Are there any what I would think of as ethnic newspapers that are members of your association as well?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Yes.
Senator Eyton: And if so, how many would there be?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is something that, first of all, is fairly new. In other words, there were not a lot of them out there 20 or 30 years ago. Today, there are quite a few of them, and we recognized that we really needed to broaden our perspectives and our inclusivity, and we have. Most of our associations across the country and our national one have changed their bylaws to allow entrance to such entities. Right now, we have about 15 in our association. It is just starting, but I think we will see a lot more of them emerging over the next few years.
Senator Eyton: Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you. Senator Tkachuk has a tiny supplementary question.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes, I do not know if it is a supplementary.
Mr. Kvarnstrom, earlier on, you had mentioned federal government advertising and you talked about the gun registry. What exactly did you say? You talked about the federal government buying advertising in the dailies' urban markets?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: Was that to register their guns?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: That is right.
Senator Tkachuk: And they were not advertising in your newspapers?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: They did not use community weekly papers to do that, and of course, as you know, there are a lot of people in rural areas who actually own guns. Just as another example of that is that in this last election, Elections Canada actually used our community newspapers, but the previous election, in 2000, they did not use community newspapers at all. However, they actually used American radio stations that were broadcasting cross-border to tell Canadians that there was an election on.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think that that might have been done on purpose?
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Let us say that we recognized our obligation to the federal government and other advertisers by actually going out and commissioning that research. Since I have been on the board of directors, we have spent $4.3 million on readership research to prove empirically to people that the public actually read our papers. Everyone seems to say, you know, that "Oh, well, yes, of course, everybody in my community reads — "
Senator Tkachuk: Mr. Kvarnstrom, what I am trying to point out is, I do not think that they did not believe that the public did not read your papers, but that they deliberately did not want it in your papers. They wanted it in the urban papers, which is why the thousand —
Mr. Kvarnstrom: Well, that could be.
Senator Tkachuk: You got what I mean. Very well, we will leave it at that. Thank you, Chair.
The Chairman: This is not something about which we can actually ask for an authoritative answer from these witnesses.
Senator Tkachuk: I know, but it was nice to get —
The Chairman: Oh, you got your licks in there, I know. I could tell what you were up to there.
Thank you so much, gentlemen. I have now, in fact, two requests. One is, would you please send us your criteria for membership? It is quite interesting that you have fairly strict definitions, essentially, of what a newspaper is, which would be very interesting to see; and the second request is: Would it be possible for us to see a fuller version of the ComBase readership material?
Mr. Hinds: Yes. Actually, you have some of that that was circulated.
The Chairman: We would like a fuller version, perhaps.
Mr. Hinds: Okay, we will provide a fuller version.
The Chairman: We would be very grateful for that.
Mr. Hinds: We can give you all 400 markets, if you like.
The Chairman: Yes, because it actually looks very interesting, and we would like the usual data of who did it and when, and all that kind of thing.
Mr. Hinds: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you so much. This has been a most instructive session and we are very grateful to you for having been in attendance here.
The committee adjourned.