THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, May 10, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 6:47 p.m. [ET] to consider Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Good evening, honourable senators. Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. My name is Julie Miville-Dechêne, senator from Quebec and deputy chair of the committee. I am replacing Senator Leo Housakos this evening, the chair of the committee.
[English]
I would like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette, New Brunswick.
Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
[English]
Senator Harder: Peter Harder from Ottawa.
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo from Ontario.
Senator Dasko: Senator Donna Dasko, Ontario.
Senator Manning: Fabian Manning from Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, we are meeting to continue our examination of Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.
For our first panel, we are pleased to welcome before the committee, from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, Kevin Desjardins, President; from the Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations — CACTUS is the short name —Catherine Edwards, Executive Director, and Amélie Hinse, General Director, Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec. Online we have from the Canadian University Press, Amy St. Amand, Vice-President; and Hannah Theodore, Director of Operations.
[Translation]
Welcome, everyone. Each group will have five minutes to present their arguments. Mr. Desjardins, please go ahead.
Kevin Desjardins, President, Canadian Association of Broadcasters: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the committee.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee today in relation to this important bill.
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) is the national voice of private broadcasters in Canada. It represents more than 700 members across the country, including the vast majority of private radio and television stations and specialized services.
[English]
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters supports Bill C-18 for two essential reasons: the legislation is necessary, and it is fair. Why is this legislation needed? When I speak to my members, be they small, medium or large players, in small or large markets, the issues they face are the same. Advertising revenues are severely challenged. The cost of programming continues to rise, as do their regulatory and copyright obligations, and the fixed costs of running their businesses are also increasing.
Maintaining professional newsrooms in communities across the country is a fundamental commitment of Canada’s broadcasters. Last year, Canada’s private broadcasters invested $681 million in news and community information.
But sustaining those newsrooms depends largely on entertainment programming that draws the largest audiences and the greatest ad revenues. Over the past decade, foreign online platforms have aggressively cornered the markets in search and advertising. Using their dominant positions, they have dramatically impacted the advertising market through algorithmic exploitation of user data.
As a result, foreign digital platforms take more than two thirds of those ad revenues out of Canada’s economy. In a very short time, we have effectively developed a trade deficit in Canada’s advertising market. At the same time, these entities are exploiting Canadian news organizations’ online content to deepen their competitive advantages in advertising.
Search and social platforms may help to direct audiences to online news sites, but contrary to their statements here and in the other place, these are not free links. In reality, Google and Facebook retain most of the value from user interactions with news sites through their ability to gather, aggregate and resell user data to advertisers. Nevertheless, social and search platforms provide no compensation to news sites for the value they derive from those interactions.
As news broadcasters and publishers struggle to maintain the resources necessary to continue to inform Canadians, the policy framework outlined in this legislation is critical to help recognize the value of their online content. The dominant internet platforms have told you and members of Parliament that Canada’s news is of little value or consequence to them. They have already blocked access to content and have threatened to remove all news from their platforms if they do not get their way with this legislation. If they are bringing their “our way or the highway” approach to this legislative process, just imagine how they use their dominance in negotiations now, when they are not even required to come to the table.
They prefer the status quo of picking and choosing who they wish to support, and the terms on which they do so. Today, if these platforms deign to even discuss any agreement with a Canadian news organization, there is no realistic option but to agree to the platforms’ terms given their dominant positions online and lack of any fair regime for negotiation.
We believe that Bill C-18 strikes an important balance. It would enact a fair and reasonable negotiation framework for all Canadian news organizations, allowing each news organization to establish a fair value for the use of their content. It will also allow for collective bargaining, so that small players can jointly negotiate and help to rebalance their bargaining power with these digital behemoths. It provides an arbitrated backstop should those negotiations not be constructive. Because a government agency is only involved as a last resort to resolve disputes when no agreement has been reached, the proposed legislation poses no threat to press freedom or free speech.
Ensuring the viability of our newsrooms is critical to Canada’s democracy. This is particularly essential as Canadians today are increasingly confronted with misinformation and disinformation online. Indeed, as the large platforms threaten to block and remove vital Canadian journalism from their platforms, these steps would certainly elevate sources of misinformation. We need to ask ourselves: How is that good for Canada?
Canada’s broadcasters want to continue to be a dependable source for the local, national and international journalism that is the foundation of Canada’s democratic institutions. But to do so, we require a fair opportunity to be compensated for the value of our news content. We believe that Bill C-18 will help us to achieve this.
We have submitted an amendment to clause 93 with respect to the coming into force of this legislation. We recommend adding a clause requiring that the legislation come into effect, in its entirety, no later than 180 days after Royal Assent.
Thank you, and I look forward to any questions you may have.
The Deputy Chair: We will now hear from Catherine Edwards and Amélie Hinse, representing the Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations.
Catherine Edwards, Executive Director, Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations: The Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations, also known as CACTUS, has over 100 members across Canada, of which 30 are not-for-profit community TV stations. Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec represents 42 not-for-profit community TV stations. Our members distribute televisual and multimedia content over the air, on cable, on satellite and online.
Community media are a trusted part of the news landscape. Our not-for-profit character and the crucial role we play, have recently been recognized in Bill C-11. CACTUS and the Fédération also co-manage the Local Journalism Initiative, or LJI, and are recognized by Canadian Heritage as leaders in ensuring the availability of news in underserved communities.
With regard to Bill C-18, we worked closely with the three community radio associations to ensure that not-for-profit news media were recognized in both clause 4, the statement of purpose, and clause 11, exemptions for news media intermediaries. The amendments were non-controversial and were unanimously supported by MPs from all parties in the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, also known as CHPC.
Similarly, both we and our community radio colleagues suggested two amendments to clause 27 to ensure eligibility of community news organizations even if they don’t meet the two‑journalists minimum. Many community media organizations that have been delivering news and local information to underserved communities for decades may not employ two journalists. TV is a highly technical medium. They may have as few as one to three employees with technical or generalist media educational backgrounds as opposed to specifically journalistic, even though they produce news. One journalist may work with citizen journalists and local organizations to produce news. So the threshold of two employed journalists is designed more for private and public sector news organizations.
Therefore, the first amendment we proposed, and which was adopted, an amendment to 27(1)(a), ensures that community TV and radio stations that are licensed by the CRTC are eligible for compensation.
While most community radio stations are licensed and covered by this amendment, the majority of not-for-profit community TV stations are not. The latter are either distributed by cable companies and do not hold their own licences, or their content is streamed in areas of the country where cable community channels have been shut down.
To ensure the eligibility of non-licensed community media, we proposed an amendment to 27(1)(b)(i) stating that not-for-profit broadcasting undertakings, as defined in Bill C-11, should be eligible.
This amendment was lost in the shuffle, apparently because there was another amendment to the same line. We are therefore re-proposing the same amendment to 27(1)(b)(i). We would like it to say, “regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada . . . .” This is what it already says. The amendment passed by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage was this:
. . . which journalists may include journalists who own or are a partner in the news business and journalists who do not deal at arm’s length with the business.
This is the amendment we would like: “or is a not-for-profit broadcasting undertaking that produces news.”
[Translation]
Amélie Hinse, Executive Director, Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec, Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations: This amendment was drafted with Canadian Heritage and legislative drafters to ensure that it is consistent with the current wording of the act, its spirit, and what was adopted in the past.
Everyone we spoke to agreed that it made a lot of sense; we don’t know why that was lost in the shuffle.
It makes sense to include it here rather than in subclause 27(1), because it guarantees that even non-profit broadcasters that are not licenced have to meet the same conditions as licensed broadcasters: They must be Canadian, produce news and uphold the journalistic standards of the industry. The explicit eligibility of community media is really crucial since we are already at a disadvantage in negotiations with the digital giants.
In their brief submitted to your committee, the NCRA and the Community Radio Fund of Canada state that they have tried a number of times to contact Facebook and Google to conclude agreements, but were never able to reach them or get an answer. That cited the example of community and campus radio stations in Australia that were unable to negotiate agreements with the platforms, even though they are eligible under Australian law.
Yesterday morning, I was listening to Linda Lauzon, who appeared before you and made pretty much the same point. Small organizations are at a great disadvantage under this bill, and that will make them unable to negotiate anything with the digital giants.
It is noteworthy that, in Quebec, community televison has recently been able to recover some of the gross revenues of cable distributors, but those revenues are in decline. They are in free fall and have dropped by about half in the past 10 years.
That is just in Quebec. Outside Quebec, non-profit community television stations never received federal or provincial support, or industry support until the local journalism initiative that was adopted recently.
Thank you very much for the time you have given me.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
We will now hear from Ms. St. Armand, from the Canadian University Press.
[English]
Amy St. Amand, Vice-President, Canadian University Press: Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable senators.
We are the Canadian University Press, or CUP for short. We forgive you if you haven’t heard of us before but, respectfully, that’s part of the problem.
CUP is Canada’s oldest student press cooperative. We have been representing and advocating for student journalism since 1938. We represent dozens of college and university news publications whose coverage benefits hundreds of thousands of students across Canada, from college and polytechnic publications, to legacy university publications with long and storied histories.
We’re here today to represent our members, who have been making news for decades. Student reporters at our member publications break stories every day that impact Canadians on and off campus. They’ve won national awards with many of them going on to work at the major publications that will benefit from Bill C-18. Our alumni staff The Tyee, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and numerous other local, national and international publications.
Students are integral to Canada’s journalism, yet CUP was left out of consultation on Bill C-18. Our students are the future of journalism, and they have been forgotten.
Student journalism goes beyond mere campus gossip. For example, in 2021, the University of British Columbia’s The Ubyssey broke news that law students collected information on classmates violating COVID-19 public health orders. This was then later picked up by regional news outlets like CTV, New Westminster Record and CityNews.
We also have a track record of covering stories with international impacts, like when Western University’s Gazette detailed the impacts of an Iranian cyberattack targeting libraries at over 300 international universities, including 42 in Canada. This too was covered by major news outlets like Reuters.
Our members have been covering news like professionals, despite most of them being volunteers and, don’t forget, they’re still students. They’re struggling with high tuition, increased living costs, full course loads and all the other problems students face. Despite all of that, they are still committed to educating their peers. We know how crucial journalism is to our communities, if only everyone else did too.
Our membership faces the same problems as the rest of the industry: Heightened distrust, public disinterest and plummeting advertising dollars mean publications have had to cut production, slash staff or, in some cases, contemplate shutting their doors for good.
Consider the University of Alberta’s The Gateway. This publication was founded in 1910 and, 113 years later, it faces a dissolution. Today, just seven staff are tasked with informing 40,000 students. Unless something changes, they’re projected to run out of savings completely within two years.
Unfortunately, The Gateway isn’t an outlier either. Across the country, student papers grapple with existential threats similar to those faced by our professional colleagues. The difference is that the professionals see direct benefits from programs like the Local Journalism Initiative. Student papers do not.
CUP welcomes measures to ameliorate the crises that our industry is facing. But because we haven’t been included in any conversation, we have no confidence that we will see any benefit.
No single piece of legislation guarantees a bright future for journalism, including Bill C-18. Whatever the solution may be, we need students.
On behalf of our members who have been at the forefront of Canadian journalism for decades, we demand a seat at the table.
Thank you, honourable senators, for inviting us to appear. We welcome any questions.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Many thanks to the three groups for their testimony.
[English]
Senator Simons: I want to start with a question for Mr. Desjardins and CACTUS.
We had Meta before us last week. They are seeking an amendment that would take all audio and audiovisual content out of the purview of Bill C-18, arguing that it should only be for print publications. I’m wondering what you think about Meta’s proposed amendment.
Mr. Desjardins: I’m happy to go first on this.
I would say that, quite obviously, we were taken aback by that, not necessarily taken aback, just in terms of how we’ve seen the behaviour of the web giants throughout this process.
Certainly, one of the things that we would point out is that, when you take a look at where Canadians go to get their news, they have identified on a number of occasions that broadcasters are at the places where they go primarily, not just on television or on the radio, but also their websites as well. They are Canada’s most trusted sources for news.
To effectively cut out a significant portion of where people go to get their news, and where they trust to be able to find reliable news, would be something that obviously we would see as highly problematic.
The other thing I would say is that radio stations, especially across the country, many of them have taken up the space that has been vacated either by regionals or local weeklies, dailies or whatnot that have disappeared, sharing news on their websites specifically.
There’s much talk about news deserts. Radio stations have been able to help fill some of that gap that’s out there. If there is no support, and if there is not an ability for them to get fair recognition and to be able to negotiate fair compensation for their news content, that is very much in peril.
[Translation]
Ms. Hinse: I don’t know where that comes from or why they proposed it, but to us it is clear. With the figures to back it up, we can say that television has suffered from the loss of advertising revenue as much as print news has. I do not understand their approach.
[English]
Ms. Edwards: Yes. I would say the same thing. Why would restricting it to print-only help? If the news giants are only compensating print news, that limits potential revenue to Canadian media overall. I don’t see what the benefit would be.
Senator Simons: The benefit is they would have to pay less money. That is the benefit to them.
Ms. Edwards: Right.
Senator Simons: I wanted to ask the question to CUP as well. I got my start writing for The Gateway. My office has been staffed with a series of CUP alumni in my office.
Let me play the devil’s advocate for a moment.
If your advertising dries up because of competition — The Gateway used to be full of classified ads, which it is not anymore — don’t university papers have the right to petition their student unions and their board of governors for funding, whether that’s a checkoff on your student union dues or money from the university administration? I know it creates a conflict of interest, just as getting money from the government creates a conflict of interest for mainstream publications. What would be wrong with those options?
Ms. St. Amand: Thank you for the question. I’m happy to speak on this.
One of the problems with that option is that some of our publications aren’t even funded by their student unions anymore. The Gateway is not. The example we provided in our opening brief was that The Gateway is relying on savings only, and they will only have two more years.
In a lot of instances, there either isn’t enough money for student associations or student associations aren’t funding these publications at all. In some cases, it’s simply not an option.
My colleague, Ms. Theodore, could speak to Ontario’s Student Choice Initiative legislation as well.
Hannah Theodore, Director of Operations, Canadian University Press: Yes. This was another example of ways that legislation could have potentially targeted our student publications in a negative way. We knew immediately when we saw the Student Choice Initiative the impact that it would have on our publications. We know that our student associations and student unions are not always keen on continuing to keep funds flowing to their student papers. CUP petitioned and advocated against the Student Choice Initiative because we recognized that the threats that are coming for our publications can be coming from inside the house. Our student associations are not always on our side.
Senator Simons: In fairness, the student union is the government you cover.
An Hon. Senator: Can I add something to the senator’s question, or are we out of time?
The Deputy Chair: Maybe on the next round. I am trying to go around the table.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses today. I have some questions, first of all, for Mr. Desjardins.
The platforms tell us that they provide great value to your members and others in the media who provide news. I would like you to tell me how you see this. What value do they provide? How is this assessed? Do you know how many of your members have deals already with either of the two big platforms, for example?
Mr. Desjardins: We don’t know how many. Those deals are, at present, private between them. Occasionally someone will tell us that they have one. Any time that I have heard of anyone who has had one, they have very much taken it as, this is not what we think the value is, but it is something in the door.
Senator Dasko: They feel they are not getting what they think they deserve?
Mr. Desjardins: In the few instances that I have heard of, effectively it has been something in the door but really not in negotiation.
In terms of the other value that they have said that they provide, again, I do not think that these digital platforms have become billion- and trillion-dollar behemoths by handing out free links. They obviously are able to monetize those. Even in an instance such as driving traffic to our own members’ sites, part of the game of that, for them, is that they are not only implicated in the selling of advertising, but also in the facilitating of selling it. In terms of the ad stack, they have both sides. If one of our members is selling advertising through their website, these platforms get a chunk of that, and that online advertising is not something that takes the place of the advertising that has been lost over the past decade.
Senator Dasko: You are saying the value that they provide to you and to your members is not great?
Mr. Desjardins: I don’t think it is commensurate with the value that they are deriving from it.
Senator Dasko: Tell me, what do you think will happen if Facebook/Meta pulls out? What impact will that have on your members? They have been talking about this, haven’t they?
Mr. Desjardins: Yes. It is possible that it would be something that would be difficult for them to do, given some of the language in the legislation. I don’t know if removing all news from Canadians would be considered undue preference. I don’t know if they would just remove Canadian sources versus all sources. For as much as they have diminished or dismissed the value of news on their platforms, there would certainly be pushback from their users.
This is a threat that they have made in other places. It is a threat that they made in Australia, it is one that they clumsily moved forward with and had to pull back from. I don’t think it is in Canada’s best interests or theirs to take a step like that. Again, we would certainly hope that they will do what they did in Australia. When legislated to do so, they will come to the table.
Senator Dasko: I have a question for Ms. Hinse. You were just speaking about how your members have difficulty negotiating. I want you to tell me, are they going to be able to negotiate under Bill C-18, or is there a change that needs to be made to ameliorate the situation that you were just describing?
[Translation]
Ms. Hinse: Actually, because of the way the bill is written, 75% of our members would be excluded from negotiations. Google, Facebook or any other platform could determine that we do not meet the criteria and refuse to conclude an agreement with us. That would be legitimate and we would have no further recourse. The threshold of two journalists would block us because we are not explicitly mentioned.
[English]
Senator Cardozo: I want to say to our witnesses from the Canadian University Press, I wish you were here. This is a personal moment of irony for me. Forty-five years ago, when I got my start in journalism at Excalibur at York University, I came to Ottawa one reading week with a friend of mine, Mark Boudreau, and covered a federal-provincial conference, which took place in this precise area, which at that point was one big hall. The media bullpen was pretty much exactly where I’m sitting right here. In 45 years, I still have not gotten very far. I am still in the same place — or full circle, I prefer that.
My question to Mr. Desjardins is: You and your members deal with the CRTC a lot. There have been some questions about whether they have the ability to monitor this and take on this new area. I would like your thoughts on whether you feel that they have got that ability to oversee or regulate this field.
For the others from Canadian University Press and CACTUS, are you looking at doing joint negotiations with the platforms and how do you think that that will work?
Mr. Desjardins: Yes. We think that the CRTC has the ability to manage a file like this. They have traditionally acted in the space of dispute resolution, especially between broadcast distributors and broadcasters. They have knowledge and expertise in that area. Especially understanding the fact that they will only be pulled in as a last resort, as the final offer arbitration system, which, if it works as it is supposed to, you are not supposed to get to that point. You are supposed to be able to avoid that through your negotiations. We think that the commission is well equipped to be able to handle this.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
Ms. Edwards: Because we are about 70 community TV members, our approach would be to negotiate as a group. Community radio has about 200 members. There are five associations altogether. Our approach would be to negotiate as a group. All we know, concretely, is that it does help that the bill has language about including a variety of business models and regions of the country. In many regions of the country, there are only community broadcasters there. We hope that will help. When we go to them and say, they do not have any not-for-profit broadcasters yet and you are required to have a variety of business models, you can get 70 with one contract if you sign with us. We hope that will be appealing, but no one knows. They have declined to answer anyone in the community media sector in Canada to date. None of our members have deals yet.
Senator Cardozo: Okay. The Canadian University Press, your thoughts about group negotiations.
Ms. St. Amand: Yes, thank you. We are having the same kind of feeling as the others who have spoken. We work as a collective to represent our members.
I think it’s worth noting that we have some of the same struggles in that an individual college paper wouldn’t be able to go toe-to-toe to negotiate with Google or Meta. I am definitely not an expert, but we would be acting as a collective for our members.
Senator Cardozo: Is it going to be worth your time and effort at the end of the day? When you take all these different papers, you are not going to get a lot of money out of this.
Ms. St. Amand: Not necessarily, but I do think that any money is helpful. Even the legitimacy that being a part of this would grant to some of our papers would be beneficial.
All of our board members are volunteers, but we are all, certainly, very passionate. We are here today, and this is something we definitely think is worthwhile even if it is not going to give us millions of dollars.
Senator Cardozo: Do you have a quick comment on the amount that it is worth, Madam Hinse?
[Translation]
Ms. Hinse: That is very hard to say. We don’t know and that is part of the problem. Even if we work collectively, we are still small organizations. Cathy is alone at the Canadian Association for Community Television Users and Stations; at our organization, there are just two of us. I certainly want to do everything possible for our members by trying to reach an agreement with them, but it is a lot of work to manage internally thereafter. The structure proposed in the bill is far from perfect, in my opinion.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Harder: Thank you to our witnesses.
My question is for Kevin Desjardins. You said the legislation was both necessary and fair. On the necessary part, I presume that you’re predicting that, without this legislation, there will be an ongoing downward spiral of capacity. I would like you to talk about “what if this doesn’t happen.”
Also, I would like you to answer the idea of “what if it does happen” in terms of what is a reasonable expectation that we could have as to how your members — I understand that depends upon the negotiation — but what would success look like, and are your members planning for what they might do, should this legislation pass and the negotiations become fruitful?
Mr. Desjardins: Yes. I wouldn’t think that many of my members would have started spending this money before we get through this legislative process and the next regulatory processes.
Senator Harder: Absolutely.
Mr. Desjardins: I do know that, as one of my radio members told me recently, we’re not counting the nickels and dimes; we’re counting the pennies at this point.
As I said, broadcasting can very much be a fixed-cost business. There are all sorts of costs that are already built in. When you are looking at where it is — when your revenues are down, when subscription revenues are down — the place where cuts are available to you are, at times, with people. It is difficult, but that is what ends up happening.
For us, this would preserve journalism jobs. It would preserve journalists in broadcast newsrooms.
Senator Harder: I have a quick follow-up if I could.
Are your international analogues looking to you as to what is taking place in Canada? We have had the Australian model. There are others who are looking, I know, to what we are doing here. Do you have contact with your analogues in other jurisdictions?
Mr. Desjardins: I think it is still early days. There is interest from other jurisdictions. Certainly, there was something similar in the U.S. that started to come out.
Senator Harder: Right.
Mr. Desjardins: There has been interest in a few other countries.
We are not at the tip of the spear, but we are not far behind Australia. The other countries are looking to us in terms of what the experience would look like.
Senator Harder: Thank you.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I would like to ask two questions since we have some time left.
To begin, I would like a clarification, Ms. Hinse. You said that non-profit community television stations are not covered by Bill C-18. How many community television or radio stations are you talking about?
I am trying to understand, because Bill C-18 already covers about 650 or 700 media outlets, since the House of Commons added a lot of media outlets.
By your count, how many community television or radio stations are not covered?
Ms. Hinse: There are 42 members of the Quebec federation, as well as those that are not members. I would say a maximum of 46 members. In Canada, there are 30 or so, because we are not licence holders. What was added in Bill C-18 pertains to licence holders, so that applies primarily to radio stations that are required to have a licence to broadcast content. For our part, we broadcast through a cable distributor, which is the licence holder. We have two members who hold digital licences, and they can also broadcast through a cable distributor, but that’s it. So that is 2 out of 45 members in Quebec. In Canada, I don’t know how many there are.
[English]
Ms. Edwards: There are 9 in Canada that have licences, so they are already covered and eligible, but there are 25 and growing that aren’t. They are streamed or their content is played back on cable community channels.
The Deputy Chair: So you know that Bill C-18 is based upon value — the value of what you are bringing to the table.
Ms. Edwards: That’s right.
The Deputy Chair: Do you have any idea if community radio and community TV are on Google and Facebook; are they being shown there?
Ms. Edwards: All of our members use Facebook to — I think Facebook is more used than Google. They use YouTube; they distribute through YouTube as well as Facebook all their videos all the time. They are very key in small communities that have no other source of media. The Facebook group for the town, if it is an online-only station, becomes their media.
That touches on Senator Dasko’s question: What is the value of these platforms to us?
We see it as very similar to the 1970s when cable first came to Canada, and the Canadian government was worried about it. If it is going to be great, we will get all of these extra programs from the United States, but they are just pipes and they should be required to give back and support Canadian content so we wouldn’t just be awash in American programming.
We see it as a repeat of that.
Back when cable came in, it was a recommendation that cable companies spend 10% on local community TV to make sure that local communities would see themselves. It was reduced to 5%, then 2% and now 1%. Broadcast Distribution Undertakings, or BDUs, fund professional production as well. We see it as the same thing: These pipes that are not even owned by Canadian companies are filled with Canadian content that they don’t pay for and are undermining their sources of ad revenue, so they should be giving back to keep those pipes filled with some Canadian content. It is the same process.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. The last question is for Mr. Kevin Desjardins.
[Translation]
You requested that clause 93 be amended so the bill would come into force six months after Royal Assent. Please tell me your reasoning for that because, under the first version of clause 93, the dates were fixed by order. Then, to satisfy the platforms — I understand that the platforms requested this —, an amendment was proposed to set different dates for different regulations to come into force. Now you are saying that you do not want that or the first version: You are requesting six months.
How did you arrive at that? I think that in Australia they did not have a schedule with a specific date.
[English]
Mr. Desjardins: The concern from our part when we saw the coming-in-to-force provisions was that, especially knowing the players with whom we are dealing, is whether there were going to be ways for them to delay at each step along the way the coming into force of this.
I would say there is a fair bit of urgency in terms of moving forward with this legislation and getting a negotiation framework in place.
All the players at this point, all news organizations, are very much alive. I’ve said that they haven’t spent the money at this point. In some ways they have in the sense there, they are very much needing for money to start coming in the door.
The concern was that there would be a way to manipulate those coming into force provisions so that this could be pushed back in perpetuity. This allows for some of those steps still to be taken in the way that had been asked for, but still creating a deadline.
Senator Clement: Thank you to all of you for being here. I appreciated your answer, Ms. Edwards, to Senator Miville-Dechêne’s question. You just see it the same way. I understand that. There are differences in ideology, though.
To that end, last week, Meta was here telling us that there is no way that they’re going to benefit economically from the links, that they don’t benefit from the links. So it’s okay for them to walk away from this because they don’t get anything from those free links.
You said, Mr. Desjardins, that there is a way for them to monetize those links.
I was trying to get at what that looks like. They use data, so people click on links, that shows preferences, that then allows Meta to target advertising to those people. Is that what you mean? If there’s more, can you explain more?
You also said that Meta should expect pushback if they stay out of the market. They don’t seem to agree. They say that according to their analytics, people are not interested in news and the links. Help me.
Mr. Desjardins: In terms of people’s interest in the news, again, we are having to trust their interpretation of their research that says whether or not people are interested in news. The example I’ve been giving to people, I know in a couple of weeks I’m going to go into the Google machine and say what is open in Ottawa on Victoria Day weekend? I know what I’m going to get out of that is at least two news organizations that are going to have stories that will feed that back.
What does Google get out of that, or what would Facebook get out of that? They know that I’m in Ottawa. They would be able to pair that up against all sorts of things; my location, my history on these platforms. From the point of view of Meta, it’s what I’m looking at on Facebook versus what I’m looking at on Instagram, who my friends are. There’s lots of data that they help to build into that.
By the way, if I am clicking through, as I often do, on a certain post from a news site that I get through their platforms, they know that I’m interested in news and they feed me more.
What they’re able to do then is to sell that back to say: Are you looking for someone who is interested in news, who lives in Ottawa? There’s just a lot that they’re able to do with this data, both in terms of the sites themselves but also the content of what people are going to look for.
Senator Clement: The representative of CUP, I was a bit concerned to hear that the student unions don’t put any money into university papers. Can you explain how you engage with students, how your members engage with students? What platforms do they use? What’s the connection with community there?
Ms. St. Amand: Absolutely. Thank you. I’ll first clarify that not every student association doesn’t fund papers. I don’t have exact numbers. There are many that do, but there are also many that don’t.
Our member publications use every platform there is. We use Facebook a lot. Many of them are entirely online publications, so using search engine optimization, or SEO, to make sure the articles get seen. Many of them have Instagram, Facebook, TikTok accounts. Especially for those that have not been able to print anymore, they’ve moved into the online world to get their news out there and really be seen by students.
In the same way as many large media organizations rely on podcasts, websites or newsletters, our organizations are in the same capacity.
Senator Clement: Thank you to all of you.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Mr. Desjardins, coming from New Brunswick, I am a bit curious about your suggestion that the bill be amended to come into force 180 days after Royal Assent. Looking at the clauses in the bill pertaining to coming into force and considering how the government is being blackmailed by organizations such as Google, don’t you think the government will issue orders quickly for all clauses of the bill to come into force?
You have to remember that any amendment made here will delay the process because the bill would have to be sent back to the other place. We have to remember that in making recommendations. It is all a question of timing, which seems to be very important to you.
Mr. Desjardins: Yes, absolutely, timing is extremely important to us. We are trying to weigh what might happen without this amendment against what would happen if it took years for the legislation to come into force. It might be in effect when work on developing the regulatory framework is starting. It is the lawyers who are experts on regulations who said that; I didn’t come up with it myself.
What I would like is for Bill C-18 to be passed as quickly as possible. The amendment we are proposing is quite simple and not controversial. I do not think it would hold things up by days, weeks or months. I hope it would be a fairly quick discussion during clause-by-clause consideration.
Senator Ringuette: In light of our very recent experience with Bill C-11 and the support you provided for the bill... There have been considerable delays. You are entitled to your opinion and I respect it, but I do not agree with you.
I have a question for Ms. Edwards. I am from a small community with a community radio station and a private radio station. Essentially, they are local businesses that buy advertising. In light of that, can you tell us how much local revenue your members have lost because of Google? Essentially, they will take large Canadian companies, car companies, and so on. It is on that scale.
Ms. Hinse: I have the figures for Quebec. The revenues are not directly related to commercial advertising because they don’t do any. The revenues are from what the cable distributor put into community television, a percentage of their gross revenues.
If the cable distributor’s gross revenues are in free fall because advertisers are using the internet — and the same thing applies for subscribers who choose online streaming —, there is less revenue, and therefore less money available for community television.
In 2015, I visited all my members. The Montreal region received about $1 million for all the community television stations in the region, not including MAtv, the Videotron community television station, which was supposed to receive $20 million or even more; now, it’s zero.
In eight years, it has dropped from $1 million to zero. That is the loss I can identify, and that is for seven community television stations in the Montreal region, not to mention all the other members who have seen their revenues drop because of this.
Senator Ringuette: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Simons: I have a question for the representatives from CUP. Because of amendments on the House side in committee, there’s a specific reference in the bill that now says that campus radio stations must be included. Campus radio stations — and I used to work at one of those too — these days don’t do a lot of original news reportage. It’s a lot of music and maybe talk about culture.
Do you think it’s fair that campus radio stations are specifically enumerated as saying that they qualify for funding, whereas campus newspapers are not?
Ms. St. Amand: I don’t, personally, especially given your statement that campus radios aren’t reporting the news in the same capacity. I wouldn’t understand why they would be included in this, and campus papers or campus news publications are not.
In fact, we are reporting news more than college radio stations are, and in some capacities, our reach is potentially larger, but the content we’re covering is more similar to what large news organizations are doing. It doesn’t make sense why radio stations would be included and news publications would not.
Ms. Edwards: Both the community radio stations and community television stations are managing the Local Journalism Initiative. Community radio stations are required to have a certain percentage under their licences with spoken-word programming, which is generally news. They do news, as do community TV stations, and that’s why they’ve been handed the mandate of administering the Local Journalism Initiative, or LJI. I think your perception that it’s mostly music is not accurate.
Senator Simons: This is specifically campus radio stations.
Ms. Edwards: Yes, including campus radio stations. Many of them are employing LJI journalists right now. They were viewed as under-resourced, and so they are hosting professional journalists and producing professional news.
Senator Simons: Is that fair that they get that funding, whereas the newspapers do not?
Ms. Edwards: They’re not eligible for the LJI? I don’t think it’s fair either, but I didn’t want their not being included to be a reason to exclude community media as well. Because both are doing important reporting that we need, particularly in smaller communities and for minority communities mixed in our big centres too.
Senator Simons: I think we’re talking about apples and oranges here. I’m talking about The Gateway is the paper at the University of Alberta; CJSR is the radio station. I’m not slighting the radio station. I’m not particularly a fan of Bill C-18, as I think we all know, but it seems ludicrous to me that you would specifically enumerate that campus radio stations must have negotiations and leave out campus newspapers. As long as we’re having a bill, it ought to have internal logic.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: That concludes the first part of the meeting. Thank you all for sharing your expectations and concerns.
[English]
Honourable senators, we are continuing our examination of Bill C-18, the online news act.
For our second panel, we are pleased to welcome, from Hebdos Québec, Sylvain Poisson, General Director; and Benoit Chartier, Chairman of the Board of Directors.
As an individual, we have Dwayne Winseck, whom I think we saw on Bill C-11, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication and Director of the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, Carleton University.
[Translation]
Welcome and thank you for joining us. We will begin with the opening statement from Hebdos Québec, followed by Dwayne Winseck. Each group or person will have five minutes for their opening statement, and then we will move on to the question period.
Benoit Chartier, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hebdos Québec: Hello. My name is Benoit Chartier. I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hebdos Québec. With me is Sylvain Poisson, General Director.
Today, we are representing more than 40 owners of independent, for-profit weeklies, including more than a 100 media outlets in Quebec and across Canada.
Nearly all of those print media outlets have an online platform. We represent more than 200 journalists across Quebec, from all those publications. We distribute 10.3 million copies per year throughout our territory, while our digital platforms have 20 million page views and close to 15 million unique visitors per month.
Our association represents most if not all for-profit print media outlets in Quebec. I myself am the owner and publisher of five weeklies and websites, including Le Courrier de Saint‑Hyacinthe, which is the oldest French-language print outlet in Quebec. We have been in business for 170 years. We are the oldest French-language newspaper in North America and I am the third generation in the company’s history.
Hebdos Québec marked its ninetieth anniversary in 2022, in the midst of this unprecedented media crisis and perfect storm, while its members were without the protection of Bill C-18, which we ask you once again today to adopt as soon as possible.
The press is an important bulwark of democracy, and its duty to inform the public with the highest journalistic standards should not be subservient to the hegemony of a few digital giants which are getting rich not only by appropriating the content that we produce at great expense, but which also disseminate a lot of fake news devoid of true journalistic practices and ethics, content that is unverified and inaccurate.
Those digital giants such as Facebook and Google also give free rein to the content aggregators created by the internet.
Those aggregators have multiplied without producing any original content, with little or no investment in journalists and little in the way of rules for ethical content.
The weekly French-language press in Quebec has also played a fundamental role in providing information to many local communities, often in regions with just one local or regional media outlet. In this context, a weakened press, which is at risk of giving up its mission and disappearing after decades in existence, is a serious threat to our democracy.
Weeklies are part of the economic and cultural landscape, some for close to a century, and are essential to the vitality of our democracy. Outside major centres, they are often alone in playing that role and they are as relevant today as they were before the advent of social networks.
Our journalists produce and create original local or regional content for each of our news products, from our respective newsrooms, which employ more than 200 journalists in Quebec.
One could say that there is one big newsroom right across Quebec.
Every day, they deliver high-quality local news and help build a wall against the wave of disinformation, especially in the past few years.
We must remember that, without local news, there are no reports of local or regional achievements, no municipal information, no visibility for local organizations, no public debate about a project or civic initiative, no exposure for local personalities, elected officials or cultural, sports or economic organizations. I will let my colleague Mr. Poisson take it from here.
Sylvain Poisson, General Director, Hebdos Québec: Good evening. According to a survey conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights on behalf of News Media Canada in May 2022, 90% of Canadians consider the survival of local media to be important, 79% of Canadians agree that the digital giants should be required to share their revenues with Canadian media, and 80% of Canadians support the bill being considered today.
To our minds, that is a real cry for help and we are asking you to approve this bill and allow collective bargaining to address the market imbalance between the global digital platforms and the publishers of local and regional media.
In the agreements already concluded between certain publishers and Google or Facebook, we can already see inequality or imbalance with respect to the others.
By controlling the algorithms, these digital giants have in effect cannibalized our revenues without assuming any of the related social or fiscal responsibilities. They have overturned our business model and diminished the real value of the news. Above all, they have been able to attract 80% of the advertising dollars spent by local and regional enterprises and businesses, without any tangible benefits to the communities.
In just a few years, without paying any taxes, these digital giants have eroded the revenues of traditional media which, for decades, have invested time and money in their community, encouraged their businesses and professionals, supported their institutions and served the public interest of their fellow citizens. Google and Meta, among others, benefit and turn a good profit from our content. That content allows them to hold the interest of their users, whose data they collect and process in order to target the advertising that is sold.
That is essentially their business model.
To top it all off, these giants are threatening to block the news in Canada if Bill C-18 is passed.
They have no interest in doing so, and it would also undermine their own business model. These threats are copied and pasted from a similar context in the past, which they ultimately removed so as not to hurt themselves.
In conclusion, we are all responsible for preserving our democracy, protecting the public’s right to information and adopting concrete and permanent measures to keep this outrageous domination by the digital giants in check.
We place our trust in you, senators, and in all parliamentarians, to pass Bill C-18 as quickly as possible.
Thank you for listening.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for sharing that cry for help, Mr. Poisson. Now for our next witness, Dwayne Winseck.
[English]
Dwayne Winseck, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication and Director of the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, Carleton University, as an individual: Thank you very much for having me join you tonight. It’s a pleasure to be here.
The online news act, in my view, has been mauled and mangled by its advocates and critics in equal measure. On one side, the bill has been driven by specious claims that Google and Meta steal the news and have caused the crisis of journalism. On the other side, critics claim that regulating Google and Meta is an assault on the free press and the open internet and these criticisms are ill informed. Claims that the government’s internet policy agenda is akin to authoritarian regimes in China, Russia and North Korea are preposterous.
The online news act is about more than making Google and Meta pay for links to news. It is about creating a fair carriage framework to govern how a select few very large digital platforms index, aggregate, rank and integrate news content into their search, social media, app stores, advertising marketplaces and other emerging products and services.
For instance, news content from The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, CBC, CTV, Toronto Star, et cetera, are featuring Google search results, News Showcase, podcasts and Nest products as branded YouTube channels and as apps in Google Play and its online advertising exchange, the engine of its empire.
Indeed, such services have become an essential part of news organizations’ multi-platform distribution strategies in Canada and around the world. This is one reason why Google and Facebook have struck hundreds of deals with news providers; another is to hold regulatory moves like Bill C-18 at bay. Because these deals are private, however, little is known about them. The act will change this by subjecting them to CRTC review.
These companies’ positions at the crossroads of communication and commerce give them the power to set, change or withdraw the terms of carriage involved in making news available to the public. Those terms influence how news is distributed, promoted, consumed and paid for. They also dictate who owns and controls the audience data generated by such activities — the lifeblood of the digital media economy.
Bill C-18 is being crafted in recognition of the fact that Google, for example, has held a near monopoly in search and controlled half of all app store revenues, mobile operating systems and internet advertising and spending for much of the last decade. Meta’s portfolio of services share of social media traffic has not dipped below 60% for a decade, while its share of online ad revenue climbed to one third of the market in 2021.
Combined, Meta and Google had close to $11 billion in revenue from Canada in 2021. They raked in 80% of the $12.3 billion in online ad revenue and accounted for close to 60% of all ad spending across all media in this country — a sum that is now equal to twice that of the entire broadcast, TV and newspaper sectors combined.
The EU has dealt with these matters by deeming a few very large platforms to have systemic-like characteristics that require a formal regulatory framework, risk-mitigation protocols and public obligations to match their size and influence. Canada’s online news act sets out what some of those obligations will be for the platforms that make news available here. Initially, it will only apply to Google and Meta, but other large news aggregators such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Twitter could be swept in the act in the future.
Google and Meta claim that they would withdraw from carrying news at all rather than comply with the act because news only accounts for a tiny part of their services. However, this position misses the point. These companies derive tremendous benefit from operating in our country. Canada is one of their most lucrative markets in the world. The revenue per user in Canada for Facebook is among its highest alongside the United States, double what it is in Europe, quadruple what it is in Asia and 10 times what it is in the rest of the world. I doubt that they will leave here lightly.
Coupled with their systemic characteristics, they have thereby acquired a public obligation to continue to distribute news because they are major pathways to the news for between a third and half of all Canadians respectively. Indeed, the public value of news in a democracy is a core part of where their systemic influence comes from and one of their core public obligations, as set out in this bill.
Reflecting this, one of the best features of the act, clause 51, bans designated platforms from giving any news service unreasonable advantages or, conversely, subjecting them to undue disadvantages. This soft “must-carry” measure could prevent Google and Meta from pulling the plug on Canadian news media.
The anti-discrimination provisions contemplated by clause 51 could even be improved by including a statutory limitation on the exercise of editorial control over the news services they do distribute, similar to the one found in section 36 of the Telecommunications Act. Together, these provisions could be used to prevent online intermediaries from blocking news in Canada, including their ongoing efforts right now to sabotage the distribution of news in Canada as part of their respective campaigns to kill Bill C-18.
Despite its virtuous intentions, the online news act remains badly flawed. For one, it does nothing to break up Google’s and Meta’s entrenched monopoly power. Their dominance has caused news providers to get a smaller cut of advertising revenue, advertisers to pay higher prices for buying ads and people’s privacy to be made worse than it otherwise would be in a more competitive market.
Second, the act tries to get a bigger slice of the platforms’ dollars and data for Canadian news media rather than curbing the forces of surveillance capitalism. Given that firms like Bell themselves are now in the data-gathering business, Bill C-18 entrenches a status quo of custom ad-driven social media and media.
Third, Canada’s largest media conglomerates — some with revenues multiple times higher than what Google and Facebook earn from their Canadian operations — will likely be the biggest beneficiaries of the bill, and this also strikes a wrong note.
Fourth, Bill C-18’s pitifully weak information-disclosure obligations means that we, the Canadians who are supposed to be the public interest represented by this bill, will be left in the dark in terms of what these deals between platforms and publishers are all about.
Six ways to fix the act and I will quickly wrap this up. Add a clause at the end of paragraph 2(2)(b) to explicitly exclude the provision of what I will call “naked hyperlinks” or URLs.
Second, add specific thresholds based upon reach, market share and capitalization in clause 6, similar to the criteria used in the EU to designate very large online platform services or very large online search engines that are covered by the Digital Services Act or the Digital Markets Act — also in several bills that are before Congress in the U.S.
Beef up the must carry and common carriage measures of clause 51; improve the information-disclosure obligations in clauses 53 to 56; add measures to ensure that the public can participate in CRTC proceedings.
Finally, add personal privacy and data-protection measures for online news audiences. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. I would be interested if you could send us your data on Facebook revenues, power because I have never heard that Canada was a better market than others. It may be because I don’t read enough. If you could send us your sources, I would be really interested in that.
Mr. Winseck: I will do that.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I have a question for Mr. Chartier. Have the weeklies in Quebec signed agreements with Facebook and Google?
Mr. Chartier: None.
The Deputy Chair: Have you tried?
Mr. Chartier: No, we are not interested.
The Deputy Chair: Are you waiting for arbitration?
Mr. Chartier: We are waiting for Bill C-18 to come into force, followed by arbitration.
The Deputy Chair: You do not think you will be able to have proper, balanced negotiations with those two platforms? You prefer arbitration? Why is that?
Mr. Chartier: It depends. We are waiting for the bill to come into force. The second it takes effect, we will sit down with News Media Canada, the 140 newspapers in Quebec and all the other News Media Canada newspapers, of which there are 600 across Canada. We will then negotiate as a single unit, in solidarity.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Simons: Professor Winseck, at the risk of embarrassing myself, what is a “naked hyperlink”?
Mr. Winseck: A naked hyperlink is my provocative label for basically a stripped-down link that you would get in, say, the old 2002 version of the Google search engine, which basically sent you back just a straight-up link without all the sponsored links surrounding it; the sidebars on the side with all the information boxes describing the particular elements that you are looking for and things that are associated with it; the news carousel underneath. Basically just a stripped-down link. So if I flipped a link to you, Senator Simons, on Facebook and said, “hey, go check out my new report or go check out the testimony from somebody who appeared before you tonight or yesterday,” that would be a naked link.
But when you start to embed it in Google News Showcase, in Facebook News tab, in instant articles, which has been discontinued, and you start to build things like the app store around it, that is something else completely.
Senator Simons: Are you suggesting then that — for example, I still write a regular column for Alberta Views magazine. If I post the link to my column on my Facebook page, you don’t think that that should be included? I mean, this is not dissimilar, frankly, from what Google proposed to us, that it should only be included if it is in Showcase or if it is embedded in one of their proprietary windows, if I can put it that way.
Mr. Winseck: Yes. I think that gets us close to where we are at. I would have to see what Google was proposing to you. What I am trying to get away from are two things: First, the idea that just a simple link engages the act, and second, to highlight all of these other ways in which these massive planetary scale digital conglomerates have built a suite or a portfolio of products and services around news and other content.
Senator Simons: I want to return to clause 51. When Google was here before us, they argued that it was too limiting because it would not allow them to curate the news to only send you — they are saying that if the clause as it currently stands were read too literally, they wouldn’t be able to send you, The Wall Street Journal ahead of The Epoch Times, for example. They want to retain the right to be able to send you the most reliable and popular links as opposed to all of them.
You are calling for even more rigorous rules to say that they can’t be prejudicial in the way they show their news. What would you say in response to their claim that that will break the algorithm?
Mr. Winseck: I think they are being disingenuous here in that they are characterizing this rule as if every single news story or piece of information has to be treated exactly the same way. What we already know is that on the internet — telephone companies themselves are already making distinctions between different types of traffic. An email will be treated much differently than a video or a voice call, and things like a cat video will be carried under different terms than a CAT scan. We can make distinctions between broad categories of content and allow them to be handled in ways that meet the technical requirements — that is, the CAT scan is more urgent and needs higher-level quality than does the cat video.
What I’m suggesting here is that similar types of news content that is carried about Google in its search results or in Google News Showcase have to be treated on similar terms. They can’t, for example, single out Canadian news for special abuse because they don’t like a particular law — namely, Bill C-18 — and therefore ban that news. That seems to me to be an unjust form of discrimination. We would have to get into the details, but something along these lines.
[Translation]
Senator Cardozo: My first question is for the representatives from Hebdos Québec.
You made a very strong case, but some people say that this bill supports the dinosaurs, so to speak. Some people argue that you benefit from the publication of your content on their sites. What do you say to that?
Mr. Chartier: Our answer is very simple: They are clearly the ones who benefit from our content, because our content brings a great deal of rigour and credibility to their platforms. Paradoxically, that also leads to a lot of traffic on their platforms, and that traffic yields them a lot of data as to the sex, age, location and so forth of users. These platforms, such as Google and Facebook, earn a great deal of money from user data. The users are there because our content is on their platforms; our content has been developed with a lot of rigour and requires a lot research in reporting, and we have newsrooms with 200 or more journalists across Quebec. They benefit a lot more than we do. That is a very easy excuse they use to try to confuse the matter.
Senator Cardozo: It’s just that the world is changing.
Mr. Chartier: Yes, the world is changing, but we have our platforms as well. We have our own websites, with several million unique visitors to our digital platforms. We are not dinosaurs when it comes to disseminating the news. The problem is the amalgam that prevents us from reaping our clients’ advertising revenues that they are stealing from us, among other things.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I would just add a subquestion here if I could.
[Translation]
We can think whatever we like about the platforms’ argument. Those platforms certainly do benefit from your content, but you also benefit from having your content disseminated on those platforms. It goes both ways, Mr. Chartier; it cannot go just one way.
Can you measure that? You talk about the value of your content, and I understand that, but it can go both ways.
Mr. Chartier: As to it going both ways, one could say that we benefit somewhat from the Facebook and Google platforms, but I think the ratio is 80% to 20%. Those platforms derive 80% of the benefit, while we only get 20%. I do not think it is equal at all. The proof is that our advertising revenues have dropped off, catastrophically so since 2014. Look at the profits and shares of Google and Facebook and you will understand why I say it is in one direction only.
[English]
Senator Cardozo: My other question is for Professor Winseck. There is another view about all of this, certainly a more libertarian, open internet view of your counterpart, Professor Michael Geist, at the other university.
What do you think of their view that this is just a changing world, get over it, and they don’t want the evil state or the CRTC telling you what should get supported and what shouldn’t?
Mr. Winseck: Yes. I think that view might have made a lot of sense before the consolidation, centralization and remaking of the internet in the image of a handful, on a planetary scale, of digital conglomerates like Google, Facebook and Amazon. These entities are now the antithesis of the open internet themselves. They have built these massive walled gardens that have substituted their own proprietary technical code for the former open common code upon which the internet itself was built and celebrated by very interesting people like Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler, Jonathan Zittrain and Barbara van Schewick throughout the late 1990s and up to the mid-2000s.
That has all changed now. If you want to basically plug in to, say, the Apple App Store or Meta’s products, you have to get access to their application programming interface, or API, to their software development kit and go to developer conferences. You are not doing this as the kid in the basement making a web page and speaking to the rest of the world. I think time has passed them by.
Senator Cardozo: The wall garden is very interesting. I didn’t mean to say that Professor Geist said the CRTC was evil, but there are people out there who think it is, just to correct the record. Your wall garden analogy is very important to this committee.
Mr. Winseck: Can I finish on that? I wanted to say something on the state. I think it is very important that we recognize that we live in one of the most democratic countries in the world that actually consistently ranks high on questions of the free press and freedom of speech. We are not living in an authoritarian country, and any slippage between Canada and authoritarian countries I think is preposterous, as I said earlier on.
I am a harsh critic of the CRTC, but I am also the director of a 40-country-strong global media internet concentration project, and I can tell you that the CRTC stacks up quite favourably to other regulators around the world. While I have severe concerns with them, I think they are up to the job, and I know they will take it seriously, especially with the new leadership under way.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Winseck.
Senator Dasko: Thank you. My question is for Professor Winseck. I’m going to play the devil’s advocate, which is dangerous because you know more than I do, so I’m disadvantaged going in this direction. You did mention the vast revenues that these platforms get from Canada.
Mr. Winseck: Yes.
Senator Dasko: It is quite fantastic how much they get. It may be the case, as Meta says, that very little of it comes from the access to news. It could also, let’s say, very well be true that if they take news off, it may not affect their revenues one whit. Is that not correct?
Mr. Winseck: Here is what I would say to that, and this is where I use the phrase in my talk “pathways to the news.”
Regardless of what Meta or Google says, as I said, about a third to half of Canadians use Google and Meta as pathways to the news. So Canadians find it quite important.
Second, the value of news is very hard, like any cultural and information commodity, to establish a price for. This has long been known in all of the cultural industries. The value comes not from any individual discrete piece of information or content but, rather, from a catalogue of goods, whether it is a catalogue of music recordings or of books or of film titles or, now, of the variety of content that is made available through news.
Trying to kind of pluck out news and say, “What is the value of that” — it is the same with the link — you cannot do that.
Senator Dasko: Yes. But if Meta says they will just remove news links from Facebook or whatever, maybe that doesn’t actually affect their bottom line very much, and, in fact, they have come to us and they have said that people don’t like the news on Facebook. I think they are actually getting this from survey data they have done, and I could actually see how they might, in fact, find something like that.
This is part of the package of arguments they bring here to say what, in fact, might be true if they stop the news, it may not make one whit of difference to their bottom line.
You are saying, well, in fact, it will make a difference to the bottom line. But maybe it won’t. Maybe they are actually right in that respect.
Mr. Winseck: What I am saying is that I’m not giving the wheel to Meta to drive the regulatory and legislative agenda in Canada. What I’m saying is that what this bill tries to do, and what we’re seeing in countries around the world, is to establish public obligations that they —
Senator Dasko: Yes, I understand that. Right.
Mr. Winseck: So whether or not they like it, all right, given their size, reach and centrality in Canadians’ lives as significant pathways to news and as meeting places, it is entirely within the right of a democratic government to set out and clarify, in bright letters, what their public obligations are.
Senator Dasko: Before my time is gone, it would seem to me that they would be able to leave the news business, and you are saying they should not be allowed to leave the news business. Do I understand that correctly? You are saying that they should not be allowed to leave the news business?
Mr. Winseck: I would say that they have a public obligation. One thing here —
Senator Dasko: Just a second. You are saying that they might be able to get caught in the undue preference, but we know that it is extremely hard to prove undue preference.
Now I know — maybe I’m arguing against myself, because if you take yourself out of the news — I can’t see how that actually qualifies as undue preference. You say, “Okay, I run a bakery, but I don’t want to make chocolate cakes.” Who is going to force me to make chocolate cake? Maybe I will make something else. You know what I mean? So what you are saying is that the government is going to say that you have to be a purveyor of news?
Mr. Winseck: I am saying that they — yes, the legislation would say it is a public obligation.
I would like to make what I think is a better analogy. When railway regulation first started in this country in 1903, the railways said, “You know what? To hell with this regulation. We’re just not going to service grain and pig farmers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.” Well, that didn’t fly. All right? And they were basically required under the Railway Act to cover pigs, people and grain, each one of them, under non‑discriminatory terms, but they did not have to carry pigs and people under the same terms. They could discriminate between pigs and people. That was just.
Senator Dasko: Right. I have run out of time.
Senator Manning: Thank you to our witnesses.
My first question is for Mr. Winseck. I have heard you argue that today’s crisis in journalism is a part of numerous factors such as the declining newspaper circulation since the early 1970s, debt problems and many others. You have argued that many of these factors predate Google and Facebook and that the government, having fundamentally misdiagnosed the issues, will not solve the current problem with Bill C-18.
I’m wondering what your view is in terms of Bill C-18 actually making things worse. For instance, if Google and Facebook do not participate and start delinking news, will that make it worse for consumers? If the U.S. initiates trade measures against Canada in relation to Bill C-18, could that make things worse? It does not seem like Bill C-18, in your view, is going to make anything better, so I am just trying to figure out how you believe it is going to make things worse.
Mr. Winseck: I am glad that you brought this question up, because as I started out I said that I do not believe that Facebook and Google caused the crisis of journalism. We hear the special dates all the time. We heard it tonight several times. A decade ago revenue started to fall. We heard it from our colleague from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, or CAB, and from elsewhere. This is not the case. The crisis of journalism is multifactorial. It depends on where you want to start. Basically, per capita newspaper circulation begins to decline in the 1980s and 1990s. Revenue peaks around 2005-2006 and then starts to go down afterwards. And why? Because of the global financial crisis. These companies were ill prepared because of consolidation, and they were debt addled exactly as advertising started to plunge and the internet giants began to emerge.
We should not blame them, okay?
But now to get to the second part of your question there, what harm will this bill bring to Canadians? My view is that this bill is not ambitious enough. It doesn’t do enough to undermine or to put sticks in the spokes of the surveillance capitalism machine that has allowed Meta and Google to build the fortresses and the moats that they have and the monopoly power that they have, and we have unleashed a scramble to the bottom that entities like Bell, Telus and Rogers now want to emulate. They do not want to rein in the surveillance capitalism machine; they want to get on board and drive it themselves. The bill, by not addressing these questions, will harm Canadians. Not paying enough attention to the equitable distribution of whatever fruits are borne out of this legislation to smaller, upstart news entities that could enliven our news ecology is a problem. So those are some of the harms.
But I am not worried. The threats that they are making, they are doing this all around the world. You can only threaten to withdraw from so many countries so many times. As I said, Canada is a top-ten market. They are doing this in Australia. They are doing it in Brazil. They’ve done it in Europe. In fact, they did it, as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act were coming down the pike. Well, Europe didn’t blink, and those acts are now in place. It is now unfolding and will fully become operational by early next year. They have not abandoned those markets. We have to basically steel our spines and carry through.
Senator Manning: Thank you.
You mentioned in your answer there a few moments ago that, in your view, the bill does not go far enough. What would you look at as a priority to amend the bill or to add to the bill in some way, shape or form that you would see as an improvement of where we are today? The purpose of Bill C-18, from what I gather, is to improve things, but when I listen to you and your answers, that is not necessarily where we are going. I am wondering where you would see how we could improve the bill.
Mr. Winseck: A lot of attention should be put on the linking part in clause 2 here. I’m not a lawyer, but to add something to basically exempt what I was calling naked links and URLs, to get rid of this idea that this is simply a link tax, okay? That has caused us a lot of damage and sucked up a lot of oxygen. That would be one thing. Clarify that, that naked links are out and the rest of the services are in.
The next thing I would do is go to clause 6 and I would say let’s model ourselves on what they have done in the U.S., through the concept of covered platforms, or in the EU through the concepts of VLOPs — very large online platform services — or VLOSEs — very large online search engines — and use reach, revenue and market cap as clear thresholds so that we know exactly who is in and who is out. Because, again, there’s been all sorts of fear mongering going on by the idea that somehow Canada land might get sucked into this, or some other entity could be sucked in and covered by the bill, because they provide links. I think all that stuff is nonsense, but we could help clarify things there.
Third, I would go with the idea of beefing up the must carry and common carriage measures of clause 51 and learn from that history that goes in section 36 and section 26 of the Telecommunications Act, which is very important. I know you received a brief from the Internet Society, that said, “Common carriage is only applied to general commodities.” That is absolutely not true.
In 1891 it was engaged around a question of personal messaging service. In 1910 it was engaged in a case between Western Associated Press from Winnipeg and CNCP Telecommunications and Great North West Telegraph Company, which was the arm of Western Union in the United States, by our Board of Railway Commissioners.
So I would do that, the privacy stuff and the information disclosure.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Since we have a media representative here as well as someone from Hebdos Québec, I would like to ask them if they agree that Google and Facebook cannot be blamed for the crisis in the media. You were quite harsh in your presentation about the role of these big platforms. You are in crisis. Are Google and Facebook really entirely to blame?
Mr. Chartier: Quite simply, yes.
I don’t think Mr. Winseck is on the ground. We are on the ground. Advertising revenue are a kind of war. We have lost a tremendous amount of advertising revenue, which has been diverted to the big American platforms in San Francisco such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to a lesser extent. Every year in the past seven or eight years, our numbers have been dropping and the advertisers who had been in our newspapers for the past 50 or 60 years are telling us they prefer Facebook or Google because they can target their clients by age, sex, where they live, and their consumption habits.
So the conventional print media and even the digital print media, but not on a secondary platform such as Facebook or Google... All of this has thrown us into a major crisis and we can no longer afford to pay our journalists to write the news.
You don’t have to look too far to explain the media crisis that dates back to 2014 or 2015.
When Mr. Winseck said that this all dates back to the early 1980s... No. In the 1980s and 1990s, newspapers in Quebec — and as a former journalist, you are in a good position to know this — were very profitable companies that generated content with a lot of rigour and research.
Clearly, there has been a major crisis for the past seven to eight years. It is not just in Quebec; advertising revenues have completely shifted to those big platforms right across Canada and around the world. It is robbery. They are taking our clients and our original content without compensating us.
Fortunately, Bill C-18 will fix part of the problem. I am not saying Bill C-18 will fix everything, but it will enable a number of print and digital media outlets right across Canada to breathe easier and get a bit more oxygen.
Furthermore, the Quebec government understood this quite quickly. For a few years now, we have received a tax credit from the Quebec government.
The Deputy Chair: I have to interrupt you. I have taken too much time and I will let my colleagues continue. Thank you for your answer.
[English]
Senator Harder: My question was very much in the theme that you have initiated.
I find, Professor Winseck, that much of your analysis is very provocative and often entertaining, but I can assure you that this bill isn’t designed to break up the surveillance capitalist regime. It has a much more modest objective, and that is to provide a mechanism that is a fair and balanced opportunity for the newspaper business and the news business to negotiate fair compensation for advertising revenue, which is short of the goal that you would wish.
I’d like to explore with Hebdos Québec in more detail your analysis of what will happen if this bill is not put in place as quickly as possible. In other words, we may talk about the philosophy of the surveillance capitalist regime while you are, in fact, going bankrupt.
Could you tell us about the pressures that you are under, in the immediate term?
[Translation]
Mr. Chartier: Yes, we are under a great deal of pressure. When we don’t have the revenue to pay our news staff and all the related expenses, we are under incredible pressure. That has been the case for a few years now. A number of newspapers in Quebec have closed shop and the last thing we want in the regions is to see news deserts. I do not think that Canada and Quebec — I am speaking for Hebdos Québec — want to see news deserts or cities that have had weeklies for 100 years that have to stop publishing. I do not think that is the goal. These pressures are becoming extremely insidious and are putting a lot of stress on newspaper publishers and owners. I own five; my family has been in the media business since 1930 and I know other owners of weeklies all over Quebec who are under tremendous financial pressure because their profit margin has disappeared. Some are seriously wondering whether they should keep publishing their newspaper. Bill C-18 will help us see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Mr. Poisson: There is actually something else that we might be overlooking. With the arrival or possibility of news deserts, with fewer journalists to produce local and regional content, we will inevitably see an increase in the fake news that is already abundant on Google in particular and on Facebook.
This is tragic for a country like Canada, and it could happen everywhere else. It will be inevitable because all the content is mixed up on the social networks, on the digital giants’ platforms. Absolutely none of the content is verified. Everything shows up, from fake news, to tidbits, and comments, anything goes, and I think it is tragic. Moreover, if we listen to their claims, if we are so useless to them, don’t you think that they would have blocked the news long ago?
They made those threats in Australia and elsewhere, and every time they back down. Yet they claim we are entirely useless to them. I think the reality is the exact opposite. It is very simple, and that is absolute proof.
Senator Clement: Yes, I wanted to talk to you about determination and your concerns, and to understand exactly how the bill will really address this reality.
Mr. Poisson: First, the more competent journalists we have, the more real news there will be, news that is checked and researched, the less room there will be for the fake news that is circulating so widely. Inevitably, the bill will contribute to that.
As Mr. Chartier said earlier, the bill will not solve everything, but it includes some important elements, and that’s why it must be passed as soon as possible. Unfortunately, most young people get their news from social media. It is rather tragic.
I am a trainer for a program that fights disinformation in schools, at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels. Unfortunately, not only are they bombarded, but they read a great deal of fake news which is not identified in any way on social media. That is why Bill C-18 is so important, so we can consolidate and increase our staff of journalists. Otherwise, the possibility of news deserts looms, and once local and regional newspapers disappear from communities, there will be absolutely no one left to cover the communities. That applies to all orders of government.
Senator Clement: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Simons: Every time I hear about very large online platforms, I think about the Princess Bride and the “rodents of unusual size.” But how do we figure out a threshold, Professor Winseck? What is the threshold base? When I met with staff from Canadian Heritage, they’ve talked about TikTok as the next company they might like to bring under the umbrella of Bill C-18. But I said, TikTok doesn’t share news links.
How would we set things up so that it was logical? Because Amazon, for example, is a platform of unusual size, but it doesn’t share the news. How do we decide who’s in and who’s out?
Mr. Winseck: The three criteria that I’m used to are reach, revenue and market cap. The EU criteria for reach is 45% of the EU population. I don’t have all the answers, but what I would say is that those people who have come up with answers and institutionalized them like the EU and those who have drafted the U.S. bills and come up with the idea of covered platforms, let’s talk to them and see exactly what they did to pin down those three criteria. Here in Canada we can say 45% on the reach, for sure, Google and Facebook meet that market cap, absolutely. With revenue, about 4 billion and 7 billion each, I would say they absolutely meet that. But we would have to sit down and have a serious conversation about what’s the right number, so we’re not plucking numbers from the air.
Senator Simons: For the folks from Hebdos Québec, we met yesterday with representatives of the National Council of Canadian Muslims who were very concerned about a mainstream, conventional newspaper in Quebec which they allege spreads hate, misinformation and disinformation.
How do we know that just because something looks like a newspaper that it’s reliable, versus a new online product that may, in fact, be more reliable?
[Translation]
Mr. Chartier: That newspaper spreads disinformation and is not part of our association. Our members are all general newspapers that provide general information in the regions of Quebec. They are old and well-known titles. My newspaper, for example, Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, has been in business for 170 years, without missing a week.
These newspapers are very well known and have a lot of credibility. They have been passed down from generation to generation. It is very rare for people to ask if these newspapers are legitimate and if they engage in disinformation.
[English]
Senator Simons: I am referencing.
[Translation]
Mr. Chartier: I am not familiar with that newspaper. Perhaps my colleague is.
The Deputy Chair: In other words, that newspaper is not part of the association.
Mr. Poisson: Of course, first of all, it is not part of the association. Secondly, I am not at all familiar with it and, thirdly, there are organizations in Quebec such as the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec.
Mr. Chartier: The Quebec Press Council.
The Deputy Chair: I have to stop you there, gentlemen, we are out of time. The meeting is over. I would like to thank our witnesses this evening, Mr. Winseck, Mr. Poisson and Mr. Chartier.
(The committee adjourned.)