Good afternoon, Minister, welcome. My question concerns the section in your mandate letter from the Prime Minister which instructs you to work with the Finance Minister to develop business models to support local journalism. The fall economic update announced almost $600 million for the news media industry and a panel of government-appointed journalists to determine eligibility.

Appearing before the Justice Committee of the other place regarding the SNC-Lavalin scandal, former Attorney-General Jody Wilson-Raybould quoted the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Katie Telford as saying:

. . . if Jody is nervous, we would of course line up all kinds of people to write op-eds saying that what she is doing is proper.

Minister, how would you view this type of quote? Does it make you uncomfortable that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff talked about placing op-eds in media outlets at the same time you’re working with Minister Morneau on a media bailout?

Thank you for the question, senator. First, thank you for the kind invitation. I want you to know that it is an absolute honour to be here with you today.

I believe that we are making history today. This is the first time that Question Period in the Senate has been broadcast live.

To your question, senator, I think we can all agree that professional journalism is one of the pillars of our democracy. It plays a very important role and Canadians are entitled to receive independent, non-biased, neutral information. Media outlets are disappearing on a regular basis and disappearing actually very quickly.

We are putting in place a program that will be arm’s length. It will follow various principles but the core principle at the base of all of this is the independence of the media, the independence of journalism and the freedom of the press.

Thank you. I actually ran one of those papers, the Montreal Gazette, which ran into serious financial stress as the market changed.

Just to follow-up, it’s critical that the press in Canada not just remain free from political influence but also be seen to be free from political influence. The government’s bailout of the media, combined with the former Attorney General’s quote from Ms. Telford on op-eds, makes this view extremely difficult.

How do you respond to Canadians who see the quote and then the bailout as evidence that the government is politically interfering in the independence of the media, particularly in an election year?

Thank you again, senator, for the question.

Access to information is a fundamental public good. The information must be factual, credible, neutral and diverse. Journalists play that role when they sometimes ask us difficult questions. Even though we would prefer not to be asked hard questions, journalists ask them to hold us accountable for our actions.

To answer the honourable senator, I believe that the principles of journalistic independence and freedom of the press will underlie everything we do. That is why we will not do that directly. We will do it through a panel of experts who will develop the eligibility criteria and conditions. It will not be me or the government that does that. It will be a panel of experts who will respect the fundamental principle of freedom of the press.

Thank you, senator, for the question. Honourable senators, I can only repeat what I said. Media journalists are disappearing on an almost weekly basis and they play a fundamental role in our country. Some regions are today without any newspapers. They are entitled to know what’s going on at city hall or at the school commission or what is happening with their local representatives. What are their MPs doing? What are their provincial representatives doing?

Through this program, senator, we are putting in place conditions to support an industry that plays a key role, a fundamental role, in our democracy. That is being done in many other countries, by the way. Canada is not inventing the wheel. It is being done in many countries in Europe and across the world. We think we have to support professional journalism so they can ask the tough questions.

As I said in French, sometimes those are not the questions we want to be asked, but we have the responsibility to answer those questions. That’s what we’ll keep doing through journalism that is still alive.