Minister Rodriguez to appear at CHPC on C-18
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Earlier today, the House of Commons heritage committee held its third meeting on Bill C-18, the Online News Act.
Canadian Association of Broadcasters
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) reminded us during the meeting that “… foreign digital platforms take more than half of those ad revenues out of Canada’s economy. They are offshored to entities with little connection to Canadians’ values or public interest, and profoundly undermine Canadian news organizations’ ability to support and maintain a robust newsgathering infrastructure.”
Pleasant prelude to future negotiations.
“Search and social platforms may help to direct audiences to online news sites, but they are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. In reality, they are retaining most of the value from user interactions with news sites through their ability to gather, aggregate, re-sell and exploit user data to advertisers through their algorithms,” Kevin Desjardins, CAB’s CEO added.
CHCH
CHCH, a Hamilton TV station, has an interesting story as it was about to go dark under the ownership of Global when it was bought by Channel Zero.
They were questioned by the Liberal MP, Lisa Hepfner, who was a reporter for CHCH for 20 years until her election last year. She saluted her ex-boss, Cal Miller and proceeded to ask him why after a period of intense news broadcasting, the newsroom was cut down in size.
He was very blunt in saying that when he bought CHCH, there was a CRTC subsidy for independent stations, which allowed him to expand the news offering. When that subsidy disappeared, he had to make tough choices. He further highlighted what he said in his opening remarks: “in the past local news was sustained with cross-subsidy from more profitable U.S. programming, the draining of Canadian advertising revenues to U.S. platforms now makes that impossible.”
Thankfully, “the CRTC’s Independent Local News Fund, ILNF, introduced in 2017… provides us with vital support for the production of locally reflective news,” said Greg O’Brien, head of news at CHCH.
Besides O’Brien, my own ex-boss (and Cartt.ca editor emeritus), the star appearance was from Colin McKay, head of public policy and government relations of Google Canada. (Google recently commissioned a controversial survey from Abacus Data, which suggests Canadians want to see changes to C-18.)
To say McKay was welcomed with open arms might be an exaggeration since the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc were after him with a vengeance.
“Our concerns with C-18 are serious. So is our commitment to working with government and the news industry on solutions,” he said.
He mentioned that they would provide proposed amendments later and stated their problems with a number of concepts included in the act in its present form.
“The bottom line for us is that Canadians deserve better than what we see in C-18 — which, to be frank, is simply bad public policy,” he concluded.
Le Devoir
An interesting witness was Brian Myles, from Le Devoir, a respected Montréal daily, which has been profitable for most of the last eight years, partly, it seems, because it had been able to conclude agreements with MSN, Apple, Meta and Google for the sharing of news. One aspect of the deals is the ability to share data, which helped them on the digital side.
Rodriguez to appear
The meeting concluded with a motion by Conservative Marilyn Gladu, a new member of the committee, who proposed to hold another three meetings, including one with the minister, before the committee starts the clause-by-clause process. She was supported by Rachel Thomas, the new heritage critic.
The debate was adjourned before the motion was voted on and the meeting was moved in-camera to deal with issues related to Hockey Canada. We heard Gladu’s motion was defeated.
However, Laura Scaffidi, the minister’s press secretary told Cartt.ca, “Minister Rodriguez is looking forward to appearing in front of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to explain how Bill C-18 will support a strong and independent press in communities across Canada.”
