Clause-by-clause to start Nov. 18
OTTAWA – The heritage committee today heard from its final witnesses on Bill C-18, the Online News Act, who talked about getting the bill to better address the needs of Indigenous and ethnic media, the possibility of launching a fund instead and about the inclusion of broadcasters.
Jean LaRose (above), president and CEO of Dadan Sivunivut – which was created by APTN in 2019 and oversees APTN’s non-television activities including First People’s Radio – said they support the bill but told the committee it “needs to better reflect the unique place of indigenous news organizations based on Canada’s commitment to implement the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
“At the least, Bill C-18 should place Indigenous news outlets on the same footing as non-Indigenous local news services,” he said. “Intentionally or not, the bill creates a kind of hierarchy of news services and diverse news outlets including those servicing Indigenous communities are placed on a lower tier than other local news services.”
He goes on to explain the bill does not require platforms to include “a significant portion of Indigenous outlets” or require agreements to contribute to sustainability but says should.
Maria Saras-Voutsinas, executive director of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada advocated for owner-operator journalists to count towards the minimum number of journalists required to fall under the bill’s scope so more ethnic media organizations will qualify.
She later said as far as she is aware, none of the organization’s members currently have deals with the major platforms and indicated about 75% of their membership would not qualify if the exclusion of owner-operators as journalists is not fixed.
“We’re at a point right now just because of the lack in funding coming in and advertising revenue where the owner-operators are the journalists and a lot of these are family businesses as well, including my own,” she said.
On the topic of the CBC, Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa argued the national public broadcaster should not be included in the bill: “… to have the CBC effectively now compete with local media, not just for digital ad dollars, but now compete as well for this pot of money I think is harmful at the end of the day,” he told the committee.
Dr. Geist also talked about the possibility of implementing a system where platforms pay into a fund which is then distributed to news organizations instead of passing C-18.
Dr. Taylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communication, Associate Professor, and Director of the Centre for Media Technology and Democracy at McGill University, expressed concerns about this idea though.
“I agree with Professor Geist that there’s an elegance to the fund model… I see a couple of challenges with it here though in actually implementing it,” he said.
“There’s two ways you can put money into a fund – you could create a dedicated tax on platforms,” he said, adding that while he is not a lawyer, he has learned that it “could be very complicated legally to do a dedicated tax on a subset of companies in terms of existing trade agreements.
“So, if that’s not possible then it has to come from general revenue and if you build a fund coming from general revenue then someone somewhere in the government… needs to decide what money to put in, what the criteria for that money being given will be,” Dr. Owen explained. He finds C-18 to be far less intrusive than such a fund would be if implemented.
Randy Kitt, media sector director, Unifor also appeared at the committee today and faced a pretty harsh line of questioning from MP Kevin Waugh, who questioned whether the major broadcasters should be included under the bill.
“Journalism is journalism, whether it’s print, digital or on a podcast or a broadcast,” Kitt said.
“Broadcast is equally affected. Facebook and Google profit from broadcast news just the same as print journalism and so they should also be included. And everybody loves to hate the big telcos, we know that – Bell, Rogers and Quebecor – but they employ a lot of journalists and those journalists tell our stories and so not including them would be a disservice. This is about fixing the entire ecosystem and that includes players big and small.”
Proposed amendments to Bill C-18 are due Nov. 10 by 5 p.m. and the committee will start clause-by-clause review on Nov. 18.
