Goldie Ghamari - March 30, 2023


Bill： Supporting Ontario's Community, Rural and Agricultural Newspapers Act, 2023

Topics
Ontario newspapers legislation
Hosted by
Goldie Ghamari
Mentioned
Geoffrey Morris Carleton Glengarry Prescott Russell Caroline Medwell Jeffrey Morris Bill
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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

147.78

Word count

847

Sentence count

37


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Premier Doug Ford speaks in support of the Supporting Ontario's Community, Rural and Agricultural Newspapers Act, which would allow municipalities to post notices in community newspapers that are published once a month or more frequently.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.840 Thank you, Madam Speaker.
00:00:02.720 Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand here today in the Legislature to talk about the
00:00:06.840 Supporting Ontario's Community, Rural and Agricultural Newspapers Act.
00:00:12.320 I first introduced this bill back in 2019.
00:00:16.020 And literally, Madam Speaker, four years ago to this day, on March 28, 2019, I spoke about
00:00:21.600 this in second reading.
00:00:23.680 And so I'm pleased to work with MPP Sarrazin, the fantastic Member of Parliament for Glengarry
00:00:29.800 Prescott Russell in this session to reintroduce this important piece of legislation.
00:00:37.460 Community newspapers bring high-value engagement and trust to all levels of government messaging,
00:00:43.120 and some 82 percent of Ontario citizens read their local community newspapers.
00:00:49.200 Community newspapers like the Manateek Messenger and Ottawa Community Voice in my riding of
00:00:53.480 Carleton are the voice of their community and strong contributors to their local economies.
00:01:01.000 Madam Speaker, this proposed private member's bill has its roots in my riding of Carleton.
00:01:07.080 This issue was originally brought to my attention by Mr. Jeffrey Morris,
00:01:11.800 who owns two local community papers, the Manitic Messenger and the Barhaven Independent.
00:01:18.360 And I'd like to thank Mr. Morris for bringing this issue to my attention
00:01:22.200 all those years ago and for inspiring me to write my first private member's bill about
00:01:27.580 such an important issue.
00:01:30.760 Madam Speaker, community newspapers are vitally important sources of information in Carleton
00:01:35.240 and in other rural and northern communities throughout Ontario.
00:01:38.980 They're also relied upon by many immigrant and new Canadian communities as crucial sources
00:01:44.260 of local, non-traditional English news.
00:01:48.300 The proposed changes will help ensure the viability of these newspapers, enabling them
00:01:52.840 to continue to bring their communities together and to provide residents with crucial local
00:01:57.940 news.
00:01:58.940 Turning now to the content of the Private Members' Bill, municipalities are required
00:02:04.280 to post notice to the public for relevant community works, events, consultations and
00:02:08.820 other things.
00:02:09.820 These notices are often required to be tendered to the public via postings in community papers.
00:02:16.240 The current definition of newspaper in the Legislation Act reads as follows, a provision
00:02:22.280 requiring that publication means a document that is printed in sheet form, published at
00:02:27.680 regular intervals of a week or less, and circulated to the general public, and consists primarily
00:02:34.480 of news of current events of general interest.
00:02:38.160 This definition of a newspaper contained within the Legislation Act 2006 is a standard used
00:02:45.040 by municipalities for the purpose of providing public notice in the following acts. The City
00:02:49.960 of Toronto Act, the Development Charges Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, the Municipal
00:02:55.740 Act, the Ontario Heritage Act, and the Planning Act. Increasingly, community papers, particularly
00:03:01.580 those in northern and rural Ontario, are published on a biweekly or monthly basis because of
00:03:07.340 the disastrous policies made by the previous government, such as increasing red tape,
00:03:12.480 hydro bills, increasing taxes, and increasing their overall bottom line, which has led many
00:03:17.760 of them to look at cost-cutting efforts in order to maintain their small, independently
00:03:22.260 owned businesses. By limiting their publications to biweekly or monthly, municipalities are
00:03:28.200 not then able to post notice in these publications anymore because they do not fit the standard
00:03:33.660 definition of newspaper. So not only are these community papers losing out on a potential
00:03:39.180 source of revenue that would help support local businesses, but it also makes it difficult
00:03:44.120 for municipalities to inform local populations of relevant local news.
00:03:49.060 To fix this problem, this legislation is proposing to amend the definition of newspaper
00:03:56.940 to mean a publication that is published once a month or more frequently.
00:04:02.500 This way, Madam Speaker, with this amendment, we are able to increase the number of community
00:04:08.460 papers that municipalities will be able to post notices in and to communicate with local
00:04:14.400 communities.
00:04:17.140 To clarify, Madam Speaker, this change does not mandate that municipalities must now
00:04:22.200 provide notice in all of these papers.
00:04:24.820 All it does is broaden the scope of potential newspapers.
00:04:29.360 The requirement that municipal notices be posted in newspapers with a publishing frequency
00:04:34.140 of weekly or less has prevented many smaller community papers from being able to post these
00:04:39.720 municipal notices, putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
00:04:44.340 Amending the definition of newspaper to those which have a publishing frequency of a month
00:04:49.300 or less will help even the playing field for many local community newspapers, like the
00:04:54.900 Manatic Messenger and Ottawa Community Voice, and could add to their bottom line.
00:05:00.600 We have received broad support for this private member's bill from key stakeholders in Ontario.
00:05:06.660 And I'd like to thank Caroline Medwell and everyone from the Ontario Community Newspapers
00:05:10.820 Association for their support.
00:05:13.280 I'd like to end my speech by thanking Mr. Geoffrey Morris for bringing this issue to
00:05:20.840 me in the first place.
00:05:22.460 I'd like to thank everyone here today for joining me in this debate.
00:05:26.220 I'd like to thank the member from Glangarry Prescott-Russell
00:05:28.900 for working with me to reintroduce this legislation that I introduced four years ago.
00:05:34.400 And I hope that after listening to my comments,
00:05:36.500 everyone in the House can join me in supporting Ontario's Community, Rural, and Agricultural Newspapers Act.
00:05:43.080 Thank you very much.