Goldie Ghamari - March 30, 2023


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


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

147.77551

Word count

847

Sentence count

37


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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.