Juno News - May 19, 2019


Justin Trudeau's flawed media bailout package

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau
Get ready for government ＂approved＂ media outlets Maryam Monsef wants pro-lifers to shut up

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

187.88

Word count

1,022

Sentence count

11


Summary

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

Justin Trudeau has proposed a $600 million tax credit to support Canadian journalism, but there are concerns that it will somehow compromise the media. In this episode, I talk about the problems with the proposed tax credit and offer suggestions on how the government can fix them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 there's been a lot of questions a lot of consternation about Justin Trudeau's media
00:00:13.920 bailout package a 600 million dollar fund that is in the budget implementation act that will go
00:00:20.580 towards supporting Canadian journalism so he says and so some media organizations and
00:00:25.980 associations support but then other people including individual journalists members of
00:00:31.020 the public and politicians are worried that this will somehow compromise the media try to
00:00:36.360 win favor with them buy them out or somewhat influence the media now I share those concerns
00:00:42.600 they are very much legitimate concerns I had a unique opportunity though a few days ago I was
00:00:48.060 asked to head up to the House of Commons Finance Committee to give a presentation to give a witness
00:00:52.800 testimony on what I thought about the legislation I want to share with you some of those remarks that
00:00:58.140 I gave there now philosophically in principle I think the best relationship between government
00:01:03.840 and the media is none not at all and I would not be heading us down this path but I realized that
00:01:09.480 this is in the budget implementation act meaning the Liberals are going to pass it and what they're
00:01:14.460 going to be doing conceivably is at least amending this legislation so I use that opportunity not to
00:01:20.400 say make an argument up against the whole plan for the media bailout but to talk about the biggest
00:01:25.800 problems in it and the ways that they could revise it to minimize any potential damages first of all I
00:01:32.640 made the point to them that they've done a really bad job actually talking about what's in this
00:01:36.780 legislation and what the purpose of it is because a lot of people think and I can't blame them for
00:01:41.380 thinking this that the 600 million is just a pot that Justin Trudeau and his friends are going to dig into and
00:01:46.800 dole out 10 or 20 or 100 million dollars here and there to whichever company they want sort of on a whim
00:01:53.040 What it actually is is they are making some changes to the tax rules to basically create a tax credit
00:02:00.720 So that various different news media outlets new newspapers primarily are able to actually file tax credits on the cost of
00:02:10.120 Employees this is something that already exists in the film industry to a degree
00:02:14.820 It is not just handing out cash grants of money
00:02:18.060 However, there are some major problems with how they're doing this and this was the substance of my remarks that I gave to the committee
00:02:25.500 And my key recommendations surrounded something called an independent journalist panel that they're setting up to determine the criteria
00:02:33.060 for all of this
00:02:35.060 What is the eligibility? Who's going to be eligible? Which organizations? Why and to what degree?
00:02:41.300 Those are the big questions that people have out there right now
00:02:44.740 How they're going to determine this is they're putting together a panel of independent journalists and I said hold on a second
00:02:51.180 I would much rather be judged by 10 complete strangers than I would other people in the media and quite frankly
00:02:56.180 I imagine other people in the media feel the same way about me and that's fine
00:03:00.180 So we're bringing people in the industry and they're going to set the rules of the game
00:03:04.680 I'm a little uncomfortable about this and I'm also of course uncomfortable about the idea that a politician say the prime minister his cabinet ministers would do it as well
00:03:13.100 So how should they work around all of this?
00:03:15.140 Well, as I said that's somewhat similar to the film tax credit that already exists federally and in a bunch of provinces
00:03:21.180 But the film tax credit it's an administrative mechanism. They have these rules
00:03:26.100 They basically say you have to take off out of these ten different boxes
00:03:29.860 You have to take off at least six of them and then you get your film tax credit and you just file your paperwork into the office
00:03:36.060 It's an administrative exercise that you send in to bureaucrats. It's that that simple. That's it
00:03:41.760 And I believe if they're going down the path of this media tax tax credit and they definitely are so it seems they need to make it as
00:03:49.940 Administrative as bureaucratic as hands-off as antiseptic as possible to avoid any sort of any sort of meddling
00:03:59.120 Whether it's from other journalists who are doing a sort of jury of their peers or from people in the government
00:04:05.120 So scrap that panel I say and just do it as a bureaucratic instrument
00:04:09.820 Now the other big recommendation I make they say they're going to bring out a list of qualified Canadian journalism organizations
00:04:17.180 That's what they're calling it and that list may even go online. I say well, hold on a second
00:04:22.460 Compiling a list of people who you're putting online and basically saying these are the I don't know government endorsed media organizations
00:04:29.900 The optics of that are atrocious now
00:04:33.180 They say that I guess these are just the organizations they are deeming eligible for this tax credit and also another change that they're bringing in for for not-for-profit and charitable status
00:04:42.360 But here's the thing you don't need to compile a list of people who are eligible for a tax credit
00:04:48.680 Any tax credit out there that we claim for our families for ourselves when we're filing our taxes
00:04:54.120 You just tick off a little box saying I'm claiming this credit and you either get it or you don't
00:04:58.840 There's no list of all of us who have gotten the the transit tax credit or what have you again
00:05:03.960 It is just a bureaucratic exercise
00:05:06.140 So that was the substance of the remarks that I made to the committee. This is really about minimizing the politicization of this
00:05:12.940 If they're going down this road, it seems like they are and that this legislation will pass
00:05:17.420 So those were the things that I told them the specific pinpoint issues that they've got to do to try and make sure that the damage is as small as possible