00:01:33.340But the key part here is not that these countries are trying to interfere and, in many cases, succeeding in interfering in our democracy.
00:01:40.220The issue is that Canadian parliamentarians, MPs, and senators are wittingly, as the report says, wittingly ceding their national pride, their patriotism, their obligation, their oath to Canada.
00:01:52.960They are wittingly throwing that to the curb as they serve the interests of foreign countries.
00:01:58.180Now, this goes far beyond the naivete of, oh, maybe, as I will say a little bit in an interview, I'm sure, this goes far beyond the naivete that some people have of just getting a little extra help from someone with maybe some curious connections that they don't really know about.
00:02:12.700These are people that know what they're doing and are willingly doing it.
00:02:16.840And the report that has come out is protecting these people.
00:02:22.740Ms. Chrystia Freeland is not naming names and had this to say when asked about why the government won't.
00:02:29.460Matters of criminal charges have to be left to law enforcement agencies.
00:02:32.960But since we don't know who these MPs are that have been alleged to help foreign state actors, can you give any guarantee to Canadians that if they are liberals, they will be removed from caucus?
00:02:42.060The guarantee I can give to Canadians is our government takes foreign interference very, very seriously.
00:02:53.740I'm not, I'm just going to say personally, yeah, we and I are very grateful to this committee for its serious and thoughtful work.
00:03:03.060It's an issue about the fight between democracy and authoritarianism.
00:03:08.160And that is absolutely the way that our government does and will continue to approach it.
00:03:15.040And I want to reemphasize, we take very seriously the role of law enforcement.
00:03:24.720Sorry, the question was, are you going to kick people who have been collaborating with foreign governments out of your caucus?
00:03:33.760The answer was, I am very grateful to the committee.
00:04:24.160These are people who are selling out their country.
00:04:27.560Conservative leader Pierre Paulyev has called on the government to name names.
00:04:31.360Mr. Speaker, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians has indicated that members of this House purposely helped hostile foreign actors.
00:04:50.700Canadians have a right to know who and what the information was.
00:04:55.760The National Security Committee indicates there are members of this House that have knowingly worked for foreign hostile governments.
00:05:03.660Canadians have a right to know who and what is the information.
00:05:08.620The Honourable Minister of Public Safety.
00:05:11.000Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition knows very well that no government, including the government of which he was a member, is going to discuss particularities of intelligence information publicly, so he knows better than that.
00:05:24.240But the good news, Mr. Speaker, is if he wanted to get the appropriate security clearance and be able to see the confidential report of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, he would be much more informed than he is now.
00:05:39.100And we would invite him to do so, so he wouldn't stand up and cast aspersions on the floor of the House of Commons without any information whatsoever.
00:07:16.120That's why I requested a classified briefing.
00:07:18.460I will be receiving that briefing and looking at that information to confirm that.
00:07:22.540I'm inclined to agree with Jagmeet Singh, by the way.
00:07:26.340I actually don't think any new Democrat members of Parliament are implicated in this.
00:07:29.980Not because I think that they're the most incredibly patriotic people, but because if you are trying to interfere in democracy, I feel that going after a new Democrat member of Parliament is like the lowest return on investment.
00:07:41.320Like they have no power, they're irrelevant.
00:07:43.540So the idea of like you would get fired as a foreign agent at the Chinese embassy, I think, if you like deployed your capital to win over, you know, Nikki Ashton or Charlie Angus or something like that, because that is not going to help you, you know, take over Canada.
00:07:58.680The point is that you have now a cross-partisan condemnation of the way the government is handling this.
00:08:03.320And I think the reason the Liberals are not disclosing this is because they know the bulk, if not all, of the names on that list are from within their own caucus.
00:08:12.400But it's not even that they're not committing to naming names.
00:08:15.640They're not even committing to expelling people who have been acting for foreign governments from their caucus if they are Liberals.
00:08:25.100And now they're saying, oh, it's the police that have to look after it.
00:08:27.660Now, the RCMP said this very vague, weird roundabout statement saying, yes, you know, there are some accusations that have to do with democratic institutions and we're on it.
00:08:37.820And yeah, the RCMP, they're going to be on it like they were on SNC-Lavalin.
00:08:41.320They're going to be on it like they were on all of these other things.
00:08:45.800The takeaway from all of this is that things have gotten far worse in this country than I think we even realized.
00:08:52.300And then even a lot of the reporting we saw on this from Global News and from the Globe and Mail suggested the gentleman I wanted to bring in on this is Sam Cooper, who has been one of the actually the biggest and most prominent and prolific journalist on this issue since the get go on this.
00:09:09.240Formerly my colleague at Global News and now he's doing great work over at the Bureau.
00:09:19.140Now, obviously, none of these revelations are good for the country.
00:09:22.420But there must be a bit of indication on your part, because I know you were facing when you were reporting on this many months ago, criticism and people downplaying it.
00:09:30.960And here we are finding, no, it was actually worse than a lot of people thought.
00:10:11.080There should be, you know, criminal investigations underway.
00:10:14.960And yet the first thing I'd like to stress is, you know, the lawsuits, lawyers, politicians, business people behind them can stand in the way of our democracy.
00:10:25.240So I think that's an important issue for Canadians to understand.
00:10:28.780The word that everyone seized on from the NCICOP report, and I think justifiably so, was wittingly.
00:10:34.820So these are not people that were too naive to realize that maybe a busload of volunteers that showed up on their campaign might have been involved in some foreign state.
00:10:44.320These are people who knowingly were collaborating.
00:10:47.640And does that, I mean, because that's the part that I think is so very damaging here.
00:10:52.280These are people that, as again, this report, this cross-partisan report shows, were actively working against Canada, while in some cases being parliamentarians.
00:11:04.000And, you know, to unpack the thinking and the reporting, this is why Canadian officials had to risk their careers, risk their freedoms,
00:11:13.600because they could face prosecutions for coming to me with classified information, both in document form and verbally,
00:11:23.140saying that the government at the highest levels, not just Justin Trudeau, but this has been happening for a while.
00:11:29.620Certainly, in my view, some politicians are more implicated than others.
00:11:33.300But the Liberal Party right now faces, you know, the responsibility that they've been warned for years, that their party especially was implicated.
00:12:37.420It's the unescapable inference that you're going to be doing something back.
00:12:42.380And that is being used as a puppet in the legislature.
00:12:45.140That's why, you know, Canadians are freshly shocked with these new revelations.
00:12:49.020I was sharing some clips earlier in the show of, you know, now the NDP and Conservatives saying release the names and the Liberals hemming and hawing about it.
00:12:57.360But there's a lot of buck passing going on.
00:12:59.420You have the committee saying, no, no, no, we aren't able to release names.
00:13:02.920You've got the government now saying, no, no, no, police have to deal with this.
00:13:06.400Not, I mean, who has the authority to do this?
00:13:09.060Who has the authority to just release the names?
00:13:11.120Unfortunately, you know, I don't believe, barring another set of leaks, it's quite possible that names won't be released.
00:13:20.360Or we may be into a situation with what happened with the Winnipeg Lab, where people quite clearly could see something very bad was happening within the lab.
00:13:29.820The opposition parties were saying to the government, you know, release the details.
00:13:36.760And so there was a compromise, you know, legally, there was a special little black box created where certain information was released.
00:13:45.740And, you know, then CSIS documents came out with some names, of course, redacted, but Canadians found more.
00:13:53.700Maybe that's the situation that occurred here.
00:13:55.680But we're in a real Gordian knot, because as my reporting has revealed from November 2022, Canada lacks the laws to really prosecute politically sensitive cases.
00:14:09.180And yet, as I've reported for the Bureau this week, you know, maybe the most powerful finding of that NSICOP report is they said Justin Trudeau was told in 2019 by NSICOP, you need to follow Australia, get a registry, work on the CSIS Act, the RCMP Act, so we can counter this deeply damaging and increasing foreign interference.
00:14:31.480And NSICOP said this week, Justin Trudeau didn't act and it's a serious failure that could harm Canada for years.
00:14:40.040So, you know, if you ask me, to me, it's the names are important, but what's more important is we need laws to empower the RCMP and CSIS.
00:14:48.380We need an independent anti-corruption agency that could actually prosecute people working for foreign governments.
00:14:54.240And, you know, Canadians should be saying, give us the names, but give us the laws.
00:14:59.620Yeah, I think that's an important point here, because sure, they could be kicked out of caucus conceivably, or maybe they don't run for re-election.
00:15:05.700But that is not enough of a consequence for someone who is effectively, to be blunt here, selling out their country or betraying their country in this way.
00:15:14.820And I wanted to ask you about some of those countries here, because obviously the report names the ones that we all talk about in the context of foreign interference often, specifically China, Iran and India.
00:15:24.600But there are other countries that are implicated that are not named, that are redacted.
00:15:29.180And are these just open secrets in the community?
00:15:33.400Why are they being given the benefit of protection here by the committee, in your view?
00:15:37.900Well, in my view, you know, my reporting, including accessing the 2019 classified Canadian eyes only NSI cop report that told Mr. Trudeau, you need to do something about these countries.
00:15:49.720After I reported that India was named very prominently in that 2019 document, now, you know, Justice Hoag's commission, following my reporting at the Bureau, had to say, give us the information on India.
00:16:02.940So I would say, without, you know, patting my back too much, my work made India be exposed in that way.
00:16:09.820You know, before people were saying Russia is the big actor.
00:16:14.140So to your question, who are those redacted countries, you know, if I'm looking at the 2019 precedent document from NSI cop, you know, a major report on foreign interference, I would say Pakistan, very likely the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and perhaps, you know, some other Middle Eastern oriented states, quite possibly Iran would be named in that document.
00:16:38.400And why is that important, you know, Andrew, for people that follow the Bureau, they know, I've been reporting, it hasn't made its way to other media yet, very much, I don't think, that organized crime is centrally used as a tool by these hostile states to attack our diasporas that came to Canada for freedoms, that want to vote for who they'd like to vote, but they're being intimidated to vote for what, you know, thug, hostile state countries want them to do in Canada.
00:17:06.180So why do you think the committee is protecting those countries then I mean, because if you really delve into it, a lot of the time identifying the country helps you identify the person involved and you can because you know, a lot of the times, which politicians have connections to which diaspora communities and that's not to say that there's there's a necessary guilt there.
00:17:28.020But I also wonder if they're hiding the countries because doing so really obscures the people a bit more.
00:17:34.900Yeah, you know, there's all kinds of, you know, obfuscation or dark reasons that could be going on.
00:17:41.260I'm just speculating today because it doesn't make sense to me.
00:17:44.840Look, if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in that document, why at this point, why are you hiding that from the Canadian people?
00:17:51.480I don't know that, but it's quite possible.
00:17:54.680I'm told by my sources that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been very active in a dangerous way, you know, in, you know, sending agents into Canada.
00:18:04.260So that, you know, brings up the case of why didn't Canadians know for for for a few years that Indian agents using organized crime or Chinese agents using organized crime were targeting our diasporas.
00:18:16.180So why aren't these other countries that are, you know, less powerful, less involved in the diasporas than China and India named?
00:18:24.780Who knows, you know, if I have to guess right now and don't hold me to it, you know, maybe there are trade issues that would make sense.
00:18:39.100So if you hear construction above me, it was a very inopportune timing to you and the listeners.
00:18:43.380One of the things that jumps out to me and I go back to your point about lacking the means to prosecute these things is that we have an election coming up in a little over a year and sure, maybe public awareness about this will help a little bit, you know, politicians will be a little bit more on guard.
00:19:03.700But if you haven't actually changed the legal mechanisms to what you were saying, Sam, we aren't really in any better position to protect against this moving forward, are we?
00:19:15.140Again, you know, let me stress very clearly.
00:19:17.780When the Bureau launched last June, my very first story said Justin Trudeau's administration has been firmly warned by NSICOP, recommended.
00:19:27.480You need a foreign agent registry like Australia, the UK now, America has.
00:19:33.080You need to empower the RCMP to go after, you know, people involved, whether they're politicians or proxies for other states.
00:19:41.560What came out of that NSICOP report this week is that, sure, we know these are deeply concerning cases.
00:19:50.140Politicians allegedly knowingly receiving money laundering like transactions, acting for other governments once they receive campaign support.
00:19:58.200So these should be crimes in a real, you know, let me just not let's don't sugarcoat it.
00:20:03.300These are crimes in a real modern state, but not in Canada.
00:20:06.520So we're not in a better position at all.
00:20:08.980And again, this isn't partisan at all.
00:20:10.840The evidence is Justin Trudeau should have acted and he didn't.
00:20:53.960Thanks again to Sam Cooper for coming on the show.
00:20:57.200And again, just to drive home the point I made earlier about how the Liberal government is not taking this seriously.
00:21:03.280This morning, this was all being discussed at committee.
00:21:06.260And I chanced upon this tweet from Mercedes Stevenson, a great journalist who shares that Jennifer O'Connell,
00:21:14.400the Liberal member of Parliament, was telling Conservatives who are concerned about this, quote,
00:21:19.420Now, this is a heckle, so I don't know if the quality of the clip is good enough to share with you here.
00:21:28.620But the reality is, this is, I think, the dismissive attitude we're seeing about something that Canadians should be taking incredibly, incredibly seriously.
00:21:38.320I want to get some political response to this.
00:21:40.240We'll also talk about this capital gains tax hike that doesn't seem to be materializing.
00:21:45.400Adam Chambers, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Simcoe North, joins me now.
00:22:20.720We have had a government who's clearly not been taking this as seriously as it should have been.
00:22:30.280And I think people like Sam Cooper and others at The Globe that have been following this very, very closely
00:22:37.080have really pushed the government and exposed many of the stories.
00:22:41.080And, in fact, we wouldn't have these stories had some of these leaks not happened.
00:22:46.240And, you know, people like Sam, who've done the work, have really been vindicated with what we've seen in this report.
00:22:51.220Now, Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has, alongside Jagmeet Singh, I should point out, called on the government to release the names.
00:22:59.180Do you have any tools available as an opposition party to actually make the government do this?
00:23:04.280And is that something you'll be continuing to hammer in the, you know, remaining couple of weeks you have in the House of Commons
00:23:10.120before the summer session, before the session ends for summer?
00:23:14.060Well, I suspect that all opposition parties will canvas all of the tools that they have to encourage the government to release the names.
00:23:21.680But let's be honest, this is a government who took a former speaker to court to prevent releasing information with respect to the Winnipeg lab docs.
00:23:29.680So, you know, I think, you know, we will do what we can.
00:23:33.680But clearly, as you mentioned in the lead in here, the Liberal government and some of its members aren't really treating this with the level of seriousness it deserves.
00:23:42.320I think Canadians expect some more information on this.
00:23:46.620And let's remember, the government who had all of the information was the one who was saying for multiple months that an inquiry wasn't needed.
00:23:57.340They were the ones who were dragged into the inquiry by all opposition parties.
00:24:54.740At least what we need is more information.
00:24:57.140And I think then we should appropriately deal with those individuals based on the seriousness of what is alleged to have occurred.
00:25:04.900What I had originally wanted to get you on the show about, you had asked Chrystia Freeland earlier this week in the House of Commons about this impending.
00:25:12.800So I don't even know if it is impending anymore.
00:25:14.960It's supposed to be an impending capital gains tax hike.
00:25:17.920This was originally promised by the Liberals in the budget going back to, I think, April 16th.
00:25:24.340And it's supposed to come into effect in less than three weeks.
00:25:28.960And the government has still not implemented any legislation to this effect.
00:25:33.780And to the contrary, they've said it's coming.
00:25:35.960So just what on earth is happening here?
00:26:01.540So normally, tax changes are implemented immediately.
00:26:04.880But the government said it wanted to give people time to plan and set an implementation date of June 25th.
00:26:12.720Now, they're being a little too cute by half.
00:26:16.080The reason why the government's giving people time to plan is because it will force a lot of transactions to occur between the budget and June 25th,
00:26:23.400which will trigger a lot of revenues because people will pay taxes after they dispose assets.
00:26:29.080But the truth is, when a government introduces or makes mentions of a tax change, that change does take effect.
00:26:36.800So CRA will still execute or implement this tax change on June 25th, even without legislation.
00:26:47.200But I think, and conservatives have said, I mean, this is just patently unfair for individuals to expect to arrange their affairs
00:26:53.940or sell assets with no legislation or no rules in place.
00:26:59.160It's only a matter of proper process that they have legislation before they may choose to decide to sell assets.
00:27:08.680For example, we're hearing a number of rumors that the government's considering some carve-outs.
00:27:13.160Carve-outs for physicians, maybe some carve-outs for those in the real estate sector,
00:27:17.760maybe carve-outs for families or farmers.
00:27:59.720So they may be doing some, you know, mass sell-off of assets in that, this interregnum period without realizing that, oh, they didn't need to.
00:28:07.960I mean, it's quite, it would be quite frustrating, I could imagine, for somebody to go through the process, sell some assets,
00:28:16.900all of a sudden to find out that the government has changed its mind.
00:28:20.280And it's not like that hasn't happened before.
00:28:22.540The most recent example was what many have called the bear trust scandal, which was the government requiring, CRA requiring a number of filings for those who have bear trust,
00:28:33.200only to reverse the decision on the day before the filings were due.
00:28:38.840And we found out that over 40,000 people, 43,000 individuals filed the paperwork for the bear trust at an average,
00:28:48.700most people paid an average of anywhere between $500 and $1,000 per filing.
00:28:54.320So a complete boondoggle by the government that created a ton of additional complexity and compliance costs for taxpayers to then realize they didn't have to do it in the first place.
00:29:05.200So what will happen with the capital gains?
00:29:09.340And Minister Freeland's response in the House indicates that the legislation won't be finalized, it won't be tabled, maybe we'll get a ways and means motion,
00:29:18.700maybe they'll just publish draft legislation on the finance website, but there's no way they will have a bill tabled and passed before June 25th.
00:29:28.160Just to go back to your objection here, is it just the process you take issue with, or is it the capital gains tax increase itself?
00:29:35.180Like, will you and the Conservatives vote against that when it comes?
00:29:39.100Well, it's hard to say you're going to vote for or against a bill you haven't seen yet.
00:29:44.360So if they table a ways and means motion within a couple of weeks before we go, I think we'll have an opportunity to go through it.
00:29:50.020But let's think about why they are bringing in this tax increase in the first place.
00:29:54.220Well, the reason the government needs this revenue is because the spending has just continued to grow and grow out of control.
00:30:02.400So if you were to not do the spending, which we have impressed upon the government for the last number of years, you know, slow down your spending growth, rein in some of these programs,
00:30:10.860you don't have to keep adding spending every single year.
00:30:13.260If you took that spending pressure away, you wouldn't have the pressure to be raising taxes.
00:30:20.320But if it were presented without carve-outs the way it initially was in the budget, would you support or oppose it?
00:33:20.640I mean, it's a crazy system that we're in that we assume that market failures are always bad.
00:33:26.980And I understand that, you know, there's some sentimentality to this, right?
00:33:31.640You know, you're always concerned that people are going to lose their jobs and that, you know, you don't want people to go without their professions.
00:33:38.960But on the other hand, if nobody's watching, if nobody's consuming your product, what is the point of it?
00:33:45.260You know, certainly there is a public service aspect of the media, but there is also a business aspect of it.
00:33:53.000And if it can't make the business case, then, you know, perhaps we allow for industries to go under and certain corporations to go under.
00:35:01.880They are for-profit commercial enterprises.
00:35:04.380The number of non-profit media organizations in Canada is very- I mean, there are lots that don't turn a profit, but the number that are registered non-profits is very small.
00:35:13.240So it is especially weird through that lens.
00:35:15.480These are businesses that seem to have this special place carved out in people's hearts, in the government's heart.
00:35:23.140And I certainly wouldn't be someone to say we need more non-profits or more government-
00:35:28.640There's a difference between non-profits and government-supported, but I don't think we need more government-supported media.
00:35:35.960You know, we have a CBC and it has its own problems.
00:35:40.000And one of the largest concerns of that problem is that they don't have to innovate.
00:35:44.920They've never really had to rely on their audiences.
00:35:46.860And again, ratings, they sort of snub their nose at advertising and audience sizes, saying, you know, well, we want to give people what they need rather than necessarily what they want.
00:35:59.320Well, you can't be force-feeding it to people, right?
00:36:02.560As their audiences are declining, we just keep on giving them more money.
00:36:33.680And, you know, the person cranking out, usually a man cranking out this weekly newspaper, making a few bucks.
00:36:39.360But then with innovation, with modernization, with commercialization, you got the, you got bigger newspapers, you got the newspaper chains.
00:36:48.480And that's where, you know, you know, the Pulitzer and Randolph Hearst and all those great names of journalism made their millions because they were able to sell a product, both, you know, like their penny sheets.
00:37:03.480But because there was such a high volume of public consuming it, they actually made their main money off of advertising.
00:37:10.520And that model worked great until about the 1980s.
00:37:12.900And then you saw in the 1980s the whole business starting to be really, you know, we were concerned about concentration of ownership then, you know, that there were too few chains owned by too few people.
00:37:24.200We had the Kent Commission, and they actually recommended government intervention.
00:37:28.980The governor of the day said, no, we'll pass.
00:37:30.800We don't think that it is right for the government to be propping up the media, that this is freedom of speech.
00:37:37.900And it's not a good idea for them to be entering into the private sector.
00:37:42.060And so now we're in a really bizarre situation where our current government thinks that that is the only way to move forward.
00:37:48.260They are so blindsided by the need that they're going to save journalism with subsidies that they can't imagine that people can actually innovate with, you know.
00:37:57.320So, you know, so if news organizations fall and you allow that to happen, it does open up the market for entrance because people are always going to be consuming news.
00:38:09.120They just don't necessarily like the information they're getting right now.
00:38:12.060So we have now a couple of years of data on this that since the government put a few measures in place, there are things like the local journalism initiative.
00:38:22.340There was the big $580 million fund, which I think was increased.
00:38:27.460You have the figure at $885 million overall that's gone into journalism in the last five years, which doesn't count money to CBC, which is, you know, $1.3, $1.4 billion a year.
00:39:04.480You know, it certainly allowed for some corporations to give their executives bonuses.
00:39:09.900But in terms of actually saving journalists' positions, no.
00:39:13.400And I see increasingly, you know, when I go online, I see increasingly a number of journalists who have left the industry either by choice or by edict.
00:39:21.060And they're doing other things, and they're opening other news organizations.
00:39:24.880Sometimes they're going into the private sector.
00:39:26.540But certainly, we've seen job losses rather than any, even, you could say it would be successful if there were no journalists who lost a job for the last three years.
00:40:16.060I mean, some people in the media, and specifically the newspaper industry, say this is all a sign that they need to do more, that it's not enough.
00:40:22.700But I think most people should hopefully take your view on this, which is, okay, let's actually pull this back and start talking about the market forces.
00:40:30.300Because right now, the incentive to reinvent, the incentive to find a way forward for traditional media just hasn't been there.
00:40:37.700The way they stem, the way they adapt to these things is just by cutting and cutting and cutting.
00:40:43.500And that doesn't really deal with the core problem.
00:41:16.440And they certainly are excited about getting more government money.
00:41:20.360But the problem with getting more government money is that you don't have that hunger at the doorstep, sort of propelling you to try new things.
00:41:28.020And then there's that whole other disaster that the government does with their online news act, and they're trying to pressure the big tech giants.
00:41:38.540I mean, there's a lot of money still to be made in the news industry.
00:41:42.140It's just not being made by the people that the government wants to make money.
00:41:45.960But certainly Google and YouTube and all these new startups have made billions of dollars in the news industry.
00:41:53.600And the argument, and at one point, a few years ago, I kind of, I felt, I sort of got sucked into this argument myself where it's like, oh, the big tech giants aren't paying their fair share.
00:42:06.600They're using traditional media outlets as clickbait, and they're just writing off their coattails.
00:42:13.900And so they should be paying them something for their content.
00:42:16.240And I see that in terms of intellectual property, you know, they can't just scrape the data off of traditional sites.
00:42:24.860And there were some private deals being made.
00:42:27.120But then the government sticks its oar in and say, we're going to force you to pay a certain amount.
00:42:32.620We're going to negotiate with you, which meant that a lot of those private deals went sideways.
00:42:37.560And it resulted in Canadians not even being able to access news on social media sites.
00:42:42.580And a lot of those traditional news medias were inhibited saying, well, we aren't getting people to dial in through, you know, traditional cable or, you know, over the air.
00:42:51.360But we can get people to watch our Facebook live streams or our Twitter streams.
00:42:55.440And Twitter and Facebook to this day don't allow media content.
00:42:59.460We don't even allow us to share news stories amongst our friends on that platform anymore.
00:43:04.740So they've made it that much more difficult for startups to begin.
00:43:08.940I mean, I live in a small town in southern Ontario, and our newspaper had folded a few years back.
00:43:14.820But there were some enterprising people in town that said, no, we still need a community paper.
00:43:21.140And that online news act actually prevents that company from sharing local news and really the only venue that was successful for them.
00:43:31.660So government not only subsidizes the wrong things, tries to pick the wrong winners and losers, but in addition to that, they get in the way of innovators.
00:43:41.280So it's not saving jobs, which we've discussed.
00:43:44.260And you also make another point, Lydia, which I think is incredibly important, which is that it's not bringing audiences back.
00:43:49.420Now, this is, I think, incredibly important because C-18, the online news act notwithstanding, it's not hard to access news.
00:43:58.360You know, it's not even like you need to be in range of the radio now.
00:44:00.980In most cases, you can listen to the, you know, listen to the website cast on newspapers.
00:44:19.860I suspect just the bombardment in popular culture.
00:44:22.720You have more options now, so you don't need to be as reliant on one individual newspaper or one individual radio station as you used to be.
00:44:30.180But news companies should be looking at that question more than just the funding equation.
00:44:36.220They need to be providing the content that people are seeking.
00:44:39.160And, you know, I consume a lot of news and I do subscribe to different news organizations.
00:44:45.320And I do find it frustrating, and this is always something that academics complain about, is that the news is so homogeneous, right, that everyone's covering the same story with the same lens.
00:44:55.260And I spent decades comparing, you know, different news organizations on how they covered the main stories.
00:45:01.660And, you know, there are some small differences.
00:45:04.500Let's say if you compare CBC and CTV, you know, CBC is more left of center.
00:45:09.880CTV tends to be a little bit more central.
00:45:11.820I wouldn't say they were right wing by any stretch.
00:45:13.780But that's one of the problems, is that Canadians aren't willing to just accept what traditional sort of mainstream, that liberal left of center viewpoint, that the position that organizations are doing, that they're always giving you the same messaging, is falling short.
00:45:37.200They want to hear not just the same headlines, you know, like if you listen to, say, and I've been traveling this week, so I've been listening to a lot of, you know, CBC, because that's the only thing I've been getting.
00:45:47.760And the stories that they cover aren't necessarily the stories that I'm interested in, and they're always sort of from that same lens.
00:45:53.520So, yeah, I then go on Twitter, and I go to other news organizations to get different points of view, because people, you know, it's not that this is sort of a classic adage of journalism.
00:46:05.540It's not that journalism tells you what to think, but they tell you what to think about.
00:46:11.600And I think that's where people are saying, you know what, we're kind of tired of you telling us this type of messaging to think about.