Juno News - The election could drastically change the media landscape in Canada

00:00:00.000 The election is here and it could drastically change the media landscape here in Canada.

00:00:04.120 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:11.320 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So I have two quick announcements. The first

00:00:16.300 is that this podcast will be a daily podcast. I'm going to be doing this show every single day,

00:00:21.220 Monday to Friday, throughout the campaign for the duration of the election to keep you informed and

00:00:26.180 to let you know what's going on in Canada on election front. So make sure you tune in every

00:00:31.240 day for this podcast. Second, we did our first live election kickoff show last night. It was a great

00:00:37.900 success. We were live for about two and a half hours. We had Andrew Lawton in Ottawa. He was doing

00:00:43.580 reporting for us, breaking it all down. We had special guests, including Danielle Smith, MPs Garnett

00:00:50.080 Jenis, Tom Kmetch, True North has hired an in-house pollster, Hamish Marshall, to help us make sense

00:00:56.020 from an analytical perspective to break down the numbers. And I was in studio with True North

00:01:01.780 contributors, Sue Ann Levy and Anthony Furrier. It was a lot of fun. If you haven't had a chance

00:01:06.120 to watch it, I encourage you to go on over to YouTube or Facebook and check that out. We're

00:01:10.640 going to be doing more of these live podcasts on other big nights throughout the campaign. So

00:01:15.520 we'll be there the night of the English debate as well as on election day. So I hope that you can go

00:01:22.100 and check those out and I hope you enjoy that content. We're really looking forward to what

00:01:26.860 True North is going to be doing throughout this campaign. We've got a lot of scoops, a lot of

00:01:30.720 new reporters working for us, a lot of content that we are working hard to create for you. So very excited

00:01:36.360 about that. And thank you to everyone who has been supporting True North throughout. If you're

00:01:41.040 interested in supporting any of our shows, this podcast, our reporting, I encourage you to head on over

00:01:46.780 to donate.tnc.news where you can learn more about supporting independent journalism in Canada. Now,

00:01:53.580 I noticed a lot of people out there feel a little bit uninspired in this election. They worry that

00:01:58.780 Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole doesn't have what it takes to be Justin Trudeau and that even if he

00:02:04.100 did, perhaps he wouldn't be much better. There is one area, however, where the leaders drastically

00:02:10.480 disagree. And that's in regard to the government's involvement with the media. As you know,

00:02:16.540 journalism in Canada over the last half decade has lost so much of its independence and autonomy.

00:02:22.680 The separation between journalism and government in Canada, or lack thereof, is a serious threat to

00:02:28.600 our country. How on earth can you trust journalists who are being paid by the government? How can you

00:02:35.140 trust them to report the facts or tell the truth to Canadians when their jobs are literally reliant

00:02:40.820 upon funding by the government? That's their business model. They need that money to survive.

00:02:47.280 And it's not just the government that funds them. It's one party in particular, and that's Justin Trudeau's

00:02:52.400 liberals. Trudeau has drastically expanded the role of government in our media in Canada. First,

00:02:59.160 by increasing the budget of the CBC and bankrolling their new venture into online English news.

00:03:04.560 And then, after Trudeau tilted the playing field in favour of CBC, hurting the newspaper and their

00:03:10.620 business models, which were increasingly reliant on subscriptions and getting Canadians to pay for

00:03:15.620 their news, well, he had to turn around and subsidise the newspaper business to the tune of $595 million.

00:03:23.020 And it doesn't even end there. As reported by True North, a government program called the Local

00:03:29.220 Journalism Initiative gave $50 million to legacy media outlets, and the government refused to

00:03:35.200 disclose who they were giving the money to. The initiative was devised by Trudeau in 2018 as

00:03:40.980 basically just yet another bailout. The Department of Canadian Heritage told this to True North in an

00:03:46.600 email. They wrote,

00:03:47.720 So, the government claims they're not even keeping track

00:04:17.580 of who is getting this bailout cash. And that's not the only issue. As reported by Blackhawk's

00:04:23.380 reporter, the Trudeau government also spent $61 million on emergency relief to media companies

00:04:28.840 during the pandemic, and once again refused to disclose who got that cash. This is a quote from

00:04:34.640 the Canadian Minister of Heritage, Stephen Galbeau. He said,

00:04:38.880 These measures demonstrate the government's commitment to both a robust, diverse, and sustainable

00:04:43.500 news ecosystem, and ensuring Canadians can receive the timely information they require from their

00:04:50.060 government. I like how he threw in the word diverse, although I can guarantee that no centre-right or

00:04:56.640 right-wing news organisations were the recipient of any of that cash. Of course, the news outlets that

00:05:02.400 receive funding in these schemes range from centre-left all the way to the fringe far-left of our news

00:05:08.980 political spectrum. You're not going to see any conservative outlets on those lists, even if they

00:05:13.460 were to disclose them, which they are not going to. So we know what we will get if Trudeau wins.

00:05:18.660 If he gets his majority, he'll be emboldened to impose even more restrictions on online speech,

00:05:23.880 like his draconian bills, C-36 and C-10, and he'll probably create lots of additional funding,

00:05:31.080 a lot of more sources, more cash, not just to the CBC, but to the entire legacy media. We know what

00:05:36.800 we're going to get with Trudeau. Aaron O'Toole, by contrast, released his own proposed platform on

00:05:42.260 Monday, and it gives Conservatives and free speech activists something to be hopeful for. As reported

00:05:48.420 by Andrew Lawton at True North, O'Toole's platform includes a review of the CBC's budget, and it also

00:05:54.720 plans to scrap those controversial internet censorship bills proposed by the Liberals. This is from Andrew

00:06:01.620 Lawton's report. Let me read from it. A Conservative government under Aaron O'Toole will evaluate

00:06:06.780 CBC's place in the Canadian media landscape. The Conservative Party of Canada's 2021 platform,

00:06:12.180 Canada's Recovery Plan, lays out a three-pronged plan for CBC. One, giving Radio Canada a distinct

00:06:19.540 legal and administrative structure. Two, to protect CBC Radio and CBC North. And three, to review the

00:06:26.920 mandate of CBC's English, television, news, and online services. So as Lawton is reporting,

00:06:33.380 basically, O'Toole wants to turn CBC more into something like a public interest model like that

00:06:40.040 of PBS in the United States. So Lawton notes that this doesn't go quite as far as O'Toole pledged

00:06:46.980 during his leadership campaign, but it's still stuck in the right direction. This is more from

00:06:51.000 Lawton's report. The pledge is more modest than what O'Toole promised last year during his leadership

00:06:55.620 campaign. O'Toole's leadership platform promised to privatize both CBC News Network and CBC's English

00:07:01.520 television within a first mandate, as well as rollback and ultimately end funding for CBC

00:07:06.860 Digital. Asked Monday morning whether he'd be fulfilling his leadership CBC commitments,

00:07:12.500 O'Toole restated the platform pledge to review the state broadcaster's mandate.

00:07:17.240 I think it's unfair for private sector media outlets that are struggling to transition

00:07:22.820 to digital, that are struggling to gain advertising revenue, to see the state competing against them,

00:07:29.460 particularly in areas of digital where the CBC increases have actually made it harder for the

00:07:36.760 private sector. And then Mr. Trudeau creates a media bailout fund to deal with some of the challenges

00:07:43.280 he's crossed. So it is the time to modernize. It is the time to respect the public interest mandate

00:07:49.300 done by CBC in terms of radio being non-commercial, the service to rural communities, French language

00:07:57.120 services are critical and Indigenous languages are critical as well. But we are going to review

00:08:02.920 where there is competition with the private sector. We need a competitive and successful private sector

00:08:09.800 in all media. And we need to balance the playing field with the American web giants, but without

00:08:15.760 attacking Canadians' liberties on social media. Well, it is no wonder the media are quietly cheering

00:08:22.540 for Trudeau and disingenuously skewing their coverage. This is why they picked up on Trudeau's

00:08:29.000 deliberate election wedge issue, the issue of mandatory vaccines for federally regulated industries

00:08:34.540 and vaccine passports for interprovincial travel. And they spent the entire election kickoff news

00:08:40.560 conferences on Sunday with Erin O'Toole repeating the same question and trying to push that wedge 0.98

00:08:46.740 and push Trudeau's agenda. These journalists want Justin Trudeau to win, clearly. And they're

00:08:52.580 clearly threatened by independent news agencies and journalists who are not on the taxpayer dole

00:08:57.960 and therefore get to retain a certain level of credibility, authenticity, and independence.

00:09:04.200 Just look at the reaction, for instance, to True North's Andrew Lawton getting the first question

00:09:08.980 at Erin O'Toole's Sunday afternoon press conference. First, we see Andrew Coyne, the celebrated

00:09:14.920 journalist who's on CBC and also has a column in the Globe and Mail. He writes,

00:09:20.760 Andrew Lawton gets first question? Seriously? He's so openly bothered by the fact that an independent 0.99

00:09:25.940 journalist gets to go to a press conference and ask a question. Why does that even concern

00:09:30.640 Andrew Coyne? What difference does it make? Who cares who gets the first question? Why is he

00:09:34.840 tweeting about that? Why does that bother him so much? It doesn't really even make sense. He's just

00:09:38.960 openly sort of insecure and dislikes the fact that an independent journalist gets to ask a question.

00:09:43.860 Likewise, this CBC podcaster writes the same thing. He goes, True North gets the first question at the

00:09:49.280 O'Toole presser as if somehow that's news. Look, Andrew Lawton got the first question because he

00:09:55.340 hustled. He worked harder and he was there first. The way that these press conferences work is that

00:10:00.240 the first journalist to go up to the microphone gets the first question. It's based on who's there

00:10:05.520 first. It's not some kind of a hidden agenda to allow an independent reporter to ask the first

00:10:10.860 question. But the mere fact that the legacy media reporters are complaining and reporting on this

00:10:16.980 as news is telling. They're threatened by True North. They treat us like we're the opposition,

00:10:22.200 like there's something scandalous about independent media. The reality is that these journalists clearly

00:10:27.460 see the writing on the wall. CBC's numbers are in free fall because increasingly Canadians simply 1.00

00:10:32.680 aren't interested in what they have to hear and they're not interested in hearing the propaganda

00:10:37.180 from the CBC. And if Justin Trudeau loses his COVID election wager and the Conservatives win this

00:10:42.860 election, the media landscape in Canada will forever change. And it won't be in favor of the boring,

00:10:49.680 stuck-up liberal status quo. It will be in favor of independent and authentic journalists like the

00:10:55.960 ones here at True North. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - August 16, 2021

The election could drastically change the media landscape in Canada

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