In this episode of The Blueprint, Conservative MP Peter Kent talks with me about the government's plan to bail out the old media, and the new media, with a special focus on the government s plan to give tax dollars to a panel that gets to decide which media organizations get what tax dollars.
00:00:00.000This is The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmale, Member
00:00:04.120of Parliament for Halliburton Corps, the Lakes Brock, and this week our topic is the media
00:00:08.060bailout. You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:14.860The cost of living keeps going up, deficits keep going up,
00:00:18.540and he has to raise taxes to pay for his out-of-control spending.
00:00:23.400Talk is cheap, except when this finance minister does it. It's very expensive.
00:00:27.480It's the fact that he punished two strong women for doing the right thing while he moved
00:00:35.000hell and high water to protect his buddies at SNC-Lavalin from facing a day in court.
00:00:43.700Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmale. With
00:00:48.160me is the one and only Peter Kent, Member of Parliament from Thornhill. Welcome. It is
00:00:53.280an honour and pleasure to be doing this in your presence, I've got to tell you.
00:00:58.140Well, and it is exactly the same for me to be in your presence and on the program.
00:01:03.060You're too kind. Well, Peter, thank you so much for joining us here to talk about this very
00:01:09.220important topic, which has been top of mind, I think, for many journalists, but also the Canadian
00:01:15.460public, I think, is starting to tune into this because of how it started out, very small, and
00:01:21.880it simmered and simmered, and Justin Trudeau just made this whole thing a lot worse by, of course,
00:01:27.880appointing Unifor to the panel that gets to decide what media organizations get what tax dollars.
00:01:35.320Absolutely. The government's going to be picking,
00:01:37.420via this panel and by the second look in secret in cabinet, the winners and the losers, but they're
00:01:47.880restricting this funding to the old media, to the media of the last century, and it's print media only.
00:01:56.520Print media with at least two employees working essentially full-time. It denies any funding to
00:02:04.480any of the struggling old media which are trying to establish new digital platforms and come up with
00:02:14.520paywalls with advertising sources of revenue that will help them actually make this transition to
00:02:22.220the new reality of journalism. Right. Those organizations that are trying to monetize what
00:02:28.280they are doing. Exactly. The new way, as you said. And so, yeah, I also want to focus in,
00:02:33.920because you did correctly point out that bloggers are not eligible for this funding. So,
00:02:39.380as you said, the new media. That's right. Most of the newspapers in Canada have been properly
00:02:46.080characterized by some of the foremost journalists, foremost columnists in the country as fossilizing
00:02:54.260dinosaurs. They're losing share value. They're losing subscribers. The phenomena of social media
00:03:02.740social media has completely derailed that original business model, and also to the detriment of the generation of factual,
00:03:12.780honest, balanced news content. But there are up-and-coming, struggling, responsible blogs, digital news platforms in the private sector, at radio stations, television stations,
00:03:29.740local newspapers. And they are trying, they're struggling exactly like the larger newspapers, to make this transition to digital platforms that will continue to serve Canadian news consumers, but also be profitable and sustainable.
00:03:48.740And the problem is that where Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had the good sense to stay out of the bedrooms of the nation,
00:03:58.740his son has wandered very clumsily, ham-handedly, improperly with Canadian tax dollars into the newsrooms of the nation. And this will not end well,
00:04:09.740aside from Unifor, and you cited that quite correctly, Unifor with Jerry Diaz having laid out his plans to be a very partisan player, a very anti-conservative player in the October election,
00:04:24.740is not alone in terms of the shortcoming and the tilt of this panel. Even the Canadian Association of Journalists, another body, have serious reservations.
00:04:35.740They didn't realize they were on the body, they weren't consulted until they heard an announcement that they were one of the eight members of the panel who will decide which Canadian news organizations qualify for money and which won't.
00:04:54.740And they have expressed great concern that the work of this panel is going to be conducted in secret, all panel members will have to sign confidentiality agreements, there will be no disclosure of those news organizations that are denied funding, and none of these meetings will be conducted in public.
00:05:15.740Wow. I don't think the public knows that part.
00:05:20.740Well, no, it has kangaroo court dimensions.
00:05:23.740And it is so like the way this liberal government has selected judges, has selected officers of parliament, done in secret, take it or leave it with the ultimate decisions that come out of the secrecy of cabinet.
00:05:40.740Well, even the bureaucrats working on the fighter jet replacement, the lifetime secrecy ban.
00:05:47.740This seems to be a way of operation for the liberals.
00:05:51.740But I don't expect you to get into the head of a liberal, but for the average Canadian out there listening to the podcast and trying to figure this out, why would they do something like this?
00:06:03.740Why would they create a package, a media bailout package?
00:06:07.740Well, as we have been saying repeatedly in question period and beyond in town halls, Andrew Scheer has been making this point very effectively, that the liberals with flawed legislation, the election legislation, and in a variety of other ways, clearly seem to be attempting to stack the deck in terms of giving
00:06:32.740other parties than the liberals more obstacles to overcome in terms of a free and fair and balanced election campaign.
00:06:44.740Certainly, the country's leading journalists have spoken out again, Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, Chantal Ebert, the list goes on and on and on.
00:06:56.740They have spoken out very forcibly that this is a new problem.
00:07:00.740You cannot have independent journalism when they are dependent on government slush fund cash handouts.
00:07:09.740And a funding that actually in its five year run has absolutely no metrics.
00:07:19.740The finance minister offered no metrics on how to ensure that this money will be effectively spent and that, in fact, these dying elements, these dying newspapers, these dying print news operations,
00:07:34.740will be any better, any more able to survive five years from now than during this period they're getting money.
00:07:40.740Chantal Ebert has suggested that this funding is a poison pill for the independent Canadian news industry.
00:07:49.740Those who have successfully established or are establishing digital platforms are still struggling.
00:08:00.740And there is still the big footing impact of the largest digital newspaper in this country, the largest digital news operation,
00:08:09.740which is the CBC's digital platform funded by almost 20% of its billion dollar plus annual appropriation for parliament.
00:08:19.740So the suggestions that I've made, which would be in place of this cash bailout of old journalism, would be to remove advertising from the CBC's digital platform,
00:08:35.740to contemporise, to remandate the CBC.
00:08:39.740There's nothing about digital news, digital platforms in the CBC's mandate.
00:08:44.740And also to change the Canada Revenue Act so that Canadian advertisers placing ads on American digital platforms, on Facebook, on Google, on Amazon,
00:08:56.740not be entitled to claim that as a tax, as a business tax credit.
00:09:01.740In the same way, and you'll recall the days when there was a Canadian edition of Newsweek, a Canadian edition of Time,
00:09:08.740Advertisers, if they wanted to place advertising in those magazines and get a tax credit, had to be in the Canadian edition.
00:09:18.740The law was changed. Those magazines went away.
00:09:21.740And I believe that $500,000 in Canadian tax credits now given for ads placed on American media, the money's leaving the country,
00:09:31.740should be disallowed from claiming a business tax credit.
00:09:35.740That would put $500,000 back into the hands of those trying to establish a business plan in the digital world for bloggers, for the private sector.
00:10:53.740But when the editor or the publisher or the owner of a failing newspaper is receiving substantial funding from the Canadian government,
00:11:03.740they can directly or indirectly message to the assignment editor in their newsroom what stories to cover, what stories not to cover,
00:11:12.740what political stories and controversies to cover, and how to cover them or not.
00:11:18.740So the accusation, our criticism of the government attempted bailout of the old journalism is not to suggest that journalists in any way can be bought by this funding,
00:11:32.740but the organizations that they work for certainly can.
00:11:37.740We've seen that at the CBC in any number of cases.
00:11:40.740I mean, my career as the anchor of The National in the 1970s was changed because I challenged the then Trudeau government from having Keith Davey.
00:11:51.740He wasn't then a senator, but he was chief of staff in the prime minister's office,
00:11:55.740who was calling the president of the CBC and telling him which events to cover.
00:13:38.740How do Canadians get some accountability?
00:13:41.740Well, at the moment there is no accountability.
00:13:45.740As I said, the members of the panel will be sworn to confidentiality, to secrecy, probably as with the procurement of defence material for their lives.
00:14:03.740There will be no hearings in public, and the names of those companies which are or will be denied funding will not be released.
00:14:17.740So I assume that some companies will apply and will go public with the refusal after the fact.
00:14:25.740But there will not be a clear and open and transparent audit of exactly how this is done, how much money is transferred.
00:14:35.740The election will be upon us before there can be any protest of any misdirected funding or, in the case of the Unifor participation on the panel,
00:14:49.740any blatantly or not so blatant partisan influence on the direction or the approval or disapproval of any of the applicants.
00:15:06.740Does it sometimes make you want to shake your head or sometimes you shake your head,
00:15:10.740you can't believe that some of the issues you had back with Pierre Elliott Trudeau,
00:15:14.740you're kind of, and the interference in the media, you're seeing again with his son, many years after the fact?
00:15:21.740Absolutely. The problem for Canadians today is, one, there's Canadian news consumers,
00:15:33.740Canadian information consumers have much more to do in informing themselves.
00:15:41.740The rise of social media, the sharp fading, the drop in subscriptions, the number of people that actually read a hard copy newspaper,
00:15:52.740the fact that most young people today and many middle aged and older people now get their information from Twitter,
00:16:01.740from social media silos where they find their own political, cultural, perhaps religious biases reflected in isolation are not getting the broader spectrum of information that they really need to make informed decisions as citizens.
00:16:25.740And that's something that will only be addressed in future in schools, I think. Young people have to be educated exactly how to use social media.
00:16:34.740And in government creating an environment for mainstream, for responsible news organizations to survive and prosper with a sustainable business plan in this new digital world.
00:16:50.740We know it's possible. It is possible. The Huffington Post, many others. It is possible. But it needs to be, the playing field needs to be leveled.
00:17:01.740Correct. And when more than a billion dollars is going, for example, to the CBC, and a significant proportion of that, perhaps 20% of that is going to a digital platform,
00:17:13.740a digital platform that was never specifically mandated in the original CBC mandate, it's time for a review, a review of our tax policies,
00:17:24.740a review of the advertising policies on our national public broadcaster. I believe Canada does need a national public broadcaster.
00:17:32.740I believe Canada does not need a semi-private national broadcaster. So I believe with regards to creating a level playing field,
00:17:43.740it would help if the CBC was remandated, decommercialized, and its digitally gathered news be made available to all news media as a national provider of information.
00:17:58.740Well, thank you, Peter Kent, Member of Parliament from Thornhill, for joining us. Very interesting conversation.
00:18:04.740And I appreciated the opportunity to sit down with you on this kind of platform.
00:18:07.740Thank you, Jamie. And pick your brain.
00:18:10.740Thank you very much. I'm Jamie Schmael, your host, Member of Parliament from Halliburton-Corthalakes-Brock.
00:18:14.740This is The Blueprint, Canada's conservative podcast. And remember, low taxes, less governments, more freedom. That's The Blueprint.
00:18:22.740Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's conservative podcast.
00:18:31.740To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada, search for The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.