SARA BANNERMAN: Okay, why don't we get started.
Welcome to the Communication and Cultural Policy in the Age of the Platform Conference.
I want to begin by acknowledging that we meet on the traditional territories
where Mcmaster stands on the traditional territories of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations within the lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon wampum agreement.
We might also consider that we meet over unseated airwaves and over crossland cables that
an infrastructure that as Jesse Wente pointed out, on Monday is not equally accessible to all Indigenous peoples, and I think we can also keep in mind throughout the conference
Of the roles that communication and cultural policy have played, and they do play in creating nations and creating cultural hierarchies.
And Jesse Wente, I think, has asked us to - invited us to consider how we might further the goals of narrative sovereignty for indigenous peoples.
I'm Sarah Bannermanm, I'm Canada research Chair of Communication Policy and Governance at mcmaster university.
I'm one of the organizers of this conference with Tamara Shepherd at the University of Calgary and David Ogborn with me at McMaster
along with a whole host of other people who have played a role - in many different roles in supporting this conference, and thanks to all of them.
I want to particularly thank the Socrates project funded through the generous donation of Chancellor Emeritus Red Wilson for its support of our keynote speakers at this conference,
along with a number of other organizations, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The Faculty of Humanities, the Center for Network Media and Performance.
The University of Calgary faculty of Arts, the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster.
The Indigenous Studies program at McMaster, McMaster School of the Arts, and the Department of Political Science.
This program is being recorded and will only be shared according to participants' agreements with us.
It's now my pleasure to introduce Edward Greenspon, the President and CEO of the public policy forum.
Ed was the founding editor of The Globe and Mail.com, a former editor in chief of the globe and mail.
He's held numerous different prominent roles in Canadian media, he's the co-author of two books on Canadian politics.
And in the last number of years, the public policy Forum has put out a number of important and sometimes controversial reports,
making recommendations for media and social media reform, including their 2017 shattered mirror report,
the 2018 democracy divided report about countering disinformation and hate in the digital public sphere
and the most recent PPF Canadian Commission on democratic expression. Their report Harms Reduction, a program for - six-step program for protecting democratic expression online.
And I think that it's it's nice today that Ed has offered to kind of format this as a discussion, so I think what we're going to do is
Is start off the discussion, the two of us, and then there will be time for Q&A a little bit later on, so please do put your comments and your questions and thoughts in the chat.
And we'll come to those in a little while, I certainly hope there's a lot because there's lots to discuss.
And I just want to start off, Ed, by asking you, first of all, what is the public policy forum for those who aren't familiar
and also what brings you to this, what it has brought you to be interested in these topics of social media and media regulation.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Okay well, Thank you, Sara, for that, and I was interested that you said a lot of the work we've done has been controversial
I hadn't really thought about that previously, although there's nothing obviously you can touch with the nexus
of news and media and government and free expression of that doesn't automatically become controversial because these are really difficult difficult policy issues,
so the most sensitive policy issues in many ways, that it can imagine, in a democracy.
Anyhow, I'm delighted to be here with you, the public policy based in Ottawa, I actually live in Toronto,
so let me just take a moment to say that I too am on the traditional unseasted territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Haudenosaunee,
the Chipuwa, the Wendat, and the Anishinabeg peoples.
And the public policy forum is a think tank that works on applied policy issues that tries to get different parties together,
marrying research and convening, if you will. And our interest in - and we have five or six areas of interest, including
You know, future of work and Indigenous participation in economies and other issues of that sort.
This work falls into our, you know healthy democracy, good governance bucket, if you will, and it started in 2016. It actually started
three weeks before I joined the public policy forum and thought
I got a call you know at that time I was still at Bloomberg news I had left the Globe and Mail, I was working - you know for shuttling between Toronto and New York City
And I knew that I was going to public policy forum but I got a call from somebody in government
In the public service, who said, you know we're apprehensive - I remember these words - we're apprehensive that sometime
In the term of this government we're going to be called upon to give advice about the future of news and we don't know anything about the future of news
We've never wanted to be seen to knowing anything about the future of news for the very controversial reasons that we're talking about here
and we need some help and can I ask you some questions, and it was apparent from the questions that they knew very little about news, including
that there was a section 19 and the income tax act, especially for media organizations or a whole bunch of things they didn't use so that led us into the process that became
The Shattered Mirror and the other work they've done for me personally, you know I am a lifelong journalist
Most of my career as you say, at the Globe and Mail, I was at the proponent of a digital world and the Globe and Mail and got
the pleasure of launching GlobeandMail.com, therefore, so I but I've been worried all along about sort of the tension between
the great freedom of speech that the Internet gives and how it opens up freedom such a good part of the tension,
but what it does to common wheel and common bases of information and things like that, so you know it was
important for me just to try to help figure out these kinds of issues and there's no easy answers.
SARA BANNERMAN: That's for sure.
EDWARD GREENSPON: There are good, and there are there are better and worse answers.
SARA BANNERMAN: True enough.
I want to kind of bring onto the table some of the proposals that have been made in the most recent report by the Canadian Commission on democratic expression which is a PPF entity, if I understand right.
And, as I understand there's these three kind of components to that. One is a regulator, which would, as I read it would
kind of focus on the systemic broader issues, it would regulate platforms imposing or enforcing a duty on platforms to act responsibly
and then also enforcing certain codes of conduct, and this is following on a UK model.
A second entity would be social media council, that, as I read it as a kind of a multi stakeholder deliberative body that would help to create these codes of conduct and perform other roles.
And third, an E-tribunal, which would be the entity that would deal with specific content and, interestingly, or what I find interesting about that entity,
is that it isn't proposed that it would have any kind of power to take down content, it actually follows more on the Canadian notice and notice model.
Where a complainant would flag certain content and the notice would go then to the person who had posted the content and
Who would not be under a specific obligation to take content down, but would then be notified that there was a problem
and I guess would have the opportunity to take it down or respond in some way.
This is what I'm reading in a book report, could you kind of correct me where I'm wrong or elaborate a little bit on these proposals as they're outlined by the Commission
EDWARD GREENSPON: Yeah I think what-well, let me start, let me just say what the Commission was.
So you know in 2018 you referred to democracy divided report that I co wrote with Professor Taylor Oh
and then at UBC now at McGill and really at the time we were struck that a lot of the conversation was saying,
we have a really huge problem there's nothing we can do about it.
And it was kind of actually a first amendment type of mentality that that existed.
in Canada as well, and of course I come from a strong, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of expression background
I love and have used legally section to be to advantage, you know as editor in chief of the Globe and Mail.
But we did feel there were things you could do, and so we laid out a whole bunch of policy options, but we didn't really endorse at it.
We just said here's different things that one could do, but the conversation is mature enough
nobody's thinking is mature enough to you know say which ones, we should do at this point.
And that leads us to the to the Commission, we thought okay let's get let's set up two entities that will work in parallel let's get a
distinguished person's permission, although not your classic - you know - very diverse group.
Some people who are younger, some people are older, the best known of the Commissioners and former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.
You know, some of them are you know, would not be well known, (inaudible) are also very well known, was a member of the Commission.
And at the same time we'd have a citizens assembly, 42 Canadians drawn through a kind of random process, they volunteer
but a representative process, I guess, would be a better way to put it, it starts random.
And then has self selection. And they would look at the issues at the same time.
So I'll talk mostly about the Commission, although they really came to very similar conclusions on almost everything.
The Commission didn't like German style takedown it didn't like take down at all,
and you know it was concerned about over-censorship, it was concerned about micromanaging content,
it was you know concerned about about those kinds of effects.
And instead of then as you said, instead it preferred to have more of a systemic approach to
Okay, what's happening and why is it happening kind of in ToTo, what are the policies of platforms
What are the business biases, you know built into - baked into - their business models that.
That lead to certain things and how would we look at that, so we didn't want to - it didn't want to regulate individual pieces of content.
Nonetheless, it did feel that there was an outlet required for people who had grievances to do
And so let's say the first outlet is a systemic outlet, the second outlet is, as you described it,
The Court, The E-Court, which is a much thinner, faster type of operation than courts with pillars and people in robes and things like that.
And they could lead to a series of things, starting with letting people know that they've done something that is offending someone else,
because there was, I hope that whatever notional percentage 10%, 20%, 50% of things you know could be you know dealt with in that matter.
And the third avenue was Takedown in the case of of you know, a demonstrable axe that put someones health or safety/life in danger.
So that was the only exception taken, it was the idea:
Let's take it down if there's you know, a demonstration that it could be putting someone in danger, and then we'll have the discussion.
You know it - perhaps we'll go back up, but you know , in the interim, but would be taken down.
As you say it's much more a duty of care, the Commission use duty of responsibility,
As it's principle that the platforms have a duty of responsibility and that duty of responibility and systemic way would be enforced by a regulator-
a new regulator, not an existing regulator.
SARA BANNERMAN: And I guess, if this were to follow the UK models there would be kind of Codes of Conduct,
I think they've started with online child abuse and terrorism.
But other topics in terms of the harms which aren't part - of don't necessarily - the details aren't laid out in the commission's report
but looking at the the UK duty of care, their codes relating to disinformation as well, for example,
How platforms would deal with that, how platforms would deal with encouraging eating disorders or various other different harms.
I want to ask you: Okay, so there are certain harms that I think we're in the forefront of your mind in -or the commission's mind -
and putting together this set of recommendations, and of course this is part of the PPF's program dealing with, I guess healthy democracy.
And so I kind of want to ask like there's lots of groups that want to regulate social media for various different reasons,
whether it's a traditional media who have their interest in, I guess maintaining a piece of the pie, whatever,
Canadian content industries who have interest in furthering Canadian content regulation online.
Copyright holders, who want to regulate the sharing of copyright content, security and policing groups who have interest in
law enforcement online or various - moral majority
lots of different groups who would like to see social media regulated for various different reasons that
may or may not directly relate to a healthy democracy, sometimes regulation is about power
and not as much about preserving healthy democracy. So - and I think some of the controversies that surround
a number of the proposals that are around the table today, not just these ones, but other ones as well, kind of relate to that
and kind of address the fear that, as we try to do things to maintain a healthy democracy, it creates bodies that can be
translated by various different groups to their own interests.
Could you respond to some of those things?
EDWARD GREENSPON: Okay.
Well you touched on an awful lot of concepts, so let me go back to the earlier part of what you're touching on
and I don't mean to be skipping out on any of it, so if I drop part of it as I'm going please you know feel free to remind me.
So you know harms is an expression that you know, should give everybody pause.
As is the idea that you said about you know people who want to see social media regulator, but nobody should want to see social media regulated.
Nobody should want to see expression regulated in any way.
Having said that, there are things that we deemed, start with as a society, that are unacceptable.
We've decided that hate propaganda is unacceptable and we do regulate that through legal means,
if you will, we do regularlate child advertising through legal means.
We do regulate legitimate advertising and election campaigns, we don't have the same free for all that the United States has
So you know, everybody in the audience knows we have both Section 2B of the Charter and Section One of the Charter,
and we do have reasonable limits and a demonstrable fashion, etc, etc. on expression in Canada
And there should be a very - you know - as there is a very, very, very strong onus that-
that there's a reason why section 2B would be overwritten, but we have accepted as a principle that that is possible, it is acceptable.
So we've had this problem around democratic expression, I guess, that you know - what is the lesser of the evils, is the misogyny that goes on online and
drives some women offline and drives some out of the new digital puppet sphere is that
a good outcome or an acceptable outcome of free speech?
For - you know - same issue for indigenous people, racialized minorities, you know, a whole bunch of people who, face that kind of
those kinds of issues. I think some of them are easier than others, you know child pornography is an easier issue for
us to get a social consensus around, and you know we already have that. So that's one set of questions, it seems to me.
What is the harm and what is the harm that we want to do something about and several of them are over the interest in law.
A second question is who, you know, we do regulate, we already regulate, we regulate through terms of preference.
Facebook regulates. Others, you know social media platforms regulate.
So who do we want to be regulating and in who's interest, do we want that to be regulating - with what kind of transparency
do we want that regulation to happen.
So it's not that we don't have content moderation, we do have content moderation.
But, you know, I think that to have it more transparent, to have it in a set of social rules, public rules
you know, seems to me a better outcome.
The big, you know, the big challenge is of course disnformation.
It's not, you know, just information is not illegal in Canada.
It was illegal, you know, in one form or another until 1992 there was a section of the criminal code section 181,
which I actually copied out.
You know that made it a crime for any person to willfully publish statement, tale of, or news
that the person who was false and that caused it was likely to cause injury or mischief to public interest.
Now I'm not suggesting we should have a Section 1A to 1 back, but but i'm not suggesting we shouldn't either, I think, actually, we should have
That should be part of a public debate and that would be a pretty radical thing to say disinformation should in some way
be illegal, if it crosses the threshold of causing- of knowingly, willfully causing a mischief to - that harms the public interest.
So I think we should have that conversation. Section 1A to 1 by the way, was ruled unconstitutional by a four to three vote of Supreme court in
1992 so it was- two justices were not on the case and it was a very close vote at that point.
So just information is - man that's a tough one, you know
and government should not get to decide.
The government of the day, should not get to decide if, you know, need be, it should be the Court says it is and in other issues,
but I don't think there's anybody who wants Government to decide what is or what is not permissible.
Now your point about power.
Yes, there's lots of people who have lots of motives, obviously, if the incumbent system
would like to see the new system, you know, tax that leads to the same level that it's taxed
or are levied or forced to get quotas, you know, which is, I guess,
the original intent of Bill C-10, the reform of the broadcasting act before it became somewhat distorted over the last
week or 10 days, and
you know, that something you would sort out you, know I think you're alluding to regulatory capture in what you're saying too.
You know, regulatory capture is always an issue we'll have to deal with I don't know exactly who's going to capture this regulator,
I suspect the odds are that it would be the platform company is more than it would be you know the social media council that we
That we want to set out but,
But you know I think we're at a point where we need to at least consider carefully whether we want rules of game, and the Commission decided we did want rules to the game.
That the situation of polluted political discourse and public digital public sphere, was not a good outcome for Canadians
and that there would be a better outcome that could be very respectful of speech by not trying to regulate individual pieces of content.
SARA BANNERMAN: One of the things that I thought was interesting in the report was,
- correct me if I'm wrong, I've read multiple things lately but, -
was the idea of taking regulation out of the black box of the Platform and putting it in a body based in Canada
was to provide that kind of ability to have input over the regulation that, as you say, is to some degree happening anyway, or the governance that's in some way happening anyway.
So many interesting things and threads I'd like to pursue here but, one of the things you've mentioned a couple times is Bill C-10 so I
want to put that on the table. Bill C-10 is proposing number of controversial changes to the broadcasting act
that would see audio and video content regulated by the CRTC.
What is your take on what's happening with Bill C-10?
EDWARD GREENSPON: Oh well, I guess, the activities that have gone around Bill C-10, as I said, the last several to 10 days,
obviously, are a tremendous political misadventure.
Before we could even get to - Before we want to get to the substantial parts of it and,
And in so being it changes the whole parameters of the debate, you know,
will we see Minister Debo introduce the legislation that he's promised for long time around, around platforms specifically.
I don't know why they decided to add user-generated content late in the game, there is,
there are a couple of plausible explanations that have been
made but not nearly as fervently as the implausible explanations that we've seen so far, so
you know, there's plausible vote, you know YouTube channels that are user generated and compete and whether they should be on the same rule book, but
you know, this is the kind of stuff all policy should be made,
transparently. And this kind of policy has to be made hyper transparent like you know, to surprise people
by an amendment that comes out of committee late and in the process is just you know,
not good governing and not good politics.
And so I can't explain much more about this they're they're backing off it now, but you know it has
it has hit a sensitive point, and you know, maybe I could just talk about the sensitive point for a moment, Sara,
you know from when we did The Shattered Mirror, we did
some very extensive polling and we did focus groups across the country, so this is
early fall of 2016 so you know it's a long time ago, in some ways, but I guess the main conclusions
too that I draw off that work we've done is that Canadians are very, very respectful of
their journalistic system. They actually trust - they trust journalism in Canada, and they trust it to such an extent, and they put so much
faith in it as a check on power that they're very, very skeptical about it somehow or another coming under and become subordinated
possibly to political power. So anything you do in this area you're trapped in, if you ask them in focus groups: Well, what about the CBC?
They fall silent, they actually it's not for them to reconcile this,
just an easy by the idea of government being - influencing that that check that they see that accountability function that they see from media.
At the same time, because they're so respectful of the journalism system, I can remember in at least three or four of the six focus groups with did sort of spontaneously,
This kind of exchange occurred, where somebody went: Well I get most of my news from
Facebook, you know. I'm sorry to say, but that's what I do I'm going to post my news from Facebook,
and then that person would pause and go: Unless it's important.
And the moderator goes: Well, what do you mean?
And they say: Well, if it's important I know my friends and my family don't know anything better than I know
and other people might be putting stuff, so I want to go to
And they never would use the word trusted sources, praise trusted sources, but they - I want to go to people I know who send out reporters
to find out what's going on, and we'll you know put journalists out there.
And then they start naming. Well who do you trust? I mean who do you want to - when something's important where do you go?
And then they start naming
news organizations, they start naming columnists by name, they start naming anchors on TV by name that they trust,
so people want, you know, I kind of walked away thinking people want a
They want a fire prevention service like a fire station for news. They don't want to engage every day.
But when they need it, they want it to be there and to be there, they want to finance and they see a public service in it
But they don't want the government running it. And so we, you know, we try to reconcile that in some ways, by giving government
what we talked about as the lightest and shortest touch possible, which is set up a system to move some money around in the system
from distributors - the Facebook's and Google's etc - from world to the producers
of news, and not just, we're very careful, but not just incumbent producers, but the startups the innovators,
the new producers, the key was: Do you produce original journalism of a civic nature?
And, end of Question and, of course, someone has to judge that.
That's a controversial thing too, but someone about the government needs to judge that- on the government to set up
a process really driven by academics, as much as anyone to you know pass those kinds of judgments
in the border map management. I don't think we have any doubt that the Hamilton Spectator and The Globe and Mail and,
National Observer would fall into that category of producing original news of civic interest.
But there may be, at the border, certain things, so there are people who will have to pass judgment on that criteria and they have been doing that.
SARA BANNERMAN: And I think there you've really touched on one of the key critiques of some of the - that have surrounded some of this which is
whether these measures, well are a) to influence by government, but b), are kind of a deal being struck between some of the
mainstream or not - more traditional I guess -
larger media organizations and conglomerates and platforms, that what happens is that some of the smaller or
what you just said was more on the edge, organizations may not benefit from some of these measures.
EDWARD GREENSPON: And that's been a critique and it's been a recurring critique, for instance, suggested ground on Canada land
and I, you know, in the aftermath of the shattered mirror was you know, on the podcast a couple times
Trying to explain this, and I think having some success explaining it, but you know
To the extent that you know your capture point, so up to this point, you know there's associations
and to understand how to talk to political people and public servants and they represent
incumbent companies, legacy companies. I you know from the beginning, have you know spoken to people like
Like Nashville Observer and others and said, you know you need to put something together too, and now they have with the help of some foundation money
Have kind of association called Press Forward. I actually think I noticed this morning, in the Toronto Star that there's an article
that you know quotes Press Forward fairly extensively on these subjects so
One of the things I don't want to see happen, is a stifling - I go back to that original conversation when I was called in Februrary 2016
One of my responses, I said two things: One, you know you're right you don't know very much about Canadian policy
and maybe I've gone to the public policy forum could announce that next week, maybe you'd be interested in us doing something.
And the second thing I said, is the Government of Canada has no interest saving the newspaper industry.
The government of Canada has an interest in safeguarding democracy, the flows of information on which people can make informed choices.
And if that takes you back to saving the news industry in some way, then that will make sense, but only if the case is made that it's for democracy
and only have the case it's made
that you don't get in the way of the natural evolution of industry and innovation that changes our industry, so you have
to be both platform neutral, which they haven't always been, and you have to be business model neutral.
Which they haven't always been either.
SARA BANNERMAN: I want to ask you about some of what you see as being the kind of key successes of some of the
things that have come out of the public policy forums work in terms of media and social media regulation or online
I also want to ask you
Sometimes I think there's recommendations that are kind of more likely to be taken up and then there's other ones that are not that likely to be taken up at the time that they're made.
And so I want to ask you about that, what are the recommendations that the public policy forum is put forward that
fall in each of those different categories and what is the kind of strategic value of making those unlikely proposals.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Yeah I mean I think that's a really important observation and
So let me take the second part of the question first.
You know thinking changes, government changes, pressure changes, to reality changes, you know when the shattered mirror came out in the beginning of 2017
I wouldn't say it was some you know resounding success springing from the starting blocks.
It got a fair bit of tension off the beginning - at the beginning, and a lot of criticism and, within government, some befuddlement.
The first section, which was really a diagnostic of the decline of the industry was you know a lot of people went:
Wow! Because they knew, but they hadn't seen any documentation and you know page after page, you know here's what happened to subscription here's what happened to
whatever we used to call classified advertising, which used to produce about $850 million a year of revenue for
Canadian newspapers and was the only thing that they had kind of to themselves alone because
until some digital solutions came around there was nothing as good it's classified advertising, etc.
So that was reaction one but what we would do about it why we do about it
Ottawa particularly was still very, very much in love with the platforms, it was very romanced by the idea of life on the platforms
and it didn't see the problems that were occuring.
So you put those things out there to get a conversation going and hope that you will provide some additions
to the intellectual firmament that that will will get taken up over time.
The things that were taken up, you know there were some things
that were so absurd it was like hard to imagine that the existence, you know, one of the great absurdities
was the discrimination, the so-called Netflix tax -
- when I refer to the discrimination against Canadian digital service providers tax.
I mean it was unbelievable to me that
Canadians would have to pay - Canadian businesses providing services would have to pay a tax, if you wanted a subscription to logic,
you have to pay sales tax, but if you want a subscription to New York Times you didn't.
Okay, you know, what possible logic could there be, I understand that was - had a historical antecedents
You know the pre digital age, but, you know it made no sense and it took till the 2019 bunch of
I think it is or may have been actually the fall of economic state, anyhow it took several years after we said, you know this is ridiculous
and everybody knew it was ridiculous but because
Former Prime Minister Harper and Prime Minister Trudeau, both got into a little spitting match about it in the 2015 election,
you know, the Liberals kind of felt
trapped in what was not an election promise, but was an election pronouncement and didn't do anything about it until they've gone through
you know, a full cycle and now that's coming off of the summer I think in July 1 finally will be off.
The local journalism initiative, which was a recommendation seven of the shattered mirror
was something that had a lot of bounce coming out of you know, the recommendation right away
It hasn't been implemented exactly the way that we recommended but,
the way we're recommended was probably - ended up not being the practical way to do it, but the idea of having
$10 million a year that would create a pool of journalists who could go into local communities,
and you know we felt that would you know add something like 80 to 100 journalists.
Who were out there in places that don't have their city halls covered and don't have their communities covered etc. Don't have their courts covered.
Necessarily would help you know, there was a lot of criticism of that, that it's not big enough to make a difference.
And i'd like to see it bigger i'm actually glad started smaller, so we can actually experiment with it and there's aspects of governance that I think could be
could be improved, but nonetheless that's a recommendation that has made a difference in many communities.
When I started my journalism career, I wasn't kind of born at the Globe and Mail, I started my journalism career at the Lloydminster Times
on Saskatchewan, Alberta border. A town of then 13,000 people, a very small newspaper circulation
about you know, I don't know, we never were truthful about what our circulation was I actually don't really know
Three person newsroom and you know, in a town like that you know this is
One of the only drivers of an informed public, is you know, is the local newspaper and the local radio station.
So that was one and I guess I just say you know there's a couple of others, but I think one other that
might be two others quickly you know, allowing journalism to be the object
of charitable donation which exists in many countries in the United States but did not exist in Canada,
a couple of organizations had and run it through by making education arms for themselves, like
Like the walrus and the (inaudible) but journalism became a qualified donee and that was one of our recommendations and the final
One that was you know very, very important came out of workshops that we did after the shattered mirror, and that was
if the problem really is that we're losing our journalists, the number of journalists who are out there, doing original news
then that's where assistance should be and we created the idea of a Labor tax credit for journalistic employment,
and that was implemented and that
is formulaic so once you're in or you're out of this idea of you know, managing the border, since I said earlier
then that's it, you know, everything after that point is automatic so that's a recommendation that I think is really important,
has many more journalists employed in Canada today than would otherwise be the case, particularly post-pandemic.
SARA BANNERMAN: I'll just reiterate the other part of that question, as I think i'm going to call for questions and comments in the chat
or if anybody wants to put up their hand I think we'll go into the Q&A in a second.
and well, people are doing that I want to ask you about those less likely proposals. Are there any that didn't seem likely at the time?
EDWARD GREENSPON: I guess you know the number one proposal,
sales tax was number two and i've given numbers to some of them, I guess, there were 12 of them all to have the last three had to do with the CPC,
But the number one proposal, which you know frankly I wish I had to rewrite because we didn't explain it very well,
we got way too complicated and intricate about it as if we were public servants ourselves.
So I regret that, but, but essentially it amount to a levy on digital advertising.
Almost all of it, which is
within the digital sphere, I just want to back off for one second say I don't begrudge Facebook and Google.
You know a lot of people say they've stolen the money from the news industry and stuff like that I think that's ridiculous proposition.
They came forward with the better business model and advertisers went with them. That's great that's fine,
unfortunately they don't put much back into our system of democracy in some ways, because just information and hate online etc,
they perhaps detract, but they also allow voices that didn't have
weren't heard before to be heard, so you know there's some good and bad in what they do, but
our recommendation nonetheless was us with the cable levy, that there should be essentially a levy we didn't call it a levy per se,
I would call it a levy if I did it again, essentially it'd be levy let's say, like the 5% levy in cable, which would produce you know
at that time, it would be about $300 million a year now, it would be in a while higher amount than that -digital advertising has grown.
So for companies that were selling digital advertising over a certain threshold and not investing in news in Canada,
they would be subject to this and this money then would be redistributed into into the system. That's a recommendation that didn't fly.
Although in the latest budget there's a digital services tax proposal of 3% on certain digital companies that
kind of amounts to a similar thing, except it's not a tight tax it's not a dedicated tax, as we were suggesting some people think it's better not
being a dedicated tax well that's a fair argument that reasonable people could disagree on.
So that's one that didn't you know, didn't fly for sure. And some of the stuff
that is flying or might fly that should fly is around you know the Australia models that a lot of people are are talking about and,
But competition policy so far in Canada as a vehicle has not has flown, and and there's a lot of complexity around that too, and I
personally have a little bit of skepticism about what the Australian model will prove to be
As fabulous as it's being made out to be now.
SARA BANNERMAN: Okay, we do have a question in the chat, and again I invite everyone to quick questions,
or, to put up their hand.
This is a question: I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the digital periodical aid to publishers Program,
component of the Canada periodical fund that came out of Canadian heritages commitment under the creative Canada policy framework,
To supporting Canadian journalism in the digital age, what is your impression of the new business models adopted by papers like
LaPresse, which now are charitable entities and that continue to deliver free content through the website and ap.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Okay, so let me start with LaPresse and your dog is wants to be part of this conversation,
I'll start with LaPresse, and you know look, I think, LaPresse is a very instructive story of
what's happened to journalism in this country and the problems with it.
Throughout the 2010s, LaPresse was, I would say, arguably the most innovative,
organization in the country in terms of - news organization in the country - in terms of
what it was trying to do with it's ap and how it has changed the news business, and you know stopped publishing
the paper first Monday to Friday and then Saturday. It along with Roger Canada is you know, the most important source of news
in Quebec of you know, serious news. Sure no Dimona allen's bigger, but you know it's a very classic tabloid in a way that we don't have in English Canada.
And, thankfully, and also, you know they were very brave I thought in innovating but the (demo huh) family were losing
10s of millions of dollars a year, and they didn't want to.
I suspect that if we still had a federalism separatism challenge Academy, maybe they would have stuck with it , but,
But given that that issue isn't as great they didn't want to lose 10s of millions of dollars a year, they walked away in as most graceful manner
as you can leaving behind $50 million for adjustment and taking on the pension, so taking responsibility for all of the pensions
that existed and La Presse is struggling, I think, going to a nonprofit and charitable model is smart
I know that they don't see the charitable model providing anything more than something like 10% of revenues, at best,
and but 10% is something and is an important component so,
they're struggling, like everybody in the industry struggling and as they struggle that's bad for the people who rely on La Presse.
You know, to keep them informed La Presse you know drove through what became the Shield Law and Canada protect journalists and their sources.
A few years ago with with some of their conference you've done, you know very, very
important coverage of corruption and construction industries, etc, etc, so I wouldn't want to lose that institutional knowledge and
that you know I'm a fan of startups, but I'm a fan of big news organizations
that can hire lawyers to manage their defamation and you know go after big stories and put people on them for
months and months with not knowing what the return will be and La Presse is that kind of organization.
The first question was around the periodical fund, I think, and
And the digital support aspect of it i've got to say I don't know,
if I've got that right, Sara that's what it was?
EDWARD GREENSPON: I don't know a lot, I know that they you know added several years ago a digital aspect to support some
that transformation. I think the discussions I've ever had about the Canadian periodical fund is let's move its basis
of whether people get money from a circulation model, which is what it was historically, so if you were a
giveaway publication and a free Community newspaper let's say - weekly - you didn't get it, but if you actually had a circulation model
that's not business model neutral to me.
Do they do journalism? Do they do real journalism? That's the question to me and I've suggested, and I think the shattered mirror,
you know I don't think it was a recommendation, per se, but I think it, you know, had a suggestion in there, that
that they changed the basis. So I said before employing journalists, doing original content is the first and foremost thing
the shattered mirror and everything we've done has said there's two important things, that's one, and the other is digital innovation.
There's no doubt it's a digital world and there's no doubt there's a lot of -as a storyteller
there's some wonderful wonderful tools to tell stories to get at your audience, etc, etc.
So it's a good thing, and so supporting people making that digital transformation, digital innovation, would be the second important role,
I would think and if that's what the periodical funds doing with this fund then good, but I have not informed enough to know.
SARA BANNERMAN: Okay terrific we've got another question.
Why are you skeptical about the Australian model of digital platforms paying news outlets for the use of their content through a licensing system
Sharon if I haven't addressed the question properly, please feel free to speak out.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Oh okay well i'll say why i'm skeptical and I'd be happy to hear if if that's making sense actually
I gotta go in gallery view so maybe I could actually see people who are asking this question
Since almost none of them are on video.
So I'm skeptical of it because, first of all there's a,
a very pronounced asymmetry, you know whether you have the government, providing a baseball style arbitration,
still there's a great asymmetry between the sides the organization's negotiating and I think that will produce a bias and secondly,
those organizations of - the large organizations, Google, Facebook, etc., will pay for large organizations.
Large organizations like large organizations.
And they also want you know if not global reach organizations, at least national reach organizations.
So I think it just favors local, and it disfavors startups. So you know that money won't really be available to them.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly,
a lot of people criticized media over the years for being in the pocket of it's advertisers and the advertisers for the influenced news coverage.
And that was
so so so rare in my experience, but not completely out of my experience. I mean there were advertisers periodically from time to time
with pressure on a news organization. I saw it more pronounced in Lloydminster than I did at the Globe and Mail.
But you know it exists everywhere and, at the end of day your greatest level of protection was that no advertiser
accounted for more than you know, for as much as 1% of your revenue.
And so, you know, if you told that advertiser to go fly a kite, the publisher was not suffering or the proprietor was not suffering
grievous economic harm from that happening.
It seems to me very possible that the kinds of deals that we're looking at in Australia, that large platforms could
be responsible for 10, 15 - I'm just taking these numbers notionally, but they don't seem unreasonable to me -
of revenues of a company. And therefore they will exert a kind of pressure that they can
influence news coverage, one way or another. We're already seeing this in money that's being handed out through funds
where organizations, you talk about regulatory capture, well this is a form of
of capture as well and I worry about the Australia model just you know, creating a flight path to capture
and capture by some of those powerful organizations in the world that need to be scrutinized in a fair and balanced and aggressive manner.
SARA BANNERMAN: And we've got quite a few questions coming in, so I'm going to try and read some of these out.
There's a question being raised about banning political figures, the news about Donald Trump this morning,
Erin O'Toole, Justin Trudeau, Maxime Bernier.
That topic of Facebook or social media companies banning politicians or people has been raised
there's also a question: is the targeted advertising of platforms, a better business model than mass advertising or is it actually the root of the problem?
Based on the platforms knowledge and sale of users behaviours and beliefs.
I got another question here from Dwayne Winseck, this one's a bit longer
EDWARD GREENSPON: Can I just only do two?
Sara: Sure, one at a time, sorry.
EDWARD GREENSPON: I don't think I can keep three in my head.
I'll come to Dwayne's in a second if we would. So the target advertising versus the mass advertising,
you know targeted advertising is a far superior system for advertising so it's very efficient, I mean,
news organizations over many years have tried to be more targeted and you know,
tried to say: Okay, you know people who are buying cars we, you know, have so many people who
are apt to buy a car. But to actually have people who are out there shopping for a car now or beginning to research a car,
because you know that online is much more efficient. But yes, it is a root of
a problem around data that companies have on people and you know such deep knowledge
of what they're up to, I think we all find things spooky you know when you say something in your house
and then you start getting delivered advertising on it, you know there's a lot of stuff that
is externally based and up for who's government, you know we would we would probably rebel about it up pretty quickly.
I don't understand why we're actually more accepting - well I shouldn't say that
I do understand why we're more accepting of the private sector, I just don't think we should be accepting either,
the private sector does not carry the instruments of coercion that you know governments have potentially do.
So yeah, so it is, it is clearly a root of a problem and how we manage data and
sovereignty over our own data etc., informed consent, etc., is a critical right that belongs with us as individuals.
I'm sorry, what was the other question?
SARA BANNERMAN: I think the other topic was about banning political figures.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Oh yeah so did something happen this morning? You said this morning, so something happened with Donald Trump today?
SARA BANNERMAN: Yeah the Facebook Oversight Board decided that the Trump Ban could stay in place for now.
But they think it should have a timeframe.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Yeah, I really struggle with this question and I think I think my struggle sort of gets obscured by you know the odious of
the human being and political figure that Donald trump is, and I, I think I might you know, I think it distorts my view of principle
in some way, so I need to you know, try to dig through this.
You know legitimately it seems to me that there is a new public square and this new public square you know does run
through digital platforms and there's a utility aspect to it and the
You know, some days I wake up, but I wonder Mark Zuckerberg worked for Smersh
which I think was the evil organization and James Bond movies or Get Smart or something like that
wow we'd have a real problem, or you know Putin, you know turned him into a mole or something you know we have a lot of power.
to decide what gets in and what gets heard concentrated in very, very, very few hands.
Fewer hands than the people who have traditionally been worried about concentration of media could have, I think, ever contemplated.
So I'm distressed and disturbed by banning political figures who were duly elected.
I'm all for the peace of mind that I have for Donald Trump's ban and not having to wake up every day with him having
manipulated the system into, fear or subservience or whatever it may be, so I think I have to go with principle you know ultimately
I'd be interested what the rest of you think about that, because you know, I think
there's a lot of tough issues out there. I don't want to pretend, you know a lot of them are going to be 51:49 kinds of decisions.
SARA BANNERMAN: Okay well recognizing that we're slightly over time I'm going to squeeze in one
two more questions that are there.
Sharon McGowan is asking whether the PPF has changed its position on Labor tax credits and
Dwayne Winseck is asking about the concentration of the Canadian media system - sky high levels of vertical integration
he asks what's your thoughts about these realities in Canada.
Do they - does that concentration deserve as much kind of policy attention as does the regulation of platforms
and, if so, why hasn't the PPF said anything about, for example, the Rogers Shaw merger?
And i'm skipping part of the question just in the interest of time.
EDWARD GREENSPON: Oh okay so.
Sharons question was about the Labor tax credit and Sharon I'm not too sure exactly where the questions coming from so
maybe you could you can help me with that, but as far as the Labor tax credit that we recommend and that's in place
no we haven't changed our position on it, we do think that the -
- for instance, I guess as you know, there is a provision in there, that you have to have two employees, a minimum of two employees working
26 weeks a year and anyhow it comes up to 1080 hours in a year and times 2 so it's like
You know 2160 hours of 2 employees and we think that's a business model question that the government has no business in.
If I want to have - I actually think that it's reasonable for them to say you need a minimum threshold.
of journalists working for you, so my wife and I - whose a journalist - can't go in the business in the basement and start a little publication
for each other and get the Labor market tax credit or something I think that you have independent employees it's
is a good idea, but if I want to have 10 of them, you know working 200 hours a year, as opposed to two of them,
you know working 1000 each I don't see that that's a business government, but I don't think that's where you're going so I just be
You know, in fairness to you I'd like to answer the question you're actually asking and Dwayne on concentration of ownership.
I gotta stick with the news business here for a minute.
Mergers and acquisitions and concentration of ownership is classically how all businesses, you know, one of their first lines of response to
to distressed economic times, or to bettering their economic outcome. I'd like to go back to having you know,
10 daily newspapers and you know four broadcasters in a variety of communities even in Lloydminster, we had two rival newspapers.
One a twice weekly and one - the one I worked for five times a week paper - and that competition was great.
I do greatly regret the super level of concentration, the over-concentration that's occurred over the last 5 to 10 years.
Particularly which has led to centralization of the provision of new services, so people in Moose Jaw are not really getting news
about about Moose Jaw, they're getting standardized news that's come from you know Hamilton.
I mean that's problematic and in our report that Dwayne you'll be familiar with, what the Saskatchewan rough riders have to teach Canadian journalism
You know, we said, hopefully we're going to have a trend line that can be supported through programs that
lead us back to more Community-based ownership of media because it doesn't serve the democratic function that I'm
trying to protect if you're not getting news about your community.
SARA BANNERMAN: Thank you so much Ed, and thank you to all of those who submitted
questions and for your patience in going a little bit over time.
This has been such a pleasure to speak with you, Ed. I really enjoyed our conversation.
But thank you again to you, Ed-
EDWARD GREENSPON: If I just thank you, Sarah and everybody as well it's interesting,
The questions make you think about you know your presumptions, so - assumptions, pardon me,
And so I really enjoyed that, thank you so much.
SARA BANNERMAN: Thank you.