àMr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today on behalf of my constituents in Mégantic—L'Érable to speak to the motion moved by my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent.
I will read out the motion so that everyone can understand why I am speaking today. The motion states:
That the House:
(a) take note of the importance of a free and independent press to a healthy democracy;
(b) express its belief that it is inappropriate for partisan political actors to pick winners and losers in the media in an election year;
(c) condemn the inclusion of Unifor, a group that has taken and continues to take partisan political positions, in the panel that will oversee the distribution of the $600-million media bailout; and
(d) call on the government to immediately cease trying to stack the deck for the election with their media bailout and replace it with a proposal that does not allow government to pick winners and losers.
There are not many days left in the 42nd Parliament, and today we are discussing one of the most important issues for our democracy. My colleagues and I have been called upon to speak on this issue since the Liberals were elected in 2015.
Let us not forget how the Liberals deceived Canadians during the election campaign. The promises they made were certainly ambitious, but they clearly had no intention of keeping them.
Here is one promise they made in the throne speech:
To make sure that every vote counts, the Government will undertake consultations on electoral reform, and will take action to ensure that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system....the Government will promote more open debate and free votes...it will not resort to devices like...omnibus bills to avoid scrutiny.
Those statements were taken from the throne speech, which was read by the Governor General when this government first took office.
Let us also not forget the Liberals' promise to balance the budget in 2019. They promised to run small deficits and to balance the budget in 2019. Instead, they ran big deficits, and they are no longer even giving us any idea of when they will balance the budget. The Liberals have completely lost control of the public purse. Today, it is clear that their promise to be an open and transparent government was an empty one. They may have meant well, but things always seem to turn out the same way with the Liberals.
When Liberals are in power, all they care about is protecting their friends, holding on to power at all costs, breaking the rules they do not like, painting pretty pictures and saying all the right things to hide what they have done or failed to do, and constantly distracting Canadians from the issues that matter most to Canadians.
Not long ago, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change revealed the Liberal government's real strategy in a bar. She said that if you stay on message and repeat it louder and louder, people will totally believe it.
Here are some examples of things the Liberals tried to keep quiet: the Prime Minister's extravagant trip to India, his vacation on the Aga Khan's private island, the Prime Minister's ethical breaches, the Minister of Finance's French villa, political interference attempts in the SNC-Lavalin affair, and, more recently, the Mark Norman case.
It is also worth mentioning repeated attempts by the Leader of the Government in the House to change the rules governing members of Parliament. Whose interests would that serve? The Liberal government's, of course. Doing so would rob the opposition of the tools it uses to stand up to the government and fully engage in its essential role: holding the government to account for its actions.
This brings me to the first paragraph of today's motion:
That the House:
(a) take note of the importance of a free and independent press to a healthy democracy;
All the examples I just gave probably would not have come to our attention if not for the importance of a free and independent press. Trust between the public and the media is a direct result of the people's belief that the media is independent of their government. However, the Liberal Prime Minister has introduced a plan worth $600 million that will be distributed to the Canadian media right before the upcoming election. The Prime Minister himself chose the members of the panel that will decide how to distribute the money. He will not commit to following their recommendations. He will not allow the panel's deliberations to be public. He is asking the panel members to sign non-disclosure agreements. The Canadian Association of Journalists is now wondering whether to take part in the process, and it is calling for greater transparency.
I would like to quote a press release issued by the Canadian Association of Journalists, not the Conservative Party.
The Canadian Association of Journalists, or CAJ, said that its paramount concern is transparency and that its ability to participate will hinge on having measures in place that ensure an open and transparent public process. The CAJ noted that, so far, much of the process appears to have taken place out of the public eye through closed-door meetings between governments, newspaper owners and lobby groups. It believes that, for journalists, whose legitimacy depends on public confidence and trust, the process must be open and debate must be rigorous, thorough and in view of the public.
Furthermore, the CAJ said that combining this with the requested confidentiality agreements could create a situation where a media outlet that is critical of a minister or his or her government is denied funding and the CAJ is barred from discussing this publicly. It said that, to ensure the panel has no appearance of partisanship, regardless of whether or not it does, the panel’s full independence must be the rule.
We cannot be accused of attacking journalists when the journalists themselves are saying that the Liberals' scheme is jeopardizing their own independence. Why does the Prime Minister want to make a decision behind closed doors about which media outlets he will help? Is he hiding that he is trying to rig the election? Does he understand the harm he could do to Canadian journalists if he does not show them greater respect?
Now let us move on to paragraph (c) of this motion, which calls on the House to condemn the inclusion of Unifor, a group that has taken and continues to take partisan political positions, in this panel. Unifor is a big union, by far the union that represents the largest number of journalists in Canada. I am saying this for the benefit of people in Quebec who may not have heard of Unifor. The Prime Minister invited Unifor to sit on the panel that will oversee the media bailout. Many journalists and Canadians were shocked by this appointment. Jerry Dias, the president of Unifor and the Prime Minister's close friend, made it clear that his union will be the Conservatives' worst nightmare for the 2019 election. He had no qualms about posing for a picture with his cronies, billing them as the resistance working to stop a Conservative government from getting elected. When is the Prime Minister going to put an end to this anti-democratic charade?
That is not all. For people who want to know more about Mr. Dias and what he thinks about the Conservative Party, I will translate what he said in his tweets, which were reported by two media outlets. First, he said that he was indeed speaking out against the Conservative leader. Then Mr. Dias said he was not going to tone down his anti-Conservative campaign and that he would probably ramp it up, because the Conservative leader had irritated him over the past few days. Such is the attitude of the president of Unifor. He is the one being appointed to an independent panel to select which media will be entitled to receive funding from the Liberal government.
This is a union whose president is committed to openly campaigning against the Conservatives with money from its members. I could cite many journalists who are furious with this decision, who do not accept that their union is making such statements and who are against the government interfering in the granting process. This process has to be non-partisan, open and transparent. It has to be the opposite of what the Prime Minister has done so far.
The government is going down this dangerous path with Unifor and letting the fox guard the henhouse. It is in the fox's nature to want to eat the chickens, and Jerry Dias has clearly expressed his intention to eat Conservative in the next election. How can we trust Mr. Dias? We can still maintain the independence of our media. To start, the government must remove Unifor from this panel.
I was a journalist for many years. I worked at a local radio station. There is always a thin line between the influence of business partners and the influence one can have as a journalist. Fortunately, journalists have always maintained their independence. However, the government's actions are not going to protect journalists' jobs.
Unifor's president must be removed from the panel and the government must go about this in the right way, in an open and transparent manner, to protect the independence of journalists and Canada's democracy.