Madam Speaker, I appreciated almost all but the opening remarks of my colleague from Quebec's speech.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had the good sense to stay out of the nation's bedrooms. His prime ministerial son does not have the wit, sagacity, acuity, percipience, sapience or clue of a newt to realize he has absolutely no business in the nation's newsrooms.

We know that the Liberal Prime Minister can memorize and recite a clever explanation of quantum computing, but he has shown us that he has no knowledge of or respect for the absolutely essential independence of the fourth estate. I will offer a reminder for the record, for Hansard, if the PM or his acolytes are ever advised by its contents, as well as for the most recent heritage minister.

Historically, there were three original states of the British realm: the clergy, the nobility and the commoners. However, over time and the evolution of parliamentary democracy, society came to recognize the press, or print, and then, over time, radio and television news, as a fourth estate, or independent chroniclers, protectors and defenders of facts and truth, arbiters of public trust, and eventually independently expressed analysis and criticism of the other evolved estates: the Crown, the courts and government. Then suddenly, as we approached the turn of the last century, mainstream journalism, as we had come to consider it, hit the rocks.

These were the rocks of technology, of fragmented audiences, of equally fragmented advertising revenues, and generational abandonment of traditional newspapers and appointment television and radio newscasts. At the same time, there was an ever-escalating shift of audiences to digital information sources, digital opinion and unregulated social and anti-social media.

The Canadian news industry began to collapse. Newspapers were downsized. There were massive layoffs and failed consolidations. Scores of newspapers were abandoned. The same shrivelling of original news content generation, local, national and international, hollowed out and emptied radio and TV newsrooms.

The solution to this crisis in Canada's news industry is not after-the-fact mitigation, the Liberal government's misguided attempted election-year bailout of failing newspapers, which, despite the heritage minister's rhetorical flailing, are indeed the fossilizing dinosaurs of hard-copy print.

The solution will eventually be found, will come, in those print and broadcast newsrooms that can adapt and survive the transformation to profitable, sustainable digital news platforms. The transformation and survival of robust, independent, digital journalism platforms in Canada will require bold policy adjustments and political leadership to level the news industry playing field. However, how can any news organizations be truly independent if they become dependent on government subsidies, temporary slush-fund tax relief or direct cash bailouts?

It is important to remember that these hundreds of millions of dollars, almost $600 million, will only go to Canadian journalistic organizations that must first apply to register for financial assistance and then be accepted as a QCJO. What is a QCJO? It is a typical, Liberal nanny state concept, a values-imposing concept, a confected panel bureaucratically designated as a qualified Canadian journalism organization. To be eligible, a newsroom must employ two or more journalists working a minimum of 26 hours a week and employed for at least 40 consecutive weeks. As well, the panel will also decide eligibility on the subjective measurement of acceptable news content generated by a newsroom.

The Liberal government is going to decide, through this commissioning panel, which struggling newspapers get money and which ones do not. It is a terrible concept, an outrageous concept. It offends the fundamental principles of the independent craft of journalism. However, it gets worse. This motley panel was created without consultation. Its most blatant shortcoming, of course, is the inclusion of Unifor, a union which has repeatedly proclaimed its deeply partisan intent to become the worst nightmare of the Leader of the Opposition in the coming election.

We have heard protests in recent weeks from many of the 12,000 practising journalists that Unifor claims to represent, journalists forced to belong to Unifor and forced to pay dues to a union that compromises their independent craft. However, beyond Unifor, we have heard protests from journalists represented by other groups among the eight groups on the Liberals' panel. For example, the head of the Canadian Association of Journalists said that she learned of the CAJ's involvement in the panel not by consultation but by the government's proclamation, and that she was concerned to learn that decisions of the panel will not be transparent and final but subject to secret secondary screening by the Liberal cabinet.

Condemnation of the Liberals' misguided decision to pick winners and losers in the Canadian news industry is not limited to those journalists represented by panel organizations. The columnist Andrew Coyne, for example, in noting that the Liberal plan excludes anyone outside the existing Canadian newspaper industry, wrote that it is designed for “not the future of news but the past; not the scrappy startups who might save the business, but the lumbering dinosaurs who are taking it down.”

The founder and editor of The Logic, one of those scrappy start-ups, David Skok, complains that the mandatory full-time status of journalists required for funding ignores the vital role that freelance journalists play in the news ecosystem. Mr. Skok noted in an editorial, “According to Statistics Canada, as of 2016, there are about 12,000 people who identify 'journalist' as their profession. Of those, it's safe to assume that the number of people not employed full-time with a newsroom is in the thousands”.

Chantal Hébert, whose primary employer is the Toronto Star, will very likely be designated a qualified recipient of Liberal beneficence. She said, “The government’s half-a-billion package will not resolve the crisis [that newsrooms face]. It may end up doing little more than delaying the inevitable.” Ms. Hébert says that “among the ranks of the political columnists, many fear it is a poison pill that will eventually do the news industry more harm than good.”

Here are a few more prominent voices. One is Andrew Potter, from McGill University, who wrote, “This is actually worse than anyone could have imagined. An 'independent body' staffed entirely by unions and industry lobbyists. What a disaster.”

Jen Gerson, a commentator on CBC and Maclean's, tweeted, “If any of these associations or unions could be trusted to manage this “independent” panel, they would be denouncing it already.”

Aaron Wudrick from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation tweeted, “Mark my words, this isn't going to arrest the erosion of trust in media. It is going to make it worse. Indeed, it already has.”

Global News Journalist David Akin, who sits above us on many occasions, sent an invitation to Unifor union boss Jerry Dias to visit with Unifor members who are also members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. David tweeted, “I’ll set the meeting up. You will learn first-hand how much damage you are doing to the businesses that employ us, to our credibility and how terribly uninformed you are.”

The finance minister cannot justify this $600-million election year bailout because he has no idea at all what will happen after his subsidized transition period, and that is unacceptable. It is wasteful of Canadian tax dollars, because an intervention should have a goal of not only short-term survival of print but long-term sustainability of the evolving craft of digital journalism.

As I remarked earlier, the transformation and survival of robust, independent journalism platforms in Canada will require bold policy adjustments and political leadership, but how can any news organizations be truly independent if they become dependent on government subsidies, temporary slush fund tax relief or direct cash bailouts?

Peter Kent