(Longueuil) The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, is due to meet with Canada Post officials soon to discuss the possible distribution of local and regional weeklies by the Crown corporation.
Posted at 6:01 p.m.
“Regional newspapers and local radio stations play a fundamental role that others cannot play,” argued the minister during a press meeting on Thursday in Longueuil, at the premises of Exprolink, a company that manufactures electric maintenance vehicles.
Mr. Rodriguez said he has been following the situation of regional weeklies closely since the announcement, by the City of Montreal on Monday, to move towards the voluntary model also called “opting in” for the Publisac as of May 2023.
This approach means that citizens must ask to receive the Publisac, whereas currently they have the option of refusing it.
However, since the weeklies are distributed with the Publisac and the Montreal decision risks being followed by several other municipalities, citizens throughout Quebec risk losing access to their local information.
“It’s a file that I follow, especially since the announcement in Montreal,” said the minister first. “I have to meet with Canada Post on this,” he continued. I have to check with (Canada Post) now. »
Throw the baby out with the bathwater
Weekly publishers criticize the City of Montreal for throwing the baby out with the bathwater by wanting to reduce the distribution of the Publisac to a minimum.
Canada Post is the only other entity that has the capacity to deliver local and regional weeklies to citizens’ doorsteps, but its rates are prohibitive, reaching up to three times the asking price of Transcontinental, which distributes the Publisac.
Minister Rodriguez recognizes that, even if the initiatives of his department to financially support the various media will allow many of them to survive, it will be a waste of time for those who can no longer be distributed to their readership.
“It has to happen”
“I will look with Canada Post, but I am completely open to discussion. Necessarily, it is not only necessary that they publish, but that it goes to people, ”he argued.
The Minister recalled that regional newspapers are a vector of democracy by being witnesses for citizens of the work of their local elected representatives. He says that delivery by Canada Post is quite possible.
“I never say no. I never say it’s impossible. […] I am closed to nothing, the proof is all the efforts we have made,” he recalled, referring to his recent Bill C-18, which aims to redistribute to the media a share of the revenues stolen from them by the digital giants.
“Platforms like Google and Facebook use content created by media professionals and broadcast for free and do not pay a penny,” he protested, recalling that 451 media have had to close their doors in Canada for 15 years, including 64 since the start of the pandemic, following the erosion of their advertising revenues in favor of the web giants.
His predecessor at Heritage, Steven Guilbeault, was very interested in the idea of entrusting the distribution of local newspapers to Canada Post when he was seized of it during a forum chaired by the current Minister responsible for Sports, Pascale St-Onge, while she was still president of the CSN’s National Communications Federation. The initiative, which was also supported by the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec (FPJQ), however, never progressed beyond the intention.
Minister Rodriguez was in Longueuil on Thursday as a Quebec lieutenant in the Trudeau government. In particular, he met with Mayor Catherine Fournier, with whom he discussed, among other things, housing, drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure.