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View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
View Paul Manly Profile
2021-06-21 21:55 [p.8902]
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak today to Bill C-10 on behalf of the constituents of Nanaimo—Ladysmith and the Green Party supporters across Canada.
It has been 29 years since the Broadcasting Act was updated, so this legislation is long overdue. I have decades of experience in music, film and the television industry, so I have a keen interest in seeing this update done correctly. However, Bill C-10 was critically flawed from the beginning.
More than 120 amendments were put forward to fix this bill, including 18 from the government itself. I submitted 29 amendments to Bill C-10. Two of these amendments passed, and another two passed with subamendments. The focus of my amendments was to ensure that industry stakeholders outside of the big media conglomerates are properly represented in the act. This included non-profit community broadcasters; independent producers who work outside of the traditional broadcasting system; small, independent production companies that create much of the content that we watch on the big networks; and independent networks, like APTN, which are not part of the media conglomerates like Bell, Rogers or Shaw.
Some of the key amendments I put forward ensured that the community element is recognized under the Broadcasting Act. The community element consists of hundreds of non-profit community TV and community radio stations across Canada. In Nanaimo, we have CHLY radio, which is a community-based campus radio station with a non-profit mandate that supports local, commercial-free programming.
When I started out in the broadcasting industry, there was a large network of community TV stations across the country, which were originally tied to the local community cable companies. As those small cable companies were swallowed up by Bell, Rogers and Shaw, the community broadcasting element was slowly pushed out. As the cable giants became more vertically integrated, buying up channels and production companies and expanding service into cellular, they started to use their community stations as a way to promote their own products.
Community media plays an important role in a free and democratic society. These stations are not owned and controlled by commercial interests, and their mandate is to provide a platform to community voices that would otherwise be squeezed out of commercial radio and television. It is important to have the community element recognized as the third major element of broadcasting in Canada. I was glad to have some of my amendments regarding the community element pass, although it was disappointing to see the term “non-profit” removed from the definition, because that is precisely what the community element is, a non-profit element of our broadcasting system.
There has been a lot of talk by the government about the objective of this bill being to level the playing field and protect Canadian cultural producers in their relationship to large Internet giants. According to the Yale report, which was presented in committee, the playing field also needs to be levelled in the contractual agreements between independent production companies and large broadcasting or streaming services.
Much of what we watch is created by small, independent productions companies that bring their program ideas to the big companies. There is a power imbalance in the system that needs to be corrected. Two amendments I put forward were recommended by the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada, and the Canadian Media Producers Association. Had they passed, those amendments would have created market-based solutions to a market-based power imbalance.
The U.K and France both have similar systems in place, which are working quite well. After the British Parliament passed legislation, the U.K. regulatory agency required negotiations of codes of practice between independent producers and the public service broadcasters. Every code of practice agreement was worked out by the players themselves, rather than dictated by the regulator. The result was a tripling of the size of the domestic production industry in under a decade. France implemented similar measures, with the effect being that the volume of independently produced productions has continually increased, including those commissioned by web giants like Netflix and Amazon.
In Canada, the CRTC has never attempted to directly regulate the commercial relationship between producers and broadcasters. It has always taken the position that codes of practice should be negotiated by the market actors concerned. It is essential, however, that the CRTC be given explicit authority in this area so that it can require players to negotiate codes of practice between themselves. Unfortunately, those amendments, which would have provided more protection to small producers, were opposed by both the Liberals and the Conservatives and did not pass.
There is no doubt that the Broadcasting Act needs to be modernized and we need to level the playing field to ensure that digital giants pay their fair share. For decades now we have had a system in which the broadcasting industry supports the creation of Canadian content, and this should extend to the Internet giants.
Currently, the streaming and social media giants get away with not paying their fair share of taxes in this country. They also contribute nothing to the creation of content except that which they choose to produce.
The Conservatives have been busy sowing a great deal of confusion about what is and what is not Canadian content and how that is determined. Our Canadian content rules are very straightforward. For music to be deemed Canadian content, there is the MAPL system.
To qualify as Canadian content, a musical selection must generally fulfill at least two of the following conditions: M, or music, means that the music is composed entirely by a Canadian; A, or the artist, is for when the music or the lyrics are performed principally by a Canadian; P, or performance, is when the music selection consists of a live performance that is recorded wholly in Canada or performed wholly in Canada and broadcast live in Canada; and L, is when the lyrics are written entirely by a Canadian.
If we fulfill two out of those four categories, we have Canadian content. It is pretty straightforward. Canadian content rules have made stars out of some great Canadian bands such as The Tragically Hip, a band whose lyrics are distinctly Canadian. Tragically, The Hip never made it big in the U.S.A., but it is great that they have become such Canadian icons, thanks to Canadian content regulations that led to the production of films that were later picked up by Canadian broadcasters and went through the procedure of having the film certified as Canadian content.
It is an attestation-based process where one makes a declaration, and it may or may not be audited in the future. There is a point system where people have must score six out of a possible 10 points. They get two points for a director, two points for the screenwriter, first and second lead performers at one point each, and points are awarded for production design, art design, the director of photograph, camera chief, camera operator, musical composer, etc.
The Conservatives spent a lot of time filibustering at committee asking how anyone could figure out if a production is Canadian or not. In question period, the member for Lethbridge wanted to know if Canadian Bacon was a Canadian film based on the name and one of the lead actors, John Candy, being Canadian. However, Canadian Bacon was produced and directed by Michael Moore, an American, and it was produced mostly with an American crew.
Yes, John Candy was one of the stars, and there was another lesser known but also great Canadian actor Adrian Hough in the film, but other than that, there was a long list of American stars like Alan Alda. According to the formula, Canadian Bacon was not a Canadian film, but it is a very straightforward system.
Social media users are exempt from Bill C-10 and the Broadcasting Act, but the content they upload to social media platforms would be covered under the act. It should be noted that under current CRTC rules, productions under five minutes or less do not require certification as Canadian content. TikTok videos and Instagram videos, which are all less than five minutes, would not fall under the current regulations for discoverability as Canadian content.
Can regulations under the act change? Yes, they can. Does the CRTC think it is a good idea to regulate TikTok and Instagram videos for Canadian content discoverability? I really doubt it. There is an ongoing debate about whether freedom of expression is protected under the Broadcasting Act. In the 1991 Broadcasting Act under part 1, the general interpretation, it states, “This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings.”
This part of the act still stands. The CRTC is going to have to respect our constitutional right to freedom of expression under the act. That is just a fact. If it does not, then there will be grounds for a legal challenge to the bill, and it seems pretty clear that freedom of expression will be respected.
In conclusion, Bill C-10 is still flawed and there could be a lot more in the bill to protect small, independent producers and production companies, and to ensure that independent networks such as APTN get their products on those streaming services, so we need to do more to protect Canadian producers and defend them in their relationship to the big companies, and not just the big Internet companies, but also the big Canadian broadcasters.
View Julie Dabrusin Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Julie Dabrusin Profile
2021-06-21 23:45 [p.8921]
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the third reading of Bill C-10, a bill that would modernize the Broadcasting Act. This bill fulfills our government's promise to artists and creators, and will make Canada's broadcasting system more inclusive, accessible and equitable for all Canadians.
The Broadcasting Act has not been updated for 30 years. During that time, foreign web giants have stepped into the void. They have made money in Canada without contributing to our cultural creative industries. Bill C-10 seeks to modernize our broadcasting system and to level the playing field between our traditional broadcasters and these foreign web giants.
A modernized Broadcasting Act is urgently needed. It puts in place the right framework to support Canadian creators, producers and broadcasters to maintain the vitality of Canadian content creation and diversity of voices in the creative industry at large. It ensures that foreign web giants and streaming services contribute fairly to the Canadian broadcasting system, like our domestic broadcasters have for decades, and strives for fairness in the new digital world.
Even before tabling the bill, we heard from people who worked across the entire spectrum of the broadcasting sector about the importance of modernization. In June 2018, our government appointed a panel to review the broadcasting and telecommunications legislative framework. We received over 2,000 written submissions and heard directly from many people through conferences across the country. The Yale Report was released in January 2020, making recommendations based on this intensive study that created the framework for Bill C-10 and the modernization of the Broadcasting Act.
I want to underline this point. The consultations leading to this bill includes the work done by that esteemed panel that produced this report. Even before second reading, the heritage committee agreed to a pre-study and it ultimately took on the study of this bill. There were suggestions that we heard from people working in the industry as to how the bill could be improved. We have listened to these concerns and we took action.
Government and opposition parties proposed amendments. In many cases, more than one party proposed pretty much the same amendments, which were moments when there was better collaboration as we worked through them. In other moments, we had very heated debate and ultimately a Conservative filibuster, which kept members from being able to discuss improvements that could be made. Ultimately, the parties were able to work through the stack of amendments we had before us and to present an amended bill to the House.
Bill C-10 would level the playing field, supporting community broadcasting, inclusion and diversity and providing the CRTC with the proper tools to fulfill this modernization. The modernization includes bringing social media companies, and not their users, into the framework. This is because social media companies, for example, Youtube, have become major distributors for music in our country.
Users uploading content to social media are specifically excluded and the CRTC powers over social media companies themselves are restricted to only the following: first, request information from social media companies about the revenues they earn in Canada; second, require that they contribute a percentage of those revenues to cultural production funds; and third, make our Canadian creators discoverable on their platforms. I will break that down.
The first is to request information from social media companies about the revenues that they earn in Canada. Right now, we do not even know how much revenue these platforms such as Youtube generate in Canada. This seems like a reasonable step to take. I cannot see why the opposition parties, such as the Conservatives, want to let foreign platforms continue to operate in Canada without having to disclose this information. This is money made by foreign companies right in Canada.
The second requires that social media companies contribute a percentage of their revenues made in Canada to our cultural production funds. This goes to the core of supporting our artists. Broadcasters and radio pay into FACTOR or Musicaction to support our artists under the traditional system. It is time for these web giants, which have been getting richer during the pandemic, to pay into these funds as well.
The third is to make our Canadian creators more discoverable on their platforms. I would like to clarify on this point that the discoverability requirement is not the same as the one that applies to traditional TV and radio broadcasters. Social media companies do not need to show or play a proportion of Canadian shows or music. The discoverability requirement for social media companies is only to make our creators discoverable. This simply means to include them as suggestions in playlists, for example, or something of that type.
I would like to make one more point on the CRTC's restricted powers regarding social media companies. The CRTC will not have any powers relating to broadcasting standards that could be imposed on social media. Its only powers for social media companies are the three I have listed.
In debate at committee and in this place, there has been much that was raised about freedom of expression, and I want to address this point. The Broadcasting Act includes a specific clause that it must be interpreted in a way that respects freedom of expression and journalistic and creative independence. That has been there for the past 30 years.
At committee, we added a further clause that repeats this protection specifically for social media companies. The charter statement and amendment analysis from justice confirms that Bill C-10 does not impinge on freedom of expression. Bill C-10 levels the playing field and requires web giants to contribute to Canadian shows and music. It does not infringe freedom of expression.
Today, we are discussing a bill that will improve the representation of all Canadians in the programs that they watch. When most of the programming available to Canadians does not reflect their actual lived experiences, something needs to change.
That is why Bill C-10 makes advances to ensure that the Broadcasting Act promotes greater diversity. Programming that represents indigenous people, ethnocultural minorities, racialized communities, and francophones and anglophones, including those who belong to official language minority communities, the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities will no longer only be provided as resources become available. The offer and availability of such programming is essential for self-actualization.
The policies set out in the Broadcasting Act will ensure that our broadcasting system reflects Canadian society and that diverse and inclusive programming is available to everyone. That is essential so that the Canadian broadcasting system can help broaden people's perspectives, spur empathy and compassion for others and celebrate our differences, while strengthening the common bonds that unite our unique Canadian society.
Many of these aspects of broadcasting that have been simply migrated online have happened, and we need to bring them into the Canadian fold. It does not cover the whole of the Internet, as some might say. Bill C-10 includes clear authority for the CRTC to exempt certain classes of undertakings from regulation and to avoid regulation where such an imposition would not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy objectives.
Much debate has occurred about social media. Social media has clearly become an important tool for self-expression for Canadians. The bill would not interfere with the lawful use of this medium to express one's self.
The Conservatives stated that they would oppose this modernization of the Broadcasting Act even before changes were made at committee. While they raised issues about freedom of expression, which I addressed earlier, it seems like the objection from the start, and to this time, was about something else. A member of the Conservative caucus called artists who received support “niche groups”, that all of them must be stuck in the early 1990s because they had not managed to be competitive on new platforms and were producing material that Canadians just did not want.
I wonder if the member for the Conservative opposition was referring to shows from Alberta, such as Heartland, or Little Mosque on the Prairie, or maybe successful Canadian shows like Murdoch Mysteries, Kim's Convenience, Corner Gas, or Canadian musicians like Jessie Reyez, Gord Downie and the Arkells, all of whom received support through our cultural production funds.
Our government has crafted a carefully considered bill, and Bill C-10 would ensure our distinctively Canadian stories continue into the future.
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-22 0:16 [p.8925]
Mr. Speaker, we have finally reached the end of this bill on which many people have worked very hard in the past few months. I commend the members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage who have been working hard since Bill C‑10 was introduced.
As we have said many times, this bill was not perfect when it was introduced. I used a metaphor, comparing this bill to a brand new paint by numbers. We had a lot of work to do.
The way it works is that we all vote in favour of a bill and agree to send it to committee. The House of Commons speaks and democracy does its job. At that point, it is our responsibility to work on improving the bills that are introduced and that must be studied in committee, and we made the decision to work on this bill, even though the task was, quite frankly, monumental.
We decided to do this work even if the task was altogether daunting. We committed to do it and we did. It was going relatively well until the withdrawal of clause 4.1 gave the Conservatives the opportunity they had been waiting for. It was the perfect opportunity to speak out against a possible attack on freedom of expression.
The support of various experts who already did not have a very high opinion of this bill, which obviously had an impact on web giants, was all it took for the Conservatives to come down on Bill C‑10 like a ton of bricks by pointing out all of the problems with the bill and demonizing it as much as possible.
I am rather pleased that we are in the final stages of this bill, particularly because we have pretty much covered all of the arguments and the list of witnesses and experts on which the Conservatives based their fearmongering.
My colleagues have said this repeatedly, and I will reiterate that the Broadcasting Act and Bill C‑10 contain several provisions that specifically exempt social media users, regular people like us and the people we care about, from the Broadcasting Act regulations.
The provisions in Bill C‑10 apply only to broadcasting undertakings. However, if entities that use social media sites like YouTube also engage in broadcasting, we have to regulate those broadcasting activities.
That excludes the activities of users who share content and little videos with each other or who have somewhat more organized channels that might even earn them an income. This does not apply to those people, as specifically stated in Bill C‑10.
The campaign of fear has run its course. It has slowed the progress of this extremely important bill since April, with what is commonly known as organized filibustering. Who will pay for that? The artists, creators, culture and the cultural community in Quebec, but also in Canada. The only ones to profit from it are the Conservatives, who oppose the bill, despite the fact that the other parties of the House are working hard to improve it and move it forward. I remind members that this bill was imperfect, but certainly not as bad as what the Conservatives have been saying for weeks and weeks.
There is another principle that I would like to revisit. I am reminded of the mother who watches a military parade go by and notices that one soldier is walking in the opposite direction, against the parade. Upon realizing that the soldier in question is her son, she wonders why everyone else is marching in the wrong direction. That is kind of what this reminds me of.
Sooner or later, when someone realizes that they are the only one who thinks something and nobody else thinks what they think, they might consider a little open-mindedness. They might accept that they have expressed their point of view, that others disagree, that we are all working in a democratic system and that the majority is supposed to rule. They can tell themselves that they fought hard and that, even though they tried hard to defend their point of view, they now have to be a good sport and stop trying to sabotage things.
That is not what happened, however. This attitude prevailed to the very end. We saw the filibustering, at times very disgraceful, and we have reached a point where Bill C‑10 may be in jeopardy. We will have to keep our fingers crossed. I intend to stay hopeful until the end, but I think this could have gone better. We could have done much more and been more noble in what we needed to accomplish. Again, it is our artists and culture that are at stake.
The web giants are earning billions of dollars on the backs of our creators. It is only fair to subject them to the same rules as broadcasters operating in Canada and Quebec.
How many times have the Bloc Québécois been criticized for throwing up their hands and supporting closure with the Liberals? It is awful. I must say that we had to swallow our pride since we are against the use of closure motions. Nonetheless, it is a parliamentary tool that exists. It is not perfect and it is certainly not noble, but neither is systematic filibustering.
Sometimes, the only way to respond to a questionable tactic is to employ another tactic that may also be considered questionable. It definitely is frustrating to come up against a gag order. We have been there as well. However, a bill for artists, for culture and for the industry deserves the right tools. If someone is standing in the way, we will use the procedural moves at our disposal.
The Conservatives will probably take the heat for a long time for scuttling the bill, if it were to fail. Quebec's motto, on all of its licence plates, is “Je me souviens”, or “I remember”. Quebec artists and those who have a lot of influence in the cultural sector will remember.
Culture does not cost anything. In an interview with a local paper in her riding, the member for Lethbridge said that Quebec artists were outdated, that they were stuck in the 1990s and that they were reliant on grants because they produce things people do not want. That is not true. Canada's cultural industry generates billions of dollars in economic spinoffs every year. The industry costs nothing; it brings in money. The industry is valuable, and not just in terms of money. We are talking about our identity here.
I will end my speech on a positive note. Just now, we voted for something positive.
Bill C‑10 was not perfect, and the Bloc Québécois believed that it was important not to wait another 30 years to amend the Broadcasting Act.
This evening, we voted to include a sunset clause in the bill, which ensures that the act must be reviewed every five years. We live in a world that is evolving at an incredible pace. Where will technology be in five years? We have no idea.
It is very important to set a limit and to give ourselves shorter deadlines for a mandatory review of the Broadcasting Act. It should be reviewed more frequently than every 30 years. In my opinion, it is one of the best ideas that we have had. We will have the opportunity to review the bill every five years and to correct whatever flaws may remain in the legislation, if it is passed.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, earlier this evening in the debate, the member for Toronto—Danforth, in response to a question I posed, wanted to make it super clear that this bill “specifically excludes content uploaded by users.” In response to that, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law stated on Twitter that it was false, that she was just wrong.
Who has it right? Does the government have it right? Are content users impacted by this bill, as many critics are saying, or is the government right, that they are not? Which way is it?
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for this question.
Unfortunately, I believe that we will never have unanimity on this issue. However, I have absolute confidence in the bill before us, in sections 2, 35 and 46 of the Broadcasting Act, the two opinions of the Department of Justice to the effect that the bill is charter compliant, and the fact that the CRTC must also abide by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I am absolutely certain that social media users can sleep soundly tonight, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and next week. These users will not be subject to the regulations adopted together with the new law, but the platforms will be.
View Alain Rayes Profile
CPC (QC)
View Alain Rayes Profile
2021-06-14 16:55 [p.8358]
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking today. Earlier, I listened to the Minister of Heritage talk about Bill C‑10, which he tabled, and I almost choked several times.
He began by pointing out that it was important to look back at the past to understand where we are now. I will give another version of the facts for everyone out there watching, and I would invite everyone to fact-check me by consulting the unedited transcriptions, the “blues”, of the various discussions at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. People will be able to check if what I am saying is accurate and well informed and if it reflects everything we have gone through during the saga of Bill C‑10 leading up to the present day.
The minister was right to say that he had all the resources he needed to table Bill C‑10 for more than a year and a half and garner a unanimous response from the outset. The minister is confusing things, talking about web giants and insinuating how he will handle them and make them pay their fair share. The ultimate goal was to produce an act that ensures a level playing field between digital broadcasters such as Disney Plus, Spotify and Netflix, and conventional broadcasters such as TVA, CBC/Radio-Canada, Global and CTV.
The minister even chose to ignore the important elements that everyone wanted to see, including copyright issues and CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate, explaining that he divided these challenges into three parts and was only introducing one in the House of Commons so that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage could work on it.
When he introduced the bill, the committee worked diligently and co-operatively to improve it. This bill was clearly imperfect even though the minister had had a lot of time to draft it with his experts. More than 120 amendments were proposed by all parties. Surprisingly, these amendments were moved not just by the Conservative Party, but also by the Green Party, which had been given authorization to move them, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, Liberal members of the committee and even the government. In fact, the government and the Liberal Party moved almost 30 amendments, not to mention all the amendments to the amendments along the way, to try to address all the shortcomings of this bill.
As the minister pointed out, the committe's study of the bill was moving along relatively well, which I can vigorously and honestly confirm. We even worked with the minister and his staff, who were telling anyone who would listen that the Conservatives were slowing down the process. That was completely false. All the committee members even agreed to do a preliminary study and use that evidence in the committee's official study, to avoid holding up the work.
At no point in the legislative process was the bill delayed, despite what the minister and his aides implied. I am saying so in all honesty, and I challenge everyone to take the time to read all the speeches and everything leading up to that infamous Friday when the minister, surreptitiously and without warning, withdrew clause 4.1 that he was proposing to add to the Broadcasting Act. This made the bill altogether different by including social networks, which had originally been excluded.
Why do I say that? It is because, when we did our job in good faith as Parliamentarians, each party had the opportunity to call witnesses to testify about various aspects of Bill C‑10. That gave us the opportunity to obtain as much information as possible to do the best we could, based on the knowledge of every member and staffer, to formulate proper opinions during our study of the bill in order to improve it. That is our job as legislators, of which I am extremely proud.
The problem is that the Minister of Canadian Heritage left social media out of the original version of Bill C‑10. Furthermore, despite the minister's assertion from the get-go that it is a historic bill, to my knowledge, only one organization has said that. The other organizations highlighted the bill's good parts and said that it was indeed time to modernize the act and to align the way we deal with digital with the way we deal with what we call conventional broadcasters. However, I met with all the organizations the minister mentioned, and every one of them pointed out several frightening provisions in Bill C‑10.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage said that the Conservatives delayed and filibustered. I am sorry, but it was not the Conservatives who did that. The Conservatives have merely given a voice to a number of organizations, individuals and experts who wanted to point out the flaws in Bill C-10. The minister can go ahead and play his partisan games in the run-up to an election to try to scare everyone into believing that the Conservatives do not support the cultural community. However, it is all complete and utter nonsense, pure theatrics, a show worthy of our Prime Minister, who is a great stage actor.
The heritage minister should stop with the games, because nobody is against culture. On the contrary, we are against censorship, against this attack and the way the minister undermined freedom of expression one Friday by removing section 4.1, which was supposed to be added to the Broadcasting Act.
That is when we began what could indeed be described as filibustering or slowing down the committee's work. We are talking about a maximum of three weeks during the six-plus years the Liberal government has been in power. Those three weeks have allegedly been catastrophic, but the Liberals are filibustering in many other committees with regard to the corruption scandals they were involved in, whether we are talking about the former justice minister, SNC-Lavalin, the WE Charity or the Standing Committee on Health, where we have been requesting access to the vaccine procurement reports. The Liberals have definitely done their share of filibustering.
Why have we been filibustering for approximately three weeks? The heritage minister was right. Let us give some background on all of this. It is important to understand it, so that people know how we got to where we are today, muzzled by the Liberals with the support of the Bloc Québécois.
By amending the bill one Friday afternoon, the heritage minister set off alarm bells all over the place. During the weekend, law experts and university professors sounded the alarm, telling us to look out because the government was doing something that would undermine freedom of expression.
What did the Conservatives do? We just asked to hear from the heritage minister again and get a legal opinion from the Minister of Justice stating that the rights guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were not violated by the removal of clause 4.1.
In response, the Liberals objected incessantly for more than two weeks until the member for Mount Royal moved a new version of the motion asking for exactly the same thing we had proposed, which was to have the justice and heritage ministers come explain the situation and answer our questions, as well as an opportunity to hear the other side of the story from experts who had concerns about Bill C‑10.
They ended up appearing, and we were finally able to put an end to the committee's three-week-long standstill. That is the truth about the delay that has the minister up in arms.
I have to wonder whether the minister really wants to pass Bill C-10, because the reality is that the work of the House will be over in just 10 days' time. When the bill is passed by the House at third reading, it will have to go to the Senate. The Senate will have to examine the bill, although 40% of the amendments will not even have been discussed by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. It is pretty preposterous to hear the minister lecturing us, given his behaviour.
Earlier, the minister said that some 30-odd organizations from across the country had highlighted the importance of the bill for the cultural community. They are right, it is an important bill for the cultural community, but that does not release us from the obligation to make sure we protect freedom of expression. I can already picture the minister pointing out that the Minister of Justice tabled his report with his experts. I am sorry, but what he tabled was an explanatory document, which was not in the motion we had presented.
We did not get any answers to our questions, and people started to wake up. The committee heard from former CRTC officials including Timothy Denton, CRTC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, Konrad von Finckenstein, CRTC president from 2007 to 2012, Peter Menzies, the CRTC's vice-president of telecommunications from 2013 to 2018, Michel Morin, the CRTC's national commissioner from 2008 to 2012, and Philip Palmer, legal counsel at the Department of Justice and senior counsel at the Department of Communications from 1987 to 1994. The heritage minister never names them, but all those individuals said that what the minister was doing made no sense.
Peter Menzies went as far as to say that this was a full-blown assault on freedom of expression and the foundations of democracy. He said it is difficult to understand the level of hubris or incompetence, or both, that would lead someone to believe that such an encroachment on rights can be justified.
When the minister attacks the Conservatives, he is also attacking all those individuals, not to mention the thousands of Canadians who support us and have said they want us to keep up the pressure on the minister about his bill and his encroachment on their rights.
These are facts, and I have not even mentioned Michael Geist, who is very often referred to as a professor emeritus of law at the University of Ottawa. His expertise is so sought after that even the Liberal government supports his research in this field. He was one of the strongest critics of the Liberal government's attitude, and the Bloc Québécois's as well since it supported the Liberals' gag order. Imagine: a gag order that has not been used in 20 years, that the Conservative Party never used during its 10 years in power, a House of Commons gag order that the government imposed on a committee when the House leaders keep telling us that committees are independent every time we question them.
Given what the Liberals just did to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, they can never again say that a committee is independent. This is something unique. Even when people used this measure in the past, they granted a minimum of 10 hours to work on the document in question. All we were given was five hours.
This law professor, Michael Geist, is not alone. There are others from other universities. I do not have the documents with me, but I have quoted them several times. People can go and check.
I therefore want to reiterate that, when the minister attacks the Conservatives, he is attacking all those who spoke out via social media, press releases, written correspondence, speeches and interviews with the media and who said that what the minister was doing did not make sense.
Does this mean we are against culture? No, absolutely not.
Does it mean that the minister made a mistake with his bill? The answer is yes.
If the work had been done properly to begin with, we would not be where we are today. It is because of all the delays that we are dealing with this mess, which will certainly not ensure a level playing field between digital broadcasters and conventional broadcasters.
My NDP colleague's question to the minister was entirely justified. That is what happened. Those are the facts.
Back when we started studying this bill, the government made a big show of saying that this was to be a partnership, so it is pretty funny that the opposition parties did not get so much as a phone call to let them know that clause 4.1 was being removed from the bill. That was the event that triggered this crisis.
No other conversations about collaboration raised problems when they were in the Liberal government's interest. I cannot talk about them because they happened in private, but I was involved in those conversations several times.
It is sad that things have come to this. It is sad that the minister is now stooping to partisan behaviour and attacking Conservatives over this file. As I said, we are just speaking on behalf of all these industry stakeholders, the ones who wanted to protect net neutrality and freedom of expression and avoid these flaws that will almost certainly be challenged in court.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission now has more powers, even though former CRTC commissioners and chairs say that giving the CRTC that kind of power is not a good idea. I am not kidding.
At the beginning of his speech the minister talked about $70 million a month, which was an approximate amount, with the calculations planned for later. People deserve to be told the truth. The CRTC now has nine months to tell us on what percentage it will base the calculations, because no one knows. The only response from the minister is that if the CRTC uses the same calculations as conventional broadcasters, the amounts will be somewhere between $800 million and $1.1 billion, which leaves a margin of $300 million. We do not know anything about it, however, and neither do we know whether the CRTC is going to use the same rules. Once the bill passes we will no longer have any control over this.
That is the current reality of this bill. Time allocation was imposed, and over the past week we have been forced to hold many votes on amendments without those watching us having access to the text of nearly 40% of them. Imagine that scenario, where the only thing the audience heard was the number of the amendment, preceded by the abbreviation of the party proposing it and followed by the question on whether members of the committee were for or against it. What transparency. The Liberals said that the people would have access to the text at the end, when it was all over. It will be too late by then and we will not be able to move forward.
The minister says that we delayed the process, but I would have him know that the committee agreed to hold as many meetings as the chair wanted. We even held meetings every day of the break week, when we were meant to be working in our ridings. Some meetings were extended to four or five hours, on barely an hour's notice. That is the truth, but the minister never mentions that when he talks about his bill.
That really stings, because these kinds of politics hurt us all. The session is ending in a few days. We know full well that the Liberals will call an election before the House comes back. All the minister is trying to do here is play politics. He wants his bill to make it into the election platform, since he knows perfectly well that he will not get it passed in time.
The Bloc Québécois helped the Liberals out of some hot water. I do not recall ever seeing an opposition party support a government gag order. The Bloc members are proud of it. They are boasting about supporting a gag order. It is crazy to think about it.
At times, I found myself wondering what was going on. The minister was weaving a story that did not make sense and that was looking like a horror story for a while there. We have tried our best to do our jobs as legislators, but it has unfortunately been extremely difficult.
The minister, through his work, has attacked net neutrality. He has created a breach. It may not be a big breach, but it is a breach nonetheless. It will be challenged, that much is clear. On top of that, the CRTC is also being given increased powers. That is the reality.
If people listening right now think that my story is not true and that I lied, if they think, as the Prime Minister has implied in the House, that I misled people, I invite them to go back and look at the record, because it is all there.
People know that that is how it happened. They know that everyone started out in good faith, until that Friday when the Minister of Canadian Heritage removed clause 4.1 without any warning. Everyone knows what happens when something is done on a Friday. It means they want to slip it through quietly. After all the theatrics to try to make people believe we do not support the arts community, which is not the case, because it is censorship that we oppose, here is what the Liberal government did instead: It censored us by imposing time allocation.
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
View Rachael Harder Profile
2021-06-14 18:25 [p.8370]
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood.
Last week culminated in a devastating assault on democracy as MPs were forced to vote on amendments that were not made public and vote on sections of the bill without any discussion or debate. There was zero openness and zero accountability, and it was absolutely wrong.
How did we get there? Earlier in the spring the Liberals brought forward an amendment to their own bill, which removed a section that originally protected the content that individuals would post online. When that section was removed, of course it caused disarray at committee and a great discussion ensued.
That was the case because Canadians deserve to be protected. They deserve to have their voices contended for and their freedoms established. When that part of the bill was taken out, of course the Conservatives went to bat. The Liberals did not really like that very much, so they moved something called time allocation in the House of Commons, which limited debate at committee to five hours.
This meant that hundreds of pages of material was only given five hours of consideration, after which time members of the committee were forced to vote on the bill, including its amendments and subamendments. Again, those were not made public and no discussion was allowed.
It was not exactly democracy in its finest state. It was a sham, and not how good legislation is meant to be created in Canada. This is not democracy.
Once again, the bill is now in the House. Although the Liberals have not moved time allocation, they have moved to have our debating time restricted again.
From here the bill will go to the Senate where it will be discussed further. My genuine hope is that the Senate will have the opportunity to examine this bill and hear from witnesses. In particular, it is my hope that the witnesses it brings forward include creators from digital first platforms because those individuals have been left out of the conversation despite being impacted to the greatest extent.
Let me back up and explain what this bill does for a moment. There are two things. The first is, as the government argues, it levels the playing field between large streaming companies and traditional broadcasters. The second thing this bill does in fact do, however, is censor the content we place online.
With regard to levelling the playing field, the minister claims this is about getting money from web giants, but if he is concerned about GST being paid, that is already taken care of because there is already an initiative starting in July that will require companies, such as Disney+, Netflix, Spotify, Crave, etc., to start paying GST, which takes care of levelling the playing field.
However, Bill C-10 goes far beyond just levelling the playing field. It is backed up by many lobby groups that are pushing for a 30% Canadian programming expenditure requirement as a share of revenue per year. What this will do is not simply increase the cost to these large streaming companies, it will actually pass that cost down to consumers. According to experts, costs are actually expected to rise by about 50%.
Canadians already pay some of the highest rates in the world, so with Bill C-10, they can expect to be taxed even more. This of course will have a huge impact on them with respect to money coming out of their wallets. Furthermore, the bill will impact the content Canadians can post and access, which brings me to my second point on censorship.
When I talk about censorship, I talk about the government getting involved with respect to what one can and cannot see and post online. I am talking about the government putting an Internet czar in place.
Peter Menzies, the former CRTC vice-chair, stated Bill C-10, “doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.” That deserves consideration. It is quite the statement.
Bill C-10 is in fact a direct attack on section 2(b) of our charter. Under this section, Canadians have the right to speak and to be heard. Much of that speaking takes place within our new form of the public square, the Internet.
The bill before us would infringe upon the ability Canadians have to post online and to express themselves freely. Furthermore, the bill would infringe upon the rights that viewers have to access that content online, which means that the right to speak and the right to be heard will be infringed upon if the bill passes.
Let us talk about viewers for a moment. Viewers go online in order to access the content they want. They go on YouTube perhaps looking for a video on how to fix a bicycle chain, or they may want to look up information having to do with the war of 1812. They are looking for content that is going to fit their needs.
However, if the bill is passed, they would go on YouTube, and the government would determine what that need might be. The government would dictate the type of material that they would be able to access. The government would dictate this based on how “Canadian” the material is.
The government would curate what we can and cannot see by bumping things up or down in the queue, which means that the content a viewer really needs to access might be pushed back to page 27 of a YouTube search whereas, normally, right now, according to the existing algorithms, that content would probably be found on page one. The government would actually infringe upon a viewer's ability and right to access that information, because it is going to curate and determine that, no, a viewer does not want what is on page 27, but rather what the government is putting on page one. It wrong. It is dictatorial. It is anti-democratic.
Canadians know what they like. They know what they want to watch, and they know how to find it. Platforms such as YouTube are curated in such a way as to point people to more of the content they desire. When a viewer searches for content, YouTube gives it, and then it might suggest more that is similar to it. However, that would not be the case going forward. Instead, the government would steer viewers in the direction that the government wants them to go, and it will do it through the power of its Internet czar.
I will talk about creators for a moment. They are amazing. In Canada, we are punching above our weight in terms of what creators are able to produce, and I am talking about individuals who are using non-traditional platforms in order to gain an audience. They share their talent, skill and ability with the world. Ninety per cent of watch time of Canadian content comes from viewers outside of Canada. That is amazing.
I think about Justin Bieber, and about how much popularity he has gained on the world stage. He started out on YouTube, a non-traditional platform. However, under Bill C-10, Justin Bieber probably would not have risen to the top, because the algorithms that the government would impose through its Internet czar would relegate him to the bottom. Why? Well, it is because his content just would not be Canadian enough to make the cut. Again, it is wrong.
Let us also talk about diversity. This government loves to celebrate diversity, but let us talk about the indigenous digital first creators or those who are members of minority groups. Instead of being able to make a name for themselves and follow the protocols that are already in existence, they would come under government scrutiny and, again, the Internet czar would determine whether or not their content can be accessed.
Now, members might ask who the Internet czar is. It is none other than the CRTC, which is the regulatory arm of the government. Who makes up the CRTC? I can tell members that the leadership of the CRTC is made up of six white men. It would be six white men who would be determining what type of content is Canadian and what content is not.
They would be determining whether or not indigenous first creators can be accessed or not. They would be determining whether visible minority content can be accessed or not. Six white men would be making those decisions on behalf of those individuals who are putting their content out online and on behalf of Canadians who wish to access that content.
I have not seen legislation this dictatorial since my time of first being elected in 2015. It is wrong and anti-democratic, and it is altogether harmful, not only to creators, but also to the millions of viewers who use platforms such as YouTube in order to access information and engage in the public square online.
It is wrong, and I would ask for Bill C-10 to be rescinded, at the bare minimum. When it gets to the Senate, I ask that, please do the due diligence; please research well; and please hear from witnesses who have not yet been heard from, namely the artists.
View Tom Kmiec Profile
CPC (AB)
View Tom Kmiec Profile
2021-06-14 18:59 [p.8374]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be joining the debate on this bill once again, at a different stage. I am pleased that my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood has moved an amendment, so I am going to speak directly to it. It is about sending Bill C-10 back to committee.
Members know that he has had a 40-year career in broadcasting, which is probably longer than that of any other member in our caucus. We actually featured him in something called “member spotlight” at a caucus meeting, noting his 40-year career using different clips from different videos of his time in sports broadcasting and with CTV as well.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Saskatoon—University, another one of our colleagues from Saskatchewan who will be adding to this debate.
I first spoke to this bill on February 5. I warned Canadians then that the contents of the bill were going to attack free speech, were calling into question the difference between users and programming, and were trying to jam the Internet age into a broadcasting act that was meant for before the 1990s, for a totally different time before Internet, Wi-Fi, cellphones and everything else.
At the time, I brought up the example of content creators in my riding. A few of them run YouTube channels. They run very successful businesses. Since I am splitting my time with a member from Saskatchewan and the member who spoke before me is from Saskatchewan as well, I want to bring up one of my favourite Instagram TV shows. It is called Leroy and Leroy. I hope the members from Saskatchewan know these two. There is always something to do, and indeed there is. It is a fantastic online content.
One of the latest very funny videos has a sign in the middle of what seems to me like nowhere, and I apologize to all the members from the Saskatchewan caucus for saying this. It is a parking sign in the middle of nowhere, and these two gentlemen turn around and show us that there is nothing there. It is unclear why there is a sign that allows people to park. I assume they can park if they want to.
They are content creators, and they will fall within the ambit of Bill C-10 and its changes to the Broadcasting Act. All of their programming will. It is not them as users, but them as programming providers, as if they were the CBC, as if they were a show like Kim's Convenience or one equivalent to it. They are incredibly funny comedians. It is great content they are producing.
Every expert I have heard, including those from OpenMedia, Michael Geist, Peter Menzies and other former commissioners, has said the exact same thing: YouTube creators, people on IGTV and all others online who are running shops, creating content and trying to get noticed by perhaps one of the large broadcasters are going to fall within the ambit of this legislation. I warned Canadians on February 5 that this was going to happen, and now it is happening.
The minister completely botched the sale job on this legislation, from the time it was before the committee to the time it got to the committee. The member who spoke before me spoke about the fact that he was unable to explain in 15 minutes, on a national TV broadcast, what the bill was about because the bill is all over the place. As I said, the bill tries to jam together the Internet era, the different content creators and the total democracy that now exists. Anybody can create content and anybody can provide it. The middle man is gone now. Anybody can go out there and entertain others, make music for others, give acting classes or provide a how-to for fixing a Jeep. Everything is out there. However, now all of it will perhaps fall within the ambit of this piece of legislation.
We have gotten to the point now where the government is trying to ram it through the House of Commons before the June sitting days are done, because it has recognized that it has botched the management of the House calendar as well. This is entirely the Liberals' fault. There was no reason to rush this through. If they did not like the fact that members of Parliament wanted to provide amendments and hear from more witnesses at the committee, they should have allocated more time. The Liberals should have run the calendar appropriately to avoid situations like the one today. Now they find themselves trying to ram the bill through using undemocratic measures, hoisting it out of committee to ram it through half finished and sending it over to the Senate side. I shudder to think what senators will think of this bill, incomplete as it is.
There is a great Yiddish proverb for this, and members will know that I find Yiddish a charming language and use it very often. It goes, “From fortune to misfortune is but a step; from misfortune to fortune is a long way.” In the case of the minister, every time he has spoken to the bill he has further confused Canadians or made them fear even more for their liberty of expression and for their ability to communicate with others freely and post their opinions and thoughts online without having the government potentially interfere with them through the CRTC.
It is an open question how the CRTC is going to apply and use these powers. It is that uncertainty that is driving so much fear and so much public attention to this bill. This is one of the bills on which I have received the most emails and correspondence and phone calls in my five and a half years in Parliament now.
The member for Saskatoon—Grasswood, who spoke before me, said this was the worst piece of legislation he has ever worked on. I disagree with him. There is a lot of competition for that title coming from the government side, so I am going to disagree with him.
The great misfortune of the minister is that he has been trying to sell a bill that does not match with his words. He has been talking about anti-hate speech legislation. He has been talking about taxing the big web giants and online content providers. As the member for Lethbridge, who spoke before me, mentioned, that is already covered. That is already coming in July. There is already legislation in the books. There is new legislation the minister is going to add, so he keeps confusing the issue, much to his own misfortune, and it is going to affect the fortunes of Canadians. It is going to affect small-time content creators like the creators of Leroy and Leroy, whom I mentioned, and budding comedians, musicians and artists out there who are just trying to provide a service and trying to advertise for themselves using social media platforms.
It is really unfortunate that we find ourselves in a situation now, in the end days of the session in June, where the government feels the urge to just ram this through, push it through as fast as it can with as few eyes as possible on it.
I am just aghast that the Bloc is helping the Liberals along, that the Bloc is helping the most centralizing, free-spending, abusing-of-federal-spending-power government there is and has been in the last 40 years. It is worse than the Chrétien government and worse than the Martin government in its centralization of power in Ottawa. The Bloc is supporting them.
I will repeat that.
It is shameful to see that the Bloc Québécois supports putting an end to the debate on Bill C‑10, forcing a vote and sending the bill to the Senate. The Bloc is helping the most centralizing government we have had in the past 30 or 40 years, one that is worse than the Chrétien and Martin governments.
It is unbelievable. The separatists are helping the Liberals. I just cannot believe that we were brought to this situation, under the guise of getting through a piece of legislation that is so defective in its content.
I have always been a believer, and I have said it many times in this House, that when the government gets it wrong and it cannot be fixed at committee, we should just send it back and make the government redo the work. There is no harm in having the justice department and the heritage department sit down once again and draft a piece of legislation that this House could support. They could just send it back. There are thousands of civil servants whose sole job is to pre-draft legislation based on stakeholder consultation, based on the feedback that they are supposed to get. That is what they exist to do. Many of them are still working from home, so they could take on this task and bring it back in the fall session. Of course, if we do not have a fall session, they will not have it. Perhaps the government is thinking of toppling itself and ensuring that it can run in an election on the free-spending budget that it had in 2021.
However, now we find ourselves again in a situation where, in the span of just a few days, we are going to rush a bill through to the Senate that is incomplete, that would attack freedom of speech and that would not protect content creators. It would protect them as users, but it would not protect any of their content. What is the point of saying “I have free speech” if I cannot say anything online lest I anger the CRTC, lest I anger people? I do not know who they are. I do not know what rules they create. The very basis of our democracy is supposed to be that we know what the rules are so we can abide by them. We do not know what the rules will be. We do not know what the CRTC will like. I truly hope, if future CRTC commissioners are listening, that they will spare Leroy and Leroy.
This is a great amendment from my colleague. We have to vote for the amendment and against Bill C-10.
View Rosemarie Falk Profile
CPC (SK)
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time this evening with the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South.
Canadians expect that legislation passed through the House has been subject to rigorous and fulsome debate, and that the members they elect to this chamber have had the opportunity to represent their voices and to be heard. It really is unfortunate that we find ourselves here once again with the Liberal government moving to shut down debate. The scary and concerning irony here is that the primary concern that has been raised on Bill C-10 is its implications for freedom of speech. The Liberal government's persistent steps to silence members of Parliament from defending free speech in this chamber certainly do not alleviate the concerns that Canadians have raised with the legislation before us, including many of my own constituents in Battlefords—Lloydminster.
Bringing forward legislation to modernize the Broadcasting Act is not without merit, and we have heard that this evening. In fact, this act has not been updated since its adoption in 1991. I was only a couple of years old in 1991, but we all know that the broadcasting landscape has changed drastically in the last three decades. There is no doubt that the Internet, technological advancements and evolving platforms certainly require some form of modernization. That is why Conservatives support creating a level playing field between large, foreign streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix and Canadian broadcasters, but Conservatives do not and certainly cannot support deeply flawed legislation that would compromise Canadians' fundamental rights and freedoms.
Bill C-10, in its current form, leaves the door open for a massive abuse of power and abuse of the rights of Canadians. This proposed legislation would allow the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to regulate user-generated content uploaded to social media platforms. The CRTC's regulatory power would go beyond television, radio and digital platforms if this legislation passes. It would extend the CRTC's power to regulate the free speech of individual Canadians on social media.
This legislation at the outset started with clear exemptions for social media that, due to amendments brought forward by the Liberal members on the heritage committee, are no longer included. If the intention of this legislation was not to regulate individual Canadians or to leave the door open to the possibility of restricting Internet content, then what was the motivation to remove the exemptions?
The Minister of Heritage has failed to provide Canadians with a sufficient answer to that question. The minister has also failed to provide Canadians with clear guidelines on how this power would be used. Giving unelected bureaucrats the authority to censor the Internet and regulate what Canadians post on social media is a radical change.
In our modern digital world, social media plays many roles. Social media is a powerful tool. It is a tool to speak truth to power, to raise opposition, to bring attention to issues and so many more items. The freedom to do that should be unencumbered in a free and democratic society. Those actions should not be subject to abuses of power. Around the world, countries that do not share our values may see fit to enforce such restrictions or regulations, but to move in that direction and to enshrine this power grab is simply unacceptable.
As it is currently drafted, this legislation does not belong in a society that values freedoms. It really is shameful that Conservatives are the only ones in this chamber who are fighting this attack on free speech and opposing Bill C-10. However, to be clear, it is not just Conservatives who are deeply concerned by the implications of this legislation.
The former CRTC commissioner, Peter Menzies, has called the Liberals' Bill C-10 a, “full-blown assault upon...the foundations of democracy”.
Timothy Denton, the former national commissioner of the CRTC has also said, “Forget about 'broadcasting': C-10 is clearly intended to allow speech control at the government's discretion”.
Those powerful and informed criticisms are not to be taken lightly. Free speech is a fundamental Canadian right. Why even leave the door open for any sort of abuse? Many of my constituents in Battlefords—Lloydminster have expressed grave concerns to me about the bill. Many have questioned the Liberal government's intention with the bill.
It has been promoted by the Liberals as a levelling of the playing field between traditional and digital broadcasters, but a look at the details reveals that it goes far beyond that. Will the criticisms of my constituents ultimately be silenced if this legislation is passed?
If those with any sort of following express discontentment with the Prime Minister's repeated attack on our energy sector, the government's failure to support our farmers and our farm families, or any other government policy, will they be subject to these regulations?
Ultimately, the question that gets raised in this debate is the question of whether this legislation is simply a tool to allow the Prime Minister to silence opposition and those who reject his agenda. If that is not the intention, why are we not taking the time to amend and draft the legislation so there is no question?
The concerns that have been raised about this legislation are very serious and the potential impact of this legislation's passage is wide-sweeping. Not only is it completely reasonable for Conservatives on this side of the House to want fulsome consideration of this legislation, I would suggest legislation of this magnitude demands it. That is not where we find ourselves.
The motion is not at the end of fulsome debate, extensive consultation and careful clause-by-clause consideration. In fact, we have not even considered the legislation at this stage, yet we find ourselves considering a motion this evening to limit and to once again shut down debate.
We find ourselves once again at odds with the Liberal government members as they act to silence the voices of those who disagree with them in the House of Commons, actions that will in turn give them the ability to silence the voices of those who disagree with them online.
Canadians can be confident that if this legislation is rammed through Parliament with the support of the NDP and the Bloc, Conservatives are committed to repealing it. However, I would sincerely hope that the Prime Minister and his government would recognize the need to withdraw this legislation and not to rush it.
Given this motion before us, it is clear that the Liberal government is doubling down on its efforts to ram this legislation through Parliament. The stifling of debate is becoming an all-too-common practice under the Liberal government.
First, the Liberals shut down debate on the legislation at committee, limiting the committee's ability to carefully consider every individual clause in this comprehensive bill and now without any debate, at report stage or third reading the Liberals are moving a motion to silence opposition to their flawed bill.
This motion pre-emptively shuts down debate on this legislation before this parliamentary stage, allowing only two hours of debate before sending it to the Senate. I urge my colleagues in the House to seriously consider the impact of this motion. I urge them to consider the serious concerns raised with the proposed legislation and I urge them to reject efforts to hurry it along without proper consideration.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-14 21:43 [p.8396]
Mr. Speaker, 2(b) or not 2(b): That is the question. Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is at stake. It reads:
freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression...freedom of the press and other media of communication.
Section 2(b) of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees us all the liberty to express ourselves without reserve and without coercion from the state. That is a core principle of our constitutional heritage. Although it was embedded in the charter in '82, it goes back hundreds of years through the English liberty this parliamentary system transmitted from one generation to the next.
A great English author, Orwell, said, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
This bill seeks to take away that right and those freedoms. Do not take my word for it. I can quote directly from one of at least two former commissioners of the regulatory body that would be empowered under this bill to control Internet content. Peter Menzies described the bill as an assault on freedom of expression. Another former CRTC member explained that it would allow political appointees to determine what we see and say on the Internet.
There is a lot we do not know about this bill, first because numerous of its amendments were voted before they were even made public at committee. In my 17 years here, I have never seen that happen before. Second, we do not know things about this bill because the minister cannot answer basic questions. For example, the bill supposedly protects Canadian content, but the minister cannot tell us what Canadian content is. He was questioned by our terrific critic about numerous things. She asked whether he understood whether they were Canadian content or not, and he could not answer.
We do not know what will be promoted or demoted online under the rubric of Canadian content because no one in Parliament seems able to define it. I have a very simple definition. If it is made by a Canadian and it is posted online, it is Canadian content. Unfortunately, that definition does not work for the Liberal government. If it did, we would not need the bill. We would just let people continue to post the things they want and watch the things they want in freedom and peace.
The Liberals want a series of bureaucrats, unnamed, unelected and unknown, to decide what Canadian content is heard and what is not. For example, when the CBC runs an effectively plagiarized news story one can get on CNN from Washington with a Washington-based reporter, that is exclusively about American politics and does not even say the word Canada, it will be considered Canadian content. Why is this? It is because it was paid for, tragically, by Canadian tax dollars. Other than that, there is literally nothing Canadian about it.
Another example is a community association in a Canadian neighbourhood telling us about a local food drive. It is in a Canadian neighbourhood. It has a Canadian author of a Canadian story, is a Canadian initiative in a Canadian city and is read almost exclusively by Canadian readers, yet it would not be considered, presumably, Canadian content and therefore would be demoted.
That is just the daily pedestrian content we get online. What about the more contentious stuff? The government is going to decide what kinds of political views are Canadian. Of course, endorsing the Prime Minister's leftist ideology will be a prerequisite of Canadiana. We can be sure of that. Liberal Party members have effectively been saying for generations that they and only they represent Canadian values, therefore only the values they espouse would be considered Canadian for the purpose of this act.
Furthermore, not only can the Liberals not tell us what content would be acceptable and what would not, but they cannot tell us who would be subjected to the bill. Originally, they had an explicit exemption for users: the everyday Joe and Jane who post stuff online. It is called user-generated content. The justice department said, “Don't worry, the bill won't affect any of them, because there's a very specific exemption that excludes them.” However, the Liberals showed up at committee and, all of a sudden and just like that, the exemption was removed. Now everyday Joe and Jane who are posting online are regulated.
In effect, the minister said, “No, we won't bother them. We'll only bother people who have large social media followings.” I think he said on television that it was something like 100,000 followers. Well, I have 100,000 subscribers on my YouTube page, so presumably I would be subject to this regulation. We would have some sort of bureaucrat over at the CRTC judging whether my political views were Canadian enough to be seen by Canadian eyes. Those things not considered Canadian enough would presumably be filtered, demoted or eliminated altogether from the Internet. The platforms on which we make our political statements would obviously be concerned about the penalties they could face if they end up on the wrong side of a bureaucrat or a politician; therefore, they would begin self-censorship and proactively and organically censor things they thought the government might not want people to see.
Is it not interesting that the Liberals are in such a rush to get the bill passed before the election? Is there content they do not want Canadians to see before voting? That is the only explanation for the sudden rush. The Liberals have been in power for half a decade now, and this was never a priority before. All of a sudden, they need to ram it through by changing rules, voting on things we have not seen and curtailing committee hearings in a way that has never been done in parliamentary history, because it has to be a law and these bureaucrats must have these powers before the fall when the Prime Minister wants to call a snap election.
What is most amazing of all is that at least 95% of artists are against the bill. If we look online at the artists I have referred to, the actual producers of artistic material and the ones who are competing in the open and free market, they are not in need of a subsidy, because people actually want to watch and consume what they produce. The lobbyists, on the other hand, who are often quoted by the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberals, are all in favour of the bill. They want to shut out the competition because they have had oligopolistic powers for years. The broadcasting corporation loves the bill because it would allow the restoration of its oligopolistic power. It is a great corporatist power grab, with big government and big corporations working together as they always do.
This reminds of Frédéric Bastiat talking about the French economy. There were all these controls to protect every interest group from competition. He effectively said, “I think we should take this to the logical end and I want to ban windows, because that will double the business for the candlemakers. Without windows, there would be no light indoors during the day and one would need more candles to keep the place illuminated. Let us shut out the sun to ban competition with candles and create more jobs for the candlemakers.” Of course, he meant it in jest, but he was trying to demonstrate the absurdity of trying to bring about prosperity by banning competition. In fact, we have better prosperity and greater light of day when the windows are open so the light can come in and everybody can see and choose for themselves.
What is the government so afraid of? Is it that people might say and see things online that the government does not want to be said and seen? Why not allow the free exchange of ideas to determine which ones rise to the top? Sure, there is a clash. Democracy is always messy. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”, as Churchill said. It is through that clash of ideas that the best ones emerge and we as a people move forward; however, only if we stand true to our constitutional heritage, 2(b), and uphold that freedom will we achieve that great success.
View Peter Kent Profile
CPC (ON)
View Peter Kent Profile
2021-06-14 22:11 [p.8400]
Mr. Speaker, just to reassure the minister, the Conservatives enthusiastically support Canadian creators. We want them to succeed, and they are succeeding spectacularly. As the lead policy adviser of Ryerson University's audience lab reminded us, about 160,000 Canadian creators of varied ethnicities, genders and abilities lead the YouTube genre and generate millions and even billions of views.
Why would the minister give literally a blank legislative cheque to the unelected CRTC to meddle in these creators' success?
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Speaker, there we have it again: It is all about YouTube. If people perform on YouTube, we consider them to be artists. If they are not performing on YouTube, we think what they are doing is simply no good and does not deserve our time of day, nor support from the state. For those who are already successful on YouTube, Bill C-10 would not change anything. Hopefully for them, they will continue to be successful.
What we want with Bill C-10 is for the web giants to pay their fair share. That is all we are asking. I thought if there was one thing the Conservative Party would be in favour of, it would be for everybody to pay their fair share, but it seems that no, they have decided to side with some of the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world instead of supporting our artists.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I can reference one specific part of this bill that I have a great issue with. It is the fact that the government removed the provisions under proposed section 4.1, which specifically protect users of social media platforms, creators or influencers from being regulated by the government.
Tonight, in rhetoric through the debate, we just had the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith talk about how the top 100 YouTube accounts from Canada look a little too American for him. We had the Minister of Canadian Heritage earlier tonight asking my colleague from Lethbridge to apologize for her comments on this bill. This is the exact type of rhetoric that we need to protect content creators from, this interference on determining what is Canadian and what is not.
If the minister is sure that social media users would be protected under this bill, why did he remove the one provision in the bill that actually protected them from his control?
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. It is very clear in the bill that a person who uses a social media service will be excluded. Companies like YouTube, the largest broadcaster of music in this country, are not being excluded from doing their fair share. If that is what the member wants and if that is what the Conservatives want, then we do not agree with them. The majority of parties in this House and the majority of members in this House do not agree with them.
View Mel Arnold Profile
CPC (BC)
View Mel Arnold Profile
2021-06-14 22:21 [p.8401]
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and, from what I am seeing from the current government, possibly a privilege to be able to rise and speak to Bill C-10. I rise representing the good people of North Okanagan—Shuswap.
I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.
Bill C-10 is the Liberal government's attempt to have the online streaming giants contribute their fair share to Canadian content and the retention of Canadian culture, but it has gone terribly wrong. World wars have been fought to protect our rights and freedom of speech, and we must never let those rights and freedoms be eroded. Freedom of expression must always be protected.
How did this bill go so terribly wrong? When the minister and the current government introduced Bill C-10 last November, the Minister of Canadian Heritage told the House that the bill's amendments to the Broadcasting Act were aimed at benefiting Canadian artists and musicians by forcing web giants to increase investments in Canadian content. That is something I think we all agree on. This initial commitment seemed reasonable, especially considering the need for our Broadcasting Act to be modernized in light of the major changes in where and how we now source music, television and film entertainment.
A couple of weeks later, the minister told the House that Bill C-10 was aimed at film, television and music-streaming services, like Netflix and Spotify, and that the government was committed to introducing another bill aimed at social media platforms, like Facebook and so on. At that time, the minister also stated that user-generated content would not be subject to new regulations.
Despite these assurances, the bill's progression took a sudden turn on April 23, when the Liberal members at committee suddenly amended the bill to extend its powers to the regulation of user-generated content on social media platforms. A bill originally presented as essential to protecting and ensuring continued Canadian content suddenly became a government bill seeking to regulate what Canadians say and share on social media. Smart phone apps were also added to the purview of the proposed regulations.
These amendments prompted strong reactions from my Conservative colleagues and me, but they also sparked a strong reaction from social media experts and Canadians. I have heard more from my constituents in North Okanagan—Shuswap about their concerns regarding the freedoms they could lose through this amendment and this bill than about any other topic in recent history. That is how concerned Canadians are for their freedom of expression.
What we see all around the world, and here in Canada today, is that social media has rapidly become the central platform used by citizens to express their rejections or protests against injustices, including those of government. The proposals of Bill C-10 open the door for the federal government and its regulatory agency, the CRTC, to undermine our ability to continue exercising our critical democratic freedom of expression. After 14 months of living with pandemic restrictions, many Canadians isolated at home and relying on social media for information, connectivity and entertainment, I strongly question why the government has chosen this time to radically change how Canadians can use social media.
I would also like to speak tonight about unintended consequences. It is something we have seen far too much of recently from the government, the unintended consequences of poorly drafted legislation. The case I want to tie into this debate tonight is the poorly drafted legislation in the government's Cannabis Act, Bill C-45, and how it is now having an impact on my constituents in North Okanagan—Shuswap.
I have now heard from constituents who are no longer able to get residential home insurance. Why? Because of poorly crafted and passed legislation. It has been disastrous for these constituents.
One man living on disability and trying to do things by the book was paying $1,000 for his home insurance. That bill then went up to $4,000 per year, then $5,500, then $6,500 and now more than $7,000 per year for a man living on disability. Why? Because he grows cannabis under a medical licence, but he grows more than four plants. Four plants is the maximum allowed under the government legislation. His insurance company has basically raised his rates to the point where he has to almost mortgage his insurance payments because the legislation has made it too costly for him to get insurance and pay for it up front.
He is not the only one. Another couple contacted me. They each have medical cannabis licences. Because the two of them grow more than the four permitted plants, they cannot find insurance.
This is just one example of how the government has failed to look at unintended consequences.
I will also tie in some of the experiences I have had on other committees in dealing with unexplained, non-scientific decisions of the government. It may seem unrelated to this, but I am trying to point out that this legislation is poorly drafted and should be taken back or at least have the proper time spent at committee to correct it.
Tying this to the fisheries committee, there was a regulation regarding the prawn harvesters in B.C., that had been in place for about 50 years. Everyone was operating under those rules. All of a sudden, the government decided it was going to reinterpret those regulations. Basically, it was going to shut down a huge portion of the spot prawn harvesters in British Columbia, simply by a reinterpretation of the regulation that had been in place for 50 years. There was no explanation, no working with the stakeholders to try to figure this out for the future. It threw the whole system into disarray because of unintended consequences of an decision that had not been researched or had any background.
I sat in on the heritage committee last week when it was going through the amendments, those that could be talked about. I tried to bring forward some of these issues about unintended consequences and the Liberal members on the committee tried to shut me down. They tried to censor what should have been my freedom of expression at that committee, pointing out the errors that the government continued to make. The member for Calgary Nose Hill was also in the committee at that time and witnessed how that took place. She may tie that session at the committee into her speech momentarily.
It was interesting to see how quickly the government seemed to want to censor Canadians, especially us parliamentarians by shutting down the debate at the committee stage of this bill to the point where amendments could not even be read aloud by the chair. They simply had to be listed by number and then voted on. Nobody could discuss what the amendment would do, the benefits or disadvantages of it, none of that. All of this was shut down by the government, trying to censor debate on this bill. Now the Liberals have limited the time we will have to debate it in the House, and it is a shame. Something as serious as freedom of expression deserves full and uncensored debate.
View Julie Vignola Profile
BQ (QC)
View Julie Vignola Profile
2021-06-14 22:31 [p.8402]
Mr. Speaker, I have read and reread the bill, which repeatedly states that users will not be subject to the same rules as broadcasters. They will be able to upload whatever they want, so I am trying to understand the line. If there is really something dangerous here, I will be the first to fight it, but I have read and reread that all these threats the Conservatives are talking about will not apply to users. Would the member please tell me which clause he is talking about, and would he please specify the page and the line?
View Mel Arnold Profile
CPC (BC)
View Mel Arnold Profile
2021-06-14 22:32 [p.8402]
Mr. Speaker, it was the removal of section 4.1, which protected user-generated content. That was in there. There was very little debate about the potential risks of the bill when that was in it. Why did the government remove that and then, after the Canadian public and Conservative members of Parliament raised alarms over that, start to backtrack? Obviously, it was a wrong move. Why?
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that less than 10 years ago the only way to get around if people did not own a car and they wanted something outside of public transit, was a taxi. Then all of a sudden, something called Uber came along and it disrupted the taxi industry, so there was a large change in the market. The taxi industry reacted. Its members lobbied municipal, provincial and even the federal government to try and ensure that the status quo was protected.
We always want to ensure that people have jobs. When there are major disruptions in technology or industry, it should happen with order and discipline. However, Uber was always going to enter the market. It was a fact and it brought wealth and jobs, and it took away the gatekeepers of the taxi industry, the taxi licences and made that profession more accessible to many other people.
What we are hearing tonight is the federal Liberal government wanting to take away the ability of YouTubers, Facebookers, Instagramers, influencers to make a living, uninterrupted and unmitigated by the federal government, in favour of the cable companies, what I like to call the cultural industry.
I was out with a friend and we were talking about watching a show. She wanted to know what I had watched recently that was good. We were talking about where a show was streamed, and they asked if cable was even a thing any more. Cable has been disrupted because of streaming services. Newspapers have been disrupted because of digital technology. The market has been disrupted. Rather than recognizing that reality and recognizing the new wealth and new voices that have come into play, the new platforms that have come into play, the Liberal government is trying to save the status quo for the benefit of the gatekeeper and to control the voices of Canadians. That is just the reality of it. That is what is happening here tonight.
We are in the House of Commons tonight debating this late at night because we do not want the bill to pass. The bill puts Canada in the dark ages. It silences. It has the power to silence the voices of many Canadians and it is obvious that the government is trying to do that with Bill C-10. We are fighting it with every action we possibly can because of the impact it is going to have on free speech as well as an entire industry in Canada.
I will give a brief history of time. Canada has always been preoccupied with ensuring that it is culturally distinct from the United States, because of the influence the American entertainment has had on Canada. Certainly when I was born in the early 1980s, when we only had radio and television and a certain type of content producers, that was the thing. We wanted to ensure Canadian voices were heard on the radio and TV. That is when existing Canadian content creation laws and programs came to be. It was to ensure that when a Canadian content creator, or specifically a French language content creator, was trying to put something into the market, it could compete with the Americans.
The Uber-style disruption in the market of cable television and things like that has levelled the playing field with zero dollars of government interference. It levelled the playing field. Voices that could never have the reach all of a sudden have a reach.
I want to give a shout-out to my cousin and her account Coupon Cutie on TikTok. She has 250,000 followers on TikTok where she teaches Canadians how to coupon. She wanted me to tell the Liberal Party that she does them a favour because she helps Canadians spend money, which the Liberals then spend on nothing. A shout-out for the Prime Minister from my cousin. She is equally as feisty as I am. She would not have had a voice. She would not have been able to go to Bell Media and get that type of a platform because she lives in rural Manitoba. She is a young woman.
These are the types of voices that are excluded by the big lobbying industries. The lobbyists and the telcos, the same people that jacked cellphone rates in Canada, the same people that protect our market such that we cannot have the same rates as Americans do, are the ones who gate-keep on the news on what content can be created. Of course, they do not want the government or my cousin and other people to have this type of reach because it challenges their artificial hold on the market.
Now the government wants to put these other voices to the side for the benefit of these big lobbyist groups. Does anyone think my cousin has a lobbyist? Does anyone think she could afford a $500-an-hour GRPR specialist to come and advocate for her? No, and she should not have to.
Why is this bill in front of Parliament? I am just going to call a spade a spade. This is about votes, and it is about votes in Quebec. It is. I fully believe that Quebec content and French-language content should be at the forefront of things we do in Canada. It is important for the French language to have a prominent place in the content that Canadians consume. All these platforms have done that.
Earlier today, a member of Parliament, in questions and comments, said that they had looked at the top 100 YouTube accounts and they kind of look American. They thought we should ensure that Canadian voices are heard. What does that mean?
What that is code for, and what the Liberals are doing, is that they want to be able to pick and choose who has a say. That is what it is. Members of the Liberal Party will want me to point to one area of the bill that I would like to see changed. There was a provision in the bill that specifically excluded individual social media accounts from the bill. What did the Liberals do? They removed it from the bill.
Over and over again the Liberals are saying that nobody can tell them what is wrong with the bill, but there it is. When I asked the minister why he did not include that, and why did he remove it, he could not answer. This bill is to the benefit of really rich and entrenched lobbyists who benefit from funding programs that are 40 years old, instead of people who have intersectional voices and people who have not had platforms.
Anybody in Canada could pick up their phone and have a voice. What the federal Liberal government wants to do is to give the regulator, the CRTC, the ability to say who gets to be seen, who gets to be seen in the Facebook algorithm or the YouTube algorithm or maybe at all. That is what this bill does.
The other thing Liberals are saying tonight is that it does not do that. I encourage people to go to the Toronto Star. On the weekend there was an article that asked if the CRTC was too cosy with the big telco companies. The Toronto Star was saying this. Of course they are, because the big telco companies benefit from the monopoly that is entrenched in Canada's regulations.
We are so archaic. We are so behind in Canada. Instead of further entrenching the status quo, we should be unleashing the ability of Canadians to create content. Frankly, at this point in time and at this juncture in our nation, why are gate keeping content creation funds through the government bureaucracy? We could do quadratic financing, a fancy way of crowd sourcing content creation funds for anybody in Canada.
Why are we still so focussed on that with CBC or the big telcos? It is actually, in some ways, racist, misogynistic and not inclusive. The Liberals are entrenching a system of gatekeepers. The CRTC is run by six old white guys. I am tired of this.
If this bill was so great for social media users and would not influence individual social media users, then why did the Liberals remove that position? This bill has to be stopped. Individual Canadians, regardless of how they vote, know that no politician in this place should be putting a chill on freedom of speech and content creation in an industry that is being disrupted the way that this bill is.
The Liberals are moving everything. They are trying to ram this bill through the House of Commons against the advice of experts at a speed we have never seen them move at in this Parliament. It is because they are preparing for an election, and they want to appease their masters that gatekeep these industries. That is to the detriment of French language creators in Quebec. It is to the detriment of every person who has a platform in Canada.
Enough with the censorship and enough on freedom of speech. Bill C-10 needs to be stopped. It needs to be repealed. The leader of my party has said that if we formed a government, we would repeal it, but I would like to stop it here tonight. I appeal to all of my colleagues of all political stripes to wake up and understand that this bill is not in the best interests of any Canadian.
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-14 22:51 [p.8405]
Mr. Speaker, the issue we are debating is fascinating, but its premise is flawed since freedom of expression is not being infringed upon.
Our understanding of the principle of discoverability of Canadian content is being skewed by a lot of rhetoric, semantic manipulation, or what have you.
Experts appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to defend every opinion. Some said that the bill would infringe on freedom of expression, others said the opposite. It seems that my Conservative colleagues really did not want to hear the other version or show the slightest open-mindedness, unlike the other members of the committee, who welcomed the experts of both parties with openness.
I would like to ask my colleague if, in all honesty, she thinks there would have been an opportunity for the Conservatives to hear another version than the one that had been whispered in their ears by those who claim there is indeed an infringement on freedom of expression, even though that is not the case.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, we are sitting here talking about who should control the levers on content viewing in a disrupted industry. What would have been a much better piece of legislation would have been frameworks to prevent big data companies from using algorithms that could be racist or sexist. We could actually open up those algorithms so they learn based on a user's wants and needs rather than what the companies are assuming around it.
Instead, what we have here is 10 times worse because it is actually entrenching the federal government's ability to downgrade content or remove content based on their whims. We have the Minister of Canadian Heritage, like the Orwellian minister of truth, literally telling my colleague, who is a critic on this bill, that she should apologize for criticizing the bill during debate before it passes. To me, that tells me all we need to know, which is that this bill is flawed, the government wants to use it to control speech and it is something that should be fought vigorously every step of the way.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-06-14 22:53 [p.8405]
Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House for some time listening to the debate tonight, so it is an honour to finally stand and speak.
This past year, we have seen the very best and the very worst of government in our system of democracy. When all parties were working together as the committee of the whole to address the COVID-19 crisis, we saw how well the government could work together. I am going to talk about some of the ways it worked well before I get negative and talk about the ways it has not been working.
I want to make it clear it is not that all opposition party members supported everything the government did during the COVID period. I, for one, have stood in this House many times repeatedly challenging the government to do better, particularly when it came to protecting Canadians from COVID-19 and all of the detritus that came with it. I stood in the House to make sure there were public health rules in place, that there was sick leave, that Canadians could stay home if they needed to, that there were things in place to help fight the virus in Canada and around the world without having to choose between their own well-being and the health of others. I will keep doing that. I will keep standing in this House of Commons as an opposition member to urge the government to do a better job taking care of Canadians. I will stand in this House and get it to close loopholes in its legislation.
There is a company in my riding, Cessco Fabrication. I have brought up probably a dozen times in the House that the government's wage subsidy program is being used to pay for scab labour so that this company does not have to negotiate with its workers. I have brought it up time and time again, and I will continue to do that.
It is really important that I push for students, seniors and people with living with disabilities.
One thing members have heard me say so many times is that if we do not vaccinate people around the world, none of us is safe, and that I am disappointed in the government's response to that.
The government itself adopted many of the opposition solutions that were offered. The government did bring forward the 75% wage support, the CERB was $2,000 a month and there was limited support for students and paid sick leave. This is how the government should work. The government should propose and opposition members should make it better. I am proud, as a new parliamentarian, that I was able to do that. I am honoured to have been part of that effort.
However, this has not been the case with Bill C-10. In fact, the entire process, including the debate this evening, is an example of the worst forms of democracy and government. It started with an extremely flawed bill that the minister himself could not explain. When the bill was tabled in November, it was immediately apparent to everyone, the government included, that it was a flawed piece of legislation. The Yale commission clearly identified Canadians' concerns with how web giants were dominating our broadcasting and culture, but were excluded from the current Broadcasting Act and, thus not subject to oversight, not held to the same standards as Canadian companies and, worse yet, not contributing taxes or funds to the Media Fund. The bill, as it was tabled, ignored all of those issues and I stood with my colleagues in the NDP and said on the day that bill was tabled that this was going to be problem and we needed to fix this.
Facebook, YouTube, companies that make billions of dollars in revenue from Canadians and Canadian content were excluded from the bill. For anyone who was worried about what that proposed section 4.1 was, it was excluding social media. It was letting Facebook and YouTube off the hook. It was saying that they could use Canadian content and they did not have to pay for it. It was selling out our cultural sector. We needed to fix that legislation.
I was worried because we know that Facebook has lobbied the minister and the department over 100 times. Their incessant lobbying seemed to pay off. Representatives met over and over again and then, all of a sudden, they were not in the bill. The minister floundered in responses to questions about the bill and the lobbying. He was unable to answer questions about his own bill to Canadians, unable to answer questions about its application in committee and unable to defend its rationale from critics.
The result was a committee review process that at the very best of times was disorganized and at the worst was completely dysfunctional. I know that because I was there. I was on that committee.
Immediately, 121 amendments to the bill were filed. The minister has said that perhaps this is a normal number of amendments for a bill of such of complexity and the breadth and depth of this legislation means it is not surprising, but what was surprising was the number of government amendments filed. The government knew this legislation was flawed, so it was a clear indication the bill was not ready when it was tabled and that the minister was not ready to endorse and oversee it.
Still, and this is the most important point, Canadians need a broadcasting act. We have heard it time and time again in this House from everybody but the Conservative Party. We have a 30-year-old Broadcasting Act. It is well overdue for us to have legislation in this country that will fix the holes in the Broadcasting Act. Canada desperately needs an updated Broadcasting Act.
Canadian broadcasters, media companies, producers, filmmakers, writers and artists all need an updated Broadcasting Act. Canadians who value Canadian news and Canadian content need and want a broadcasting act as well. It was absolutely vital that we roll up our sleeves in committee and we fix this bill to create a broadcasting act that would work for Canadians. It was an excruciating process, because instead of working with my colleagues, many of whom I admire and who worked very hard in this committee, politics kept getting in the way.
Again, this is what I mean when I say the worst of government and democracy. The Conservatives saw a weak minister with a flawed bill, and rather than roll up their sleeves and do the work that needed to be done so we could fix this legislation, they smelled blood in the water and attacked. They took advantage of the committee process and the flaws in the bill to spread disinformation about the bill far and wide, and then they filibustered the committee so we could not even get to the amendments that would fix it. We could not even fix the things they raised as concerns because they would not stop filibustering the committee to allow us to do that.
All across Canada we were hearing the most outrageous accusations about the bill. I had one constituent tell me he had read that individual Canadians' tweets would not post until they had been reviewed for Canadian content by the CRTC. The things that were being told to Canadians by the Conservatives were absolutely outrageous.
I listened to the member for Lethbridge yell “freedom” so many times that I was in a panel with her and I thought maybe I was on a panel with Braveheart. All this did was waste time and confuse Canadians, and with a minister who could not adequately explain his bill, the disinformation campaign found oxygen it never should have had.
It brought us here to this evening to the last-second attempt to rush this bill through before the session ends. The government had six years to update the Broadcasting Act, and in the end, it served up a flawed bill that took so much work for us to fix.
As a member of the heritage committee, I worked very hard with my fellow members to close the Liberal loopholes and fix problems in the legislation. I voted in favour of a Conservative motion for a second charter review to ensure the Broadcasting Act would not infringe on personal freedoms of expression, and that review was done.
I supported a motion to force the ministers of justice and heritage to appear at committee to address concerns over freedom of expression. I proposed that the committee meet more often and for longer hours. I proposed to extend the deadline so more work could be done. I voted against closing debate and I even put forward a motion asking the committee to debate the bill through the summer months so we could get this work done. All the parties voted against that.
In the end, the Liberals closed the committee debate and we were forced to vote on amendments without even discussing them. It is not my idea of good government.
I fully welcome the attention that Bill C-10 has aroused in Canadians. The Broadcasting Act affects us all on a daily basis, and I am heartened to see so many Canadians engaged in the legislative process. It is true that many Canadians are profoundly misinformed about the bill, which is, of course, in no way their fault. I would say it falls very much on the shoulders of some of our members of Parliament who have taken great joy and have done an awful lot of fundraising off the idea, the misinformation that they are spreading and the fear that they are sowing among Canadians.
The issues addressed in Bill C-10 are complex and every country in the world is grappling with those issues right now, attempting to find a way to protect their own citizens, their own content, their own identity and their own media platforms from web giants that do not have to follow the same rules as everyone else, web giants that pull in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue without giving anything back and companies that leave a swath of local and national media and entertainment venues languishing in their wake.
While I am dismayed by the disinformation permeating the debate on this bill, some of it coming from the web giants themselves in an attempt to resist and avoid regulation, I will vote for Bill C-10 because I worked so hard to fix this legislation. I worked so hard to make sure that people's freedom of expression was protected and that in the end web giants were held to account and that they were contributing to our broadcasting sector.
I have said it before and I will say it again: It is vital that we modernize the Broadcasting Act. The current version of the act was updated in 1991, before the Internet and before streaming services. The Broadcasting Act cannot, as it stands, address the new landscape. It cannot protect Canadians or Canadian content and it must be updated.
For me and my fellow New Democrats, the goal has always been to make sure that we had a bill that would make web giants like Facebook, YouTube and Netflix follow the same rules as Canadian companies and contribute to Canadian content just like Canadian companies are required to do. We have fought both to protect freedom of expression and to ensure that web giants are on an even playing field with Canadian companies. Canadian media and content are under extreme pressure and the web giants have a competitive advantage right now. That competitive advantage must end with this legislation.
Thanks in part to the amendments offered by all parties, Bill C-10 now would utterly protect individual rights to freedom of expression on all platforms. The CRTC powers are limited by this bill to broadcasters and the bill specifically excludes individuals from regulation. Users who upload content to social media services would not be subject to the act. In fact, the bill now contains four sections specifically exempting individuals from the act, and this bill would protect Canadian culture and heritage.
Arts and culture are at the heart of who we are. They are what make us Canadians. It is how we listen to and understand each other better. It is how we connect across the vast distances in our country and it is how we celebrate our identities. It is how we share our incredible stories with each other, in both official languages and with the entire world. We must protect our heritage and support a strong, independent arts and culture industry. Without that protection, Canadian talent will not thrive. We need Canadians to succeed on both digital and traditional platforms. Here at home and around the world, Canadian artists should be able to earn a decent living from their art, and this bill has an important role to play in making sure that the wide range of Canadian voices with stories to tell are those stories that we see on platforms.
When Bill C-10 is enacted, the next step is to increase the funding for CBC and Radio-Canada to help reverse the damage done by decades of funding cuts and unequal rules that have favoured foreign competition.
Our public broadcaster has a remarkable legacy of connecting all points of our country, and it needs a stronger future to help make sure Canadians have access to accurate, relevant information no matter where they live and no matter what language they speak.
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-14 23:11 [p.8408]
Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona on her speech.
We have the pleasure of serving together on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. She and I have managed to move the bill forward and improve it, sometimes with opposing views, sometimes converging views, sometimes through excellent co-operation. It needed a little help to become a good bill.
Over the past few weeks, after the removal of clause 4.1, which actually had been strengthened with other provisions to ensure that social media users were protected, we have seen a slew of Conservative Party pundits suddenly take an interest in Bill C-10, although we have been working on it for months now. This is a complex bill that takes time to understand. It must be properly analyzed, and it is important to have a good grasp of the subject. Nevertheless, over the past few weeks, we have had a number of experts come to us to give their opinions and tell us that we have done our job all wrong.
I would like the member for Edmonton Strathcona to comment on this. How should we take this wave of insults from colleagues?
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-06-14 23:12 [p.8408]
Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting to me that we are told that there are experts. I have a letter here that was written by 14 lawyers who have said that Bill C-10 would do none of the things that we have been accused of doing to it. We have gone through the legislation tooth and nail, and I have a document here that outlines every single time freedom of expression is protected. I could tell members exactly where in the act and where in the bill; if they want me to name it, I can. I know that is not the case with most of the members in the House this evening, but I can certainly tell them exactly how freedom of expression is protected, and I am deeply offended that any member of this House would think that my priority would not be to ensure that Canadians' freedom of expression is protected at all cost.
View Greg McLean Profile
CPC (AB)
View Greg McLean Profile
2021-06-14 23:19 [p.8409]
Madam Speaker, I am splitting my time tonight with my hon. colleague for Langley—Aldergrove.
It is my honour to address the House this evening and to address another faulty bill being pushed through Parliament by the Liberal government: Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts. To begin, let us look at the title of this bill, which says “to make related and consequential amendments”. They are consequential in that they have consequences.
In this case, it is safe to say that this bill, if passed as written and subsequently amended at committee by the government, will have serious consequences for Canadians. We could have a discussion about net neutrality, which Canadians have enjoyed largely in their online consumption choices these past decades. This bill would, in fact, seek to upend the very nature of what Canadians can do on the web. Of course that is not the intent. No, it could not be. It has merely been written that way, and amended and partially changed through a process Canadians became aware of through the efforts of stalwart parliamentarians: my colleagues in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. They identified the intrusion in not only the use of the Internet for uploads and downloads, and the overreach in regulating this activity, but the consequences it would have on the very notion of freedom of speech, one of the rights Canadians have enjoyed—
View Greg McLean Profile
CPC (AB)
View Greg McLean Profile
2021-06-14 23:26 [p.8410]
Madam Speaker, we were talking about the very notion of the freedom of speech Canadians enjoy, one of the rights Canadians have enjoyed since being introduced by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1960 and embedded in Canada's Constitution in 1982. Freedom of expression in Canada is protected as a fundamental freedom by section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The charter also permits the government to enforce reasonable limits.
I would say from experience that a large amount of Canadian communication between parties, individuals, businesses and organizations of all types, even governments and their agencies, happens via the Internet. Where does the problem arise in this legislation? Bill C-10 creates a new category of web media called “online undertakings” and gives the CRTC the same power to regulate them that it has for TV and radio stations. What is an online undertaking? Whatever one uploads onto the web is an online undertaking, such as videos, podcasts, music and websites. It is a huge regulatory stretch. However, Canadians should not fret as the CRTC will not act in the way the legislation is written, or so it has said.
Let us look back at that notion of freedom of expression and how we as legislators are supposed to ensure the legislation we consider abides by this fundamental piece of protection embodied in our constitutional bill of rights and freedoms. The Department of Justice Act requires the justice minister to provide a charter statement for every government bill that explains whether it respects the charter. The charter statement for Bill C-10 directly cites the social media exemption in its assessment that the bill respects this part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Then, poof, at committee the Liberals removed the cited exemption from the legislation. When my Conservative colleagues rightly asked for a new assessment based on the new wording of the legislation, the Liberals decided to shut down debate at the committee.
At this point, I think Canadians would ask where the Minister of Justice is on this issue and why he will not seek and provide the legislative charter statement from his department. I have watched the Minister of Justice and let me illustrate how he operates in my opinion.
Regarding Bill C-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), admittedly no bill is perfect, yet this bill passed through committee here in the House of Commons and members from all parties voted in a free vote to pass the legislation. The legislation passed with the input of witnesses who wanted to respect the rights of disadvantaged Canadians and it worked through this House. The minister, despite that democratic process, manipulated the legislation with an amendment at the Senate and forced an amended bill back to this House, a bill that disrespects the input he received through witnesses and parliamentarians in the process. It was pure manipulation.
Regarding Bill C-15, an act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, after one hour of debate on a bill that my indigenous constituents are asking for clarity with respect to the defined terms in Canadian law and how it affects them, the Minister of Justice shut down debate, saying it had been debated enough.
Perhaps it is unparliamentary to state openly here that the minister's remarks are completely disingenuous. I have watched him during question period while he brazenly denies that his judicial appointments have nothing to do with Liberal Party lists. That is disingenuous. I know why Canadians are losing faith in governments.
Now we have this, the refusal to provide an updated charter statement. Shame on the minister.
Coming back to the bill, if passed, Canadian content uploaders will be subject to CRTC oversight. Yes, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will be looking at uploads all day long. That is in fact who is writing the bill and in fact the government organization trying to gain some relevance with it, but Canadians do not have to worry because it will not enforce the law as it is written.
Let me quote Timothy Denton, a former national commissioner of the CRTC, who now serves as the chairman of the Internet Society of Canada, who stated:
...their fundamental [principle here] is...that freedom of speech through video or audio should be in the hands of the CRTC — including Canadians’ freedom to use the internet to reach audiences and markets as they see fit.... The freedom to communicate across the internet is to be determined by political appointees, on the basis of no other criterion than what is conducive to broadcasting policy — and, presumably, the good of our domestic industry. As always, the interests of the beneficiaries of regulation are heard first, best, and last. Consumers and individual freedoms count for little when the regulated sector beats its drums.
Finally, let me congratulate the government on this one step. We have been through 15 months of an unprecedented time in our modern history, with lockdowns, economic dislocation and devastation, and literally a pandemic. The press does not cover what happens in the House and the myriad mistakes the government has made because governments make mistakes in unforeseen, unprecedented times. Canadians have given the government some benefit of the doubt about these mistakes and so do all people of goodwill, but it is our job in opposition to do our utmost for the country in oversight and to provide solutions to make our outcomes better.
I thank all my colleagues for the work in helping Canadians during these unprecedented times. I should thank the Liberal government for providing a coalescing issue that has Canadians from all backgrounds and political beliefs in my riding united in reaching out to make sure the bill does not pass. The bill and the government's responses to reasonable amendments to protect Canadians' rights show its ambivalence to Canadians and their rights.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-06-14 23:32 [p.8411]
Madam Speaker, I know my colleague is very thoughtful and careful in his language, but he spoke about amendments that have been put forward to make the bill better. I wonder what he can say about an amendment that the Conservative Party put forward. It says:
That Bill C-10, in Clause 7, be amended by adding after line 19 on page 8 the following:
9.2 An online undertaking that provides a social media service is deemed not to exercise programming control over programs uploaded by any user of the social media service who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or the agent or mandatary of either of them.
It seems quite clear to me that this was an excellent amendment. I voted for it and it passed. It was a Conservative amendment. I am wondering why he thinks it does not protect freedom of expression.
View Greg McLean Profile
CPC (AB)
View Greg McLean Profile
2021-06-14 23:33 [p.8411]
Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona is always great with her questions, and I am pleased that she knows some of these amendments very well.
The issue we have is the blanket clause, whereby we are going to subject Canadians to some regulations by the CRTC when they upload videos. All kinds of amendments have been put forward at committee by my colleagues to make sure that this does not cover everyday Canadians and is only counting, as the government seems to indicate, certain web giants that have a large economic footprint, ensuring they are going to be regulated. However, the writing indicates very clearly that this applies to all Canadians. That is why we are trying to make it very clear in the amendments that they are not included. That clarity is required, and I have not seen that clarity in any of the other amendments to this point in time.
View Alex Ruff Profile
CPC (ON)
View Alex Ruff Profile
2021-06-14 23:34 [p.8411]
Madam Speaker, I have a simple question for my hon. colleague. The minister could not answer it earlier. Why did the minister remove section 4.1, the safeguard to protect user-generated content?
View Greg McLean Profile
CPC (AB)
View Greg McLean Profile
2021-06-14 23:35 [p.8411]
Madam Speaker, I wish I knew. I wish I had a response, but I do not know why amendments 2.1 and 4.1 were not considered together to provide clarity on how changes would affect Canadian Internet users going forward.
I can speculate what the answer might be, but I am not going to put words in the mouth of the minister, who chose not to answer this question. However, I will put it back to the minister the next time we get to hear from him why he chose this path.
View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
View Paul Manly Profile
2021-06-14 23:35 [p.8411]
Madam Speaker, I have heard a lot about free speech from the Conservatives and I would like to ask if they think that social media platforms are a place of free speech.
I will point to a situation on May 5, Red Dress Day, to commemorate missing and murdered indigenous women and girls across this country. Hundreds if not thousands of posts were removed by Instagram and Facebook from people who were expressing their sorrow, rage and loss of family, friends and loved ones to this tragedy in our country.
Does the member think this is freedom of speech? When these platforms are removing this kind of content in this country are they a democratic space?
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