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Results: 1 - 60 of 434
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, the third petition I am presenting is from Canadians who are very concerned about Bill C-10: the government's supposed reform of the Broadcasting Act, which would in reality give the government significant powers to control and limit speech online.
Petitioners note that Liberal members of the committee voted in favour of amendments that would include social media platforms within the jurisdiction of this regulation. Petitioners call on the Government of Canada to respect Canadians' fundamental right to freedom of expression, to prevent Internet censorship in Canada and not to continue with Bill C-10 as currently written.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
View Arnold Viersen Profile
2021-06-21 17:52 [p.8880]
Madam Speaker, as I resume my speech from over a week ago, I want to echo the concerns that many people have brought forward about Bill C-6 and its definition of conversion therapy. Canadians from across the country have expressed concern and asked parliamentarians to fix the definition as they are concerned about private conversations and freely chosen, voluntary counselling being criminalized.
Looking back at the committee that studied this bill, there were concerns expressed by several witnesses along these lines, with members of multiple parties endorsing that position as well. The member for the Bloc at the justice committee, the member for Rivière-du-Nord, expressed concerns about the impacts of the legislation. Along with the testimony from witnesses, many briefs were submitted to the committee. Almost 300 individuals and groups wrote briefs, which means that Canadians were interested in and concerned about this bill. The justice committee did not even take the necessary time to have the briefs translated or reviewed before it voted and adopted this bill. Why did the committee members not take the time to read over these briefs? Many Canadians are wondering.
Fixing the definition is what Canadians are asking for. The Liberal government has failed Canadians by coming up with a definition that does not have unanimous support in this place. Conservatives are opposed to conversion therapy and are looking forward to a bill that would ban conversion therapy and not conversations.
View Lianne Rood Profile
CPC (ON)
Madam Speaker, I have received hundreds of emails and letters from constituents who are very concerned that their parental rights will be taken away from them, or their pastoral right to counsel their children or people who might be seeking their advice on this particular issue.
Can the member comment on this?
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
View Arnold Viersen Profile
2021-06-21 17:54 [p.8880]
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her hard work in this place.
I agree with her. I have heard from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the definition of conversion therapy, particularly around the word “practice”. The word “practice” is not clearly defined in Canadian law, so what is a practice that would be covered by this law? This law would be banning a treatment, service or practice, and that is fundamentally what folks are concerned about. What is the definition of a practice? Is it just a conversation that people are having? Is it a prayer that is being prayed for somebody? There are many things. “Religious practice” is a term that we use often in the religious world. Would a religious practice therefore be considered conversion therapy? That is what folks are concerned about.
View Dane Lloyd Profile
CPC (AB)
View Dane Lloyd Profile
2021-06-21 17:59 [p.8881]
Madam Speaker, today we are debating a very unfortunately worded piece of legislation, Bill C-6, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding conversion therapy. I say it is unfortunate because this legislation fails to accurately define what conversion therapy is. It fails to provide clarity for Canadians, and I believe that it puts LGBTQ+ Canadians, children, parents, religious leaders and medical professionals at risk.
From the outset, I have been clear that I do not support conversion therapy, which involves coercive, involuntary and abusive practices that seek to change someone's sexual orientation. The evidence we have heard is clear: These practices have been harmful to those who have participated and they should not be allowed to continue.
The problem I have as a legislator is that the government has adopted a definition of conversion therapy that goes far beyond the scope of this harmful practice, and risks creating significant harms for families as a result. Going by the very definition the government has included in the legislation, we are asked to accept that even discouraging someone from “non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression” is a criminal act of conversion therapy.
The Minister of Justice has tried to assure members of the House that honest discussions about sexuality will not be criminalized under this act, but it is very apparent that the wording has been left so vague as to open up the very real possibility that the courts could interpret honest discussions about sexuality as potentially criminal. Without further clarification, we are introducing confusion into the Criminal Code, which could potentially lead to many honest Canadians being subject to a criminal investigation for honest discussions about sexuality.
The legislation is also potentially very harmful to children under the age of 16, who I believe are unable to truly consent to life-altering surgeries and drug regimens to achieve gender transition. This legislation could lead to the criminalization of important information streams that are essential for people to make informed decisions regarding gender transitions. In the recent United Kingdom High Court decision of Bell v. Tavistock, the court ruled that it is highly unlikely that children under 13 could truly consent to the use of puberty blockers. The court also analyzed the considerable effects of these treatments and concluded that it was even doubtful that children under the age of 16 could understand the long-term risks and consequences of these treatments.
This legislation potentially undermines the ability of medical professionals to share critical medical information that may lead to discouraging a child from undergoing a gender transition. The consequences for these children, as we have seen in the Tavistock case, are permanent and tragic. This puts LGBTQ+ youth at significant risk, as they may not be given access to the necessary medical information and frank advice needed for them to make informed decisions.
I am also very concerned over the effect this legislation could have on families, the foundational building blocks of a free society. The inclusion of gender expression and penalties for the repression of non-cisgender behaviour creates risks for families that could result in bad outcomes for children.
It is not hard to imagine a young boy who wants to go to school dressed in female clothes. Many parents would force their child to wear what they believe are gender-appropriate clothes, and I believe in the majority of those cases the parents are doing it out of a genuine care and concern for the well-being of their child. When that child goes to school, perhaps he will tell the teacher that he believes he is of another gender and that his parents refuse to let him wear female clothing. If the practice of conversion therapy, as poorly defined by the government, is made a criminal offence, teachers would probably have little choice but to report the parents to children's services for allegations of emotional abuse. The ramifications of this outcome would be highly damaging to the welfare of children, families and society. The definition of conversion therapy must be clarified, and the rights of well-meaning parents who are caring for their children must be protected.
One result of this legislation is that it could lead to an infringement on the rights of LGBTQ+ Canadians to seek out services they may genuinely wish to access. In my exploration of this topic, I spoke with members of the LGBTQ+ community who, for religious or personal reasons, felt they did not want to engage in certain activities.
In some cases, members of these communities may have been struggling with issues of sex addiction or sexual practices that could lead to serious physical, emotional or spiritual consequences. Under this legislation, it would not necessarily be illegal to offer services that would be covered under the definition of “conversion therapy” to consenting adults. However, it would be very difficult for LGBTQ+ adults to find or access these services considering the effect of this legislation, which is essentially to make these services impossible to advertise and, by extension, to access in Canada.
This could even lead to cases of discrimination, whereby a heterosexual who is seeking counsel and support for dealing with sex addiction or harmful sexual behaviours will receive treatment, but an LGBTQ+ person would be turned away. I do not think the government intended to discriminate against LGBTQ Canadians, but I believe that it is a very real possibility under this legislation as it has been drafted. Again, this demonstrates why the flawed definition of “conversion therapy” is leading to confusion and significant potential adverse outcomes for LGBTQ Canadians.
Furthermore, the legislation's poor definition of “conversion therapy” could potentially lead to outcomes whereby well-meaning people with bonafide constitutionally protected beliefs will be made into criminals. When people are driven by a sincere desire to help those who come to them struggling with issues, they should not be treated as criminals for sharing their perspective. In the case of religious leaders who are approached by members of their congregation looking for guidance, I believe that under this legislation, the very act of even sharing passages of the Bible could be considered a criminal act of conversion therapy.
These provisions create the very real possibility of criminal sanctions against those who hold unpopular opinions in whole or in part because of those opinions. Punishing people for having unpopular opinions or beliefs is not a Canadian value. Given the religious views of conservative Muslims and Christians, among others, it is probable that those impacted by this legislation will be people who come from various faith backgrounds. This is potentially a case of enforcing religious discrimination.
Jail time is not an appropriate punishment for those who hold differing viewpoints, particularly religious views. The criminal penalties in this legislation, which include a maximum of between two and five years in prison, are on par with assault, abandonment of a child and infanticide. To treat people who hold constitutionally protected beliefs on par with those who kill children is completely disproportionate. I propose to the government that the provisions of this act are already addressed by human rights legislation and human rights tribunals. Given that we are debating competing rights, such as the equality rights of LGBTQ Canadians and the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, it would be far better to delegate the adjudication of these difficult decisions to a body that is equipped to deal with them.
In cases where there is evidence of harm related to conversion therapy, such as forcible confinement, assault or kidnapping, the Criminal Code already has significant mechanisms to deal with these matters. In cases where there is a dispute between people over what is and what is not legitimate to say to somebody regarding their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, it would be far better for the human rights tribunals to be investigating and making decisions on these matters rather than the criminal courts.
In closing, I have illustrated a number of reasons, including the poor definition, the potential for discrimination and the possibility that human rights tribunals could do a far better job of adjudicating these difficult decisions on competing rights, that I cannot support this legislation at this time. I believe that Bill C-6 would harm some LGBTQ Canadians, some families and society in general, which outweighs the potential benefits outlined in it. If the government is truly interested in working in good faith with concerned Canadians, it will commit to amending the definition in this legislation to provide clarity and protections for families, counsellors and medical professionals.
View Cathay Wagantall Profile
CPC (SK)
View Cathay Wagantall Profile
2021-06-21 18:24 [p.8885]
Madam Speaker, during my presentation, I presented the personal and emotional testimonies of those who found that gender transition was not a permanent solution to their gender dysphoria and who found worth in their own process of detransition. These individuals have made their stories public, about detransitioning or deciding not to make transitions surgically or with the use of hormones. They stress that they are in no way wanting to be disrespectful toward other people's personal choices. As it stands, Bill C-6 would criminalize people like them.
As it is currently written, could the member speak to how this will restrict the free, respectful and exploratory speech of those with valuable lived experiences?
View Damien Kurek Profile
CPC (AB)
View Damien Kurek Profile
2021-06-21 18:25 [p.8885]
Madam Speaker, the member brings up a very good point that we saw represented in much of the evidence that was presented to committee. The suggestion that somehow there is universal acceptance of Bill C-6 as a need to move forward to address these issues is simply incorrect.
There are many lived stories from Canadians from coast to coast who have demonstrated that it is not as clear cut as is being suggested and that the implications of this bill could be very severe and would actually take away the rights of Canadians who are living their lives. It is very troubling that could be one of the significant implications of a bill being passed that has not had the proper consideration and due debate around some of the very valid concerns that have been brought forward.
View Cathay Wagantall Profile
CPC (SK)
View Cathay Wagantall Profile
2021-06-21 18:41 [p.8887]
Madam Speaker, this is interesting to hear because the personal and emotional testimonies I shared in my speech were all of young people who had transitioned in their teens and then realized in their early twenties that gender transition was not a permanent solution to their gender dysphoria, and they were in their own process of detransition.
Clearly there is a concern here, as has been mentioned. I am wondering if he would expand further on how Bill C-6, as currently written, could very well restrict the freedom of the respectful and exploratory speech of these individuals with valuable lived experience.
View Derek Sloan Profile
Ind. (ON)
Madam Speaker, one thing that struck me about the debate on this bill, and of course this was not reflected in committee, although I think in committee there was a balanced discussion on many of the issues, was that right now there is a conversation going on around the world with respect to transgender identification in children. I heard some members talk about the fact that a small percentage of the people who transition have regrets.
We are on the tipping point of a big iceberg of regret, because back 10 years or 20 years ago, the funnel for who experienced surgery with respect to transgender changes was a lot narrower. We are seeing, as I said earlier, this meteoric rise in identification. We are seeing an increase of 1,000% for men and 4,400% for young girls. We are seeing a U.K. government office do research into why we are seeing this, so I think the tip of the iceberg of regret is just on the horizon.
View Alain Rayes Profile
CPC (QC)
View Alain Rayes Profile
2021-06-21 21:23 [p.8899]
Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to rise after you presented the long list of amendments to all parliamentarians and the people who are watching at home. Canadians are interested in Bill C-10 and the whole saga surrounding it since its introduction.
I will not go back over all of the amendments that you just read, but I would like to talk about the key amendment, which seeks to reinstate protection for the freedom of expression of social media users. The government tried to attack freedom of expression, as many law professors and legal experts across the country have pointed out.
Before I talk about this key amendment, it is important to explain to people how we got to where we are today and why members will spend so much time this evening voting on many amendments.
The story began last November, when the Minister of Canadian Heritage introduced a bad bill in the House. Members of the House all wanted to pass legislation that would strike a balance between Canada's digital and conventional broadcasters.
Everyone put a little water in their wine. We found ways to allow all members who had concerns to have their say. This allowed us to get information from the various groups involved around the country. Some people may not know this, but the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage even unanimously agreed to form a pre-committee so as not to slow down the process at the beginning.
There was a willingness to find ways to improve this bad bill because it did not take into account the role of CBC/Radio-Canada nor the issue of copyright. There were several flaws and Canadian companies had no protection. We wanted to ensure that francophone and Canadian content was protected by certain safeguards, standards or basic criteria. There was nothing. If I remember correctly, the parties proposed more than 120 amendments, not counting the ones they added later.
Although the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons kept telling us that committees were independent, the minister, who is not supposed to interfere in committee business, suddenly decided on a Friday afternoon without warning to withdraw clause 3 entirely, which included proposed section 4.1. That removed the protection with respect to user content, including of small companies that use social media.
There is a lot of talk about YouTube, since that is something people understand. However, according to a memo from senior officials, this bill will affect all social networking platforms. Older people, and I would include myself in that group, since I have a few grey hairs, know about YouTube and TikTok, even though these networks are for younger people. However, this bill affects all of the other platforms young people use that we do not know about, such as social media games or all of the social networking tools that are not mentioned anywhere in the bill.
The real problem is that the government targeted freedom of expression. The minister and his Liberal members on the committee did everything they could to stop the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Justice from testifying in committee and explaining why they wanted to withdraw clause 4.1. Work at the committee was stalled for two or three weeks as a result of members filibustering to force the government to explain itself and give us proof that freedom of expression was not in any jeopardy.
After three weeks, the Liberals on the committee ended up agreeing to have the ministers testify. Unfortunately, all we got was an explanatory document, not the legal opinion the motion had requested. That was yet another way the Liberals failed to honour the committee's wishes.
I think that the NDP members tried different ways of protecting freedom of expression, even if they did support Bill C-10. One NDP member, whom I am not allowed to name, but I forget the name of her riding, even suggested we work during the summer to improve this bad bill.
However, we suffered another serious blow when the government, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, which is important to point out, decided to impose time allocation for a bill whose core element was freedom of expression. Worse still, the time allocation imposed on the committee, which is supposed to be independent, was not even properly applied. The committee members, apart from those belonging to the Conservative Party, decided to reverse the decision of the committee chair, who was only reporting what the Speaker of the House had said, that members would have to vote in favour of the bill without even reading the 40-some amendments that were missing.
Therefore, we voted on the amendments one by one, without even reading them. The people who were interested in this controversial bill heard members say “yes” and “no” without even knowing what they were voting on. What a crazy story. This was completely contrary to what the Speaker and the House had decided.
In a dramatic turn of events, when the report was tabled in the House, we informed the Speaker that the committee had voted to overturn the Chair's ruling. The Chair agreed with us and overturned the 40 amendments we had voted on.
This means that we now have a bill in which some 40 amendments that attempted to correct its shortcomings were struck down after the vote. We are 48 hours away from the end of the session, and the government is trying to cram 20 or so amendments from several parties down our throats in just one hour of debate.
How will this play out? This bill will move on to the Senate. For the people who are listening to us, the Senate will not stand for this, as it is supposed to be independent. The Senate will therefore begin to study the whole matter from the beginning to make sure it was done right, because the government did not do its homework, because the government waited six years to introduce a bill, because the government did not listen to the recommendations of the various groups, because the government played partisan politics and suggested there was a war between the cultural community and freedom of expression and made the Conservatives look like the bad guys. Even members of the Green Party and the NDP spoke out against some of these tactics by the government, which, as we all know, with an election coming up in the fall, wants to play tough.
What is happening right now is really sad. We are being forced to rush votes on more than 20 amendments, some of which had already been rejected, and on the reinsertion of clause 4.1, which is the most important part. I hope my House of Commons colleagues will agree to vote in favour of that amendment at least. It will protect content created by social media users, which is what a number of former senior CRTC executives pushed for.
Law professors from several universities across the country condemned this bill. I hope people will listen to them, because we are headed for disaster. This will get hung up in the Senate, it will never get to a vote, and the legislative process will never be completed because of the fall election. The Liberals are setting us up for failure, and this will be challenged before artists can even get the help they have been asking for for so long.
View Damien Kurek Profile
CPC (AB)
View Damien Kurek Profile
2021-06-21 21:38 [p.8900]
Madam Speaker, my Conservative colleague articulates some of the concerns very well.
I have been very troubled to hear the Liberal minister time and again misleading the House by accusing Conservatives of obstruction and delay, when it is actually the Liberals' mismanagement of the legislative agenda that has led to the position we are in. The Liberals have basically shut down debate on a bill on censorship.
Specifically, I would ask the member to expand on how this is not about opposing artists, unlike what the minister suggests. The Conservative opposition to the bill is about ensuring that Canadians have freedom of speech and that this bill—
View Alain Rayes Profile
CPC (QC)
View Alain Rayes Profile
2021-06-21 21:39 [p.8901]
Madam Speaker, these 15 seconds will not be nearly enough time. I will say, however, that the Conservatives will always fight for freedom of expression, not only for Canadians but also for our artists who want to have the freedom to write songs, say the things they want to say and put on the quality comedy shows that we all know.
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-21 21:39 [p.8901]
Madam Speaker, it is a shame that I only get 10 minutes to speak to this legislation, with all those amendments. I will try to be as concise as I can and provide some thoughts in regard to the last speech and, in particular, that last amazing question from the Conservative member.
It is important to recognize at the beginning that the very core of Bill C-10, from my perspective and I believer the way my caucus colleagues look at it, is to promote Canadian music, storytelling and creative works. The bill is about fairness and getting American web giants to pay their fair share and contribute to our cultural sector. That is absolutely necessary.
Before I expand on that, it is a bit much to hear the Conservatives refer the legislative agenda and say that it has been mismanaged. It is somewhat ridiculous that the Conservative members would even suggest such a thing when they are at the core of the problem. The Conservatives will say that they do not have enough time to debate and will ask why the government is bringing in different forms of time allocation, yet it is the Conservative Party that consistently wastes time on the floor of the House of Commons. Last Thursday, we were just getting under way and the Conservatives tried to adjourn debate for the day, they wanted to stop debate. They did not want to work anymore, and we were only on a Thursday morning.
What about the motions for concurrence the Conservative Party continuously raise? What about the raising of privileges and points of order as a mechanism to filibuster on the floor of the House of Commons? Government business, unlike Private Members' Business or opposition days, has a process that makes it very vulnerable to opposition parties. Whenever there are 12 or more members, it makes it very difficult for government to pass legislation if one of those opposition parties wants to make it difficult.
The Conservative Party of Canada members in the House of Commons have made it their mission to prevent the government from passing anything. We have seen that destructive force in the House of Commons. I do not think they have a case whatsoever to complain about debate times on pieces of legislation. We tried on numerous occasions to bring certain bills up or to extend hours to facilitate their needs, but the Conservatives have said that if they cannot get what they want, they will waste time. The government then has to bring in some form of closure or time allocation or nothing will ever get passed. We have seen that, and Bill C-10 is one example. They need to wake up.
The minister has done a fantastic job of bringing forward to the House legislation that would modernize an act that has not been modernized for three decades. Is it absolutely perfect? There was some need to make some modifications. Some of those modifications have, in fact, occurred. However, the spin that the Conservatives put on this is that it is terrible legislation that should never, ever see the light of day. We know the legislation would never be able to pass if it did not get the support from at least one opposition party.
It is not the Government of Canada ramming the legislation through. Often it feels as if it is the Government of Canada pleading and begging opposition to recognize the value and try to drum up support within the House. Fortunately, once again, at least one political party is prepared to see this legislation advance. I truly do appreciate it.
Bill C-10, as I said, is, at the core, promoting Canadian music, storytelling and creative work. The Conservatives argue against it, that somehow it limits freedom of speech, and they cite a number of examples. However, the Department of Justice has done an analysis of the legislation and has clearly indicated that it is consistent with the charter guarantee of freedom of speech, and that is coming from civil servants.
I wish the Conservatives would recognize that the bill would ensure that the act would not apply to users of social media services or to social media services themselves for content posted by their users. However, to listen to what the Conservatives are saying, one would not think that, because it does not fit their narrative.
The bill aims to update some critical elements of the broadcasting policy for Canada. For example, it would ensure that the creation of Canadian content is reflective of Canadian society and accessible to all Canadians. The bill would also amend the act to ensure that there is a greater account for things such as indigenous cultures and languages. It would also recognize that Canada's broadcasting system should serve the needs and interests of all Canadians, including racialized communities and our very diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socioeconomic status, abilities, disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions of age.
I can tell my Conservative friends, in particular, that things have changed since the act was really updated. The Internet was in its infancy. When I first got the chance to speak to the legislation, I made reference to the fact that when I was first elected 30-plus years ago as a Manitoba parliamentarian, the Internet was accessed by dialing up through the telephone, and I think it was on a 256-kilobytes Compaq computer. Actually, I started off with a small Apple computer that I put floppy disks into. Contrast that to what the Internet is today and how advanced technology continues to push us. We, at least on the government benches, recognize that this is change that needs to take place.
Unlike the Conservative Party, we recognize the true, intrinsic value of culture and heritage, and Canada's diversity continues to grow on a daily basis. We need to modernize the legislation. It is there for all Canadians, which is the reason this government is bringing forward this legislation, as well as other important legislation, whether it is Bill C-6 or Bill C-12.
This is solid, progressive legislation that is going to make a tangible difference, and this is why it is so sad at times when we see the unholy alliance of opposition parties trying to frustrate the government in getting through a legislative agenda that we can all be proud of before the summer break, which is something that is done all the time in June when government gives that final push before the summer break.
I would ask members to get behind this legislation and do what I and my Liberal caucus colleagues are doing: support it, and let us move on to more legislation.
View Bob Zimmer Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I have an article in front of me entitled “Heritage minister ignored his own officials over controversial Bill C-10, documents reveal”. It says:
Months before the Liberal government removed a section of Bill C-10 in a controversial amendment [the] Heritage Minister...was told by officials within his own department that it was an “important limitation” on regulatory powers.
What does the member say to all the critics of Bill C-10? It is not just the Conservatives, not just people on this side of the House who are criticizing this bill. What does he say to those people?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-21 21:54 [p.8902]
Madam Speaker, I would indicate to those people that we have a minister who has done an incredible job when it comes to consulting with Canadians from virtually coast to coast to coast. This legislation was brought in with a great deal of background work done, not only by the minister and within the department, but also by the parliamentary secretary and many of my caucus colleagues, to ensure that sound legislation would ultimately be presented. I believe the minister has done a great service by providing this legislation to update and modernize something that needed to be modernized. As I said, the Internet has changed over the last 30 years.
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 Kerry Diotte Profile
CPC (AB)
View Kerry Diotte Profile
2021-06-22 0:01 [p.8923]
Mr. Speaker, Toronto's CN Tower is a Canadian landmark that is known worldwide. When it was completed in 1976, it was the highest free-standing structure in the world. It is 553 metres tall, or about 1,800 old-fashioned feet high. That is the length of five and a half football fields. It has actually been named a wonder of the modern world, right up there with the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. The CN Tower gets a lot of attention, and tons of people visit it: two million a year.
Some of those visitors got more than they bargained for on July 16, 2001. On that day, two radical activists decided to do a dangerous illegal stunt. The two men scaled the outside of the tower and unfurled a banner. That banner bashed the Liberal government and the U.S. government for allegedly being killers of the planet. Not doing enough to fight climate change was the charge. The men had to be rescued by firefighters, and they were later charged and convicted for their dangerous stunt. The court heard that the whole ordeal cost CN $50,000, but the two men only had to pay $3,000 in fines in total. I guess the punishment did not quite fit the crime.
Who were those two men who created such havoc and made headlines worldwide? They were both Greenpeace activists. One was a British guy, Chris Holden. The other fella has really climbed to new heights. He is now a Liberal cabinet minister, the heritage minister. Two decades after his last dangerous stunt, this radical guy is pulling another one. In some ways, it is even more dangerous than his first stunt. He wants to censor our online free speech.
By now many Canadians have heard of Bill C-10. It is actually interesting that hundreds of bills are discussed in the House and most people do not pay attention. If we mentioned a random bill, the average Canadian likely would not know what it is about and probably would not care. We realize that a bill is controversial when regular folks know about it and know it by name and number. I did a virtual meeting with students from a grade 6 class a couple of weeks back and they knew about Bill C-10. They were very concerned about it. They should be.
I have a special interest myself in Bill C-10. I worked as a journalist for three decades in radio, TV, newspapers and news magazines, so free speech is in my DNA. For many years I was an opinion columnist for the Toronto Sun chain. Opinion columnists at Sun Media were the lifeblood of that organization. Every survey we did showed that many people bought the newspapers, and sometimes just to read one of the regular columnists.
I am not going to bore anybody by dissecting the intricate legalese of Bill C-10. Lots of lawyers and legal experts have argued the finer points in detail. I know the government will tout this bill as being all about supporting Canadian content. It has already done that. It claims it is not out to stop free speech in any real way, but I do not believe it. Most Canadians do not either. It is no wonder that we do not believe it. The government has earned a reputation, and it is not a good reputation. It cannot be trusted. I do not trust it and Canadians do not trust it.
The Prime Minister and his Liberals have a long string of botched files, ethics violations, broken promises and cover-ups. They failed to quickly close our borders when COVID hit. Then they failed on quickly getting Canadians vaccines. They tried to do a deal with the communist Chinese regime to get vaccines. Of course that failed miserably.
The Liberals have failed on many, many fronts: the SNC-Lavalin affair, the WE scandal, cash for access, cancelled energy projects, disgraced cabinet ministers and MPs, blackface, the trip to the Aga Khan's private island, no serious plan to open our international border and cover-ups galore. Ler us consider a recent one. It is about the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab and a refusal to provide vital documents to a key parliamentary committee. Look for that to be in the headlines for a long time.
Is it any wonder that Canadians do not trust the Liberals? Is it any wonder they cannot be trusted with something so sacred as free speech? Is it any wonder that people do not trust the minister proposing Bill C-10, a guy with a radical past, a guy who got hauled off in handcuffs and was convicted by a court of law?
We have already seen censorship raise its ugly head on the Internet. It is already happening at an alarming rate. I bet every Canadian with a computer knows someone who has had a social media post flagged or deleted by big tech. It could have been for something as simple as a personal opinion about COVID rules. I bet many of us know people whose social media accounts have been suspended or even shut down by big tech. It is ridiculous that some self-appointed 20-something is a judge at a big tech firm like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
It also seems like conservative voices are the ones often targeted by these censors. It is strange how that works. Can members imagine what kind of censorship will happen if the Liberal government controls our online speech? I shudder to think of it.
Some people might say that since I am a member of the official opposition, of course I will slam any Liberal bill. Well, it is not just the official opposition. There are a lot of people against this Big Brother bill. Every constituent I talk to wants me to fight against the bill. I cannot recall one person coming to me to say, “Hey, Kerry, you have to support Bill C-10.” In fact, I have heard so much opposition to the bill that I decided to start an online petition against it. I was inundated with people signing it. I told them that I would send a letter of protest directly to the Prime Minister on their behalf, and that is exactly what I did.
Speaking of opposition to Bill C-10, members should check out what Tim Denton said. He is a former national CRTC commissioner, and he is also the current chair of the Internet Society Canada Chapter. Mr. Denton had this to say:
C-10 is clearly intended to allow speech control at the government’s discretion. Ignore the turn signals, look at where the wheels are pointed. They are pointed at your right to communicate freely by means of the internet.
This is scary stuff. Who would members trust to pass judgment on this bill, our heritage minister, with his radical past, or Mr. Denton? I know who I would trust.
How about the comment from Peter Menzies? He is a long-time journalist and former CRTC vice-chair. I worked in journalism with Peter. He is a good guy, a smart guy. He has summed up the Liberal bill really well. He said that Bill C-10 “will place the internet under the control of the...CRTC. Its nine unelected, unaccountable commissioners will decide if your Facebook post or Youtube video is appropriate internet content.” My former colleague goes on to point out that the heritage minister “has promised more legislation to establish another regulatory panel to oversee what sort of things people may say on social media. All of this constitutes an outrageous abuse of government authority”.
We can see where this legislation could go. Maybe a person does not like a government program or a policy or a politician and speaks out. Maybe they will get blocked or cancelled. There is a lot of cancel culture out there to go around, and the legislation before us would only make things worse.
The bottom line is that the Liberal government cannot be trusted with our free speech. The minister, with his radical, checkered past, cannot be trusted with our free speech. Our free speech is too sacred to be imperiled by this terrible, dangerous legislation. Canadians are saying that loud and clear. Bill C-10 must be defeated. Our very democracy in Canada is at stake.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I did notice the member spoke almost not at all about the bill, which is interesting because that is why we are here. Since I am sure he has read the bill and has read the act, he knows there are numerous places in both the act and the bill where freedom of expression is explicitly protected.
While the Liberals may not be trustworthy, members will recall that the Bloc, the Green Party and the NDP also support this legislation. New Democrats have always stood up for freedom of expression. They have a long history of that, and they have always stood up for net neutrality. The only party that is against this legislation is the Conservative Party.
I have heard from one Conservative MP that he has raised over $3,000 by fearmongering abound Bill C-10 in his riding. Would the member share how much money he has raised in his riding by fearmongering on Bill C-10?
View Kerry Diotte Profile
CPC (AB)
View Kerry Diotte Profile
2021-06-22 0:13 [p.8925]
Mr. Speaker, that is another diversionary tactic because the NDP member does not understand the kernel of this. As I said, I am not going to dissect this bill; I am not a lawyer.
However, I know one thing. I know about freedom of expression. I was a journalist for 30 years. I talk to a lot of people, and I represent my constituents, who are telling me that they do not like this legislation and they do not trust the Liberals. The Liberals have not earned the trust on this bill. It is as simple as that. That is the absolute truth.
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-22 0:14 [p.8925]
Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech, and I must say that it was shockingly chock full of fearmongering. I have seldom heard anything like that. On top of that, these words are from a former journalist. He himself said that he had been a journalist for 30 years.
I remind my colleagues that facts are important in journalism. They have clearly chosen party lines over the facts in this debate.
My colleague mentioned a few times that he was interested in Bill C‑10 and that he was fairly familiar with it. My colleague from Edmonton Strathcona said that there are numerous places in Bill C‑10 and in the act where freedom of expression is explicitly protected.
Could my colleague explain exactly which clauses in Bill C‑10 could potentially undermine freedom of expression? What are the specific sections he is referring to?
View Kerry Diotte Profile
CPC (AB)
View Kerry Diotte Profile
2021-06-22 0:15 [p.8925]
Mr. Speaker, that is another diversionary tactic. I very clearly stated in my speech that I was not going to dissect it. I am not a lawyer.
It comes down to trust. People do not trust the government on this issue of free speech, nor has the government earned that trust. We just have to talk to many people. I have seldom seen a groundswell against a bill like the one I have seen with this bill.
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 Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate this evening on such an important issue.
I just complimented my colleague from Drummond, and I also have some kind words for my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona. She did a masterful job on Bill C‑10 at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Her assistant, Laveza Khan, also worked very hard on it, and my assistant Samuel Fortin-Pouliot worked very hard too. I commend everyone. They truly put in the work, as they say.
I agree that we absolutely needed to amend the Broadcasting Act. It has been 30 years since that act was passed. It had become completely archaic and obsolete, and it still is. It does not fit with today's reality and the current context with the new digital broadcasters. I think we need to keep that in mind when we debate this bill.
That is why the NDP has always worked and remained in touch with various actors and stakeholders in Quebec's cultural sector, in particular the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and also ACTRA, Unifor and Music Canada. They have always counted on us. We worked with them to try to improve this very important bill.
Since the Yale report was released a few years ago, we have come to understand how necessary it is to update the Broadcasting Act and bring it into the 21st century. As progressives and New Democrats, we agreed with the broad strokes of the Yale report. It is so important, because it is a matter of cultural sovereignty. What we need to do is ensure that major new digital broadcasters participate, invest and contribute to the production of original Canadian and Quebec content. That is not what is happening.
It is vital to understand the ecosystem that we have been dealing with and continue to deal with, in the hope that it can change, and why the principle of this bill is so important in the first place. We have a system based on conventional broadcasters and cable companies that contribute to a fund to ensure we can invest in telling our stories on television, in film and other media.
However, big players, new players who are no longer quite so new today, had not contributed at all. It is great to be able to bring them to the table and force them to contribute to the growth and development of Quebec, Canadian and indigenous culture in general, just like conventional broadcasters.
Unfortunately, the bill that was presented to us was botched from the beginning. The NDP was prepared to collaborate. We have always been prepared to collaborate, to make amendments and improvements, to resolve the problems with the bill so that it best meets the needs of the cultural industry and our artists, artisans and technicians. We also want to make sure it best meets the needs of the public, because we need cultural content that brings us together and that we have some control over so that we can tell our stories, which our fellow citizens in Quebec and Canada love to hear. Think of all of the big television, movie and music success stories that we know of.
Unfortunately, we had to deal with very bad communication from the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who on numerous occasions could not for the life of him explain his own bill.
He was attacked under various pretexts by the Conservative Party and was unable to reassure the public and to continue in a constructive and positive direction for this bill.
Obviously, there has been a lot of talk about freedom of expression. It is an important issue, and we are not going to sweep it under the rug and say we do not care about it. As members of the NDP, as New Democrats and progressives, if there were a bill on the table that called into question the freedom of expression of people, of Canadians, we would obviously be very concerned.
The NDP has a strong track record when it comes to protecting freedom of expression and the rights of Canadians. This is not something we take lightly. We did our work in committee, as well as in the media, in the public sphere and in the House, to raise these issues and to take the time needed to get legal opinions, to hear from experts and to get the notices of compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms from the Department of Justice. Those notices actually came twice, before and after the removal of clause 4.1.
We have always been in favour of the principle of the bill. We hope it will pass because our cultural sector will benefit when Internet giants contribute to and help fund the production of original works that tell Canadian and Quebec stories.
We did our work. We were open to arguments because we wanted to be absolutely sure we were protecting freedom of expression. That is what we did, and the NDP is committed to supporting the cultural sector and our artists, artisans and technicians. At the same time, we wanted to be absolutely sure everything was charter compliant and would in no way interfere with individuals' right to keep expressing their opinions and posting whatever videos they wanted on social media. Doing that work was very important, and we did it in a reasonable and responsible way. Unfortunately, there were some closure motions that prevented debate in some cases and violated our rights as parliamentarians.
The way the Liberals have been managing this bill strikes me as rather strange. They imposed closure on a committee, which has only ever happened three times. Despite this gag order, they had to resort to a supermotion. The Liberal government treated this bill as if we had neglected it and taken it lightly, while it was too important for equity in our Canadian programming ecosystem and for the defence of programming and content in French, as well as in indigenous languages.
We want our television, film and musical artists to have the chance to pursue their activities and be properly paid for the work they do, especially musicians on YouTube, and we want them to continue to tell our stories. It is a question of jobs and a very important economic sector. The cultural sector accounts for tens of thousands of jobs across the country.
What is more, culture is what defines us. It says who we are, what our vision of society is, how we approach the issues, social discussions and debates. It also gives us a chance to change our perspective and world view, and a chance to change the world.
I find it sad that on June 21, we still have to talk about this. The Liberals should have managed their agenda better.
However, I think that this bill does ultimately achieve the objectives that matter to our cultural sector, our artists and our artisans. The NDP will always be there to defend them.
View Derek Sloan Profile
Ind. (ON)
Madam Speaker, Canadians know that I have fought hard for them in Parliament over the past several months when other parties have failed to do so. Too many times, we heard nothing but silence in Parliament over urgent issues, such as the detainment of Canadians at airports; research into promising COVID treatments like Ivermectin, which has been utilized in other jurisdictions but not Canada; the unconstitutional push for vaccine passports with no debate in the House of Commons; the use of endless lockdowns across Canada, despite the negative impact on our economy and youth mental health; the rights of workers against forced vaccinations in the workplace and, of course, the Prime Minister's famous double standard on the constitutional rights of Canadians to protest.
I have always stood up for Canadians on these issues, just like today when I hosted a panel of Canadian doctors and professors, who are now facing extreme censorship across our nation due to their whistle-blowing on Canada's handling of COVID-19.
I call on the government, big tech and other organizations to stop muzzling medical experts and let them share their concerns freely without fear of reprisal and censorship.
View Dave Epp Profile
CPC (ON)
View Dave Epp Profile
2021-06-16 16:20 [p.8539]
Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to present e-petition 3393 on behalf of many Canadians, particularly those from my riding of Chatham-Kent—Leamington.
The petitioners are extremely concerned that Bill C-10 unjustly infringes on citizens’ right to freedom of expression outlined in section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly that the speech Canadians engage in on digital platforms is crucial to their conveying of their basic individual expressions. Bill C-10 would provide the CRTC with the authority to control and regulate user-generated content on digital platforms that Canadians use every day and censor what Canadians post and see on social media and the Internet, providing it with sweeping powers over how Canadians communicate and express themselves online.
These Canadians want their rights upheld and due process followed. I commend you, Mr. Speaker, for so ruling yesterday.
View Anthony Housefather Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Anthony Housefather Profile
2021-06-15 11:00 [p.8434]
Madam Speaker, this is one of the most important speeches that I have given in this virtual chamber. I want to clarify for the people in my riding and across Canada what this motion means, and even more importantly what it does not mean. I also want to contribute my views to the public record so that they can be examined by any court that may, in the future, be called upon to consider the significance of this motion.
First, I want to clarify that if this motion is adopted, it does not constitute an agreement by this House to a constitutional amendment. Amending Canada's framework document would require a proper bill, extensive public consultation, committee study and hearings, legal analysis and extensive debate in this House and across the country. I would never support any constitutional amendment that did not follow this process.
Second, what does this motion do?
It asks the House to recognize that section 45 of the Constitution Act, 1982, allows Quebec and the other provinces to unilaterally amend their respective constitutions. What the motion does not say is that section 45 is subject to section 41. Section 41 refers to section 43(b), which clearly states that any amendment to any provision that relates to the use of the English or the French language within a province also requires the approval of the House of Commons and the Senate. I will speak to what this means a little later.
This motion also calls on the House to acknowledge the fact that Quebec intends to use section 45 to amend its constitution to state that Quebeckers form a nation, that French is the only official language of Quebec and that it is also the common language of the Quebec nation.
Third, let me be clear about the mechanism being used. Quebec's proposed Bill 96 has not yet been the subject of hearings. It has not been debated, amended or adopted. Since the determination of whether section 45 applies to an amendment will depend on the final wording of Bill 96, it would be premature to offer more than a preliminary assessment as to whether section 45 could apply.
No amendment to the constitution of a province made under section 45 can have any legal effect on the Constitution of Canada. Our Constitution is very clear that if any amendment relates to the use of English or French language in the province, section 43(b) must be used, not section 45. Therefore, this amendment cannot be used to reduce or impact the rights of the Quebec English-speaking minority in any way.
It would not and could not change the scope of section 133 of the Constitution, which says that English is an equal language with French within the National Assembly and the courts of Quebec. It would not and could not change the scope of the rights of the minority language community under the charter, such as education rights under section 23. Perhaps most importantly, in my view, this amendment cannot be used to interpret whether any charter right has been breached or to justify a section 1 limitation of that right.
Fourth, I support the exact wording adopted by the House of Commons in 2006. That motion stated, “that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” I want members to note those last words, which are “a united Canada.” The current proposal is missing those words.
I also believe that it is very important to understand the legal implications of the notion of French as the common language of the Quebec nation. I hope that there will be presentations and debates in the National Assembly on this issue.
Quebec's Charter of the French Language states that French is the official language of Quebec. French is the first language used in Quebec, and French-speaking Quebeckers should be able to live, work and be served in French throughout our province.
Some proposals in Bill 96 have raised real concerns that common language means something else. For example, is the Quebec government seeking to limit those who can receive certain services in English? Sections 22.2 and 22.3 of Bill 96 link the ability to receive certain government services in English to those who are eligible to receive instruction in English. This has never previously been done in the Charter of the French Language outside of education rights.
Let us look at what that means. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of people who considered themselves part of the English-speaking community of Quebec will no longer be eligible to receive certain services from the state in English. This would include people who came to Quebec from the United States or other English-speaking countries, and even Holocaust survivors in their nineties who have been part of the English-speaking community since arriving in Canada over 70 years ago. This is profoundly disturbing, and I very much hope this section is amended by the National Assembly.
There is also section 18.1, which states that the personnel members of the civil administration shall use exclusively French when communicating orally or in writing with one another in the exercise of their functions. I do not think it is reasonable to ask two anglophone public servants to speak and write to one another in French.
In light of these and other provisions in Bill 96, we can understand why leaders of the English-speaking community, including former member of Parliament Marlene Jennings, who is the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, have expressed some serious concerns about Bill 96.
I am particularly concerned about the impact of Bill 96 on how we see the charter and how individual rights interact with collective ones. In my view, we have a Charter of Rights because we, as a society in Canada and Quebec, have accepted that there are certain rights which are inalienable, rights that are not subject to change by a simple majority in the legislature. A charter is designed to protect minorities, even unpopular minorities.
In Bill 96, Quebec has departed entirely from this principle. First, the bill says the Charter of the French Language would no longer be subordinate to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. This means that Quebeckers would no longer be able to argue that the Charter of the French Language breaches rights under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Quebec is also proposing to use a notwithstanding clause in an omnibus and pre-emptive way, preventing any Quebecker from arguing that fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, are breached under this bill. I would like to be very clear that I am against the notwithstanding clause. I do not believe it should be part of the charter.
We already have section 1, which allows legislatures to place reasonable limits on rights. To allow legislatures to allow unreasonable limits on rights, or to put laws outside the review of the judicial branch of government, is not something I can ever support. I oppose the use of the notwithstanding clause by Quebec, Ontario or any other jurisdiction.
Although we have to accept that the notwithstanding clause is part of the charter and can be invoked, it should be invoked only on very rare occasions, in response to a legal ruling. It must not be used pre-emptively. The idea of insulating a bill from possible legal challenges is profoundly troubling. The public would have no way to find out whether a right has been violated. As a Quebecker and a Canadian, I believe that we need an extensive public debate on this matter.
What is clear is that the issues related to our Constitution, our charter and our two official languages are at the very core of the fabric of our country. They are not documents or concepts to be taken lightly, but to be approached thoroughly, transparently and with the best interest of the federation at heart. Canadians place their trust in us to protect our country, protect our rights, including minority rights, and protect our democracy. These are not conversations that happen in one day, but rather require time, reflection and public debate. Our Constitution and Canadians deserve nothing less.
In the end, while I believe that this motion is purely symbolic in that it only asks this House to acknowledge what Quebec intends to do as opposed to the House agreeing to anything substantive, I also understand why this may be unclear to Canadians, especially official language minority communities and in particular, English-speaking Quebeckers.
Therefore, I move that this motion be amended by adding, after the words “of the Quebec nation”, the following: “That the House acknowledge adopting a motion in 2006 stating that this House recognize that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada and reaffirm this position, and declare that the rights of Quebec's English-speaking minority under the Canadian Constitution may not be impacted or reduced by such an amendment.”
View David Yurdiga Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, energy security should be a concern for all Canadians. Distribution of Canadian energy through networks of pipelines is paramount to withstand shocks from a wide range of sources, like natural disasters, geopolitical conflicts and other merging threats. Energy distribution like Line 5 potentially being shutting down will initiate shortages, causing astronomical increases in the cost of everything.
The Liberal government's lack of understanding of the importance of ensuring reliable and cost-effective energy has put Canada at a huge disadvantage compared to other nations. As the Liberal government continues to spin the narrative of our economic standing globally, it is only countered with the facts.
Thanks to the pending Bill C-10, the Liberals will be able to shut down what we can hear and see, just like North Korea. Canada was once a nation that embraced freedom of speech, but I guess that will be a footnote in history if not censored by Bill C-10.
View Rob Moore Profile
CPC (NB)
View Rob Moore Profile
2021-06-14 14:11 [p.8330]
Mr. Speaker, the priority for Conservatives is getting Canada’s economy reopened and back on track. The Liberal government’s priority is ramming through Bill C-10, its Internet censorship bill.
I have heard from constituents across my riding who want to see this bill scrapped. New Brunswickers in Liberal-held ridings are frustrated by their MPs' failure to commit to opposing this bill, a bill that fundamentally would alter how the Internet would operate in Canada. Canadians are even more bewildered by how the government is so focused on Bill C-10 rather than pressing issues that impact their health and the economy.
I will not support Bill C-10, a bill that puts freedom of expression in peril. The government should listen to Canadians who are telling it to abandon this poorly thought-out bill that is focused on political power rather than protecting the freedom of speech that Canadians so rightly enjoy.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, the eighth petition is about Bill C-10. It notes that the CRTC already has sweeping regulatory powers over traditional forms of media. The original mandate of Bill C-10 was to expand those regulatory powers to include online platforms, but Liberal members have since used their position on the heritage committee to amend Bill C-10 to include social media platforms and other Internet platforms. This would amount to a significant attack on freedom of speech.
The petitioners want to see the government reverse its position on this and defend the freedom of speech of all Canadians. This petition calls on the government to respect Canadians' fundamental right to freedom of expression and to prevent Internet censorship.
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
Madam Speaker, if we really want to understand where we are, we have to look at where we started.
Bill C‑10 came out of the work of the Yale commission, which worked on this for nearly a year and a half. The commission was created by my predecessors. It travelled across the country gathering input from experts and stakeholders, including groups representing people in music, visual arts, television and film.
The Yale commission received close to 2,000 briefs and submitted its report in early 2020. We took that input from the consultations and feedback from a group of leading Canadian experts, including the former director general of the CRTC, Ms. Yale, and started working on Bill C‑10. We worked hard to do what the previous overhaul of the Broadcasting Act in the early 1990s did when the Conservatives modernized it. The act was created to protect Canadian artists, organizations and businesses from the American cultural invasion.
We all know that the American cultural invasion is powerful and that it can steamroll any culture on the planet. I have discussed these issues with ministers in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Many countries worldwide are currently dealing with the issue of cultural sovereignty.
This is the spirit in which we tabled Bill C‑10. At the time, I was the first one to say that the bill could be enhanced, improved and amended. I would remind members that the last time the Broadcasting Act was amended, the government of the day overlooked one very important issue: the ownership of Canadian broadcasting companies. The act was amended in the early 1990s, and the Governor in Council issued an order in council a few years later, in 1997, to protect the ownership of Canadian broadcasting companies, because this had been overlooked.
All of this is to say that, when we propose a bill, we do our best to make sure that it represents the best of our intentions. I would like to remind all of the members in the House that Bill C‑10 was praised by cultural organizations across the country. According to many, its passage was a historic event.
Not only was the tabling of the bill saluted from coast to coast to coast, but the National Assembly of Quebec voted unanimously in favour of Bill C-10. It said that we need Bill C-10 and that it is a good piece of legislation. Among other things, it would help the French language, French producers, French artists and French composers to better perform in this environment. Another feature of Bill C-10 is that it would also further help and support indigenous creators, indigenous artists and indigenous producers in ways the previous incarnation of the bill unfortunately did not do.
This bill is not about content moderation. The CRTC, in its decades of existence, has never said to Shaw, CBC or TVA that they can do one program but cannot do another program. The CRTC has never had that power.
I heard one member talking about the sweeping powers of the CRTC. The CRTC is not above Canadian laws. It must comply with our bodies of laws and regulations, and it is a regulator. We have many regulators in different sectors, and the CRTC, from that point of view, is no different than existing regulators. What Bill C-10 wants to do is to ensure web giants pay their fair share.
As I have said many times in this House, as well as at the heritage committee, the independent, professional civil servants at Canadian Heritage estimate that, by asking web giants to pay their fair share, we would be adding revenues in excess of $800 million a year for our creators, artists, independent producers and musicians. That figure is an estimate, not an exact figure, as we would have to adopt the bill and implement the regulations to know exactly how much it would be.
I want to point out that, initially, when the heritage committee started working on the bill, things were going really well. The committee was able to go through roughly 20 amendments at every committee meeting. What has been really challenging to understand is the Conservative Party.
By and large, we have four parties in this House that recognize the need to modernize the Broadcasting Act and agree on the goals. We do not agree on everything, but between the Greens, the NDP, the Bloc and us Liberals, I think there is vast agreement on what needs to be done.
Frankly, I am trying to understand the position of the Conservative Party on this, as it has been a moving target. Initially, the Conservatives criticized the bill for not going far enough because we were not going after YouTube or integrating these really important companies in the bill, so we changed it. Then, all of a sudden, they changed their minds. It was not good enough. Not only was it not good enough, but they disagreed with their initial position.
Then they started talking about this idea that somehow the bill would lead to censorship, which was proven wrong by the independent professional civil service of the justice ministry. The deputy minister came to testify at the heritage committee to that effect and produced analyses that showed Bill C-10 did not go against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In fact, there are elements within Bill C-10 and the CRTC's own laws that state that the CRTC has to abide by the Charter of Rights.
Because of that, the Conservatives claimed that it was an infringement on net neutrality. We tried to explain what net neutrality is and what it is not. Basically, net neutrality is about telecommunications. It is about the hardware and the ability of people to have access to networks. Bill C-10 does not do that. It is not about telecommunications at all.
I think we are now faced with the fact that, because of the Conservative Party, we have lost months of work on Bill C-10. For every month that passes, artists, creators, musicians and technicians in this country lose roughly $70 million per month, so we must proceed with the adoption of Bill C-10. Artists, musicians and organizations across the country are asking us to do so.
View Warren Steinley Profile
CPC (SK)
View Warren Steinley Profile
2021-06-14 16:53 [p.8357]
Madam Speaker, I find it funny for the minister to be asking what happened to the Conservatives. We always have stood up and always will stand up for free speech. We believe that citizens across the country should not be censored on what they put on social media, like Facebook and YouTube. We believe people have a right to their own personal thoughts and opinions, unlike three-quarters of the front benches of the Liberal Party who want a basic dictatorship. Conservatives will always stand up for free speech and Bill C-10 curtails that. We will stand with all Canadians and their right to have their own opinions and own independent thought process.
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
Madam Speaker, I am not sure there was a question in there, but I will give it a shot. I would be curious to hear the hon. member on his party's stance regarding free speech when they were in power under the Harper government. At the time, I used to work for not-for-profit organizations. Organizations like mine, and so many others in this country working on environmental issues, women's rights issues and international development issues, were the target of the government because we did not agree with it. That is word for word. People can look it up.
I had a huge argument with the spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office at the time when it was prime minister Stephen Harper, at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. He said the reason they were doing this was because they wanted to shut us up because we disagreed with the government.
Where was their priority and eagerness to defend freedom of speech when they were using all of the state's resources to go after non-governmental organizations and try to take away our funding because we disagreed with them? Where was their concern for freedom of speech two weeks ago when 81 members of this party voted—
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 Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-14 17:20 [p.8361]
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska. I know that he has been very emotionally involved in the issue of freedom of expression on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in recent weeks.
After clause 4.1 was removed on that fateful Friday in late April, we were interrupted by the Conservatives, who saw a potential violation of freedom of expression, the important principle that all of us here respect and cherish. At the request of my Conservative colleagues, we invited experts to speak. The Conservatives called their own experts, and we heard from attorneys. The other parties called other experts with a completely different opinion. Some credible voices said that Bill C‑10 did not infringe on freedom of expression and that it contained provisions protecting it.
My question to the hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska is this: If this is not an ideological matter, what would the experts have had to say to finally convince the Conservatives that Bill C‑10 does not infringe on the freedom of expression of Quebeckers and Canadians?
View Alain Rayes Profile
CPC (QC)
View Alain Rayes Profile
2021-06-14 17:21 [p.8361]
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from my neighbouring riding of Drummond for his question. I appreciate him as a colleague, as he is well aware.
What he said is entirely true. Following the testimony of the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Justice, we heard from experts with diametrically opposed opinions. I agree with him. It is true, and it is healthy in a democracy.
Among the experts who agreed with the Conservatives were law professors. I think that these people also deserve a voice in Canada's Parliament because of their vision, their advice and their warnings. It is appalling to see the minister attack these opinions. It is obvious that, if you do not think like a Liberal, you are not worth anything. That is not true, we are worth something. Our constituents are full-fledged citizens. These people deserve a voice, and it is thanks to these divergent voices that we can exchange ideas and improve bills.
The problem is when the minority government across the way operates in a dictatorial fashion and pays no mind to what is going on, which means that it can only get its bills passed under a gag order. Instead, it should try to understand these voices and see how it can improve its legislation.
I will say it again: If clause 4.1 had not been removed, we would not be in this situation today. We would not be engaged in these never-ending arguments that we have been having for some time—
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-06-14 17:23 [p.8361]
Madam Speaker, I have so many concerns with what happened in our committee. He was a member of the committee, as was I.
The Conservatives brought up concerns about freedom of expression. Does the member realize that the act itself has three cases in which it specifically names freedom of expression being protected? The bill itself already has a protection in it, and we approved at least four amendments, including a Conservative amendment, that would all have protected freedom of expression.
When the member says that freedom of expression is an issue and that he would like to continue to work for it, I ask the member this: Why did he vote against my motion to sit during the summer? We could have continued to work on this bill and could have continued to get it right.
View Alain Rayes Profile
CPC (QC)
View Alain Rayes Profile
2021-06-14 17:24 [p.8361]
Madam Speaker, I do not know exactly which motion the hon. member is talking about; there have been so many. I apologize for not being able to answer her question directly.
However, I can confirm that the NDP and the Bloc Québécois were themselves at some point surprised by the removal of clause 4.1. Both parties supported our efforts to hear what the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Canadian Heritage had to say about the concerns about freedom of expression.
I presume that, when the hon. member mentions elements of the bill that supposedly protect freedom of expression, she is referring to clause 2.1, which addresses individuals. However, the issue we are debating, the issue that was raised by the legal experts, is content.
I myself asked the Minister of Justice if the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects individuals as well as content. He has always refused to answer that question—
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-06-14 17:28 [p.8362]
Madam Speaker, I will now get back to the premise of my speech, the 2019 campaign in which every Bloc Québécois candidate made a serious promise to voters, a commitment made solemnly and with conviction: Whenever we are in the House, we will make decisions, take a position and support bills and motions that defend Quebeckers’ interests and values.
Even today, it is still the question we ask ourselves when it comes time to choose which direction to take, either here or in committee. A time allocation motion, closure, a gag order, whatever we may call it, there really is no good word for it and we find it chilling, because freedom of speech, parliamentary privilege, is fundamental. It is something we deeply respect and will defend at all costs, like we did with this morning's motion, which just squeaked by.
The Bloc Québécois has fervently defended this idea since its inception, 30 years ago tomorrow. I think that we supported a time allocation motion more often in the past two weeks than in all the 30 years of my party’s existence.
Sometimes, situations force us to step on people’s toes to defend our values, and sometimes that is justifiable.
The parliamentary toolkit contains another tool that is just as questionable, in my opinion, and many of my colleagues probably agree with me. It is the filibustering of debates, either here in the House or in committee. The filibuster consists in droning on endlessly, taking up debate time to prevent a vote or to prevent something that is against our convictions from happening. At that point, the other move that is just as questionable, time allocation, becomes equally justifiable.
In recent months, we have supported time allocation for Bill C‑6 and for medical assistance in dying, an extremely sensitive issue on which Quebec has reached a consensus. People were waiting for the bill. They were waiting for a decision from the House of Commons. They were enduring unbearable suffering and they wanted the freedom to decide when they could end it.
At that point, we asked ourselves the same question. We asked ourselves whether we were going to accept closure if it reflected the will, the values and the interests of Quebeckers. Since it was a simple question, and the answer was yes, we believed we were duty bound to do whatever was necessary to have these bills and motions adopted.
Bill C‑30 is also important for businesses. It is important for the economic recovery, since it will allow entrepreneurs in our regions to get back on their feet after the pandemic. Obviously, we would have preferred that the democratic process take its normal course but, when it is clear that someone is trying to delay the process by every means possible for reasons that are often purely ideological, in order to please their base or collect funds by plucking at the heartstrings of certain groups of Canadians, we believe that it is our duty to counter these manoeuvres using another parliamentary tool. We believe that, in those circumstances, it is reasonable.
That was the case with Bill C‑10. How did we get here? My colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska talked about that earlier. It is true that, at first, when the bill was tabled, we found a lot of holes in it. There were more holes in it than there are in Swiss cheese, like in a brand new paint by numbers. It took six years' preparation to come up with a bill and there was still an enormous amount of work to do.
I do not want to lay blame on anyone, but I think that, from the moment the bill was introduces, the opposition parties were unanimous in thinking that there were too many things missing for it to be acceptable. The industry was happy because a bill was finally being introduced to amend the Broadcasting Act, which had already been obsolete for several years and which was enacted in 1991, at a time when we were recording songs broadcast over the radio on four-track cassettes.
Since we were considerably behind, it was not surprising that the industry applauded the tabling of a bill to review the Broadcasting Act. It should have been reviewed 20 years ago, it should have been reviewed 10 years ago; it should be reviewed on a regular basis.
We soon realized how much work there was to be done. In a way, when a member of the House decides to vote in favour of a bill so that it can be studied in committee, that member is making a commitment to say that certain elements of the bill are not very good and need to be worked on. That work falls to us. It is unfortunate, but we have to do it. We have to improve Bill C‑10 because the cultural industry, our media and the field of broadcasting in Canada have drastically changed. Today's broadcasting industry is nothing like what it was in 1991, when the last version of the Broadcasting Act was passed. I was working in radio at the time. When I walk into a radio studio these days, in 2021, I am completely lost and I have to be shown around because I do not know what anything is. Everything is different today, except for the mike, which has not changed much.
When we agree to work on a bill in committee, we are committing to making improvements. That is how we ended up with more than 100 amendments. At first, there were about 120 amendments proposed by the NDP, the Green Party, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois.
Before proposing these amendments, we consulted people. We heard from people who were interested in sharing their concerns with us. A lot of people wanted to talk about the Broadcasting Act, because it affected a huge number of stakeholders, including community radio and television stations, broadcasters, cable companies, artists and online companies. A lot of people wanted to share their concerns and remind us to include certain things in the bill.
Independent broadcasters also depend on online companies, as well as conventional broadcasters, such as the traditional cable companies, to broadcast their content. In short, there were a lot of witnesses to listen to. We came to realize that this would be a monumental task. There is a reason there were 120 amendments: because there was a lot of work to do. We did it.
I met with representatives of the cultural industry. We exchanged many messages, emails and calls and held many meetings. These people represent more than 200,000 artists, creators, artisans, authors and other people who earn a living from the cultural industry, which has significant spinoffs. Canada's cultural industry generates billions of dollars in economic spinoffs. That is no trivial matter, and we cannot let an industry like that down. We love culture, the arts, our artists and our distinct culture, but we also like money. This is a profitable industry that does not cost us a fortune. Far from being a millstone dragging us down, we benefit from it. It sets us apart and identifies us. There were 120 amendments, but they were serious amendments. They were important. We worked hard, but then came the events of late April.
Did we do things the best way possible? In hindsight, that is a reasonable question. Was it right to eliminate clause 4.1? Maybe not. Is the result what the Conservatives say it is? It is not.
Bill C‑10 contains provisions that clearly protect social media users. As important as it was to protect social media users, it was also important to regulate social media platforms, which play a role in broadcasting and are involved in broadcasting. Social media has an impact on the broadcasting system. YouTube is the largest online music broadcaster in Canada.
We would have had to tell Apple Music that it was going to be regulated, but that YouTube was not because it also has a social media service. That makes no sense. Apple Music would have been right to tell us off, saying that we had done a horrible job and that we needed to go back to the drawing board.
We had to be able to regulate social media for their broadcasting activities, while protecting their users. That is what is clearly stated in the bill, and that is what will come out of the revised Broadcasting Act in the end.
There was never any question of limiting Quebeckers' and Canadians' freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is a value that Canadians of all stripes hold dear. Let us not compete to see who loves freedom of speech the most. It is fundamental for us, for Quebeckers and for Canadians. Of that there is no doubt.
What party in the House would have blindly voted for a bill that would actually limit freedom of expression? It does not make sense. It is merely a question of ideology. It is merely an attempt to fan the flames, to offend sensibilities. Perhaps it will pay off, I do not know.
When the problem arose in committee and the question was raised, the Conservatives said that we absolutely had to hear from the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Justice. These ministers had to issue a charter statement. They had to see what was going on. We needed a guarantee from the minister that the bill complied with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and if we were going to do that, we should hear from experts. The Conservatives wanted to invite experts back.
We were wasting time on a bill when we already did not have much time to spare. We wondered what we should with that. Having reflected on it, I am convinced that what is in the bill will protect freedom of expression and social media users, in other words individuals, people. We decided that if there was any uncertainty, we needed to get to the bottom of it, and we had a duty to do so. It was early May, and we were running out of time, but no matter, we had to get it done, and that is what we did. We heard from the experts that the Conservatives wanted us to invite. We heard from law professors and people who believe that this bill goes against this provision of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and who claim it jeopardizes freedom of expression. I want to listen to all sides before I form an opinion.
However, we also heard from experts such as Pierre Trudel, a professor of law who is renowned across the country. He, too, is a leading authority, and he had a completely different opinion. We heard from Ms. Yale, the chair of the major study that resulted in the Yale report almost a year and a half ago. She also testified and shared her views. Ms. Yale also did not think there was a threat.
There is nothing wrong with expressing doubts and saying that some experts have a certain view. However, at some point, we must respect the democratic process. We listened to everyone and showed good will and good faith. Other experts expressed different views before the committee. Through a vote, the committee decided that we would finally move forward and that there was no threat. The democratic process can come down on either side and we must respect it. Our Conservative colleagues decided to continue filibustering the committee by giving interminable speeches, and we saw things get out of hand.
I was really disappointed by the comments made by the member for Lethbridge in the Lethbridge Herald. She described Quebec artists as being a niche group who are stuck in the 1990s and unable to adapt, so they have to make a living off government grants. I spent 30 years working in the media, in radio and in television, surrounded by artists, being part of their community. If I had had more hair to begin with, I think whatever is left would have fallen out. That took my breath away. I cannot believe that we did not hear a heartfelt apology in the House, either from the leader of the official opposition or from the member herself. I found her comments, which have been denounced by arts organizations, beyond sad and terribly unfortunate.
When we started studying Bill C‑10, I decided that I would do exactly what the Bloc Québécois had promised to do during the 2019 election campaign in Quebec. My colleague from Jonquière once told me that if I really wanted to connect with and be attuned to my constituents' realities, I should lace up my shoes, hit the streets and listen to what my constituents want me to support. That is exactly what I did.
I have been in contact with the cultural sector from the beginning, especially in Quebec, but also, by extension, Canada, since the associations that represent the artists and the industry in Quebec also represent the industry across Canada.
We also listened to francophone communities outside Quebec, which were also needing the protections offered by this bill. We listened to them, we moved forward and we proposed amendments to protect francophone and Quebec culture, and most of these amendments were accepted.
We worked hard to improve this bill. As we were approaching the end of the road, or in this case, the end of the session, and we had made some major gains for the cultural sector, we knew that it was not the time to give up and call it a day because there would not be enough time.
This industry suffered during the pandemic. It has been waiting for a bill, a review of the Broadcasting Act, for far too long. Remember what things were like in 1991. We did not have high-speed Internet. We could not always connect. We had to listen to a sound like a fax machine for about seven minutes. When we managed to connect, we could not just download a photo. If we wanted to do that, we had to start the download the night before in order to see the photo in the morning. We were far from streaming music, downloading videos and watching shows online like we do today. The Broadcasting Act has been completely out of touch with reality for a long time.
As I was saying, we do not have much time left to finish working on this bill, which is so important for the cultural industry, the cultural community, broadcasters, independent broadcasters and creators, as well as for the unique identity that we have here with our culture. Whether we are talking about Quebec or English Canada, we are not the same as the United States and there are marked differences between our culture and American culture.
What should we do? Are we going to allow the web giants to rake in billions of dollars when we are not asking them for much? Are we going to say that it does not matter if they do not produce our shows, that it is a free market and that we should let them set up shop here with their billions of dollars and their means of production and let them do what they want? Come on. That is completely ludicrous.
The Yale report mentioned this last year, and it is just as relevant today: We must act quickly. When action is urgently needed, we must do what it takes to get results and achieve our goal.
The Bloc Québécois made an unusual but necessary decision in supporting time allocation for Bill C‑10 in committee. It is a rare measure and I hope we will not have to take it again, but it was necessary. We made a commitment to work for Quebec, the cultural community and our media. We are also committed to keeping our culture alive. In Quebec, we have been in the habit of fighting for our culture for quite some time. That is perhaps the difference: We have been rolling up our sleeves for a longer time now. We will not give up the fight.
Contrary to what our Conservative colleagues think, this bill is essential and it is urgent. We owe it to our cultural community, as well as to Quebec and Canadian media.
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to a bill that is important to me. It is not so much the bill itself, but what it will do and the sector it will affect. This bill could really change things in the future.
Before speaking about the principles and general thrust of Bill C‑10, and as we are officially discussing at this time a supermotion to expedite the business and the course of events in the House, I would like to come back to the question I asked my colleague from Drummond a few minutes ago, that is, how did we get here?
How did we arrive at a bill that nevertheless affects our cultural sovereignty, our ability to produce Quebec and Canadian cultural content, and thus an entire industry representing billions of dollars, thousands of jobs and people affected in every region of Quebec and Canada, such a crucial and important industry that we had failed to address for a very long time?
Not only is the bill behind schedule, but so is the government in its management of government business in the House and in parliamentary committees. We have seen it all with Bill C‑10. I have been doing this work for years, but some of these things are unprecedented, including the twists and turns, bad management, communication problems, breaks, questions, notices and many testimonies. I have seen contradictory things and rather odd processes, including this thing done by the Conservatives, which I have rarely seen: systematic filibustering in order to waste the committee's time, including on Conservative amendments. When a member proposes an amendment they usually want to see it passed because they think it will improve the bill. However, the Conservatives had the nerve to filibuster their own amendments. It is rather odd.
Things are coming to a close. Nobody wants an election, but everyone expects one. That means we need to get a move on because we might be on the campaign trail come August or September. That is up to the Liberals.
We could come back and work on the bill. There is a chance that could happen, but all signs point to the Liberals being in a hurry. Now they want to move so fast that they shut down a parliamentary committee. That is just the fourth time in more than 150 years this has happened. This time, they are not limiting debate to 10 hours but to five.
In order to make the best possible use of those five hours, the NDP and other parties agreed to schedule more meetings so the committee could meet more often than originally planned. Last week, instead of meeting twice, the committee met five times, if memory serves. Even so, here come the Liberals with their supermotion to expedite matters once again.
I can only conclude that the government dragged its feet. It said all kinds of things about how important culture and the cultural sector are, but none of that was true. Bill C‑10 was full of holes, things were not clear, the Minister of Canadian Heritage himself was often unclear, and the government did not put Bill C‑10 on the agenda early enough and often enough for it to make any headway.
It is all well and good to mollify artists and tell them we love them, that we support them, that this is important and the bill must be modernized, but now we have a bunch of amendments at the last minute that we did not have a chance to study, even though some of them would have been relevant and should have been included in Bill C‑10.
This is the reality we often face at the end of a parliamentary session. It is too bad. If the Liberal government had been serious about culture and cultural sovereignty, it would have done this long before now, and not just because the Yale report was released in 2018. Bill C‑10 could have been given more attention during House proceedings, but the Liberals chose not to do so.
Why did the Broadcasting Act need to be overhauled? It is because, over time and with changes and advances in technology, it has become completely outdated and obsolete.
In my opinion, it is important to remember that the traditional broadcasters are required by the CRTC to contribute to the production of cultural content, whether Quebec or Canadian, in French or in English. We will talk again about the importance of having works, films, and programs in French. The ecosystem of broadcasting content has changed a lot over the past few years.
One of the things the member for Drummond talked about was Internet access. Some people will remember that it was much harder to get online 10 or 15 years ago. Today, our system is completely imbalanced and unfair, which means the cultural sector is hitting a wall. This is putting the cultural sector in jeopardy. Year after year, cable companies are losing subscribers. Why? Because the technology has changed and the traditional broadcasters are being overtaken by digital broadcasters, who are becoming more prominent and taking up more space. That was the case before the pandemic, but the pandemic has shown us that platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Crave have taken over.
Let me be clear: The big digital broadcasters, social medial companies and web giants do not contribute to the collective investment that is needed to create Canadian or Quebec cultural content in French or English. That is the problem. That is what the Conservatives and Liberals have been dragging their feet on for years. The Broadcasting Act should have been amended a long time ago.
The NDP is obviously in favour of making new players contribute. They are not so new anymore, but they are big. Traditional broadcasters contribute money to a fund to create Quebec and Canadian cultural content, but that fund is getting smaller and smaller. These new digital players need to contribute so that the industry gets more resources to create new works that will tell our stories, the stories of what is happening in our communities, cities, regions and our villages.
This is so important to the NDP that it was one of the issues we campaigned. I will read an excerpt from our 2019 platform:
Most Canadians now get their news from Facebook, and Netflix is the largest broadcaster in the country - but these web giants don't pay the same taxes or contribute to funding Canadian content in the same way that traditional media do. Canadian film, television, and media is up against a tidal wave of well-funded American content - and the Liberals have refused to take action to level the playing field [this notion is very important].
That's why...we will step up to make sure that Netflix, Facebook, Google, and other digital media companies play by the same rules as Canadian broadcasters. That means paying taxes [which is not in Bill C‑10. It is in the budget, but it seems we will have to wait until next year], supporting Canadian content in both official languages, and taking responsibility for what appears on their platforms, just like other media outlets....
New Democrats will make sure that Canadian talent can thrive on both digital and traditional platforms - here at home and around the world. We think that artists should be able to earn a decent living from their art, and that government has an important role to play in making sure that a diversity of Canadian voices tell our stories.
As members can see, we already knew that the act had to be modernized. Thirty years after it was passed, the act is outdated.
It is true that there is a real and well-founded appetite for such a long-awaited change in the cultural sector, whether it is television, film or music. YouTube is the platform most used for music, so it is really important to include social media platforms like YouTube on the list of entites that can be monitored and regulated.
However, we should not be regulating users, citizens who post their own videos on this platform. We need to target the professional use of this platform for commercial purposes.
I will come back to the questions that arose in the course of the Bill C-10 saga. To ensure the longevity of our cultural ecosystem, the NDP was obviously prepared to work in good faith to improve and enhance the bill, based on the premise that the old existing act had outlived its usefulness because it is jeopardizing this industry, our capabilities and some jobs.
What was the NDP looking for, exactly? We wanted a broadcasting system that remains essentially Canadian, with Quebec and Canadian ownership. We wanted Quebec and Canadian productions that are easily identifiable and accessible. We wanted local shows and content. That is something that we examined very closely.
We also wanted a broadcasting system that clearly recognizes the importance of the French language in this ecosystem. Unfortunately, the Liberal government had a hard time signing an agreement with Netflix a few years ago. We wanted to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, because we never got any real guarantees about the percentage of French-language content that would be produced under the agreement between the Liberals and Netflix.
We also wanted an equitable system without lowering our standards. Just because Canada is calling on web giants and digital broadcasters to participate financially should not mean that traditional broadcasters get a free pass or we will be no further ahead in terms of increased revenues for our artists and cultural production.
We wanted to ensure that there were indigenous language productions for indigenous peoples and for first nations. That was one thing we were watching for and wanted to find in Bill C‑10. Those are the principles that guided us in this work.
Now we are at the end of the process with a flawed and yet well-intentioned bill. This may create a dilemma for us as members and parliamentarians. We wanted to take our time to do the work properly, plug the holes and ensure that the bill could not be challenged in court.
The government has to accept a lot of responsibility for the misunderstandings and legitimate concerns people had about their freedom of expression, a topic I will now get into.
Is freedom of expression being threatened? There was much talk of that, many people reacted, many people called and wrote in and there were articles and editorials on the topic. Experts are divided on the issue, but one group is smaller than the other. The member for Drummond talked about that earlier. In Quebec, we just have to look at Pierre Trudel and Monique Simard, who are strong voices and feel very strongly about this.
It is also important to know that there are already guarantees in three provisions in the act, in sections 2, 35 and 46, that protect citizens' and ordinary users' capacity to publish and broadcast content on social media.
Obviously, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms still exists. We asked the Minister of Justice for a charter statement on two occasions, first before and then again after the removal of proposed section 4.1. In both cases, we were told that the bill was consistent with the charter.
To make sure that this important issue is properly dealt with and that we have all the possible guarantees, the NDP is also asking the government for a Supreme Court reference. That way, we would ensure our citizens' rights to freedom of expression are protected in the bill.
There are the sections of the bill, the overwhelming expert opinion and the two charter statements from the Minister of Justice. In addition, we are asking for a Supreme Court reference, to make sure that users cannot be regulated by the CRTC. That is very important: The CRTC will regulate broadcasting companies, not individuals.
I believe a member also mentioned it, but if I thought there was any possibility that my children or teenagers would be targeted by the CRTC or restricted in their freedom of expression on social media and online, I would be greatly concerned and I would not let that happen.
Why is it so important to take care of the cultural industry, our artists and our artisans? We may want to do it for economic reasons because this industry represents thousands of jobs and these sectors generally work well. Things were harder during the pandemic and it is more difficult for the cultural industry to get out of the crisis. What is more, things are not consistent across the cultural industry. Some sectors are doing well, while others are struggling. I am thinking of festivals, all the performing arts, the theatres and concerts. These sectors will need a little more time to get back on their feet. With regard to television and movies, activities continued, but we need to ensure that our system is sustainable so that we are able to continue creating our television shows and movies, telling our stories and hiring our local creators, artisans and technicians. There is therefore an economic argument because the cultural industry is an important economic driver.
However, the cultural sector is about more than just economics. It also brings us together as a society. It forges an identity, a vision of the world, and it also brings elements of beauty, tenderness and humanity into our lives. That is what makes the cultural sector different from any other economic sector. It changes who we are as human beings and how we see the world. The art that is produced says a lot about a society, whether we experience it through television, dance, paintings, performances, books or poems. Culture can change the world.
Allow me to read an excerpt of a poem written by Jacques Prévert.The sun shines for all mankind, except of course for prisoners and miners, and also forthose who scale the fishthose who eat the spoiled meatthose who turn out hairpin after hairpinthose who blow the glass bottles that others will drink fromthose who slice their bread with pocketknivesthose who vacation at their workbenches or their desksthose who never quite know what to saythose who milk your cows yet who never drink their milkthose you won't find anesthetized at the dentist'sthose who cough out their lungs in the subwaythose who down in various holes turn out the pens with which others in the open air will write something to the effect that everything turns out for the bestthose who have too much to even begin to put into wordsthose whose labors are never overthose who haven't laborsthose who look for laborsthose who aren't looking for labors...those who simply rotthose who enjoy the luxury of eatingthose who travel beneath your wheelsthose who stare at the Seine flowing bythose whom you hire, to whom you express your deepest thanks, whom you are charitable toward, whom you deprive, whom you manipulate, whom you step on, whom you crushthose from whom even fingerprints are taken...those who scatter salt on the snow in all directions in order to collect a ridiculous salarythose whose life expectancy is a lot shorter than yours isthose who've never yet knelt down to pick up a dropped hairpinthose who die of boredom on a Sunday afternoon because they see Monday morning coming and also Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Fridayand Saturday tooand the next Sunday afternoon as well.
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-14 18:15 [p.8368]
Mr. Speaker, for many years we have been waiting to modernize the legislation. This act would do a multitude of things, but it would ultimately protect the interests of local artists. At the end of the day, it is the best thing for our identity, for consumers and so forth.
The Conservatives seem to be focused on freedom of speech, which really has nothing to do with it. Their argument is completely bogus. Could my colleague provide his thoughts on why the Conservative Party members seem to be basing their decision on this legislation somehow limiting freedom of speech? Also, if it was up to the Conservatives, does he believe that this legislation would even pass?
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his comment and question.
The Conservatives will have to speak for themselves. People have raised legitimate questions. As I said earlier, when the issue is freedom of expression, taking our time, doing the work, checking, listening, talking to experts and getting opinions from the right people is the right thing to do.
However, I have to say that the Minister of Canadian Heritage did such a poor job of justifying and explaining his Bill C‑10 that the Conservatives saw a political weakness they could exploit. They jumped at the chance, hoping to score political points by occasionally manipulating the truth and the facts a little bit. The reason they were so aggressive is that the Liberals were so weak.
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 Kenny Chiu Profile
CPC (BC)
View Kenny Chiu Profile
2021-06-14 18:35 [p.8371]
Mr. Speaker, I do not have as deep of experience as the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood does in media, but in my previous life I debated on ethnic TV and in the media. I actually championed the right for our Bloc Québécois members to be able to debate and articulate why Quebec should be independent, although, of course, I am a federalist.
I would like to hear from the member for Lethbridge what kind of control there could be, should any other province campaign to be independent because, obviously, then it would not be Canadian content.
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
View Rachael Harder Profile
2021-06-14 18:36 [p.8371]
Mr. Speaker, at the heart of the issue is censorship. It is the government determining what we can access online and what we cannot access, and what creators can post online and what they cannot post online. For the government to determine this does in fact mean it could swing things in its favour in curating that content, which is wrong. It should be left up to Canadians.
The Internet is this amazing free space where we are supposed to be able to access information, where we are supposed to be able to exchange ideas and where we are supposed to be able to engage in debate. For the government to dictate what can or cannot happen within that public space is a breach of section 2(b) of the charter. It is absolutely wrong and it is harmful.
View Candice Bergen Profile
CPC (MB)
View Candice Bergen Profile
2021-06-14 18:57 [p.8374]
Madam Speaker, everyone who is here virtually or physically is here, and I am very happy to state that. I am also really happy to be here physically on the government side to take this place.
My colleague, the Conservative member, has done such a fantastic job talking about Bill C-10 and what we can do to ensure that two things happen: that Canadian content is protected and that we have freedom of speech, with the ability to express ourselves online.
Can my colleague from Saskatchewan tell Canadians how we can protect both Canadian content and freedom of speech?
View Kevin Waugh Profile
CPC (SK)
View Kevin Waugh Profile
2021-06-14 18:58 [p.8374]
Madam Speaker, I would say to the House leader that freedom of speech is big in this country. It is democratic and it is fundamental to why we exist. We have seen some awful incidents in Canada in the last month and a half that show there is a lot of hate speech we need to talk about. We know as Canadians that it is not acceptable. On both sides of the House we know that.
I want to thank the hon. member for bringing this up, because what the Broadcasting Act should have looked at was conventional broadcasting and the Internet. We did neither.
View Jasraj Singh Hallan Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, I want to echo something that the member mentioned about having a lot of emails and phone calls. I have noticed them going up in my own office, being a neighbouring riding. I have been hearing the most from new Canadians and immigrants. Most of them have left countries where freedom of speech is not the liberty that we are supposed to enjoy in this amazing country we live in today, much like the member is an immigrant. I would like him to speak a little more about that.
View Tom Kmiec Profile
CPC (AB)
View Tom Kmiec Profile
2021-06-14 19:13 [p.8376]
Madam Speaker, there are a lot of people I call new Canadians who come here from other countries where freedom of speech is not taken for granted because it is a very precious right and privilege. In this House, we should be the guarantors of people's constitutional, natural-born rights.
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
View Corey Tochor Profile
2021-06-14 19:14 [p.8376]
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to enter into debate on this faulty bill. I really hope there is some soul-searching by opposition members before this bill is passed. This bill is ridiculous. The minister has done a terrible job explaining it. He cannot explain it because I do not think he fully understands what this bill would do to Canada.
I am first going to talk a bit about my fears about this bill. Central Canada or any governments that believe they can fix a problem with a solution often create more problems. This is what this bill would do. This bill is garbage. It has to be defeated. It has to go back to committee. I get that there is a gag order on it, and I get that the Liberals are trying to push it through, but opposition members have to start asking themselves why they are in Parliament if they do not stand up to a government that is threatening to take away our freedom to express our opinions online. This is dangerous material.
Governments will try to find a solution to a problem. We know that the CRTC needs updating, and we know that helping artists is a valuable inspirational goal. I get that, but it would question our existence as a country and whether we are truly free. If governments are there to tell us what to say, what we can post, what we can hear, what we can see, we are entering a dangerous stage in our country where I fear what this would lead to.
Failed regimes resort to censorship. This is what this bill is. It is telling the citizens of Canada what they can and cannot post, what will be shared and what, through the labyrinth of programs out there, will be heightened on search engines, on Facebook. This bill is something one would see from a failed regime. This is what we are seeing out of Ottawa lately. If we were to crack open a history book, we would see that failed regimes around the world follow a bit of a pattern, and we are seeing that with this bill. We are seeing it with other things that the Liberal government has done. In our history on this planet, a cornerstone of failed regimes is censorship. Another one would be printing money, and that is exactly what the government is doing. We have seen this story play out and it ends terribly for our society.
Maybe that is why the Bloc is supporting it. Maybe Bloc members are the smartest ones and are laughing to themselves as they support this centralizing of powers because they do not want Canada to exist anymore. That is probably why. If that is their political game in supporting this bill, and the Liberals are willing to take separatist support on this bill because it gets Canada closer to, unfortunately, breaking up, maybe that is why the Bloc is supporting it.
However, why are New Democrats supporting it? This is a troubling trend. I have had numerous calls at my office from people saying they are not supporters of mine but of the NDP, and asking what the heck is going on with Bill C-10. It is not too late for NDP members. Constituents should contact their MPs, if they are NDP members, and explain why they are passionate about this bill not proceeding. That is the only way we are going to slow this bill down.
There are elements of it that can be improved at committee. It can get to the stated goal. That is the thing; the stated goal that the Liberals put forward on this bill is nowhere near what it would actually do for the CRTC, such as where it is reporting: from reporting to Parliament, which means 338 representatives from all over Canada, to reporting to the minister's office.
Who would trust the minister? Who would trust the minister after the way he has bungled this rollout and explanation of a censorship bill? I feel sorry for him, but this has got to get scrapped for the sake of our country. I am very hopeful that maybe the parties of other members here are whipping their support on this. I urge them to take a pause, because it is not too late to have those discussions in caucus.
Members can flesh out what would need to be changed for this to work. There is no need for this to be rushed forward in the dying days of this session before summer. There is nothing in here that requires urgency during the middle of a pandemic to force Canadians to change their ability and right to post what they want.
That is what creates fear for our country. There is this march toward centralized power in the Prime Minister's Office, because that is ultimately where the CRTC will report. It will report first to the minister, but we know that he serves at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. I do not believe the minister will stand up to, and not bend over backward for, the Prime Minister.
What does that mean for Canadians? It means that our rights to share our views and our beliefs will be censored in Canada. I cannot think of a more damaging thing for unity in this country than if Canadian citizens are not able to share their views. It is a fundamental freedom that we have cherished in this country. During a pandemic, the government decided that it would like to rush through a bill that would harm our ability to interact with other Canadians.
A lot of things on the Internet are silly and trivial, but there are some truths. We saw this at the G7 convention just recently. People on different social media platforms might have been embarrassed a bit by the Prime Minister talking about newspapers being used to wrap fish and some of the ridiculous comments he made.
Maybe in the future Canadians will not see that anymore. Maybe that is the point. Maybe that is what the government would like to do. It would like to stop the Internet's ability to share what is going on, be it a finance minister who wears no shoes at an international gathering and is mocked around the world, or someone who has embarrassed themselves by wearing blackface.
This bill gives power to the Prime Minister to stop those stories and stop people from being able to broadcast to anywhere in the world what they are seeing in their part of the country. That is the power of technology that has advanced in the last 20 or 30 years, which is our ability to tell our stories directly without going through the middleman of other broadcasters. The CRTC needs to be updated so that we can make sure that we have a modern act that would cover national broadcasts and make sure that we are modernizing our act to reflect the changes in the landscape. However, this bill does not do that.
I would ask all members to please do a soul-searching exercise and reach out to their supporters and the constituents they represent. They should ask them if they want the government to have more control. That is what this bill would do. It would give the government more control. Those who would lose are Canadians and Canadian stories.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-06-14 19:27 [p.8378]
Madam Speaker, I would like to be able to say that the member's speech was enlightening, but it was absurd, to be perfectly honest. I would like him to tell me exactly where in this legislation freedom of expression is put at risk, because it is not in the four places in the act where it is explicitly protected. It is not in the place within the legislation where it is explicitly protected, and it is not within the amendments that the heritage committee approved, including Conservative amendments, to protect freedom of expression.
Would he be so kind as to read exactly where that happens, instead of just saying “some places”?
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
View Corey Tochor Profile
2021-06-14 19:28 [p.8378]
Madam Speaker, it is a bill that would change the way Canadians share their stories, and this is the problem. I would hope that other parliamentarians would take this time for soul searching and to ask what we are doing as parliamentarians to protect freedom of speech, because this is not it. The academic people in our country who have come out against this bill are not typical Conservatives. They are minds that are concerned with the concentration of powers in our country in a select few individuals and what that would mean to our country. I would ask members to please take this time to reconsider their position on this bill, because it would have a lasting effect on our country for many years.
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 Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-06-14 19:39 [p.8380]
Madam Speaker, the government cannot ram through this legislation. It is a minority government, which means that we need to get support from opposition parties in order to bring in time allocation.
The need for time allocation is there because the Conservatives, as the member just said, have absolutely no intention of passing the legislation, even though members of the Green Party, the NDP and the Bloc all support the legislation.
My question to the member is very specific. The Conservatives are trying to say this is an attack against freedom of speech. Could the member cite, specifically, where the attack on freedom of speech could be found in the legislation?
View Rosemarie Falk Profile
CPC (SK)
Madam Speaker, it is really unfortunate that the member was throwing the Bloc under the bus in his question as siding with the government.
It is the government's fault we are in this position. The Prime Minister, who is riddled with scandal and ethic breaches, prorogued Parliament to hide a cover-up. We did not need to have two Speeches from the Throne in a minority Parliament. What I would suggest is that member should take that back to his caucus, the effects that proroguing Parliament on legislation.
View Alistair MacGregor Profile
NDP (BC)
Madam Speaker, with respect to my Conservative colleague, I did not really hear an answer to the previous question.
I have reviewed this bill's progress through committee, and its report back to the House. There were amendments adopted to the legislation to ensure freedom of expression. There are sections in the parent act that specifically articulate freedom of expression. Even in the original Bill C-10 that was sent to committee, there were sections dealing with freedom of expression.
I will ask the member, again, if she could point to a specific section in this bill that has been reported back to the House that she has troubles with, that sort of backs up all of the points she made in her speech.
View Rosemarie Falk Profile
CPC (SK)
Madam Speaker, I do not trust the Liberal government and neither do my constituents.
When the Liberals pull funny business, whether it is trying to cancel committees or whether it is extending sitting hours because they failed to work the parliamentary agenda, I do not understand why this falls on us. We are doing our job. The opposition is supposed to strengthen legislation. Iron sharpens iron. It is too bad that the Liberals will not take that advice.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
Madam Speaker, it is an absolute privilege to rise in debate today. I must say, without commenting on who is or is not in the House, that the government benches have not looked this good in years.
I am happy to speak on Bill C-10, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts. The idea or belief behind this act, and some of the goals that the minister espoused, are laudable. As the member for Saskatchewan said earlier, the Broadcasting Act absolutely does need to be updated, there is no doubt about that, but it infringes upon one of the most sacrosanct principles in our country, and that is our freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are really the pillars of all the freedoms we enjoy today. I would like to talk a bit about how people have talked about the importance of freedom in the past.
One of my favourite books in the entire world is The Republic written by Plato, the musings of Socrates. Socrates said a couple of things that are critical to this debate. I own a couple of horses. I love horses and think they are beautiful. Socrates talked about a horse in particular and said that someone may have a beautiful, fantastic horse, but in the absence of any type of motivation or being pushed forward, it would lose its strength. Socrates likened himself to a fly that kept the horse swishing his tail, kept the horse moving and getting stronger. That is what the discussion is in many ways on the Internet. It is that fly that keeps people and discussions going, keeps pushing our discourse to be better.
Alexis de Tocqueville, one of my other favourite political philosophers, said, “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.” This was de Tocqueville talking about the Internet 200 years before the Internet existed. He captured the very essence of our democracy. The foundation of our democracy is the citizens that underpin it. Never before has there been such a democratization of information and the ability to contribute.
When members of other parties chastise Conservatives and say our concerns are not legitimate, it goes to the very heart of who we are. In fact, the reason I am so passionate about this is because I want members of the Green Party, the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberal Party to always be able to express themselves. That starts to be limited and gets pulled away. Oftentimes when we lose our freedoms, it is not in one swift blow. It is often bit by bit. Conservatives stand as the guardians not just for our freedoms, but for everyone's freedoms, including members of all parties in this House.
There is no doubt that there have to be some reasonable restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, but it is my contention that this legislation has gone too far. I have noticed there have been questions recently as to what specifically this bill would do to limit freedom of expression. Let me go through this and explain it specifically to members. This is not just bluster; there are legitimate concerns.
Bill C-10 defines undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet for reception by the public by means of broadcasting apparatus. This means that we are now including the Internet in the Broadcasting Act. Conservatives are okay with the idea for massive followings with $100 million in revenue or the Netflixes of the world. There is some discussion to be had there, there is no doubt, but for the individual provider, as it says in proposed subparagraphs 9.1(1)(i)(i) and 10(1)(i), among other things to adopt, “requiring social insight such as YouTube to take down content it considers offensive and discoverability regimes.”
What that means is that within this bill, as it is currently written, there is the ability to push content up or down. What does that mean? That means a government, a bureaucracy, the CRTC can say, “This content, we believe, is more agreeable or more Canadian than this other content”.
The reality is that the misnomer in this whole debate is that Canadian content producers are not doing well. The opposite could be true. Canadian content producers are some of the largest producers per capita of YouTube content in the entire world. Our content creators are doing a fabulous job, and we need to reward them for that, not penalize them.
We should not just be pushing people down randomly, and that takes the most positive view. I would certainly hope that, if this legislation ever came into place and the CRTC became responsible for the algorithms pushing content up or down, it would stay non-partisan.
However, sadly, colleagues and all Canadians have witnessed something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. We saw a case where there could have been interference with the independence of the judiciary. That was the SNC-Lavalin affair. What happened there was a potential direction of the Prime Minister's Office to an actual investigation of SNC-Lavalin for deferred prosecution.
This should never, ever happen. In fact, prior to this case, to me the independence of the judiciary was sacrosanct. I did not think that even the Liberal government would consider it, or that it would even be in the realm of possibilities, but we saw that it was.
Seeing that is conceivable, is it then also conceivable that a government of the future could potentially put pressure on the CRTC to favour one particular political viewpoint? I would render to the House that, if in fact a government could potentially interfere with an independent legal investigation, it is completely possible that this could happen. That would be a limitation of our freedom of speech, which would be incredibly dangerous to our democracy. As I said, freedom of expression and freedom of speech are the underpinnings of all our freedoms. They are the shields that protect our freedoms, going forward.
When we get to this, the health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by the citizens. Those were de Tocqueville's words on the importance of democracy.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
It is important that we hear from all the citizens, and that includes the House of Commons. Unfortunately, we have had a gag order put in place. The irony of all ironies is that we are here defending freedom of speech, and the government put a gag order on us defending freedom of speech, saying that there is not an issue of freedom of speech. The irony there is just too rich.
We need to go back. We need to peel back the boards here. We need to go right back to the studs and we need to look at this legislation and start over again. It is absolutely flawed. Anyone who heard the minister's interview on The Evan Solomon Show knows that there is a significant problem with this.
Long live freedom, and long live Canada, the greatest country in the world.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Madam Speaker, I am starting to detect a pattern here, and I actually want to give credit to the NDP for starting this. There have been questions asked of several Conservative members back to back, which they completely avoided answering, so I would like to give this member the opportunity to answer that same question.
Can he point to the specific part in the legislation that would impact and restrict somebody's freedom of speech? If he could just tell us what clause of the legislation actually talks about that, I would love to hear it, or will he be the third Conservative in a row to dodge the question?
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