44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 29, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I just want to make sure that people all understand that the obligations will fall only onto the platforms. That is the first thing I want to make sure is clear in my remarks today.
For the hon. member, I am sure that if we look at all parliamentarians and the advertising they do, because many of our residents are on Facebook and other platforms, I am sure that we would see that all parliamentarians advertise to reach their residents through the platforms they are using to receive their information as well.
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- Mar/29/22 4:30:19 p.m.
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Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Battlefords—Lloydminster, Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Health.
Before I go to resuming debate, I just want to advise the members that the time allotted for 20-minute speeches has now reached an end. Therefore, members will now have 10 minutes for speeches with five minutes for questions and comments.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
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Madam Speaker, I am very proud, as always, to rise in the House to speak for the incredible people of Timmins—James Bay.
We are here to talk about Bill C-11. We have to step back into the last Parliament where we had Bill C-10, which this is the update of, and what was then Bill C-11, which was supposed to be about addressing the long outstanding need to bring Canada's laws up to standard in dealing with the tech giants.
This Bill C-11 was the old Bill C-10, which should have been pretty straightforward. Who does not want Facebook to finally start paying tax? This is a company that made $117 billion in profit last year, up $31 billion in a single year, and it is not paying tax. That is what Bill C-10 was supposed to do, but then it was our modern Minister of Environment who was then the minister of heritage who turned it into a total political dumpster fire. It was so bad the Liberals had to call an election, just to get that thing off the table.
Now the Liberals have brought it back. At the time, then Bill C-11 was supposed to be the privacy bill, a pretty straightforward thing. However, that was another dumpster fire, because the Privacy Commissioner had to come out and say that the Liberal plan to update privacy rights would actually undermine basic Canadian privacy in the realm of digital technology. Particularly, the Privacy Commissioner found this American company, Clearview AI, broke Canadian law for their illegal use of images in facial recognition technology. In response, the Liberals were going to rewrite the rules so it would be easier for Clearview AI to break the law, rather than for the Privacy Commissioner to protect Canadians.
The Liberals had to call an election to erase all of that. Now the Liberals have been given, as they have so many times in the past, one more chance. The deus ex machina comes down and gives them a chance to do things all over again.
Now we are looking at this Bill C-11. I can say one thing about this Bill C-11 is that it fixed a lot of the problems with the previous dumpster fire, maybe by moving the minister, although God help the planet now that he is looking after the environment. That is just my own personal thoughts from having read his ridiculous environment plan today. What he was going to do for culture, he is now doing to our environment.
Having said that, I would say that there is a couple of key issues we need to be looking at. We need to be looking at the need for Canada's legislation to actually address the right of artists to get paid in the digital realm. For too long in Canada we sort of pat our artists on the head. We all talked about the favourite TV shows we had growing up. One of the Liberals was talking about the Polkaroo.
Arts policy should not be that we just pat our artists on the head. This is an industry. It is one of our greatest exports. We are not promoting arts as an export or promoting our artists to do the work they need to do. We saw from COVID the devastating impacts on Canada's arts industry, on theatre, on musicians and on the tech people, the highly skilled tech people who went over two years without working. We really need to address this. One of the areas where they have been so undermined is online.
Let us talk about Spotify. It is basically a criminal network in terms of robbing artists blind. The number of sales one needs to have on Spotify to pay a single bill is so ridiculous that no Canadian artist could meet it.
We have streaming services that are making record fortunes. Therefore, it is a reasonable proposition to say that they are making an enormous amount of profit and they have a market where they do not have any real competition, so some of that money, and this was always the Canadian compromise, needs to go back into the development of the arts so that we can continue to build the industry.
The one thing I have also come to realize is that what the digital realm gives us and what streaming services give us is the ability to compete with our arts internationally on a scale that we never had before, if we are actually investing. Let us not look at it in a parochial manner, like what was done with the old broadcasters, where it was one hour on prime time a week they had to have a Canadian show on. Let us actually invest so that we can do the foreign deals. Why is it I can watch an incredible detective show from Iceland on Netflix, yet people in Iceland are not seeing an incredible detective show from Canada?
This is what we need to be doing. This is a reasonable position to take. With the profits that Facebook and Google are making, they can pay into the system. That is simple. They have unprecedented market share.
I will go to the second point, which is dealing with the tech giants. It is something I worked on in 2018. Our all-party parliamentary committee came up with numerous recommendations. I have to speak as a recovering digital utopian because there was a time when I believed that when we let all these platforms come, if we stood back and did not put any regulations on them, they would create some kind of new market promised land, but what we saw was that those dudes from Silicon Valley who were making YouTube in their parents' garage morphed into an industrial power that is bigger than anything we have ever seen.
There is a term, “kill zone of innovation”, where these companies have become so rich, so powerful and have such unprecedented corporate strength that it dwarfs anything we have ever seen in the history of capitalism, companies like Facebook. When Facebook gets a $5-billion fine, it does not even blink. It does not bother it. When the Rohingya are launching 150-billion U.K. pound lawsuit for the mass murder caused because of the exploitation of Facebook's platform, we realize we are dealing with companies that are so much beyond that they do not believe that domestic law applies to them. There has to be some level of obligation. I have worked with international parliamentarians in London, and there were meetings in Washington, trying to see how we can address the unprecedented power.
There is one thing that changed fundamentally when we saw the growth of this power. There used to be a principle that the telecoms would always tell parliamentarians, which was that we should not be blamed for what is in the content because, as they say, the pipes are dumb. We just send out the content and people choose, but people do not choose the content on Facebook and YouTube because of the algorithms. It is the algorithms that make them culpable and responsible.
I refer everyone to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who demanded Facebook explain how many of these stolen bot pages were driving misinformation during the convoy crisis here in Ottawa. Congresswoman Maloney wrote, “Facebook’s history of amplifying toxic content, extremism, and disinformation, including from Russia and other foreign actors” is well known. It is no wonder that some members on the Conservative backbench are so defensive about this bill. My God, this is their main source of news. What are they going to do if we start dealing with bot pages that they think is something that came down from the promised land?
As parliamentarians, we have an obligation to address bot accounts. We have an obligation to hold these companies to account. What does that mean? Number one, it is about algorithm accountability. I do not care what someone watches on Facebook or YouTube, that is their business, but if the algorithm is tweaked to show people what they would not otherwise see, Facebook is making decisions for them.
I would refer my colleagues to Tristan Harris, the great thinker on digital technology. He spoke to the committee in 2018 and said, “Technology is overwriting the limits of the human animal. We have a limited ability to hold a certain amount of information in our head at the same time. We have a limited ability to discern the truth. We rely on shortcuts” like thinking what that person says is true and what that person says is false. However, what he says about the algorithm is that the algorithm has seen two billion other people do the same thing, and it anticipates what they are going to do so it starts to show people content. What they have learned from the business model of Facebook and YouTube is that extremist content causes people to spend more time online. They are not watching cat videos. They are watching more and more extremist content. There is actually an effect on social interaction and on democracy. That is not part of this bill.
What the all-party committee recommended was that we needed to address the issue of algorithmic accountability and we needed to address the issue of the privacy rights of citizens to use online networks without being tracked by surveillance capitalism. With this bill, we need to ensure that these tech giants, which are making unprecedented amounts of money, actually put some money back into the system so that we can create an arts sector that can compete worldwide.
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Madam Speaker, this bill will ensure that broadcasters and streaming platforms contribute to the direct support of creators from francophone, racialized, indigenous, LGBTQ2 and disability communities. Could my colleague elaborate a bit more on this aspect?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for this important question.
The role that the francophone community plays in the arts is essential for Canada, for Quebec and for my region of northern Ontario, where many proud Franco-Ontarians live.
It is essential for the francophone community to have access to the digital environment. It is also essential that Facebook, Netflix and YouTube support the development of Canada's francophone community to ensure that the whole world has access to Canadian content.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Timmins—James Bay for his speech. We have a lot of friends and family from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame actually living in the Timmins area and working hard in the resource industry, bringing new dollars into the economy, but I was a bit sad that he had to insult Conservatives after the Deputy Speaker chastised us about insulting each other. I guess that respect is not really there.
He made reference to tin hats and things like that. I was feeling really bad. He talked a lot about marmalade, but he could not spell jam, so after all this I do not know which way my colleague across the way is going to vote. Is he going to stay in line with the marriage, or is he going to cheat like he did earlier today in our vote?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague. At least his relatives work hard for a living, and I am glad they are working in the mines and the forestry industry in Timmins.
One of the great concerns that we have in the digital realm is the dumbing down of conversations to a level that they would fit on a Facebook meme. The fact that my hon. colleague thinks we are talking about marmalade and jam while we are actually talking about the digital marketplace is really concerning to me. Maybe he should spend a little less time online and come up to Timmins—James Bay. We could show him what real working people do.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I believe we feel the same way about this bill, which is very important for the discoverability of French-language content and is essential for Quebec artists. Members may not know this, but I used to be an actor. I have friends who really struggled during the pandemic, and this is a fundamental bill.
I would like to address something else with my colleague. He stated that platforms such as Facebook and Google are siphoning off advertising revenues. A recent UNESCO report found that Google and Facebook now soak up no less than half of all global digital advertising spending.
This bill does not address that threat. The fact that these major global platforms account for half of all advertising spending is a threat to democracy and independent media. Does my colleague believe that it is time to pass legislation to address this issue as quickly as possible?
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Madam Speaker, this is really important. The size of these companies are without parallel, and the fact is that they make the choices of what we see. They make the choices through the algorithm, which has a huge impact. For example, when I saw I could find my good friend Richard Desjardins' film Trou Story on Netflix, I was telling all my friends they had to see this film. I am in it by the way, but that is a side issue, it is still a great film.
People should be able to see great Canadian films on Netflix and not have the company decide what we watch or do not watch. That is why the accountability of algorithms is there, and they should pay into the system so we can make better films.
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- Mar/29/22 4:46:01 p.m.
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Before resuming debate, I want to remind members who are having side conversations that it is not really respectful when someone has the floor and is trying to answer questions or do their speech if other members are having side conversations. There is a lot of echo in here. I would ask those members to bring their side conversations outside in the lobby. That would be a lot more appropriate.
Resuming debate, we have the hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
The one thing that really upset me was being accused of talking about jam and marmalade. I am afraid, if the Conservatives keep talking among themselves, they are probably not actually hearing what the conversation is, so perhaps—
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- Mar/29/22 4:46:45 p.m.
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That is not a point of order.
It does take time away from other speakers being able to have their debates, so if someone is going to rise on a point of order, please make sure it is a point of order.
The hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon has the floor.
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- Mar/29/22 4:47:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am just going to fix my tie because a constituent said that the last time I spoke I did not fix my tie. It was the first thing I heard at Tim Hortons when I returned home—
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- Mar/29/22 4:47:37 p.m.
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You should wear a red tie.
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- Mar/29/22 4:47:37 p.m.
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Again, there should not be side conversations going on. As well, the hon. member knows full well that, in the House, we are not to use the name of somebody who sits in the House.
We will get back to the debate because the hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon's time is running.
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- Mar/29/22 4:47:37 p.m.
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You know what? I love this blue tie. Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux.
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Madam Speaker, today I am so pleased to speak to Bill C-11, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts.
This bill is big, and this bill it really big news. When a lot of Canadians where I come from think of what the government does well and does not do well, it often relates to what we might watch on TV or what we might stream on the Internet, so in terms of consequences in our day-to-day lives, what we are talking about today really does matter.
It was in 1932 that the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act was passed, which recognized the importance of radio broadcasting concerning educational, social and cultural development on a national level. Throughout the years, this act was revised and modernized, with the last update occurring in 1991. The world has changed over the last 30 years, especially with the rise of social media and the Internet.
Today, our current government says it is updating the act for today’s digital world to ensure that Canadian content is reflected in online programming. While there is a need to promote Canadian content and support Canadian creators, is the government truly respecting user choice, or is it trying to control what we see and hear online?
The heavy tone of all the regulations in this bill, in my opinion, is more of government oversight rather than cultural and language promotion. Why is the government telling the subject matter experts how to use their language and what stories they should be telling?
For example, under section 9.1, subsection (1)(d), the CRTC regulates:
the proportion of programs to be broadcast that shall be devoted to specific genres, in order to ensure the diversity of programming;
Is the government trying to tell us how many comedy, drama or horror programs that broadcasters under this act, in the age of social media and the Internet, would have to offer?
Last year, I did a survey on the previous iteration of this bill, Bill C-10. I heard from one elderly gentleman in my riding who was angry because he did not have any say over which channels he could get in a basic TV package. These are covered by the current Broadcasting Act and CRTC regulations, which would be amended by the legislation we are debating today.
In the modern era of broadcasting in Canada, more government oversight has meant fewer options for viewers. People do not want to be told what programs they have to include and pay for in their cable packages. This has led to a domination of traditional media by a few legacy giants, whose viewership continues to decline year over year as many are choosing the Internet and its vastly more diverse range of content and options.
This legislation risks causing the same reality we witnessed with cable TV, but applied to the Internet, including fewer choices, and fewer independent actors and creators. At the end of the day, is this just another attempt by the government to prop up failing legacy media?
Bill C-11 was the government’s opportunity to move into modern day concepts of broadcasting programs. The government claims it wants to modernize the Broadcasting Act of 1991, yet Bill C-11 is basically using the exact same definition of broadcasting, meaning the starting point for regulation in Canada is that all audiovisual content would be cast as programs. Had the government perhaps distinguished between conventional and on-demand broadcasters versus video sharing platforms, like was done in the European Union, there would be no need for exceptions, exemptions and exclusions, which are riddled throughout this legislation.
It is not me saying that. It is Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. He explained that, when we start with legislation that includes everything and we try to narrow it down, we simply cannot. We end up with loopholes, undefined services, and plain and simple confusion.
Rather than clearly define what needs to be regulated as broadcasting, this bill would leave much of those decision-making powers up to the CRTC. This limitless reach of the CRTC was even identified in an internal government memo during the committee process of Bill C-10, the last iteration of this legislation. The memo stated that social media services such as YouTube and Facebook greatly expand the number of individuals and other entities than can be said to be transmitting programs over the Internet. It also highlighted the importance of limiting the power of the CRTC to regulate user-generated content.
Despite this, the government removed the exemption for user-generated content in Bill C-10. Now in Bill C-11, the government claims the exemption is back with proposed section 4.1. The government now says it listened and fixed the concerns around social media. However, when we look at proposed subsection 4.1(2), we see there is an exception to the exception, and indeed the government does allow for regulation of content uploaded to social media. How are users and content creators to know if they are the exception or the exception to the exception?
Proposed subsection 4.1(2) states:
(2) Despite subsection (1), this Act applies in respect of a program that is uploaded as described in that subsection if the program
(a) is uploaded to the social media service by the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or by the agent or mandatary of either of them
Subsection 2(1) would define “affiliate” as follows:
in relation to any person, means any other person who controls that first person, or who is controlled by that first person or by a third person who also controls the first person
My tongue is already twisted; this is really complicated stuff. It seems to apply to YouTube creators and other creators, but with the vague definition and really challenging legislation to read and understand, we do not know. It is almost like the government tried to make it as complicated as possible so people would not understand the complexity of what it is trying to achieve, which we still do not know either.
Podcasts, one of the richest spaces for user online expression, would fall within CRTC power to regulate content as a program. This bill is trying to categorize, in very convoluted language, any and all Canadian content on the Internet as broadcasting. It simply is not. Foreign services that carry modest Canadian presence or services might not take so kindly to CRTC oversight. Their first response may very well be to block the Canadian market entirely, leaving many Canadians with less program choice, more expensive services, particularly with respect to access to multicultural programming, and algorithms that do not meet their needs online or respect their choices.
One of the key questions I get from constituents regarding this legislation is “Will I now be subject to CRTC regulations for what I watch and do on the Internet?” Recently, Darcy Michael, a comedian from B.C. with a large following on TikTok, expressed his concern with how the bill will affect artists in the digital space and those consuming culture online. Mr. Michael cautioned that CRTC oversight would limit creativity of independent artists and that the current system of “user-generated content exists because it works”. Algorithms right now, as I understand, reward content that is popular and it is shown to people who are likely to be interested. That is how Mr. Michael has made a lot of money and has done it as an artist. By showing Canadian content to viewers who are less likely to interact with it, we hurt its ability to reach foreign viewers and the creator's ability to make a living in the digital marketplace beyond the limited Canadian media landscape. Therefore, one of the most disconcerting issues is the financial impact this bill will have on Canadian creators, many of whom have large foreign audiences and are the real reason people know about Canadian culture in the first place.
In conclusion, there is so much to cover, but this is not the 1930s, the 1950s or the 1990s, when we would turn to the radio or television to hear the news or watch a local hockey game. This is 2022, and we are constantly facing new media platforms. We need to eliminate the uncertainty this bill creates. We need to avoid the problems this bill will create. We need to define key provisions, decide on what actually constitutes a Canadian creator, fully exclude user-generated content and limit the scope of the bill to a manageable size. It is unrealistic in the 21st century to think the government can regulate the Internet, and the consequences of doing what we are doing here today will be felt for a long time in ways that we do not understand.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to quote Ian Scott, chair of the CRTC. He said, “We will never regulate user generated content. We are not interested in that.” The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, said, “once this bill has gone through the parliamentary process—”
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- Mar/29/22 4:57:57 p.m.
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I remind the member that she is not to use a minister's name. She can mention his department, but not his name.
The hon. member.
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Madam Speaker, thank you for that reminder.
The hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage said, “once this bill has gone through the parliamentary process and received royal assent, we will make it even more clear to the regulator, through a policy directive, that this legislation does not touch users, only online streaming platforms. Platforms are in; users are out.”
I am a member of the heritage committee, so I have the privilege of speaking one on one to a lot of the stakeholders for Bill C-11. What I am hearing from members opposite is a lot of the YouTube talking points, so I am wondering why the Conservatives are so intent on supporting the web giants and not Canadian arts and culture.
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