44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 5, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House once again on behalf of the great people of Cypress Hills—Grasslands. I will begin my speech in this debate by considering the background of the bill. There is a disturbing trend happening under this NDP-Liberal coalition. They do not seem to respect the democratic process, and they do not seem to be interested in protecting it.
Among many other examples, the most recent is the passing of Motion No. 11 to give themselves the power to prematurely shut down Parliament. They do not even pretend to use COVID as an excuse anymore, but they also do not like it when the Conservatives mention that it is long overdue for them to remove restrictions on members, their staff and regular citizens from entering this place or from travelling within our own country, insinuating that they are supposedly undesirable Canadians.
Leaving those things aside though, we are here to debate yet another attempt by the government to extend its overly controlling approach to online content that people can access or publish. That is the problem with Bill C-11. The vast majority of it is a near carbon copy of its predecessor, Bill C-10, with the exception of some minor changes surrounding user generated content. To debate this legislation properly, we need to fully understand how we got from Bill C-10 to Bill C-11.
Let us refresh a few memories here. Originally, Bill C-10 had a section which excluded user-generated content from its scope. At heritage committee, that was suddenly removed. This threw the door open for the CRTC to regulate nearly anything on the Internet. The government faced severe opposition to this and rightly so. At first, it might appear that the Liberals learned something from all the embarrassment, but sadly, if we dig a little deeper, it is clear that they have not.
What is even more sad is that the NDP has sold out and is going along with it. Section 4.1 is back in Bill C-11, but it is now accompanied by section 4.1(2), which allows for an exemption on the previous exception. This creates a loophole for the CRTC to regulate any content that either directly or indirectly generates revenue. In other words, the CRTC can regulate nearly anything on the Internet.
At the heart of the bill is the lurking threat of expanding censorship. It is only a matter of time, as this new opening moves through the process of bureaucracy. We must carefully consider more than the bill in front of us as it exists on paper, otherwise we will move too close to Big Brother for comfort, and it will turn out to be just as toxic as a reality show, but without any of the entertainment value. I hope bad jokes will remain safe from censorship as well.
Liberal members, along with their neighbours in the NDP, may say that this is not the intention behind the bill. If it is not, I will remind them that good intentions can still pave the road to a very bad place, and that is why Conservatives keep on saying and trying to remind them of. We are doing our job as the official opposition because it is our duty to point out any harmful risks in legislation so Parliament can make better decisions on behalf of Canadians.
This is what every MP should keep in mind. When I took my oath of office as an MP, I swore to defend the Constitution and the fundamental rights of every Canadian. Every single MP did the same thing. We are all under that same obligation. It is entirely possible to fix the problems with the bill while achieving what the NDP-Liberals say it is supposed to do. There should absolutely be a level playing field between smaller Canadian broadcasters and larger streaming services. Canadian content creators have something unique to bring to the table, and we all want to see them in the spotlight. No issues there. We are happy to pass this part of the legislation that supports Canadian producers.
However, where it goes too far is that it is unnecessarily wrong for government to control what people can or cannot access online, and ironically, what type of content Canadians should or should not produce. It is extremely irresponsible to ignore the warnings we have received. Before we know it, it could completely get out of hand. If the NDP-Liberals want to deny it, they should explain to Canadians how they are leaving room for it to happen without closing the obvious loophole.
It is a failure of due diligence and there is no excuse for it. Canada stands in a long tradition of free expression. We are admired and envied around the world for a heritage of free speech among many other freedoms. For centuries and over the years in our lifetime, we have seen it practised in newspapers, letters to the editor, and people just simply writing letters to their elected officials.
Today, we all express ourselves on the Internet as a free space. We can post our opinions. We can access information and engage with other people around the whole world. We have done it as citizens, and we do it as members of Parliament communicating with our fellow Canadians. Right now, it is easy to make posts and videos with our thoughts on all kinds of issues, and it all could be subject to regulations. Bill C-11 fails to provide safeguards for our freedom as we know it.
The government could eventually control what everyday citizens post online. This is what Peter Menzies, the former CRTC vice-chair, had to say about Bill C-10 in the last Parliament: “[It] doesn't just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.” That should catch all of our attention. The former CRTC vice-chair warned that this legislation is toying with a fundamental right. He is in a position to understand better than some how necessary freedom of speech is for a democratic process to remain intact.
Citizens must always be able to disagree with their governments openly and strongly. We are eroding this right so the government, through the CRTC, could have the ability to regulate what it does or does not like to hear. Quite frankly, it does not like to hear the dissent from the opposition. That said, Bill C-11 would not only give us a paternalistic government, but it might also create practical problems in the area it claims it would help.
Currently, anyone could pull out their device and head over to YouTube, where they can access any content they would like, whether it is kitchen renos, how to fix car problems or content posted by friends, family or people around the world. It works well enough for now, but with the government involved, the CRTC might decide to dictate what content people should see when they search for something specific. While government mandated algorithms analyze how Canadian the content is, what someone is looking for might get pushed to the back of the queue of their search results, if it simply does not pass the test.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Jeremy Patzer: Madam Speaker, someone could be trying to renovate their back deck, and the helpful video from a YouTuber they saw a little while ago is not so easy to find anymore, because maybe the best creator did not happen to be Canadian. Instead, they are flooded with—
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Madam Speaker, they are trying to censor me already. It has already begun.
Instead, when looking up that video, they are flooded with videos about beavers and maple syrup, while where they really need to be is on page 27 of the search results to find the video of the guy giving the advice they need to build a deck, who is maybe not Canadian. This would all be because the government thinks it knows better.
Again, we do need to support the creators and the content that is made in Canada. Nobody has any issue with them. We do not need a band-aid solution to do it. What is most needed from the government is for it to take advantage of every opportunity to build and support our entertainment industry so it will be competitive and successful in the marketplace. We need more and more talented Canadians who can make it here, and that is what happens when our entertainment industry has a good foundation from a strong economy, but I wish us good luck with that, underneath the current Liberal government.
With Bill C-11, we are talking about government overreach, censorship, higher entertainment costs and half-baked solutions. Most concerning of all, we see the NDP-Liberals would be giving the CRTC power to regulate not only what Canadians can see online, but also what they can say. They could also try to decide what it means to be Canadian in our video searches or elsewhere.
Bill C-11 is dangerous, it is ridiculous and it just does not make any sense. On behalf of my fellow Canadians, I will continue to stand up and I will continue to defend their rights alongside my fellow Conservatives. It is the right thing to do, and we can only hope the NDP and the Liberals on the backbench will stand with us and make sure this bill gets due process and accomplishes what it should actually be trying to accomplish.
Before I finish, I have a subamendment. I would like to move, seconded by the member for Souris—Moose Mountain:
That the amendment be amended by adding the following:
“and that the committee report back no later than 10 sitting days following the adoption of this motion.”
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Madam Speaker, if the member actually listened to my speech, I referenced section 4.1 and section 2, because part of this bill is the same as the previous bill. It adds onto it, which does not actually help the issue. One of the primary issues that we had in the last Parliament with the bill was section 4.1. I alluded in my speech that there are sections of the bill that we would support, because there are good things in this bill.
Again, the member opposite wants to be the czar of the future ministry of truth, so it is not surprising that he would ask some questions without actually paying attention.
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Madam Speaker, disinformation is going to be one of the biggest issues presently and going forward. We have all been bombarded with it a lot over the last number of years.
The member also touched on another very important piece. That was about the small papers, our local community papers and local groups that actually do real journalism. I think that is what we need to get back to. The problem I see with a lot of government legislation going forward is that the supports do not actually line up with supporting the small-town papers and small community papers. As we go forward, we are going to start to see more and more of those little papers be wiped off of the planet. It is going to be the big digital platforms, the CBC and others, that are going to be dominating the space and getting rid of all these other little pieces and maybe even a company like TikTok. She is absolutely right.
I think, though, that we have to find ways to better support those small papers and do better for them going forward.
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Madam Speaker, it is pretty fascinating that the NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc have been the ones talking about that issue. We are here focused on the bill that is before us today. We are not focused on that; we are focused on this. At this point in time, we need people to stay focused on the debate at hand, instead of using these distraction techniques and playing cheap political games.
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