44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 11, 2022 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, let us remember Bill C‑10 and the work my colleague from Drummond did. I helped him a few times because we were co-critics for arts and culture in the previous Parliament.
Now here we are with Bill C‑11, which covers essentially the same things. The Bloc Québécois has never stopped working with the arts community to make things better.
Here we have a bill that is basically the same and that the community is comfortable with. This is good work that has taken a lot of time and energy, and I think cultural stakeholders in Canada and Quebec are satisfied with it. The Bloc Québécois is very proud of this bill because we were very committed to it and put a lot of energy into it.
I would like to ask the government House leader why he is doing this to us today.
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Madam Speaker, here is one last little plea on my part. I am always appalled to see how the government ignores the reality of our artists, artisans, content creators and those who revitalize culture in our world, our beautiful world.
Today, we are spending more time debating whether we should take even more time to debate something that already existed and is now back on the table.
In the previous Parliament, we had Bill C-10. Now it is back on the table as Bill C-11. It has been reworked and improved. The Bloc Québécois put a lot of effort into that, and the sector is happy, but here we still are, talking about the time allocated for debate.
I am rather appalled. I would like the House leader to comment on the urgent need to take action on behalf of these people who are losing money—
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Madam Speaker, I want to begin by sending my regards to all of my friends and associates from the life I led before and sometimes still go back to: the artists, authors, creators and composers. It is a team and a big family that I still belong to, although to a small extent. I send them my sincere regards.
I will begin my speech with a thought, a quote from one of Quebec's great poets, Raymond Lévesque, a friend of mine whom I adored.
Keep running, good people. Don't get involved. At the end of the race, you will find a trash can and death. Tomorrow you will curse those who got you into trouble, and yet you will have let them get away with it.
Let them get away with it. That is what the two main parties that have been taking turns being in government have done over the past 15 years, when broadcasting was revolutionized and digital broadcasters invaded the broadcasting market.
The cultural sector has therefore seen its main sources of revenue swallowed by the digital world. Although it had anticipated this and looked for possible solutions, it came up against outdated federal legislation. Accordingly, as it is capable of doing, it questioned itself, it adapted and tried as best it could to make a place for itself in this miserly and opportunistic monster of a world that values nothing but its own financial interests, without caring too much about what constitutes it, which is content and artistic, cultural, media, literary and visual creation. In short, the gargantuan digital monster is happily helping itself to the buffet, and it has been doing so for a very long time.
The cultural community is losing not only the income from its content, but also the revenue from the sale of traditional media for that content—cassettes, CDs and videocassettes, which we had in my day. In another life, I wrote songs. My songs went from room to room in people's homes on cassettes and CDs. I sold some CDs.
Everyone found their share of income in these media. To keep it simple, let us think of it as a pie, cut into parts proportional to the investment in the production of the work. Copyright revenues and royalties were distributed, as well. There was also an anticipated income from subsequent distribution on social media for creators, writers and composers.
French-language content quotas on the traditional platforms were not perfect, but we managed to hang on by the skin of our teeth. Any success we had on the radio or on television simply gave us a bit of money to invest in the next project. Unfortunately, since the transition to digital, the whole profitability aspect of the exercise has disappeared. People can no longer afford productions, especially independent productions.
Nothing has been done so far to adapt the legislation to this new digital world. Election promises were made in 2015 and again in 2019. A year later, the Yale report backed the government into a corner by making it clear that delaying the exercise any further would be politically disastrous for the government and noting the frustration and desperation of the tourism industry. As a result, the Liberals finally introduced their bill to amend the Broadcasting Act in November 2020.
Better late than never, I guess. We sat down in parliamentary committee, we consulted Quebec's cultural community, and we found several major shortcomings in this bill, including the lack of protections for francophone content; the lack of discoverability, predictability and enhancement of content; and the absence of any obligation for foreign producers to prioritize Canada's cultural potential or to offer compensation if that proved impossible.
The Bloc Québécois has made the priorities of Quebec's cultural community central to its work here. The creators and broadcasters of all manner of cultural expression were pleased to see their needs reflected, first in the original Bill C‑10 and then in the current Bill C‑11. The community is satisfied and, above all, reassured by our work and our signature collaborative spirit, as we seek to come to find the balance that will make a bill the best it can be.
As Bloc members, that is our job. We did it. Eighteen months and a second attempt at the bill later, we ask only one thing, that the House pass that blessed bill.
Right now, the gigantic digital world is still stuffing itself at the all-you-can-eat content buffet. As the former heritage minister from the previous Parliament said during one of his many appearances on a very popular Sunday TV show, the cultural sector has been losing more than $70 million a month since the legislation failed to pass. It has been 18 months since the bill was introduced in November 2020, so that represents $1.26 billion in losses for the creative industry, which equates to $2.33 million a day or $97,222 an hour.
I am part of this cultural sector. I know this community: It is generous, resilient and passionate. It has an ability to bounce back that is absolutely incredible. It possesses the magic of universality and perseverance, and it is used to working hard. We cannot deprive it of the income it is owed. It is unacceptable to keep drawing things out like this.
If I were to walk among my colleagues in the House and take from each of their pockets the amount of money that the cultural community has lost since November 2020, I swear that no one here would like that. That is what we do every day when we postpone passing this bill. We have been dragging our feet since 2020.
My 10‑minute speech will have cost artists and creators $16,203. What are we doing, then? Should I pass the hat?
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Madam Speaker, what my colleagues in the creative community are more concerned about right now is finding their place within this great technological system. It is our job here to do that.
They are worried about losing access to these royalties and rights, some of which belong to creators and are rightfully theirs. Royalties are a right; they are sacred. What we are trying to do in Parliament is to ensure that content creation is profitable.
I do not know if that answers the question. My concern, shared by the creators I know in the community, is really that there should be a return on their creations.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his comment. That is exactly what matters most to me, francophone content.
Had it not been for the Bloc Québécois taking part in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage when Bill C-10 and Bill C-11 were being studied, the discoverability of francophone content—its presence, and the obligation to promote it, to recognize it, and to showcase it—would not have been nearly as significant as it is now.
We are satisfied with discoverability now. That was a demand from the sector that we responded to and discussed. My colleague from Drummond did the same for Bill C-11. We are satisfied, and we hope that the sector is as well. I think it is, because we are making sure its voice is heard.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his passionate speech.
I just want clarify that, in 1991, people in Quebec were listening to L'amour existe encore by Céline Dion.
I also want to remind the member that, at the time, Céline Dion was enjoying great success, but there were also people like Caroline Desbiens who, even though she may not have been a superstar, was also succeeding, and that the CRTC made it possible to manage all those fine people.
I have a question for my colleague. Why are our Conservative neighbours questioning whether the CRTC will be able to do its job when the legislation comes into force when the CRTC has always been able to do its job?
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