44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 11, 2022 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, I am never one to back down from a challenge. The member challenged us to find individuals who might have something to say against this bill, other than Dr. Geist. Andrew Coyne, the columnist for The Globe and Mail; Dr. Irene Berkowitz, senior policy fellow at Ryerson University; Matt Hatfield, campaigns director at OpenMedia; Peter Menzies, former CRTC chair; Monica Auer, the executive director of Forum for Research and Policy in Communications; Scott Benzie, managing director of Digital First Canada; Oorbee Roy, digital content creator, and actually a witness at the Canadian heritage committee; and Darcy Michael, at committee and a digital content creator as well, all spoke against it, as did Morghan Fortier, Skyship Entertainment for YouTube. Those are just a few that my friend across the way seems to have forgotten.
Not only do Michael Geist, and we on this side of the House, oppose this bill, but millions of Canadians across this country oppose it, as well.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to speak in the House. I rise today to add my concerns to those of my colleagues around Bill C-11.
For those who have been following the process closely, Bill C-11 has several working titles around Parliament Hill. To some here in the House, it is just a reintroduced Bill C-10 from the last session of Parliament, with one change and one exception making that change irrelevant. To others, this bill is known as “how to save the future of broadcast” despite the fact that broadcasters such as Rogers and Bell, for example, have never publicly mentioned that their future relies on this act. My colleague for Perth—Wellington would call it the “groundhog day act”, because the challenges that existed in this bill when it was introduced as Bill C-10 are here again in Bill C-11. Let me explain.
Bill C-11 aims to regulate online streaming, online news and online safety. Those are admirable goals, but Canadians understand and expect that large, foreign-owned streamers ought not to be given advantages over the regulated Canadian broadcasting sector. Large foreign streamers should pay their fair share. On the face of it, this bill simply updates regulations in an industry that has moved faster than regulations ever could.
However, if there is one thing that we have learned from the Liberal government, it is that it is never able to resist the allure of power at any cost. It takes power, controls the narrative, silences its opposition and never accounts for its actions. We have seen this before. The Prime Minister just could not resist the urge to silence his opposition, going as far as to use the Emergencies Act, although it was unnecessary, and he and his government are never accountable for their actions. That is why we, as the opposition, need to be extreme in our diligence to ensure that the government cannot be given powers that could be misused.
Why is that necessary? It is because the Liberal government has proved that it has the audacity to use these powers and then not be accountable for their use. With that said, for my colleague across the way, Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He is clearly a highly esteemed legal voice on this issue, unlike my colleague across the way, and he has had nothing flattering to say about the government's proposed Bill C-11. As we know, the government does not meet with those who have the courage to hold opposing opinions.
First, there is the question of regulating user-generated content, referred to in this bill as “content uploaded to a social media service”. Have colleagues ever thought about how broad that is: “content uploaded to a social media service”? Based on that definition alone, every member in this House should take pause. By that definition, the Facebook post that I put out this morning puts me within the same regulatory framework as the major players.
The Liberals on the other side have tried to make the argument that there are exclusions in the act, but the devil is always in the details with their legislation, meaning that the exception indicates that users would not be regulated like broadcasters, but their content could be treated as a program subject to CRTC regulation. These regulations include discoverability requirements that would allow the CRTC to require platforms to prioritize certain content and effectively deprioritize other content. The problem is not that they do not have protections looking out for individual users; it is that we know that even in the context that this should protect Canadians, it is not enough to keep the Liberal government from overreaching.
Second, in addition to the continued regulation of some Internet content as programs under CRTC rules, the remarkable scope of the bill also remains unchanged. In fact, there was a 10-page memo that set out what the government could regulate with this new bill: podcasts, audiobooks, sports streaming services and niche video streaming services, just to name a few.
In fact, as Professor Geist explains, and here it comes:
The potential scope for regulation is virtually limitless since any audio-visual service anywhere with Canadian subscribers or users is caught by the rules. Bill C-11 maintains the same approach with no specific thresholds or guidance. In other words, the entire audio-visual world is fair game and it will be up to the CRTC to decide whether to exempt some services from regulation.
Did we just feel a shiver go across this room? Canadians did. Just the thought of having the government-appointed body of Liberal friends in charge of deciding who they want to regulate without legislative guidance, now that is scary.
The uncertainty found in former Bill C-10 is also largely unchanged in Bill C-11. Bill C-11 tries to include some criteria for defining key provisions, such as the user-generated content exception and what constitutes a Canadian creator. How do Canadians feel about vague ways to identify who will be covered under provisions in this bill or what items are left unidentified?
For example, key terms like “social media”, used 12 times in the bill, are undefined. Unfortunately, this is lazy Liberal legislation, or maybe that is what they want us to think. This is their second attempt at this bill and I think they still have it wrong. They have left the door wide open for government regulators to cross lines of government overreach leaving us with only the hope that no government would have the audacity to stoop so low. In thinking that, we are underestimating what the government is willing to do with its power.
When opening the debate on Bill C-11, the minister asked us to “imagine a day without art and culture, no music, no movies, no television or books. It would be really boring.” This bill asks us different questions. It asks us to imagine a day when the Government of Canada decides which music, what television shows or what books are acceptable and how they should be distributed and regulated, with no clear guidelines of what they actually are. It asks us to trust the government by giving them the power to broadly regulate with their word that although they could use it to silence opinions opposed to theirs, they assure us that they would not.
I have considered that world and I have found that the Liberal government needs no extra powers to silence the viewpoints of Canadians.
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- May/11/22 11:13:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have lots to say about that, because Canadians do feel we have lost our democracy in this country. The bill is just another example of the slide of democracy. What my statement was is that the Liberal government needs no extra powers to silence the viewpoints of Canadians. That is how Canadians feel. We are not the only ones opposed to this. Look around. Look at the people in this country who are media experts who are saying this is a dangerous bill put together by a dangerous government that is drunk on its own power. Let us look at that. That is exactly what the bill is about.
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Madam Speaker, the reason I said it is lazy Liberal legislation is because this is the government's second kick at the can. It had serious opposition the first time around. The bill was turfed because of the election, so it had an opportunity to fix what Canadians said needed to be fixed, and it really did not. That is what I mean by lazy legislation.
With respect to content, of course I think Canadians deserve to have a choice in the content we see, which includes Canadian content. I do not see how this bill improves that. We cannot rely on the CRTC to completely regulate everything that is not legislated for it.
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, the charter guarantees freedom of expression. While the act states that the CRTC has that opportunity, given the history of the current government and its involvement in trying to regulate what Canadians can say and do, I do not have enough confidence that this bill will improve what is going on online.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that the language is inadequate currently. I am not on the heritage committee and do not propose to understand exactly what the right language would be, but it is certainly something that we would be looking at improving to ensure that the language is adjusted to reflect that issue.
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