44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 11, 2022 02:00PM
- May/11/22 3:15:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my question for the Prime Minister is on the subject of single-use plastics, but first I really want to thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the foreign affairs minister for their recent trip to Ukraine.
Turning to single-use plastics, there are less thanks and more demands that we do something about the mounting amount of plastics in our environment, the microplastics that permeate almost all the water on Earth and the plastics that are found in the stomachs of animals that wash up dead.
The Prime Minister promised to eliminate single-use plastics by 2030. We do not have a plan. The regulations that are in draft form are completely inadequate. When will we see a plan to eliminate single-use plastics by 2030?
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- May/11/22 4:09:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually in this place to present a petition that constituents have pressed upon me, and there are many of them. They call on the government to take seriously the climate emergency that was passed by a motion of this place in June 2019, and that the target to take the climate emergency seriously is 60% below 2005 levels by 2030. The petitioners add that the situation is more urgent by the day. They also call on the government to stop all subsidies for fossil fuels. There is a long list of measures. I will try to summarize them by saying there is a wide range of social justice elements, including a just transition for workers and setting an end date to create certainty for when Canada will cease the production and use of fossil fuels in accordance with scientific advice.
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Madam Speaker, I am very distressed that we are once again seeing time allocation. I understand the predicament of the House leaders not being able to properly schedule how long it takes to look at a bill.
However, it is not our fault, as opposition members of Parliament, that Bill C-10 was put back to the starting block because of the election, which we as opposition members clearly did not call.
With Bill C-11, we have had very little time in the House to debate it. We do need to have improvements made. That is clear. I do not want to appear to be in any way joining in any overheated rhetoric that the bill is about censorship, but the bill needs work. It does need to go to committee, but we need to discuss it and debate it first because that is what Parliament is for.
I would urge the hon. government House leader to consider that we enforce our own rules. We would have more well-organized debates if we had the discipline to say we would observe the rule that no member can stand up and read a pre-prepared speech. That would reduce the number of members who are truly engaged on a file and who are able to give a speech off the cuff. It should help organize our House time. I would urge the hon. member to think of that, instead of continuing to use the methods that were honed by the previous government of Stephen Harper.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand virtually to join members this evening to contribute to this debate. I am currently in my home riding and am honoured to recognize and acknowledge the territory of the WSANEC nation. I raise my hands to all of them and say hych'ka siem, which is in the language of the traditional people of this land. I hope that Bill C-11 will actually deliver on some of the ideas to increase the indigenous content in what we see from our broadcast media in this country. We have a lot of work to do.
I want to address the bill. I have thought a lot about it, and in some of the debate, the notion that we need to do more for Canadian content has been somewhat ridiculed because there is Canadian content in things like The Handmaid's Tale. Why would we think that needed more Canadian content?
Just for fun, I looked up some of the things that one could think of as Canadian content that never was, like Dudley Do-Right. I grew up with Dudley Do-Right, the accident-prone Canadian Mountie who of course had nothing to do with Canada. It was produced by the people who did Rocky and Bullwinkle. It was in the 1960s that I used to watch that. In 1999, there was a Hollywood film based on the cartoon, and of course none of the people involved were Canadian, and the indigenous characters, who were played in ways that were racially and culturally inappropriate and offensive, were played by actors who were not themselves indigenous. We can go way back, if we want to look for Mounties, to find Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald from the 1930s, with a score from Oscar Hammerstein, singing Indian Love Call.
It is absurd to think for one minute that a Canadian Mountie makes a show Canadian or that the inclusion of an indigenous character makes it appropriate. It is laughable. We really do have to pay attention to raising up Canadian content.
I can share with colleagues that countries with much smaller populations than Canada has, like Norway or Denmark, have really extraordinary hit programs that people watch even if they have to put up with subtitles. They watch Borgen or watch the Occupied series. Canada has amazing talent, and it is time to make sure that we are not undermined by online streaming.
I am therefore very sympathetic to many of the goals of this bill. It has amendments to the Broadcasting Act, and because the Broadcasting Act protects freedom of expression, we are not going to lose freedom of expression. However, that does not mean I do not have some concerns that I share with other members here.
I want to thank Paul Manly, by the way, the former member of Parliament for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, because he took on all the workload of Bill C-10, which involved a lot of time developing amendments and being stuck in committee, where nothing was moving, and then we had an election. I did want to get out a public thanks to Paul.
I will turn to the things that really need work. The whole piece around the community element needs work. The broadcasters within community radio and community television that take on the role of community really want the community element definition fixed. One of the key concepts that I hope the committee will take on, in listening to community broadcasting, is to make sure that community broadcasting, by its definition in Bill C-11, is understood as fully community run. It is a really important point and we want to take that forward. I will be working in committee as a non-member of committee to get some amendments made so that the act really protects community-run content.
I am also concerned, frankly, about criticisms of the overreach of the CRTC's authority. We should really look at them. I am not sure where I come down on this yet, but Michael Geist, who is a really knowledgeable expert on media, is concerned that there would be an increased and expanded CRTC authority. I did used to practise in public interest law, and I went through some really long, mind-numbing hearings on, for instance, the review of revenue requirements for Bell and the breaking up of Bell, and all the things the CRTC did. It is a very powerful administrative body, and I wanted to mention that to colleagues.
A lot of the councils and advisory bodies to government, like regulatory agencies, generally provide advice to the government. In the case of the CRTC, it has decision-making authority and can only be overturned by a cabinet-level decision, so it is really important that we are careful. This is our one opportunity to really say what the CRTC is supposed to do and what it is not supposed to do. It is what we do when we are legislating, so let us make sure we get that right.
I have to say my confidence in the CRTC was shaken when I realized that it had put Russia Today, RT, on cable networks across Canada. It is a disinformation source that has undermined this country's democracy. I do not know how anyone ever concluded that this was a good idea, but I would like to make sure that we know we have given the CRTC the right instructions by legislation to make sure it is regulating and protecting Canadian content, and ensuring the survival and flourishing of our artistic community, our indigenous community and the French language.
We need to have French broadcasting. That is essential to our multicultural country. I am not convinced that Bill C‑11 has this quite right. It is not perfect, at least not yet.
The other piece I really want to mention is what we do about online content and social media. I know that the hon. member for Fleetwood—Port Kells made reference to this, but I really want to commend the recent work of former chief justice Beverley McLachlin and the quite brilliant academic director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill, Taylor Owen. They make a very important point: Regulate the system, not the speech.
I really think that our social media approach should not be to look for when there has been a transgression and then go out and punish. I do not think the government or the CRTC should be trying to figure out when speech is hate speech or when it is libellous. We need to create a system where social media enterprises have to themselves take on the responsibility to be fully transparent and accountable.
I am going to read this into the record, before I run out of time. It is from an article by former Supreme Court chief justice Beverley McLachlin and Taylor Owen:
For too long the issue of online harms has been erroneously framed as one of individual bad actors and the regulation of speech, but the problem is one of systemic risk and it must be addressed as such. Canada now has the chance to learn from and build on the policies attempted in other countries and get it right.
That is from the recent May 9 article “Regulate the System, Not the Speech”.
We can do this. Whether it is through this bill or the many others that are looking at social media, we have to fix this. I will close here and just say this. Let us get Bill C-11 to committee. Let us get it right.
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Mr. Speaker, honestly, the hon. member for Fleetwood—Port Kells, who is a dear friend, may be conflating some things there, because it is not so much freedom of speech that is offended by calling for the end of the CBC. Really, it is about making sure we have a public broadcaster that can deliver things that the private sector does not care about.
I lament how many cuts have been made to the CBC. We have lost the suppertime news. The swim coach, believe it or not, in our fitness program in Parliament used to be Pierre Lafontaine, the former Olympic swim coach. He helped me and my dear friend Joy Smith, who used to represent the Conservative Party, learn to swim. We all learned how to swim really well because Pierre Lafontaine helped us. Pierre Lafontaine said that when CBC lost the suppertime news, it stopped covering local sports. That was a great way to get more kids involved in sports and more parents involved, because the CBC used to have enough money to cover local tournaments and local events.
Our news media in this country, whether community suppertime news or national news coverage, has suffered from being undermined. Private sector companies like CTV and Global have been undermined by competition from all kinds of news sites, Google and so on. This took away their advertising revenue at the same time that they have had cutbacks. We need to fund the CBC properly.
As far as freedom of speech goes, again, the Broadcasting Act says that freedom of expression is protected. That is clear. The charter protects freedom of expression too. However, nobody has the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. We have never had that right. That is freedom of speech misused. It is not an absolute right; it never has been.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to sincerely thank my Bloc Québécois colleague because one of the goals of this bill is to protect artists, actors, creators and directors.
We need to protect their role in our society because that is our wealth, our roots as a society. Canada's true soul lies in our artists. We need to protect them. I totally agree, and it was not our idea, as members of an opposition party, to hold an election.
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