44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, this afternoon the minister is trying to defend the indefensible from coast to coast. Bill C-11 is a disaster, as was Bill C-10, and it is being shut down once again. We had 20 written submissions handed to us last Wednesday at committee from people who wanted to come to committee. The member talks about LGBTQ and indigenous issues. We have not heard from APTN, which was one of the guests the NDP wanted to bring to the committee. It has yet to come to talk to us.
This is a disaster waiting to happen. Why do the Liberals want to shut the bill down in the House of Commons, do nothing over the summer and hand it over to the Senate? We have time to bring other issues forward. Proposed subsection 4.1(2) has always been an issue. It was an issue a year ago when we debated Bill C-10 in the House, which they rammed through and then called the unnecessary election. This is the same situation we are seeing today with Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, before I get under way here this afternoon, I just wish to tell everyone that I am going to split my time with the member for Langley—Aldergrove. We get the good 10 minutes at the later part of the speeches, so I will set him up for it.
I am very thankful to speak to the bill today, Bill C-11. It is the programming motion regarding the online streaming act: the successor to, or should I say the copy of, Bill C-10, which we debated here in the House of Commons. Let us step back. We really did not have any debates last June on Bill C-10. It was pushed through the House with no amendments to it.
I am really desperate on this one because I thought the government learned last June about Bill C-10 and the flaws that we moved forward now on Bill C-11. As most remember, the Liberals tried the same tactics here in the House with the deeply flawed Bill C-10. It was wrong and undemocratic then. Nothing has changed. It is still wrong and mostly undemocratic now. The Senate is not even going to deal with the bill. To say that we need to pass it in the House today is ridiculous because the Senate, at best, will not see the bill until October.
Bill C-10 drew much controversy in the previous Parliament, and I talked about that, due to the proposed infringements on free expression, and massive granting of powers to the CRTC. I have talked for over a year and a half on the CRTC, and I will have more to say on that body and the potential to open up the Internet to broader regulations in a moment, among other serious concerns that I have.
Bill C-11 is the same flawed Liberal bill that could have potentially disastrous consequences for Canadian content creators, and most importantly for consumers. Conservatives said then that Bill C-10 needed more study, and we continue to say that today with this bill, Bill C-11.
As a former broadcaster, members can believe that I completely understand how desperately the Broadcasting Act needs to be upgraded. It has been 31 years since we started. The act is indeed badly outdated. It does not address the realities of modern broadcasting and content creation, and Canadian broadcasters and creators today are struggling because of that.
We absolutely need to put foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters on a level playing field, whatever that looks like. However, the solution, I feel, is not simply to force new realities into this old and outdated structure, or to have the CRTC regulate to its heart's desire.
The CRTC is in charge of broadcasting. Seventeen months later, it still has not updated the licence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It has been 17 months, and we have heard nothing. That is the CRTC's responsibility today: local licensing. We have heard nothing from chairman Ian Scott on CBC, saying, “We are busy. We are going through it.”
Seventeen months later, the public broadcaster still does not have a licence, because the CRTC is looking at it. I do not have to tell everyone in the House, all 338 of us, that we desperately want a three-digit suicide line. As of the month of June the request is a year old. We still have not got it. Why? It is because of the CRTC.
Do we see where I am going on this? It is not capable today of doing anything. As for its chairman, Ian Scott, his five-year term is up and he is leaving in September. We are going to have a new chair. He or she will get a five-year term and they will have to be re-educated on what the CRTC actually delivers to the citizens of the country.
Regulating the Internet, the Pandora's box that is being opened up in this legislation, is also simply not in the best interests of Canadians. We need to make sure that we are protecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians. Ensuring those protections cannot start by regulating the Internet and restricting the free speech that we have in the country today.
These are issues that need further study at committee. There are dozens of important witnesses that still wish to be heard. As for one of those witnesses, it is kind of interesting to listen to everyone talking about indigenous voices, because we have not heard from the indigenous peoples television network, APTN. We have not heard from it.
The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network has not come to committee to speak about what Bill C-11 would do for that network, which was started years ago because the public broadcaster did little with indigenous programming. That is why APTN started: it heard voices. In fact, I was at an event on Saturday in Saskatoon, and the Filipino community is asking about Bill C-11. The Filipino community does a half-hour televised tape show in Saskatoon on cable, and they have asked about whether they can continue if this bill passes. I had no answers for them.
This is the diversity we are hearing in our country that Bill C-11 has not answered in committee. We have not had a chance to even slice through the first level of onion to get to this bill, and now the Liberal government, as it did last year with Bill C-10, is pushing it through the House, but this time there is no excuse for it. The Senate will not even look at this bill until maybe late in September or early in October. We have all summer to deal with Bill C-11.
I remember when the government came into power, and we all remember when it came into power in 2015. It promised sunny ways and made a commitment not to use closure and time allocation as the Conservatives did in the previous government. They have forgotten that in six and a half short years. All I have heard is “Harper this,” and “Harper that”. Now, I am going to suggest that it is the member for Papineau who is shutting everything down in the House of Commons.
Now, whenever there is the slickest push-back against the Liberals' agenda, they go straight to time allocation and, today, the programming motion. I participated in the study on Bill C-10 in the previous Parliament, when the government passed a similar programming motion. Several legal and industry experts came before the committee and raised concerns about the legislation. They were the same concerns from 2021 that have come in 2022. As legislators, have we looked at this bill and said we have done the best we can with it? That is our job. We 338 are elected to get the best bills coming out of the House. Have we done that? We have not done that at all, and the Liberals agree with that, yet they are moving forward today.
Tomorrow we will have a full day, going through from noon to nine o'clock, with amendments, then we will push the amendments through from nine until midnight without a word we can say or object to. We proposed further witnesses and debate in the last Parliament, and Canadians deserve better on this bill. The government, however, is clearly sick of hearing about the problems with the legislation. We have gone through two heritage ministers already, and probably will a third when we come back in the fall, and shut down Bill C-11. Thankfully, Bill C-10 did not complete the legislative process because of a useless election. What is it going to be this summer?
Now, the chamber has a second chance to get this bill, Bill C-11, right. This time we have the opportunity, as members of Parliament, to give Canadians what they want out of this bill, Bill C-11.
First of all, despite claims to the contrary by the minister, Bill C-11 absolutely would leave the door open to the CRTC regulating user-generated content online. In other words, the CRTC could still, under Bill C-11, decide what Canadians can and cannot see. These powers pose a clear threat for free expression in this country, which is the most fundamental right in a democratic country. Under Bill C-11, the CRTC could regulate away free expression online.
Second is the fact that the powers the bill grants to the CRTC are so broad and wide-ranging that they empower the commission to essentially regulate any content in a manner it sees fit, and I have talked enough about the CRTC, but that second bullet should be a concern to everyone in the House of Commons.
What will happen to the foreign services that are small players in this Canadian market? Where did the Canadian market go? In a small part of the user base, we have new regulations and requirements that we can thrust upon them.
Third, the government is asking us to vote on legislation that we do not have all the pieces to. The government says it will address the problems through ministerial order, but it has not shown us what the orders will be. Bill C-11 is a flawed bill.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting about the CRTC. I asked a question of Bell, the owners of CTV. I asked how much it pays for American programming, because every night on television from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. there is American programming and very little Canadian content. It did not answer how much it spent on American content, although it said that when it goes to Hollywood to bid on programming in the fall, it is being challenged now by Netflix, Amazon and others. How could it be challenged in the United States by these streamers when we, all along, have gone there, filled our American basket and brought things up to Canada to produce no Canadian content?
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Madam Speaker, all of us know of discoverability. Where do we find things when we are on Facebook? What do I like, what do others like or what does the member from the Bloc like to see? Where will it be the next time we open Facebook? There are algorithms. Who is in charge of determining what we see and where it comes up? If it is Canadian content, will it automatically be in the first 10 things we look at, or will it be down in the 500?
We have issues with section 4.2. We have talked about it in the House. We also have a lot of issues with discoverability. There are many Canadians producing fabulous stuff today on YouTube, TikTok and so on. They are more than worried about where this legislation goes when it does become law, next year maybe, because a lot of the creators in this country are making a pretty good living promoting Canadian content.
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Madam Speaker, that is interesting because last week in committee, on Wednesday, the clerk gave me 20 printed submissions that we had to deal with. That tells me that as a committee we are not doing our job because these are submissions that have come through the clerk to the committee from people and organizations wanting to speak to this.
I want APTN there. I have been requesting that APTN come to committee. We need the indigenous voice on Bill C-11. We have not heard it. That is one of the flaws with this bill. We need APTN to see its future and how Bill C-11 would affect that network.
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Madam Speaker, while I want to thank the member for her concerns, they are not valid. We have seen in committee people like Dr. Michael Geist and former commissioners of the CRTC. They know this is a flawed bill and they are upset that it is progressing the way it has.
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