44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, because I know the member is very knowledgeable as a gun owner, is there any part of Bill C-21 he finds useful as a reform and that would be beneficial? If the bill would go to committee, where would we want to look for making amendments?
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Madam Speaker, we have had atrocious gun crimes in this country and horrific tragedies where neighbours tried to warn law enforcement. I remind the hon. member of what happened in his colleague's riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka, where Mark Jones in Burk's Falls killed many members of his family before killing himself. In 2020, of course, there were the Portapique killings. Some neighbours even moved away out of fear of the man who later killed 22 people. There is also the tragic case of PTSD that took the life of Lionel Desmond and members of his family.
What do the Conservatives recommend we do about gun crimes in rural and remote areas of this country against family members and random strangers in a neighbourhood?
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Madam Speaker, we had discussions in the session this morning about the New Zealand example. As I recall, we saw this legislation right before the election. It initially had a voluntary buyback program. Having said that, we have seen flaws in how New Zealand handled this. That was a point made by some Conservative members.
I know there was push-back from groups concerned with gun violence, that a voluntary buyback program was not as good as a mandatory program. Can the hon. member for Guelph bring any information forward as to why the government changed its position on voluntary versus mandatory?
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Madam Speaker, I am sure the hon. parliamentary secretary heard the question I asked earlier to the member for Guelph. The first version of this bill, before it died on the Order Paper, was a voluntary buyback program. We have now moved to it being mandatory. I would appreciate any light she can shed on the government's change of heart.
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Madam Speaker, I found the hon. member for Provencher's discussion of issues of the heart and issues of the law compelling.
This quote from the Reverend Martin Luther King is relevant:
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behaviour can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me.
I wonder if, in that regard, the hon. member thinks there is a role for the state in regulating gun ownership.
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- Jun/20/22 3:11:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the latest IPCC report advanced the clock on “too late”. To have any hope of holding to 1.5°C or even 2°C, global emissions must peak before 2025 and drop rapidly from there to roughly half by 2030. Net zero by 2050 will not make any difference without deep cuts before 2025. We are 30 months from too late. When we get back here in September, we will have 28 months, yet the government continues to approve fossil fuel expansion.
Who would care, in this place, to explain this madness?
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- Jun/20/22 4:10:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to present this petition on behalf of 534 Canadians who express their outrage that 26 Canadian citizens, including 14 children, have been abandoned by our government in conditions that can only be described as “hell on Earth” in detention facilities in northeast Syria. They have been denied consular services. They have had no assistance from government. They have not been charged with any crimes, nor have they been convicted. Again, they are 14 children, eight women and four men who are currently held in northeast Syria.
Attempts to ask the government to repatriate them have fallen on deaf ears. The Canadian government has shown the ability to repatriate citizens from Syria, as was the case of the child called Amira, who was repatriated last year.
The undersigned 534 Canadians seek the Government of Canada's assistance to immediately begin the process to repatriate the 26 Canadian citizens, 14 children, eight women and four men, charged with nothing and convicted of nothing, who are in jail in northeast Syria. It is a matter of life and death.
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Mr. Speaker, on this rare occasion, I actually had an amendment passed on Bill C-11, and it was with the aid and assistance of the hon. parliamentary secretary.
I wonder if he would like to expand on that experience of collaboration in the interest of community broadcasting and engagement of citizens through community non-profit activity, an aspect of Bill C-11 that has not been referenced much so far in this round.
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Mr. Speaker, it is the hon. member's reference to the TV and movie filming of Deadpool in Vancouver that made me think to rise and ask this question of him.
That is, of course, important programming and an important industry for the Vancouver area, but I want to ask him if he is aware of the fact that most of that kind of production value in Canada pays Canadian actors what is called “at scale”. They are not paid anything like what the U.S. actors who come in and get dropped into the community are paid, and a lot of the working crew comes in from the U.S. It does not employ Canadians. That is a lot of what I hope Bill C-11 may change in the future. I hope for a chance to really create a level playing ground, so that when Canada is used as the backdrop for films, even around a Canadian story, Canadians are not treated as second-class citizens.
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- Jun/20/22 7:33:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a point of order.
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry, but the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, and I was paying close attention, was not given the floor at any time by the Speaker. No one who has not been given the floor by the Speaker is allowed to speak. Once the Speaker stands, everyone is to sit down.
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Madam Speaker, I want to begin by acknowledging that we are here on traditional unceded Algonquin territory and say meegwetch.
It is a great honour to speak to Bill C‑11 this evening. As everyone knows, this bill would amend and modernize the Broadcasting Act, something that has not been done in 30 years, even though we have seen enormous changes in the various delivery platforms. The biggest changes have to do with online streaming rather than television and radio broadcasting. There have been changes for our actors, creators and musicians and with respect to the issue of Canadian, Quebec and indigenous culture.
First of all, this bill is not perfect. I have problems with certain aspects of it, but I have decided to support it anyway, and I will explain why. I thank my colleague from Kitchener Centre, another Green MP. We made different decisions, but we agree on the problems and the reasons why he will be voting no and I will be voting yes.
It is a complicated bill. I want to start with a few things, just to clarify what it is not. Moments ago, a very talented new member of Parliament, the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, spoke about wishing that we could put in a more concrete, entrenched form that freedom of expression and freedom of speech are respected in this land and that every Canadian knows they have a right to those things.
I would say, with all respect to that member, we have that. We have the right of free speech in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Beyond that, the act that this bill amends but does not cancel, repeal or wipe out the words of, the Broadcasting Act, has for the past 30 years entrenched the right of Canadians to freedom of expression. Nothing in this modernization in Bill C-11 would change, in any way, our right to freedom of expression. This bill does not censor anything. It does not change what we can see and what we cannot see, or what we can hear and what we cannot hear. It attempts to achieve greater protections for many different varieties of Canadians against the powers of the new digital world.
I am going to focus a little time on some specific examples. Before I talk about the good the bill does, let me say where I hope we will observe closely how the bill works, and be more than prepared to take it up again within the next year or two. I would suspect we would, if we have the problems that we fear we may have with the failure to make sure that Canadians who in the government's intentions are not supposed to be caught by this bill, are not, and if we have problems differentiating the impact of the bill on those people from the impact on the large digital platforms, whether it is Netflix, Crave or HBO. We are not intending to capture users who place their content on YouTube.
One of the differentiations that I found quite useful, and that I actually heard from Professor Michael Geist, was that there is a difference between a platform, a place where we can put things, that is “curated” versus one that is not curated. That is the word he used. I wish the government had used that kind of language in Bill C-11, because I think it would clarify things a great deal.
In other words, instead of concentrating on who does what on a platform, we should differentiate between the systems and differentiate between the platforms. If we were to say there was this area where there was a conscious effort to promote certain content, it would be a curated place. This is versus one where everybody could put stuff up: It is not being curated to meet a certain purpose. If it is being curated to meet a certain purpose or to create different profit, that would have been a better differentiation than we have in Bill C-11. What we have in Bill C-11 has left us divided.
I do not disagree one bit with my colleague for Kitchener Centre that this bill should be much better and clearer on the question of platform versus user. Platforms will be in and users will be out: I believe that is the government's intent, but the drafting does not make that sufficiently clear. I think we will have to go back to it and improve on and clarify this.
I remain concerned that the CRTC has a lot of clout and power in this. I hope we see that the CRTC is guided by the best information from people who are skeptical about this bill to make sure its use does not do anything but improve the situation for Canadians, both those who enjoy the products of creators and those who create. I hate to use the word “consumption” as if people consume culture, and I will not use it. People who enjoy culture, who are edified by culture and who feel ennobled by culture, those of us who are essentially the audience, need to benefit from this act just as the creators do.
Regarding the discussion around platforms versus users, I do not think the government has it right yet, so why am I going to vote for this bill?
When I look at the creative community, there is no question about this as it is empirically documented. The rise of the digital broadcaster has reduced the economic status of Canadian musicians and Canadian creators versus those in the U.S. Just to give members one example from the world of music, a traditional broadcaster generally sent 49¢ out of every dollar from Canadian music to the U.S. That sounds like a lot. Then, we see that the digital broadcaster sends 64¢ out of every dollar to the U.S. From 49¢ to 64¢ is a big difference to someone who is living on those earnings. In fact, I do not know how Canadian musicians can live on their earnings. In the past year, in 2021, on average Canadian musicians writing their own material earned $67 total in royalties from digital streaming platforms. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that people who are writing their own music in Canada have their income reduced just by virtue of what medium they use to share that material.
We need to have a Broadcasting Act that promotes Canadian creators within Canada and overseas, and we hope this bill will improve things. Certainly, the Canadian Media Producers Association, the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, SOCAN, and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, ACTRA, are saying that for their own survival as artists we need desperately to redress that imbalance. When it goes onto a digital platform, Canadian artists are paid less. They are valued less, and will turn from that career because they cannot make ends meet. As the rise of digital access to creativity overtakes the traditional, the situation will only get worse, and that is the trend line we see with the digital media and the online sharing of everything from music to film, video and TV.
There is a huge creative class in Canada. As a matter of fact, just to give some context for it, the membership of the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers is 175,000 people. By the way, SOCAN does not just promote these brilliant creative people, but it actually runs the system that collects the royalties and distributes them fairly, so when we go outside of that system we are seeing the funds to pay musicians the royalties they deserve slip through their fingers without capturing it. That is why SOCAN is so strongly in favour of Bill C-11.
The same is true of how people feel across the spectrum of other artistic endeavours. We have heard a lot in this place about films like The Handmaid's Tale. It is hard to say one loves The Handmaid's Tale when, as a feminist, one would wonder how Margaret Atwood could see the future coming before we did. I dread the day I go to shop with my debit card and it is taken from me. It is not sufficiently Canadian content when the leads, the producers, the people holding the cameras and the people yelling “cut” are not Canadian. That is what Bill C-11 hopes to repair.
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Madam Speaker, I hope I was clear in my speech that this is the reason I am voting for Bill C-11. It is important and urgent that we pass Bill C-11 now.
We saw the last Parliament's attempt to pass Bill C-10. It is not the fault of any of us in the opposition that we had an unnecessary election, which caused Bill C-10 to die on the Order Paper, but Canadian performers and creators have been waiting a very long time to see a modernization that takes into account the way their income is undermined by online streaming. We need to do this urgently, and if it turns out that, as many have warned us, there are mistakes made in other parts of the bill, I hope we will go back and fix that later.
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Madam Speaker, I will do my best to provide a good answer to both questions from my colleague from Drummond.
First, I am absolutely comfortable with the position taken by my colleague from Kitchener Centre. In the Green Party, we are Green MPs, yes, but we have our own ideas and we do not have to vote with one voice. As members of Parliament, we have our own positions, depending on our ridings.
Second, I think my colleague from Drummond is right. It is vital that we have cultural products from here, made by Canadians and Quebeckers from here. If I remember my colleague's speech correctly, he, like his Bloc Québécois colleagues, clearly supports our creators, directors and film and television creators, and he believes that Quebec culture is more threatened by the development of online broadcasting and must be protected.
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Madam Speaker, I have a lot of concerns about the CRTC. I used to appear as an administrative lawyer in front of the CRTC, a gazillion years ago, on things like the Bell Canada review of revenue requirements when we were breaking up Ma Bell. I was a lawyer with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and was before the CRTC quite a lot.
That policy directive should be public. One of the things the CRTC did in recent years, which I find very concerning, was deciding that Russia Today was appropriate content and available to be packaged on cable channels. That never should have happened.
We need to keep the pressure up to say that we need to see, from the government, the directive to the CRTC, and we need more transparency from the CRTC.
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Madam Speaker, I do think we made improvements to the bill. Even one Green Party amendment managed to get in. It was quite a nice change from Bill C-12, the climate accountability act, on which all of my amendments were killed by the NDP-Liberal deal.
I really regret asking this, but I have not had a chance in this session and we are about to rise for the summer, so I will ask my hon. friend, since he has pointed to the confidence and supply agreement, why the NDP decided that dental care was enough and that proportional representation or significant climate improvements would not be included.
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- Jun/20/22 11:48:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to pursue a question I put to the Prime Minister on April 6, which was two days after a quite devastating report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was from working group III, in the sixth assessment report. What that report told me when I read it was that we have less time than I thought, because the timeline for action to avoid going above 1.5°C or even holding to below 2°C was shortened considerably.
I asked the Prime Minister, two days later, whether anyone had briefed him on this new documentation from the IPCC and whether he understood how rapidly the window on 1.5°C was closing. Unfortunately, in the Prime Minister's answer, he revealed that he had not been briefed, not possibly. The answer he gave was the usual response, that the government is doing a wonderful job. He said that we have put forward a very comprehensive plan and that we are committed to reducing emissions and will reduce them “by 40% from 2005 levels in the next eight years.” That statement alone confirmed that no one had briefed him, or if they had he chose to reject the advice, because saying that we have a “doable and concrete” plan is not the same thing as saying that it is adequate.
I am going to do something I probably should not attempt to do at midnight in this place, which is read from the “Summary for Policymakers”, give a reference to the paragraph and page, and decipher some fairly impenetrable language so if the Prime Minister or his staff should happen to watch this late show, maybe they will understand that they are proposing a plan that does not preserve any hope of holding to 1.5°C.
Paragraph C.1, on page 22, working group III, sixth assessment report, from April 4, states, “Global GHG emissions are projected to peak between 2020 and at the latest before 2025 in global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C...and in those that limit warming to 2°C...and assume immediate action.”
I have to explain that the way the IPCC writes is somewhat impenetrable. It is not projecting something that will happen. The sentence would make more sense if it was reversed. What the IPCC is saying is that all the models it has worked through, all the pathways it has found that hold to 1.5°C or 2°C require that “between 2020 and at the latest before 2025” we begin to see a total drop in emissions, so the word “peak” is to suggest that no later than “before 2025” total greenhouse gas emissions must begin to drop and the highest level they ever achieve must be before 2025.
This is seriously concerning, because going above 1.5°C or 2°C is not a political target. We cannot negotiate with the atmosphere. The physics and chemistry of the atmosphere tell us, from the best peer-review process of science in the history of the world, the IPCC, that we have to ensure that greenhouse gas levels begin to drop by then or the window on holding on to a livable world will close, and close forever. It does not reopen. I repeat: Going above 1.5°C or 2°C is not a political target. It is about whether global climate systems remain hospitable to our species. If we exceed those, our children may be condemned to an unlivable world.
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- Jun/20/22 11:56:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I now have to ask the parliamentary secretary, who is an old friend, if he has read the IPCC report, because his answer reflects the usual complacency we hear. The government is doing things. There is no denying there are many programs, but the totality of those programs does not ensure that we can hold to 1.5°C or 2°C. In fact, they do the opposite. Net zero by 2050, by itself, is not science: It is a marketing slogan. What we have to look at is that last year, 619 people in British Columbia died in four days. There were wildfires across the province and floods in November. All that has happened to Canada right now at a 1.1°C global average temperature increase. We are on track for three times more. It is not survivable. Nothing matters if we do not get this right.
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