44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2022 11:00AM
- Jun/20/22 4:41:41 p.m.
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I must interrupt the member. It seems there was a problem with the interpretation, but it is working now.
The hon. member for Drummond can restart his question.
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Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, I will give my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, a break. I will not talk about censorship. I will not talk about the enormous power that the CRTC will have over what Canadians and Quebeckers can and cannot watch online either. I think that we agree that the bill we are discussing contains no such horrors.
However, in the short time we had to discuss the amendments, there was something that troubled me, and that was the issue of the degree to which foreign companies will be required to use homegrown talent and creators.
We tried to submit a minor amendment that would have forced online companies to maximize their use of homegrown talent, creators and artists, but it was rejected. I would like to hear the reasoning behind this refusal to also make foreign companies maximize their use of Canadian and Quebec resources.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question and his collaboration during the debate and throughout committee work.
I know the Bloc, the Liberals and the NDP work very well together to ensure that we do hear diverse voices and that we do act to protect the French language, both within Quebec and outside of Quebec. That is what we are building on. In the Broadcasting Act, we are building on the others who have come before us in order to ensure that the voices and how Canada looks, how Canada sounds and how Canada communicates are reflected back at us.
I know we can quibble about amendments and I know the member was very passionate about that amendment, but I know we both stand behind the principle of this legislation, which is to ensure that strong voices in Canada, including strong francophone voices, are heard in our digital landscape as they have been heard under the Broadcasting Act with traditional broadcasters.
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Mr. Speaker, modernizing the Broadcasting Act is important, and levelling the field between Canadian broadcasters and web giants is essential. Even with these needed changes, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook and other web giants still do not pay their fair share on the profits they make here in Canada.
Why is the government delaying the implementation of a digital services tax? Why are they protecting the profits of the web giants and refusing to make them pay their fair share?
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Mr. Speaker, I think we have to be careful, because there are web giants—and I know Netflix was mentioned in that group—that contribute heavily to Canadian production, employ many Canadians and provide many good union jobs as well. We should be careful when we are lumping everyone in to one particular group.
I agree that this legislation is about ensuring a level playing field. Our traditional broadcasters, although people will say what they will about the Bells and Rogers of the world, are Canadian companies. Large foreign companies should have to play by a similar set of rules. I do not know why the Conservatives are taking the side of huge foreign companies like Google or a Chinese company like TikTok over Canadian companies in Canada. It has been disappointing this entire time.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated the member's speech. It gives Canadians a very good understanding of what the bill does and what it does not do. As a member of Parliament, my job is to be out there on the ground speaking with constituents and finding out how they feel. I am sure my colleague, in his constituency and in travelling as part of his job as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, is also travelling across the country and having those discussions.
What are the creators and artists on the ground saying this will do for them? Are they happy with this or not?
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Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to speak to creators large and small across the country. We had Gord Sinclair of The Tragically Hip before our committee. The member for Kingston and the Islands will not like me phrasing it this way, but a band from a small town in eastern Ontario that grew to be a huge success across the country benefited from previous legislation. He came to our committee to say he wants to see the next Tragically Hip and that Bill C-11 will do that.
We have been hearing that from artists across the board who have had significant success, and some who have not. The artistic community has been united in their support, from what I have heard on Bill C-11, and it is something I ask all members of this House to pass so that we can get that help to our artists.
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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, I would like to thank the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. Once again we find ourselves working together on a piece of legislation in a collaborative way. As we saw, amendments were accepted, I believe, from all parties in this House, including the Green Party and the Conservative Party, which stands opposed to this legislation.
I had the opportunity to meet with community broadcasters, which are a fundamental part of who we are. I would like to thank the hon. member for her amendment and for taking the time to stand up for those voices, because it is important for us to be local as we move out in the digital age. A lot of times we lose that local experience, which is so important in knowing what is going on in our communities in a basic way. In an era of disinformation, more local sources provide us with better context and better information than the information we get from strangers on YouTube, so I want to thank her for helping to strengthen the Broadcasting Act in that way.
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Mr. Speaker, my friend made reference to the industry as a whole, and it is a very important industry nationwide and in our communities, where literally hundreds of jobs are generated that support our arts. I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts in regard to the size of the industry and how much that means to Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, this is a multi-billion-dollar industry. As I said in my speech, the industry employs 165,000 Canadians, and it is not just traditional broadcasters or traditional industries but digital creators too, and we do not want to separate them; they are all artists. Digital creators and traditional creators are all creating and benefiting our economy. It is important that we stand up and contribute and grow that number of 165,000 people employed in this industry, and Bill C-11 will help us along that way.
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Mr. Speaker, freedom of speech is a fundamental right in Canada. It is enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms in fact. Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states:
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
These rights are what makes Canada a modern democracy. They are not trivial principles. They should not be up for debate. Interfering with fundamental rights is the sign of a dying democracy, yet the Liberals have shown, time and time again, that they are dead set on desecrating this right by regulating and censoring the social media content that Canadians are able to see online.
I just want to go back a little with the history. This bill was first introduced back in November 2020, as Bill C-10, and by February 2021, the Liberals had removed a clause from the bill exempting user-generated content, which extended the legislation to encompass everyday social media content created by Canadians. Before the bill could pass in the last parliamentary session through both Houses of Parliament, I raised a point of order and exposed the Liberals' reckless approach to implementing this bill. I submitted in my point of order that several of the amendments to Bill C-10 that were made in committee needed to be struck down because the government's committee government members had grossly exceeded their authority in more ways than one.
This point of order, which was upheld in its ruling, effectively defeated the chances of the bill being able to proceed before the Liberals called their early election back in 2021. Then, of course, to no one's surprise, when Parliament reconvened after that election, the bill was re-introduced as Bill C-11, which we have before us.
In order to ensure its passage, the Liberals decided to pass Motion No. 11 in the House, which has allowed them to push through the passage of this legislation by bypassing standard procedure. When that was not enough, the Liberals decided to pass several motions to shorten the committee's study and to limit witnesses, and then accused Conservatives of filibustering every time we opposed one of those anti-democratic motions.
Last week, the Liberals finally moved closure through Motion No. 16 to force the bill through committee clause-by-clause consideration with limited or, in many cases, no debate. On June 14, just last week, the Canadian heritage committee was forced to sit from 11 in the morning until 12:15 at night to complete clause-by-clause of 172 pages of amendments, over 100 of which were passed without allowing for so much as one second of debate.
I would say that bypassing debate and rushing through an unprecedented bill is an insult to Canadians, and it only allows the government to avoid accountability. Parliament has a democratic responsibility to thoroughly examine the implications of Internet regulation, and Canadians deserve to know the truth about this deeply flawed bill. The Liberals are stifling freedom of speech by curtailing parliamentary process.
Ironically, by limiting MPs' ability to speak, the Liberals are symbolizing the censorship contained within this bill. The government does not just want to regulate the Internet and hinder freedom of speech, it is also determined to interfere with parliamentarians' right to speak and debate the same legislation that is looking to interfere with people's rights and freedoms.
Back to the bill itself, under the auspices of amending the Broadcasting Act, the legislation contained in Bill C-11 infringes on the rights and freedoms of every single Canadian who uses social media. This bill would give bureaucrats at the CRTC sweeping powers to regulate online social media content based on famously irrational criteria. It would allow the CRTC to decide what content it considers to be Canadian enough, and then force social media companies to promote that content and bury the so-called un-Canadian content, so it would be nearly impossible to find. This would effectively result in censorship.
Moreover, analysts are saying that the bill could allow the CRTC to automatically subscribe Canadians to a certain list of Canadian YouTube channels, such as the CBC, without even asking their permission. It already mandates that cable providers do this in the subscriptions they offer to Canadians, so for the CRTC officials, I am sure doing so online would only be the next logical step in their mind.
Essentially, the government has decided that Canadians are not responsible enough to choose for themselves what they want to see on social media, so it is turning on the parental controls. This notion that Canadians need to be made to watch certain content that has been deemed as socially and culturally appropriate by the government and discouraged from watching other content is the result of an out-of-touch, paternalistic approach to governing what seems to stem from Liberal elitism.
As it stands now, Bill C-11 would determine what content is Canadian enough based on a famously flawed and outdated points system, which was developed in the 1980s, decades before the advent of social media. This black and white points system designed for legacy media, has resulted in a series of truly embarrassing rulings from the CRTC in recent years. For example, an Amazon Prime series focused entirely on the Toronto Maple Leafs was ruled to be not Canadian enough under this points system. The film adaptation of the famed Canadian novel The Handmaid's Tale was also deemed to be not Canadian enough, and Deadpool, the award-winning Marvel movie based on a Canadian character, filmed in Vancouver and co-written by a Canadian, was also deemed to be not Canadian enough under this system.
Maybe we should take some comfort in the fact that the minister responsible has promised to review and update these criteria for determining what is Canadian enough, but, then again, maybe not. Strangely enough, the minister boasted about a meeting with the German minister of culture to consult with her about how to update these criteria for determining what should be considered Canadian content. He decided it would be a good idea to get on a plane, fly across the Atlantic on the taxpayer dime, and talk with Europeans about the best way to approach Canadian legislation on what is Canadian content. Maybe the minister could have consulted with Canadians instead. They are the people he has actually been elected to serve. This is just an idea.
Of course, the minister has said that he will not reveal how he is planning to change the rules until after the bill passes through Parliament. By doing this, he is leaving both Canadians and parliamentarians completely in the dark about what his legislation is going to look like in practice. It begs this question: What content will the Liberal government deem to be Canadian enough on people's social media? Will it have to be made by Canadian citizens? In that event, what about permanent residents or people here on study or work permits? Will it have to be produced in Canada? What would that mean for Canadians living abroad who make social media content? Will it have to be only in an official Canadian language? What would that mean, then, for cultural groups in Canada who speak another language?
Perhaps, and I suspect this is the actual plan, the Liberal government will require that content producers subscribe to a certain set of values to be truly considered Canadian content. The Liberals already demand faith-based groups to adhere to the Liberal Party's stance on certain issues to meet the eligibility criteria for the Canada summer jobs program. Therefore, it would be fair to assume that they will likely do the same in determining what content would be considered Canadian on the Internet or on social media.
The most alarming power given in this legislation is slipped into an unassuming clause buried in the text of the legislation that quietly allows the CRTC to create regulations “respecting such other matters as it deems necessary for the furtherance of its objects”. These 14 little words give the CRTC a blank cheque to act however it likes and arbitrarily create regulations whenever it feels it is necessary. CRTC bureaucrats are not elected officials, and they do not answer to Canadians. They should not be able to unilaterally create new regulations. It would be undoubtedly undemocratic to give them such broad, sweeping powers.
Under Bill C-11, the minister responsible assured Canadians that amateur content such as cooking videos or cat videos that people upload online would not be regulated under this proposed regulation, but officials at YouTube Canada were quick to respond to this comment by asserting that they had studied the legislation and the bill certainly would give the government the power to regulate amateur content.
I certainly know who I would believe with respect to that. That means that any content posted on any social media service could be subject to these arbitrary standards. One thing is clear. The Liberals are determined to censor our social media content, and that, by itself, is wrong.
On top of that, with the legislation being this broad, it is impossible to discern why something could be censored or the motivations behind it even. The Liberals are essentially saying to Canadians that they are going to censor what social media content we can access. They will not even tell us how they are going to censor it, but that it is okay and to just trust them on this one. I do not think so. I do not think most Canadians think so. We have seen far too many examples of the government trampling on charter rights to trust it.
We have seen how, under the Prime Minister, the government tested facial recognition technology on millions of travellers at Toronto Pearson International Airport without their knowledge or their consent. What happened to freedom?
We have seen how the government has been collecting cellphone data since the beginning of the pandemic without the consent of Canadians. What happened to freedom?
We have seen how, during a largely peaceful protest in downtown Ottawa, the government invoked the Emergencies Act to use unjustified and extraordinary powers against its own citizens. What happened to freedom?
We have seen how the government has discriminated against people based on their personal medical choices to bar them from air travel, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence. What happened to freedom?
In a recently revealed submission to the Department of Canadian Heritage, Twitter protested the recent proposals that would allow the government to block website access on the Canadian Internet saying that the measure would be similar to the kind of censorship found in places like China, North Korea and Iran. The submission goes on to say that the proposed measure “sacrifices freedom of expression to the creation of a government run system of surveillance of anyone who uses Twitter”. What happened to freedom?
The government is obviously not interested in respecting the rights or freedoms of people. The alternative to Bill C-11 is freedom. The only solution is to keep the government out of the equation.
Canada has long been home to many renowned actors, film makers, artists, performers and social media icons. It is belittling of the government to think that the only way Canadian art and culture can survive is through punitive legislation that forces people to watch it. The quality of Canadian content speaks for itself. The last thing it needs is to be propped up by a Liberal censorship regime.
Without government intervention, social media can continue to be a free market of ideas, content and information. Under this system, individual Canadians are left to decide for themselves what they want to see on social media. They will watch what they want to watch and ignore what they do not. Only under this self-regulating system can freedom truly exist.
Therefore, I move, seconded by the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
“Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, be not now read a third time but that it be read a third time this day six months hence.”
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The amendment is in order.
For questions and comments, we will go to the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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Mr. Speaker, talk about seeing something that is just not there. I think conspiracy theory 101 is the lesson from the other side here. What Bill C-11 is all about is fairly straightforward. It is the modernization of the Broadcasting Act. It is as simple as that. Maybe the Conservatives get a gold star nowadays if they mention the word “freedom” in their speeches. I do not know where the member is getting the information from.
If the member wants to be consistent with what he said, does that mean the Conservative Party of Canada's new approach to the CRTC is to get rid of it? Are they saying the CRTC regulations should not be applied to other media streams? Is that what the Conservative Party's position is today?
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Mr. Speaker, the member suggested I am seeing things that are not there. I think he is actually right. There are some things I am seeing that are not there.
What I am seeing that is not there is the idea of freedom from the government, the idea of respecting people's rights, the idea that we can actually let Canadians choose for themselves what they want to see on the Internet, what they want to see on their social media and what they do not, and the idea that we can actually enable Canadian content producers to produce the great content they produce without the need for the government to prop them up with censorship.
Those are the things I am seeing that are not there. Those are the things the government is doing, and those things should not be there.
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Mr. Speaker, this again feels like a bad movie where the Conservative Party members are opposing just for the sake of opposing.
I will ask my colleague a two-part question. I hope his answer will show me that they are not opposing for the sake of opposing, in this case.
He spoke about local Canadian content and how to determine whether content is local. He seemed to be criticizing the implementation of a point system. He gave the example of a movie that talked about Toronto but was filmed in the United States. From what I understood, he seemed to be saying that it would be acceptable to consider that movie Canadian content. I am sorry, but if the royalties and all the actors were paid in the U.S. and all that money is going to stay in the U.S., then I do not think that qualifies as local content, just like an Australian movie that talks about Quebec would not be considered local content either.
I have two questions. First, if we do not have a point system, a mathematical formula or some fairly logical way of assessing whether content is local, how are we going to determine that? What does my colleague propose?
Second, is he really opposed to showcasing Canadian content and giving jobs to people here, whether in Quebec or Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, I think the member was referencing an example I used of a film about the hockey team the Toronto Maple Leafs. I do not know what his objection is to a Canadian hockey team being in a film. Maybe if it was the Montreal Canadiens he would be more open to it. I do not know.
He also mentions the idea of several other examples I used, and I used the example of Deadpool. It was filmed in Canada and co-written by a Canadian. It is about a Canadian character. What does he see as not being Canadian there? That certainly sounds pretty Canadian to me, so there are obviously some flaws in the way the system works, and the government is proposing to take that system and apply it to our social media as well. There are clearly problems, so why would we want to impose a system that is already flawed onto further content? It does not make any sense to me.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague from Banff—Airdrie for his opinion of the direction the government has given to the CRTC to implement Bill C-11. What does he think of the direction? I have not seen it.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that question gets at the heart of one of the challenges with the bill. I mentioned during my speech the fact that there essentially is a lot of room for interpretation, and a lot of grey area, in terms of how this would all be implemented. I think leaving Canadians in the dark in such a way, when we are talking about essentially censoring what kind of content they can see without even knowing how it would be censored and in what ways, makes for greater concerns than the fact that things are going to be censored to begin with. I think that really gets to the heart of one of the big problems with the bill, and I appreciate the member raising that and giving me a chance to highlight that one more time.
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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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