44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2022 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I think this a good question and a good point that the member raises. I know that this is something I hear frequently from many people. I have experienced that myself. We just want to be able to have a couple of extra channels that maybe will allow us to see a few more hockey games or something, and we are forced to buy a whole package of things that we do not even really want to be able to do that.
I have heard that many times from many people, and I think it really does come to the heart of the problem here, which is that we are taking what really is a flawed system that has been set up for legacy media and television: those kinds of things. It is already flawed, and we are going to take that and apply that to social media content and to other content on the Internet. It was already flawed for what it was doing.
It was designed back in the 1980s, so 40 years ago, and we are applying that to something new that was not even invented at that point in time. As I think I said, it was already flawed. It seems to me like that is a really big mistake.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate many of the comments that my colleague has brought forward. One of the things that is really important for us to recognize is that over the years we have seen significant change. In the early 1990s, when the Internet really started to take off, we started to see more streaming really beginning. It was not really until the late 1990s. The Broadcasting Act has not been amended in any significant way since then. I wonder if the member could provide her thoughts on why it is so critically important, just recognizing technological changes, for this act to be modernized.
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Madam Speaker, you are quite right. It is quite the comment to follow.
I look at Bill C-11 from a totally different perspective from the official opposition: from how they see the bill and interpret the legislation. Understanding that things change through time is really important here. It seems to be something the Conservative Party has not necessarily realized yet.
I raise this in the form of a question. When we talk about how things change over time and the need to modernize the legislation, I figured it would have been fairly easy to argue why Bill C-11 was so important to Canada. We need this legislation. I want to talk about why it is so important that we have this legislation shortly.
Suffice to say, when I was first elected in the eighties at the Manitoba legislature, we did not have very much when it came to Internet services. In fact, those were the days when we actually had to use the telephone line: We would hear the dial up, the long buzz and then one would know they were on the Internet by a certain sound that came through the computer speakers. It took a while to see that take place.
A few years later, as we started to get into the nineties, things became a whole lot more advanced with the Internet—
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Madam Speaker, I quite like my friend from Brandon—Souris, who serves with me on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.
He said at the end of his speech earlier that we should not try to regulate the Internet. However, regulating the Internet is not the purpose of the bill. I am sure my colleague is well aware that if Quebec wants its culture to flourish in a sea of anglophones, it needs support. That is what the bill seeks to do: offer support to Quebec culture to enable it to compete with American commercial culture.
That is how the bill should be regarded. The objective is not to regulate the Internet or to limit freedom of expression, but rather to ensure that all forms of expression find their place on the Internet, especially French-language expression.
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Madam Speaker, I would have gladly given my time up to my colleague from Perth—Wellington to answer that question because he is absolutely right. What we are talking about here is the creation and the creators on the Internet, not the traditional types of media that we have had in Canada. This is the Internet sites that we are dealing with and the types of creation that are on there are growing and expanding. I do not know where the member gets his information, but there are more creators on the Internet today than we have every had before.
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Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in the House of Commons to represent the constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha.
Today, I am speaking to one of the most important bills that will come before this Parliament: Bill C-11, also known as the online streaming act. Bill C-11 would impact anyone who uses the Internet. Bill C-11, or the online streaming act, is a significant piece of legislation. It is long and convoluted in how it is written, but in a nutshell it would mean that the CRTC would have significant governing powers over content creators and what is uploaded to the Internet.
For those who do not know, the CRTC is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. According to its website, it is an administrative tribunal that operates at arm's length from the federal government. This bill appears to make it even closer to the government, meaning more government overreach. As we have all experienced, more bureaucracy never equals more efficiency or equity.
In this speech, I am going to outline three key reasons why Canadians should be deeply disappointed and concerned with this bill. Number one is the lack of transparency. Number two is logistics and the fallout from not foreseeing the consequences of this poorly written bill. Number three is unnecessary urgency.
If someone Google searches Bill C-11, they will read the following: “The online streaming act does not apply to individual Canadians, whether they are users, creators, digital influencers or workers.” Just for the record, in case people at home do not know, an online content creator could perhaps be a child who has uploaded their performance at their talent show, Justin Bieber, perhaps one's favourite cook, an athlete or a musician. All of these people are considered to be online content creators. This is the biggest area of mistrust and lack of transparency when we go back and read that “the online streaming act does not apply to individual Canadians, whether they are users, creators, digital influencers or workers.”
We have heard multiple times from the heritage minister that this bill would not target content creators, but rather the platforms, which means Facebook, TikTok, Netflix, etc. However, Ian Scott, the chair of the CRTC, the entity that would be responsible for doing the regulation on the government's behalf, says that user-generated content would be fair game. Who are we to believe?
That is fairly inconsistent information and, as such, Canadians are very skeptical of the “just trust us” approach. I do not know of any contract with any reputable organization where the customer is asked to sign now and learn the details later. This approach lacks transparency and, in the absence of information, we can expect people to fill it in with misinformation. The Liberal government continues to leave out information, which leads to mistrust. Why is the government asking Canadians to just trust it? What premise has it set to deserve such blind faith?
I want to move on to my second major concern: the logistics of this bill. As I have mentioned, there are very few clear details on how this bill would impact content creators and users. What I do know is that there are thousands of videos uploaded every day, and probably even millions. How will the government plan to manage this? What is the plan? I have seen time and again the government fail to plan and constantly react instead of prepare. We have the highest wait times at passport offices that we have ever seen, because the government was not prepared. How is it going to manage the volume of content creators fairly? I would like to know these details before we pass this bill.
Rules and guidelines are extremely important when generating content. I worked in both mainstream media and as an online content creator, and it is extremely important to have guidelines that equal the playing field, but this bill would not do that. Here is a quote from Dr. Irene Berkowitz. Irene said:
Bill C-11's wrong turn starts with the notion that CRTC has jurisdiction over the whole Internet for two reasons. The first is scale. Consider the math. On YouTube alone, 500 hours of content is uploaded per minute....
Second, new media is a feature, not a bug.... Bill C-11 gets it backwards. Instead of positioning new media as a model to engage audiences, it ensnares new media in the epic fail part of our old media: disregard for audiences.
Here is another quote. It is from Darcy Michael, a comedian and digital content creator:
Bill C-11 will directly affect my ability to earn an income.
He went on:
The sheer logistics of the CRTC trying to approve Canadian content for every video uploaded to social media is impossible. Across the country, there are thousands of videos uploaded every day. There is simply no way to approve this. You are creating a logistical nightmare, with all due respect to the members, without properly understanding the industry that we're in.
He continued:
I don't want to be paying 30% to do something I don't benefit from as a digital creator. I think it's a second tax. I think that by the end of the day I'll be paying 80% tax on my income. That isn't fair.
To my third point, why the rush? This is a significant piece of legislation that needs a lot of attention and detail, so why would anyone who truly cares about democracy want this rushed? Bill C-11 would be the first major update to the Broadcasting Act in 31 years, and this government is ramming it through. Why?
Dozens of interested witnesses have yet to be heard by the heritage committee. The government has an obligation to listen to those who are directly impacted by the bill. By imposing an arbitrary deadline to return the bill to the House, the government is not allowing members to carefully consider each clause or amendment, and this will inevitably result in a flawed and incoherent Broadcasting Act, which comes back to the second point I made earlier: There is no way to work out the logistics in such a rushed approach.
I am somebody who likes things done quickly. I am always about speed and efficiency, but this is being rushed. I would ask Canadians if they would want someone regulating every book they read and every song they hear. Do they want censorship at that level? Bill C-11 would create winners and losers based on the CRTC's rule book, which is unknown at this time and will be decided on with zero transparency to Canadians.
Here are some powerful words from Oorbee Roy, a digital content creator, who said:
Not only does the bill not help me. It also hurts me and actively undermines my needs as an artist. There is no language in the bill to tell me otherwise.
Frankly, I don't qualify. I'm just not the right fit. That I'm not the right fit is a story I've been told my whole life. ... I'm too round. I'm a nerd. I'm too old. I'm female. I'm not feminine enough. I'm not the right demographic, but I've never been the right demographic. My voice has been suppressed far too many times.
That is a powerful quote from Oorbee Roy, a digital content creator.
I will wrap up my speech by saying that George Orwell warned us of the dangers of having the thought police, and I think that Bill C-11 is a potentially dangerous bill that needs a lot more attention before we can get it right. I urge everyone in this House to vote against it and take the time it needs to make sure we get it done right.
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