44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
- Dec/13/22 11:27:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Edmonton Strathcona has been speaking up time and time again on women's rights, yet we see the Conservative Party is against basic reproductive freedoms. Its members are politicizing issues of human rights elsewhere, targeting other countries, yet it is them who have shut down committees on addressing fundamental rights of women in Canada.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague what she thinks about the Conservative Party being so committed to denying basic reproductive rights to women. What does it say about the party today?
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- Dec/13/22 11:48:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciated that my hon. colleague talked about values and said there are things that should be above partisanship. Human rights is certainly one of them. I think most of us in this chamber would agree that women's rights are human rights, but not the Conservatives.
One of the fundamental issues of women's rights is the right to control their own bodies, not to have men tell them what is going to happen with their bodies, nor politicians and Conservative backbenchers, nor the church. The right of women to control their own bodies is a fundamental human right. I would think that in 2022 we would all agree on that, yet we see the Conservatives using tricks time and time again in committees to shut down important discussions on human rights because they are out to deny women their most basic right, the right to control their bodies.
What does my hon. colleague think of the values in the messages the Conservatives are sending in their attack on women's rights again and again?
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- Dec/13/22 12:16:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry if words were said that offended people on either side. I agree with my colleague that people have lost confidence because of the kind of bickering that goes on. However, I do not know if what has been raised meets the test. I say that because it is not clear what was said. We know that a lot of dumb comments were being made that day on both sides, and that is certainly a question of the confidence that people have, but I do not know if that means we are losing confidence with respect to the ability to govern. This does not meet the test that we are now a divided House that is unable to govern; rather, this is a partisan House.
I am not questioning whether this was or was not said. The member certainly feels that her reputation has been impinged. However, she raised three examples of why this meets the test, and I do not think they do meet it.
The first example was about using bulk mailings to attack someone else. That is using parliamentary resources to deliberately target someone in a riding. That would be an abuse of parliamentary rights, because the resources of the House are being used to attack.
Second, if someone makes comments on the record to a journalist, that is an official statement, which is different than someone heckling. A heckle is something that is ethereal; it may or may not have happened. However, if someone puts something on the record to a journalist, that can be brought back to the House if it is false.
The third example she gave was of a minister deliberately misleading the House when answering a question, because what has been asked in question period is on the record. When it is on the record, a minister must speak truthfully. We have had a number of examples over the years where ministers have misled the House, but we have also had examples where ministers were clearly not telling the truth and the Speaker deferred based on the issue that it may or may not have been a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Therefore, the standard we have for meeting the test for contempt, I think you will find, Mr. Speaker, is very high. However, I remember the other day when this unfortunate incident came to light that the Speaker said he would go back and check the record to clarify if this was said. If it was, then my colleague has a right to go forward. If it was not said or was not picked up, then it is a matter of opinion of what happened back and forth with respect to the heckling. I leave that to the Speaker.
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Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with a number of factors. The massive power of the tech giants is unprecedented. The use of algorithms is really distorting public conversation and there are algorithms that drive people to extremist content.
One of my concerns is that there was a pre-existing problem, where we saw a few of the media giants in Canada buy up many of the small newspapers and fire staff. If we look at any of what used to be great local papers, often the website pages are the same, page after page and newspaper after newspaper. We are not getting local content from those sources. I am concerned, if we are talking about supporting local, that we not just be paying into some of the large media platforms that have literally stripped our local voices out of our local media.
How do we ensure the money is going to create a balanced ecosystem of local and regional identities that are part of the fabric of Canadian conversation?
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Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to suggest the CRTC is the best avenue to deal with the digital giants. I listen to my hon. colleague and, when she talks about these big media companies, she is missing the fundamental fact that the biggest media company in the world is Facebook, with $82.4 billion in ad revenue.
The other fact of this ad revenue is that Facebook falsified its metrics, which anywhere else would be fraud, but when one has monopolistic control, people had no choice. Facebook is actually deciding what people see through the algorithms. We can get an extreme right-wing marginal publication such as Breitbart be one of the highest read on Facebook because of the algorithms. It is the editor. It is deciding what is being seen. It has falsified its metrics. Its profits are unprecedented.
I do not see why the Conservative Party is bending itself backward to defend a company such as Facebook, which has shown such dismal commitments to human rights, democracy and working for innovation, other than making Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest people on the planet.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly found what was said very entertaining. I do not like to go down the dark wells of conspiracy minds very often, but it was nice to see how the Conservatives look when they look internally.
The member talked about Elon Musk and what a great breath of fresh air he is. The guy has almost crashed one of the biggest platforms in the world in the space of two weeks.
What is so fresh about Elon Musk? Well, there is the rise of anti-Semitism. Jeez, that is a breath of fresh air. There is Vladimir Putin's troll armies against the people of Ukraine. What a breath of fresh air that is for backbench Conservatives. Then, of course, Elon Musk wants to jail the United States' most illustrious doctor for the work he did in preventing the pandemic. I bet the Conservatives just love that. What a breath of fresh air that is. If only we could go after medical science.
Then, on the other hand, we have the big, bad CBC running everything. I thought it was George Soros doing this. I thought it was Klaus Schwab. When the leader of the Conservative Party said he was going to go after cryptocurrency, replace the Bank of Canada and shut down the CBC, I did not know it was because of the conspiracy that the CBC controls everything.
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