44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Drummond for his great work. The committee members worked really well together.
We made a number of changes to Bill C-18. Which of the amendments that were made to improve Bill C-18 does my colleague think is the most important?
I think that the original bill was good and that the bill now before the House is much better. I know that the member also helped a lot with that.
In his view, which of the amendments that were adopted is the most important?
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Mr. Speaker, I understand I will be having to split my time before and after question period.
I wanted to start off with a tribute to Jim Carr. We have this tradition in place that we refer to members of Parliament by their riding names, like the member of Parliament for Winnipeg South Centre. When they pass away, as Jim did, and we received the sad notice of that yesterday, we can use their real names as opposed to their riding names. It is a sad moment, and we have been through this over the last few years with a number of members of Parliament.
With Jim, it was particularly saddening, because tomorrow we would have been paying tribute to him in the House of Commons with a round of speeches. We were aware that we needed to do that, and I think all 337 of us would have loved to have had Jim hear those words of praise for him. We will now be doing that in his absence and in his memory.
It is important to note that his popularity was such that within the NDP caucus a number of members of Parliament wanted to rise to speak. The tradition is one speaker from each party. We had difficulty determining that in our caucus, because people respected Jim so much. He was a gentleman. He was very eloquent. He was passionate about Canada. He will be sorely missed, and I want to pass on my condolences to his family. As we pay tribute to him informally through the course of our work today, having had to suspend the House yesterday, I know that through the course of the week and tomorrow, we will be paying more formal tributes to him. He will be missed.
The object of the debate for the next few minutes is Bill C-18.
My first letter as Canadian heritage critic to the Canadian heritage minister right after the election in 2021 was to push the government to bring immediately to bear a bill that would force big tech to start making its contributions to Canadian society.
As members know, over the past few years we have seen a hoovering up of ad revenues, which have decimated our community news, whether we are talking about radio stations or newspapers, right across the country. My community of New Westminster Burnaby has lost two publications: the New Westminster News Leader and the Burnaby News Leader. We continue to have Burnaby Now and the Royal City Record. We also have new online publishers and two community online publications that do a terrific job: the Burnaby Beacon and the New West Anchor.
The reality is that the impact has been felt right across the country. It has decimated local news and it has meant fewer journalists. What has been worrisome about this is that at the same time we have seen a parallel rise, because big tech has not taken any sort of responsibility for the rise in hate, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia. These two trends are connected.
On the one hand, there is pressure on local community media that brings us together in the community and ensures that people understand that even if their neighbours are different, they all share the same values and goals in the community. Second, there is what I would not even say is big tech's reluctance to curb hate. What it has actually done is promoted it, because extremism, hate and disinformation help to fuel revenues for it. It has been proven many times that the algorithms big tech uses help to foster hate and conflict in the community. Big tech profits from that. The increase in so-called “engagement” leads to more revenues for them.
The importance of bringing forward a bill like Bill C-18 to force big tech to start to provide that support for local community journalism is absolutely fundamental.
That is why the NDP, right after the election, told the government it had to bring forward this legislation on the Australian model. Although it has many weaknesses, which I will perhaps address in the second half of my speech, the Australian model is also a good one, because it stared down big tech. The Australians decided that even though big tech was threatening to withdraw, they were going to push companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to take responsibility and provide funding for journalism. It paid off.
Therefore, we pushed the government, and it introduced Bill C-18, which represents a significant step forward in forcing big tech to provide supports for local journalism and journalism right across this country.
The reality is that when Bill C-18 was tabled, it was a bill that we supported being brought to committee, but at committee we wanted to improve the bill. There was much that was missing in the bill regarding transparency, supporting local community press and journalism, supporting non-profit journalism, and allowing indigenous news outlets to have a role. There was radio silence regarding indigenous news outlets.
We had to fight to get all those things into the bill. We brought it to committee, and I am pleased to announce today that 16 NDP amendments were adopted by the committee working together to ensure just that, a better Bill C-18, one that we can be proud of. It includes, in a comprehensive way, indigenous journalism and indigenous news outlets. It ensures community supports. It ensures that the community radio and non-profit outlets can benefit, and it ensures transparency. Therefore, I am pleased to say that because of the NDP's work, and working with committee members from all parties, Bill C-18 is better than ever, and I am proud to support it in the House of Commons.
I look forward to the second half of my speech after QP.
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to conclude my remarks by thanking members of the committee. The 16 amendments from the NDP that were adopted have improved Bill C-18 immeasurably, and we have a much better bill coming into the House.
I look forward to questions and comments from my colleagues.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North is asking me to imagine what it is like to be in the mind of a Conservative and I have great difficulty in doing that.
I found a bit of a muddle from the Conservative side, and we have seen this before in other legislation. On the one hand, Alberta community newspapers and Saskatchewan community newspapers stepped up. These are newspapers that basically represent nearly half of the Conservative caucus. Their representatives came to committee and said that Bill C-18 has to be adopted, but to improve the aspects from journalism so that more journalists and more Canadian newspapers can benefit from this.
Conservatives should have taken their marching orders from their constituents, including the local community newspapers across Alberta and Saskatchewan who said that Bill C-18 was needed but improvement needed to be brought. The NDP brought forward that improvement. The NDP brought forward an amendment that would allow for a two-person operation, even if they are owners and operators of that business, to access the money that would come from big tech and those negotiations. What did the Conservatives do? They voted against the NDP amendment.
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Madam Speaker, that is exactly my point. Conservatives voted against the NDP amendment that opened it up for owner-operators. That is what the community newspapers in Alberta and Saskatchewan and across the country asked for: owner-operators and part-time journalists who are working.
The NDP amendment opens it up so that if a couple owns and operates a community newspaper, they would now qualify. If two part-time journalists are employed by that newspaper or that community publication, they would now qualify, even at a part-time level. Even if we are talking about one and a half journalists in terms of full-time equivalents or even one journalist in a full-time equivalent, the publications would now qualify.
That is why I find it passing strange the NDP amendment that was so successful and has been praised by a wide variety of groups was opposed by only one party, the Conservative Party.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his work. The amendments that were adopted expanded the scope so it would apply to all indigenous communities and to indigenous journalists. Bill C‑18 now allows indigenous publications and indigenous journalists to receive funding. That is a big improvement. Transparency and accountability are in the bill now, thanks to the NDP's amendments. The member for Drummond also proposed some very valuable amendments.
As far as transparency is concerned, the most important amendment is the one that ensures that owners who operate a small publication somewhere in Saskatchewan or in Alberta are now eligible even if those operators are also journalists. Even if they work part time, they are eligible. Every party around the table voted in favour of that amendment. The only party that voted against it was the Conservative Party.
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Madam Speaker, I invite Conservative members to read the bill. It is always very important to read the bill before coming into the House.
What Bill C-18 does is provide an obligatory process of negotiation. Big tech has been vacuuming up money from communities right across the country, including Pembroke, Burnaby, New Westminster and communities across the length and breadth of this land. Big tech is now obliged, as it is in Australia, to fund local journalists and local publications. Big tech has benefited enormously from the journalism that has been done in communities across this country. It is now obliged to pay its fair share, because there is an obligatory negotiation process.
I am particularly proud of the NDP amendment that puts in a strict timeline, so big tech cannot play around. It cannot skate around in circles. It is obliged to negotiate fairly and fund local journalism. I am proud of the NDP amendments that were adopted. I am proud of the committee members for working together.
Bill C-18 is a bill that will benefit all Canadians, including indigenous people.
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- Dec/13/22 6:52:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first off, I would like to give a shout-out to and acknowledge the health care workers across this country. Nurses, doctors, health care workers and health care professionals are doing such a remarkable job in such difficult circumstances right now with our health care system.
As members are well aware, what we have seen is a virtual collapse of the health care system in parts of the country. Over the course of the last few months, we have seen a situation in Ontario where the average wait time in emergency rooms is now 20 hours. That is 20 hours for patients to wait, for seniors to wait, for children to wait. In pediatric hospitals, we are seeing the same incredible length of time for people to get into the hospital. Tragically last weekend, as a family was waiting, a child died in an Ajax area hospital, reportedly because there was no access to emergency support.
In Alberta, we have seen a collapse in dozens of Alberta communities. Of course, we can say that the UCP, the Conservative government in Alberta, has an appalling disregard for the health and well-being of Albertans, just as we can blame Doug Ford in Ontario for showing an appalling disregard for the health of Ontario citizens. However, the reality is that the health care system across the country is under intense pressure. The health care professionals I mentioned earlier are the ones struggling to provide services to keep people alive and to provide the kind of medical care that Canadians deserve in this profound deterioration of health care.
What are the origins of this? Well, as we saw, the Stephen Harper government basically slashed the accelerator fund for health care in this country. There was hope back in 2015, when the new Liberal government came in, that it would reverse what was effectively a cut to health care funding. However, surprisingly to all of us and in repudiation of the commitments the Prime Minister and Liberal candidates across the country made in the 2015 election, we have not seen the Liberals reverse the Harper cuts to the accelerator clause.
Federal funding for health care in this country is at 22%, which means, as a result, that even provinces that are well meaning and want to reinforce the health care system do not have the wherewithal to do that. The NDP has put forward the proposition that we have to provide supports for health care and treat health care as the precious and valued public service that it is.
The Liberal government, within four days of COVID hitting, provided an unprecedented $750 billion in liquidity supports to Canada's big banks to maintain their profits. What the NDP members say is that the Liberal government should treat health care with more importance and with a higher priority than it treats the priorities of bank profits in this country. If three-quarters of a trillion dollars can go to bank profits, the federal government has the wherewithal to ensure adequate funding for the health care that Canadians need.
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- Dec/13/22 7:00:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we talk about innovation. The member for Vancouver Kingsway, the NDP health critic, has been very clear about this, as has the leader of the NDP, the member for Burnaby South.
First off, we have talked about Canada pharmacare and brought forward the Canada pharmacare act exactly for that reason. Putting in place pharmacare, as we know, provides for the bulk purchasing power that reduces the cost of drugs to the health care system. In New Zealand, some of the drugs that were referenced by their pharmacare program were reduced in cost by 90%. We brought the Canada pharmacare act forward, and the Liberals and Conservatives voted against it.
We have talked about home care, because that reduces costs as well, and enforcing the Canada Health Act is vitally important. The reality is that Conservatives are trying to burn down the health care system, and they are pyromaniacs, but Liberals are bringing the gasoline by refusing to fund the health care system adequately.
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