44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 9, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, since August 2021, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the people of Afghanistan have been subject to the rule of this brutal terrorist group. They have had their rights and freedoms stripped away from them. Women and girls have been subjected to misogynistic laws, discrimination and now even prevented from attending school. Canada has continued to provide humanitarian assistance, immigration services and aid, because that is what Canada does.
Can the Minister of Public Safety please update the House on how the government intends to continue support the people of Afghanistan?
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Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to be here today.
Listening to the comments from the other side of the aisle, one would think that the world is falling down or something to that effect. In fact, Bill C-11 is very prudent. It is a good step and a very big first step in modernizing the Broadcasting Act, which has not been modernized since 1991.
In fact, it would do nothing to discourage creation or streaming for Canadians who wish to produce content. It would encourage more Canadians to produce Canadian content. Who would not be in favour of such a goal, to have more Canadian content seen, listened to and read by Canadians from coast to coast to coast? This is a bill that has been debated on both sides, in the Senate and here, for hours upon hours and with amendments brought forward. Would the hon. member not agree that this is the best way to produce legislation, when we have both Houses working, witnesses coming forward and the committee doing the work that Canadians sent those MPs here to do?
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Madam Speaker, it is great to be here this afternoon, and I hope all of my colleagues are having a productive day.
I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-11, the online streaming act. This important piece of legislation will level the playing field by requiring online streaming services to support Canadian artists and culture, just as Canadian broadcasters have been doing for decades.
As we have all heard many times, the last time the Broadcasting Act was updated was over 30 years ago, in 1991, when yours truly just finished high school, I believe. Since then, the way content is broadcast to audiences has changed dramatically, but our system is stuck in the 20th century and needs to be updated. After over a year of thorough study in both Houses of Parliament, the finish line, yes, is in sight.
Conservatives have recently started claiming that parts of this bill have not yet received the appropriate scrutiny by parliamentarians. I beg to differ.
With all due respect, I fail to understand how they can genuinely suggest that this bill has not been studied enough. At every step of the process, they have attempted to delay and distract from the issue at hand, which is bringing the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century to support Canadian artists and creators.
To show just how much this bill has been studied, let us take a trip down memory lane. On February 2, 2022, Bill C-11 was tabled in the House of Commons. Second reading debate started on February 16, 2022. Over the course of five days of debate, we heard over 15 hours of speeches from 48 members of Parliament in all recognized parties, including 29 Conservatives.
Conservatives then claimed that they did not have enough time to debate but then moved concurrence motions that blocked their own ability to speak and debate on the bill. They did this during the previous iteration of the bill in the last Parliament and on Bill C-11 in this Parliament, when they cut three hours of debate time and prevented their own members from having the opportunity to speak. I note the irony. Ultimately, these obstructionist tactics have only hurt the Canadian artists and creators that the online streaming act, Bill C-11, seeks to support.
Fortunately, Bill C-11, finally—
Mr. Ron Liepert: Because of the unnecessary election fiasco.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): Order.
Mr. Francesco Sorbara: Madam Speaker, the committee gave our colleagues the opportunity to study the bill with much closer scrutiny. That study lasted 12 meetings, where the committee heard from 80 witnesses and received 52 written briefs, but do not worry; the Conservatives still managed to delay and distract. They filibustered during the meeting at which the minister was supposed to appear and they filibustered the committee's clause-by-clause consideration.
They can try to deny it today, but the member for Lethbridge admitted it herself. She said, and this is a direct quote, “I did filibuster at committee”.
Fortunately, our colleagues in the Bloc and the NDP have decided to join us in modernizing Canada's broadcasting system through Bill C-11, and 38 amendments passed at the heritage committee, which included amendments from all recognized parties. Despite the Conservatives' best efforts, the bill made its way to the Senate.
Very well. At this point, I think it is valuable to remind my colleagues that the Conservative Party of Canada is the only political party recognized in both the House of Commons and the Senate. Senator Leo Housakos, the proud Spartan, who is both the Conservative critic for the bill in the Senate and the chair of the committee that reviewed it, is a regular in “Kill Bill C-11” videos posted by the Leader of the Opposition on social media.
Ironically, those videos, I might add, would not be impacted whatsoever by this bill, no matter what he claims. The best word to describe the Senate committee's study of Bill C-11 is “robust”.
Starting in June 2022, the committee spent over six months reviewing the subject matter of Bill C-11, hearing from 138 witnesses over 40 meetings. The members did not mishear me. I said 40 meetings, dedicated to considering the subject of this very important bill. Senators spent nine of those meetings in clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-11, including three-hour meetings, making it the longest clause-by-clause consideration in Senate history.
The bill emerged with amendments from all recognized parties and groups in the Senate, of which we are pleased to support close to 80%.
Here we are, over a year later, hearing the Conservatives urging us to send the bill back to committee, after over 100 hours of committee study, over 200 witnesses and dozens of written briefs, including from Telelatino in Toronto. I know that the folks at Telelatino produce great ethnocultural broadcasting, and they are in support of this wonderful bill.
This does not even include the countless hours of debate and study of the previous version of the bill that contributed to the online streaming act. As it stands, this bill has amendments from all recognized parties and groups in both houses of Parliament. It has truly been a group effort, and the future of Canada's broadcasting system is better for it.
The Conservatives are now bringing up Quebec. It is great they are finally paying attention, but they must have missed the two unanimous motions passed by the National Assembly to support the Broadcasting Act and the entire Quebec cultural industry pushing for the bill's swift passage.
The reality is throughout this process there have been endless opportunities for Conservatives to work collaboratively to defend Canadian artists and creators. Every time, they have chosen to side with foreign tech giants to maintain the status quo.
On this side of the House, we believe in doing more for Canadian culture, not less. We know in the prior Conservative administration how much less its members did for Canadian artists and culture and how they cut spending on Canadian culture, artists and content creators. We will not do that and we have not done that. We will continue to support the Canadian arts sector, culture sector and content creators.
I know this has been brought up many times throughout the debate, but there is an urgent need for this legislation. It cannot be overstated. The integrity of Canada's arts and culture system is at risk. We owe it to the tens of thousands of Canadians working in the arts and culture sector across the country. We have done the work as parliamentarians and now it is time to pass Bill C-11.
Many of us watch streaming services that provide content over what are called non-traditional methods. My wife and I really enjoy Ted Lasso, and the third season of Ted Lasso is coming out on March 15. We very much enjoy it. It is very well written. It comes across on I believe Apple TV+ and we pay a monthly fee for that. That content provider would now be subject to the Broadcasting Act, and it should be, much like Canadian broadcasters have been subject to the Broadcasting Act for decades.
Finally, to end off, the Broadcasting Act has not been revised since 1991. I wish to applaud all members of both the House and the Senate on those committees who have worked so judiciously, even when their opinions did not converge, to be unified and even when they disagreed vehemently and passionately from potentially different ideological bents on how they view the Broadcasting Act and how they view the CRTC. However, they did the work Canadians sent them here to do, and particularly in the House of Commons. They did the work their constituents elected them to do judiciously and diligently to bring forth the best possible legislation with regard to the sector we are talking to, which is broadcasting and updating the Broadcasting Act after three decades, or since 1991.
I look forward to questions and comments from my colleagues and I hope everyone is having a wonderful and productive day and week.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Calgary Shepard for his question.
I have known the hon. member for Calgary Shepard for many years since I was elected a member of Parliament and I have a great deal of respect for him.
The content creation would not impacted in any way by Bill C-11. That is not the intent of the bill in any way. We encourage and value content creation by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. This is a bill to modernize our Broadcasting Act and ensure the technological advances that have allowed streaming services like Netflix, Crave or Apple TV+ are brought under the Broadcasting Act, much like the Canadian homegrown broadcasters have been so for many decades.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Montcalm for his question.
Quebec is a very economic, vibrant sector here in Canada, and we applaud all the artists in the cultural sector in the province of Quebec. We should take a nod from them in their support of Bill C-11 and how it would modernize the Broadcasting Act.
Also, we then scratch our heads about why the Conservative Party of Canada is against a bill that the cultural sector here in Canada supports. It makes me think about the other ways Conservatives are looking at this bill, such as for ideological purposes and partisan purposes, and not for the direct benefit of the Canadian cultural sector, including the cultural sector in the province of Quebec.
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Madam Speaker, I work closely with the hon. member for London—Fanshawe on the Ahmadiyya Parliamentary Friendship Group, and we share the same concerns when it comes to the beer and wine sector here in Canada and some of the challenges it faces.
Obviously, COVID accelerated a number of trends in our economy and our society, from working habits to staying home and from streaming to online shopping. We need to pay attention to the changes that have happened. Exactly as the member stated, this amends the Broadcasting Act to address an acceleration in streaming services. Therefore, for the broadcasters, much like the broadcasters that are under the Broadcasting Act today that pay their fair share for Canadian artists and content creators, the same thing would apply for those services now. It would be brought in under the Broadcasting Act.
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