44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 9, 2023 10:00AM
Yes, Madam Speaker, that is quite easy. In applying the Broadcasting Act to the Internet, which is obviously trying to put a square peg into a round hole, it gives the broadcasting regulator the power over what content appears on the Internet. That is the whole purpose of the bill.
I do not have enough time to list all the clauses in the bill that would give the bureaucracy the power to control what people see and say on the Internet and, therefore, violate their freedom of expression rights found in the Charter of Rights, under section 2(b).
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It was a rookie mistake, Mr. Speaker. I apologize, wholeheartedly.
The point is that there is nothing at all within the legislation that would infringe upon a person's rights and freedom, and yet the Conservative Party members continue to go out and spread information that is not accurate and it is causing a lot of anxiety in our communities.
Could the member cite something specific within the legislation that clearly says that it is an infringement on a person's rights or freedoms?
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Madam Speaker, as I indicated earlier, nothing in this legislation threatens Canadian freedoms and rights, and that has been very well established. The Conservative members know this, yet they continue to give a false impression.
Given that we have a minority government, we are very dependent on opposition parties. Whether it is the Bloc, the Green Party or the New Democratic Party, we are all saying the same thing: There is no infringement on rights and freedom of speech. However, the Conservatives continue saying that.
I wonder if they applied the same principles to the Broadcasting Act that they are applying today, or going back to the traditional act, where there were Canadian content mandates, for example. Is it the Conservative Party's policy today that it would also get rid of this so that there would not be a level—
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- Mar/9/23 6:46:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise this evening in Adjournment Proceedings to pick up on a question I asked on the occasion of World Children's Day. On the closest opportunity to that day, I asked the hon. minister responsible for children and families whether the government was finally making any progress toward creating, at the federal level, a position to advocate for the rights of children.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada has signed on to and which most countries have signed on to. Since 1989, virtually the entire world has committed. Strangely enough, not the United States, but most countries around the world have adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I pointed out that the committee that oversees that convention has been asking Canada for some time when we plan to fulfill one of our obligations, which is to create a position within the government that advocates for the rights of the child and that oversees, monitors and promotes the well-being of children: a children's advocate.
Since I first asked that question in November of last year, Canada lost one of our most extraordinary advocates for children. Senator Landon Pearson, whom I had the honour to know and work with, passed away. She was perennially, in the other place, making the same points I am making here tonight: that Canada is letting down our children and that we need to have an advocate for children at the federal level. People may ask “Why?” and say that Canadian children are doing great. We do not know, if we do not advocate and if we do not collect data.
I found fairly recent statistics, from last year, 2022, in a report called the “KidsRights Index”. Because I am a proud Canadian, I like it when we rate really high, so I immediately looked up the top 10 countries in the world. The top is Iceland; second, Sweden; third, Finland; fourth, Netherlands. I will not keep going, because we were not in the top 10. We were not in the top 20. We were not in the top 30. We rank, in the world community, at number 48 in terms of measurable commitments and measurable achievements to ensure the rights of the child.
What are the rights of the child? They are the rights to life, to health, to education, to protection from harm and to enjoying an enabling environment that supports them as they grow. One would think that Canadian children must be pretty well off because Canada is an industrialized society that is wealthy. A recent report on poverty among Canadian children found that thanks to the CERB, the special COVID benefits, poverty in Canadian children dropped by 40% when the CERB was reaching families. However, even with that, we had a million Canadian children living in poverty. Globally, 1.1 billion children live in poverty.
We are not doing what must be done. In the wake of the pandemic, we see increasing mental health issues for our children. We know we need to do more. What progress is being made for the rights of the children?
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