44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, before I start, I want to extend my condolences to the Cossey family who farmed down the road from where I grew up near Chipman, for the loss of their beautiful Veronica, a much-loved, well-known and universally admired nurse, farm wife and community member from Lamont county.
I appreciate this opportunity to stand up for people like the Cosseys, for people all across Lakeland, and for hard-working farmers and agricultural workers across Alberta and throughout Canada, against the rising costs brought on by the NDP-Liberal costly coalition's carbon tax.
I thank my Conservative colleagues, the MP for Huron—Bruce who brought in this bill and the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South who introduced it as Bill C-206, which was agreed to before the Liberals called the unnecessary 2021 election. That put it back to square one and blocked crucial relief for farmers of the carbon tax on their farm fuels for the past two years.
I am proud to represent all kinds of farms, ag businesses and farming families across Lakeland, which is the fourth largest rural riding in Alberta. It is home to nine first nations and Métis communities, and more than 50 municipalities and summer villages. It takes almost an hour to drive from end to end. Lakeland's economy mainly relies on agriculture, natural resources and small businesses.
I hope colleagues from urban and suburban ridings can begin to imagine the distances, infrastructure challenges, equipment required and costs involved in the daily lives and work of the people and businesses across an area larger than 86 countries around the world, especially for those family farms and related businesses that make a living off the land and who feed the world using the highest environmental and production standards of any farmers on Planet Earth.
Where I am from, while a lot of us use Starlink now for Internet, we still cannot haul cattle or seed a crop with a Tesla, and almost none of the towns have public infrastructure and transportation. It is in those rural areas that Canadian farmers live and work to feed their neighbours and cities.
As one of the world's largest producers of canola, oats, wheat, flaxseed and pulse crops, and the fifth-largest agricultural exporter in the world, Canada's agriculture sector accounts for almost 7% of GDP and sustains the livelihoods of 2.4 million Canadians. It is vital.
Farmers are the backbone of Canadian rural communities. They work hard days and late nights to put food on our tables. Canadian farmers compete with each other and globally, so they constantly innovate for the most efficient production of crops and livestock to maintain, improve and steward the land, water and air on which their lives literally entirely depend. They strive to reduce costs and offer high-quality but affordable products. However, despite their generations of excellence in environmental stewardship and emissions reduction, the Liberals slapped them with an ever-growing carbon tax. Farmers now struggle to provide for their families, to maintain their businesses, to contribute to their communities and to pass on their way of life.
Constituents often share personal trials and tribulations, and my dedicated staff and I work as best we can to solve the problems we can impact. We all agree that some of the most heartbreaking conversations are in farmyards or in the constituency office where farmers, some whose roots stretch back so far they have awards that celebrate more than a century of their families' blood, sweat, tears and work, painfully say they have resigned themselves to hope that their kids do not try to take it on and that they pick a different path because the costs are insurmountable. It is no wonder, when some farmers will face $150,000 a year in taxes just seven years from now if the Liberals stay on course.
Canadian farmers and ag-based communities have faced major challenges in recent years, as collateral damage in trade wars and diplomatic disputes has made the normal uncertain weather, growing conditions and global prices even worse. Back-to-back disasters have hit Lakeland with alternating harvests from hell and major flooding. Farmers lost a significant portion of their crops, with some being completely wiped out, and other farmers ran out of grazing area and feed for their livestock.
Farmers have clearly requested one thing: Axe the expensive and unfair carbon tax so they can continue to feed Canadians and the world.
Michelle, a farmer from Blackfoot, says that carbon tax hikes are “crippling”. She says, “In my opinion, the Federal Minister of Agriculture is not taking this issue seriously.”
Farmers already have to navigate challenging conditions, and carefully plan and save so they do not go bankrupt during bad years. When rural families have to watch their once-a-year paycheque burn, drown, rot, freeze on the field or get loaded for processing because they cannot afford to feed all year, or the costs for grain drying and heating barns are skyrocketing and too expensive, situations that are completely out of their control, the government should not use a tax to make it worse and take even more away.
Unfortunately, the Liberals' approach to farmers and farm families is mostly broken programs, endless platitudes and, at worst, layers of punitive policies and outright hostility to their way of life.
In 2016, the then ag minister said the Liberals would not exempt farmers from the carbon tax because “the impact is a very small percentage of operating costs”. Frankly, that is just not the reality for farmers, ranchers and rural Canadians. Farmers need specialized, expensive equipment powered by fuels that have no alternatives to grow and harvest their crops, to irrigate and to heat barns and buildings.
The carbon tax will cost the average farmer $45,000 a year overall, with estimates of $36,000 a year for grain drying alone. The worst part is that the Liberals were warned, but they ignored the CFIB's analysis that farmers would already be paying an average of $14,000 a year in federal carbon taxes when it was just $20 in 2019. The Liberals hiked it 150% a year ago, and days from now the Liberals will triple that carbon tax compared to 2019. Let us talk about the worst April Fool's joke ever.
It is not just the Conservatives saying the carbon tax will cost more. The independent, non-partisan PBO confirms it is a net loss for most Canadians. The truth is that 60% of all households pay more than they get back. That will rise to 80% in Ontario and Alberta by next year. The average Canadian family will pay an extra 400 bucks, and more than 840 bucks in those provinces, in carbon tax this year after Liberal rebates. Farmers and ranchers of course will pay even more, but Michelle from Blackfoot is right. The Liberals do not care about the disproportionate damage of their carbon tax for rural Canadians and producers.
It is even more galling that the Liberals refuse to reverse course. Almost half of Canadians are $200 away from bankruptcy, and food prices are skyrocketing so that Canadians are already skipping meals, turning down the heat or cutting out meat and veggies to make ends meet because of the Liberals' reckless tax and inflationary spending agenda. The Liberals' rebate program, which they claim is an offset, is really just a blanket return to producers that is entirely based on eligible farming expenses that needs a total of over $25,000 to qualify. It ignores the distinct impacts of carbon surcharges on particular farms, sector productivity and competitiveness.
The carbon tax affects the entire supply chain. It makes it more expensive for farmers to produce food, and more expensive to ship it, which raises the cost of groceries for all Canadians. In many cases, farmers are so cash-strapped, they cannot afford any more capital-intensive innovations and technologies for productivity and sustainability gains. That is the exact opposite of what carbon tax proponents claim they want.
A chicken producer and mixed farmer, Ross, from Lakeland, recently said to me in exasperation that he doesn't know what the Prime Minister wants him to do: use coal or just quit farming. Obviously, a full carbon tax exemption for natural gas and propane, lower-emitting, more affordable and actually available fuels would make a real difference for farmers struggling to pay their bills. However, the Liberals do not listen to everyday Canadians, Conservatives or apparently even their own public servants. They impose policies with arbitrary and impossible targets without a second thought to how it will hike costs for everyone and hurt some even more.
Of course, the Liberal government's own studies long warned of the major added costs of the carbon tax for farmers and all Canadians. In 2015, Finance Canada said imposing a carbon tax would “cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices...leading all firms and consumers to pay more”. That prediction came true. The Lloydminster Ag Exhibition Association also says the carbon tax is “crippling” and too much of a burden. Its bill is already $30,000 a year in carbon tax alone. Its building got major energy retrofits, but the carbon tax still hiked bills 30% and taxed away any cost savings.
However, the Liberals are happy to add disproportionate costs to farmers, farm families and rural residents, even while the carbon tax causes everyone economic pain with no discernible environmental gain. That is not where their votes are.
Ultimately, all Canadians, farmers, workers, consumers, business owners, the middle class, people on fixed incomes, the working poor, urban residents, all consumers and anyone who eats will pay the price. Conservatives will axe the carbon tax completely, but today we can at least exempt farmers from the carbon tax on fuels they cannot do without, for which there are no alternatives to affordably or immediately replace, and save them tens of thousands of dollars a year on necessary farming costs and operations.
I want to thank, again, our Conservative colleague from Huron—Bruce for giving us this common-sense opportunity to turn hurt into hope for Conservative farmers. I am proud of the agricultural sector in Lakeland and all across the country. I am grateful to all the farmers, producers, their families and their workers. That is why I support Bill C-234, and I encourage all MPs who claim to stand with Canadian farmers and ranchers to do the same.
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Mr. Speaker, there are few values more important to the people I represent, as they are to my colleague who just spoke, than advancing freedom and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially when it comes to the creeping, reaching, interfering and the heavy hand of government and its agencies.
I oppose Bill C-11 because it is not just about what its proponents claim. It will be a way for the Liberal cabinet and CRTC gatekeepers to control what Canadians see, say and hear online. The Liberals have ignored and ridiculed the concerns about Bill C-11’s impacts and potential unintended consequences for Canadian media of all kinds and for everyday Canadians. Thousands of Canadians, and Conservatives, have spoken out for three years, so now, at the very final stage before it becomes law, the charitable assumption that its proponents are unclear or unintentional about the risks and potential consequences can no longer be entertained.
Bill C-11 remains an attempt by the Liberals to regulate the Internet, with unprecedented powers for the CRTC and no clear guidelines or guardrails on those censorship powers.
The other parties argue for the bill on two main grounds: modernization of the Broadcasting Act and that it will enhance and expand Canadian content and culture online.
The truth is that Bill C-11 goes backwards on Canadians' successful online innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism by regulating it with the Broadcasting Act. Instead of promoting Canadian content as a whole, Bill C-11 will pick winners and losers, prioritize and deprioritize content, and therefore shape what Canadians see, regardless of their actual preferences, and whether Canadians can be seen or heard under its criteria, which will be decided by the CRTC and ministers. To be clear, on this point, I really do not care what party it is. This power, in particular, should not be extended to any.
Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives measure success by outcomes delivered, not money spent. The challenge of how to best expand and promote Canadian content is clearly not going to be done as well by Bill C-11 as it is already being done by the private sector, hardly a surprise. For example, the Motion Picture Association Canada is responsible for half of domestic media production and spent $5 billion in 2021 alone. That private sector investment is five times the amount allotted in Bill C-11. This is more of the costly coalition’s usual MO of spending lots of tax dollars regardless of results, despite the private sector’s obvious leadership. It is a government gatekeeping and taxpayer-funded solution in search of a problem.
The core problem with the way Bill C-11 deals with the concept of Canadian content is that, one, it does not actually define it and enables politicians to tell the CRTC what it is, and two, any person or business may be restricted since their content can be pushed up or down if it is decided that they fit or that they are not Canadian enough.
Canadians do not have to decipher the truth from our back-and-forth here. Currently, the CRTC’s definition of Canadian content often depends on copyright ownership, which big streaming services usually keep, instead of, say, Canadian staff, locations, writers, actors, compositions, art or stories.
The power granted to politicians is clear in Bill C-11. Section 7 of the Broadcasting Act states, “the Governor in Council may, by order, issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters”. Well, “Governor in Council” means a cabinet minister. Conservatives tried to remove that clause to ensure that the CRTC chair would be free from political interference, but Liberals blocked it, so the power is there.
After the costly coalition pushes through Bill C-11, Liberals will write up a set of backdoor regulations for the CRTC and then apply some sort of values test to every YouTube video, Facebook post, TV show, documentary and radio show, and it is endless. Social media is caught because of Bill C-11’s definition of “online undertakings” and “programs”, which can include images and sounds where written text is limited. That could mean videos, podcasts, photos and memes, but not written posts or news articles.
Clauses 9 and 10 could empower the CRTC to adopt so-called discoverability rules that would force social media sites like YouTube to modify algorithms and affect how often videos are seen on social media feeds, based on the yet-to-be determined criteria for what is and is not sufficiently Canadian. Bill C-11 clearly makes the Canadian government and the agency the regulator of the Internet. The Broadcasting Act states that the regulations will prescribe “what constitutes a Canadian program”. If the content is not Canadian enough, it will get slapped with fees and taxes, and it will be censored. If it is Canadian enough, it will continue just as it does now.
Bill C-11 will also force content creators, from small YouTubers all the way to Netflix, to pay fees to the Canada Media Fund, but it does not define who will be exempted and makes creators pay based on a points system that value-tests whether their content production is Canadian enough.
The winners would be government-subsidized broadcasters, such as the already advantaged government-funded CBC, which would get even more funding with Bill C-11. The losers would be the independent innovators driving Canadian digital leadership, and often young Canadians. So much for the democratized free market of ideas that the Internet embodies.
Conservatives proposed to define discoverability and limit government algorithm manipulation, as well as amendments to ensure greater transparency of the CRTC and its decision-making, but the Liberals rejected them.
Digital entrepreneurs have grown rapidly on YouTube and Instagram. They create brands off their channels and the advertising revenues their videos generate. They are worried that they would not qualify as Canadian enough, and that small channels, with only a couple of hundred subscribers and next to no revenue, will suddenly be forced to pay government, or even get fined up to $25,000 per day, as in proposed section 32. It is crazy that a young Canadian YouTuber could get fined because they are not Canadian enough.
Conservatives also tried to remove proposed subsection 4.1(1), which may be referenced by members opposite as exempting normal Canadians from these CRTC rules, but the Liberals put in an exemption to the exemption right after, so there is actually no change.
The Liberals plan to reject the amendment that would explicitly encourage the CRTC to regulate professional, copywritten content, which seems to be their actual aim, instead of individual user-created content. Even then, it does not change the discoverability rules that would control and prioritize what Canadians see and hear, thereby controlling the content creators.
Experts warn that this will happen. Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies says that under Bill C-11, Canada will “become a global leader in restricting online speech and meddling with news media.” Canada’s top legal scholar and digital content expert, Michael Geist, whom the Liberals now deride when we quote him, says it will restrict who can hear Canadian voices: “the risk with these rules is not that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard.” If Canadians do not have the freedom to hear it, then the creator does not have free expression.
Forty thousand creators from Digital First Canada signed letters calling for these rules to be removed. The Liberals ignored them. Prominent and diverse Canadian YouTubers, like J.J. McCullough, Morghan Fortier, Justin Tomchuk and Oorbee Roy, have all spoken about their concerns about what Bill C-11 would do to their viewership and their income.
J.J. McCullough said:
Given that YouTubers make videos of every genre imaginable, from fitness to architecture to political commentary, it is frankly terrifying to imagine that government may soon have a hand in determining which genres of video are more worthy of promotion than others.
In summary, anyone proud of the tremendous success of Canadians on YouTube should be deeply concerned about the damage that Bill C-11 could do to their livelihoods.
If MPs pass this bill into law, no one can say they were not warned about the potential consequences. The level of uncertainty and concern, as much about what is not defined as what is, and the potential impact on the core value of free expression should be enough for the costly coalition to hit pause and fix this bill.
That is the duty of policy-makers, the duty of MPs, to ensure that legislation does what they claim and to mitigate unintended consequences before passing laws. MPs must defend the values of Canadians' right to freely, without censorship or risk of consequences, express their views, so long as they are not inciting harm or hate, whether or not they align with the views of anyone in here. That is our job.
No government agency responsible for broadcasting in a free and democratic society should have powers to censor, control and regulate as proposed in Bill C-11. Canadians have fought and died to defend rights to free thought and expression.
I will close with these words:
you fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye
Margaret Atwood was talking about love and pain. That is what Bill C-11 would do to what Canadians can see and hear online. She says Bill C-11 is “creeping totalitarianism”. I would not presume but it is probably fair to say she is not a Conservative, but she is a world-renowned Canadian artist and icon, and Bill C-11 supporters should actually listen to her before it is too late.
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Mr. Speaker, what I am extremely concerned about in this legislation is the ability of government and a related agency to define what counts as Canadian content, to set all those rules, regulations and guidelines after the law has already passed, and then to basically apply a values test to what Canadians can view on the Internet, thereby controlling what content is prioritized and what content is not prioritized, which by its nature obviously controls the content creators.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member would next want to spring forward to House of Commons legislation that sets guidelines and regulations, after the law is passed, about the speed at which one ought to clap or how and in what way Canadians adequately show their appreciation, admiration or concern. I am not sure.
I appreciate the member for standing up and asking the question, but I would think that, given that this subject really gets to the foundation of our democracy, the tens of thousands of Canadians who are worried about their free expression, their income, their individually driven businesses and their online entrepreneurialism and innovation would probably want to see him, as a member of the governing party and the costly coalition that will make the ultimate determination on this bill, take this issue seriously.
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Mr. Speaker, if the government, or the member who props up the government and supports everything it does, but sometimes not, and keeps the Liberals in power so Canadians cannot have a say on this disaster, wanted to have a piece of legislation that focused directly, solely and only on that topic, they could have put it forward and we could have been debating that, but that is not the only consequence of Bill C-11, so we are not.
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