44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it might have started as a good idea, with the support of the Liberals' NDP allies, to not resist the temptation to take this opportunity to reshape Canadian culture and society in their own image, so we are here in the House of Commons this evening, late at night, talking about Bill C-11, the so-called online streaming act. This act has morphed into the Liberals' attempt to regulate the Internet, and we are hearing from so many Canadians that this is a terrible idea.
The Liberals are saying that they are just updating the Broadcasting Act, which has not been updated in 30 years and, in the meantime, since the Internet has been invented and more people are getting their news, entertainment and information off the Internet and fewer people are going to the legacy media, it is important that they now regulate the Internet. However, they are saying that this does not affect user-generated content, the things that ordinary Canadians post on the Internet.
Here is the problem. As soon as that user-generated content becomes commercial, it falls within the rules, and the CRTC is going to regulate it and impose Canadian content rules on it. The question we ask then is the obvious question: At what point does our user-generated content become commercial, and at what point do we have to start worrying about the Canadian content rules? The answer we get is that we should not worry. We should leave it up to the Liberals because they are going to do it right and are going to leave it up to the CRTC to figure out what the rules are.
We asked if we could at least see a draft of the rules, and the answer was no, that we should trust them as they are the Liberal Party and know what Canadian culture is and what Canadians want to watch. It will commission the CRTC to come up with the new rules, and they will give it a policy directive. We asked them if we could see the policy directive, and the answer was no. Therefore, we as Canadians are left in the dark.
This is very important public policy that needs to be debated here in the House of Commons. This is the people's chamber. The people want to know what is going on with something as important as the Internet, which everybody relies on and has become pervasive in our society.
The Senate, the chamber of second thought just down the road, looked at this legislation. It did not approve it. It said there was a problem with it, that we need to get rid of user-generated content altogether. However, inexplicably, the Liberal government has said that it is not going to change anything. That is why we Conservatives and so many Canadians are against Bill C-11.
We are not alone. We have received so many emails, and I am sure the members opposite have also received a lot of emails, from people who have issues and problems with Bill C-11, but we are also hearing from higher profile people such as Margaret Atwood, for example, who has been cited here by several of my colleagues. She is a famous Canadian author who was quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying that bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write and should not decide what is Canadian.
She said, “So it is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to [write].” Those are not my words. They are the words of Margaret Atwood. She is a very fair and balanced person and acknowledges that Bill C-11 shows some signs of what she says are “well-meaning attempts to achieve some sort of fairness in the marketplace.” She added, “But like a lot of well-meaning attempts, if people haven't thought it through, the effect might be different from what [they] thought it would be.” Is this personal for Ms. Atwood? Maybe it is. The Emmy award-winning adaptation of her famous book The Handmaid's Tale failed the Canadian content rules. Imagine that, Canada's most-famous author is not Canadian content.
A person who lives in Abbotsford, right next door to my community of Langley, is Kris Collins, a.k.a kallmekris, who through her own ingenuity, creativity and determination, has become one of Canada's most popular TikTok stars. She has 48 million followers. It is phenomenal.
She is known around the world. She has learned how to monetize her social media presence. In the process, she was making a lot of money at it, so good for her, and all of this without the help or intervention of the CRTC. Ms. Collins figured out on her own what Canadians want and what the world wants. She knows how to market herself. She did not need the government.
This is what she says about the Liberal government's attempt to change all of that: “I am scared. I have been paying really close attention to Bill C-11, a.k.a. the online streaming act. It is something my fellow Canadian creators should be paying attention to, and all the viewers as well. Bill C-11 was supposed to be promoting Canadian storytelling online. In reality, the bill has ended up so broadly worded that it lets the CRTC interfere with every part of your online life.” This is exactly what Conservatives have been talking about: Liberal overreach.
We talked about the Senate, the chamber of sober second thought, as it likes to call itself or as Canadians call it. I have a quote from one of the senators, the Hon. David Richards. This is what he had to say about Bill C-11. I will read the first two sentences of his speech: “Honourable senators, I have a good deal of problems with this bill. I think it’s censorship passing as national inclusion.”
We hear the Liberals saying that it is not censorship at all, that people are free to post and write whatever they want and that the government is not telling them what not to write or what not to post. However, here is the problem. A bureaucratic body, the CRTC, would be tasked with deciding what to promote and, consequently, what to demote on the Internet, all based on that body's idea of what is good Canadian content, keeping in mind that Margaret Atwood did not pass the test.
Senator Richards went on to talk about equality, quoting somebody who commented a lot about equality, and that is author George Orwell, who, in his novel Animal Farm, said, about the society he was talking about, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That is the issue here. That is why so many Canadians are upset with this legislation. They are feeling like they are less equal than people who might agree with the Liberal government's idea of what is Canadian culture and what is good for our society.
I want to quote one of those ordinary Canadians. This is a person who lives in my riding, Barry Springman, who wrote me a very thoughtful email. I have gotten a lot of emails, hundreds of them, and the vast majority are clearly against Bill C-11, urging Conservatives to vote against it. There are a handful that have some reserved support for the bill. I just wanted to get that on the record, to be fair. This is what Mr. Springman said: “Our family has lived in Langley, B.C. for the past 16 years and have family ties to this city for almost 50 years. We have enjoyed the freedoms we have as Canadians to choose what we want to see on the internet, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. In the past few years, we are seeing these freedoms erode. While we are always careful to warn our kids of the potential dangers of some of the content on the internet, we are very much against the government deciding what we should have access to. Therefore, we would like to express our deep displeasure in the Federal Government's attempt to pass the Bill C-11. In no way do we support the passing of this bill.”
This is just a sample. I do not have time to read more.
When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me and my brothers, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I will grant that the government's Bill C-11 probably started with good intentions, but, in typical overreach, Bill C-11 went off the rails. I know the Liberals are not going to take advice from the Conservatives, because they always say that they do not have to, but will they take advice from ordinary Canadian citizens, experts in the field and people like the Springman family? Will they at least take advice from the Senate, which is telling them that this legislation is wrong?
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Madam Speaker, if I get a well-drafted email, like I did from the Springman family, I am going to assume that they have thought about this carefully and that this is something that they wrote of their own volition and to express their own opinions. I think that we should respect it. I think the Liberal government should respect voices like this.
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Madam Speaker, to be honest, I think the question from my colleague from Manitoba makes a whole lot more sense. If the Liberal government would pause, think carefully about what the experts are telling us, what people like Margaret Atwood are telling us, what the Senate is now saying and what ordinary Canadians are telling them, maybe they would just decide that removing user-generated content all together would improve this bill drastically.
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Madam Speaker, I think that would be a question to put to Margaret Atwood. I am just going to take her at face value. This is what she thinks. This is her experience. She believes what Canadians want to see, write and publish and how they are going to have a conversation with each other should be up to Canadians to decide, not up to the government bureaucracy. I think that is what she is talking about.
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Madam Speaker, I am not quite sure how to answer that question. The Internet is a new invention. It changes everything. Just like when the Gutenberg printing press was invented, it upset culture and completely overturned society, but it came out stronger. I think the Internet will do the same. We are too close right now to see what effect it will have, but we have already started seeing some of the effects with legacy media struggling and people like Kris Collins thriving.
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