44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am glad I caught your eye so I can speak to this piece of legislation. I know I started speaking on it, but I guess the government made a mistake in its original motion. I was so keen to make sure I was here to add my voice and the voices of my constituents on this.
Years ago, when this bill was known as Bill C-10, which then got converted to Bill C-11, I remember standing at a Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast in my riding in the community of Auburn Bay. The hosts served two to three thousand people that day. I stood at the front of the line, and before people got their pancakes, they had to interact with me.
I had a great many constituents tell me the number one issue they wanted to talk to me about was Bill C-11. I was floored that some of them knew the number for a piece of legislation. A lot of young people wanted to talk about it. What they knew was that Bill C-11 was coming through and would have an impact on free speech, and they did not like it. I asked them what they knew, and we had an exchange about it.
The majority of emails I get are in opposition to Bill C-11 and also in opposition to Bill C-21. I have had a handful, which I could literally count on one hand, of people who have had positive things to say about Bill C-11.
People are extremely upset with the government over the Senate amendments and which of the amendments it has chosen to proceed with and which it has not. One of the Senate amendments it rejected would have protected user-uploaded content.
As we know, with most user-uploaded content, there is a possibility for someone to make revenue from it when they have a channel. All of it is captured by these amendments that the government would be accepting in Bill C-11. Bill C-11 is still a deeply flawed piece of legislation.
Before I continue, I want to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Lakeland, who I am sure will do a terrific job speaking on behalf of her constituents as well.
I want to go through the legislation, specifically section 7, which I have the most concerns with.
In my home, my kids go on YouTube and streaming services exclusively. We do not have cable. There is no over-the-air TV like back in my day. When I say “back in my day”, I still remember when there were black and white channels.
In Communist Poland, there were only two channels we could get. They were both in black and white. The joke always was that the regime had set up a second channel to prove to people the first one was not that bad. I do not remember it, but the first time I got to watch TV in colour was when I came to Canada in 1985. It was a nice thing to see that colour TV was something we could get.
My kids do not have that experience at all. They go onto YouTube and I go onto YouTube as well. I am going to mention two particular channels I love, because they are by Canadian content creators who would be impacted by Bill C-11.
The first one is an Ontario channel called TheStraightPipes. It is two guys from Ontario who review cars. They just get vehicles and review them. They would have to go to the CRTC to get a licence that says the videos they post are Canadian content.
They are from Canada. They are Canadian content creators. Even when they travel to America, I still think of their videos as Canadian content. Would they be eligible for a licence for their Canadian and international audience to be able to look at their videos if they go to America and do them?
The second one I want to mention is my favourite, and I mentioned it earlier in the previous stage of debate on Bill C-11 It is Leroy and Leroy. If people are not on Instagram checking out these guys from Saskatchewan, they are missing out.
Leroy and Leroy is the funniest comedy channel about funny street signs all over Canada. I will always remember the one video they uploaded of a “no parking” sign on a straight road somewhere in Saskatchewan. I know it is really difficult to figure out one straight road from another in Saskatchewan. It is a rural road, there is a “no parking” sign and there is just nothing there that someone would be concerned about vehicles blocking.
I wonder whether they would have to keep reapplying to the CRTC as Canadian content creators. Are they Canadian enough? When they travel outside of Canada to do their comedy routine, would they be Canadian enough?
I have a Yiddish proverb. I always have a Yiddish proverb. I am going to butcher the pronunciation of it.
[Member spoke in Yiddish]
[English]
It means, “Truth has all the finest qualities, but it is shy.” I am glad we are having this debate this evening, because it is an opportunity for the shyness to come out and the truth to come out.
Many members on the opposite side do not like the fact that we call this a censorship bill. We say the CRTC is going to be able to control what people see and hear online, but that is what many of the witnesses have been saying.
Countless witnesses, professors and academics, people who have specialized in writing, including a constitutional lawyer who used to work for our justice department, have expressed concern over the content of the bill and how the bill is written. When there is a disagreement between experts and the common, everyday people who write to my inbox telling me they are upset with the contents of the bill, I am going to trust my constituents, the real experts when it comes to legislation before the House. They are the ones I represent here. They are the ones who are going to have to live with the decisions we are making and the types of legislation we are going to pass.
I am very concerned with section 7. It reads, “For greater certainty, an order may be made under subsection (1) with respect to orders made under subsection 9.1(1) or 11.1(2) or regulations made under subsection 10(1) or 11.1(1).”
We write these laws in this manner. I am not burdened with a legal education, thankfully, but I did go back to the Broadcasting Act to see under which sections the government would be able to direct things. This one would allow cabinet to issue, under the heading “Policy directions”, any of the objectives of the broadcasting policies set out in a different subsection, or any of the objectives of the regulatory policies set out in a different section. It starts by saying, “the Governor in Council may...issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters with respect to”, and then it goes into detail.
The next section I will talk about is licencing. Everything to do with licencing would be impacted as well, because the government would be able to direct the CRTC through a policy directive and tell it what to do. That is all in section 7. It goes on to talk about regulations generally, and we find that in many pieces of legislation.
For those constituents who are perhaps watching this and will use this as an explanation when I go through this, it goes from literally 10(1) all the way down from (a) to (k), and the government covers everything down to what respects the audit or examination of the records of licencees.
What does that mean? Is it that, if Leroy and Leroy gets a licence with the CRTC to prove its creators create Canadian content, the creators can be audited, such as with respect to how many videos they did in Canada versus not in Canada? If TheStraightPipes brings in an American vehicle, or a vehicle perhaps manufactured elsewhere, are the creators going to be audited on that?
The bill talks about distribution, mediation rules and respecting the carriage of any foreign or other programming services by distribution undertakings. What happens if TheStraightPipes decides to do a joint episode with an American channel? Does it need a special licence, a different licence, and have to pay a fee? Is it Canadian content enough?
All these broadcasting rules are being brought into the age of YouTube, and they do not really apply here where the cost of production is so low and so close to people. However, in the bill, there are things about advertising, Canadian programming and what constitutes Canadian programming, which is where this Canadian content comes in.
Again, there are a schedule of fees, performing of the licence and the undertakings, which are all being covered, and it starts with the policy directives that can be set by the Government of Canada. A lot of different groups have expressed concerns about it. Like I said, it is probably the number one issue emailed to me or in the phone calls I get in the office.
I talked about the Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast outside the Auburn Bay A&W, which was hosting it. The gentleman who runs it, Balwant, is a great community activist. He is always helping different charitable groups and supporting them.
There are a lot of groups and individuals who think this is bad legislation: Digital First Canada; OpenMedia; J.J. McCullough, who is an independent journalist but has his own YouTube channel as well; Justin Tomchuk, who is an independent filmmaker; and the Digital Media Association. The list goes on and on.
This piece of legislation is bad. It is about censorship, or it would give the opportunity for it, and if the government really meant for it not to be not to be known by that, it would have abandoned this piece of legislation. It would have gone back to the drafting process and drafted a better bill.
This entire situation could have been avoided. Motions were tabled that actually did not do what they were supposed to do, and then the government came back and tabled a different motion because it is just trying to ram the bill through the process, and that has not worked out for the government. I think there are way more Canadians who know about Bill C-11 and about the CRTC than ever before, and the vast majority of them in my riding are opposed to Bill C-11.
I am going to vote against Bill C-11. I will continue to advocate against it, because that is what my constituents want me to do. Hopefully, through this intervention here in the House of Commons, I have been able to demonstrate that the legislation, particularly section 7, and its amendments to the Broadcasting Act are completely on the wrong track. The government needs to kill Bill C-11.
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Mr. Speaker, what I would like to see is an opportunity for indigenous Canadians to participate freely, just like everybody else on YouTube, and upload their content free of the requirement to obtain government licences or of the requirement to keep updating their licences with the CRTC. That is not what they need in their lives. They do not need more government; I am certain of that. Just like my constituents do not need more government, Canadians in Nunavut and the territories also do not need more government in their lives.
The nice thing about platforms such as YouTube and many other online streaming services is that they equalize the production costs and the opportunity costs of joining, so that more and more eyeballs are being presented and there is the opportunity to be found and discovered by Canadians and by people internationally. That is the great opportunity.
We do not need to insert the government to generate those revenues. If one has a really interesting idea, a really fun and comedic routine or some very traditional cultural demonstration of one's personal culture, there is an opportunity to present it to others. If they find it interesting, want to look at it and want to share it with others, they are going to do so.
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Mr. Speaker, what I would like to see is an opportunity for indigenous Canadians to participate freely, just like everybody else on YouTube, and upload their content free of the requirement to obtain government licences or of the requirement to keep updating their licences with the CRTC. That is not what they need in their lives. They do not need more government; I am certain of that. Just like my constituents do not need more government, Canadians in Nunavut and the territories also do not need more government in their lives.
The nice thing about platforms such as YouTube and many other online streaming services is that they equalize the production costs and the opportunity costs of joining, so that more and more eyeballs are being presented and there is the opportunity to be found and discovered by Canadians and by people internationally. That is the great opportunity.
We do not need to insert the government to generate those revenues. If one has a really interesting idea, a really fun and comedic routine or some very traditional cultural demonstration of one's personal culture, there is an opportunity to present it to others. If they find it interesting, want to look at it and want to share it with others, they are going to do so.
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Mr. Speaker, the media bailout fund, which I think is what the member is referring to, was a $595-million fund. I remember it distinctly because I was on the Standing Committee on Finance at the time and held it up for about three to four hours asking basic questions. A government official was there from Finance Canada, and I asked whom it would cover and how one would actually obtain the funding. I said that it sounded like it was $595 million to cover politicians, and asked if that was correct. After about 15 minutes, the official said that, yes, that was basically it.
I started reading off the titles of different publications and asking if they would be eligible, and none of them were. Basically, if someone were going to cover the government and what the government was doing in current events, and obviously in flattering coverage because someone would never bite the hand that feeds them, then they would obtain the money. That has been one of the greatest problems with this. Again, this is old thinking. It is thinking from 40 years or 50 years ago to take the Broadcasting Act and impose it on online streaming services, on YouTube and online platforms. It just does not fit, and the government should abandon this.
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