44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, the law is very clear. I read the phrase in the law that said the government, and that includes the CRTC, cannot dictate algorithms. If by “criteria” the member means a request or a requirement that streaming platforms provide some visibility to Canadian content, I think that is a pretty wide-open criterion that leaves a lot of leeway to streaming services to do that in the manner they think is most appropriate.
One of the points of this bill is to make sure that Canadian creators can find space on streaming services, the same way CanCon was meant to make it so that radio could provide space for great Canadian music, which now dominates the world.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very interesting speech and historical look at this, as well as explaining different technical terms.
Since we come from the same neck of the woods in Quebec, I would like to hear my friend and colleague speak about the importance of creating that space for Quebec content via Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, I think a great part of this bill is driven by the need to provide support to Quebec content, as well as other Canadian content, and that is why stakeholders in Quebec are so in favour of this bill. The stakeholders have been consulted by the government over and over, and Quebec stakeholders are particularly keen on this bill, and for a very good reason.
I think it is a very important bill, not only for all Canadian creators but for maintaining the vibrancy of Quebec culture, which has shown itself to be extremely vibrant. It is an effort to maintain that vibrancy in the new technological environment that we have with cyber-communication.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank the member for mentioning the web giants. I think we all agree that this enabling legislation is important and that they need to pay their fair share. I wonder if the member can tell this House when he thinks this enabling provision will be enacted.
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Madam Speaker, it is a good question; unfortunately, I do not have a precise answer for it.
However, the member hit on another important aspect of this bill, which is that it is not only about discoverability of Canadian content creators but also about levelling the playing field and making sure that streaming services pay their fair share. It is really not fair at all that traditional broadcasters have to contribute to the Canada Media Fund but the streaming services, the foreign-owned streaming services, have been able to skirt that obligation. This bill would help make things more balanced, and that is a very important point that the member has raised.
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Madam Speaker, my understanding is that the goal here is to ensure that foreign streaming services pay their fair share. We have a plan for that. Could the member tell me what the Liberal plan is to ensure that they pay their fair share?
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Madam Speaker, right now traditional broadcasters have to make payments to the Canada Media Fund, which is used to help in the production of Canadian content. At some point, through regulation, the streaming services will also have to contribute a portion of the revenues they earn in this country from Canadian consumers into the Canada Media Fund in order to help with the production of Canadian content for streaming.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if I could ask the same question of the member for Lac-Saint-Louis as I did of the member for Timmins—James Bay, with respect to a Senate amendment that would have looked to scope out content posted on social media services coming from users who could be musicians in his community, for example. I am not asking about censorship, but just looking at whether he agrees or what his views are on whether more could have been done to ensure that the CRTC is not regulating content from a musician in his community, for example.
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Madam Speaker, this is a very technical bill, but my understanding is that the amendment in the Senate could encourage music companies to share music on platforms like YouTube instead of on music services like Spotify and Apple Music. The bill is quite clear that it is not meant to regulate the small, independent creator. As a matter of fact, it says here that proposed paragraph 5(2)(h) of the act would require that regulatory policy:
(h) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which this Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on any class of broadcasting undertakings if that imposition will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1).
There are checks and balances all through this bill to ensure that the small, independent creator is not brought into the scope of this legislation. It is important to note that there are safeguards throughout the bill, including with respect to freedom of expression.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time tonight with the member for Sarnia—Lambton.
It has been really interesting to sit here listening to the debate because I have sat on the heritage committee for years and went through all the testimony on Bill C-10 and Bill C-11. The only thing I agree on is that the former heritage minister knew nothing about Bill C-10 and that is why he was replaced. I would say the current heritage minister knows very little about Bill C-11, and he too should be replaced. This is an interesting conversation we are having here tonight.
I say that because, when one sits in committee and hears testimony after testimony twice a week for four years, it is kind of interesting. It is true that this bill a dumpster. We have seen it since day one when the former heritage minister tried to explain it. It came back to the House early in June and then we shoved it off to the Senate, only to have the unnecessary election and the bill died. How serious were the Liberals on that? They had an election that did not have to be called if Bill C-10 were so important, but, no, they shoved it to the Senate, called an election that did not need to be called and the bill died. We had to start all over and two years later, here we are again on Bill C-11, and the Liberals are still arguing the same points as they did on Bill C-10. It is interesting.
Now we are dealing with the Senate's proposal on this bill. I will say that the Senate, in my estimation, did a fairly good job on this. It worked hard on this. It spent weeks on Bill C-11. It did not like what we sent it, we being the House of Commons and the committee, so it spent weeks going over this. In fact, it had 26 amendments that it recommended the government look at and put in the bill. That speaks volumes. We never get that many amendments from the red chamber.
Out of the 26 amendments, we understand the government took 18, but it did not take eight. For whatever reason, the government did not like eight amendments from the Senate, which I will get to in just a moment. The concern remains on all sides of the Senate. I know they are flipping each way over there, but they all agreed this bill is a disaster.
In the Conservative caucus, we have talked about this since day one. We have been very vocal on this bill for very good reason. We are very concerned with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's involvement in Bill C-11. I am very concerned. I do not think it has the capability, in fact I will say that I know it does not have the capability, to really do what is necessary in Bill C-11.
It is not just the Conservative caucus talking about its concerns with Bill C-11. We have heard it from industry experts. We have heard it from academics, content creators and digital platform users. Everybody who came to committee over the last number of years expressed the same concern. Former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies spoke twice in committee about his concerns with Bill C-10 and Bill C-11. Dr. Michael Geist has been the most vocal on this, and he should be because he is Canada research chair in Internet law. I think he is one of the foremost thinkers in the country when it comes to Internet regulation. He has written oodles of articles not only denouncing Bill C-10 but also, recently, Bill C-11.
The government claims the platforms must pay their fair share. I have heard over and over today the government claiming that platforms must pay their fair share. This just in: They actually do. The government says it is long overdue. Platforms are among the biggest investors today in Canadian film and television production. There are all-time records in Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver. The business has never been so good. Why is that? It is because Americans are hiring Canadians to do their productions from Toronto, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg and Vancouver. I could go on and on about the tremendous support in this country for working, paying taxes and shooting documentaries.
TV networks, such as CBC, CTV and Global, do not do documentaries anymore because they are too expensive. However, Netflix and Amazon do documentaries because there is skin in the game. They put well over $1 billion into this country's film and TV production, which is later shown either on streaming devices or sold to the traditional broadcasters.
The Liberals say that we need to support the next generation of Canadian artists. However, Bill C-11 would hurt Canadian artists the most. The Senate was absolutely convinced on this issue. We were, too, on Bill C-11, as were many digital creators, who risk being harmed by the CRTC regulation.
I heard the member for Nunavut the other day, and again a couple of moments ago, explaining that there is concern with this. The concern should be up north, where their voices have never been heard. CBC does not go up there. CTV would not go up there, and Global does not go up north to tell indigenous, Inuit stories. It is too expensive. However, here we have Netflix and Amazon giving us the stories of Canadian people. TV and film production is at its all-time high in this country.
We were told in committee by the largest entertainment workers union, Unifor, that streamers are now the largest employer in this sector. No longer is it CTV, Global or CBC. It is the streamers that are the largest employer in the sector. We can see how it has grown.
I am a 40-plus year veteran of television. I have seen the decline in television, but the gap has been filled by streamers and production houses from others that had to come into this country to put money on the table to produce some of the greatest innovation this country has ever seen.
My fear now is that CanCon demands and higher regulatory costs would mean that many streaming services from around the world could block Canada. The biggest concern, and I have talked about this, is regulating user content. This was one of the eight Senate amendments rejected by the government. I pointed that out. It appears that the government wants to retain the power to regulate. Instead of listening to experts, the Liberals are catering to the needs of big telecom companies, which basically hold the monopoly, and they have for decades, over broadcasting in this country.
One more time, I am going to talk about the CRTC because I am fearful of it today. The CRTC, as we have seen, is a body with little or no accountability. I would argue it is one of the least effective regulatory bodies in the whole country today. It is a body that can barely handle the responsibilities that it has. For starters, the CRTC has been totally ineffective at managing Canadian telecoms. We have the least competitive and most expensive telecommunication industry in the world. I blame the CRTC. Canadians today pay the highest prices for cell phones and Internet. Many, in fact, do not even have broadband in this country.
Then there is that three-digit suicide prevention line, which this place unanimously voted for in December 2020. How easy would that be to put into action? The CRTC, in its wisdom, has taken a year and a half for a simple three-digit suicide prevention line. How can we expect the CRTC to address the problems of broadcasting when we already know it has no idea how to handle its responsibilities?
The big issue with Bill C-11 is the CRTC and the Governor in Council. Canadians have woken up. I have gotten lots of emails in the last couple of days. I can share them during questions and comments. This is a bill that Canadians should be very fearful of.
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Mr. Speaker, the member said that we should be listening to experts. I think that is what he said specifically.
I know that I am certainly not an expert as it relates to the culture and making sure it is properly showcased throughout our country. One individual from my riding who is an expert is Gord Sinclair from the Tragically Hip. He came forward. This member must have seen his submission, where he said that this bill was critical to ensure the longevity of the arts in Canada. He went on to say that, had there not been those CanCon requirements and a need for investments back into Canadian culture specifically, that the Tragically Hip would not exist today. It would not have made it.
Is the member saying that Gord Sinclair is not an expert when it comes to Canadian culture and properly showcasing it?
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Mr. Speaker, I did hear Gord Sinclair, and I thank the hon. member for bringing him up. Yes, through the sixties, seventies and eighties, when radio stations were forced to hit rates of 30% or 35% in Canadian content, there was a lot of Canadian talent that made a lot of people in the industry successful. We could go on for an hour naming the successful people that CanCon created. This was very much so in the radio days, but that is no more. In fact, the department does not know how much revenue Bill C-11 would bring in.
It has no idea, but over a billion dollars has been put into this country by the big giants for production. I have talked about Toronto, Regina, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary. These are tremendous production houses, which I fear would have closed years ago.
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Uqaqtittiji, I, for one, think the last election was super important because, if it were not for that election, I would not be here today, so I am thankful. I do not think it was a useless election, as he says it was.
I also want to talk about the great work that CBC has done for Inuit and indigenous reporters. We have great indigenous reporters who CBC has continually promoted, such as Pauline Pemik and Jordan Konek, who have appeared in national CBC shows, so I do appreciate what CBC was done for indigenous journalism.
I want to ask the member about online streaming because we have two great indigenous-owned online streaming providers, Isuma TV and Nunavut TV. They are indigenous online streaming providers that are forced to compete against each other. I think that giants, such as Netflix and Disney+, need to help indigenous online streaming providers to get the same airspace because they do not have the same capability to compete against those web giants.
I wonder if the member agrees with me.
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- Mar/27/23 7:37:02 p.m.
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I used to give out gold stars for best comments, but that definitely gets a gold star. We are happy to have the hon. member here in the House of Commons as well.
The hon. member for Saskatoon—Grasswood.
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- Mar/27/23 7:37:02 p.m.
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I used to give out gold stars for best comments, but that definitely gets a gold star. We are happy to have the hon. member here in the House of Commons as well.
The hon. member for Saskatoon—Grasswood.
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Mr. Speaker, did the member for Nunavut know the indigenous met with the minister and stormed out of the office, they were so upset over the regulations on Bill C-11, even Bill C-10? The indigenous, the Inuit and others are not happy with what has transpired.
They do need their voice up north. If CBC was doing such a good job, we would probably not have needed APTN in this country. It is funny that APTN has taken over the voice of the indigenous people because the public broadcaster could not carry it. That has opened a window for those in Winnipeg and at APTN.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his years of service. I also heard him say that he had a face for radio, and I did not realize that he had been on TV as well.
He mentioned, in his deliberations, all the emails he got from concerned Canadians. I wonder if he could share some of those with the House, from individuals who have legitimate concerns about what Bill C-11 is and how it would impact them.
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Mr. Speaker, these came in over the weekend, and this afternoon, I had an email from my constituent Bob that I will share. It has an interesting spin. He said that what is lost in this bill is that, while the government is forcing Facebook and all to pay for news, those same media of Global, CBC and CTV are taking photos from his Instagram and Facebook pages and using them without payment. There is an interesting one.
The other email is a concern from a YouTuber. He is worried about the government overreach on Bill C-11.
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Mr. Speaker, normally I would say it is a pleasure to rise and speak in this House, but I am very sad to hear the tone of the debate tonight, with personal attacks and insults against many members just because they have a different view. That is not our country. It is not why we are here in this House. We are elected to come and share a different view.
Bill C-11 is a bill that is purported to be about the modernization of the CRTC in the digital age, and everyone in this House is okay with that. Everyone agrees we need to modernize.
However, there has been an assertion that we need to make everyone pay their fair share, and that is certainly a principle everybody would be on side with, but the reality is right now these large streamers they are talking about are putting $5 billion into the Canadian economy. This bill, if implemented, would put $1 billion in.
Already, I would tell members this is not really what is behind this bill, and my concern as the shadow minister for civil liberties has to do with people's charter rights and freedoms. Let me just refresh one's memory about what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says in section 2(b), which is everyone has the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” We are supposed to have freedom.
There have been claims of misinformation and disinformation. In fact, on Twitter, the Minister of Heritage put out some things I want to go through one at a time about what the bill is and what the bill is not, because Canadians are listening to it all and are not sure what to believe.
The minister says that Bill C-11 would not tell Canadians what to watch. For this one, I want to do the fork analogy. Let us say somebody decides to go hide all the forks in the house in the hall closet. Then they tell Canadians they have the freedom to choose whatever utensil they want to eat with, so Canadians open the drawer and see spoons, knives and various things, but there are no forks. Now, if they want to spend the time to go hunt through the house, they can find those forks in the hall closet, so absolutely, they have the choice of what to eat with, but in fact, by burying the forks in the hall closet, the government has effectively impacted what Canadians can watch, or what they can eat with.
The minister also says that this is not going to infringe on free speech. However, what this bill would do is allow the government in council, that is cabinet, to determine the criteria that will be used by the CRTC to bury content. I am not saying I could be in the minds of the members opposite, but I am sure, from the commentary I heard tonight, they hate Conservative ideology. That would be fairly obvious to me tonight.
If somebody was posting content with Conservative ideology, perhaps the criteria the minister would set for the algorithms would say to bury that. We do not know what the criteria are, because even though the CRTC indicated the Minister of Heritage would set those and the Minister of Heritage said he had given consideration and in due course would reveal them, we do not know what they are. From an open and transparent government, we have no transparency on what the criteria are that will censor content, or bury it.
The Senate studied this and gave due consideration. It said it really had a problem with the government of the day, whatever government it was, deciding which individual content to bury. Yes, the government gets that people are making money off the Internet, streaming services and everything else. It wants to make sure Canadian content is out there and promoted, but individuals would be excluded, so the Senate brought an amendment to exclude that. The Liberal government rejected it, which says to me and to many Canadians it wants to have the ability to control what individuals put out. That is unacceptable.
In addition, the minister said that the bill would not create censorship on the Internet, but anything that can shut down content is a form of censorship. We know that in a healthy democracy, criticism of the government of the day and the ability to speak freely are essential elements. It is only in communistic governments that the government of the day determines what one can see, what one cannot see, what one can say and what is unacceptable. That is not democracy, and that is not what we want in Canada.
The final point from the minister is that any ridiculous things that the Conservatives come up with are to scare Canadians. Well, in addition to that being insulting, did the Liberals not listen to the many digital creators who came to committee and objected to the bill? Did they not listen to Canadian icons, like Margaret Atwood, who is criticizing the bill for its definition of Canadian content and for the ability of the government to tell her what to write or whether it is going to be promoted or not. I think that is ridiculous.
The other thing is that it is not just Conservatives who have concerns about the bill, and I have mentioned a few, but how about President Joe Biden? President Joe Biden has a concern about Bill C-11, and we were all here in the House on Friday to hear and to talk about the long-standing friendship between the United States and Canada. So let us hear what they have to say about Bill C-11.
This is from The Canadian Press:
Washington has raised concerns about the trade implications of Ottawa's online-streaming bill, prompting a legal expert to warn that Canada could face hundreds of millions of dollars of retaliatory tariffs if it becomes law. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai expressed disquiet about the proposed legislation, known as Bill C-11, during talks earlier this month with International Trade Minister...at the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) Free Trade Commission ministerial meeting. The online-streaming bill, which has passed the House of Commons and...the Senate, would force American-owned platforms, including YouTube, Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video, to promote Canadian TV, movies, videos or music, and help fund Canadian content.
This is from True North:
The United States government has waded into the fight against two digital regulation laws being considered by the federal Liberal government. US Trade Representative and Ambassador Katherine Tai met with Canadian Minister of International Trade...on Wednesday to discuss Bill C-11 and Bill C-18. In a readout of the meeting, Tai stated that the US side “expressed concern” about the two laws discriminating against American businesses and content creators.
We have heard all of the rhetoric about how the U.S. is our strongest trading partner and that it is the most important relationship we have. Our friends to the south have expressed concern about the bill. Will this Liberal government not even consider their concern? Will it not even address their concern? I think that is unhealthy for Canadians and unhealthy for our relationship with our neighbour to the south.
Let us talk about the lack of transparency on what will be voted upon or what will be buried. We have asked for over a year, and if there is nothing wrong with the criteria, why not share it?
Then there is the Canadian content definition, and I mentioned Margaret Atwood earlier. The Handmaid’s Tale, which she wrote, unfortunately is not Canadian content, because even though Canadian actors acted in it, etc., and it was filmed here, the head company is from the U.S., and so it is not Canadian content.
I think that there is a pattern with this government of eroding our freedoms, and I see this as another slice of a thousand cuts in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the media, and I could go on.
I know that there are people here who want to ask questions, but all I am saying is that our neighbours to the south have raised concerns, digital creators have raised concerns, we are raising concerns, and there is no transparency coming from the other side on the bill, and so it is time to take a pause.
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Mr. Speaker, it is truly unbelievable. However, I guess it really is believable having sat through many of these debates listening to the types of things being said by the Conservatives. Do they honestly believe that we are moving towards what the hon. member says is a “communistic” set of laws? Is that not an incredible insult to people who have lived through these types of regimes? There has been no one before our committee, no constitutional expert who has raised concerns about that standing.
However, leaving that aside, can the member comment on Ambassador Tai's appearance before Congress just a few days ago where she said something completely different than what was being reported, and that she did not raise concerns about that, she was just interested in the progress of the legislation?
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