44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am concerned. I am concerned because I listened to my Conservative colleague's speech. I have to honestly admit that if I were a poorly informed individual who relied strictly on the member's speech, I would be really scared. I would be really worried. I would think that I would no longer be able to express my views on the Internet, on Facebook. I would even be afraid to post on social media.
People need to inform themselves to discern what it really means, what Bill C-11 really is, by considering both the old and the new version. So many people brought their concerns to us. We received emails from groups of people who were worried. When we asked experts, they all told us that it was clear from reading the bill that there is no censorship.
I am therefore concerned about what the Conservatives are doing in the House of Commons, in Parliament, a place where we should elevate the debate, try to inform people, provide the facts, go further and rise above the fray. What we are actually seeing is the opposite. The Conservatives are going so low they have hit rock bottom.
We heard from the member for Winnipeg North that the Conservatives are using their opposition to Bill C‑11 to fundraise. I would like my colleague to tell us how much money the Conservatives have raised with their campaign of fear against Bill C‑11.
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Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to say I will be sharing my time with my very distinguished and dynamic colleague from Shefford.
Let me make a few things clear. Bill C-11 deals with culture, not censorship. Bill C-11 deals with national identity and pride. Culture is the essence of who we are. This bill does not promote censorship, it promotes and showcases our culture. I would even say that it seeks to showcase our cultures: Canadian culture, Quebec culture and indigenous cultures.
The bill seeks to give more visibility to culture. This is not about telling people they can no longer listen to certain content. Since the beginning of the debate today, we have been hearing all sorts of things. In fact, we have been hearing these things for two years, since Bill C-11 is the former Bill C-10. We hear things about cat videos, for example. Let us be serious.
The threat does not come from censorship because of Bill C-11. The threat comes from the platforms that have changed the world of telecommunications. That is the threat.
We are working on Bill C-11 to review an act that was amended for the last time in 1991. Must I remind you that, in 1991, we did not all have cellphones in our pockets? It was a completely different world, which is why we need to review the act.
The cultural community is asking for this, as is everyone else. We are not just being asked to pass the bill quickly. Quebec’s cultural community is asking us to hurry because it needs this legislation. They are losing $70 billion a week. On reflection, that may be a bit high. I will have to check the figures later in my notes. Let us say that, every week we delay the passage of this bill, they are losing a lot of money. Let us protect our people.
What does Bill C-11 do? It ensures the protection and promotion of original content. For us, that means French-language content, which is what concerns us. Of course, it also ensures the protection and promotion of original Canadian productions in English and indigenous languages and productions created by certain visible minorities. If we want to protect Canadian content and boost visibility, we need to bring in incentives. We are not talking about banning people from posting on Facebook and saying what they want. This is not about imposing choices, it is about raising their visibility. It is about ensuring discoverability.
Let us consider how small the percentage of French-language production in North America is. If we rely only on the number of times videos are viewed by users, French-language content will not be suggested very often. That is the problem. It is not about playing with algorithms. It is about giving the CRTC the power to talk to these companies and see what they can do to give local culture more visibility. It is a matter of promoting and showcasing our culture.
Let me draw a parallel here. When we look at platforms, we see that there is very little French-language content and that needs to be fixed. When we look at the boards of directors of Canadian and Quebec companies, we see that women are under-represented. In both cases, we need to take action to fix the situation. Obviously, we do not want to prevent anyone from applying, but we want to make sure that the positions are accessible to women and that women receive those kinds of job offers. The same thing applies to culture.
With Bill C-11, we want to improve the visibility, and therefore the profitability, of our local French-language productions and put in place a mandatory contribution to the Canadian and Quebec broadcasting system.
A mandatory contribution is more than just running old television shows. We want the platforms to participate in the creation of real local content. An American movie filmed in Vancouver is not local content. We certainly benefit when American filmmakers shoot in Vancouver. We support that. However, local content is something local produced by local artists who represent us. That is what culture is.
When racialized people say that they watch television and do not see themselves, that is a problem. These people should be able to see themselves and identify with the characters. That is why we are trying to increase representativeness. It is the same thing.
We simply want to expand the coverage of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to all media we interact with. We need first-run French-language content.
With this bill, we are telling the major American platforms that stream content in Canada and invade our markets that we are relatively happy because that is a good way to disseminate information, it gives more people greater access to information. Furthermore, streaming does not restrict access to cat videos; then again, it invades our market. That is where we have the right to say, as a state, that we have a culture to protect.
I often talk about the agricultural exemption in the House. This morning, I talked about the agricultural exemption. We cannot act without protecting our culture. It is important. We have the right to tell the people who come and make money in Canada that we are happy to welcome them and that it is a good thing, just as we have the right to tell them that we would like to recognize ourselves in our media. We are not asking them to ban certain content, but to showcase local productions that represent our people. That is the idea.
There is another very positive element in Bill C-11. It makes no sense that, in 2023, we are revising a broadcasting act from 1991. That is a major oversight.
The bill includes the obligation to review the act at least every five years. To those who have concerns, I would say that we are capable of being intelligent and implementing a reasonable policy. After the law is in effect for a few years, we will review it all to see how things went and what the impacts were. That is the important part.
I want to spend the last few minutes of my speech emphasizing that the Quebec and Canadian cultural community wholeheartedly supports Bill C‑11.
I just found the figure that I mentioned earlier. I should have said “millions” rather than “billions”. I thought that seemed like a lot. According to the former Canadian heritage minister, we would lose $70 million every month. I do not know whether those numbers were validated, but I am assuming that they were.
This important bill is one of three related and highly anticipated bills in this Parliament. As parliamentarians, I would like us to quickly pass them. There was Bill C‑11 to promote our local content. There is also Bill C‑18, which will complement it. Communications platforms will pay something to use news content in order to encourage our journalistic community. That is important. Finally, there is a third bill on online hate, which we need to regulate.
Once again, this is not about censorship, but about living together, being reasonable and creating a world where the Internet is a bit more representative of who we are. We need to see ourselves on television every once in a while, see ourselves reflected in the programming so that we do not forget who we are. I said television, but it is the same thing for the things we watch on a computer screen.
Let us stop wasting time and pass this essential bill.
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Madam Speaker, I had not heard those concerns, so I thank the hon. member for bringing them forward.
I will say that Canada was unique among other countries in the way that our terrorist financing regime was designed. It was included in the Criminal Code, so it made it more difficult to make exemptions compared to what other countries have done. I know other countries around the world have granted a blanket exemption, but their terrorist financing provisions were not included in a criminal code the way ours are.
I look forward to the hon. member passing on the concerns that she has heard to me, and I look forward to working with her to ensure that we put forward something that is able to deliver aid to Afghanistan as quickly as possible.
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Madam Speaker, I very much welcome this legislation coming forward, although I share some of the concerns of the hon. member for Victoria. Many of our allies and other donor countries did not have the problems we have had as a country with getting aid workers into Afghanistan without tripping up into the rules against terrorism. I welcome this legislation. We need to get it through quickly.
I was totally moved by my colleague's speech and her emotion about this issue, but our colleagues in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. did not have the problems that were created for us by the very strict and overly narrow definitions of terrorism that tripped up our aid efforts. Does she have any thoughts on what we can learn from this experience going forward?
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Madam Speaker, I think what we will hear is that there was a desire to balance the needs of security versus the needs of humanitarian organizations. It is my thought, though, that this balance is completely wrong in this case. That is proven out by what we saw from the United Nations Security Council and what we saw from the U.S., the EU, the U.K., Australia and other countries that were able to do that.
From my perspective, I feel like government members, in fact, were not open to listening to the sector. They were not open to listening to experts. I have already sent a list of my concerns to one of the ministers responsible, and I got back a comment that said, “Thanks for your advocacy.” I sent 15 questions and I got a thanks for my advocacy.
I do have to say that they are not listening to us. They are not listening to Afghans. They are not listening to experts. This should be an easy thing to do. There is support from every party. There is massive support across Canada from Canadians.
I know this is not really an answer for the member, but I do hope it gives some clarity.
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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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Mr. Speaker, he is absolutely right. If we think about the Senate that has 107 senators, there are only 18 Conservative senators there. Essentially, the Liberal Senate, that the Liberals kicked out and formed different groups, has said there are issues with this bill. There are issues especially on individual content and that is the major concern that we are talking about here.
We have the testimony that was heard at committee from people who are online digital creators who want the ability to grow globally. They do not want the government interfering in that and possibly down voting content if it does not like their content because it is not the ideology of the day.
That is the difficulty. I have already talked about the President of the United States. That should give serious pause to the Liberals. If they are serious about their relationship with the U.S., they need to be serious about addressing those concerns.
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Mr. Speaker, I was listening carefully to my colleague's speech. I do not share his concerns or criticisms whatsoever.
It seems as though the Conservative Party has been fearmongering for months. Some words are quite loaded and must be used sparingly, words like dictatorship and oppression or talk of civil liberties being limited. I never saw the CRTC do that while attending hearings in my previous life.
Is the member opposite aware that his criticisms and comments are not based on anything in the bill, and that individual users can continue to express opinions and share their content on social media? I wonder what exactly he is talking about.
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Mr. Speaker, my question for the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner is this. There are legitimate concerns with this bill. However, when words like “censorship” and “charter rights” get used inappropriately, I think that can take away from the legitimacy of those criticisms. Is he not concerned that some of that language can erode concerns that are legitimate with respect to certain aspects of the bill?
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the amount of correspondence he got from constituents and people from all across his riding who were concerned about Bill C-11. I have heard a lot of concerns from people in my area around this.
I am wondering if the member could perhaps go into a little more detail on some of the specific concerns he heard from regular, everyday, hard-working Albertans.
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