44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it is a bit painful to listen to my Conservative colleague, who is showing just how little she knows about how broadcasting, cultural creation and the CRTC work in this country.
Why does she think it is appropriate for Rogers, Vidéotron and Bell to contribute to the creation of culture, television and film in Canada, but then she defends Google, YouTube, Amazon and Apple and has no problem with them not paying, not contributing to cultural production? Why is she siding with the web giants? Why does she want to continue to exempt them from having to pay their fair share?
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Mr. Speaker, I believe I said in my remarks that a professor at the University of Montreal who specializes in CRTC issues made a strong case that, no, we are not at the point of needing an Internet police force.
More than that, if restricting freedom of expression is the same as trying to get an adequate proportion of francophone content on digital platforms, then I want more francophone content. If that is the one and only thing that Bill C‑11 is designed to do, I do not believe it is infringing on freedom of expression. It is better representing the diversity of our cultural milieu.
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Madam Speaker, although my colleague talked a little about conspiracy theories, the Senate is the place of sober second thought. It looked at this bill in detail and brought in amendments, one of which is to try to exclude individual content.
The senators recognized that the CRTC really should not be determining what individuals are posting. Clause 4 looks at the extent to which a program contains a sound recording that has been assigned a unique identifier under an international standard system, the fact that the program has been uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service, the fact that a program or significant part has been broadcast by a broadcast undertaking or that it is required to be carried on under a licence. This amendment was brought to make sure that those who are doing commercial business are overseen by the CRTC, but individual content is excluded.
The NDP, in their unholy marriage with the Liberals, have rejected this amendment. Could the member explain to the Canadian public why that is?
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by sharing with the member for Timmins—James Bay, and he is aware, that I agree with him. There is so much good in Bill C-11. There is no censorship in it. We need to cut through that noise.
However, I think it is fair to offer constructive criticism and concern. At committee last June, it was my view that we lost potentially good amendments because of animosity between Liberals and Conservatives. My hope was that the Senate might look to improve the bill and suggest amendments. Particularly, amendments could focus on ensuring that if a musician like the member for Timmins—James Bay in my community were to post a show on YouTube, it would not be open to regulation from the CRTC.
Could the member for Timmins—James Bay share whether he is concerned about this with respect to Bill C-11 as well?
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Madam Speaker, I certainly think that Bill C-11 could have been better. Moreover, I think the CRTC is an extremely cumbersome instrument to deal with this. However, the Conservatives decided to take this absolutely extreme, paranoid position as opposed to saying, “What do we actually need to do to make sure this works?”
There were probably better ways to do this, but we were not given those options, given the realm. I have been an artist, and I know many people in the arts community. I certainly want to reassure the artists I know.
I do not know those who are concerned that if they post a YouTube video, the CRTC is somehow going to watch it. We can imagine if it did. Would that not be fascinating? That is not what this bill is about. It is about making sure that the tech giants pay their share.
I think there were better ways of dealing with this legislation and making sure that these tech giants are held to account. I certainly believe that, out of Bill C-11, we still need to deal with the issue of accountability in the algorithms. Certainly, there are issues with the tech giants in their refusal to deal with online harm for children and the vulnerable, the exploitation of people that has happened and the proliferation of hate and violence that we have seen in jurisdictions like Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Brazil. There have to be legal consequences. I think we need to look at those issues beyond where we are tonight with Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, with all respect to my colleague across the way, at committee the CRTC said that the Governor in Council, the cabinet, would provide the criteria by which the algorithms would be set to determine what content is voted up and what content is buried.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage admitted that he had given good thought to that, but he would not release what those criteria are. I am not sure how that squares with an open and transparent government, which is the platform the Liberals ran on.
Can the member comment on that?
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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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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, as it goes with diplomatic relations, she may not have come out and said what she said to the press at committee because she wants to know the progress of the bill. She is interested to know whether the government would consider the amendments that the Senate made, which are very sound, and recognize that we want to exclude user content.
Yes, it is fine for people, in the definition of the Senate amendment, who have been assigned a unique identifier under an international standards system, have uploaded to an online undertaking in social media that is the exclusive licensee of copyright, is a program or significant part of which has been broadcast by a broadcast undertaking, or is required under a licence.
It is clear that the Senate intended that those were the people the CRTC should be regulating and not individuals. I am sure that what was quoted in multiple news organizations about what the U.S. thinks is true, that it has a concern with Bill C-11 and the government needs to listen to it.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is right. I was not at committee, but I know, from what I have been monitoring in this particular debate and from the content of phone calls and emails to my office from many folks across the country, that they have concerns. It is not because we are raising them but because Canadians who have testified at committee have concerns as well.
Anytime we have a piece of legislation that effectively makes the government a regulator, we as Canadians need to be concerned. That is exactly what this bill does. This bill, by any other word, makes the CRTC responsible to determine what content is Canadian enough and what is un-Canadian. It has trouble keeping up with what it has been mandated to do already. I cannot imagine it trying to do this.
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Mr. Speaker, unlike the member I heard earlier, I am burdened with a legal education from the best law school in Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School.
I very much enjoyed the member's speech. My question is about what she said when she was talking about the freedom to speak but not necessarily the freedom to be heard. My understanding is that this would give the CRTC the ability to control algorithms, thus potentially burying comments, perhaps like burying a comment that was called out on Twitter for not being truthful, like the member for Kingston and the Islands.
Would the member be worried that the content by the member for Kingston and the Islands might be buried?
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Mr. Speaker, unlike the member I heard earlier, I am burdened with a legal education from the best law school in Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School.
I very much enjoyed the member's speech. My question is about what she said when she was talking about the freedom to speak but not necessarily the freedom to be heard. My understanding is that this would give the CRTC the ability to control algorithms, thus potentially burying comments, perhaps like burying a comment that was called out on Twitter for not being truthful, like the member for Kingston and the Islands.
Would the member be worried that the content by the member for Kingston and the Islands might be buried?
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Madam Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, he expressed pleasure at hearing Orwell quoted to him from Conservative benches, so I will maybe continue in that vein.
He was certainly my favourite novelist of the first half of the 20th century, although he did spend most of his career writing and criticizing socialism and its excesses. In 1984, the main character worked in the “Ministry of Truth” and sat in his cubicle deciding what people could see and what information they would have access to, which seems rather relevant to this debate.
We might as well be honest here with each other about what the bill does. It expands the powers of the CRTC to influence and control what people find, see, hear and post online. Could he comment on the expansion of the powers of the CRTC?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comment and his question. I think that we could have a debate and a discussion at some point on George Orwell's ideological and political views and his real objectives as a left-wing socialist.
To answer his question, I think that it is, in fact, essential that the CRTC has authority over digital broadcasters. That is the purpose of this exercise. It does not expand bureaucracy; there is absolutely nothing new about it.
The CRTC had authority over traditional media, television and radio. Over the past 30 years, no one has died because of that. Things still turned out okay. Now, the law needs to be modernized so that it also applies to web giants and digital broadcasters. I do not see how this creates a major problem. People will be able to watch whatever they want, when they want, as usual.
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Madam Speaker, the CRTC is getting its marching orders from the government, absolutely. What it says to them will impact how the CRTC functions, and it has its hands full, quite honestly, dealing with the dynamics around the legacy media at this point in time.
The truth of the matter is there is all kinds of production going on in Canada, from those large producers. If the member listened to the speech from the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood who was in the industry for 45 years, he talked about all across this nation, and especially in British Columbia, on the island and in the Lower Mainland, these companies are coming to Canada to make their movies and documentaries. We are gaining an incredible amount of GDP because of that influx into our nation.
We deserve the freedom as Canadians to use the Internet in the way that it has been designed and is functioning now.
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Madam Speaker, I guess this member is sort of a part of the government, or his party is governing with the Liberals. Why did the government not exempt user-generated content and the uploading of user-generated content? This is a big bill, and I am not going to oppose everything that is contained within it. I am not going to suggest that every motivation behind the tabling of this bill was wrong, but the bill is unsupportable to the extent that it would grant new and extraordinary powers to the CRTC that do not belong in a free and democratic society. I, frankly, do not see how this bill, if passed, would necessarily solve the problems that the member suggested. It would take away all kinds of opportunities for other Canadian content creators to find an audience through an unfettered Internet.
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Madam Speaker, the point is that this legislation would give incredible authority to the CRTC. As I laid out in my speech, I do not have a lot of confidence in the CRTC's taking on of all this extra responsibility and authority, considering what it has existing in its mandate. One could argue that the CRTC is not meeting a lot of the obligations of its current mandate.
The government is willing to give the CRTC this incredible new authority without even telling or disclosing to Canadians and parliamentarians what would be the criteria and all of the rules about the new authority that it would have. This should be concerning to every Canadian.
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Madam Speaker, it is extremely concerning. This bill spent a lot of time in the Senate, and a lot of senators had real concerns. They brought forth an incredible number of amendments to the government, of which the government did not accept all, so here we are today. The government is not listening to witnesses who have testified at committees both in the House of Commons and in the Senate. It is not listening to senators and it is not listening to Canadians.
We have to wonder what truly are the Liberals' objectives. They are wanting to give incredible authority to the CRTC, and we do not even know what that authority would be and what the criteria would be. All of this is extremely concerning.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to be standing up to reiterate what all my colleagues have been saying tonight: It is time to kill Bill C-11.
The legislation is about giving the government more power and making sure that we have extra regulation. If we give the CRTC more regulations, that means more red tape and more gatekeepers telling us what we can and cannot watch; it also equals less opportunity for us, as Canadians, and less opportunity for creators who are using the Internet. We know that it comes with more costs.
We already heard that the government is going to ask content providers to make sure that they have the appropriate broadcast licences to go onto YouTube and other social media platforms and get their creations out there. These creations may be online programming, some of the short films being produced, animation or sharing their music. Now they are actually going to have to pay for a licence to have their own channels on social media.
We have already witnessed how government intervention has cost us as consumers. Canadians already pay the highest Internet service fees in the world. We pay the highest mobile phone bills, more than anywhere else in the developed world. To me, that is extremely disturbing. Canadians continue to pay more and more, while everybody else seems to be getting away with paying less while getting better services than we get from our phone companies or Internet service providers.
We still have lots of Canadians, including in my riding, who do not have access to high-speed broadband. They do not have that opportunity to actually see what we are talking about here on Bill C-11 because they still do not have the ability to hook up online.
As Conservatives, we believe that Canadians should be given more of what they want. However, the Liberal-NDP coalition wants the government to tell Canadians what they can watch or see on YouTube and other social media platforms.
The question here, and we are going to use a little theatre, is 2(b) or not 2(b). Of course, I am talking about section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under fundamental freedoms in section 2, it says that everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.
If we go to Justice Canada's own website, and we are talking about a department of the federal government, it says:
The protection of freedom of expression is premised upon fundamental principles and values that promote the search for and attainment of truth, participation in social and political decision-making and the opportunity for individual self-fulfilment through expression.... The Supreme Court of Canada has maintained that the connection between freedom of expression and the political process is “perhaps the linchpin” of section 2(b) protection.... Free expression is valued above all as being instrumental to democratic governance. The two other rationales for protecting freedom of expression [are] the search for truth through the open exchange of ideas, and fostering individual self-actualization, thus directly engaging individual human dignity.
Canadians who value their Charter of Rights, who understand the freedom of expression, are all the ones out there denouncing what Bill C-11 could do. That is why we are hearing from social media content creators. A lot of them have their own shows where they share their political views. They share a lot of things, from criticizing what is going on in the film industry to criticizing what is happening here in the House of Commons. They fear, and they have testified at committee, that their ability to share their thoughts online, and the costs that come with it, would undermine their freedom of speech, expression, and opinion and thought. This would happen through the excess licensing that this bill would create.
That is why, as Conservatives, we are standing so strongly in opposition to what is very much a censorship bill that we are seeing from the Liberal-NDP coalition.
We heard through the debate tonight a lot of times from the Liberals asking where the legal expertise was. All we have to do is look at Phil Palmer, who is a constitutional lawyer and former official in the Department of Justice. He argued that Bill C-11 is unconstitutional. He said:
...C-11 lacks a foundation in Canadian constitutional law. Internet streaming services do not transmit to the public by radio waves, nor do they operate telecommunications facilities across provincial boundaries. They and their audiences are the clients of telecommunications common carriers, which are subject to federal regulation. Netflix, for instance, in this case is no more a federal undertaking than a law firm such as McCarthy Tétrault or a chain store like Canadian Tire, both of which rely extensively on telecommunications services.
We are talking about a situation where we have the Government of Canada overstepping its means through Bill C-11 and infringing upon the rights of Canadians, Canadian companies, individuals and our artists. I would make the argument that Bill C-11 would actually penalize content creators, including our artists, whether they are creating music, culture, clothing or any other type of art that is out there on social media.
We already heard from the member for Sarnia—Lambton. She talked about the monetization and the ability of creators who have been able to go online and make a good living selling their music, art and any bit of their creations. Right now, if we regulate the industry, we are talking about $1 billion a year that the arts community is going to be able to earn. Today, without government interference, it is making $5 billion a year. Why would we want to limit the ability of our arts and culture industry to actually make less?
I guess there is the argument out there about having a free market versus government intervention. We know that government intervention always equals more dependency, because people are going to have to rely on grants and subsidization to be able to earn a living. I think the Liberal-NDP coalition, and I think my colleagues will agree with me, actually loves when Canadians become more dependent, because if they are more dependent, the government gets to control them.
A great example of that is the $595-million media bailout and how the government has control of our free press, supposedly.
This is a debate about freedom. This is about the debate to have freedom to create, share and earn a living. This is about freedom of Canadians to view and listen to what we as consumers choose, without the gatekeepers dictating what we see and hear. This is about the freedom to express ourselves and participate in society online without any censorship, but we should not be surprised, since we have a Prime Minister who has said that he admires basic communist dictatorships.
I have heard from hundreds of constituents and Canadians across the country who oppose Bill C-11 as well as the NDP-Liberal coalition. They are worried about censorship. The artists and content providers are worried about the red tape, the extra costs and the limited market opportunities. Matthew Hatfield, who is the campaigns director of OpenMedia, encapsulates this the best. He raises the issue I think most Canadians are concerned about. He says:
...Bill C-11 must not give the CRTC the power to manipulate the results of algorithms on platforms. We would never tolerate the government setting rules specifying which books must be placed in the front window of our bookstores or what kinds of stories must appear on the front pages of our newspapers. But that’s exactly what the discoverability provision in section 9.1(1) currently does. This dictatorial approach is not needed or appropriate.
I can tell Canadians that there is hope out there. A future Conservative government would kill Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, when we have a government agency like the CRTC deciding what the algorithms are and what Canadian content is without having it defined and without Canadians having the ability to individually choose what is Canadian enough for them, it is disturbing to many people. That is why our offices have been overrun with emails and phone calls. More and more people are concerned about the government's ongoing dictatorial approach to how this country is run.
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