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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 173

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 173 - Mar/27/23
Mrs. Shannon Stubbs (Lakeland, CPC)
  • Mar/27/23 8:38:30 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-11 
Mr. Speaker, there are few values more important to the people I represent, as they are to my colleague who just spoke, than advancing freedom and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially when it comes to the creeping, reaching, interfering and the heavy hand of government and its agencies. I oppose Bill C-11 because it is not just about what its proponents claim. It will be a way for the Liberal cabinet and CRTC gatekeepers to control what Canadians see, say and hear online. The Liberals have ignored and ridiculed the concerns about Bill C-11’s impacts and potential unintended consequences for Canadian media of all kinds and for everyday Canadians. Thousands of Canadians, and Conservatives, have spoken out for three years, so now, at the very final stage before it becomes law, the charitable assumption that its proponents are unclear or unintentional about the risks and potential consequences can no longer be entertained. Bill C-11 remains an attempt by the Liberals to regulate the Internet, with unprecedented powers for the CRTC and no clear guidelines or guardrails on those censorship powers. The other parties argue for the bill on two main grounds: modernization of the Broadcasting Act and that it will enhance and expand Canadian content and culture online. The truth is that Bill C-11 goes backwards on Canadians' successful online innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism by regulating it with the Broadcasting Act. Instead of promoting Canadian content as a whole, Bill C-11 will pick winners and losers, prioritize and deprioritize content, and therefore shape what Canadians see, regardless of their actual preferences, and whether Canadians can be seen or heard under its criteria, which will be decided by the CRTC and ministers. To be clear, on this point, I really do not care what party it is. This power, in particular, should not be extended to any. Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives measure success by outcomes delivered, not money spent. The challenge of how to best expand and promote Canadian content is clearly not going to be done as well by Bill C-11 as it is already being done by the private sector, hardly a surprise. For example, the Motion Picture Association Canada is responsible for half of domestic media production and spent $5 billion in 2021 alone. That private sector investment is five times the amount allotted in Bill C-11. This is more of the costly coalition’s usual MO of spending lots of tax dollars regardless of results, despite the private sector’s obvious leadership. It is a government gatekeeping and taxpayer-funded solution in search of a problem. The core problem with the way Bill C-11 deals with the concept of Canadian content is that, one, it does not actually define it and enables politicians to tell the CRTC what it is, and two, any person or business may be restricted since their content can be pushed up or down if it is decided that they fit or that they are not Canadian enough. Canadians do not have to decipher the truth from our back-and-forth here. Currently, the CRTC’s definition of Canadian content often depends on copyright ownership, which big streaming services usually keep, instead of, say, Canadian staff, locations, writers, actors, compositions, art or stories. The power granted to politicians is clear in Bill C-11. Section 7 of the Broadcasting Act states, “the Governor in Council may, by order, issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters”. Well, “Governor in Council” means a cabinet minister. Conservatives tried to remove that clause to ensure that the CRTC chair would be free from political interference, but Liberals blocked it, so the power is there. After the costly coalition pushes through Bill C-11, Liberals will write up a set of backdoor regulations for the CRTC and then apply some sort of values test to every YouTube video, Facebook post, TV show, documentary and radio show, and it is endless. Social media is caught because of Bill C-11’s definition of “online undertakings” and “programs”, which can include images and sounds where written text is limited. That could mean videos, podcasts, photos and memes, but not written posts or news articles. Clauses 9 and 10 could empower the CRTC to adopt so-called discoverability rules that would force social media sites like YouTube to modify algorithms and affect how often videos are seen on social media feeds, based on the yet-to-be determined criteria for what is and is not sufficiently Canadian. Bill C-11 clearly makes the Canadian government and the agency the regulator of the Internet. The Broadcasting Act states that the regulations will prescribe “what constitutes a Canadian program”. If the content is not Canadian enough, it will get slapped with fees and taxes, and it will be censored. If it is Canadian enough, it will continue just as it does now. Bill C-11 will also force content creators, from small YouTubers all the way to Netflix, to pay fees to the Canada Media Fund, but it does not define who will be exempted and makes creators pay based on a points system that value-tests whether their content production is Canadian enough. The winners would be government-subsidized broadcasters, such as the already advantaged government-funded CBC, which would get even more funding with Bill C-11. The losers would be the independent innovators driving Canadian digital leadership, and often young Canadians. So much for the democratized free market of ideas that the Internet embodies. Conservatives proposed to define discoverability and limit government algorithm manipulation, as well as amendments to ensure greater transparency of the CRTC and its decision-making, but the Liberals rejected them. Digital entrepreneurs have grown rapidly on YouTube and Instagram. They create brands off their channels and the advertising revenues their videos generate. They are worried that they would not qualify as Canadian enough, and that small channels, with only a couple of hundred subscribers and next to no revenue, will suddenly be forced to pay government, or even get fined up to $25,000 per day, as in proposed section 32. It is crazy that a young Canadian YouTuber could get fined because they are not Canadian enough. Conservatives also tried to remove proposed subsection 4.1(1), which may be referenced by members opposite as exempting normal Canadians from these CRTC rules, but the Liberals put in an exemption to the exemption right after, so there is actually no change. The Liberals plan to reject the amendment that would explicitly encourage the CRTC to regulate professional, copywritten content, which seems to be their actual aim, instead of individual user-created content. Even then, it does not change the discoverability rules that would control and prioritize what Canadians see and hear, thereby controlling the content creators. Experts warn that this will happen. Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies says that under Bill C-11, Canada will “become a global leader in restricting online speech and meddling with news media.” Canada’s top legal scholar and digital content expert, Michael Geist, whom the Liberals now deride when we quote him, says it will restrict who can hear Canadian voices: “the risk with these rules is not that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard.” If Canadians do not have the freedom to hear it, then the creator does not have free expression. Forty thousand creators from Digital First Canada signed letters calling for these rules to be removed. The Liberals ignored them. Prominent and diverse Canadian YouTubers, like J.J. McCullough, Morghan Fortier, Justin Tomchuk and Oorbee Roy, have all spoken about their concerns about what Bill C-11 would do to their viewership and their income. J.J. McCullough said: Given that YouTubers make videos of every genre imaginable, from fitness to architecture to political commentary, it is frankly terrifying to imagine that government may soon have a hand in determining which genres of video are more worthy of promotion than others. In summary, anyone proud of the tremendous success of Canadians on YouTube should be deeply concerned about the damage that Bill C-11 could do to their livelihoods. If MPs pass this bill into law, no one can say they were not warned about the potential consequences. The level of uncertainty and concern, as much about what is not defined as what is, and the potential impact on the core value of free expression should be enough for the costly coalition to hit pause and fix this bill. That is the duty of policy-makers, the duty of MPs, to ensure that legislation does what they claim and to mitigate unintended consequences before passing laws. MPs must defend the values of Canadians' right to freely, without censorship or risk of consequences, express their views, so long as they are not inciting harm or hate, whether or not they align with the views of anyone in here. That is our job. No government agency responsible for broadcasting in a free and democratic society should have powers to censor, control and regulate as proposed in Bill C-11. Canadians have fought and died to defend rights to free thought and expression. I will close with these words: you fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye Margaret Atwood was talking about love and pain. That is what Bill C-11 would do to what Canadians can see and hear online. She says Bill C-11 is “creeping totalitarianism”. I would not presume but it is probably fair to say she is not a Conservative, but she is a world-renowned Canadian artist and icon, and Bill C-11 supporters should actually listen to her before it is too late.
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