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, 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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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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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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Uqaqtittiji, in 2020, one in four people working in the cultural sector lost their job, but Netflix's revenues increased by over 22% in that same year. Does the member agree that we need this legislation to equalize the playing field in online streaming?
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Madam Speaker, he must have missed the last part of my speech, so I will just repeat it, briefly.
A Conservative government would repeal Bill C-11 and, recognizing the richness and breadth of Canadian content in the Internet age, we would require large streaming services to invest more in producing Canadian content while protecting the individual rights and freedoms of Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, it might have started as a good idea, with the support of the Liberals' NDP allies, to not resist the temptation to take this opportunity to reshape Canadian culture and society in their own image, so we are here in the House of Commons this evening, late at night, talking about Bill C-11, the so-called online streaming act. This act has morphed into the Liberals' attempt to regulate the Internet, and we are hearing from so many Canadians that this is a terrible idea.
The Liberals are saying that they are just updating the Broadcasting Act, which has not been updated in 30 years and, in the meantime, since the Internet has been invented and more people are getting their news, entertainment and information off the Internet and fewer people are going to the legacy media, it is important that they now regulate the Internet. However, they are saying that this does not affect user-generated content, the things that ordinary Canadians post on the Internet.
Here is the problem. As soon as that user-generated content becomes commercial, it falls within the rules, and the CRTC is going to regulate it and impose Canadian content rules on it. The question we ask then is the obvious question: At what point does our user-generated content become commercial, and at what point do we have to start worrying about the Canadian content rules? The answer we get is that we should not worry. We should leave it up to the Liberals because they are going to do it right and are going to leave it up to the CRTC to figure out what the rules are.
We asked if we could at least see a draft of the rules, and the answer was no, that we should trust them as they are the Liberal Party and know what Canadian culture is and what Canadians want to watch. It will commission the CRTC to come up with the new rules, and they will give it a policy directive. We asked them if we could see the policy directive, and the answer was no. Therefore, we as Canadians are left in the dark.
This is very important public policy that needs to be debated here in the House of Commons. This is the people's chamber. The people want to know what is going on with something as important as the Internet, which everybody relies on and has become pervasive in our society.
The Senate, the chamber of second thought just down the road, looked at this legislation. It did not approve it. It said there was a problem with it, that we need to get rid of user-generated content altogether. However, inexplicably, the Liberal government has said that it is not going to change anything. That is why we Conservatives and so many Canadians are against Bill C-11.
We are not alone. We have received so many emails, and I am sure the members opposite have also received a lot of emails, from people who have issues and problems with Bill C-11, but we are also hearing from higher profile people such as Margaret Atwood, for example, who has been cited here by several of my colleagues. She is a famous Canadian author who was quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying that bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write and should not decide what is Canadian.
She said, “So it is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to [write].” Those are not my words. They are the words of Margaret Atwood. She is a very fair and balanced person and acknowledges that Bill C-11 shows some signs of what she says are “well-meaning attempts to achieve some sort of fairness in the marketplace.” She added, “But like a lot of well-meaning attempts, if people haven't thought it through, the effect might be different from what [they] thought it would be.” Is this personal for Ms. Atwood? Maybe it is. The Emmy award-winning adaptation of her famous book The Handmaid's Tale failed the Canadian content rules. Imagine that, Canada's most-famous author is not Canadian content.
A person who lives in Abbotsford, right next door to my community of Langley, is Kris Collins, a.k.a kallmekris, who through her own ingenuity, creativity and determination, has become one of Canada's most popular TikTok stars. She has 48 million followers. It is phenomenal.
She is known around the world. She has learned how to monetize her social media presence. In the process, she was making a lot of money at it, so good for her, and all of this without the help or intervention of the CRTC. Ms. Collins figured out on her own what Canadians want and what the world wants. She knows how to market herself. She did not need the government.
This is what she says about the Liberal government's attempt to change all of that: “I am scared. I have been paying really close attention to Bill C-11, a.k.a. the online streaming act. It is something my fellow Canadian creators should be paying attention to, and all the viewers as well. Bill C-11 was supposed to be promoting Canadian storytelling online. In reality, the bill has ended up so broadly worded that it lets the CRTC interfere with every part of your online life.” This is exactly what Conservatives have been talking about: Liberal overreach.
We talked about the Senate, the chamber of sober second thought, as it likes to call itself or as Canadians call it. I have a quote from one of the senators, the Hon. David Richards. This is what he had to say about Bill C-11. I will read the first two sentences of his speech: “Honourable senators, I have a good deal of problems with this bill. I think it’s censorship passing as national inclusion.”
We hear the Liberals saying that it is not censorship at all, that people are free to post and write whatever they want and that the government is not telling them what not to write or what not to post. However, here is the problem. A bureaucratic body, the CRTC, would be tasked with deciding what to promote and, consequently, what to demote on the Internet, all based on that body's idea of what is good Canadian content, keeping in mind that Margaret Atwood did not pass the test.
Senator Richards went on to talk about equality, quoting somebody who commented a lot about equality, and that is author George Orwell, who, in his novel Animal Farm, said, about the society he was talking about, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That is the issue here. That is why so many Canadians are upset with this legislation. They are feeling like they are less equal than people who might agree with the Liberal government's idea of what is Canadian culture and what is good for our society.
I want to quote one of those ordinary Canadians. This is a person who lives in my riding, Barry Springman, who wrote me a very thoughtful email. I have gotten a lot of emails, hundreds of them, and the vast majority are clearly against Bill C-11, urging Conservatives to vote against it. There are a handful that have some reserved support for the bill. I just wanted to get that on the record, to be fair. This is what Mr. Springman said: “Our family has lived in Langley, B.C. for the past 16 years and have family ties to this city for almost 50 years. We have enjoyed the freedoms we have as Canadians to choose what we want to see on the internet, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. In the past few years, we are seeing these freedoms erode. While we are always careful to warn our kids of the potential dangers of some of the content on the internet, we are very much against the government deciding what we should have access to. Therefore, we would like to express our deep displeasure in the Federal Government's attempt to pass the Bill C-11. In no way do we support the passing of this bill.”
This is just a sample. I do not have time to read more.
When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me and my brothers, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I will grant that the government's Bill C-11 probably started with good intentions, but, in typical overreach, Bill C-11 went off the rails. I know the Liberals are not going to take advice from the Conservatives, because they always say that they do not have to, but will they take advice from ordinary Canadian citizens, experts in the field and people like the Springman family? Will they at least take advice from the Senate, which is telling them that this legislation is wrong?
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Uqaqtittiji , I think we all know by now that the online streaming act is attempting to update the outdated Broadcasting Act. I will read a quote from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. It said, “Other countries are taking measures to protect their economy and their cultural sovereignty. Canada must not fall behind. Sovereign countries must have the necessary tools to tell their own stories in the 21st century.” I wonder if the member can respond to that.
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