44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 11, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be here this morning to discuss a very important subject.
The law that limits young people's online access to sexually explicit material, more commonly known as pornography, is something we should be concerned about.
When we look at certain aspects of the bill, we see that things changed with the advent of information technology. Things are not like they used to be. It is no longer the same. We must have a slightly different concern for that reason.
We want—
90 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, Bill S‑210 would create an offence for organizations that make such content accessible. Obviously, we are motivated by the desire to better regulate sexually explicit material. Basically, what we want to do here is protect young people from a certain type of danger. When we seek to protect, we want to act proactively to prevent a certain event from happening, and the danger is being at the mercy of someone or something. We need to be very careful.
It is much easier then it used to be to gain access to pornography. I remember, when I was young, that people really had to be quite clever to find anything at all, and then it had to be hidden under the bed. I am not talking about myself, obviously, I am referring to others. Today, it is easy to get the material online. The web means everywhere and forever. It is very difficult to regulate online content.
In philosophy, it is said that in order to exist, an event must have two characteristics, space and time. Something takes place at a given time. We are used to thinking this way. Where and when? But the Internet is everywhere and forever. This makes it hard to control certain types of content or the businesses that provide it. Without space and time, nothing would exist. I used to ask the following question in discussions: What would happen to a bird in flight if there were neither space nor time? Most people answered that the bird would fall, but it would not, because there would be no time. These are basic building blocks of where we are.
When we talk about young people, we are talking about individuals who have not yet necessarily had an opportunity to develop judgment. They are very susceptible to various influences. They can easily form a false idea of the nature of sexuality, love and relationships, a distorted idea that could significantly shape their behaviour. This is a danger. As parliamentarians, no one here can be against preventing such a danger.
At the age when the concepts of love, sexuality, relationships and dating are still fluid, we have to be able to act preventively. There is a Creole saying I really like. It says, “the sun sleeps, but danger never does”.
That is why we must act. I will reiterate that all action is time sensitive. If we must act, we must do so now. Of course, as we send the bill on to the next step, there will be discussions about what form it might take, but we must never lose sight of its intent. The intent must remain, because it reflects the values underlying it. Values are elements that embody a certain vision of goodness, justice and injustice. They are values like respect. We all demand respect, but sometimes we do not bother to learn what it is. Respect is a second look we take at something or someone so as not to offend needlessly. There is then something here we have to think about now.
This said, I have a bit of a problem with the idea of “now”, because, if it is urgent, we have to act. Last Friday, we lost a parliamentary day to useless procedural tactics that delayed the hearing and potentially the implementation of such a bill. We were confronted with a shameful partisan stunt that twisted procedure for purposes other than those intended. This is called manipulation. Manipulation is to use something for other purposes, for one's own ends.
While we were voting, the people who forced the vote were forgetting that there was a danger. There was a danger, yet I am told that the party that forced the vote was okay with the danger.
In the bill, although it is not referred to explicitly, we can read between the lines and understand that self-regulation will not be an option. Of course, as far as the Internet is concerned, self-regulation is a fiction. In general, online companies, especially the ones that distribute pornography, are not at all trustworthy, and trust is a condition for self-regulation. Trust is the ability to rely on others without having to control everything. Self-regulation is therefore neither credible nor acceptable.
In conclusion, I will ask my colleagues to stop wasting time, something we are seeing a lot of, and bear in mind that every hour of time lost is an opportunity for something to go wrong. As I said, there is danger, there is a threat, there are young people involved whose minds are not yet fully formed. We have to act now.
782 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, this is the first time in two years that I have gotten the unanimous consent of the House, and I am proud of it. Before beginning my speech, I would like to make one thing clear. This is not a case of the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal Party standing together. It is the Conservatives that stand alone. That is not the same thing.
Today we will be discussing Bill C-56, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act and the Competition Act. I will be talking mostly about that last part of the bill, in terms of both its technical points and its rationale. Before we begin, though, we always need to establish what we are talking about. What is competition? It means coming together and converging on the same point. That is what competition is. It is not necessarily a bad thing. However, what is the motivation for coming together? What is the purpose? Is it good or bad? As members of Parliament, our objective must be commendable, because we obviously have the public interest at heart.
In one amendment, the bill would increase the maximum monetary penalty for abuse of a dominant position to $25 million for the first offence and $35 million for subsequent offences. The aim is to give the law teeth, to make sure that it will not be taken lightly, that people will not think that they can get away with a slap on the wrist. This provision also makes Canadian law more comparable to U.S. law, of course.
The second important amendment in the part on competition would allow the Competition Bureau to conduct market study inquiries if the minister responsible for the act or the commissioner of competition so recommends, and would require the minister to consult the commissioner before doing so.
The Competition Bureau already has significant powers, but it cannot demand certain things from the people it is investigating. It cannot request a search unless there is a clear offence. It cannot request a search just to look around. It cannot make assumptions. All of us here know that groceries are expensive and that we pay the highest cellphone fees in the OECD. It does not take a genius to realize that the commissioner might want to investigate these things.
When it conducts a study, the bureau will have to determine whether there is adequate competition in a market or industry. Right now, it does not have that power in every industry. What the Competition Bureau can do at present is all right, but it is not necessarily the best thing right now. It may have been sufficient at the time, but now it needs to be enhanced.
In its report on the state of competition in the grocery sector, published in June, the bureau noted that the grocery chains did not really co-operate with its study. I like that euphemism: “did not really co-operate”. They said no, which is not the same thing, and the Competition Bureau, with its current powers, could not make them say yes. They refused to provide the documents the bureau asked for, and they refused to answer certain questions. My colleagues will no doubt agree that there are many shades of meaning between “did not really co-operate” and “refused to answer”. The aim of Bill C-56 is to solve this problem by granting the Competition Bureau the power to conduct inquiries where applicable.
Lastly, the bill would revise the legal test for abuse of a dominant position prohibition order to be sufficiently met if the tribunal finds that a dominant player has engaged in either a practice of anti-competitive acts or conduct that is having or is likely to have the effect of preventing competition. That is the technical part of the bill. However, when someone drafts a bill, they need to think about why they are doing it, what they are trying to accomplish.
The purpose of the Competition Act is to ensure that Quebec and Canadian consumers have freedom of choice. We sometimes talk about monopolies. What is a monopoly? It is an exclusive right. What does “exclusive” mean? It means doing everything possible to keep others out. It means restricting, refusing, blocking, rejecting. Exclusivity means limiting access. It is almost like a secret agreement.
The bill also seeks to prevent stakeholders from abusing a dominant market position. To dominate means to master, to control. In the past minute, I have talked about refusing, blocking, mastering, controlling, exclusive rights. All of this goes against the free market that this country promises, that it says it has, but that is sometimes, in reality, only an illusion.
Essentially, the drafters of the bill wanted the Competition Bureau to have more power, the power to provide us with freedom of choice, the power to investigate where appropriate until it is satisfied that it can make this possible.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, competition means getting together and converging on the same point. If that is not possible, if certain players dominating a market prevent that from happening, we are being deprived of our freedom of choice. It is a sort of manipulation. It is a sort of lie.
Without calling anyone a liar, we can still talk about what a lie is, here in the House of Commons. A lie from someone in a dominant position may prevent someone else from doing something they would have done had they known the truth. Lies imply secrecy. Monopolies imply secrecy. It is this secrecy that this bill seeks to eliminate so that everyone can exercise freedom.
954 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.
22 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, those who hold monopolies or exclusive rights do not need to be good at what they do. They just have to be there. At the end of the day, they can charge whatever they want, with whatever conditions they want, to whoever they want. They do not have to sell to everyone if they do not want to.
The law will need to improve the efficiency of service providers, because they will not have the luxury of serving a passive and captive clientele.
85 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, competition is for oil companies too. Funny how the price of gas never goes down, only up.
Regulation is not always a cure-all, but it is the right solution in this case because the players are not trustworthy. If they were, we might be inclined to let them self-regulate, but they have shown that that was not good enough, particularly when they refused to answer questions from the Competition Bureau.
I think that the proposed legislation seeks to restore consumer confidence in the bureau's services. I do not believe that there will be a loss of efficiency. I think that we will see increased efficiency, because the players will have no other choice.
118 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I will respond candidly and honestly: I simply do not know.
If my colleague so desires, I can look into it and get back to him later. At this point, I could not say.
36 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
