44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 7, 2024 10:00AM
- May/7/24 10:10:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition today, which is signed by Canadians from across the country.
These Canadians are concerned about the nearly 100,000 preborn children who die every year since the Morgentaler decision. Canada is only one of two nations in the world that has zero laws protecting the preborn. They also note that a child's heartbeat begins when the child is six weeks old. They are calling on the Government of Canada and this place to strengthen the protections for the preborn in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to wrap up the debate on the SISE act at second reading.
I have appreciated listening to the members give their speeches. At the outset, I want to briefly urge members to use the term “child sexual abuse material”, or CSAM, rather than “child pornography”. As we heard from the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, the latter term is being replaced with CSAM because pornography allows for the idea that this could be consensual. That is why the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo has put forward a bill that would change this in the Criminal Code as well.
During the first hour of debate, we heard from the member for Laurentides—Labelle, who gave a passionate speech outlining the many serious issues of the impact of the pornography industry on women and youth. I simply do not have the time to include all of that in my speech, but we both sat on the ethics committee during the Pornhub study and heard directly from the survivors who testified.
It was the speech, however, from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons that left me scratching my head. I do not think he actually read Bill C-270 or even the Liberals' own bill, Bill C-63. The parliamentary secretary fixated on the 24-hour takedown requirement in Bill C-63 as the solution to this issue. However, I do not think anyone is opposed to a 24-hour takedown for this exploitative intimate content sharing without consent or the child sexual abuse material. In fact, a bill that was solely focused on the 24-hour takedown would pass very quickly through this House with the support of everyone, but that does not take into account what Bill C-270 is trying to do. It is completely missing the point.
The 24-hour takedown has effect only after harmful content has been put up, such as CSAM, deepfakes and intimate images that have been shared. Bill C-270 is a preventative upstream approach. While the takedown mechanism should be available to victims, the goal of Bill C-270 is to go upstream and stop this abusive content from ever ending up on the Internet in the first place.
As I shared at the beginning of the debate, many survivors do not know that their images are online for years. They do not know that this exploitative content has been uploaded. What good would a 24-hour takedown be if they do not even know the content is there? I will repeat the words of one survivor that I shared during the first hour of debate: “I was 17 when videos of me on Pornhub came to my knowledge, and I was only 15 in the videos they've been profiting from.” She did not know for two years that exploitative content of her was being circulated online and sold. That is why Bill C-270 requires age verification and consent of individuals in pornographic material before it is posted.
I would also point out that the primary focus of the government's bill is not to reduce harm to victims. The government's bill requires services “to mitigate the risk that users of the regulated service will be exposed to harmful content”. It talks about users of the platform, not the folks depicted in it. The focus of Bill C-270 is the other side of the screen. Bill C-270 seeks to protect survivors and vulnerable populations from being the harmful content. The two goals could not be more different, and I hope the government is supportive of preventing victims of exploitation from further exploitation online.
My colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke also noted that the narrow focus of the SISE act is targeted at people and companies that profit from sexual exploitative content. This is, indeed, one of the primary aims of this bill. I hope, as with many things, that the spread of this exploitative content online will be diminished, as it is driven by profit. The Privacy Commissioner's investigation into Canada's MindGeek found that “MindGeek surely benefits commercially from these non-compliant privacy practices, which result in a larger content volume/stream and library of intimate content on its websites.”
For years, pornography companies have been just turning a blind eye, and it is time to end that. Bill C-270 is a fulfillment of a key recommendation made by the ethics committee three years ago and supported by all parties, including the government. I hope to have the support from all of my colleagues in this place for Bill C-270, and I hope to see it at committee, where we can hear from survivors and experts.
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- May/7/24 6:54:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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- May/7/24 6:54:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government, the standard of living in Canada is in a total free fall, and the carbon tax is causing this crisis. The only goals that the government has accomplished is to indebt Canadians more and more, and to make bankers and bondholders wealthier.
Common-sense Conservatives have a plan for Canada and have a plan to restore the promise of Canada, where people are the masters and the government is the servant. It would be a Canada where, if they were to work hard, they could accomplish anything. It would be a Canada that would be glorious and free. We would axe the tax so that Canadians could afford to put food on their tables, to put gas in their cars and to put heat in their homes. Back in March, I asked the Liberal minister this: When will he see the facts and axe the tax?
The fact is that, in Canada, life has never been so unaffordable. Our next generation will be the first generation that has it worse than the previous generation. I understand the frustration that Canadians are facing, and I know that because of the current government's incompetence, Canadians are broke and Canada is broken. Our young people are stuck in their parents' basements because under the Liberal-NDP government, rent has doubled, home prices have doubled, the cost of a down payment has doubled, and our dollar just does not go as far as it used to. Therefore, people's hard work does not pay either. All of that is due to the reckless government spending and bad Liberal policies.
Since I asked the minister my question, the Liberals have refused to listen to the 70% of Canadians and the 70% of premiers who asked that the hike be spiked and that the increase on the carbon tax be avoided. Nonetheless, the Liberals did not listen, and they increased the carbon tax on April 1 by 23%.
The minister is making life more unaffordable for all Canadians every day. We have said it over and over again, and I will say it again. If the Liberals tax the farmer who grows the food, tax the trucker who delivers the food and tax the grocer who sells the food, Canadians cannot afford to buy food. The carbon tax is a tax on everything, both indirectly and directly, and it makes all aspects of our life more unaffordable.
For example, a school division in my riding, Peace River School Division, reported that it has spent $522,000 on the carbon tax since 2020. That is over $280,000 on transportation costs and $240,000 in carbon tax to heat its facilities. What a shame it is for the government to be putting this strain on our education system, and in every area of the country for that matter. I wonder how many teachers the school division would have been able to hire with that money. I wonder how many new books or how many new building materials to build new schools could have been paid for with that money. Let us think about all the property tax that needed to be raised and collected to pay this tax. This is a tax on a tax.
This also affects municipalities, which are not exempt from the carbon tax. For the Town of Whitecourt, just heating its municipal buildings is costing it $30,000 a year. There is no dimension of our society that is not being crushed by the carbon tax. Therefore, my question to the minister, again, and to the Liberal government is this: When will the Liberals do something good for Canadians and axe their disastrous carbon tax?
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- May/7/24 7:00:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, no matter how many times the parliamentary secretary says it, Canadians are not better off under the carbon tax scheme. Canadians are feeling the weight of everyday costs going up, and we have seen that the carbon tax has cascaded through the economy, making life unaffordable.
We also see it when a local school division has to pay $522,000 in carbon tax to heat its buildings and drive its buses. The carbon tax affects every area of our economy, wherever someone lives in Canada. No one is better off under the carbon tax.
Conservatives believe in innovation, not taxes. We believe that we have the ability to solve the issues that we see in front of us without taxing and making Canadians' lives less affordable. The carbon tax drives innovation out of our country and makes people poor. When will the government listen to us and axe the tax?
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