Hon. Leo Housakos: My question is for the government leader in the Senate.

Senator Gold, we just completed a marathon study of a piece of legislation overhauling the Broadcasting Act in what the Trudeau government stated was an effort to bring online streamers in line with Canadian broadcasters, including the public broadcaster, the CBC.

This morning, there was an interview featuring the head of the network who stated that CBC is getting out of the broadcasting business and moving its operations entirely online. She proudly boasted about the CBC’s efforts thus far toward that goal which, by the way, would be in violation of the CBC’s broadcasting licence that requires that they provide service to all Canadians and to all regions.

Essentially, government leader, the head of the CBC is acknowledging that traditional broadcasting is dying.

How much of the CBC’s current funding is being inappropriately allocated toward these efforts to circumvent the conditions of the very licence that provides that public funding? Will your government do the right thing and freeze funding until this practice ceases by the CBC?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, your answer does not correlate with the facts. Over the last decade, we’ve seen the CBC reducing regional service to an enormous degree, simultaneously spending millions of dollars toward the digital platforms, and that is a fact. The only thing we can’t really determine is how much of taxpayers’ money they are actually spending to convert to digital.

Let’s try another question. Senator Gold, the minister responsible for your government’s online censorship bill, Bill C-11, has written a letter to the chair of the CRTC, whom the minister himself had just appointed, expressing concerns that his bill could be used to infringe on freedom of expression. Shocking. The bill is still before Parliament, so I’m not so sure why the minister would write a letter instead of just writing something in the actual bill to protect against the very thing we have been raising concerns about all along, which is the trampling of the freedom of expression.

Senator Gold, are the members of your government, the Trudeau government, unaware that they are in government and that it’s not being done to them, but it’s being done to Canadians by them? Why is the minister sending a letter to his appointee?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you for your speech, Senator Harder.

I was very skeptical about Bill C-11 in terms of the government having an objective to predetermine winners and losers. In the case of Bill C-18, I understand the objective, and I think it’s about fairness and respecting copyright and content. But I still have some concerns and I’m skeptical if it actually does achieve that.

What would you say to critics who will argue that the web actually just magnifies and amplifies the work of those content producers? When a journalist at Quebecor or CBC posts to Twitter or Facebook, they do it because they want to amplify and get as much reach as possible for their work. Without those platforms, they wouldn’t be getting that reach.

What happens now when we jump into an Uber to go to dinner tonight and, once we get to the restaurant, the Uber driver says, “I also want a percentage of the bill tonight that you spend at that restaurant, because if it wasn’t for my platform, you wouldn’t be having this exchange?” Or, regarding this wonderful speech you just gave, when you post it on Twitter or when the Senate puts it on Facebook, are we entitled to ask for royalties from all those platforms when we’re actually using those platforms in order to propel our work?

Senator Harder: Thank you for your question, senator.

If I can take your analogy, the Uber driver who will take us to dinner would be worthy of a portion of that expense if he were providing the dinner. He’s not.