Senator Carignan: Thank you for your question. It is interesting, because it shows how important it is for senators to be part of a caucus, like those in the House of Commons. What you may not know is that the other place consults senators. That way, we are able to help improve bills, give our opinion even before the bill reaches the Senate, and propose amendments.

That is what I did with regard to the electoral reform. I worked with my current leader, Pierre Poilievre, who, at the time, was the minister responsible for democratic reform and the Fair Elections Act. Even before the bill reached the Senate, I proposed several amendments that were added to the initial bill. That is the advantage of having access to the prime minister and cabinet, to the government. Obviously, that’s something you don’t have, because I am still waiting for an answer to my question about Prime Minister Trudeau’s much-talked-about credit card.

Senator Carignan: Of course.

Senator Carignan: How can you not have that information? Why is it so hard to get such simple information? The credit card statements from December and January arrived weeks ago. How can you not have this information? This is a serious matter.

Senator Carignan: I have no problem asking for five more minutes if Senator Miville-Dechêne would like to ask me a question, because she seemed to have one.

Hon. Claude Carignan: My question is for the proud Leader of the Government. Senator Gold, you gave Senator Plett a rather clear answer about how the Prime Minister didn’t know that there was a meeting of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation just a few feet from his office in an annex. I don’t know whether you have ever been to his office, but the room in question is quite close to it — and yet the Prime Minister did not know that was happening.

Can you answer my question? Does the Prime Minister at least know whether he paid for his infamous $9,000-a-night vacation to Jamaica? Did he pay for that? Can you answer that question?

If you can answer that he didn’t know there was a meeting four steps away from his office, then I would imagine that you have had the information about whether the Prime Minister paid for his vacation out of his own pocket for about two weeks now. The credit card statements for December and January have arrived.

Hon. Claude Carignan: Honourable senators, today we begin final debate on Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

More specifically, we will first deal with Senator MacDonald’s subamendment to Senator Plett’s amendment to the main motion. As you know, we’ll be having an abbreviated debate after the Leader of the Government in the Senate moved a time allocation motion, which has passed.

However, before I begin my speech on the substance of Senator MacDonald’s subamendment, I would like to revisit some of the remarks that Senator Gold, the proud Leader of the Government, made yesterday. In addressing the issue of time allocation, Senator Gold said the following:

It is important to remind ourselves that the original purpose of time allocation was not only to allow a government majority to manage the finite time of a legislative chamber, but also for the legislative body itself to overcome the use of tactics deliberately geared at delaying the progress of government legislation.

Then, Senator Gold added the following:

In a nutshell, colleagues, time allocation can be either curative or abusive, and context is everything.

He concluded with this:

Moreover, colleagues, as precedent demonstrates, there is nothing extraordinary about time allocation. In fact, it has been regularly applied to various stages of government business . . . .

Senator Gold also mentioned that when I was deputy leader and leader of the government in the 41st Parliament, I myself used time allocation motions 22 times. I am not going to contradict Senator Gold on that point, because he is absolutely correct. However, this fact cannot be taken out of context. I will repeat what the Leader of the Government told us yesterday. He said, “time allocation can be either curative or abusive, and context is everything.”

The context was rather simple at the time. The Liberal senators had lost their majority in the Senate since December 2010 and quite frequently refused to collaborate with the government to advance its legislative agenda. However, as I mentioned last night, we never used a time allocation motion on the message to the House of Commons, and certainly not at the stage of sending a response to the other place. Every time I used a time allocation motion it was to advance a bill at second or third reading stage, when bills that were important to the government were getting stuck in partisan ruts thanks to the Liberal opposition.

In short, supported by a Liberal opposition that was well practised in obstructionist tactics, the Liberal Senate caucus — including Senator Ringuette, Senator Furey and Senator Cordy at the time — repeatedly used dilatory measures to unduly delay debates. Obviously I had to use this time allocation tool that is available to governments. In fact, that was the objective of the Liberal opposition at the time: every important bill had to be passed after a time allocation motion was moved so that it could then be used in their partisan narrative against the government.

However, despite these tactics, I always tried to find common ground with the leaders of the opposition. When those negotiations failed, usually because of partisan imperatives, I was responsible for advancing the government’s agenda, and I never hesitated to do so.

Yesterday, the Leader of the Government was boasting that, like his predecessor, Senator Harder, he has never had to use a time allocation motion. By so doing, Senator Gold simply drew attention to the fact that he and his predecessor were always able to reach an agreement with the opposition to advance the Trudeau government’s agenda within acceptable, reasonable timeframes.

The opposition’s good faith therefore cannot be called into question, and it is especially surprising that the Leader of the Government is imposing time allocation on our debates today at the stage where the Senate is responding to the message from the House of Commons.

As all of the senators appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau decided, we must therefore meet these procedural requirements and deal with all of the amendments and subamendments within a rather tight time frame of six hours.

I will therefore come back to Senator MacDonald’s subamendment, which seeks to amend Senator Plett’s proposal.

Let’s first look at the nature of Senator Plett’s amendment.

As a result of the collaborative work of all senators in this chamber, the Senate adopted 22 amendments to Bill C-11. In its response, the government accepted 14 of them, rejected six and submitted two counterproposals for amendments. Senator Gold is proposing that we do not insist and that we accept the response of the House of Commons as presented, because he is guided by the will of his Liberal government.

Through his amendment to Senator Gold’s proposal, Senator Plett is proposing, in contrast, that we do insist and urge the House of Commons to make the 22 amendments to Bill C-11.

Meanwhile, Senator MacDonald wants us to insist essentially only on amendment 3, one of the amendments that was rejected in the message from the other place. That amendment, if adopted, would amend the text, as proposed in Bill C-11, of the new subsection 4.2(2) of the Broadcasting Act.

I agree with what Senator MacDonald said in his speech on April 20, 2023, as follows:

This is probably the most significant amendment the Senate made to Bill C-11, and it was based on what the Senate Transport and Communications Committee heard over several months from dozens of witnesses.

As Senator Simons pointed out in her speech on January 31, 2023, without this amendment, the CRTC has, and I quote:

 . . . the power to scope in a program uploaded to a social media service if it directly or indirectly generates revenues. That exception-to-the-exception clause rightly worried all kinds of small and not-so-small independent producers who use services such as YouTube and TikTok to distribute their programming, though they retain the copyright.

In my view, it is incomprehensible and unreasonable that MPs, in the message they sent to the Senate, refused this amendment. I am of the opinion that it is truly necessary to insist with the House of Commons that this amendment be kept in Bill C-11.

Let’s recall what this amendment does. It simply includes in the law a commitment that the Minister of Canadian Heritage made on November 22, 2022, before the Senate committee studying Bill C-11. Senators Plett and MacDonald reminded us of this in the speeches they gave on April 20. In her January 31 speech, Senator Simons reiterated the promise made by the Minister of Canadian Heritage:

In the wake of some of the controversy around Bill C-10, the Minister of Canadian Heritage promised that Bill C-11 would not pertain to nor capture users of social media but only big streamers who were analogous to traditional broadcasters.

In this context, the fact that MPs rejected amendment 3 in the message sent to the Senate is a game-changer, as their message contradicts the commitment made by the minister. That type of situation only adds to the concerns that senators had when they passed amendment 3. The senators felt this amendment was necessary to ensure that there was no ambiguity about the minister’s assurance to the committee. On this point, I will quote from Senator Simons’ speech at third reading of Bill C-11 on amendment 3:

Our amendment to clause 4.2(2) removes all mention of revenues, whether direct or indirect. Instead, it focuses on whether or not a piece of content has already been broadcast on a conventional commercial service and/or whether it has a unique identifier number that is assigned to commercial recordings. In other words, our amendment would mean that if a broadcaster such as Rogers or CBC reposted a baseball game or a news documentary to YouTube or Facebook, such a rebroadcast would still be captured by the provisions of Bill C-11.

Our amendment would also ensure that if a major record label such as Sony released a new single or album on YouTube, that posting would be treated in a way that was akin to the release of a song on Spotify, Amazon or TIDAL. At the same time, digital creators, including commercially successful ones, would be properly and clearly exempted from Bill C-11 even if they uploaded their comedy, music, animation, film or TV episodes to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or some other social media platform we cannot yet predict or imagine.

In other words, my friends, the bill now says, “platforms in, users out.”

By rejecting amendment No. 3, the message from the House confirms to senators that the minister’s promise has no effect and that the bill will therefore bring with it obligations for independent creators on social media, not just on commercial platforms.

As Senator MacDonald said in his April 20 speech, and I quote:

Time and time again, the government has claimed that section 4.2 is only designed to catch commercial content. Time and time again, they have claimed that they’ve listened to social media creators, but, overwhelmingly, most social media creators have repeatedly disagreed with that, and they did so ostensibly before the committee.

This important change in circumstances justifies us sending a clear message to the House of Commons to insist on our amendment 3 in order to protect these independent creators from Bill C-11 as it now stands, since it clearly unduly threatens their income. Thank you.

[English]

Hon. Claude Carignan: Honourable senators, I very much regret that Senator MacDonald’s amendment was defeated, but I want to believe that senators rejected it because they want every amendment that was rejected by the government to be reconsidered, which is in fact what Senator Plett’s amendment seeks to do. Above all, I want to once again deplore the situation the Leader of the Government has put us in, for no good reason.

By imposing closure on debate on Bill C-11, Senator Gold is limiting our ability to express ourselves on fundamental issues related to a bill that directly affects freedom of expression. In my opinion, he is also undermining our work as senators in the chamber of sober second thought. How can we do a full study with wisdom and perspective if we are being challenged in our work? Again, I very much deplore this, Senator Gold.

What is more, Senator Cowan, who was then the leader of the Liberal opposition and who former Senator Austin knows well, said the following during debate on a time allocation motion for the study of Bill C-19 on the firearms registry:

Honourable senators, Bill C-19 is a controversial bill. Canadians across the country feel passionately on both sides of the issue. There are strong arguments why this bill is wrong for the country. My colleagues opposite may disagree, but surely they agree that those arguments deserve to be heard and debated without having one eye on the clock.

To support his argument, Senator Cowan shared this statement:

Why is this government so afraid of free and open debate? The former United States Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in a famous decision: “Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open.”

Senator Tardif, who was deputy leader of the Liberal opposition in 2012, made the following statement during consideration of Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act:

Honourable senators, the motion moved by the Deputy Leader of the Government would limit debate on the omnibus crime bill at the report and third reading stage. I find it hard to believe that the members of this government, who proudly boast that they defend freedom of expression, would use any means available to them to limit the opposition senators’ right to speak, particularly when no government senator has been able to provide a reasonable explanation as to why such a time allocation motion is necessary in this case.

This is especially true now, when we are debating the time allocation motion in response to the message from the House of Commons, which is probably a first in the Senate.

Following that little bit of history, I will return to Senator Plett’s proposed amendment.

I would remind the chamber that this amendment was intended to modify what Senator Gold was proposing, in other words, that we not insist and that we accept the message from the House of Commons as it was presented to us.

Senator Plett proposed the following:

That the motion, as amended, be further amended:

1. by replacing sub-paragraph (b) by the following:

“(b) insist on its amendments to which the House of Commons disagrees;”;

2.by adding, before the final paragraph, the following new paragraph:

“That, pursuant to rule 16-3, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications be charged with drawing up the reasons for the Senate’s insistence on its amendments; and”; and

3.by replacing, in the final paragraph, the words “That a message be sent” by the words “That, once the reasons for the insistence have been agreed to by the Senate, a message be sent”.

In my speech on Senator MacDonald’s motion in subamendment, I succinctly addressed the elements concerning amendment 3, which would protect amateur creators of digital content. This amendment is very important to several senators, including me.

The government rejected another amendment, and, quite honestly, esteemed colleagues, I cannot believe it.

Had amendment 2(d)(ii) been adopted, it would have created paragraph 3(1)(r.1) of the Broadcasting Act.

The text of that paragraph reads as follows:

(r.1) online undertakings shall implement methods, such as age-verification methods, to prevent children from accessing programs on the Internet that are devoted to depicting, for a sexual purpose, explicit sexual activity;

I would call that the Miville-Dechêne amendment.

This amendment, which I think is essential, seeks to ensure that age verification methods are put in place to better protect children from exposure to online pornography. This amendment, which was introduced by Senator Miville-Dechêne, was adopted at the December 6, 2022 meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, thanks to the support of the Conservative senators on the committee.

I would like to remind senators that Senator Miville-Dechêne explained the reason for this amendment in the speech she gave on January 31. She said, and I quote:

The objective of Bill C-11 is to give the CRTC the power to regulate online platforms in the same way that it can regulate traditional broadcasters. The CRTC already has the ability to regulate access to sexually explicit content in traditional broadcasting, through cable or satellite, and my amendment only transfers that ability to online content.

Amendment 2(d)(ii) is obviously important, according to the majority of senators who adopted it both in committee and in the Senate.

Unfortunately, a majority of MPs decided to reject this amendment to Bill C-11, even though it was quite simple. I am confused as to why members of the House would refuse to support this sensible measure proposed by the Senate, given that minors are vulnerable to the consequences of early access to online pornography.

Senator Martin described these harms quite well during her April 18 speech on another bill, Bill S-210. She pointed out that more and more children — some of them very young — are regularly exposed to pornography online. Furthermore, she made the following points:

The individual and societal consequences of children viewing sexually explicit content, particularly violent material, are becoming more and more apparent as studies continue to surface.

Girls who view porn have higher rates of self-harm and are more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking.

For boys, as you may expect, the harm tends to manifest as sexual aggression toward women, dating violence in high school and a difficulty in forging intimate relationships with women in real life.

And, regardless of gender, young people who view pornography have higher rates of anxiety and depression.

The severity of this issue cannot be overstated.

One of the roles of the Senate, in studying bills such as Bill C-11, is to introduce amendments that we believe are essential to protect minorities and vulnerable groups.

I’m relying on the Supreme Court’s 2014 Reference re Senate Reform, which said the following:

Over time, the Senate also came to represent various groups that were under-represented in the House of Commons. It served as a forum for ethnic, gender, religious, linguistic, and Aboriginal groups that did not always have a meaningful opportunity to present their views through the popular democratic process . . . .

Although children and adolescents are not named in the Supreme Court passage that I just read, they are certainly an under-represented group in the House of Commons. Minors are vulnerable because they do not have the same degree of maturity or education as most adults. Furthermore, they have not reached the voting age, which makes it difficult to participate in the democratic process.

According to this logic, I am of the opinion that the Senate must send a message to the House of Commons to insist on keeping the amendments that were rejected and, especially, amendment 2(d)(ii), which would implement age-verification methods.

I am convinced that this amendment, if included in Bill C-11, would prevent vulnerable people like our youth from serious harm by viewing, at a young age, sexually explicit activities on the internet, as researchers have shown.

Let’s not forget that in their message to the Senate, MPs do recognize that this amendment seeks to legislate on a matter relating to the broadcasting system. However, they’ve rejected it on the simple grounds that these matters go beyond the policy intent of the bill.

By insisting on amendment 2(d)(ii), the Senate would be sending a loud and clear message to the House of Commons. On the one hand, senators would be expressing that we find the explanations of the MPs who rejected the Senate amendment to be grossly inadequate, given the seriousness of the societal harms that the amendment would address.

On the other hand, by insisting on this amendment, the Senate would be putting justified pressure on MPs to try to find common ground, a counterproposal to the Senate amendment to amend Bill C-11 to better protect minors from this flaw in the Broadcasting Act that currently leaves the door wide open to early and harmful exposure to online pornography.

In my final intervention on Senator Gold’s proposal — a proposal that will be amended by Senator Plett’s motion, I hope — I will address other important amendments that were adopted by the Senate after careful consideration, but were rejected.