- Member of Parliament
- Minister of Justice
Attorney General of Canada
- Liberal
- Parkdale—High Park
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,537.19
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I share the member opposite's passion and her fondness for the nostalgia of boom boxes and cassette tapes. I still have some cassette tapes at home. My kids do not know what on earth they are.
What is critical is that this is part and parcel of a broader agenda of our government and, I hope, of this Parliament in terms of what we are doing to address the presence of digital platforms in our lives. We have Bill C-11 and we have Bill C-18. We are very committed to addressing online harms and online safety. In previous Parliaments we have addressed things like electoral advertising in online spaces.
Our commitment is to ensure that digital platforms that benefit from what they do in Canada and how they promote themselves or advertise in Canada, and that reap dollars from Canadian pockets, will also contribute back to Canadian communities and to the creation of Canadian content. That is a fundamental theme that informs all pieces of our legislation, and it will continue to do so.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House.
As I rise today, it is a bit like Groundhog Day. I am rising to speak on Bill C-11. The reason why it is so familiar to me is because I rose to speak on virtually the same bill in the last Parliament, when it was known as Bill C-10. I am rising again today on this issue because, once again, it is before Parliament.
There are certain issues that perhaps do not transcend from one Parliament to another, perhaps they are more temporal in nature, however, this issue has only become exacerbated with the passage of time. The issue and the pressing need to address the Broadcasting Act, to modernize that legislation and bring it into the 21st century has become even more acute and more critical. Thus is the reason why it has been presented by our government and why it is being debated today, and being debated with urgency. I do believe that the passage of this type of legislation is urgent.
When we are talking about the Broadcasting Act, we are talking about fundamentally Canadian content. We just heard a very impassioned speech by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, talking about the importance of promoting English Canadian and French Canadian cultural content. This has been a critically acute issue for Canada for literally decades. The principle reason is because of our geographic proximity to our friend and ally, a nation whose president was in this chamber literally short of a week ago, a cultural behemoth that has the potential to overshadow and really eclipse content that is being produced in other nations, including the nation that is its most proximate neighbour.
We realized this many decades ago, and that is why we put in place, as a government, as parliamentarians, protections for Canadian content, so we could have Canadian stories told, told via television, film and music. Those were important protections. Those protections were put in place in legislation that hearken back to a different era, when people received their content through things like the radio. It is not coincidental that in French, when people talk about the CBC, it is called Radio-Canada, because that was the principle medium for the transmission of communications, including entertainment at the time.
Radio and television dominated the landscape for nearly a century. However, things have changed. In the old era, what we would do and what we continue to do today is put, as a condition of a licence for a television or a radio broadcaster, that it must invest in Canadian culture and Canadian artists. That has produced significant results.
However, the status right now is very different. I will include myself as one of the Canadians who have changed. Times have changed. Canadians are not using cable very much anymore. I think I might be one of the rare households in this chamber that still has cable. I use it for watching things like the Toronto Blue Jays, and God bless them today on the opening day of the season. I hope they have great season.
Independent of sports, most people are consuming their content online, on streaming services. Streaming is everywhere. People stream on their phones, in their cars, on their televisions. Many people are enjoying this.
I was actually looking up some of the statistics, and it is quite startling. Right now, eight out of 10 Canadians, or 80% of our entire country, uses at least one streaming service. Just in 2016, one year after our government took office, that number was five out of 10. Again, I will include myself in the people on the outside looking in back in 2016. People would talk to me about streaming Netflix and I did not know what they were talking about. I am being quite honest.
Now, not only am I streaming Netflix, but we have a Disney account, and my kids want me to get Amazon Prime, which I really do not know about. There is a number of different streaming platforms that people are attracted to or are already using. Six out of 10 Canadians, or 60% of the country, subscribe to two platforms or more.
However, the basic point is that while we have, on the radio and television side, things like Bell and Rogers contributing to Canadian content, which is a good thing and it is something we want to continue, streaming platforms, such as the Amazon Prime, YouTube, Crave, Netflix and Spotify, are broadcasting to Canadians, using Canadian content to market to those Canadians, but they are contributing absolutely nothing to the flourishing and development of more Canadian content on their platforms. They do not have the same requirements applied on those platforms as are applied on standard radio and television broadcasters.
There is the problem. From a very basic perspective, what are we here for as parliamentarians, if it is not to identify problems and seek to address them for the benefit of Canadians. That is something quite fundamental, and I think all 338 of us try to do that every day, that we are privileged to hold these types of positions.
Nevertheless, the legislation has not kept pace. I found it quite fascinating that the last time the Broadcasting Act was amended was in 1991. I was in my second year of university at McGill at that time. I do not even think I had an email address at that point. I think I got one my fourth year. It was really long and basically never used, because in order to use it, I had to walk into a separate office on the west floor of the building to access something called email. At that point, the Internet was mainly the purview of the U.S. military that had invented it years before.
There was no such thing as smart phones. There was certainly no such thing as apps. We were living in a completely different world and that was merely, on my account, about 32 or 33 years ago.
Back then, given that landscape in 1991, the Broadcasting Act was perfectly useful and suitable to the landscape as it was then. It dealt with radio and television broadcasters, because that was where people found their content, and we ensured that those radio and television broadcasters were promoting Canadian content.
It is now 2023 and the landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade, but certainly in the last few years. What we are seeking to do with this legislative amendment to the Broadcasting Act is to ensure that we promote, and continue to promote, great Canadian stories dans la langue de Molière, mais aussi en Anglais wherever those stories are found.
This bill would give the CRTC the ability to require that online streaming companies that profit from playing Canadian content, including Canadian music, film and TV shows, make financial contributions to support Canadian creators. This is a critically important objective.
What I am equally pleased about with the bill is that if we are to reopen a piece of legislation, we may as well improve upon it. We are modernizing it to deal with this new online landscape. We are also doing something that is quite targeted and deserves some attention. We are promoting the diversity of Canadian creators. What do I mean by that? We are promoting indigenous creators.
I spent a lot of time in our first Parliament working on indigenous language protection when I was the parliamentary secretary to the then minister of heritage. What we heard, in all the consultations we did and in all the work that turned into what is now the Indigenous Languages Act, which thankfully got support from everyone in this chamber, every party, as it should have, was that in order to promote indigenous language, the restoration and revitalization of those languages, we needed to ensure that we were also supporting indigenous creators. This bill would do that. It is an important aspect.
It also addresses persons with disabilities. We talk a lot about changes to things like the accessibility act. We talk about the Canada disability benefit act that we are rolling out. At the same time, we need to ensure that people's sense of inclusion and understanding of persons with disabilities is enhanced by ensuring that persons with disabilities are seen and included in the Canadian content we all absorb.
The same can be said for people of diverse sexual orientation. The LGBTQ2 community is specifically mentioned in this legislation as a group of creators whose content we want to promote.
I will finish on this idea of other diverse creators, which is Black and persons of colour. As a racialized member of this chamber, this has been a weak spot for our country, quite frankly. Our Canadian content creators need to have an applied focus that directs them to enhance and empower the voices so Black persons and persons of colour can see themselves reflected on what they are consuming on television, in film and on musical platforms when they are streaming. It is important for all Canadians to be able to see themselves in the content.
I need to address an issue that was raised repeatedly in the last Parliament and it has been raised repeatedly during this Parliament about this bogeyman of restricting freedom of expression. I have two broad responses to what I feel is an improper and incorrect attack on this legislation.
It is logically flawed to posit that this is a challenge to freedom of expression. It is also inaccurate in terms of the substance of the bill. It is a logical flaw.
On the logic of this kind of argument, the fact that we have been promoting, for decades now, through financial contribution requirements, things such as radio and television broadcasters, those promotion efforts would have restricted or diluted the creation of Canadian content as opposed to enhanced it.
We know for a fact that the enhancement has occurred by ensuring that broadcasters, in that physical and traditional context, are required to apply money and funds from their profits toward the creation of Canadian content. We have had, on the musical side, the Arkells and The Tragically Hip. We have had Rush and Drake from my city.
On the television side, we have had everything from the Beachcombers to Kim's Convenience and everything in between.
We do not get those great Canadian success stories without that applied directive to ensure there is financial enhancement in the industry by broadcasters to support creators. Therefore, with that simple logic, if this model were flawed, it would have diminished the amount of Canadian content as opposed to enhancing it, and the same reasoning applies here.
The same would apply for ensuring that online streaming companies are classified as broadcasters. What we will see, far from diminishing Canadian expression, is enhanced Canadian expression. What do I mean by that? It is going to compel the Amazon Primes, Netflix and the Spotifys of the world to ensure that they are making Canadian content discoverable and are contributing monetarily from their very healthy bottom lines, balance sheets and profits to the creation of more Canadian content. That is a good onto itself.
However, the argument on the challenge of freedom of expression is flawed even in terms of the bill itself. If there is one thing that changed between the last Parliament and this Parliament is that, although the framework of the bill is the same, and we heard this argument so many times in the 43rd Parliament, we went to great lengths to ensure that there would be multiple provisions, not just one, that stipulate that this bill was not about restricting freedom of expression.
The bill would not dictate what Canadians can see and do on social media. The bill explicitly excludes all user-creator content on social media platforms and streaming services. Those exclusions mean that the experience for users creating, posting and interacting with other user-generated content will not be impacted whatsoever. Multiple clauses in the legislation explicitly state that the regulations the CRTC imposes on platforms through the Broadcasting Act cannot infringe on Canadians' freedom of expression on social media. Provisions indicate that the act would not apply to uploaded content.
All regulatory requirements and obligations in the bill would only affect the broadcaster or the platform and never the user or the creator. For the individual Jane and John Doe in their basement seeking to upload something, create a music video or put something online about how they are playing the guitar, how their guitar level is increasing or singing a song and uploading it online, this does not speak to them. It speaks to the Amazons and Spotifys of the world, and that is an important delineation that has been emphasized by the text of the legislation.
Why is it important to support these creative industries? It is critical. Not only is it about the value, which I indicated at the outset of my comments, it is about the importance of telling Canadian stories particularly when we are threatened by a sea of non-Canadian stories from our neighbour south of the border. It is also important when we think about what Canadian creators, many of whom I am very privileged to represent in Parkdale—High Park, do for us as a nation.
During the pandemic, we heard extensively about the contributions of Canadian creators to Canadian society. When people were going through difficult times, when there were higher levels of anxiety and depression through lack of physical contact with one another, it was our Canadian creators who were there to support all of us, to tell stories and support us in some of our most troubling times as nation, literally since probably World War II.
Those creators are also economic contributors to Canada. It is not just the people who actually make the film, direct, act and produce the screenplay, it is not just the people picking up the instruments or microphone, it is a whole host of supplementary supports for the industry that contribute to the economic uplifting of Canadian society. For no other reason than the economic benefit, I would hope His Majesty's loyal opposition would support the bill for the economic productivity that stands to be gained by this type of legislation.
It is really important to look at the host of cultural creators who have lined up in support of this bill: The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, ACTRA, SOCAN. I will read what Alex Levine, the president of the Writers Guild of Canada, has to say. He says:
Private, English-language Canadian broadcasters have reduced their spending on Canadian television production every year for nearly a decade, while foreign streaming services have taken over more and more of the Canadian market. This threatens our whole industry, and the tens of thousands of jobs it supports. Canadian broadcasters have long been required to contribute to the culture and economy of this country. It’s time for global streamers profiting in Canada to be held to the same standards.
Mr. Levine is talking about levelling the playing field. It is a very simple concept. If something benefits from Canadian content and access to the Canadian market, it needs to contribute to the Canadian content it is benefiting from. It is as simple as that. By pursuing a level playing field and modernizing this legislation, we could bring the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century. For that reason, I hope every party in this chamber will support this legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the speech by the member opposite on this very important bill, as well as his comments on freedom of expression.
I would outline that I have found that the bill explicitly states that all user-created content on social media platforms and streaming services is excluded from the purview of the bill, which means that the experience of creating, posting and interacting with other user-generated content would not be touched at all by this bill, which I think is important.
The question I have for the member opposite, and this is what I hear from creators in my riding, is whether the contrary is absolutely the case, as in this bill would actually promote the liberty of expression by virtue of creating more financial resources to support Canadian creators who are promoting that Canadian content in Quebec or in other parts of the country.
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Madam Speaker, believe me, I share the member's concerns about Russia Today and Sputnik. I will be very candid with her in saying that we have an issue and have raised it with the CRTC. It is ultimately the independent regulator, but I am very confident and pleased by the fact that Bell, Rogers and Telus have all committed to removing Russia Today from access in Canada.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is a critical question. When we carve out the promotion of indigenous culture and particularly indigenous languages in the legislation, which has explicitly been done, we create an opening to address the exact problem the member has highlighted.
We know that we need more indigenous voices and indigenous content online. We also know that supporting this sometimes costs more money. However, having the legislation crafted as it is right now, with that specific exception and specific prioritization, allows us the opportunity to dedicate some of the funds coming in from the Amazon Prime's of the world specifically to the promotion of Inuktitut and about 90 other indigenous languages in this country.
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Madam Speaker, I like the question asked by the member for Trois-Rivières. I learned a great deal of French in that city 30 years ago.
I want to point out that this is not just about regulating web giants, but also about spelling out the type or number of regulations that will govern them and the amounts they will have to pay.
Our strategy is not to have a laissez-faire system or a context where the companies decide. We are the ones who are going to decide how to regulate the companies and how much they are going to pay. The same approach will be used for taxation.
As for the next steps, we will continue the fight against hate and fear, which are also a major issue in the digital world.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member opposite's service on the justice committee and I look forward to working with him in this Parliament.
I think he makes an interesting point on the tactic taken with legislative drafting. However, one thing is clear in the context of the debate on this bill, and it was quite vociferous regarding Bill C-10 in the 43rd Parliament: People want a surety that user-generated content by an individual person posting something to a platform like YouTube will not be caught. That is why we put an express exemption to that very effect into this legislation.
This has been cast wide because the platform and the nature of the streaming services are wide. However, with an adequately tailored exemption, I think it is clear to Canadians that we are not here to limit freedom of expression unnecessarily. What we are trying to do is to actually empower freedom of expression by creating more of that expressive content and by empowering the creation of more Canadian content through this funding model.
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Madam Speaker, since I last rose five days ago, Mr. Putin in Russia decided to, very unceremoniously and aggressively, invade a sovereign nation. I want to express my absolute solidarity with the people of Ukraine, in terms of showing gratitude and appreciation for their bravery in the face of this blatant aggression and violent and unlawful act, and to simply state, in terms of representing my constituents of Parkdale—High Park, that I will continue to advocate with every fibre of my being for the well-being of Ukraine and for the well-being of Ukrainian-Canadians, for assisting them in any way, shape or form in terms of assistance militarily, assistance with their defence and assistance with immigration, and in terms of restoring peace to their land.
I want to turn now to Bill C-11, and I will start with Canadian content creators.
I learned a heck of a lot about Canadian content and Canadian creators during the course of the 42nd Parliament, when I served as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of heritage at the time: the current Minister of Foreign Affairs. What I learned about was the voluminous contribution that these content creators made to the Canadian economy. In some respects, it is either equivalent to or outstrips contributions from sectors such as the mining sector in this country. It is staggering the amount of GDP output that is attributable to Canadian content creators. Around $19.7 billion of Canada's GDP and approximately 160,000 jobs are linked to things such as publishing, writing, music, producing theatre, producing film, producing television products, etc.
My riding of Parkdale—High Park, which I have the privilege of representing for the third straight time in this Parliament, is home to many of these creators. They have explained to me what they do for a living and how it contributes to the Canadian economy, but they have also said where their trade and craft is suffering and they have walked me through these steps. We have heard from the member for Kingston and the Islands and some of the other members in this debate who have talked about where we were about 30 years ago, when we had the Broadcasting Act, and where we are now. Where we are now is a fundamentally different place. People consume, view and listen in a completely different manner from how they did 30 years ago when the Broadcasting Act was last touched.
Why is this relevant? It is relevant because it is incumbent upon us, as parliamentarians, to make sure that our laws are responsive to the current state of the nation. Our laws need to be reflective of current norms, current technological features and current aspects of day-to-day life. That is really critical. For decades, our system guaranteed the creation of Canadian movies, TV shows and music that made us proud because we ensured that traditional broadcasters, such as Bell and Rogers, were contributing to such Canadian content.
Why is that critical? It is critical because we live next to a very large nation that creates a whole lot of cultural content. It is very easy to be dwarfed by that content, particularly in its English-language form, if we are not supportive of Canadian content. We adopted these ideas about mandatory contributions financially from Canadian broadcasters, which are usually through a television screen, ensuring that they could then help us create the next Kim's Convenience, the next Schitt's Creek or the next The Beachcombers. I know I am dating myself. I am a bit older than I look. However, that kind of cultural content is critical. What we have seen is an erosion of that kind of cultural content because we are no longer asking these new types of broadcasters to contribute, and because the system simply has not kept up.
Who is responsible for all that? I will be blunt: All of us are responsible for all of that, because we have not acted quickly enough to deal with Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. When we legislated this most recently, which is three decades ago, those things did not even exist. In fact, the Internet was still in its infancy, probably just a plaything of the U.S. military at the time, because we are reaching back to around 1991. Although I prefer Spotify, most Canadians today get their music from YouTube Music. That is an incredible statement. It is not from the radio. It is not from vinyl or cassettes, but from one particular platform: YouTube Music.
Unless we directly regulate that type of platform and ensure that it is contributing to the continuity, creation and support of Canadian content, we could see great Canadian musicians or great Canadian musical acts simply go by the wayside. Do we want to have the next Tragically Hip, the next Arkells, the next Drake, the next Justin Bieber, etc.? I desperately want to see that. I want to see that for our country and I want to see that for the children I am raising, but we cannot see that unless we actually take an active step to support this industry.
What we have is Canadian broadcasters from the traditional mould, such as Bell and Rogers, playing by one set of rules, and we have streaming platforms playing by entirely another set. There needs to be one set of rules for all.
What would this bill do? We have heard a little about this during this debate. The bill would provide the CRTC with express powers to require broadcasting undertakings, including online undertakings, to make financial contributions to Canadian content and to its creators.
Over these last years, as the member of Parliament for Parkdale—High Park, I have heard basically a plea that this exact kind of measure be put into force. I have heard it from ACTRA. I have heard it from the Directors Guild of Canada. I have heard it from the Writers Guild of Canada. I have heard it from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. Over and over again, they have said that unless we support their industry, in terms of where it is being viewed or seen now at that level of broadcasting and not just in its old modality, they are in jeopardy. All the Canadian content they create is in jeopardy.
Why is that important? Everyone in this chamber chuckled about The Beachcombers. Those touchstones are significant because they tell a Canadian narrative. That is good, right and proper, because it is important, as a nation-building exercise, for people to see themselves reflected in what they see and hear and also to learn about themselves, in terms of what they see and hear.
That is why I hope another aspect of this legislation gets touched on in this debate. I think it is important, because we are trying to also make sure a Broadcasting Act three decades later reflects the reality of Canada. The city I represent boasts that it is one of the most diverse, if not the most diverse, city on the planet. That is the city of Toronto. We would like to see the broadcasting offerings that are available, including online, reflecting that diversity and reflecting people of colour: racialized people, immigrants, Black Canadians, etc.
There is a specific provision in the legislation that actually references promoting indigenous language vitalization. That is something I also had the ability to work on in the 42nd Parliament. It is something I feel very strongly about. The way we do that and keep moving the yardsticks forward is by amending the broadcasting legislation.
In these last two and a half minutes, I want to deal with what this bill is not about. We heard a great deal about this in the last Parliament, and I am very keen to ensure we do not hear about it in this Parliament, particularly now. My opening comments were about Ukraine. We know that not just this country, but the planet, is seized with addressing misinformation and disinformation right now. To purport incorrectly or benignly, or to misconstrue what is in a piece of legislation versus what is not, is not helpful for the discussion about this legislation, nor is it helpful to the public discourse in this country, let alone on this planet. I mean that very seriously.
This bill has a specific carve-out, and the carve-out is clear. User-generated content, video games and news media will not be affected by the proposed changes. It is quite clear that what we are doing would ensure that social media allows people to share their thoughts online, and that is for the most part a very good thing. We agree it is vital for Canadians to be able to express their views, which is why the bill specifically states that the regulator cannot make regulations that infringe on freedom of expression on social media or online platforms. That is critical, because we are not talking about individually generated user content, unless that content is being commercialized, which is a point that was adequately addressed by the member for Kingston and the Islands. It is important that people understand this fact, and that this fact does not get misconstrued in the context of this debate or when this bill hopefully moves to committee.
Why is this important? It is critically important, in terms of taking outdated legislation and moving it into the modern age three decades hence. It is also important because it would allow us to ensure that Canadian stories and narratives are being told. It is important for ensuring there would be a playing field. The simple principle is that if something is benefiting from a system, which clearly the YouTubes and Spotifys of the world are, then it needs to contribute to that system.
Another participant in this debate mentioned that other jurisdictions have already taken the step of ensuring contributions from online streaming platforms. We would simply be making sure that Canada levels the playing field internationally and also vis-à-vis traditional broadcasters and online streaming broadcasters.
I hope that is a concept that all members and parties in the House can get behind.
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