- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
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Mr. Speaker, as it goes with diplomatic relations, she may not have come out and said what she said to the press at committee because she wants to know the progress of the bill. She is interested to know whether the government would consider the amendments that the Senate made, which are very sound, and recognize that we want to exclude user content.
Yes, it is fine for people, in the definition of the Senate amendment, who have been assigned a unique identifier under an international standards system, have uploaded to an online undertaking in social media that is the exclusive licensee of copyright, is a program or significant part of which has been broadcast by a broadcast undertaking, or is required under a licence.
It is clear that the Senate intended that those were the people the CRTC should be regulating and not individuals. I am sure that what was quoted in multiple news organizations about what the U.S. thinks is true, that it has a concern with Bill C-11 and the government needs to listen to it.
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Mr. Speaker, normally I would say it is a pleasure to rise and speak in this House, but I am very sad to hear the tone of the debate tonight, with personal attacks and insults against many members just because they have a different view. That is not our country. It is not why we are here in this House. We are elected to come and share a different view.
Bill C-11 is a bill that is purported to be about the modernization of the CRTC in the digital age, and everyone in this House is okay with that. Everyone agrees we need to modernize.
However, there has been an assertion that we need to make everyone pay their fair share, and that is certainly a principle everybody would be on side with, but the reality is right now these large streamers they are talking about are putting $5 billion into the Canadian economy. This bill, if implemented, would put $1 billion in.
Already, I would tell members this is not really what is behind this bill, and my concern as the shadow minister for civil liberties has to do with people's charter rights and freedoms. Let me just refresh one's memory about what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says in section 2(b), which is everyone has the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” We are supposed to have freedom.
There have been claims of misinformation and disinformation. In fact, on Twitter, the Minister of Heritage put out some things I want to go through one at a time about what the bill is and what the bill is not, because Canadians are listening to it all and are not sure what to believe.
The minister says that Bill C-11 would not tell Canadians what to watch. For this one, I want to do the fork analogy. Let us say somebody decides to go hide all the forks in the house in the hall closet. Then they tell Canadians they have the freedom to choose whatever utensil they want to eat with, so Canadians open the drawer and see spoons, knives and various things, but there are no forks. Now, if they want to spend the time to go hunt through the house, they can find those forks in the hall closet, so absolutely, they have the choice of what to eat with, but in fact, by burying the forks in the hall closet, the government has effectively impacted what Canadians can watch, or what they can eat with.
The minister also says that this is not going to infringe on free speech. However, what this bill would do is allow the government in council, that is cabinet, to determine the criteria that will be used by the CRTC to bury content. I am not saying I could be in the minds of the members opposite, but I am sure, from the commentary I heard tonight, they hate Conservative ideology. That would be fairly obvious to me tonight.
If somebody was posting content with Conservative ideology, perhaps the criteria the minister would set for the algorithms would say to bury that. We do not know what the criteria are, because even though the CRTC indicated the Minister of Heritage would set those and the Minister of Heritage said he had given consideration and in due course would reveal them, we do not know what they are. From an open and transparent government, we have no transparency on what the criteria are that will censor content, or bury it.
The Senate studied this and gave due consideration. It said it really had a problem with the government of the day, whatever government it was, deciding which individual content to bury. Yes, the government gets that people are making money off the Internet, streaming services and everything else. It wants to make sure Canadian content is out there and promoted, but individuals would be excluded, so the Senate brought an amendment to exclude that. The Liberal government rejected it, which says to me and to many Canadians it wants to have the ability to control what individuals put out. That is unacceptable.
In addition, the minister said that the bill would not create censorship on the Internet, but anything that can shut down content is a form of censorship. We know that in a healthy democracy, criticism of the government of the day and the ability to speak freely are essential elements. It is only in communistic governments that the government of the day determines what one can see, what one cannot see, what one can say and what is unacceptable. That is not democracy, and that is not what we want in Canada.
The final point from the minister is that any ridiculous things that the Conservatives come up with are to scare Canadians. Well, in addition to that being insulting, did the Liberals not listen to the many digital creators who came to committee and objected to the bill? Did they not listen to Canadian icons, like Margaret Atwood, who is criticizing the bill for its definition of Canadian content and for the ability of the government to tell her what to write or whether it is going to be promoted or not. I think that is ridiculous.
The other thing is that it is not just Conservatives who have concerns about the bill, and I have mentioned a few, but how about President Joe Biden? President Joe Biden has a concern about Bill C-11, and we were all here in the House on Friday to hear and to talk about the long-standing friendship between the United States and Canada. So let us hear what they have to say about Bill C-11.
This is from The Canadian Press:
Washington has raised concerns about the trade implications of Ottawa's online-streaming bill, prompting a legal expert to warn that Canada could face hundreds of millions of dollars of retaliatory tariffs if it becomes law. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai expressed disquiet about the proposed legislation, known as Bill C-11, during talks earlier this month with International Trade Minister...at the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) Free Trade Commission ministerial meeting. The online-streaming bill, which has passed the House of Commons and...the Senate, would force American-owned platforms, including YouTube, Netflix and Amazon's Prime Video, to promote Canadian TV, movies, videos or music, and help fund Canadian content.
This is from True North:
The United States government has waded into the fight against two digital regulation laws being considered by the federal Liberal government. US Trade Representative and Ambassador Katherine Tai met with Canadian Minister of International Trade...on Wednesday to discuss Bill C-11 and Bill C-18. In a readout of the meeting, Tai stated that the US side “expressed concern” about the two laws discriminating against American businesses and content creators.
We have heard all of the rhetoric about how the U.S. is our strongest trading partner and that it is the most important relationship we have. Our friends to the south have expressed concern about the bill. Will this Liberal government not even consider their concern? Will it not even address their concern? I think that is unhealthy for Canadians and unhealthy for our relationship with our neighbour to the south.
Let us talk about the lack of transparency on what will be voted upon or what will be buried. We have asked for over a year, and if there is nothing wrong with the criteria, why not share it?
Then there is the Canadian content definition, and I mentioned Margaret Atwood earlier. The Handmaid’s Tale, which she wrote, unfortunately is not Canadian content, because even though Canadian actors acted in it, etc., and it was filmed here, the head company is from the U.S., and so it is not Canadian content.
I think that there is a pattern with this government of eroding our freedoms, and I see this as another slice of a thousand cuts in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the media, and I could go on.
I know that there are people here who want to ask questions, but all I am saying is that our neighbours to the south have raised concerns, digital creators have raised concerns, we are raising concerns, and there is no transparency coming from the other side on the bill, and so it is time to take a pause.
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Madam Speaker, with all respect to my colleague across the way, at committee the CRTC said that the Governor in Council, the cabinet, would provide the criteria by which the algorithms would be set to determine what content is voted up and what content is buried.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage admitted that he had given good thought to that, but he would not release what those criteria are. I am not sure how that squares with an open and transparent government, which is the platform the Liberals ran on.
Can the member comment on that?
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Madam Speaker, although my colleague talked a little about conspiracy theories, the Senate is the place of sober second thought. It looked at this bill in detail and brought in amendments, one of which is to try to exclude individual content.
The senators recognized that the CRTC really should not be determining what individuals are posting. Clause 4 looks at the extent to which a program contains a sound recording that has been assigned a unique identifier under an international standard system, the fact that the program has been uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service, the fact that a program or significant part has been broadcast by a broadcast undertaking or that it is required to be carried on under a licence. This amendment was brought to make sure that those who are doing commercial business are overseen by the CRTC, but individual content is excluded.
The NDP, in their unholy marriage with the Liberals, have rejected this amendment. Could the member explain to the Canadian public why that is?
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite talked about the misinformation that is being put out, and most of it is being put out by the members of the Liberal government. If we look to the actual facts of the matter, the fact of Bill C-11 is that it says that the Governor in Council, that is, the cabinet ministers, would determine the criteria by which the CRTC would decide who would be impacted by the legislation, so that it is the government telling the CRTC who would be under it. It has not revealed that information, although we have asked for it for a year.
The Senate has now brought amendments that would specifically exclude individual content. It would say that if one were not commercially involved, if one did not have a unique identifier, that one would not be subject to this legislation. The Liberal government, again, has refused to accept it.
Could the member tell me how this legislation is different from what happens in communist countries, where the government determines content and who is going to be able to see it?
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Mr. Speaker, in Communist countries like China and North Korea, the government determines what online media content people can and cannot see. The government determines what content is suitable for the country.
The Liberal government has brought forward Bill C-11, which would allow cabinet to tell the CRTC what the criteria for acceptable content are. It would also allow them to use algorithms to either allow the content to be seen by Canadians or bury it.
The Senate tried to bring amendments to exclude individual content from being censored, but the Liberal government has said it will refuse to accept these amendments.
Canada is not yet a Communist country, and Conservatives want to ensure that Canada remains the freest nation on Earth. In order to do that, we need to kill Bill C-11.
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