- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Drummond
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $108,134.67
- Government Page
- May/9/24 2:43:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, no one with a crumb of intelligence in the Canadian broadcasting sector thinks that the Bloc Québécois is siding with the Conservatives on this issue. They need to change their tune. This is a no-go.
CBC/Radio-Canada's CEO was unequivocal when she appeared before the committee on Tuesday. Any Conservative cuts to the CBC would cause serious harm to francophone communities and to Radio-Canada in Quebec. In fact, she agreed that the two were interconnected.
Obviously, we do not want cuts to the CBC, and, obviously, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of a strong public broadcaster.
The minister must submit her modernization plan. Will she ensure that it includes a firewall that prevents Radio-Canada from falling victim to potential cuts to the CBC?
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Madam Speaker, there is never a dull moment in the House. It truly is incredible. There is always some event or other that grabs our attention.
I am very happy Bill C‑18 has reached this stage. I am happy, but I can promise my colleagues that there are an awful lot of people at media outlets in my riding and pretty much everywhere in Quebec, not to mention everywhere across Canada, based on our conversations with stakeholders, that will let out a big sigh of relief when we finally pass Bill C‑18.
I would humbly like to dedicate my speech to the 1,300 workers in the news sector whose jobs were cut at Bell Media last week. We talked about it here in the House. I would like to spare a thought for two of them. I am sure that many of my colleagues have some in their ridings throughout Quebec and Canada.
Martin Brassard, a journalist with 35 years of experience at Bell Media, in my colleague's riding, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, lost his job to the cuts. Back home in Drummond, Louis‑Philippe Harnois‑Arel, a talented young journalist full of potential and promise who worked on the Bell-owned Noovo news desk, was also among those who lost their jobs because of these cuts.
Mr. Speaker, you may not have had a chance to read today's news yet, but in today's Le Devoir, Boris Proulx reports that my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood hinted that Bell's decision to cut 1,300 jobs and close six radio stations may have been part of a plan, made in cahoots with the government, to force the adoption of Bill C‑18 this week.
I wondered what kind of movie script we were playing out. Have we really got to the point where we believe that a company will fire 1,300 people just because we want to push through a bill that is long overdue and that was obviously going to pass in the coming days or weeks anyway?
Honestly, I think that is going a little overboard with the conspiracy theories. I wanted to say it. I really admire my colleague from Saskatoon—Grasswood. I sit with him on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which we co-chair. I know that he loves the media industry and that before becoming an MP, he had a career in the media, as did I. He and I will definitely have an opportunity to talk about it again.
To provide some context, the media, and especially the news media, has been struggling for many years. Facebook and Google in particular appropriate the news stories, the news content, without paying royalties or compensation for the material produced with hard work and passion by newsrooms.
In the early 2000s, red flags were already being raised regarding the presence of the web giants, the major corporations that were taking up more and more space on the Internet. The government decided at that time to exempt them from the Broadcasting Act, to exclude them from those regulations. Perhaps the government was short-sighted. I do not want to criticize the decisions made back then, because they were based on the information available at the time, but I think the government could have shown a little more agility. The government may not have given itself sufficient freedom to re-evaluate its position over time.
For years, the news media in particular, but also the cultural industry, have been sounding the alarm and urging caution because these giants were taking up more and more space, and warning that the space taken by these giants was hurting them, eating into their revenues and putting jobs at risk.
That is exactly what has happened over time. Successive governments were warned, but no one ever bothered to lift a finger or consider whether something should be done for the news media and the cultural industry.
As I said earlier, I was in the media before switching to politics. I also worked in the private sector, always with some connection to advertising. For years, I had a front-row seat to the impact this new player in the advertising world was having on the market. For example, representatives would come to us to sell us advertising and explain that it was more profitable for us to buy advertising space from them than from the digital platforms, even though the digital platforms were offering rock-bottom prices compared to traditional media. Obviously, it was very tempting for all kinds of companies to choose the option of switching to digital media, to Google and its ilk.
Today, more than 80% of advertising revenue is generated online. The market has been cornered primarily by Google and Facebook, which, again, pay no royalties. They pay nothing to the people who produce the content. They get to monetize that content and use it to sell their advertising.
On top of that, they collect data. We know that data is even more lucrative than advertising. They are really raking it in and not leaving anything for anyone else. Journalists are slowly seeing their work picked up by digital media, and high-quality reporting by talented journalists is ending up being shared on Facebook or Google in search results. Not a penny goes back to them for that, and not a penny goes back to the media that paid to produce it.
This makes no sense to me. We urgently needed to address the calls from news media and implement legislation that would impose not specific amounts or a payment, but rather a framework for negotiations. Bill C‑18 does not tell companies that they have to pay a certain amount. What Bill C‑18 does is tell companies that they have an obligation to negotiate in good faith within the legislated framework. That is what Bill C‑18 is all about.
It is a bit of a stretch to say that this will give one party an advantage over another. It is going a bit far. I think this bill could likely be improved and it will not solve all of the problems. That is obvious. The news media have fallen so far over the past 10 or 15 years that Bill C‑18 alone is certainly not the solution. However, it is definitely a step in the right direction. We are certainly sending the right message to the web giants by telling them that they cannot cannibalize our news outlets' content and our cultural content.
It is urgent that we pass this bill and it is urgent to see what impact it will have so that we can then put measures in place to help media outlets—
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Mr. Speaker, 1,300 people learned yesterday that they would be losing their jobs at Bell Media. Six radio stations are going to stop broadcasting. When even a giant like Bell can no longer protect its media and newsrooms, the situation is dire. The entire news industry and the people who work in it are all under threat.
The Bloc Québécois is proud to have contributed to Bill C‑11 and Bill C‑18, two very important bills. However, I think the minister is beginning to realize, as I have, that this will probably not be enough.
In light of these new job losses, does the minister have anything to suggest in order to better protect the diversity of information?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his great question.
I will even add that, once Bill C-11 is passed and the reform of the Broadcasting Act is implemented, it will enable certain TV and radio broadcasters with very specific missions that serve under-represented communities to survive and blossom.
As for my colleague's question about the Conservatives' stand, yesterday, I was very perplexed by the speech given by one of my Conservative colleagues, in which she talked about how much she loves artists in general, but especially digital artists. I am very perplexed that the Conservatives moved an amendment to do away with the bill, rather than trying to improve it. I think that says it all.
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Madam Speaker, that is excellent. I was just about to say the same thing. I think that the question is a valid one, because I referred to Bill C-11 in my speech when talking about the differences in views between the rest of Canada and Quebec.
In answer to the question from my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, I would say that there have indeed been concerns about the possible manipulation of algorithms or their control over the web giants for rather nefarious purposes. However, that is not what Bill C-11 seeks to do.
One way or another, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission needs to be able to see that the objectives are being met. The CRTC is not being given the power to control social media algorithms, which is something that I do not agree with. However, I do agree that the CRTC should take all possible and necessary steps to ensure that the objectives of the Broadcasting Act are being met. That is the distinction, and perhaps we have different views on the way it is written. However, my colleague’s question is a legitimate one.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. We do need to give ourselves the latitude to review the legislation and change things that are not working. Things are moving so quickly with the arrival of these web giants. The digital universe is evolving so quickly that we can barely keep up.
I think we will have to keep an eye on this and monitor the evolving technologies and content consumption patterns. We do not consume content the same way that we did five years ago, and that will probably change again in another five years.
A provision requiring that the House review the Broadcasting Act every five years will allow us to keep up and make it so that we do not end up with a completely outdated law in need of a total overhaul 30 years from now.
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Madam Speaker, I really do not feel like answering the question. I would much rather react to my colleague's comments.
Freedom of expression is a topic that we could debate for many hours. I would say that, when it comes to broadcasting legislation, there also needs to be parameters that in some way guide what we can and cannot say.
In fact, this is something that we already do in everyday life. There is a rather universal concept that is generally understood by all, in Quebec and across Canada that one person's freedom ends where another's begins.
There is nothing in this bill that infringes on freedom of expression. I am not sure if that answers the question from my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé, but, since I am saving the two or three insults I have for him for later in private, I will stop there.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith on the quality of her French. That was perfect.
I could take 20 minutes to answer that question. Of course the government should have imposed tax rules on online businesses much earlier. Even now, I do not think adequate measures have been brought in, far from it.
When it comes to contributing to the broadcasting system, to the cultural industry and to content, some companies are making an effort and trying to do something, but it is still not nearly enough. I do not want to point fingers at every single company, because there are some that are trying to produce things here.
However, several aspects still need to be fixed or brought in. Rules and a legal framework are needed. Once the framework is in place, it will be much easier for these businesses to generate original Quebec and Canadian content that meets both our expectations and the financial needs of the community.
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Madam Speaker, I can see that some of my colleagues on the other side of the House still have some things to say.
I thank and commend my colleague from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for his speech.
I completely agree with him. Quebec and Canada have had some massive success stories precisely because our broadcasting system promotes content created by Quebeckers and Canadians. Many artists have enjoyed successful careers in Quebec, in Canada and abroad because of the CRTC's broadcasting rules.
There are a lot of benefits, but there are also some pitfalls. One such pitfall that we hear about quite a bit is regulation of social media, and I think this aspect has been adequately addressed in Bill C‑11. The Minister of Canadian Heritage clearly stated that he did not want to regulate content generated by users, by the private individuals who use platforms like YouTube, TikTok and so on. These creators have, however, expressed some concerns about the wording of this bill in its current form.
Does my colleague think that we could review the wording of Bill C‑11 to satisfy and reassure these creators, who are becoming more and more of a presence in our broadcasting system?
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