- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Drummond
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona for being so concise.
On this February 15, before I begin my speech, I would like to salute a few illustrious people, namely François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier, Charles Hindelang, Pierre-Rémi Narbonne, Amable Daunais and François-Stanislas Nicolas. We think of these persons today, as we have done every year on February 15 since 1839.
The bill we are discussing today is a very simple bill. What we are really asking is that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act be amended to ensure that Quebec is systematically consulted when the CRTC puts in place any regulations that would have an impact on Quebec culture.
It is a short bill involving one very simple amendment. Earlier I listened to my Conservative colleague recount the events that followed the passage of Bill C-11. When Bill C-11 was almost ready to be passed, the Conservative Party released a letter that was sent to the government, the Liberal Party, to the heritage minister at the time. That letter set out Quebec's specific demands with respect to Bill C-11, which reformed the Broadcasting Act.
I would like to provide a bit of context. With a little good faith, I think that my Conservative colleague will lend credence to what I am going to tell the House. The Conservatives unduly delayed and blocked the bill in committee for a very long time. Quebec had demands and it was not consulted during the study of the bill, at least not formally.
By the time Quebec's demands finally arrived, the bill was about to be passed. Does that mean that the demands therein were illegitimate? No, not at all. Realistically, however, it was too late to reopen the file in committee and go back to the drawing board, so to speak.
If my Conservative colleague had the slightest understanding of how the Government of Quebec operates in this kind of situation, he would not have talked about having Quebec's minister of culture and communications, Mathieu Lacombe, appear before the committee. If he had the slightest understanding of how the relationship between Quebec and Ottawa works, he would know that Quebec government ministers do not testify in committee. They have a nation-to-nation relationship with Ottawa. They speak minister to minister. Ministers from Quebec do not appear before committees. He should know this, but he does not. It was much more dramatic to take the letter and say that the Bloc and the Liberals do not listen to Quebec. He said the Bloc did not listen to Quebec, did not listen to cultural groups and did not listen to groups in Quebec's broadcasting sector during the study of bills on broadcasting, online news and anything to do with Quebec culture. What a joke. It is funny, actually, so that is how we will take it.
That being said, we have here Bill C-354, which was introduced by my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île. This bill addresses one of the most important demands set out in that letter from Minister Lacombe and the Government of Quebec. This is a natural demand and Minister Lacombe was not the first to make it. Quebec's need, its desire, its demand to have its say in the decisions that are made in Ottawa and that have an impact on francophone culture and the French language dates back to 1929 and has been kept alive by successive Quebec governments.
The premier at the time, Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, saw this weird new technology called radio and thought that it needed to be regulated immediately. That is when a regulatory body was created to provide oversight.
To no one's surprise, instead of agreeing with what Quebec was doing and choosing to play a part in this regulatory body, Ottawa decided to do something else. It created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, or CRBC, the current CRTC's ancestor. Both organizations were developed in parallel, as is so often the case, with a tiny intrusion into Quebec's jurisdictions. It seems that this was even more commonplace back then and that people did not complain as much. There was no Bloc Québécois to fight for Quebec in Ottawa.
Long story short, wanting to have a say in French-language communications and culture in Quebec is not just a Quebec separatist or nationalist thing. Liberal governments also asked for it, and so did Union Nationale governments. Even former minister Lawrence Cannon, who was a Liberal minister in Quebec before becoming a Conservative minister in Ottawa, asked for it.
This is not a demand being made by spoiled sovereignist brats who want to repatriate all powers to Quebec. This is a reasonable request to ensure that Quebec is consulted on decisions made by the next-door nation that affect the Quebec nation's culture.
We will be voting on Bill C‑354 in a few days. We are not asking for the moon. At the moment, we are not even asking for the right to immediately create a Quebec CRTC, which is also among Quebec's requests and the Bloc Québécois's plans, and quite reasonably so. For now, this is not what we are asking. For now, we are simply responding to a straightforward request from Quebec.
As my Conservative colleague said earlier, the Conservatives tried to promote this request themselves, but it was already too late in the Bill C‑11 process. I presume that the entire House of Commons will support this very reasonable request when we vote on this amendment to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act.
Bill C‑354 was introduced in response to a request from Quebec, the Government of Quebec and the people of Quebec, and I think everyone in the House should agree that Quebec and the provinces that are concerned about preserving French in some of their communities should be consulted when regulations are put in place that will have an impact on the French language and culture in those places.
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- Mar/30/23 12:29:58 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the premise of the question would suggest that the government and the CRTC will interfere with what people can and cannot watch. This shows that the member does not understand the bill's intent. I will leave it at that.
Discoverability is not about an open market. Discoverability is about ensuring that our culture has its place. For that, we need a framework and regulations.
This does not mean that the government is going to decide what people can or cannot watch. That is another example of the misinformation that we have been denouncing from the beginning.
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Mr. Speaker, as my colleague was saying, we are now in the home stretch of the passage of Bill C‑11.
I would like to remind members that Bill C‑11 seeks to ensure that Quebec culture and Quebec and Canadian artists have their place and can succeed in the new digital world.
The Government of Quebec shared its demands concerning Bill C‑11. It is asking that Quebec have a say in CRTC decisions that impact Quebec culture and that the Quebec act respecting the status of artists be respected.
How will the minister respond to Quebec's demands?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, for his speech. I also want to thank him for the very collaborative work we are doing at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. We went through some tough times, battled some strong headwinds during our study of Bill C‑11. I congratulate him on his hard work.
Obviously, when we are working on a bill as important as Bill C‑11, which will have a huge impact on Quebec's and Canada's broadcasting systems and cultural industries, all kinds of stakeholders want to have their say at various stages of the process. Just recently, the Government of Quebec spoke up to say that it has a few demands. There are things that are important to the Government of Quebec. I believe the parliamentary secretary is aware of some of those demands.
I would like to know if the order the minister issues to the CRTC will address the demands laid out by the Government of Quebec.
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Madam Speaker, I, too, found my colleague from Saskatoon West's comments on Bills C‑11 and C‑18 quite interesting. There will be an opportunity to return to Bill C‑11, likely later. I was particularly surprised by the comments on Bill C‑18, especially in a context where Google is currently blocking access to news content for nearly 2 million Canadians, which is no trivial matter. By the way, we still do not know why.
I have heard so much misinformation, it is outlandish. Bill C‑18 requires digital giants to negotiate agreements. It is not forcing them to do anything other than negotiate agreements to pay the companies that produce the news content they use and get rich off of. It seems quite logical to me.
The point I took the most issue with in my colleague's comments was when he said that Bill C‑18 will allow the government or the CRTC to decide what news people will be able to access online.
Since he seems to be an expert on the subject, I would like him to tell me specifically what clause of Bill C‑18 would allow the CRTC to do such a thing.
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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 the source of all the disinformation. There is absolutely no interference in the coding of algorithms. There is even a clause that states that the CRTC cannot require the use of algorithms.
In short, the purpose is to create performance objectives. How will that be accomplished? It will be up to the businesses to explain that to the CRTC. The CRTC will then give them the green light, provided that it is shown the results. No one will tell these businesses to change their algorithms to include Canadian content or other content, or that such content will be prohibited based on algorithms. That is simply not true. That concept simply does not exist.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his speech. I am going to give him a break from questions about censorship and the CRTC's control over the Internet, if Bill C-11—
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Madam Speaker, I appreciated the speech from my colleague, with whom I serve on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
Bill C‑11 corrects a concern that was raised during the study of Bill C‑10, the predecessor of Bill C‑11, which was dropped in the previous Parliament.
Bill C‑11 clearly states that the CRTC will not be able to use algorithms to verify whether digital platforms are meeting the objectives set out in the Broadcasting Act.
I have a question for my colleague. If it turns out that algorithms are the only way to verify whether the objectives are being met, what might the solution be? How will we ensure that the platforms are meeting discoverability and other objectives?
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