- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Saskatoon—University
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $125,428.08
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, what is happening in Canada? The world is watching our nation and seeing a big, bossy government close down debate on censorship. The Liberals are censoring the debate on censorship. This is what the world is seeing. This puts us in the category of the Communists of Beijing and countries like North Korea and Russia. Putin would be envious of the ability to change the algorithms of his viewers to watch content online.
This is a dangerous time in Canada. We have all had struggles for the past three years. The division in our country has never been as great as it is today, and now we have a government that wants to take it a step further, jumping on that raw nerve in Canada that distrusts government because of its actions on this bill. We are here tonight debating because of the forcing of closure on this bill. If people are watching this online, I am going to clip this and put it out there and hopefully if Bill C-11 does not pass they will still be able to watch this. People should like and share this right now, because this might be the last opportunity. People will be able to post things, but no one will be able to find them. This is what is in this bill. This is a layering-on of effects on our freedoms.
Even this beautiful Parliament, where 338 people from across Canada are elected to bring our views here, to debate ideas and policies and directions for our country with respect to what is right and what is wrong, has been affected, even before this bill. We are taking a system of communication that has been a tool of democracies all over the world and we are taking a tool out of the tool box.
There are problems in Canada. There are problems in our democracy. We have seen it with foreign influence in our country. We have seen that the state is now sponsoring media throughout our land, and when Canadians turn on the news, they are saying that it does not reflect their views and the Canada they know. Then they come to the realization that it is being sponsored by government and so they mistrust it. This goes back to the divisions that we have in our country. We have to come up with policies and ideas and laws that bring people together and not divide them. This is the problem that I have with this bill. It is another big, bossy government wanting to divide Canadians.
Censorship has been in our history in the world. History does not always repeat itself, but it rhymes. We only have to look to the failed regimes around the world, and not even that far back in our history, to the 1940s in eastern Europe. In 1945, there was a vote in Hungary. There was democracy in Hungary in 1945. In the vote, the Communists finished sixth. By 1949, it was a Communist country. How is that possible? One of the tactics they used is called a salami tactic, where they just take a slice, and every time a little slice more and a bit more each time. Right now, this is what this bill represents. The government will tell its citizens what they can watch, what they can consume, how they should be thinking or what thoughts they should be portraying.
I send pleas to the members here tonight to think about the impact if this bill becomes law in our country and in a future Parliament there is a leader who takes these tools and censors their party and their beliefs and what they want to post. This would take us into a country of Canada that I do not want any part of for myself or for my kids.
The bill would allow one to post all one wants, and we heard this earlier tonight, but one's fellow Canadians would not be able to view it. We still have time to stop this.
Later in my speech I will have two direct asks to Canadians who are watching live tonight or who are watching this online. I ask them to please, once again, like and share this video.
I would like to go back to some of the struggles we have in Canada because our institutions such as this place, Parliament, are not functioning how they were set up to function. Everybody in here has probably had people phone their office and say that they were watching question period and that everyone was asking questions but they were not hearing any answers. The citizens of this country see this over and over. They hear questions asked that they want to hear the answers to. They phone and write and ask why the Speaker is not telling them to answer those questions.
The problem is not so much that the Speaker needs to impose new rules on this place; it is how this was set up. We have freedom of press in Canada. How this place is supposed to work is that if we have an opposition grilling a minister or a prime minister and they are giving us garbage, the media would hound that minister or prime minister until they received answers to those questions. If they did not answer, it would heighten the question of what they are trying to hide.
We are not getting that right now in Canada. We have some great journalists who are working hard on uncovering the truths of what is happening, but those stories are not being published. This is because, like I said, when states start sponsoring media, everyone questions the stories they are hearing. We know whoever pays the piper picks the tune.
That is how this place is supposed to work. We should have the galleries full of media right now. We do not. During question period, we do not have media filling the galleries. It is because there are no stories; the opposition heckles. There is nothing they want to hear.
I do not know how this is going to end. We heard the government talking about proroguing, which is cancelling or shutting down Parliament. That could kill the bill. The bill is going to be passed to the Senate, unless the Bloc and the NDP decide they are not going to vote for it later tonight. There are still chances. I am an optimist; there is still hope.
The Canadians who are watching should not give up on hope. They can search out the petition we are circulating right now. They should be sure to sign up to get updates because we do not know what YouTube is going to show people in the months or years to come if this becomes law. However, they can have confidence. We heard earlier tonight from the Leader of the Opposition that one of the first things we would do is cancel Bill C-11.
I know my time is limited. I would like to thank everyone for being here tonight. I have one last ask of the people watching online. They should please like and share. I ask them to contact their NDP member of Parliament, because they can perhaps get the courage to stand up for their convictions, vote against the government and bring the government down. We could then have an election that elects a government that will protect our freedoms.
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Mr. Speaker, we need to help artists get their products to the international markets. This bill would hurt their chances, because other countries might decide to bring in their own censorship bills that would hurt our artists' attempts to enter their markets.
I believe it is better to let it flow freely, to let artists perform and make offerings to the people and let the market decide.
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Mr. Speaker, we need to provide an environment that other platforms are attracted to so that our artists can get their product to market. I think that is a better approach than regulating the Internet.
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Mr. Speaker, the question is about whether it is a free market. I would say we need to encourage more competition, be it from Spotify or even from a specific one for Quebec. Let the market decide if there is a need for those players. I do not think regulation is going to accomplish what the member wishes it would do. I would say to our creators that we have to compensate the creators for the content they make, but we need to do it in a way that we are not regulating all aspects of their lives. When a country starts regulating Spotify and all other potential streaming services, I believe that is a country I would not want to live in. I would rather open the doors and encourage more platforms to come forward and share Canadian stories than tell a private company what it can and cannot play.
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Mr. Speaker, in the context of what we are debating and what we should do based on radio, such as AM radio, I do not think even the member would listen to radio anymore. I would say it is in my car. How it relates to this bill is that it limits the ability for consumers to post their content on social media. That is what I am against, and it is what this bill unfortunately would accomplish for our landscape.
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Mr. Speaker, be it across the floor or at committee, when Bill C-11 gets there, I wonder what the coalition partners are going to ask. How are they actually going to scrutinize the bill when their partner, the Liberal government, is proposing it? In the case of Bill C-10, we did see some questioning from the NDP on that government bill, and ultimately, thankfully, Bill C-10 was defeated. I have less hope for this bill.
I have less hope for the freedoms that Canadians have relied on and expect to have in their country. After the bill passes, we will have an Internet tsar that will tell us what we can and cannot post and what content we can watch. Meanwhile, I have highlighted how problematic it is that through technology we are going to be able to do an end run around that.
What would this bill actually accomplish? I believe that in the end it is going to limit people's choices, not expand them. It will not expand a creator's ability to tell Canadian stories, and that is what needs to happen first. We will see when this bill gets to committee.
I know some members have questions for me and I am going to cede my time and allow them to ask those questions and have a proper debate. I do hope that we have a proper debate at committee, because we have heard from too many Canadians that the bill is wrong.
To the Canadians who are watching, please consider contacting your Liberal or NDP-Liberal government MP at their office and explain why this censorship bill is not right for Canada.
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Madam Speaker, it is good to hear the NDP members defending themselves on crossing the floor. I think they are going to have to defend themselves a lot, because I believe history will show the follies in the move they have made to prop up the government.
There were also problems with the last time this bill was before the House as Bill C-10. Now it is Bill C-11, but Bill C-10 was at committee. At that time, the NDP did not cross the floor, but the bill never became law, thankfully.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to take part in this important debate.
Thinking back in history about failed regimes, what did they do? In the dying days of these governments, they censor the public. They take over broadcasters. They print money. They put down protesters and stifle free speech. How that relates to this government, to this failed regime, is that I believe Bill C-11 follows in those dangerous footsteps that we have seen around the world in different parts of history when failed regimes overreach.
We even heard this after the preceding speech by the member for Thornhill. The question was about going onto Netflix and not finding Canadian content. The problem is that with VPN and different technologies, we can pretend that we are anywhere in the world, so we are trying to regulate something that cannot be regulated. Unfortunately, that is going to make an uneven playing field for some.
We all want Canadian content. We all want Canadian content to be produced to tell our stories. It has been pointed out that it is not the creators but the portal or the streaming services, but the bill unfortunately is an analogy with different parts in history when governments burned books or banned books to be sold. Authors could write all the books they wanted, but only government-approved books were sold, and in government-run stores.
This is the problem we have with the government. It is overreach. The Liberals think they can regulate everything in our lives. Many Canadians have reached out to me to say that they disagree with this approach. They disagree that we need the censorship that comes with Bill C-11. They disagree with the CRTC not reporting to Parliament, to all of us, but to the Prime Minister.
It is troubling that an order in council will clarify the instructions on the bill. That is quite frightening. Also, on the backdrop of what the last week and a bit have been, we have had the NDP prop up the government and then literally almost cross the floor to support the Liberals in their endeavours. With the floor-crossing NDP supporting the Liberals, the bill will pass.
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