- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Saskatoon—Grasswood
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $133,761.32
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, before I get under way here this afternoon, I just wish to tell everyone that I am going to split my time with the member for Langley—Aldergrove. We get the good 10 minutes at the later part of the speeches, so I will set him up for it.
I am very thankful to speak to the bill today, Bill C-11. It is the programming motion regarding the online streaming act: the successor to, or should I say the copy of, Bill C-10, which we debated here in the House of Commons. Let us step back. We really did not have any debates last June on Bill C-10. It was pushed through the House with no amendments to it.
I am really desperate on this one because I thought the government learned last June about Bill C-10 and the flaws that we moved forward now on Bill C-11. As most remember, the Liberals tried the same tactics here in the House with the deeply flawed Bill C-10. It was wrong and undemocratic then. Nothing has changed. It is still wrong and mostly undemocratic now. The Senate is not even going to deal with the bill. To say that we need to pass it in the House today is ridiculous because the Senate, at best, will not see the bill until October.
Bill C-10 drew much controversy in the previous Parliament, and I talked about that, due to the proposed infringements on free expression, and massive granting of powers to the CRTC. I have talked for over a year and a half on the CRTC, and I will have more to say on that body and the potential to open up the Internet to broader regulations in a moment, among other serious concerns that I have.
Bill C-11 is the same flawed Liberal bill that could have potentially disastrous consequences for Canadian content creators, and most importantly for consumers. Conservatives said then that Bill C-10 needed more study, and we continue to say that today with this bill, Bill C-11.
As a former broadcaster, members can believe that I completely understand how desperately the Broadcasting Act needs to be upgraded. It has been 31 years since we started. The act is indeed badly outdated. It does not address the realities of modern broadcasting and content creation, and Canadian broadcasters and creators today are struggling because of that.
We absolutely need to put foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters on a level playing field, whatever that looks like. However, the solution, I feel, is not simply to force new realities into this old and outdated structure, or to have the CRTC regulate to its heart's desire.
The CRTC is in charge of broadcasting. Seventeen months later, it still has not updated the licence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It has been 17 months, and we have heard nothing. That is the CRTC's responsibility today: local licensing. We have heard nothing from chairman Ian Scott on CBC, saying, “We are busy. We are going through it.”
Seventeen months later, the public broadcaster still does not have a licence, because the CRTC is looking at it. I do not have to tell everyone in the House, all 338 of us, that we desperately want a three-digit suicide line. As of the month of June the request is a year old. We still have not got it. Why? It is because of the CRTC.
Do we see where I am going on this? It is not capable today of doing anything. As for its chairman, Ian Scott, his five-year term is up and he is leaving in September. We are going to have a new chair. He or she will get a five-year term and they will have to be re-educated on what the CRTC actually delivers to the citizens of the country.
Regulating the Internet, the Pandora's box that is being opened up in this legislation, is also simply not in the best interests of Canadians. We need to make sure that we are protecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians. Ensuring those protections cannot start by regulating the Internet and restricting the free speech that we have in the country today.
These are issues that need further study at committee. There are dozens of important witnesses that still wish to be heard. As for one of those witnesses, it is kind of interesting to listen to everyone talking about indigenous voices, because we have not heard from the indigenous peoples television network, APTN. We have not heard from it.
The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network has not come to committee to speak about what Bill C-11 would do for that network, which was started years ago because the public broadcaster did little with indigenous programming. That is why APTN started: it heard voices. In fact, I was at an event on Saturday in Saskatoon, and the Filipino community is asking about Bill C-11. The Filipino community does a half-hour televised tape show in Saskatoon on cable, and they have asked about whether they can continue if this bill passes. I had no answers for them.
This is the diversity we are hearing in our country that Bill C-11 has not answered in committee. We have not had a chance to even slice through the first level of onion to get to this bill, and now the Liberal government, as it did last year with Bill C-10, is pushing it through the House, but this time there is no excuse for it. The Senate will not even look at this bill until maybe late in September or early in October. We have all summer to deal with Bill C-11.
I remember when the government came into power, and we all remember when it came into power in 2015. It promised sunny ways and made a commitment not to use closure and time allocation as the Conservatives did in the previous government. They have forgotten that in six and a half short years. All I have heard is “Harper this,” and “Harper that”. Now, I am going to suggest that it is the member for Papineau who is shutting everything down in the House of Commons.
Now, whenever there is the slickest push-back against the Liberals' agenda, they go straight to time allocation and, today, the programming motion. I participated in the study on Bill C-10 in the previous Parliament, when the government passed a similar programming motion. Several legal and industry experts came before the committee and raised concerns about the legislation. They were the same concerns from 2021 that have come in 2022. As legislators, have we looked at this bill and said we have done the best we can with it? That is our job. We 338 are elected to get the best bills coming out of the House. Have we done that? We have not done that at all, and the Liberals agree with that, yet they are moving forward today.
Tomorrow we will have a full day, going through from noon to nine o'clock, with amendments, then we will push the amendments through from nine until midnight without a word we can say or object to. We proposed further witnesses and debate in the last Parliament, and Canadians deserve better on this bill. The government, however, is clearly sick of hearing about the problems with the legislation. We have gone through two heritage ministers already, and probably will a third when we come back in the fall, and shut down Bill C-11. Thankfully, Bill C-10 did not complete the legislative process because of a useless election. What is it going to be this summer?
Now, the chamber has a second chance to get this bill, Bill C-11, right. This time we have the opportunity, as members of Parliament, to give Canadians what they want out of this bill, Bill C-11.
First of all, despite claims to the contrary by the minister, Bill C-11 absolutely would leave the door open to the CRTC regulating user-generated content online. In other words, the CRTC could still, under Bill C-11, decide what Canadians can and cannot see. These powers pose a clear threat for free expression in this country, which is the most fundamental right in a democratic country. Under Bill C-11, the CRTC could regulate away free expression online.
Second is the fact that the powers the bill grants to the CRTC are so broad and wide-ranging that they empower the commission to essentially regulate any content in a manner it sees fit, and I have talked enough about the CRTC, but that second bullet should be a concern to everyone in the House of Commons.
What will happen to the foreign services that are small players in this Canadian market? Where did the Canadian market go? In a small part of the user base, we have new regulations and requirements that we can thrust upon them.
Third, the government is asking us to vote on legislation that we do not have all the pieces to. The government says it will address the problems through ministerial order, but it has not shown us what the orders will be. Bill C-11 is a flawed bill.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Guelph is so right. Much of our new-found talent came from YouTube and progressed from there. Many do not deserve to be on YouTube, quite frankly, as their careers will never lift off, but it is a way to try to get started. As we move forward on Bill C-11, the discussion will be what to do with the Internet, YouTube and so on, because many performers in this country are making a pretty good living right now putting their talent on YouTube instead of on the traditional media that we know today of radio and TV.
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Madam Speaker, I am once again honoured to have the opportunity in this place to speak to the matters contained within Bill C-11, the online streaming act, the new name. I say “again” because, as many will remember, in the previous Parliament we tackled these issues under a different bill, and it was called Bill C-10, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act.
This is a new bill and a new title, but we still have the same issues that exist with this bill. It was interesting because, moments ago in committee, the heritage minister admitted that Bill C-10 was flawed. He said that proposed section 2.1 should never have been in there, and 4.1. He mentioned those two that we fought on this side, in Bill C-10, for weeks. Unfortunately, even with the flawed bill, it passed the House but then the Liberals called the unnecessary election and the bill died.
However, this is the first time the Minister of Canadian Heritage has actually admitted Bill C-10 was a flawed bill. Here we go now with Bill C-11, an update. We all know the update is necessary. It has been 30-plus years since we updated the Broadcasting Act. I was even a young broadcaster 30-plus years ago when this came out. At that time, believe it or not, there was no Internet. It was just radio and TV back then, a little bit of newspaper. Of course, the Internet came and the World Wide Web, as we know it today, has changed a lot.
There were no Internet companies and no online streaming services to compete with the healthy Canadian broadcasters. However, when the predecessor of this bill was drafted in Parliament last session, we addressed four major areas of concern where the government legislation lacked significant consideration. I mentioned a couple of those in proposed sections 2.1 and 4.1, but we will go on.
First was for social media companies we all know, such as Facebook, Google and their various properties like YouTube, to pay their fair share. We agree. Second was creating that level playing field for digital platforms, like Netflix and Spotify, to compete with the conventional Canadian broadcasters. Third was to define Canadian content. This is the important one. We need to define Canadian content production and media fund contributions by digital broadcasters. What is the formula?
Last was the power given to the CRTC, better known as the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, to attempt to regulate in such a broad manner. This is an organization that struggles to enforce its own regulations now. We can even look, today, at Russia Today. They really never did take it down. It was the big conglomerates that moved in and took Russia Today down, like Bell, Rogers and Shaw. It is interesting. I think we could all agree the CRTC should have moved long before Russia Today was pulled down from Canadian programming.
Forty years ago, Internet companies and streaming were not even a consideration. Digital information has become absolutely accessible to everyone in this country. The demand for mainstream media, television and radio has nosedived. Streaming services have become the primary source of entertainment for many Canadians. Television stations have had to downsize their operations, along with radio stations. Many have gone dark in this country. The same is true for radio.
Right now, radio stations have another issue. Their revenues have dropped as much as 40%. Part of the problem is the public broadcaster, CBC. The government gave it another $150 million more during COVID to compete against private broadcasters. As I just said, private broadcasters' revenues have gone down 40%. CBC has gone up $150 million more in the budget, meaning we can see what is happening in the market. CBC, the public broadcaster, is going up, while the private broadcasters' radio listeners are going down, and thus advertising is not as good.
The result, as in my province of Saskatchewan, is that we have seen a major decline in local content. Easy access to digital content has been beneficial to the consumer, but with the outdated Broadcasting Act, the broadcasting sector has had some steep hurdles to overcome, and I mentioned those just seconds ago.
It is therefore fair to ask this: What does a modernized act need to accomplish? Does the government's latest attempt, Bill C-11, actually achieve this goal?
The first concern we should all address is the notion that the Internet needs to be regulated. We need clarity and clearly defined parameters on which aspects of the Internet would be regulated and to what extent. Would Bill C-11 create an environment where virtually all of the content would be regulated, including independent content creators earning just a modest living from social media platforms such as YouTube?
As I mentioned, Bill C-11 is almost a copy of the previous Liberal offering, Bill C-10, which was flawed and failed to address many of the concerns addressed by the experts during its hearings. When we speak of creating a level playing field, is it in the context of giving Canadian content creators the protection they need to produce and compete without impeding their ability to succeed at home and globally? Regulation, done properly, would support the success of Canadian content producers and would meet the objectives of the Canadian heritage mandates to support artists and the cultural sector. However, the bill before us leaves very little hope that this is what would be achieved.
I remain very concerned about the CRTC being tasked with administering the act. I have been in the business of television and radio for over four decades, and I have seen that the CRTC is already stretched to its limits with the broadcasting and telecom situation in this country. If the CRTC lacks the capacity to carry out the current mandate effectively, how can it be expected to take on the Internet?
The CRTC struggles to cope with the 4,000 or 5,000 entities in the broadcasting sector. We are seeing it in the industry committee now. Rogers wants to take over Shaw, and although this started last year, we still have no definitive action from the CRTC. Will it make a ruling soon on the takeover worth $26 billion? Can it even predict the number of entities that it will be required to look after once online streaming is added to its mandate? How much money and how much talent would the CRTC need on board to keep up with the bill? In fact, does it even understand the scope of the undertaking yet? How many years will it take to understand the criteria and scope and accumulate the resources needed to carry this out?
During our last debate on Bill C-10, I asked this of the CRTC chairman, Ian Scott, who, by the way, is stepping down in September after five years: How is the CRTC ever going to pay for this? He gleefully told the committee that it would be going directly to the Treasury Board. Well, we know what that means: The taxpayers will be paying more for their services.
What is perhaps most disappointing is that the CRTC will be handed the power to develop the rules of regulating, and it can make those rules up as it goes along. This act would endow the CRTC with the ability to determine its own jurisdiction without constraints.
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