Hon. Leo Housakos: Before I enter into the crux of the debate, I want to share with colleagues that in my long time in this institution, there’s no piece of legislation that’s been more important than this one. It’s important because I find that, as senators, we have an obligation to pay homage to the past and to fight for the present, but we also have responsibility in defending the future. This bill touches a young generation of Canadians particularly, and touches upon how we will be dealing with information going forward.

I’ll say this before I enter into the crux of the bill, as well as the issue and my concerns with it, government leader. There’s been accusations back and forth about partisanship in this particular debate. I’ll tell you this: The people that I’m fighting for have been traditional Liberal voters. The people that came before my committee — the stakeholders that I met — are young Canadians who don’t fit the stereotype of your typical Conservative voters. These are people who voted for the Liberal Party in 2015, 2019 and 2021, and they feel betrayed and concerned. These are the people that I’m fighting for.

Bill C-11, without a doubt in my mind, opens the door to censorship. The government has, of course, made a bunch of justifications that they’re doing this in order to align traditional broadcasters with digital platforms. I’ve said on a number of occasions that digital platforms are not broadcasters.

We keep hearing about protecting Canadian content, but the reality of the matter is that Bill C-11 hardly dealt with Canadian content — other than the fact that we give a mandate to the CRTC to decide unilaterally what that Canadian content will be, which raises concerns from coast to coast to coast.

Colleagues, I’ll say it again and again: I understand the importance of this legislation to certain unions, associations and legacy media who are struggling as the entertainment industry evolves and as digital platforms continue to take up more space. We know that. We know that traditional broadcasting is in decline and we know that their business models are facing risk of extinction.

I understand the desire for regulations to bring foreign streaming companies that behave like broadcasters — like Netflix and Prime — in line with other domestic broadcasters, and to make sure the Canada Media Fund and others get their cut and continue to be the gatekeepers who get to decide who becomes successful and who doesn’t. Keep in mind, though, colleagues, that it’s our responsibility in this institution to be fair.

Organizations like the Canada Media Fund — and, for that matter, the Canadian treasury — have benefited enormously from Canadian digital-first content producers in this country, because it’s an industry that is exploding. Unlike traditional broadcasters, those Canadians are making hefty contributions to the Canadian government. Yet, this bill is going to allow the gatekeepers and these giant traditional broadcasters to feed at the trough while there’s absolutely no accommodation for other Canadians. I don’t consider that fair.

I also understand the government’s desire to protect this paternalistic and antiquated system. However, I do not think that is our responsibility as senators. User-generated content will end up regulated by all means necessary, including algorithm manipulation. That is a fact under this bill. This puts the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Canadian digital creators at risk because of what it will do to their global rankings. That is what algorithms will do.

Someone at the CRTC or some bureaucrat at Canadian Heritage will determine whether their ranking should be at the top or bottom, based on whatever criteria the CRTC and bureaucrats decide — instead of having an open market where Canadians can choose for themselves what is a priority. I don’t think that choice and putting customers ahead of bureaucratic decisions are bad things.

These are creators, by the way. I keep saying “digital-first creators” and “user-generated content.” This is not some kind of techie, far-off concept. These are young Canadians, people from across the country — creators who have embraced the world of opportunities that has been opened up for them because of the internet. They haven’t needed or wanted government intervention. Quite the contrary; these people were happily going about their business and all of a sudden there’s a bill that raises deep concerns for them.

It is a noble thing to want to protect and promote Canadian culture. I have no issue with that. Who would? I’m not here to dispute that and I take no issue with the need to modernize the Broadcasting Act. However, colleagues, these young streamers and bloggers are part of the reason the Canadian cultural industry is exploding, both economically and artistically. We’ve seen Canada punch above its weight. Over and over again, I’ve seen statistics indicating that all of a sudden francophone streamers and bloggers are expanding their horizons. Instead of a limited francophone market of 7 or 8 million, all of a sudden at their feet is a market of hundreds of millions to which they can promote Canadian culture.

Why would we want to limit that? As the rest of the world is going global, Canada will become parochial and short-sighted. We will try to attach to the digital world antiquated solutions to cultural protection. These solutions were useful in the 1970s and 1980s, when the broadcasting industry was very different, but they don’t apply today.

Look around at our children and grandchildren. They’re no longer using cable. On a regular basis, they consume information from around the world. More importantly, they’re exporting around the world Canada and all the greatness of Canada. We’ve seen a boom in the tourist industry in this country. People from all corners of the world want to go to Banff and Quebec City. We’ve seen this explosion in tourism in large part because of digital platforms.

Artists, actors, writers, producers and directors are busier in 2023 than ever before. The biggest injection of cash in our cultural industry is no longer to Telefilm Canada or from legislation that we pass here in terms of budgets from the federal government. Why? It is because we can’t keep up. In today’s world, it costs billions of dollars to produce films and documentaries. Netflix and other international streaming companies are investing billions in Canada. Why? Because we happen to be a great place to invest. It’s cheap to produce films here and we have beautiful locations.

More important are the Canadian human resources and talent. Why would we want to hinder that talent? Why wouldn’t we want to unleash it and compete with the world? Canadians can compete. Have faith in Canadians.

Senator Housakos: Please, her position is clear on it, and so is the position of many others. I guess everybody else who thinks there’s potential for censorship — haven’t they read this bill either? The truth of the matter, colleagues, is that a compelling case has been made that this bill has left out many important voices in this country. We are the last vestige of hope for these people to be defended.

Again, we had unanimous consent that this bill needed to be fixed by all groups. A concerted effort was made to fix it. The most important elements and amendments in this bill were ignored by the government. I’m pleading and asking this chamber to send it back one more time, to do our due diligence and to tell the government and insist that these are worth reconsideration.

Senator Housakos: I always say: Have faith in Canadians’ choices and in their abilities. That is why it is so unfortunate that the government bungled this by turning it into an internet regulation bill rather than a broadcasting reform bill.

Minister Rodriguez, along with former Senator Dawson and the government leader, Senator Gold, love to say that when it comes to regulating user-generated content, “Users are out, platforms are in; trust us.”

Colleagues, there are no platforms without users. I’ve said this a thousand times, and I had to learn it myself during the study: Platforms are just an empty shell. They’re just a service that is provided to Canadians who want to use it. That could be individual journalists, media companies and even us politicians. When we export using these platforms, what we do here, we use them as a forum to communicate with as many people as possible in order to propagate our work. What is wrong with that? At the end of the day, are we going to call these platforms and say, “You owe us part of your revenue because we’re content producers”?

Where do you draw the line? When does a government step in to pick who wins, who loses, who gets punished for their success and who gets rewarded for their failure? When you regulate these platforms, you regulate content and you regulate the users.

That’s what this debate is all about. We know that this bill is about regulating the platforms. As I said, platforms are user‑generated content producers and digital-content producers — which are, again, Canadians.

Basically, the government is saying that it will regulate bookstores but not the books or authors. How ludicrous is that? The government is saying, “We’re going to regulate the platform, but — trust us — users won’t be affected whatsoever. We’ll ask the platforms for a desired outcome. Obviously, the only way to have the desired outcome is to force users to manipulate their algorithms in order to give us the outcome we want. But don’t worry; trust us.”

Most of us work with governments in good faith, but those of us who have been here for a long time recognize that unless you get it in writing, you will always be disappointed down the line.

I go back to the goodwill gesture on the part of the Canadian Senators Group to include an observation in the bill. Senator Quinn, I’m telling you that 6, 9 or 10 months from now, when we don’t get the outcome we want from the CRTC or Canadian Heritage, nothing in this bill gives us any remedy to solve this problem and the outcome will be very dangerous.

The amendment that this chamber put forward to protect digital creators in this country and to protect consumer choice in controlling their own feed was not perfect. Many of you know that it wasn’t perfect. However, I accepted it because I believed it was better than what we now have in the bill and what we had in the original bill. The fact that it was a non-starter for the Trudeau government makes it worthy of more pushback and insistence from this chamber.

At every turn in this debate — in our committee and in the other house — we’ve seen the government push back and not accept any concrete, written, black-and-white amendments that would protect user-generated content. That, in itself, has raised flags and concerns on the part of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are wondering about their livelihoods and businesses — and their way of life, for that matter, because today digital communication is a way of life.

I will reiterate my grave concern for digital creators in this country as a result of this legislation. These are people from across Canada and from all walks of life. I’ve said it before, but it bears being repeated: All regions, ethnicities, linguistic and religious backgrounds have found incredible success on the internet, and they’re pleading with this chamber for their concerns to be heard and to gain some sense of security. Unlike this government, they’ve embraced innovation and the lack of barriers. They’ve done it without any government help or intervention.

Again, I will repeat the people I’m fighting for because it’s worth repeating. Darcy Michael comes to mind, for example; I mentioned him earlier. Jennifer Valentyne comes to mind; I mentioned her many times. Vanessa Brousseau is a proud Indigenous woman who expressed concern, as did other Indigenous groups, about their voices being heard and being heard in an unfettered fashion. These are the people for whom I’m so vociferously fighting every step of the way on this piece of legislation. I know they’re watching because they communicate on a daily basis. They’re hopeful that this institution will provide some added value to these stakeholders across the country.

I talked about algorithms. I talked about the impact it will have on user-generated content, and then there’s Canadian content. We went through this review of the Canadian Broadcasting Act, which, of course, is at the pinnacle point of culture in this country, and we didn’t open up the element of CanCon and the definition of CanCon. How ludicrous is that? How irresponsible as legislators?

By the way, the Broadcasting Act in this country hasn’t been opened very often. Every 30 years or so, the government has the courage to look at it. Yet, we went after the digital platforms. We went after user-generated content to, by all means, help our traditional broadcasters, which are huge corporations in this country, and there’s still no clarity on the definition of CanCon.

We’re not listening to the ordinary Canadians who feel their livelihoods are being threatened. We’re not even listening to Margaret Atwood. We’re not even listening to icons of Canadian culture. Did you hear what she said about Bill C-11? Did you hear what she said? She called it “creeping totalitarianism.” So if you don’t believe Leo Housakos and my view on this being potentially a censorship bill, is Margaret Atwood also being partisan?