- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Kelowna—Lake Country
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,412.70
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, it is extremely concerning. This bill spent a lot of time in the Senate, and a lot of senators had real concerns. They brought forth an incredible number of amendments to the government, of which the government did not accept all, so here we are today. The government is not listening to witnesses who have testified at committees both in the House of Commons and in the Senate. It is not listening to senators and it is not listening to Canadians.
We have to wonder what truly are the Liberals' objectives. They are wanting to give incredible authority to the CRTC, and we do not even know what that authority would be and what the criteria would be. All of this is extremely concerning.
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Madam Speaker, the point is that this legislation would give incredible authority to the CRTC. As I laid out in my speech, I do not have a lot of confidence in the CRTC's taking on of all this extra responsibility and authority, considering what it has existing in its mandate. One could argue that the CRTC is not meeting a lot of the obligations of its current mandate.
The government is willing to give the CRTC this incredible new authority without even telling or disclosing to Canadians and parliamentarians what would be the criteria and all of the rules about the new authority that it would have. This should be concerning to every Canadian.
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Madam Speaker, the bill would allow the CRTC, by direction of the government, to create regulations that would affect what we see on the Internet. Here we have the CRTC, which is already the regulator for telecommunications, that even after well over a year, is not able to set up a suicide hotline of 988. What kind of confidence does the member have in the CRTC being able to take on this giant new mandate?
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Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about here has to do with online media, and this has to do especially with small independent media in communities all across this country. That is what this legislation is a lot about. Also, it is about giving the CRTC sweeping powers.
I was happy to hear the member say that he was not a huge fan of maybe some of how the CRTC operates. A big part of my speech was that we would be giving an organization sweeping powers. Already, it is questionable whether it is meeting some of its mandate, and it would have these sweeping powers to make all kinds of new regulations and have a huge arbitration process without really knowing what it is going to mean. That is extremely concerning, especially for the small independent news media organizations.
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Madam Speaker, I want to ask the hon. member about the CRTC. We know that Bill C-11 would give sweeping new powers to the CRTC. We have heard that the government is not willing to disclose the policy directive for the CRTC. Is it not concerning to the member that we would give the CRTC these new powers without actually knowing what its mandate is going to be and what the policy directive will be?
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Mr. Speaker, I think that we have been really clear, on this side of the House, that it does make sense, and I did reference that in my intervention, for organizations like Netflix to pay their fair share in order to pay taxes. That is completely separate from being able to change the content people see online. They are completely separate things. This is one of the reasons why we, on this side of the House, have said from the very beginning that some of these issues should be separated. Charging GST for some type of service is very different from changing, or even defining, what discoverability is, with looking at what people are able to see online and actually changing the algorithms so that what we see is what the CRTC comes up with that one should be seeing. Those are completely separate issues.
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Mr. Speaker, we should look at how the CRTC is operating right now. I will give one example. There was a piece of legislation that passed in the House well over 500 days ago to create a suicide hotline: the 988 hotline. That has still not happened.
To give huge other priorities to the CRTC, when here is a prime example of something very simple that it has not been able to do, is really difficult to understand. It is going to take on this whole other huge objective.
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Madam Speaker, Bill C-11 proposes to give the CRTC the ability “to make orders imposing conditions on the carrying on of broadcasting undertakings;” in 18 different categories of operations.
We know that it has now been just past two weeks since we hit the 500-day mark from when there was a motion in the House for the government to create a suicide 988 hotline, and it tasked the CRTC with this. It has had consultations, but it has not been able to implement this. I am wondering what kind of confidence the member has in the CRTC to take on this giant new mandate and new project, considering its recent record.
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