44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 5, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, that is a very important question. We have a different perspective on that. For sure, we all agree in this House, whatever party we represent, that we need to have a share of representation. If we want to have access to something, nothing falls from the sky, so we have to pay for that and the money should get back to where it belongs. If we want to have new products and good wages for that, we need to have a fair tariff.
My colleague talked about Quebecor and TVA, and yes, they have an obligation to produce here. What we are asking is just to be sure that those who produce great-quality documentaries or something else have access to the same platforms that TVA and some others have. We have some concerns with how the bill is written right now, so this is why we are referring it back to the parliamentary committee.
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Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to speak about fiscal balance and fairness.
For years, broadcasters and cable companies invested in the production of Quebec and Canadian content. The new players, that is to say digital broadcasters, were given a gift, a free pass, for many years.
My question is simple. Why does he think that Vidéotron should pay, but Google and YouTube should not?
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Madam Speaker, that is a very good question.
In our opinion, this bill does not properly assess the balance we must strike and the fair payment that must be made to all producers and broadcasters, without affecting content quality and creators' initiative, whether on YouTube or elsewhere. Damien, the musician I spoke about earlier, made us understand that.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to speak in the House, but particularly on an issue as important as Bill C-10, or rather, Bill C-11. I apologize. I am in the last Parliament.
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- May/5/22 4:25:30 p.m.
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There is no going back and forth. The hon. parliamentary secretary should know that.
The hon. member can continue.
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Are you literally reading a speech from the last Parliament?
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Madam Speaker, the broadcasting and communications industry has changed dramatically, and COVID-19 has shown us that it is incredibly important in today's day and age to have access to unfettered news and unfettered communication. Many of us were locked down in our houses for months at a time, and in many cases our sole form of communication was through the Internet. That is the way we communicated with the outside world.
The great news is that Canada is no longer restricted to a few channels. I can remember when I was younger that we had three, four or five channels, and that was it. That was the maximum number of channels. I lived out in rural Canada, so we used to have to move the antenna to get CBC, and that was our one communication around there. Now, we have Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Reddit, among many other platforms.
I will actually discuss one great communicator. He is from my riding and lives about five minutes from my house. His name is Mr. Wyatt Sharpe. Wyatt is a young man of about 13 years of age, who is one of the leading voices in Canadian politics today. He is leading the discourse on many important issues at 13 years of age.
How did he do it? He started working at the Orono Weekly Times, writing for the paper. Then he moved on to social media. If it had not been for the great access to social media, Wyatt's voice would have been limited to the wonderful but relatively small community of Orono. As it is now, he goes from coast to coast to coast, and if members have not been on the Wyatt Sharpe Show or listened to his podcast, I highly recommend it.
When we look at social media, this bill casts it as another CBC, NBC or broadcasting network. I do not think that is accurate, with respect. I believe the Internet is closer to the public square, where we go out as Canadians and share our views and visions. We might be miles apart, but it is so critical that we have those discourses. It is so critical that we go out on the battlefield of ideas and discuss them. Some of those ideas will fall by the wayside in favour of better ones, yet other ones will be improved and get better. Having that unfettered access to that public square that we call the Internet is so incredibly important.
Canadians have always had the ability to communicate completely unfettered and to share their ideas and visions, and what alarms me about this legislation is the fact that we are moving away from freedom of speech and starting to restrict it. I dare say I am perhaps going a bit too far, but we really do not have to look too far in history or even around the world to look at examples of what happens when the government goes too far in restricting freedom of speech.
We can go back in time and look at the Soviet Union as it pushed out its propaganda and told lies to its people. This held people behind for years and years, sitting in bread lines. Meanwhile, they were being fed that they were actually ahead of the western world, which we all knew was false. We see the modern-day incarnation of that in Vladimir Putin restricting freedom of speech and restricting the Internet as Russians are unable to hear about or listen to the atrocities that are happening in Ukraine.
Freedom of speech is a pillar of western democracy. It really supports many of the other freedoms and rights we all share. It is based on that. It is foundational to our country and many around the world, so when we mess with that foundation, we must do so with the greatest of care. We must use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
There are some out there who agree that this is going on, and that content is being curated right now by large multinational multi-billion dollar corporations, so why is the government not in a better position?
The challenge is that there is no one watching the government. When we look at companies that have stepped offside, the government has a rightful obligation to ask for greater accountability and transparency when it comes to sorting, curating and ensuring there are appropriate algorithms. We must do that carefully, and as legislators it is our role to provide that oversight. However, when we have the government watching the government, we have the fox watching the henhouse, and that should be troublesome for all Canadians.
The reality is that when we look at the Internet right now, there are certainly challenges, as I said. Greater transparency with respect to algorithms and otherwise is critically important, but there has been a tremendous growth in Canadian content. The Canadian Media Producers Association suggested that the industry has grown by a record amount and that there have been record investments in film and television, almost doubling in the last decade.
I am inspired by what is going on in my own riding of Northumberland—Peterborough South with Albert Botha, Heather Haldane and the South Eastern Ontario Production Accelerator Fund. This initiative is making southeastern Ontario the next hot spot for a bustling film and TV industry, and I am very proud of what they are accomplishing. On that note, certified Canadian content has grown in recent years. The highest growth for certified Canadian content television has occurred over the past three years.
My fear is that when we change this very foundation, this freedom of speech and freedom of expression, we could do more harm than good, not only by restricting people's ability to express themselves, but in terms of the production of Canadian content itself. While there is no doubt that traditional broadcasters may benefit from the restriction of this content and bringing others into this content, it will almost certainly inhibit the amount of content that is produced when we start to regulate user-controlled content.
The other hallmark, sometimes, of poor legislation is a lack of clarity. Quite frankly, this legislation is replete with a lack of clarity. The hon. minister claims that the legislation features guardrails against overly broad regulation, to keep the nature of the Internet as it is, but there is no specific eligibility. In fact, many of the decisions are pushed onto the bureaucracy, and as much as I respect it and our public service often does a great job out there, it is not ultimately accountable to the people, like parliamentarians are. When we push our decisions onto the bureaucracy, we lose accountability as a government.
Bill C-11 includes many terms that it simply does not define. “User-generated content” is not defined, and “social media” is not defined, yet these words are used repeatedly. One of the troubling sections is the user-generated content. It was excluded and then brought back in, and that is troublesome. We have user-generated content that people are creating from all around Canada and, instead of treating these folks as I think they should be properly viewed, as the public square, as the sharing of discourse, as the battlefield of ideas, allowing all entrants onto the field, it restricts them and starts to treat individuals as it would the CBC and other major broadcasters, making them pay fees and making them subject to content restrictions and algorithm restrictions.
I believe that Canada is best when we let Canadians decide and, unfortunately, this legislation puts the government in the driver's seat, allowing it to make decisions that Canadians should be allowed to make.
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Madam Speaker, first off, I want to say that the member is incredibly lucky to have Wyatt Sharpe in his riding. What an incredible young individual. By no means should anybody judge his ability to interview people based on his age, because I know from appearing on his show not that long ago that he is a hard-hitting individual who knows his stuff well in advance.
My real concern over the member's speech is his comments with respect to how this bill would somehow limit user content. I cannot help but think that something that we chuckled at at the beginning of his speech when he talked about Bill C-10 might actually be true. What this bill has in it that perhaps Bill C-10 was not as explicit about is a number of sections that reference making sure that user-generated content is protected: proposed subsections 2(2.1), 2(2.2), 2(2.3), 4.1(1), 4.1(2) and 4.2(3).
I am wondering if the member has actually read this version of the bill or if indeed his comments about user-generated content were based on Bill C-10.
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Madam Speaker, as always, I admire the passion, although not necessarily the substance, of the member's question.
Proposed subsection 4.1(2) creates an exception to an exception for user-generated content when the user makes some type of profit or dollars from it. That is absolutely brought in and is clear. That is the right answer.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
He spoke about how important this is in our society, and everyone knows that Quebec's and Canada's cultural sectors have been waiting for decades for updates to this legislation.
Just a few days after Bill C‑11 was introduced, the cultural sector made a very simple request, that we adopt this bill as quickly as possible. I think those in that sector have waited long enough.
What does my colleague think is needed to pass Bill C‑11?
Why do you not want to pass it as is?
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- May/5/22 4:37:00 p.m.
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I am not saying I do not want to adopt it, so I will call on the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.
Unfortunately, this legislation is a failure. Of course, I share the member's passion for Canadian and Quebec culture and would like nothing more than to see it promoted. However, this bill is replete with challenges and difficulties, including a lack of definition and clarity on what Canadian content is and on the regulation of user-generated content, which is very challenging.
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Madam Speaker, we can see one of the issues we are faced with if we take the Conservative line that the government is more controlling on this issue. The reality is that we are elected by the citizens of our country to make decisions and set regulations. Some of the things the member raised can be fixed in the bill, and we are looking for amendments to them. However, if we do not do this, then we will leave it to U.S. web giants to have complete control over Canadian artists and their fate.
What suggestion should we go forward with? If we do not get this bill to committee and fix some of the issues, we turn over all of this Canadian content and the artists to the control of web giants in the United States and other parts of the world.
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Madam Speaker, there is no doubt that work needs to be done. The Broadcasting Act needs to be amended and changed. I certainly do not use my Sony Walkman anymore, so we need to update it.
The problem is that this bill is so bad that we need to go back to the drawing board, unfortunately. It has all the hallmarks of bad legislation. It has a lack of clarity. It is overly burdensome to the industry. It also puts too much onus on the bureaucracy and not enough on parliamentarians.
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- May/5/22 4:39:08 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, Climate Change; the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Health; the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, Labour.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-11, an almost carbon copy of Bill C-10, which the Minister of Canadian Heritage himself, to his credit, admitted was deeply flawed.
Let me start by first acknowledging the creators, artists, musicians and all those who work so hard to bring Canada’s arts and culture to the world. They undoubtedly deserve to be highlighted and given the opportunity to share our history and stories on the many platforms available in today’s world. Many of my colleagues and I have experienced their work first-hand and have met with many talented individuals across our country. The Conservative Party knows the importance of ensuring that Canadian artists are heard, appreciated and given the ability to share their art not just with Canadians but the world. Creators need rules that do not hold back their ability to be Canadian and global successes.
There is absolutely no doubt that after 30 years, the Broadcasting Act should be updated. Technology has evolved, and the ways in which Canadians create and consume stories have changed. Thirty years ago, the Internet was not what it is today, and people relied on radio, cable television and newspapers to consume content. That is what the Broadcasting Act was designed to regulate. Today, most Canadians consume content on the Internet, from streaming services to social media platforms. We live in a world where digital information is accessible to everyone in this country at any time.
I will first take the opportunity to highlight what Bill C-11 is proposing.
The bill proposes to expand the Broadcasting Act beyond the current platforms to include large foreign and domestic streaming services such as Netflix, Prime and Disney+. It also includes user-generated content created on social media sites such as YouTube and TikTok. This means that newer forms of media previously subjected to little or no government oversight will be brought under the authority of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC.
Many Canadians and I know that Bill C-10 contained similar content and raised concerns regarding free speech, not only from opposition members but from many organizations. The inclusion of user-generated content in Bill C-10 meant that anything Canadians chose to upload or post on social media or on any creative content-sharing platform would fall under the authority of the Broadcasting Act and be regulated by the CRTC. Why was that an issue? There was very little accountability, and it was unclear what authority was being given to the CRTC. There was no indication of what any of the regulations would be, and there would be little to no parliamentary oversight, meaning that a government agency would be controlling what content Canadians see.
Coming back to the bill we are debating today, in Bill C-11 the government has included an exclusion on user-generated content on social media. However, upon reading the bill, there seems to be an exclusion to this exclusion. What does that mean? It means that once again, the government, through the CRTC, could regulate user-generated content.
As Matt Hatfield from OpenMedia stated:
Trying to exclude user generated content from CRTC regulation is a good step, and an acknowledgement by the government that last year’s Bill C-10 was a mistake.
The problem is that it isn’t clear if they’ve actually excluded user generated content. They’re working from a foundation of a clean separation of professional and amateur content on the Internet that simply doesn’t exist. Major Canadian Internet productions like podcasts could find themselves in the worst of all worlds—subject to CRTC regulation, while not able to seek CanCon funding.
While we can acknowledge an attempt by the government to fix its admitted error within Bill C-10, there is still too much uncertainty about the impact Bill C-11 could have on digital first creators.
According to a summary of the 2019 report from researchers at Ryerson University, “there are an estimated 160,000 Canadian content creators on YouTube, including 40,000 who have enough of an audience to monetize their channels. These 40,000 creators have in turn sparked the development of nearly 28,000 full-time jobs”. These are positive economic impacts that should be encouraged and praised rather than hindered and targeted. While the intent of the bill may be to support Canada’s broadcasting industries, it marginalizes Canadian digital content creators who are successfully sharing Canadian stories across the globe.
We on this side of the House believe that large foreign streaming services and social media platforms should not be given unfair advantages over the regulated Canadian broadcasting sector. They should be expected to contribute to and create Canadian content and have Canadians tell Canadian stories. Foreign streamers should pay their fair share.
We all agree that large streaming providers should feature more Canadian content, but what is Canadian content?
Recently, I watched the Disney film Turning Red with my kids. It is set in Toronto and tells the story of what it is like growing up as a Chinese Canadian teenager. The film stars Canadian actors, yet under the current rules, this movie is not considered Canadian content.
A series based entirely on the Toronto Maple Leafs being streamed on Amazon is not considered Canadian Content. The Handmaid's Tale, based on a novel written by a Canadian author and filmed in Canadian cities, is not considered Canadian content. The movie Deadpool, based on a Canadian comic book character, starring a Canadian actor, co-written by a Canadian and filmed in Vancouver, is not considered Canadian content.
This bill would require streaming services to invest in and create more Canadian content. However, these films, biographies and TV show adaptations that most of us would consider Canadian content simply are not. This definition must be broadened so that these large streaming services want to invest in our great Canadian talent and tell Canadian stories.
I want to turn more broadly to the CRTC because I think a large part of the criticism of this bill is about a lack of clarity and the amount of control and regulatory power that would be given to the CRTC.
It will be up to the CRTC to administer this act, and I think there is reason to be concerned. The CRTC is already spread thin and lacks the capacity to carry out the current mandate effectively. How exactly can Canadians have faith in the CRTC’s ability to regulate the Internet and redefine what is Canadian content when it is already struggling to cope with the 4,000 or 5,000 entities in the broadcasting sector? What tools will have to be provided to the CRTC and how much money will this cost taxpayers? My colleague, the member for Saskatoon-Grasswood, asked the CRTC chairman how the CRTC was ever going to pay for this. His response was that it would go directly through the Treasury Board, meaning that Canadians would be on the hook for more regulations and rules, with no oversight or accountability.
The government has proposed Bill C-11 with a “just trust us” approach and has failed to provide clear policy direction on how the CRTC’s regulatory powers would be interpreted. It is unclear whether the CRTC even has the capacity or, to be frank, the competency to actually successfully execute what the government is proposing through Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, I agreed with the hon. member when he started his speech. He talked about how Canadian artists deserve to be shared on many platforms and need to be heard. That is what the bill does, excluding user-generated content.
He also talked about digital-first creators and how great they are. I hear this from the Conservatives, I have heard it at committee and I am hearing it in the House. We agree that they are doing great things, but in question period, the hon. member for Perth—Wellington mocked them as influencers and was shocked that the government spent money on advertisement through digital-first creators.
Do the Conservatives respect digital-first creators or are they just a rhetorical pawn to try to stall Bill C-11?
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to be in the chamber with my friend and colleague on the other side. I would point him back to what we are hearing from a lot of those within the creative sector. Darcy Michael, comedian and digital content creator, who came to committee just a few weeks ago, said, “Bill C-11 will directly affect my ability to earn an income. That aside, I'm also an ACTRA member, so I do want to say that I'm on both sides: the traditional and the digital media.”
I started my speech by reaching out and sharing my opinions and those of members on this side. We have respect for the creators in our country, and we just ask that at the end of the day, the government treats them fairly.
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Madam Speaker, as to the issue of creators, we had a debate around Bill C-10 on this: When is a product Canadian, even if it is called Canadian something or other? I happen to have family in the film business. They are are actors. A lot of what the U.S. productions that are filmed in Canada do is pay scale to Canadian actors. We all love Ryan Reynolds, and who does not? However, he lives in the States and gets the big bucks. He deserves them, but consider our actors in Deadpool and other films that are filmed in Canada. If they are not getting paid at the same rates and are not getting their careers boosted, we are undermining Canadian content by having a kind of Canadian gloss over U.S. productions, even The Handmaid's Tale.
I put that to him for comment.
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