44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 11, 2022 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to mislead Canadians.
He tells them that Bill C-11 will level the playing field. What he means by this is actually that digital-first creators, those who produce on YouTube, TikTok or Twitch, are too successful, so they actually need to be held back through more regulation and by putting fees on top of them. Digital-first creators would be forced to subsidize commercial broadcasters.
I will let that sink in for one moment: The government's definition of levelling the playing field looks like punishing those who are successful, so they can be equal with those who are not. How is that fair?
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Mr. Speaker, once again, the Prime Minister has proved he is either incompetent or absolutely committed to misleading Canadians every step of the way.
He continues to do this over and over again. The fact of the matter is that Bill C-11 would actually tip the scales in favour of traditional broadcasters by punishing digital-first creators, artists and those who use TikTok, YouTube, Twitch or Spotify in order to get their message out. Somehow, magically, this is supposed to protect Canadian culture. “Punish the little guys; reward the big guys” is the plan here.
Why does the Prime Minister insist on punishing digital-first creators?
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Madam Speaker, of course, the last time this legislation was updated, the technology the member is referencing was the technology that was prevalent, and the reality for how the technology is utilized now is very different. People are consuming media that is coming from online streaming sites and online streaming services that are not subject to the same rules that traditional media have been subject to.
I know the Conservatives traditionally have not supported Canadian artists and the idea that broadcasters have a responsibility to use some of their profits to support Canadian artists and to promote Canadian artists in what they put on, whether it is on the radio or on television. I suppose they are continuing their battle to block—
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Madam Speaker, it is kind of a pleasure to speak to Bill C-11. I will offer a few things based on a career, at least my first career, of dealing with the CRTC as a broadcaster, as a person who was on the radio and occasionally on television, and especially as a manager of stations that were required to follow the CRTC regulations.
The concerns that have been expressed about Bill C-11 need to be paid attention to. We should not just dust them off and say there is no problem here. The questions are legitimate, but we also need to drill into the details and see exactly what the implications are. When we do that, we are going to end up feeling a lot more secure and confident that Bill C-11 is going to add significant value to Canada.
First of all, this is the Broadcasting Act that we are talking about. The Broadcasting Act relates to broadcasters. I want to quote a couple of things that kind of settle what we are talking about. The first is:
undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings...
In other words, basically we are saying that the web platforms that distribute and carry programming to Canadians will be classed as broadcasters. The legislation also says:
the [Broadcasting] Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service
In other words, cat videos, homegrown YouTube and even the productions that someone may have spent some money to develop will not be covered. They will not be influenced by this.
Further, there is one exception that we need to note in the legislation. It says:
A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service—and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate...does not, by the fact of that use, carry on a broadcasting undertaking...
I want to go back to my radio days. It was 15 years of misspent youth, but an amazing education in a lot of ways. I got into the radio business just after the initial Canadian content regulations came to radio, and here is how that worked. The original rules said that 30% of the music that we played from 6 a.m. until midnight had to be Canadian content. I will describe what that is in a second. Later, the CRTC and the governments of the day came forward with a formula in which the radio stations had to contribute to a fund. Initially, it was called the Canadian talent development fund. There have been other names and other versions of it.
The two things were that, first of all, we had to profile Canadian content, and then later we had to contribute financially to the creation of Canadian content. What we are doing here now is no different from what was done 50 years ago.
How did we know what Canadian content was? In the radio business, every record had what was called the MAPL logo. It was a system that identified music, artist, production and lyrics of the piece. The rule was that anything produced after 1971 or 1972 had to have two of those categories covered as being Canadian to be classified as a piece of Canadian content. It was tough in the beginning, I have to say. I had grown up listening to radio that was free to play anything it wanted at any time, within reason. I will get to that, but the fact is that all of a sudden we had to play Canadian content. In those days it was scarce; at least, the kind of music we wanted to program on our station was scarce. I still today cannot listen to Snowbird by Anne Murray because we played it to death. It was what we had at the time. That no longer exists, and it is because the Canadian content rules led to the development of a Canadian music industry that punches way above its weight around the world.
There was a unique proposition to those early CanCon days that is totally different from what we face today. Radio, by its nature, is very linear. The listeners listened to the piece of music I had on the air, and got it in the order that I gave it to them. If they were going to listen to our station, they would get that 30% of Canadian content, period.
It is different in this case. We are asking online broadcasters to simply make Canadian content available. The people who use Netflix go in and there are little tiles that show them all of the movies available. What this rule would do is tell Netflix that it has to make sure that Canadian content is represented in those tiles. People do not have to choose it, but they have to know that it is there. That way, we are going to at least give Canadian creators access to audiences who can choose to view or listen to their material, or not.
The actions of the regulator have certainly changed throughout my lifetime. Sometimes, when I talk to kids in schools, they ask me what it was like in the old days when I was a kid: when we would ride our dinosaurs to school and all that good stuff. When I was a kid, Canadian radio stations were not allowed to play commercials on Sundays. If they played a recording, they had to announce that it was a transcription so that people would not think that the performance was live. That was then.
Over the years, the broadcast regulator updated, streamlined and allowed things that were not allowed previously. I remember only two times, or maybe three, when the Canadian regulator stepped in and got in the way of a licensed broadcast undertaking.
One was at one of the first stations I ended up working for: CJOR in Vancouver. The family who put the station on the air was forced to sell it because it lost control of the programming. The programming in the mid-1960s was pretty rough, when we look at the community standards of the day.
Another refers to a general category of radio called radio poubelle: garbage radio or trash radio, which has been a unique property, particularly in the Quebec City area. Station CHOI was forced to be sold, again because it could not control some of its announcers who were doing some hideous things on the air. I could quote them, but will not because members really do not need to hear the sorts of things that were going on there. The CRTC had been more than patient, but it was far beyond what anybody could ever accept.
With respect to the obligations of the broadcaster, there was an article co-written by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin entitled, “Regulate the System, Not the Speech”. When we look at Bill C-11, what it is really going to do is regulate the broadcaster so that it is responsible for the material that is played by it. I could play any record I wanted, but if I did not follow Canadian content rules the broadcaster, i.e. the station I worked for, would get into trouble, but nobody was standing over my shoulder saying that I had to play this song next or that I could not play a record, except if it did not match the format. It is not the content producers, but the platform that provides the content to the public, that the bill will regulate.
By making Canadian content more available to Canadians, we will do something about that cultural, and I use this word advisedly, juggernaut to the south of us, particularly when it comes to French production. One of the most delightful things in my time as a member of Parliament has been that I have a home in Quebec. I love it here. Quebec is such a wonderful, unique thing and we must do everything we can to protect this unique culture in a unique country such as ours.
I will end it there to let us go to questions, but I have to say that although some of the fears may be quite legitimate, they actually do not get borne out when we look at the details behind Bill C-11.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to note that I really appreciate my hon. colleague's wonderful radio voice.
I have to pick up on the comment by the previous speaker, my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party. I appreciate much of what was said, but I think the analogy between a radio station in the 1980s is not a completely apt metaphor for the Internet today. The average radio station listener could not add to the content or participate in generating content on the radio station. It was a one-way platform, whereas the Internet is something the public meaningfully participates in.
I am interested in my hon. colleague's comments on that. More particularly, I have constituents who are concerned that there would be an attempt by the government to regulate and cause broadcasters, in this case online providers, to remove content that is deemed hateful: in other words, that requires a subjective determination. They are worried that this may lead to censorship of the Internet. I am curious about my hon. colleague's thoughts on that. Is he concerned that Bill C-11 may lead to that consequence?
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Madam Speaker, I want to begin by sending my regards to all of my friends and associates from the life I led before and sometimes still go back to: the artists, authors, creators and composers. It is a team and a big family that I still belong to, although to a small extent. I send them my sincere regards.
I will begin my speech with a thought, a quote from one of Quebec's great poets, Raymond Lévesque, a friend of mine whom I adored.
Keep running, good people. Don't get involved. At the end of the race, you will find a trash can and death. Tomorrow you will curse those who got you into trouble, and yet you will have let them get away with it.
Let them get away with it. That is what the two main parties that have been taking turns being in government have done over the past 15 years, when broadcasting was revolutionized and digital broadcasters invaded the broadcasting market.
The cultural sector has therefore seen its main sources of revenue swallowed by the digital world. Although it had anticipated this and looked for possible solutions, it came up against outdated federal legislation. Accordingly, as it is capable of doing, it questioned itself, it adapted and tried as best it could to make a place for itself in this miserly and opportunistic monster of a world that values nothing but its own financial interests, without caring too much about what constitutes it, which is content and artistic, cultural, media, literary and visual creation. In short, the gargantuan digital monster is happily helping itself to the buffet, and it has been doing so for a very long time.
The cultural community is losing not only the income from its content, but also the revenue from the sale of traditional media for that content—cassettes, CDs and videocassettes, which we had in my day. In another life, I wrote songs. My songs went from room to room in people's homes on cassettes and CDs. I sold some CDs.
Everyone found their share of income in these media. To keep it simple, let us think of it as a pie, cut into parts proportional to the investment in the production of the work. Copyright revenues and royalties were distributed, as well. There was also an anticipated income from subsequent distribution on social media for creators, writers and composers.
French-language content quotas on the traditional platforms were not perfect, but we managed to hang on by the skin of our teeth. Any success we had on the radio or on television simply gave us a bit of money to invest in the next project. Unfortunately, since the transition to digital, the whole profitability aspect of the exercise has disappeared. People can no longer afford productions, especially independent productions.
Nothing has been done so far to adapt the legislation to this new digital world. Election promises were made in 2015 and again in 2019. A year later, the Yale report backed the government into a corner by making it clear that delaying the exercise any further would be politically disastrous for the government and noting the frustration and desperation of the tourism industry. As a result, the Liberals finally introduced their bill to amend the Broadcasting Act in November 2020.
Better late than never, I guess. We sat down in parliamentary committee, we consulted Quebec's cultural community, and we found several major shortcomings in this bill, including the lack of protections for francophone content; the lack of discoverability, predictability and enhancement of content; and the absence of any obligation for foreign producers to prioritize Canada's cultural potential or to offer compensation if that proved impossible.
The Bloc Québécois has made the priorities of Quebec's cultural community central to its work here. The creators and broadcasters of all manner of cultural expression were pleased to see their needs reflected, first in the original Bill C‑10 and then in the current Bill C‑11. The community is satisfied and, above all, reassured by our work and our signature collaborative spirit, as we seek to come to find the balance that will make a bill the best it can be.
As Bloc members, that is our job. We did it. Eighteen months and a second attempt at the bill later, we ask only one thing, that the House pass that blessed bill.
Right now, the gigantic digital world is still stuffing itself at the all-you-can-eat content buffet. As the former heritage minister from the previous Parliament said during one of his many appearances on a very popular Sunday TV show, the cultural sector has been losing more than $70 million a month since the legislation failed to pass. It has been 18 months since the bill was introduced in November 2020, so that represents $1.26 billion in losses for the creative industry, which equates to $2.33 million a day or $97,222 an hour.
I am part of this cultural sector. I know this community: It is generous, resilient and passionate. It has an ability to bounce back that is absolutely incredible. It possesses the magic of universality and perseverance, and it is used to working hard. We cannot deprive it of the income it is owed. It is unacceptable to keep drawing things out like this.
If I were to walk among my colleagues in the House and take from each of their pockets the amount of money that the cultural community has lost since November 2020, I swear that no one here would like that. That is what we do every day when we postpone passing this bill. We have been dragging our feet since 2020.
My 10‑minute speech will have cost artists and creators $16,203. What are we doing, then? Should I pass the hat?
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, like me, is a recovering broadcaster. There is more than one of us in the House.
Could she recall the heavy hand of the CRTC? In some of my comments earlier this evening, I said that the CRTC demonstrates a pretty light touch when it comes to regulating content, which would be far more direct and focused on conventional broadcasters and not at all on the content online. Could the member recall the CRTC really playing the heavy-handed bad guy in her days in television?
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Mr. Speaker, I happily rise to speak to Bill C-11, especially after that display of political theatre that we saw on the other side. It was very entertaining for some but quite frustrating for others, I am sure. Certainly, onlookers in the Canadian public who are watching tonight are probably quite concerned that the Conservative Party of Canada is not even really reading the bills that the government puts forward, and on such a topic that is so important to Canadian creators right across this country.
Despite the Conservative Party of Canada and its members propagating inaccuracies in relation to this bill and trying to make Canadians believe that this is somehow about censoring user-generated content, it clearly is not. That is explicitly stated by the government in many places. I am happy to rise to speak to the merits of this bill and its true intention, which is really to level the playing field and ensure that online streaming platforms are subject to the same rules and regulations as other broadcasters are.
It is about time that we did that because, as members have said, the Broadcasting Act has not been amended in over 30 years. Just for fun, before my speech today, I looked up the hits in 1991. Some of the Canadian hits on the charts were Bryan Adams' (Everything I Do) I Do It for You and Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway. It was a banner year for Canadian content. Not only that, but there was Glass Tiger, Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, Crash Test Dummies, Blue Rodeo, and none other than Kingston's The Tragically Hip with Little Bones. What a great tune.
Honestly, the content creators who are musicians that we have had in this country are incredible. There is no doubt we can be very proud.
The overarching goal of the bill is to ensure that online streamers contribute in an equitable but flexible way to the creation of Canadian content, just as our broadcasting system has done for decades. I want to talk about why this bill is fundamentally important when it comes to our music sector. Online streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music, have dramatically changed how we listen to music. Today, most Canadians use YouTube as their primary music streaming service: I know I do. I use it all the time for that purpose.
However, these online streamers are not subject to the same rules as traditional broadcasting services, like over-the-air television, cable and radio. Right now, our system is not supporting Canadian musicians and creators the way it really should. If online streaming services are, more and more, the way music lovers like me are accessing music, should they not be subject to the same rules as other broadcasters? That just seems like common sense to me.
The music sector is important to Canadian society. It includes a wide array of artists, including songwriters, composers, performers and arrangers. Let us not forget the people who support them: the agents, producers, record labels and many others. The music production and sound recording industry accounts for over $625 million of Canada's GDP and almost 10,000 jobs. Through their music and lyrics, Canada's musicians help create relationships and memories, initiate important social discussions, forge a collective national identity and promote Canadian values.
Music allows us to share our country, our culture and our ideas throughout the world. The best of what Canada has to offer, I would say, is on stage when our musicians, content creators and artists are successful.
For decades, Canadian broadcasters have given us incredible Canadian content on our televisions and radios, and this is no accident. We choose to be different from the cultural juggernaut of the United States, and we care about our cultural sovereignty. We believe our diversity should be celebrated. Our culture is who we are as Canadians. It is our past, our present and our future. It is how we tell our stories to each other.
As a condition of their licences, radio broadcasters have had to invest in our culture, our artists and musicians. It is why we have all the Canadian content that we love today. Whenever we hear Charlotte Cardin, Joni Mitchell, Drake, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Great Big Sea and the Arkells, it makes us proud to be Canadian.
There has been a digital disruption. Since the early 2000s, the music industry has navigated a landscape that has been profoundly changed by new distribution models offered by online platforms.
We have also seen the music industry evolve from selling music on physical media to selling digitally and selling downloads. Most recently, there is the increasing popularity of online streaming.
Online streaming has had positive impacts for Canadian consumers and certainly for artists. Online broadcasters make music readily accessible to Canadians wherever they have an Internet connection available. They can access a variety of music and playlists tailored to their tastes and interests. Streaming has also allowed a number of artists to be discovered, and their careers have been bolstered in other countries as a result.
Ruth B. is just one notable example of a Canadian artist who has achieved great international success after being discovered online. However, the upheaval caused by digital platforms has also had significant consequences for our broadcasters and our musical artists. Currently, online platforms have no regulatory requirements to support Canadian music. As more and more Canadians listen to online platforms and the revenues of traditional broadcasters drop, so does funding and support for Canadian musical artists.
We need to fix this now. That is what this debate is about, and that is what this bill is about: It is about how we fix this problem. The problem is that our online streaming platforms are not contributing to supporting our Canadian artists, musicians and content creators here in Canada. This bill is really about that.
We have heard, loud and clear, from Canadian music producers that passing Bill C-11 is critical to the industry. I want to share a quote from SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada:
Canadian creators need support to continue to develop Canadian music in the world of streaming, and Canada must be a place for emerging music creators, where songwriters and composers can create, grow and thrive.... The tabling of the Online Streaming Act on February 2, 2022, is an important first step to make it easier for Canadian audiences to find and engage with Canadian creators, giving our music a place in the world of streaming.
The chair of the board of the Canadian Independent Music Association also told us that:
The most tangible way to get our artists heard in Canada and around the world is to ensure that we have awesome Canadian artists, supported by strong Canadian owned independent music companies that can compete in the global music market....I welcome all initiatives that help make our companies stronger and our artists thrive.
This is why we are here. On this side of the House, we want to see our artists thrive.
The time to act is now. Bill C-11 seeks to update our broadcasting framework so that the online platforms would be required to support Canadian music and artists, just as traditional broadcasters currently do. Why would anyone not want to support our artists and musicians in Canada?
Bill C-11 would ensure that our musical artists would continue to contribute to Canadian culture and be able to make a living from their music. The bill is part of our wider commitment as a government to support artists in Canada, and is part of the strengthening of our arts and culture sector.
In conclusion, this bill realizes the importance of investing in Canadian music. Bill C-11 creates a competitive and sustainable broadcasting system while supporting Canadian music. The modernizing and fair regulatory framework that the bill proposes would support Canadian artists and broadcasters.
I ask the hon. members of the House to support this bill. We owe it to the next generation of musical talent, the Tragically Hips and the Alanis Morissettes of the future. We certainly need to support them now. This bill, I think, has really got intentions built into it that are very promising for the future of our cultural sector here in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, if the Liberals really wanted to drive this bill all night long, they would not have called closure on it. More to the point, they were talking about this bill applying to broadcasters. Our concern is the definition of “broadcaster”. What we find with the Liberal government is that the definitions expand, and we are concerned that the broadcasters will now be the people who are broadcasting their own news stations.
We had Canada Proud and True North slagged as broadcasters. Are they now going to have to pay into CanCon as well?
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Mr. Speaker, the bill is actually very clear on this in terms of defining the terms of broadcaster and what counts as commercial content that would be subject to the regulations within the bill. To me it is actually quite clear. There is no slippery slope here. There is no backdoor attempt at trying to censor user content. The member opposite should not be concerned about her nightly news channel being censored.
Certainly, the very large streamers that are streaming content are making money doing that and they clearly should be subject to the same rules that other broadcasters are subject to. That is the intent of the bill. It is very clear.
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Mr. Speaker, my thanks to the hon. member for a good faith question. I appreciate it.
The way I read the bill, and I have the section in front of me, is that this is how the bill defines commercial content and commercial content is part of how we define whether someone is broadcasting or not using a streaming service. In many ways, this is part of the definition of being able to determine whether Canadian content should be promoted. I think that is the intention of the bill, that broadcasters that are already promoting commercial content and distributing that are subject to the same regulations that other broadcasters are.
That intention is very clearly laid out in the bill. It is very specifically and clearly not to regulate the user-generated content.
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I think the member misinterprets the intention of the bill. When we say level the playing field, we are talking about the very traditional broadcasters that would be subject to the Broadcasting Act versus the very big, successful online streamers that are running platforms that are streaming content for commercial gain currently.
The playing field is not level because the one that is now successful in today's society is not contributing to Canadian artists and musicians and content creators. We want to make sure that they do so.
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Madam Speaker, it is with great interest that I rise today to speak to Bill C-11, the online streaming act, which follows on Bill C‑10, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act.
First, as a student of journalism, media arts and technology at the Cégep de Jonquière, which I would like to give a shout-out to, then as a politics and communications student at Université de Sherbrooke and even recently as the critic for seniors, I have heard a lot about what is happening to the media and web giants like GAFAM. That is what my speech will focus on today, because my other colleagues, including the member for Drummond, have spoken at length about the importance of Bill C‑11. In my speech, I will address three points: the link between this bill and local news, the importance to seniors of protecting regional media, and the Bloc's gains in this bill.
The first part of my speech will be a plea to save regional news. For that, I will cite excerpts from Extinction de voix: plaidoyer pour la sauvegarde de l'information régionale, a book on this very subject that was written by a journalist and author from back home, Marie-Ève Martel.
First, by not requiring enough of a contribution from GAFAM and their ilk, we are helping erode regional news content. We can rail against the unfair tax treatment between the news media and the web giants and the federal government's inaction when it comes to remedying the situation. Local news outlets have been part of the socio-cultural landscape in Quebec communities for decades. Many of these outlets played an essential role in their community for years and years before closing up shop.
The uncertain economic outlook for regional news businesses dictates the rules of the game. Economic stability seems unattainable for some. There is a high price to be paid for the dwindling number of journalistic voices out there. It is not uncommon for several small media outlets to be served by a single journalist or a barebones staff. They sometimes get content from national news outlets or other group members to pad the web edition. Televised newscasts are cut down or fleshed out with national news reports on more general topics. In some cases, any white space on the platforms is simply filled with press releases, which means that the message is not subject to a journalist's scrutiny. By using such practices, news outlets can hide the fact that they are producing increasingly less local content, as a result of having insufficient resources to produce as much coverage as they used to.
Journalism is often called the fourth estate, because it is in charge of monitoring the other three, namely the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judiciary, and reminding us of their purpose. We are governed by elected members who advocate for transparency on all fronts, at least in their speeches. In the digital age, they can now communicate with their constituents without an intermediary. Their policies should be available online with just a few clicks. Despite this so‑called transparency, the information is not necessarily more accessible than it was before. There are still many obstacles that will need to disappear before we can be said to have full access to this information.
We have to acknowledge the many barriers making regional journalists' work harder. Although these limitations and barriers are not directly contributing to the disappearance of the media, they prevent the media from fulfilling their mission, so in that sense, they are a threat on the same level as economic uncertainty.
Another equally important role the media plays, regardless of location, is oversight of political power. Elected representatives represent their constituents, so, as officers and administrators of public funds and municipal government, they are accountable for managing them. That watchdog role is one of the main reasons media outlets do what they do. Need I point out that the media took shape as political instruments centuries ago? On behalf of the people, journalists keep representatives accountable and ensure the proper functioning of local governments. That is why they are known as the fourth estate, which some elected representatives sometimes dislike.
Nevertheless, as much as journalists keep an eye on politicians, they also serve them, if only by enabling them to take the pulse of the populace. Many elected representatives rely on local news for information about problems and issues of concern to the people. The media essentially helps build local identities, serves as a catalyst for local unity, and provides a public forum for the exchange of ideas.
Regional media outlets serve as an advertising platform that gives businesses consumer visibility and, as a service, they are a powerful showcase for small and medium-sized businesses.
An American study published in May 2018 found that when local media shuts down, this has a profound impact on the local economy. The study looked at a total of 1,266 counties in the U.S. served by more than 1,500 newspapers, 291 of which disappeared between 1996 and 2015. The authors found that, since the media monitors how contracts are awarded, including by various levels of government, when the media disappears, this has a direct impact. Public spending tends to increase within a three-year period, particularly in the area of long-term borrowing for infrastructure projects.
In the communities that were studied, borrowing costs were on average 0.55% to 1.1% higher in places where there was no longer a newspaper to keep an eye on public spending.
These are just a few examples from the book to illustrate the importance of better protection.
Ms. Martel has recently written another book, Privé de sens: plaidoyer pour un meilleur accès à l'information. It is a plea for better access to information. In it, she explores Quebec's access to information system, which was set up 40 years ago and allows anyone to obtain most documents produced by public organizations. These days, the mechanisms underpinning the system are often outdated. Long wait times, astronomical fees, conflicts of interest, blatant misunderstandings, insufficient resources and redacted documents are some of the numerous and overlapping reasons given for refusing or delaying the provision of information. The book also explores the connection between access to information requests and the democratic foundations of our societies.
We must now remember that in the 20th century, Quebec's and Canada's local broadcasters had two advantages that enabled them to provide free local journalism and increased their revenues.
First, the media could offer a package of products, or a combination of genres and categories, with the profitable parts of the package subsidizing the unprofitable parts, thus ensuring the overall viability of the platform. For example, television stations used to offer all types of programs, including news, sports and others, and they used the profits to subsidize less profitable genres.
Second, radio and television stations and newspapers served as gatekeepers. They provided news that listeners, viewers and readers could not officially or easily have obtained otherwise.
The Internet changed everything. Websites and platforms took off, starting with the classified ads on Craigslist and moving on to international digital platforms, such as Google and Facebook ads, and they were soon able to compete with local media for profits. With targeted print, audio and video media being delivered digitally, the Internet enabled more competition for advertising dollars and for consumers' time and attention, including international competition for these three elements. The competition, especially from global Internet conglomerates, devastated local Canadian media.
The Quebec and Canadian radio and television broadcasting sector is in crisis. An article published by the Canadian Press on August 27, 2020, reported that the short- and medium-term outlook for private radio and television broadcasting in Canada is very bleak. It is high time to subject web giants to the Broadcasting Act by forcing them to contribute financially.
Second, the survival of local media is extremely important for seniors, as this is how they stay connected to their communities. They are worried that the web giants are not paying their fair share, which is jeopardizing the survival of local media. I got a question about this at a debate during the 2019 election campaign. I have also heard from organizations on this issue recently because of my position as critic for seniors.
Third, I have to mention that the Bloc Québécois contributed significantly to the previous version of the bill, the infamous Bill C‑10, and was able to secure the following gains: the protection and promotion of original French-language programs; the discoverability of Canadian programming services and original Canadian content, including French-language original content, in an equitable proportion; the promotion of original Canadian content in both official languages and in indigenous languages; a mandatory contribution to Canada's broadcasting system if a company is unable to make use of Canadian resources as part of its programming; the requirement for first-run French-language content, in order to ensure there are new French-language shows on Netflix, for example, and not old ones; and a sunset clause that would provide for a comprehensive review of the act every five years.
I would like to mention that the Haute‑Yamaska chamber of commerce held its 35th awards gala last weekend, and the daily newspaper La Voix de l'Est won in the category “retail business and services with more than 15 employees”, demonstrating that our local news outlets are an integral part of our economy. Mario Gariépy received the community builder award, notably for his involvement with the committee that turned La Voix de l'Est into a co-operative.
To conclude, this bill is very important to us, because Quebec culture is at the heart of the Bloc Québécois's mission. Broadcasting is undoubtedly the most effective tool for disseminating our culture, and it helps define our national identity. Local artists regularly remind us of this. The Bloc Québécois is obviously in favour of modernizing the Broadcasting Act. We must keep pace, stop the misinformation and move forward. I was barely 10 years old in 1991, the last time this legislation was reviewed.
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Madam Speaker, I said in my speech, and this is the truth, I absolutely support creating a level playing field between large foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters, and championing Canadian arts and culture. There are multiple ways to do that, and having the CRTC have the authority that it is being given without clarity and without checks and balances is not in favour of our own Canadian arts and culture.
I have children of my own who are very engaged in this field and, believe me, I understand the dynamics. However, this bill has issues and needs to be incredibly improved, if not scrapped and started over. I know there is frustration with the fact that the CRTC has not been improved for many years, but the issue is that this is not the correct bill. That is what happens: The government brings forward a statement that reflects what it wants people to understand it is moving towards, and there are many other elements to the bills it brings forward that end up causing great—
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Madam Speaker, one part of the bill I appreciate is how it can legitimize the role of community broadcasters in media. It is the section that defines a community element. One example in my community is Midtown Radio, whose focus is on supporting KW musicians and audio creators. I am hopeful that in committee this language can be improved, and I am curious. What does the member think about this?
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