44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2022 11:00AM
- Jun/13/22 6:03:22 p.m.
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I would remind members to bring everything through the Chair when asking questions of members.
The hon. member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne.
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Mr. Speaker, the reality is that this piece of legislation was reintroduced in the 44th Parliament. Now, the election happened on September 20, and the House resumed in December. As the member opposite knows, the House also breaks for Christmas at the end of December until the end of January. The bill was then introduced in February, so it was actually reintroduced within the first six weeks of sitting of the new legislature, and it was brought forward because it is so important.
Members across the aisle know how important the bill is, and many have said that they are going to support it. While the member mentions that he feels there was a delay of four months, when we look at the legislative calendar or the actual sitting calendar, it was actually reintroduced quite quickly.
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague and congratulate her on becoming a grandmother. That is a joy and beautiful gift in life.
We can also collectively offer a beautiful gift by passing Bill C‑11. There is certainly room for improvement. That said, it makes changes to the Broadcasting Act, which does not happen every year. This bill needs vision.
We could have used more time. I can understand moving motions to have time for a report. I think that will be done tomorrow, according to this morning's motion. It is not a lot of time. That said, sometimes perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, I think that perfect is what should govern us.
My colleague wants the majority of the House to pass Bill C‑11. If she had an argument to convince those who are hesitating, what would it be?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question and her kind words.
It does not help the debate when members rise in the House and say that this bill is not going to let people create content for YouTube or other platforms, even though they know that is not true.
It is not true that creators and users will be penalized for creating their content. This bill targets every mechanism for communicating that content, including TV, radio, the Internet and big players like Netflix and Amazon. The bill aims to ensure that they all abide by the same laws and invest in our culture, our artists and our creators.
There is no reason to be wary of this bill. Its purpose is not to target individuals sharing their projects and demonstrating how to do things on Pinterest. Its purpose is to get the big players like Netflix and Amazon Prime to play by the same rules as TV and radio.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the member will be learning a lot of new songs off YouTube.
The member mentioned that some of these platforms have not been contributing their fair share of taxes and contributing to the social safety net in that way. I was just wondering if there was any estimate of the loss of revenue, versus if they had been taxed back to 2015.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sure my colleague across the way is going to give me some good ideas for songs I could be singing to my grandson.
I know that when we looked at this in a previous Parliament, in terms of the loss of revenue and loss of contribution, the amounts were in the millions and millions of dollars. I do not know whether the committee, in its study of this bill, has also looked at that. I would have to check that and get back to the member on whether there were actual updated figures from that, in terms of possible contributions to the fund from these web giants.
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Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of sitting on the heritage committee all through this study, and as an artist myself, I know that we, on this side of the House, are fighting for artists as hard as we can. We have met with almost every major stakeholder of arts groups in the country, and they all support this bill.
The opposition is talking about free speech. I would suggest that artists are on the forefront of defending free speech. Everything we do is to make sure we are defending free speech. That is what the arts are a big part of. Can my colleague explain how the opposition somehow thinks every arts organization in Canada is wrong yet the Conservatives are correct about this being an attack on free speech?
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Mr. Speaker, I know that, as a member of the heritage committee, my colleague is doing great work there, and as he is a professional artist, I am incredibly honoured to serve with him.
That is how committees work. There is a piece of legislation, and members submit witnesses they want to hear from. The witnesses come and testify. Overwhelmingly, the artists across Canada and in the industry have said that this is important legislation and that it needs to be done. Do 100% of people say they are in support of this? No, but that is why it is at committee, and that is why, during the 20 hours of dedicated time that the committee members all agreed to, those questions and amendments could be brought forward, but that is not what is happening. If that were truly happening and they still felt they had concerns, that would be a different story and we would not be talking about Motion No. 16, but unfortunately that is not what is happening.
When I hear members across the way, during QP and Statements by Members, saying that all of a sudden people across Canada are not going to be able to upload their videos or their content, that is not correct; that is factually incorrect. Unfortunately, that is what gets people going, and then they write to us. When we correct the record, they say that now they get it.
The reality is that this is not what this bill is about; this bill is about making sure the platforms that are not currently covered under the same rules as radio and television are included. That is the purpose of this bill.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Peace River—Westlock.
I am rising today to speak on behalf of my constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country to this motion to close debate on Bill C-11. It is a bill that the government continues to insist should not be of concern to Canadians, yet barely allows it to be debated. The previous iteration, Bill C-10, had massive backlash last year, and damning testimony and expert analysis of the Liberal bill, so we can see why the Liberals want to shut down scrutiny as quickly as possible this time around.
Bill C-11 is a piece of legislation that the government continues to insist is entirely different from last year's Bill C-10. After reviewing the legislation, I can confirm there is definitely an 11 and not a 10 in the title of the legislation. Unfortunately, the rest of the deeply flawed Bill C-10, which would limit what Canadians could see, share and view online, has been sadly left in place.
The government can say that it listened and that regulating user-generated content is off the table; however, legal experts and digital content producers can read, and what they are reading in this legislation is still deeply concerning.
The government is moving to shut down debate, shut down committee study and prevent dozens of witnesses from sharing their thoughts and concerns on this bill. Probably the most recent conflict comes between the heritage minister and comments from the current CRTC chair, Ian Scott. Mr. Scott confirmed that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, would be able to regulate user-generated content under the current iteration of Bill C-11.
The government has stated that this legislation intends to support Canadian artists, promote the spread of Canadian content over that of international competition and update the Broadcasting Act to cover the rise of digital streaming content. None of these goals is wrong. Our Canadian arts and culture sector is flourishing and deserves our support. More Canadians than ever are making films about Canada. More Canadians are making music than ever in Canada. More video games are being made here in Canada, not to mention e-books, podcasts and YouTube content.
Canadians are producing and watching great Canadian content. Sometimes they will see it through Disney+, and occasionally getting that content made will involve international investment. Under the current rules, this may make it un-Canadian. It is not what the government would prefer for Canadians to watch.
A constituent of mine recently wrote to me with his concerns on Bill C-11 and the threat of censorship that is always present when a government looks to prefer one source of information over another. He told me the story of tenants of his who had grown up in the Soviet Union. He wrote:
Some time ago, a couple from Russia rented our basement suite. We got to know them well and had many discussions over how Russia-controlled media impacted them.... We asked, in your opinion, what was the biggest lie ever told to the Russian citizens. Slava didn’t hesitate: “That Russia won the 72 Canada Russia hockey series!” We were astounded… how could they not know that Canada won? We had the videos. They said the government simply eliminated the last four minutes of the winning game and controlled the narrative.
They only saw what the government wanted them to see. Bill C-11 gives the Canadian government the powers to do this: it has broad powers that could be used to censor what Canadians can see and say online according to the government’s preferences.
If the government is genuinely interested in updating the Broadcasting Act, let us work together to do that. If the government wants to ensure that Netflix, Spotify and YouTube are not playing by different rules than Canadian producers are, Conservatives are happy to help them in that. Canadians want to see digital platforms pay their fair share, but do not trust Bill C-11 to do it with all the extra censorship power.
To quote very specifically from the bill itself, Bill C-11 seeks to bring platforms like YouTube under the following content regulations. It says the CRTC:
May, in furtherance of its objects, make regulations
(a) respecting the proportion of time that shall be devoted to the broadcasting of Canadian programs;
(b) prescribing what constitutes a Canadian program for the purposes of this Act...
The government says it is looking to bring the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century, but applying those regulations to user-driven content platforms is trying to bring digital content into the 20th century. As my colleague for Calgary Nose Hill put it, “It is like playing an MP4 on a VHS machine: It is just not going to work.”
Regulating digital platforms and social media is beyond the scope of the CRTC's mandate and abilities. Right now, Canadians are succeeding on digital platforms with the support of fellow Canadians. People of every background in this country are making their full-time living creating digital content while receiving billions of views. We know Canadians are succeeding in these spaces.
Social media platforms already have reach within Canada. Why would the Liberals fork over $600,000 in taxpayer dollars in 2021 to pay for social media Internet influencers to sing the Liberals' messages if online platforms were so ineffective? This does not include the money the Liberals spent on the various digital platforms themselves, only to pay influencers. This was only discovered through investigations by Conservatives.
Governments should not look to discourage Canadians from watching Canadian YouTubers just because they make content abroad. We should not look to saddle the success of homegrown content makers with checklists to prove the Canadianness of their videos. Over-regulation is the swiftest eliminator of innovation. It benefits the previously established who may be too out of touch to keep up with the pace of change. Canadian digital content creators are on the cutting edge of new media. They do not need Bill C-11 to succeed, and they have proven that. Canadians are already watching what they are making. They do not need the federal government to tell them to, or to have the CRTC analyzing every online post to see if it is something that meets whatever rules it comes up with and is worthy of its view.
This is truly unbelievable. The Liberals are also refusing to release the policy directive they are giving the CRTC. The only ones who are seeking the government's assistance really are the legacy media companies that once enjoyed monopolies on television and radio. They did not innovate to the new media landscape, and are now looking for backdoor bailouts in partnership with a government seeking greater control of the lives of everyday people.
Any government looking to impose new regulations on a service so vital to everyday life as our digital devices would need to first demonstrate that its actions are not self-interested and that it would not choose to discriminate based on the viewpoints of those it is seeking to regulate.
The current government has proven that it cannot be trusted to be fair and equitable. In the past two years, we have seen two public protest movements that blocked public infrastructure get two entirely different responses from the same Liberal government. Of course, I am talking about the 2020 rail-line blockades, which brought pretty much all passenger and commercial rail, including from ports, to a dead stop for almost three weeks across the entire country and laid off 1,000 people. That is compared to the 2022 trucker convoy border closures at a handful of border crossings for a few days of that critical infrastructure.
Even though there was damage to infrastructure during the rail blockades, the Liberals worked with law enforcement and met with protesters. When the Liberals disagreed with trucker protests over mandates, they turned to the Emergencies Act to give themselves new powers, which were proven not to be necessary as our border crossings had already been reopened under our existing laws. The Liberals froze Canadian bank accounts without verification, which is something just admitted by the Department of Finance. The Liberals were called out by the Privacy Commissioner for failing to notify or ensure the privacy of Canadians whose cell phones were tracked by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Nothing can make the government's track record of secrecy, control and division clearer today than to repeat the same tactic of cutting short debate it used in the prior piece of legislation, Bill C-10, in the previous Parliament.
This motion to impose an arbitrary deadline to send the bill back to the House does not help the Liberals' case. The House is not a short-order kitchen. There is no need to push on law-making, especially on a piece of legislation such as Bill C-11, which has so many holes of uncertainty that its symbol should be a piece of Swiss cheese. However, as the Prime Minister has constantly proven, the work of Parliament is secondary if he can move up his vacation plans in Tofino. As currently written, and with the government having no interest in hearing from witnesses or entertaining amendments, I cannot support stopping debate on this poorly thought-out, full of holes, overreaching piece of legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to share with Canadians what the CRTC does in its current mandate. As an administrative tribunal, it regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in the public interest and focuses on achieving policy objectives established in the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act.
Based on the assumptions being shared with us today in this chamber, is it the position of the member that the CRTC is currently censoring Canadians? Is this fear to be followed through on if this bill were to pass?
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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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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech.
From what I understood from it, she is saying that Bill C-11 protects those who have yet to adapt to new approaches, the new digital reality.
Is my colleague aware that Quebec francophone culture, with 8.6 million people, must still have some sort of protection in this ocean of 350 million anglophones that is the Americas?
I would like to hear her thoughts on that.
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Mr. Speaker, we have digital creators who are online right now who are producing very successfully. We have heard from many of them at the committee. We have heard many of them talking about this. They are very successful in this space. This is without any kind of change to what people can search and view online. To go back to that, we already have a lot of Canadian experts, content producers and many witnesses who have said that they are extremely concerned with this regulation and that it could, potentially diminish their views for what people are seeing right now.
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Uqaqtittiji, since the beginning of the pandemic, our cultural workers have been losing jobs and income. In 2020, one in four people working in the cultural sector lost their jobs. Netflix's revenue increased by over 22% in the same year, yet the Conservatives plan to stand in the way of cultural workers.
Does the member believe that Netflix is not making enough profit to pay its fair share to cultural workers?
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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, I rise today in regard to the Liberals' efforts to fast-track a bill through Parliament that would allow the government to censor what Canadians post. The Trudeau Liberal government and its NDP allies are pushing through a motion in the House to curtail Parliament's responsibility to examine Internet regulation, Bill C-11—
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- Jun/13/22 6:26:25 p.m.
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I believe the hon. member for Fredericton is rising on a point of order.
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Mr. Speaker, I just would like to point out that the member should not be using people's names in the House.
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- Jun/13/22 6:26:35 p.m.
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I am sorry. I should learn to pay attention in those first few seconds. I know that we cannot reference people's names in the House of Commons.
The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.
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Mr. Speaker, that is duly noted.
I would like to think that the Liberals would have learned their lesson after the debacle of Bill C-10 in the last Parliament, but only this government would be able to introduce a bill that is even worse than the original. The Liberals claim they are trying to level the playing field between traditional and online media. However, it is already incredibly difficult to start a radio station in this country, but it is very easy to start a podcast. Why would the government not make it easier for traditional media to operate instead of policing online content?
In all of this, the Liberal-NDP coalition has refused to listen to Canadian experts, content producers and other witnesses at the heritage committee to fix this incredibly flawed bill. Today's motion only limits the ability of parliamentarians to hear from witnesses, and to debate and study the proposed amendments. Essentially, the Liberals and the NDP are censoring MPs from speaking on their censorship bill.
One of the greatest concerns is proposed section 4.2 of the act, which outlines what is considered a program for the purposes of regulation. In answer to this question at committee, the Minister of Canadian Heritage was adamant that social media posts would not fall under the definition of a program, yet the chair of the CRTC, Ian Scott, said the exact opposite when he testified, “Proposed section 4.2 allows the CRTC to prescribe by regulation user-uploaded content subject to very explicit criteria.”
He, on another occasion, reassured Canadians they had nothing to worry about because the folks at the CRTC, “have lots of things to do. We don’t need to start looking at user-generated content.” How is it reassuring that they do not need to start looking at people's social media? In other words, they will eventually start looking at people's social media, but they are just too busy at the moment.
The Liberal government is telling Canadians to just trust it, except Canadians do not trust this government. They do not trust it when it comes to mandates. They do not trust it when it comes to protecting Canadians online. They certainly do not trust it when it comes to ethics. I think of the SNC-Lavalin and the WE Charity scandals. They do not trust the government at all.
Rather than policing Canadian social media, why would the government not tackle online sexual exploitation? I believe there are some areas where the Internet should have oversight. Porn companies should not have unlimited access to our children online, but they do, and there are no requirements to make sure that accessibility to their sites is for those over the age of 18. I also believe porn companies should not be able to post their content without verifying the age and consent of each person depicted therein.
Too many women and kids have been horrifically exploited online, and porn companies, such as Montreal-based MindGeek, have made billions of dollars from exploiting these women and children, but the Liberals' Bill C-11 does not tackle any of these important issues. The Liberals are more interested in policing our political, social and religious views online. Despite multiple calls for action by survivors, NGOs and parliamentarians, the Prime Minister and the Liberal government have done nothing to address companies like MindGeek, which have been publishing and profiting from online sexual exploitation for many years with impunity.
It has been over two years since nine parliamentarians wrote the Prime Minister to alert him to the fact that companies like MindGeek were profiting from child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking and rape in his home province. It has been a year and a half since 20 parliamentarians from four parties wrote the justice minister inquiring why Canada's laws have failed to hold online exploiters accountable, and it has been 18 months since the world has asked why Canada allows this company, MindGeek, to profit off of videos of exploitation and assault.
It has been over 70 weeks since the Canadian heritage minister promised legislation to fight online exploitation within three weeks. It has been 498 days since the survivor, Serena Fleites, shared her horrific story and called on parliamentarians to do something. It has been one year since the ethics committee tabled a report with 14 unanimously supported recommendations. There has been nothing, no action, from the government. Within three days, Mastercard and Visa were able to make findings and judgments that ended their relationships with MindGeek and Pornhub, yet the government has been unable to come up with anything to end this online harm.
To be clear, there have been multiple lawsuits from survivors in Canada and the United States against MindGeek, but zero government legislation to prevent companies from exploiting or profiting from the victimization of children, sex-trafficked victims or rape victims. There have been zero known investigations in Canada, zero charges laid in Canada, and zero justice for survivors. This government's priority is to police law-abiding Canadian citizens online and turn a blind eye to exploitation.
The government could have even used Bill C-11 to tackle online exploitation to protect minors, which is why I have provided some amendments to Bill C-11 that would do this. Specifically, I am proposing that Bill C-11 amend section 3 of the Broadcasting Act to set out policy objectives that the CRTC is mandated to implement to protect children from sexually explicit content and to prevent broadcasting of sexual violence. Specifically, I am proposing these policy objectives to seek to protect the health and well-being of children by preventing the broadcasting to children of programs that include sexually explicit content and to safeguard the human rights of women and marginalized people by preventing the broadcasting of programs that include pornographic material that is violent, sexist, racist or degrading or that is produced through sexual exploitation or coercion.
I have put forward these amendments at the committee, and I hope that the government will support them. These amendments are supported by child advocacy organizations and those fighting online exploitation.
In a brief submitted to the heritage committee, an organization called Defend Dignity highlights, “Children are spending more time online” than ever. It also notes, “Exposure to sexually explicit material is detrimental to children’s [health and] well-being” and “The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child...recently adopted General Comment 25”. It continues, “Sexually violent material perpetrates discrimination and abuse [with the] connection between sexually explicit material and sexual exploitation”.
Defending Dignity also wrote:
Protecting children from the harms of sexually explicit material and society from the dangerous impact of violent sexually explicit material must be a priority. As an organization working to end sexual exploitation in Canada, we call on all members of the committee to support [the member's] proposed amendment to section 3 of the Broadcasting Act.
There was also a joint submission to the Heritage committee from Timea's Cause and OneChild, two organizations with a combined 30 years' experience in combatting the sexual exploitation of children. They wrote:
Today, Canadian children's access to sexually explicit content and the broadcasting of sexual violence has gone far beyond the realm of television and radio. This content is broadcasted online through digital advertising to pornography. The Internet has unleashed a tsunami of content that is objectifying, violent, and misogynistic in nature, and those viewing this harmful content are getting younger and younger....
This content greatly informs our cultural norms, values and ideologies. In the case of children who are still navigating the world and are in the process of developing their sense of self and esteem and learning how they should treat others and how others should treat them—this kind of material is detrimental to their development. It warps their understanding of sex, consent, boundaries, healthy relationships, and gender roles. Moreover, viewing this kind of content online has frightening links to rape, 'sextortion', deviant and illegal types of pornography such as online child sexual abuse material, domestic violence, patronizing prostitution, and even involvement in sex trafficking.
That is why Timea's Cause and OneChild are urging the committee and this government to adopt these amendments to Bill C-11.
Conservatives will continue to defend the interests of Canadians. We will stand up to the exploitation, and those at risk of exploitation. We will stand up for those who are artists and creators, speaking out against this bill because it will harm their livelihoods. We will stand up for all Canadians.
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