44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am going to go back to history again. During the Vietnam War, I was in university, and I read different papers from all over the world. They would write about battles that occurred in Vietnam, and one would say each was a different battle; however, they were all the same. I know that because my family and cousins were there, and they told me what actually happened. Are we to say they should not be able to write their version of that story? Are we to say that one cannot write one's version of the story, and it needs to be one story? No, the person who wants to write should be allowed to.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad I caught your eye so I can speak to this piece of legislation. I know I started speaking on it, but I guess the government made a mistake in its original motion. I was so keen to make sure I was here to add my voice and the voices of my constituents on this.
Years ago, when this bill was known as Bill C-10, which then got converted to Bill C-11, I remember standing at a Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast in my riding in the community of Auburn Bay. The hosts served two to three thousand people that day. I stood at the front of the line, and before people got their pancakes, they had to interact with me.
I had a great many constituents tell me the number one issue they wanted to talk to me about was Bill C-11. I was floored that some of them knew the number for a piece of legislation. A lot of young people wanted to talk about it. What they knew was that Bill C-11 was coming through and would have an impact on free speech, and they did not like it. I asked them what they knew, and we had an exchange about it.
The majority of emails I get are in opposition to Bill C-11 and also in opposition to Bill C-21. I have had a handful, which I could literally count on one hand, of people who have had positive things to say about Bill C-11.
People are extremely upset with the government over the Senate amendments and which of the amendments it has chosen to proceed with and which it has not. One of the Senate amendments it rejected would have protected user-uploaded content.
As we know, with most user-uploaded content, there is a possibility for someone to make revenue from it when they have a channel. All of it is captured by these amendments that the government would be accepting in Bill C-11. Bill C-11 is still a deeply flawed piece of legislation.
Before I continue, I want to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Lakeland, who I am sure will do a terrific job speaking on behalf of her constituents as well.
I want to go through the legislation, specifically section 7, which I have the most concerns with.
In my home, my kids go on YouTube and streaming services exclusively. We do not have cable. There is no over-the-air TV like back in my day. When I say “back in my day”, I still remember when there were black and white channels.
In Communist Poland, there were only two channels we could get. They were both in black and white. The joke always was that the regime had set up a second channel to prove to people the first one was not that bad. I do not remember it, but the first time I got to watch TV in colour was when I came to Canada in 1985. It was a nice thing to see that colour TV was something we could get.
My kids do not have that experience at all. They go onto YouTube and I go onto YouTube as well. I am going to mention two particular channels I love, because they are by Canadian content creators who would be impacted by Bill C-11.
The first one is an Ontario channel called TheStraightPipes. It is two guys from Ontario who review cars. They just get vehicles and review them. They would have to go to the CRTC to get a licence that says the videos they post are Canadian content.
They are from Canada. They are Canadian content creators. Even when they travel to America, I still think of their videos as Canadian content. Would they be eligible for a licence for their Canadian and international audience to be able to look at their videos if they go to America and do them?
The second one I want to mention is my favourite, and I mentioned it earlier in the previous stage of debate on Bill C-11 It is Leroy and Leroy. If people are not on Instagram checking out these guys from Saskatchewan, they are missing out.
Leroy and Leroy is the funniest comedy channel about funny street signs all over Canada. I will always remember the one video they uploaded of a “no parking” sign on a straight road somewhere in Saskatchewan. I know it is really difficult to figure out one straight road from another in Saskatchewan. It is a rural road, there is a “no parking” sign and there is just nothing there that someone would be concerned about vehicles blocking.
I wonder whether they would have to keep reapplying to the CRTC as Canadian content creators. Are they Canadian enough? When they travel outside of Canada to do their comedy routine, would they be Canadian enough?
I have a Yiddish proverb. I always have a Yiddish proverb. I am going to butcher the pronunciation of it.
[Member spoke in Yiddish]
[English]
It means, “Truth has all the finest qualities, but it is shy.” I am glad we are having this debate this evening, because it is an opportunity for the shyness to come out and the truth to come out.
Many members on the opposite side do not like the fact that we call this a censorship bill. We say the CRTC is going to be able to control what people see and hear online, but that is what many of the witnesses have been saying.
Countless witnesses, professors and academics, people who have specialized in writing, including a constitutional lawyer who used to work for our justice department, have expressed concern over the content of the bill and how the bill is written. When there is a disagreement between experts and the common, everyday people who write to my inbox telling me they are upset with the contents of the bill, I am going to trust my constituents, the real experts when it comes to legislation before the House. They are the ones I represent here. They are the ones who are going to have to live with the decisions we are making and the types of legislation we are going to pass.
I am very concerned with section 7. It reads, “For greater certainty, an order may be made under subsection (1) with respect to orders made under subsection 9.1(1) or 11.1(2) or regulations made under subsection 10(1) or 11.1(1).”
We write these laws in this manner. I am not burdened with a legal education, thankfully, but I did go back to the Broadcasting Act to see under which sections the government would be able to direct things. This one would allow cabinet to issue, under the heading “Policy directions”, any of the objectives of the broadcasting policies set out in a different subsection, or any of the objectives of the regulatory policies set out in a different section. It starts by saying, “the Governor in Council may...issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters with respect to”, and then it goes into detail.
The next section I will talk about is licencing. Everything to do with licencing would be impacted as well, because the government would be able to direct the CRTC through a policy directive and tell it what to do. That is all in section 7. It goes on to talk about regulations generally, and we find that in many pieces of legislation.
For those constituents who are perhaps watching this and will use this as an explanation when I go through this, it goes from literally 10(1) all the way down from (a) to (k), and the government covers everything down to what respects the audit or examination of the records of licencees.
What does that mean? Is it that, if Leroy and Leroy gets a licence with the CRTC to prove its creators create Canadian content, the creators can be audited, such as with respect to how many videos they did in Canada versus not in Canada? If TheStraightPipes brings in an American vehicle, or a vehicle perhaps manufactured elsewhere, are the creators going to be audited on that?
The bill talks about distribution, mediation rules and respecting the carriage of any foreign or other programming services by distribution undertakings. What happens if TheStraightPipes decides to do a joint episode with an American channel? Does it need a special licence, a different licence, and have to pay a fee? Is it Canadian content enough?
All these broadcasting rules are being brought into the age of YouTube, and they do not really apply here where the cost of production is so low and so close to people. However, in the bill, there are things about advertising, Canadian programming and what constitutes Canadian programming, which is where this Canadian content comes in.
Again, there are a schedule of fees, performing of the licence and the undertakings, which are all being covered, and it starts with the policy directives that can be set by the Government of Canada. A lot of different groups have expressed concerns about it. Like I said, it is probably the number one issue emailed to me or in the phone calls I get in the office.
I talked about the Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast outside the Auburn Bay A&W, which was hosting it. The gentleman who runs it, Balwant, is a great community activist. He is always helping different charitable groups and supporting them.
There are a lot of groups and individuals who think this is bad legislation: Digital First Canada; OpenMedia; J.J. McCullough, who is an independent journalist but has his own YouTube channel as well; Justin Tomchuk, who is an independent filmmaker; and the Digital Media Association. The list goes on and on.
This piece of legislation is bad. It is about censorship, or it would give the opportunity for it, and if the government really meant for it not to be not to be known by that, it would have abandoned this piece of legislation. It would have gone back to the drafting process and drafted a better bill.
This entire situation could have been avoided. Motions were tabled that actually did not do what they were supposed to do, and then the government came back and tabled a different motion because it is just trying to ram the bill through the process, and that has not worked out for the government. I think there are way more Canadians who know about Bill C-11 and about the CRTC than ever before, and the vast majority of them in my riding are opposed to Bill C-11.
I am going to vote against Bill C-11. I will continue to advocate against it, because that is what my constituents want me to do. Hopefully, through this intervention here in the House of Commons, I have been able to demonstrate that the legislation, particularly section 7, and its amendments to the Broadcasting Act are completely on the wrong track. The government needs to kill Bill C-11.
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- Mar/27/23 8:34:05 p.m.
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I love the comment “I'm Leroy. He's Leroy behind the camera.”
It is time for questions and comments.
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Uqaqtittiji, I do not watch YouTube very much, so I do not know what that reference to Leroy is. I am sure he would have the same response if he watched Isuma TV, which shows great Inuit content, and which is quite disadvantaged at this point because it cannot compete against web giants like Netflix and Disney+.
To get to my point, for many years, broadcasters and cultural workers have been losing a lot of revenue and have been suffering from unfair competition from the web giants. Does the member agree there needs to be an end to this kind of injustice and we need to ensure indigenous content providers can get the supports they need by taxing web giants like Netflix and Disney+?
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Uqaqtittiji, I do not watch YouTube very much, so I do not know what that reference to Leroy is. I am sure he would have the same response if he watched Isuma TV, which shows great Inuit content, and which is quite disadvantaged at this point because it cannot compete against web giants like Netflix and Disney+.
To get to my point, for many years, broadcasters and cultural workers have been losing a lot of revenue and have been suffering from unfair competition from the web giants. Does the member agree there needs to be an end to this kind of injustice and we need to ensure indigenous content providers can get the supports they need by taxing web giants like Netflix and Disney+?
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Mr. Speaker, what I would like to see is an opportunity for indigenous Canadians to participate freely, just like everybody else on YouTube, and upload their content free of the requirement to obtain government licences or of the requirement to keep updating their licences with the CRTC. That is not what they need in their lives. They do not need more government; I am certain of that. Just like my constituents do not need more government, Canadians in Nunavut and the territories also do not need more government in their lives.
The nice thing about platforms such as YouTube and many other online streaming services is that they equalize the production costs and the opportunity costs of joining, so that more and more eyeballs are being presented and there is the opportunity to be found and discovered by Canadians and by people internationally. That is the great opportunity.
We do not need to insert the government to generate those revenues. If one has a really interesting idea, a really fun and comedic routine or some very traditional cultural demonstration of one's personal culture, there is an opportunity to present it to others. If they find it interesting, want to look at it and want to share it with others, they are going to do so.
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Mr. Speaker, what I would like to see is an opportunity for indigenous Canadians to participate freely, just like everybody else on YouTube, and upload their content free of the requirement to obtain government licences or of the requirement to keep updating their licences with the CRTC. That is not what they need in their lives. They do not need more government; I am certain of that. Just like my constituents do not need more government, Canadians in Nunavut and the territories also do not need more government in their lives.
The nice thing about platforms such as YouTube and many other online streaming services is that they equalize the production costs and the opportunity costs of joining, so that more and more eyeballs are being presented and there is the opportunity to be found and discovered by Canadians and by people internationally. That is the great opportunity.
We do not need to insert the government to generate those revenues. If one has a really interesting idea, a really fun and comedic routine or some very traditional cultural demonstration of one's personal culture, there is an opportunity to present it to others. If they find it interesting, want to look at it and want to share it with others, they are going to do so.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to get up and ask my colleague from Calgary Shepard a question, because “there's always something to do.”
The government of the day has subsidized media outlets across this country to the tune of over $600 million because these media outlets that are highly regulated by organizations like the CRTC and forced to follow these rules cannot generate the advertising revenue or the interest they need because the government is dictating to them what they can and cannot do. Does my colleague see Bill C-11 doing the same thing to digital content creators on the Internet?
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Mr. Speaker, the media bailout fund, which I think is what the member is referring to, was a $595-million fund. I remember it distinctly because I was on the Standing Committee on Finance at the time and held it up for about three to four hours asking basic questions. A government official was there from Finance Canada, and I asked whom it would cover and how one would actually obtain the funding. I said that it sounded like it was $595 million to cover politicians, and asked if that was correct. After about 15 minutes, the official said that, yes, that was basically it.
I started reading off the titles of different publications and asking if they would be eligible, and none of them were. Basically, if someone were going to cover the government and what the government was doing in current events, and obviously in flattering coverage because someone would never bite the hand that feeds them, then they would obtain the money. That has been one of the greatest problems with this. Again, this is old thinking. It is thinking from 40 years or 50 years ago to take the Broadcasting Act and impose it on online streaming services, on YouTube and online platforms. It just does not fit, and the government should abandon this.
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Mr. Speaker, there are few values more important to the people I represent, as they are to my colleague who just spoke, than advancing freedom and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially when it comes to the creeping, reaching, interfering and the heavy hand of government and its agencies.
I oppose Bill C-11 because it is not just about what its proponents claim. It will be a way for the Liberal cabinet and CRTC gatekeepers to control what Canadians see, say and hear online. The Liberals have ignored and ridiculed the concerns about Bill C-11’s impacts and potential unintended consequences for Canadian media of all kinds and for everyday Canadians. Thousands of Canadians, and Conservatives, have spoken out for three years, so now, at the very final stage before it becomes law, the charitable assumption that its proponents are unclear or unintentional about the risks and potential consequences can no longer be entertained.
Bill C-11 remains an attempt by the Liberals to regulate the Internet, with unprecedented powers for the CRTC and no clear guidelines or guardrails on those censorship powers.
The other parties argue for the bill on two main grounds: modernization of the Broadcasting Act and that it will enhance and expand Canadian content and culture online.
The truth is that Bill C-11 goes backwards on Canadians' successful online innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism by regulating it with the Broadcasting Act. Instead of promoting Canadian content as a whole, Bill C-11 will pick winners and losers, prioritize and deprioritize content, and therefore shape what Canadians see, regardless of their actual preferences, and whether Canadians can be seen or heard under its criteria, which will be decided by the CRTC and ministers. To be clear, on this point, I really do not care what party it is. This power, in particular, should not be extended to any.
Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives measure success by outcomes delivered, not money spent. The challenge of how to best expand and promote Canadian content is clearly not going to be done as well by Bill C-11 as it is already being done by the private sector, hardly a surprise. For example, the Motion Picture Association Canada is responsible for half of domestic media production and spent $5 billion in 2021 alone. That private sector investment is five times the amount allotted in Bill C-11. This is more of the costly coalition’s usual MO of spending lots of tax dollars regardless of results, despite the private sector’s obvious leadership. It is a government gatekeeping and taxpayer-funded solution in search of a problem.
The core problem with the way Bill C-11 deals with the concept of Canadian content is that, one, it does not actually define it and enables politicians to tell the CRTC what it is, and two, any person or business may be restricted since their content can be pushed up or down if it is decided that they fit or that they are not Canadian enough.
Canadians do not have to decipher the truth from our back-and-forth here. Currently, the CRTC’s definition of Canadian content often depends on copyright ownership, which big streaming services usually keep, instead of, say, Canadian staff, locations, writers, actors, compositions, art or stories.
The power granted to politicians is clear in Bill C-11. Section 7 of the Broadcasting Act states, “the Governor in Council may, by order, issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters”. Well, “Governor in Council” means a cabinet minister. Conservatives tried to remove that clause to ensure that the CRTC chair would be free from political interference, but Liberals blocked it, so the power is there.
After the costly coalition pushes through Bill C-11, Liberals will write up a set of backdoor regulations for the CRTC and then apply some sort of values test to every YouTube video, Facebook post, TV show, documentary and radio show, and it is endless. Social media is caught because of Bill C-11’s definition of “online undertakings” and “programs”, which can include images and sounds where written text is limited. That could mean videos, podcasts, photos and memes, but not written posts or news articles.
Clauses 9 and 10 could empower the CRTC to adopt so-called discoverability rules that would force social media sites like YouTube to modify algorithms and affect how often videos are seen on social media feeds, based on the yet-to-be determined criteria for what is and is not sufficiently Canadian. Bill C-11 clearly makes the Canadian government and the agency the regulator of the Internet. The Broadcasting Act states that the regulations will prescribe “what constitutes a Canadian program”. If the content is not Canadian enough, it will get slapped with fees and taxes, and it will be censored. If it is Canadian enough, it will continue just as it does now.
Bill C-11 will also force content creators, from small YouTubers all the way to Netflix, to pay fees to the Canada Media Fund, but it does not define who will be exempted and makes creators pay based on a points system that value-tests whether their content production is Canadian enough.
The winners would be government-subsidized broadcasters, such as the already advantaged government-funded CBC, which would get even more funding with Bill C-11. The losers would be the independent innovators driving Canadian digital leadership, and often young Canadians. So much for the democratized free market of ideas that the Internet embodies.
Conservatives proposed to define discoverability and limit government algorithm manipulation, as well as amendments to ensure greater transparency of the CRTC and its decision-making, but the Liberals rejected them.
Digital entrepreneurs have grown rapidly on YouTube and Instagram. They create brands off their channels and the advertising revenues their videos generate. They are worried that they would not qualify as Canadian enough, and that small channels, with only a couple of hundred subscribers and next to no revenue, will suddenly be forced to pay government, or even get fined up to $25,000 per day, as in proposed section 32. It is crazy that a young Canadian YouTuber could get fined because they are not Canadian enough.
Conservatives also tried to remove proposed subsection 4.1(1), which may be referenced by members opposite as exempting normal Canadians from these CRTC rules, but the Liberals put in an exemption to the exemption right after, so there is actually no change.
The Liberals plan to reject the amendment that would explicitly encourage the CRTC to regulate professional, copywritten content, which seems to be their actual aim, instead of individual user-created content. Even then, it does not change the discoverability rules that would control and prioritize what Canadians see and hear, thereby controlling the content creators.
Experts warn that this will happen. Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies says that under Bill C-11, Canada will “become a global leader in restricting online speech and meddling with news media.” Canada’s top legal scholar and digital content expert, Michael Geist, whom the Liberals now deride when we quote him, says it will restrict who can hear Canadian voices: “the risk with these rules is not that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard.” If Canadians do not have the freedom to hear it, then the creator does not have free expression.
Forty thousand creators from Digital First Canada signed letters calling for these rules to be removed. The Liberals ignored them. Prominent and diverse Canadian YouTubers, like J.J. McCullough, Morghan Fortier, Justin Tomchuk and Oorbee Roy, have all spoken about their concerns about what Bill C-11 would do to their viewership and their income.
J.J. McCullough said:
Given that YouTubers make videos of every genre imaginable, from fitness to architecture to political commentary, it is frankly terrifying to imagine that government may soon have a hand in determining which genres of video are more worthy of promotion than others.
In summary, anyone proud of the tremendous success of Canadians on YouTube should be deeply concerned about the damage that Bill C-11 could do to their livelihoods.
If MPs pass this bill into law, no one can say they were not warned about the potential consequences. The level of uncertainty and concern, as much about what is not defined as what is, and the potential impact on the core value of free expression should be enough for the costly coalition to hit pause and fix this bill.
That is the duty of policy-makers, the duty of MPs, to ensure that legislation does what they claim and to mitigate unintended consequences before passing laws. MPs must defend the values of Canadians' right to freely, without censorship or risk of consequences, express their views, so long as they are not inciting harm or hate, whether or not they align with the views of anyone in here. That is our job.
No government agency responsible for broadcasting in a free and democratic society should have powers to censor, control and regulate as proposed in Bill C-11. Canadians have fought and died to defend rights to free thought and expression.
I will close with these words:
you fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye
Margaret Atwood was talking about love and pain. That is what Bill C-11 would do to what Canadians can see and hear online. She says Bill C-11 is “creeping totalitarianism”. I would not presume but it is probably fair to say she is not a Conservative, but she is a world-renowned Canadian artist and icon, and Bill C-11 supporters should actually listen to her before it is too late.
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Mr. Speaker, unlike the member I heard earlier, I am burdened with a legal education from the best law school in Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School.
I very much enjoyed the member's speech. My question is about what she said when she was talking about the freedom to speak but not necessarily the freedom to be heard. My understanding is that this would give the CRTC the ability to control algorithms, thus potentially burying comments, perhaps like burying a comment that was called out on Twitter for not being truthful, like the member for Kingston and the Islands.
Would the member be worried that the content by the member for Kingston and the Islands might be buried?
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Mr. Speaker, unlike the member I heard earlier, I am burdened with a legal education from the best law school in Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School.
I very much enjoyed the member's speech. My question is about what she said when she was talking about the freedom to speak but not necessarily the freedom to be heard. My understanding is that this would give the CRTC the ability to control algorithms, thus potentially burying comments, perhaps like burying a comment that was called out on Twitter for not being truthful, like the member for Kingston and the Islands.
Would the member be worried that the content by the member for Kingston and the Islands might be buried?
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Mr. Speaker, what I am extremely concerned about in this legislation is the ability of government and a related agency to define what counts as Canadian content, to set all those rules, regulations and guidelines after the law has already passed, and then to basically apply a values test to what Canadians can view on the Internet, thereby controlling what content is prioritized and what content is not prioritized, which by its nature obviously controls the content creators.
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Mr. Speaker, I was sitting here quietly, not saying a word and not getting in the middle of it, and then the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South decided to get up, so I have a question.
I shared a video recently of the former leader of the Conservative Party slow-clapping Joe Biden, which was extremely disrespectful. That has already seen just under two million views on Twitter. I wonder if the member can comment as to whether I should be concerned about my content not getting views like that, two million views of the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. Should I be concerned that if this law is passed, I will not get that kind of reach?
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member would next want to spring forward to House of Commons legislation that sets guidelines and regulations, after the law is passed, about the speed at which one ought to clap or how and in what way Canadians adequately show their appreciation, admiration or concern. I am not sure.
I appreciate the member for standing up and asking the question, but I would think that, given that this subject really gets to the foundation of our democracy, the tens of thousands of Canadians who are worried about their free expression, their income, their individually driven businesses and their online entrepreneurialism and innovation would probably want to see him, as a member of the governing party and the costly coalition that will make the ultimate determination on this bill, take this issue seriously.
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it is always the same old story from the Conservative side. They are fearmongering, saying that freedom of expression is under attack, when there is absolutely nothing to that effect in the bill.
However, there is one thing the bill does that the Conservatives never talk about: It brings fairness to Quebec and Canadian cultural production. Cable companies have been contributing for 30 years, but digital broadcasters were not included in the act at the time because they did not exist.
Why do the Conservatives want to prevent YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ from paying their fair share for cultural productions and helping our creators and artists?
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Mr. Speaker, if the government, or the member who props up the government and supports everything it does, but sometimes not, and keeps the Liberals in power so Canadians cannot have a say on this disaster, wanted to have a piece of legislation that focused directly, solely and only on that topic, they could have put it forward and we could have been debating that, but that is not the only consequence of Bill C-11, so we are not.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak on behalf of the constituents of Red Deer—Lacombe about an issue that I am hearing quite a bit about. Before I go any further, I will note that I am splitting my time with my friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.
Bill C-11, the online streaming act, and in the previous Parliament Bill C-10, is causing a lot of concern and a lot of debate here in Canada. We are not debating the bill per se anymore in the sense that it has been returned to this place. This does not happen very often. Those who are still able to freely watch this at home need to understand that it is very rare for the Senate of Canada to return a piece of legislation to the House of Commons, because normally MPs do their due diligence in the legislative process here. It goes through committees, where we hear from witnesses and hear from experts, and we can generally amend legislation in the House of Commons. I am not saying it ever goes to the Senate in perfect format, but if we are actually doing our job here, the Senate would have very few recommendations or changes to propose for a piece of legislation.
That is not the case with this particular piece of legislation. I believe there were 26 or 29 amendments made by the Senate. I can tell members how many Conservative senators there are in the Senate. I think there are 15, so that tells us that the vast majority of senators in the Senate are not in the Conservative caucus. However, that Senate, by a majority vote, decided to report the bill back to the House of Commons with well over 20 amendments, some of which the government has decided to accept. They are largely the innocuous ones. The important ones, dealing with what people can freely say online, what constitutes Canadian content and what the government and the CRTC can regulate, have not been accepted by the government, so we are in this debate now, in this standoff.
I want to be fair to the government in my analysis of the legislation, so I want to talk about the correspondence I have gotten in my office from Canadians and from my constituents in regard to the bill. We know how it is when we go to a convention. There is the “yes” microphone and the “no” microphone, with people speaking in favour of something and people speaking against something, so in fairness to the government, I will talk about the correspondence I have received that have a positive view on Bill C-11.
Now that that is out of the way, I am going to talk about all of the negative things we are hearing from constituents. Not since the proposals on firearms have I had this much uproar in my constituency. Actually, I have not had this much uproar since back in 2017, when the previous finance minister, Bill Morneau, tried in the summertime to change the tax laws in this country, which created so much furor.
Not one person in my constituency has written into my office to says they agree with everything the government is doing on Bill C-11, and there are people in my constituency who use social media, watch Netflix and watch Disney+. They are those who have not cancelled Disney+ and saved themselves from financial ruin, according to the current finance minister. All kidding aside, they have not, and here is why: It is because they trust the people who are being very critical about this piece of legislation. They are largely objective people.
Margaret Atwood has said, “bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write” and that bureaucrats should not be in charge of deciding what is Canadian. She has referred to all of this with two words that I think should make every member of this House stand still and think for a second: “creeping totalitarianism”. That is from Margaret Atwood, a voice of reason. Everybody around the world has read, understands or has access to some of the fine works of Margaret Atwood.
Senator Richards, who was appointed by the current Prime Minister and is himself a novelist, in his January speech in the Senate said that Bill C-11 is “censorship passing as national inclusion”. I hear this all the time. I do not know what my colleagues hear, but basically when we hear the government talk about inclusion, what it really means is that everybody who agrees with it is included and everybody who disagrees with it finds themselves on the outside looking in and feels like they are foreigners in their own country. Our country has never been more divided, and there has never been less trust in institutions. We only have to go back to a little over a year ago to see what the reaction has been to the divide-and-conquer approach the current Prime Minister and the government have taken.
Senator Richards goes on to say, “Cultural committees are based as much in bias and fear as in anything else. I’ve seen enough artistic committees to know that. That what George Orwell says we must resist is a prison of self-censorship.” This is Orwellian language being invoked by a Senate appointee of the current Prime Minister. He also said, “This law will be one of scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be.” That is what an intelligent, articulate senator, a novelist appointed to the Senate of Canada, is on the record as saying in a speech in the Senate.
It is shocking that we find ourselves here in this place reviewing this legislation again after everything we said when it was Bill C-10 and before Bill C-11 went to the Senate. It has now come back to us with the senators confirming all of our suspicions, all of our concerns and all of the problems we identified for the Canadian public.
Professor Michael Geist, who has been a perennial witness here, is one of the most learned people when it comes to free speech and all of the laws pertaining to it. He is the University of Ottawa's Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. On digital content, he says, “Canada punches above its weight when it comes to the creation of this content, which is worth billions of revenue globally. We are talking about an enormous potential revenue loss for Canadian content producers.”
This is at a time when Canadians are having an increasingly difficult time making ends meet with inflation, the carbon tax, the cost of living and the cost of housing. Everything is going up in this country. If we go back to January, Jack Mintz wrote an article about this. In 2015, the cost of the federal government service was about $38 billion a year. Today, eight years later, the cost of public service salaries is $58 billion, an increase of $20 billion. It is an increase in the size of the federal public service in Canada of over 30%, so there are 30% more people working for the Government of Canada now than there were in 2015. Have things gotten better? Have people gotten their passports quicker? Are people getting across the border quicker? Are people getting anything done? Are any of the services needed by my fellow Canadians getting done in a quicker and more timely fashion? The answer is clearly no.
Why on earth, why in the name of everything that is good about the free country we live in, would we increase the size of the bureaucracy even more through the CRTC and give it the ability to do to the Internet what it has done to cable TV and radio? Canadians are no longer watching. They have tuned out. They have tuned out to the point where the government has had to spend $600 million just to prop up legacy media outlets because nobody is interested in their mandatory content.
Why do we not hear from them? We can hear from many people. I have been a member of Parliament here for 17 years, and I hear from people I disagree with all the time, but that does not make me a bitter or jaded person. It does not make the information I am hearing more or less valuable. We need to hear from everybody, and everybody should have the ability to say what they need to say. When they are not heard, when they feel like they are not being heard and when they feel like their government is working against them all the time, they start doing things they would normally not do. We saw that manifested on this Hill for three weeks last year. This is the kind of governance we are getting from the folks across the way.
The implementation of this bill is going to be a blunder. There is no reason for me to believe that increasing bureaucracy and the capacity of the CRTC is going to create a better outcome for the people of Canada than the current 30% massive increase in the size of the government we have already seen. On behalf of my constituents who have written me, I would urge the government to at least reconsider its position on the amendments and accept all of the amendments the Senate has proposed, because it would at least make a horrible bill somewhat more bearable.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the amount of correspondence he got from constituents and people from all across his riding who were concerned about Bill C-11. I have heard a lot of concerns from people in my area around this.
I am wondering if the member could perhaps go into a little more detail on some of the specific concerns he heard from regular, everyday, hard-working Albertans.
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Mr. Speaker, I will reassure my friend from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake that one of my favourite places to visit in our beautiful province is Cold Lake. I have already booked camping and fishing at Cold Lake, so I am happy to go there and reacquaint myself with not only the good people in her constituency but also the great fishing opportunities there.
Aside from that, Albertans are sometimes a little culturally different from the rest of Canada, and I accept that, but we want responsible government. What I have heard from my constituents by and large is that they do not want to be told what they can and cannot watch, and they do not want the government regulating them.
Here is Canadian content. For digital content creators, “CanCon is defined using criteria applied by three bodies: the CRTC for regulation; Canadian Heritage to access tax credits; and the Canada Media Fund (CMF) to access its public financing.” That trifecta of bureaucracy is going to be governing what Canadian content providers can do. They know impossible odds when they see them. Dealing with one government department on an issue is bad enough. When they have to deal with three for the same issue to try to get something done, good luck.
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