44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I guess this member is sort of a part of the government, or his party is governing with the Liberals. Why did the government not exempt user-generated content and the uploading of user-generated content? This is a big bill, and I am not going to oppose everything that is contained within it. I am not going to suggest that every motivation behind the tabling of this bill was wrong, but the bill is unsupportable to the extent that it would grant new and extraordinary powers to the CRTC that do not belong in a free and democratic society. I, frankly, do not see how this bill, if passed, would necessarily solve the problems that the member suggested. It would take away all kinds of opportunities for other Canadian content creators to find an audience through an unfettered Internet.
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Madam Speaker, there are a number of things about this legislation that I wish were different. I do not think I have ever seen a bill in this place, even the ones I would be persuaded to vote for, that I thought was perfect. However, the difficulty I have in this debate are the exaggerations, and I am pleading with colleagues on the Conservative side. Comparing Canada with the People's Republic of China is just not supportable. It is just not, and it makes it impossible to engage in a thoughtful debate when there are such really damaging claims that hurt our democracy being made in this place.
There are flaws in Bill C-11, for sure, but it is not totalitarian, it is not the People's Republic of China and it is not North Korea. It is Canadian content. If the hon. member wants to call Canadian content mediocre, that is his right, but do not claim that Bill C-11 puts Canadians in a situation anywhere comparable to that of people who live in totalitarian states.
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Madam Speaker, I would invite the member to listen more carefully then, because I did not say many of the words that she put in my mouth, and she did not notice or note any of the words other than a couple that she picked here and there. I said quite the opposite of what I think of Canadian content. I talked about the regulation of Canadian content, and I oppose it in this bill.
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Madam Speaker, irrespective of the hour, it is always an honour and a privilege to rise in the House tonight to speak to Bill C-11, the online streaming act. Before I go on, I want to note that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove.
The Liberal government does not trust Canadians with freedom. Members will hear me say that several times more.
The bill returns to us from the Senate, where more than two dozen amendments were unanimously agreed to, and I will not get into the 26 versus 29. That should give us all a sense of the state of this piece of legislation. We want to thank our counterparts in the upper chamber for their efforts to improve this heavily flawed bill.
Let us all go back for a moment to the beginning of Bill C-11. Its purpose was to update the 1991 Broadcasting Act, to bring equity and fairness into a new age of communication tools, and hopefully have a structure and adopt principles for new communication platforms that we have not even dreamed of yet. That was a goal we could all support.
However, as is too often the wont of the government, it is the overreach of this bill that we must now focus on so that a problem that needed solving does not become a bigger problem than the one we started with. That brings us here today.
The Liberal government does not trust Canadians with freedom.
One of the most important amendments involves the protection of user-generated content from regulation by the CRTC and focuses the scope of the bill toward professional, copyrighted music, music with a unique signifier number or videos that have been broadcast on mainstream media and then uploaded.
Importantly, this amendment removes the clause that would add the criteria of direct or indirect revenue. Unfortunately, the Minister of Canadian Heritage has already indicated that the government would not support any amendments that “impact the bill”. Here, my analysis would cause me to read “impact” as “improve”. It is disheartening to hear the minister reject impactful amendments that could be greatly beneficial to our Canadian content creators.
These creators rightfully expect the government to implement responsible legislation that creates a safe and competitive environment for them to continue growing their brand and sharing their Canadian reality.
What no Canadian creator, indeed no Canadian, expects is for their government to begin telling them what it means to be Canadian. Yet, by giving the CRTC the power to regulate Canadian Internet users and define what can be categorized as Canadian content, or CanCon, the government is instead restricting those Canadians who are on the forefront of Canadian digital content creation.
Artists and creators who excel in their fields deserve nothing less than an equal playing field and the tools they need to succeed. It is the users of the content, not the government, who should determine how often it is viewed or the ease in which new viewers could find new material. In addition to fair compensation, they should also be able to share their stories through the medium of their choice, be it television, film, music, prose or, what we are talking about now tonight, online.
The Liberal government does not trust Canadians with freedom.
The government is sending the message to people that says they should not be trusted with the freedom to create and view the content of their choice online. It is continuing its “Ottawa knows best” approach of limiting individual freedoms by creating problems with user-generated content that do not exist.
The government has had an opportunity here to adapt how it treats the arts, culture and media to suit modern realities and platforms. Instead, the Prime Minister has rejected every attempt to include safeguards in the bill that would protect the freedoms of Canadian Internet users to ensure that they have access to the content of their choice and not what the government decides to promote or de-promote.
Again, the government does not trust Canadians with freedom.
Another important amendment proposed by the Senate is the definition of CanCon itself. This amendment would make sure that the CRTC considers all factors like the producer of the content, the key creators of the content, furthering Canadian expression, whatever that means because it is defined, the amount of collaboration among Canadian industry professionals and anything else brought into regulation before disqualifying content as CanCon. Again, as in the previously mentioned amendment, this amendment would certainly impact the bill, so the government rejected it.
We must not lose sight of the fact that culture naturally grows and evolves over time. Canada has long-prided itself on being welcoming to the cultures of many different peoples. In fact, if one turns on television today, one may hear a CBC ad that says, “It's not how Canadian you are. It's who you are in Canada.” Yes, I watched the CBC Saturday night because the hockey game was on.
Why then is the government putting forward legislation aiming to do just the opposite by determining how Canadian one's content is?
What we absolutely do not support is online legislation that would affect what people can access on the Internet. Having freedom of speech and the ability to express oneself freely within the confines of the law is crucial—
An hon. member: And be heard.
Mr. Dave Epp: Madam Speaker, and be heard, as the member aptly interjected.
This includes those who upload content to social media platforms and other digital platforms. They expect to be just as visible as their neighbours, regardless of how Canadian the CRTC thinks their content is.
Even with the amendments put forward by the senate, Bill C-11 remains a misguided and deeply flawed piece of legislation. It is one that ironically does not reflect Canadian values and the realities of digital content creation. Canadians are rightly concerned about the infringement on their freedom of speech and the implications of possible government overreach that this bill, like Bill C-10 before it, could have on them, on the freedom of speech and on the freedom to be heard.
The government does not trust Canadians with freedom.
If ensuring citizens were accessing local content online was truly a pressing issue, would we not see other governments around the world enacting similar legislation? We have heard the criticism of comparing the bill to other authoritarian states, but when it comes to online censorship or the possibility of it, that is exactly where this potential legislation can go. These are not countries that we want to emulate.
Initially, the government put forward, in clause 7, unprecedented power of the government over the CRTC. The Senate rejected this amendment and, fortunately, in the light of day, the government accepted that rejection. Many stakeholders were concerned about the amount of regulatory authority this would give the government over communications in Canada.
It is difficult to imagine how the government could put forward legislation with so many unintended side effects and areas of ambiguity. It has led many to speculate that the so-called side effects were actually the true intention of the bill. I must admit, I do not blame them for entertaining such thoughts. The alternative seems to be that so little thought was put into a bill of such consequence that they did not realize the impact it would have on Canadian creators and Canadian internet users.
We are seeing a large number of Canadians, both content creators and consumers, expressing serious and valid concerns about the way their government is handling their livelihoods and entertainment. Under Bill C-10, the attempt by the Liberal government to regulate the Internet and limit Canadians' free speech and free hearing was unacceptable, and it is still unacceptable in its current form under Bill C-11.
The number of jobs created by content creators who have enough audience to monetize their channels, like YouTube, in Canada is estimated at about 28,000 full-time jobs. Instead of hindering this type of digital-first Canadian content creation, we should be supporting it. The best way to ensure Canadian content is allowed to thrive is by empowering our creators and not limiting them.
We must not only support our Canadian artists but also pave the way for the next generations' success. We have an obligation to ensure that new bills do not hinder the creativity and the individuality of our creators so that innovation can be fostered. This country has a wealth of venues where inventive ideas emerge daily, and it is in our best interests to help our creators export their talent around the world.
As Conservatives, we will always support Canadian creators, artists and broadcasters by protecting their rights and freedoms. Bill C-11 remains an unacceptable attack on those freedoms, as it provides both the CRTC and the government with unprecedented control over online content.
This is a misguided piece of legislation that will see the potential end of free speech and free hearing for Canadians online. Why does this government not trust Canadians with freedom?
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Madam Speaker, I would put the member's last question back to him and ask whether he trusts platforms to decide for Canadians what they watch, rather than the government.
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Madam Speaker, on the platforms, it is my understanding that it is the level of use by the users that determines the prioritization and not the platforms. The algorithms are driven by those who are using and viewing. It is by the users. It is the freedom to choose what one sees. That is what is driving the algorithms behind it, and that is exactly what we want to see. We want to see that freedom of the users of the content: the hearers. That is what this legislation would be impacting. It is not the freedom of speech as much as the users.
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Madam Speaker, as a woman standing in the House, who knows it took over 100 years to get anything close to representation of women's voices in the House, I am having a really difficult time with this debate tonight, and certainly with those last comments.
Users do not choose, when there are algorithms involved. I am a programmer analyst, and I can tell you that there have been marginalized voices for over 100 years in this country. If we do not do something to level the playing field, we are not going to see what people want to see. We are going to see what people have been told is the most important. Women's voices have been missing, indigenous voices have been missing, indigenous languages have been missing and we have not given space for those voices because too many white men have been taking advantage of the news, journalism and the arts. There are not even enough women in the arts, so I guess my question—
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- Mar/27/23 11:07:06 p.m.
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The hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington has the floor.
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Madam Speaker, in my maiden speech to the House in 2019 or 2020, I referenced my four daughters and said I hoped they would have no glass ceiling above them. The Internet provides the opportunity, if that is their chosen field, not to put any ceiling above them. They have the full freedom.
I am surrounded by very capable female colleagues who did not require the quota to bring them here. The freedom the Internet provides gives the expression of those opportunities. It does not hinder racialized Canadians, Inuit and first nations. It provides the platform that is accessible to all. A quota does not help that. It will not help my daughters; they will make it on their own.
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Madam Speaker, here is a little late-night levity, maybe, to bring a smile to everyone's face. To the member, does it make him scared that this bill would twist the arms of Canadians to watch what bureaucrats want them to watch? Would it make some providers feel like they are “locked in the trunk of a car”, and does he believe Conservatives “are ahead by a century” on Bill C-11?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for possibly leading me not astray but down the right path. This bill would create the possibilities, the potential and the temptation for governments to overreach. That is the danger. It is a danger where we do not want to see governments of any stripe go. No one can call Margaret Atwood a Conservative. When she describes creeping totalitarianism, what is she referring to as a content creator?
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Madam Speaker, it might have started as a good idea, with the support of the Liberals' NDP allies, to not resist the temptation to take this opportunity to reshape Canadian culture and society in their own image, so we are here in the House of Commons this evening, late at night, talking about Bill C-11, the so-called online streaming act. This act has morphed into the Liberals' attempt to regulate the Internet, and we are hearing from so many Canadians that this is a terrible idea.
The Liberals are saying that they are just updating the Broadcasting Act, which has not been updated in 30 years and, in the meantime, since the Internet has been invented and more people are getting their news, entertainment and information off the Internet and fewer people are going to the legacy media, it is important that they now regulate the Internet. However, they are saying that this does not affect user-generated content, the things that ordinary Canadians post on the Internet.
Here is the problem. As soon as that user-generated content becomes commercial, it falls within the rules, and the CRTC is going to regulate it and impose Canadian content rules on it. The question we ask then is the obvious question: At what point does our user-generated content become commercial, and at what point do we have to start worrying about the Canadian content rules? The answer we get is that we should not worry. We should leave it up to the Liberals because they are going to do it right and are going to leave it up to the CRTC to figure out what the rules are.
We asked if we could at least see a draft of the rules, and the answer was no, that we should trust them as they are the Liberal Party and know what Canadian culture is and what Canadians want to watch. It will commission the CRTC to come up with the new rules, and they will give it a policy directive. We asked them if we could see the policy directive, and the answer was no. Therefore, we as Canadians are left in the dark.
This is very important public policy that needs to be debated here in the House of Commons. This is the people's chamber. The people want to know what is going on with something as important as the Internet, which everybody relies on and has become pervasive in our society.
The Senate, the chamber of second thought just down the road, looked at this legislation. It did not approve it. It said there was a problem with it, that we need to get rid of user-generated content altogether. However, inexplicably, the Liberal government has said that it is not going to change anything. That is why we Conservatives and so many Canadians are against Bill C-11.
We are not alone. We have received so many emails, and I am sure the members opposite have also received a lot of emails, from people who have issues and problems with Bill C-11, but we are also hearing from higher profile people such as Margaret Atwood, for example, who has been cited here by several of my colleagues. She is a famous Canadian author who was quoted in The Globe and Mail as saying that bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write and should not decide what is Canadian.
She said, “So it is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to [write].” Those are not my words. They are the words of Margaret Atwood. She is a very fair and balanced person and acknowledges that Bill C-11 shows some signs of what she says are “well-meaning attempts to achieve some sort of fairness in the marketplace.” She added, “But like a lot of well-meaning attempts, if people haven't thought it through, the effect might be different from what [they] thought it would be.” Is this personal for Ms. Atwood? Maybe it is. The Emmy award-winning adaptation of her famous book The Handmaid's Tale failed the Canadian content rules. Imagine that, Canada's most-famous author is not Canadian content.
A person who lives in Abbotsford, right next door to my community of Langley, is Kris Collins, a.k.a kallmekris, who through her own ingenuity, creativity and determination, has become one of Canada's most popular TikTok stars. She has 48 million followers. It is phenomenal.
She is known around the world. She has learned how to monetize her social media presence. In the process, she was making a lot of money at it, so good for her, and all of this without the help or intervention of the CRTC. Ms. Collins figured out on her own what Canadians want and what the world wants. She knows how to market herself. She did not need the government.
This is what she says about the Liberal government's attempt to change all of that: “I am scared. I have been paying really close attention to Bill C-11, a.k.a. the online streaming act. It is something my fellow Canadian creators should be paying attention to, and all the viewers as well. Bill C-11 was supposed to be promoting Canadian storytelling online. In reality, the bill has ended up so broadly worded that it lets the CRTC interfere with every part of your online life.” This is exactly what Conservatives have been talking about: Liberal overreach.
We talked about the Senate, the chamber of sober second thought, as it likes to call itself or as Canadians call it. I have a quote from one of the senators, the Hon. David Richards. This is what he had to say about Bill C-11. I will read the first two sentences of his speech: “Honourable senators, I have a good deal of problems with this bill. I think it’s censorship passing as national inclusion.”
We hear the Liberals saying that it is not censorship at all, that people are free to post and write whatever they want and that the government is not telling them what not to write or what not to post. However, here is the problem. A bureaucratic body, the CRTC, would be tasked with deciding what to promote and, consequently, what to demote on the Internet, all based on that body's idea of what is good Canadian content, keeping in mind that Margaret Atwood did not pass the test.
Senator Richards went on to talk about equality, quoting somebody who commented a lot about equality, and that is author George Orwell, who, in his novel Animal Farm, said, about the society he was talking about, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That is the issue here. That is why so many Canadians are upset with this legislation. They are feeling like they are less equal than people who might agree with the Liberal government's idea of what is Canadian culture and what is good for our society.
I want to quote one of those ordinary Canadians. This is a person who lives in my riding, Barry Springman, who wrote me a very thoughtful email. I have gotten a lot of emails, hundreds of them, and the vast majority are clearly against Bill C-11, urging Conservatives to vote against it. There are a handful that have some reserved support for the bill. I just wanted to get that on the record, to be fair. This is what Mr. Springman said: “Our family has lived in Langley, B.C. for the past 16 years and have family ties to this city for almost 50 years. We have enjoyed the freedoms we have as Canadians to choose what we want to see on the internet, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. In the past few years, we are seeing these freedoms erode. While we are always careful to warn our kids of the potential dangers of some of the content on the internet, we are very much against the government deciding what we should have access to. Therefore, we would like to express our deep displeasure in the Federal Government's attempt to pass the Bill C-11. In no way do we support the passing of this bill.”
This is just a sample. I do not have time to read more.
When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me and my brothers, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I will grant that the government's Bill C-11 probably started with good intentions, but, in typical overreach, Bill C-11 went off the rails. I know the Liberals are not going to take advice from the Conservatives, because they always say that they do not have to, but will they take advice from ordinary Canadian citizens, experts in the field and people like the Springman family? Will they at least take advice from the Senate, which is telling them that this legislation is wrong?
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Madam Speaker, could the member opposite tell me whether he thinks he is getting all these hundreds of emails about Bill C-11 because of all the misinformation about the legislation that is being perpetrated by the Conservatives?
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Madam Speaker, if I get a well-drafted email, like I did from the Springman family, I am going to assume that they have thought about this carefully and that this is something that they wrote of their own volition and to express their own opinions. I think that we should respect it. I think the Liberal government should respect voices like this.
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Madam Speaker, like the member, I am getting hundreds of emails sent to my office as well.
Does the member think he is getting all those emails on his computer and physical mail through a mailbox because of the misinformation from the Liberals and NDP?
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Madam Speaker, to be honest, I think the question from my colleague from Manitoba makes a whole lot more sense. If the Liberal government would pause, think carefully about what the experts are telling us, what people like Margaret Atwood are telling us, what the Senate is now saying and what ordinary Canadians are telling them, maybe they would just decide that removing user-generated content all together would improve this bill drastically.
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Uqaqtittiji, one of the sections in Bill C-11 says, “the Canadian broadcasting system shall be effectively owned and controlled by Canadians, and it is recognized that it includes foreign broadcasting undertakings that provide programming to Canadians”.
Could the member explain how Margaret Atwood might say that this is creeping totalitarianism?
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Madam Speaker, I think that would be a question to put to Margaret Atwood. I am just going to take her at face value. This is what she thinks. This is her experience. She believes what Canadians want to see, write and publish and how they are going to have a conversation with each other should be up to Canadians to decide, not up to the government bureaucracy. I think that is what she is talking about.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting a short time ago when we had an opportunity to listen to one of the answers from the Bloc. The member for Shefford said that if violating freedom of expression means ensuring Quebec content is well represented online, then it is worth it. They may not vote against this particular bill, but they are certainly saying what the member is saying about the fact that there are violations.
Can the member comment on our colleague from the Bloc's assessment of the bill?
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Madam Speaker, I am not quite sure how to answer that question. The Internet is a new invention. It changes everything. Just like when the Gutenberg printing press was invented, it upset culture and completely overturned society, but it came out stronger. I think the Internet will do the same. We are too close right now to see what effect it will have, but we have already started seeing some of the effects with legacy media struggling and people like Kris Collins thriving.
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