44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/20/23 10:13:00 a.m.
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- Jun/20/23 10:56:17 a.m.
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I declare the motion carried.
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moved:
That, in relation to Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada, not more than five further hours shall be allotted to the stage of consideration of Senate amendments to the bill; and
That, at the expiry of the five hours provided for the consideration of the said stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.
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- Jun/20/23 10:57:35 a.m.
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Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period. I invite hon. members who wish to ask questions to rise in their places or use the “raise hand” function so that the Chair has some idea of the number of members who wish to participate in this question period.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.
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Madam Speaker, this bill deals with a very important topic, which is the sustainability of journalism in Canada. There have been many stakeholders from across the country who have expressed deep concerns, and I also note that, at various stages of the debate, there were many witnesses from different regions, different demographics, who participate in media in Canada who were not allowed to testify at committee.
My concern is that, if the government is curtailing debate on this without a chance for every member to speak to the amendments that the government is suggesting it either will or will not support, the voices of regional Canadians who are engaged in the media will not have a chance to be adequately debated in the House.
I am wondering, with the decline of local media in Canada, why the government is choosing to curtail debate on a bill that could, in fact, have some censorship provisions at this juncture.
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Madam Speaker, there is a reason why the bill is here in front of us, and that is because there is a huge power imbalance between the tech giants and local journalists. In the last 15 years, we have seen around 500 newsrooms close their doors: big and small; in cities and rural areas; English, French and different languages. That is hurting our democracy.
This bill is absolutely essential. It is essential that we move forward. We had the chance to debate it here in the House. We debated it in committee for a long time. We went to the Senate. It was debated in the Senate. It was debated in committee at the Senate. It had the chance to go there. It is now time for us to pass the bill.
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Madam Speaker, I really do not like that they are imposing time allocation. I think it is an insult to democracy and parliamentary privilege.
That said, I do not agree with my Conservative colleague who said that people were not heard in committee when it studied Bill C‑18. I think everyone spoke to that bill. The committee heard as many people as possible and we had ample time to debate the bill.
The bill was debated in the House and it was studied in the Senate. This week, the government is moving forward by imposing time allocation, and I find that deplorable. I would like to ask the minister if he believes that we could have dealt with Bill C‑18 in the House this week without resorting to time allocation. Or, on the contrary, does he believe that the Conservatives would have done everything possible to drag things out to ensure that the bill, which they oppose, does not pass?
I deplore time allocation. Was it absolutely necessary to use it today? Could we have dealt with it this week in the normal course of debate?
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Madam Speaker, I will make an exception to the rule. I usually have kind words for my colleague. I still have very kind words for him, but the Bloc Québécois is being a little hypocritical. Bloc members never like time allocation, but they want to take credit when a bill is passed. They say that it is thanks to them that a bill is passed, and that they moved heaven and earth to do it. However, when it is time to vote for a bill to pass it, they hide. Let them show some backbone. Either they support it or they do not. It is one or the other.
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Madam Speaker, as my colleague from Drummond just mentioned, we had dozens and dozens of witnesses. Two of the key witnesses who came forward about Bill C-18 were from the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association and the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association. These newspapers, independent outlets right across Alberta and Saskatchewan, are the ones that cover cities and other places represented by half of the Conservative caucus, and they said Bill C-18 needs to be put in place, adopted as quickly as possible.
We have Alberta community newspapers and Saskatchewan community newspapers saying the bill needs to be brought in, and we have Conservative MPs who represent those ridings fighting tooth and nail to block this bill completely, refusing to allow it through. To me, that seems to be hypocrisy and a clear contradiction of what Conservative MPs should be defending, which is their communities' interests.
Why are the Conservatives blocking a bill that their community newspapers are calling for?
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague and his party for their incredible work on this bill. I thank the Bloc Québécois too, with the little exception here today. Its members did a good job too, because this bill is fundamental.
The question is a very important one, but I have no answer for it because I do not know why the Conservatives are blocking such an important bill. This bill is good for big cities and small communities, and for papers and radio stations across the country. Why is it? It is because big tech is getting all the money, as 80% of all advertising revenue is going to two companies: Google and Facebook. The Conservatives seem to be comfortable with that. They are super happy. They stand up for the tech giants all the time, instead of standing up for small papers and small community radio stations. They do not have the guts to stand up for local journalism. We will stand up for them.
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Madam Speaker, here we go again. I have supported time allocation in the past. The budget implementation act, for example, took us months to get through, and it got to the point where I felt it was appropriate to say that we were hearing the same speeches over and over again and that we should move on. I also just finished supporting moving to orders of the day, because I also recognize we are at a time when there are a lot of partisan antics going on here.
That being said, this is the fourth sitting day in a row when we are voting on limiting debate again. In this case, the Senate amendments came back last night. We heard one speech from the minister and one from the official opposition, and now we are being told to limit debate again. Does the minister recognize the implications this approach has for our democracy?
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Madam Speaker, this bill is important for our democracy, because the media are disappearing. Almost 500 newsrooms have disappeared across the country: big ones and small ones; in cities and small communities; and in English, French and indigenous languages. So many have disappeared.
That is why it is urgent to move forward. This bill has been studied in the House, in committee, in the Senate and in the Senate committee. It has come back here and it is time we move on, because too many newsrooms have closed their doors. We need a solid, independent, non-partisan news system in our country. We need the tech giants to contribute. That is why it is so important to pass this bill now.
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Madam Speaker, this is not about a power imbalance but the refusal of the legacy media to innovate. It is not up against links, as Facebook and Google do not advertise newspaper links; rather, it is up against Kijiji, Craigslist and, in Petawawa, even Jennifer Layman's Forward Thinking, where everyone in the valley goes to advertise or find a job.
What this is really about is preventing news from getting to the wider population through the end result of not having news links on Facebook or Google. This means that Canadians do not get all the news that is going on.
Why does the minister want to stifle the debate on the ability of Canadians to learn what is going on in their own country? What do the Liberals have to hide?
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Madam Speaker, history will remember the Conservatives as those who stood up for tech giants and forgot about all the media outlets in the different regions, including the regions they represent.
Small media outlets from everywhere across the country, including in their ridings, have been coming to tell us that they are disappearing. Our bill will help those media outlets to survive and thrive, whether in English, French, indigenous languages or other languages. We need those small and big traditional media outlets because they are here to ask the tough questions. The Conservatives hate that. They do not want those media outlets to come here and ask the tough questions.
Of course it is tough. Sometimes, it is not fun to answer the questions, but that is our job, and the Conservatives do not want to do it.
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Madam Speaker, let us cut to the chase. We are not talking about the bill itself here. I think that the Bloc Québécois, through my colleague from Drummond, has shown how hard it is fighting for passage of this bill and the good reasons why we must pass it.
What we are talking about here is democracy and, for the last few weeks, the repeated use of closure motions and the repeated imposition of time limits on parliamentarians' debate. Limiting debate time is an attack on democracy. When I hear some members of the opposition rise to denounce it, I wonder why they unequivocally support each closure motion.
We need to change our parliamentary rules to ensure that we have time to debate such important government bills, instead of seeing yet another closure motion being imposed at the last minute, which is anti-democratic.
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Madam Speaker, what I like about this is that the Bloc Québécois wants to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand it is saying that this bill is very important, but on the other hand, it is saying that we must not move forward with it, that it is not voting with us on this motion, and that it is giving up on us and abandoning the people it wanted to support.
The Bloc has done remarkable work. The member for Drummond has stood up the entire time. He was remarkable, as was the Bloc Québécois. However, now that it is time to move, there is a problem. It is one or the other. Either we end the debate and move forward with the bill, or we do not. The Bloc cannot have it both ways. It is hypocrisy pure and simple. Those members need to stand up and show some backbone.
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Madam Speaker, this debate is important to my riding. I met with Terry Farrell from the Comox Valley Record and Peter McCulley from PQB News. They talked about the sense of urgency right now, because they cannot compete with Google, Facebook and so on. PQB News had to lay off Scott Stanfield, one of the top local reporters in the Comox Valley, who has covered really important and critical stories. Now it is short-staffed and does not have the capacity to cover as much as it would like to make sure that the people in our communities are well-informed and not at a disadvantage.
What we are seeing from Conservatives and finding out is that they are the gatekeepers for Google, Facebook and the big web giants.
Scott Stanfield has lost his job, and we know there are going to be more if we do not make sure that local media outlets can produce good local media in our communities. Can the minister speak about the sense of urgency to get this legislation passed, so local media outlets get the proper financial supports?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and the New Democrats for their overall work on this very important bill. I can say that they get it.
His question points to why the bill is so important. It is not a silver lining for now; we need more, and we are doing more as a government. For example, we put in place a tax credit on labour. We put in place local journalism initiatives. We have the Canada periodical fund. These will support everything we are doing, and we are open to doing more.
One thing we are not willing to do is to just stand down like the Conservatives and say that we are not going to do anything for our local media. That is totally unacceptable, and history will remember it.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the minister could reflect on how, when the leader of the Conservative Party had a press conference in regard to the budget bill, he said that he was going to speak and speak.
His intentions were to prevent the bill from passing until the Prime Minister made changes to the budget. Now we have the Conservatives opposing this particular bill. They have already expressed an interest in terms of speaking and speaking in order to prevent the bill from passing.
Would the minister not agree that, just as when the leader of the Conservative Party vowed to speak endlessly, without the time allocation, we would never have been able to pass the budget and we would not be able to pass Bill C-18? Would the minister provide his thoughts on that issue?
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Madam Speaker, this is a very important question. I want to thank my colleague for his work on this bill and the overall work of the government. He is a key member of the government team.
Sometimes, it is necessary to use time allocation. With this official opposition, it may be used more, because they like to filibuster. The opposition likes to play with the tools it has to hurt our democracy.
Bill C-11 is an amazing bill that is asking the streamers that we all love, such as Disney, Netflix and others, to contribute to Canadian culture, which is a good thing. Normally we would all agree on this. I know the NDP agrees. I know the Bloc agrees. The Conservatives are not too sure. That bill spent more time in the Senate than any other bill in the history of this country, because it was blocked by Conservative senators under the order of the leader of the Conservative Party. That is totally unacceptable.
The Conservatives are trying to do the same thing on Bill C-18, with the budget and other bills. They are hurting our democracy.
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