44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, with whom I am fortunate to serve on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We have some great discussions there.
I too have worked in a newsroom and studied journalism. I am speaking on behalf of local media in my region, which want us to pass Bill C-18 because they want the web giants to pay their share. Whether it is La Voix de l'Est, the radio station M105, La Pensée de Bagot, Le Journal de Chambly, Granby Express or Le Val-Ouest, these local media, which contribute to the local economy and are part of our cultural community, are calling for it to pass.
I am not hearing from anyone at those media outlets about the administrative problems that my colleague just mentioned. All they want is for Bill C‑18 to pass. They need it. They are asking for it.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. She is wonderful to work with on the status of women committee. On the surface, if we just read the Coles Notes version, we would say we need help because they are drowning. The competitive market is destroying them. That is the reality. They have shackles on them.
This bill is not going to do what they think it is going to do. It is going to last maybe five years. It is going to put a bandaid on a bullet wound. Media needs access and the freedom to create content and to be innovative. This bill, as much as it sounds honourable, will not. We have quote after quote saying that.
Professor Dwayne Winseck of Carleton University said:
The media's money troubles are long-standing and this latest proposal is a bandaid on a bullet wound.... I just think the whole thing is a real dog's breakfast.... This bill is being saddled with expectations and being sold as a rescue package — that, I think, [is] really disingenuous.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that, in her view, the government should not interfere with this free market that rules our media world, yet the message I am hearing from community media, like the local newspaper in my community, is that it wants this. It is struggling in the face of these big tech giants that are not going to tell the local stories in Smithers, Burns Lake, Fraser Lake and Prince Rupert. They are just not going to do that. Community media wants to find a viable way to ensure it has the business case to deliver those stories to the people who need to hear them. People came to me, met with me and said they want precisely what is delivered by this bill.
What would my colleague say to them if they came to her with that message?
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Madam Speaker, that is a great question. On the surface, I would sit down with them and tell them to read the bill. It is not going to give them what they think it will. They need help. Every small media company is literally drowning. If the government walks in and says it will give them money, they will say yes because they do not know how else they are going to keep their head afloat otherwise. The reality is they have to get innovative.
I am going to tell a quick story. I worked in a newsroom and we launched a live talk show. I went to the news director at the time and said we needed to ensure we were cutting these stories for the Internet, so we were putting them into two-minute-and-30-second pieces to post online. The boss looked at me and said, “Michelle, we are in the business of TV, not the Internet. We are not doing that.” That is the limitation that boss had. He has been fired and he did not make it. They have to be innovative, but they have to be given the environment to—
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- Jun/20/23 4:28:30 p.m.
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The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is rising on a point of order.
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- Jun/20/23 4:28:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to take a few minutes to intervene on the point of order that was raised by the whip of the official opposition just prior to question period.
It is regarding the entirely appropriate decision that was made by the Speaker at the time, the Assistant Deputy Speaker, the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, who has been a stellar Speaker in the chair, always maintaining, on behalf of all of us, order and respect for this institution. It is so important. It was clear to me that the official opposition whip was not present in the House and had no idea what went on.
I want to cite a number of references to Bosc and Gagnon, and then I want to clearly lay out the facts because I hope you and the Speaker will rule in a forthright way. It is very important that the decision be upheld. It was the appropriate decision.
Madam Speaker, as you well know, Bosc and Gagnon give the Chair the authority to preserve order and decorum: “As the arbiter of House proceedings, the Speaker's duty is to preserve order and decorum in the House and to decide any matters of procedure that may arise. This duty”—
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- Jun/20/23 4:30:13 p.m.
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I have to interrupt the hon. member, as the hon. member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner is rising on a point of order.
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- Jun/20/23 4:30:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member has been a member for a long time, and he knows better than to identify whether a member was or was not in the House. He indicated previously that the whip of the—
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- Jun/20/23 4:30:31 p.m.
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The hon. member is correct. We should not make mention of presences or absences in the House.
The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby can continue.
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- Jun/20/23 4:30:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was saying that it was obvious to me that she had not observed what had happened. I stand by my position on that. That was obvious from her presentation. I was not in the House when the opposition whip made her presentation, but I carefully read what she said in her speech, and it was obvious to me that she was not here to observe.
Having said that, I will continue.
In essence, the Chair has the duty to exercise his or her powers in order to maintain respect for Parliament: “This duty carries with it...authority extending to...the behaviour and attire of Members, the conduct of proceedings, the rules of debate and disruptions on the floor of the Chamber and in its galleries”. I will come back to that later.
As we know, “Once the Speaker has ruled, the matter is no longer open to debate or discussion”. Furthermore, all of these “ways in which the Speaker may act to ensure that order and decorum are preserved” are given to the Chair by us, the members of the Parliament of Canada.
Bosc and Gagnon say:
The rules governing the conduct of debate empower the Speaker to call a Member to order if the Member persists in repeating an argument already made in the course of debate, or in addressing a subject which is not relevant to the question before the House. The Speaker may intervene directly to address an individual Member or the House in general, or the Speaker may respond to a point of order raised by another Member. The Speaker can call to order any Member whose conduct is disruptive to the order of the House.
I will come back to this later, because it was definitely the case here.
If the Speaker has found it necessary to intervene in order to call a Member to order, he or she may then choose to recognize another Member, thus declining to give the floor back to the offending Member. On occasion, a Member who is called to order by the Speaker may not immediately comply with the Speaker's instructions;—
That is what happened in this case. Bosc and Gagnon go on to say:
—in such a case, the Speaker has given the Member time to reflect on his or her position, declining in the meantime to “see” the Member should the latter rise to be recognized. A warning at the time the Member is called to order that the Chair may elect to do this has sometimes been sufficient to secure compliance.
It is therefore very clear, when we look at the procedural bible of Bosc and Gagnon, that all these powers to preserve order in the House do indeed fall to the Chair. That is the case in the ruling that was made this morning by the chair occupant, the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing.
I will give three examples, and then I will get back to the facts of what happened. Since I was in the House, I saw first-hand what happened.
Here is the first example. First, in 1987, Speaker Fraser would not recognize Jim Fulton, the member for Skeena and a member of our caucus, for more than three weeks because he refused to withdraw his remarks. The member was only able to be recognized after agreeing to apologize.
Here is the second example. On November 27, 2002, Speaker Milliken ruled on unparliamentary language used by Jim Pankiw, the then member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. The Speaker asked the member to apologize, which was not done. The member was not recognized for the day and offered a full apology the next day, which closed the matter.
I am also aware of another case, which involved an NDP member from Dartmouth. That member was not recognized for a few weeks because she had introduced someone who was in the gallery. As we know, we are not supposed to do that. It took a few weeks. In this case as well, the hon. member apologized and things went back to normal.
Clearly what happened with the member of Parliament for Lethbridge was a complete refusal to heed what were clear directives, politely but firmly given, from the Chair. Looking at the blues from this morning, we can see that the Assistant Deputy Speaker repeatedly asked the member for Lethbridge to stop screaming and heckling in the House. This was done not one time, not two times and not three times, but four times. Each time the Assistant Deputy Speaker issued, very clearly, a warning that, if the member for Lethbridge continued to heckle, yell in the House and disrupt the proceedings, the member would not be recognized.
As we can see from all the precedents and the clear directions from Bosc and Gagnon, that is an authority that we give to you, Madam Speaker, and to all of our terrific Speakers in the House of Commons, to maintain order and decorum. The member for Lethbridge violated that decorum repeatedly. She refused to heed very clear, politely but firmly worded warnings from the Chair, and the consequence is a consequence that has transpired in the past in the House. It is completely valid, within the rules of order and appropriate.
I will say one final thing on this. I know the Assistant Deputy Speaker and the great work she does in the House of Commons. I also commend the work of our whip, the member for North Island—Powell River. If a member from the NDP had done what the member for Lethbridge did today, that member would have been called to order by our whip because our whip would not encourage this type of behaviour in the House of Commons. Therefore, I call upon the official opposition whip to take her responsibility seriously and call on the member for Lethbridge to apologize in the House for her behaviour, which was inappropriate and over the top, and for refusing to heed the repeated warnings of the Assistant Deputy Speaker, who was acting entirely appropriately.
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- Jun/20/23 4:37:38 p.m.
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The hon. member's points will be taken into consideration.
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- Jun/20/23 4:37:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on that same point of order, I do really appreciate the work the Speakers do in the chair. I know they are doing a fantastic job.
However, one of the greatest challenges we are seeing is that we need to ensure that this treatment goes from one party to the next and it is equal. We have had four of our own members sanctioned, while we have watched members across the aisle give the finger and say some very derogatory things. Therefore, when we are talking about this, we want to see equal treatment for all parties.
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- Jun/20/23 4:38:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity again to address Bill C-18 in the House.
I am pleased that the Senate has exercised its judgment as the place of sober second thought and sent this legislation back to the House for further work.
Right off the top, I will say that there are three areas where all members of the House are in agreement. First, we all agree that there should be some mechanism whereby tech giants are taxed, and that we do so in a way that does not negatively affect Canadian consumers. Second, we all agree that there must be some mechanism in place to deal with online misinformation and disinformation. At every one of our offices, we deal with this issue on a daily basis. Third, we all agree that we must create a framework to regulate AI or artificial intelligence.
We agree on these three principles. The issue, as is usually the case in the House, is how we go about doing that.
How do we make tech giants pay their fair share? How do we regulate information online and, perhaps more pertinent to our conversation today, particularly in light of the events of the past three years, who determines what is misinformation? How do we differentiate between fact and opinion?
In our postmodern world, or what some have called a post-truth world or a world where truth has become a relative or entirely subjective concept, how do we, as governments and media, differentiate and adjudicate between truly evidence-based information versus that which is driven by ideology and political expediency? Finally, how do we even begin to deal with the challenges posed by artificial intelligence?
In the Bible, we have the story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have the story of the Tower of Babel, where people believed that by building a tower to heaven, by storming God’s dominion, they could themselves become God. We have heard the story of Pandora’s box, or jar if we want to be exact, and the story of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
Almost every ancient civilization has some story of humanity receiving or taking knowledge from the gods, knowledge they were not ready for, that they were ill-equipped to handle and that ultimately leads to chaos.
With the advent of the technological revolution and, in particular, artificial intelligence, humanity has come full circle to a truly frightening reality. It is good that we are beginning to address these important issues. It is good that we are at least largely agreed on what those issues are.
Unfortunately, as is always the case with the government, the flaw is in the details. There is a reason that the Senate sent this back. It could have chosen to just approve it. It sent it back and that is because this legislation, like its sister legislation Bill C-11, is deeply flawed.
Conservatives maintain that the government has misled Canadians about what the true objectives of Bill C-11 are. In short, it gives the government the ability to control what people see and post online. That is why Conservatives have committed to repealing it. I suspect that we will do likewise after Bill C-18 has been passed, and we are sitting on the other side of the House.
Like Bill C-11, at first look, the legislation looks fine and prudent, but then one starts to dig a little deeper. The flaw is in the details. One of those first pesky details is the issue of accountability. The government says that tech giants need to be more transparent and accountable to Canadians, which is the pot speaking to the kettle.
I agree. I am pretty sure my colleagues agree with this statement. Tech giants, like all multinational, plutocratic entities, do need to be held accountable. If they wish to operate within the jurisdiction of a country, those individual nation states must find a way to temper the unprecedented power, influence and wealth these entities have amassed.
When it comes to transparency and accountability, the government has very limited credibility. How the government can have the audacity to tell anyone they need to be more accountable and transparent shows its utter lack of self-awareness and the level of narcissism we are dealing with here because there has never been a government that has been so secretive. This government has so actively shunned accountability.
When, in the long line of scandals and failures of the Prime Minister and his ministers, has even one of them ever taken responsibility? I think the record clearly shows that the answer to that question is never. I could stand here and, one by one, list the scandals and failures of this government, but we would be here all night, and I know we have other work do get done here.
There is always an excuse, always someone else to blame. The government never takes responsibility. No minister has ever been held accountable. Actually, that is not quite true. We may remember that the Prime Minister did fire a minister. What did she do? Did she fail to execute the basic functions of government? Did she create chaos in her department? Did she misappropriate funds? Did she lie about a matter of national security? No, she did not. Her crime was that she tried to hold the Prime Minister accountable. She was the first indigenous woman to be minister of justice and attorney general, and the Prime Minister fired her because she refused to be party to his misdeeds or to capitulate to his unlawful demands.
When it comes to accountability, the Liberals have no credibility. Therefore, how can Canadians trust the Liberal government to enforce the very thing that the government itself refuses to do? That same statement from the heritage minister’s office states, “Canadians need to have access to quality, fact-based news at the local and national levels, and that's why we introduced the Online News Act.” I agree with that sentiment. The problem is that it is really difficult to take the government at its word when it has spent the past seven and a half years subsidizing media outlets that are friendly to it, intentionally parrot government talking points as “facts” and brand everything else as “misinformation”.
The Liberals gave legacy Liberal media $650 million and continue to fund the CBC to the tune of $1.24 billion per year. Why do they need to do this? First, it is to buy positive coverage, and they have gotten excellent bang for their buck. There is always a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefit seems to have been worth the cost of taxpayers' dollars. Second, they have done so because those friendly outlets are dying. They are trying to prop up a dying industry.
With the exception of a brief renaissance during COVID, when flush with Liberal government dollars, the media spouted government talking points and spread fear and division among Canadians. They have ceased to be relevant. We can bemoan that fact all we want, but I would ask, as I believe my colleagues have adequately done, what members' primary source for their news and entertainment is? Chances are that it is something online. I think this is really at the heart of the issue. I would pose this question to the government: What is a better indicator of what people actually believe, what they say or what they do? I would argue that it is what they do.
In the same way as the government’s track record, its behaviour has shown that it does not really believe in accountability. It also does not care about what the media prints or posts as long as it is favourable to the government. However, Canadian consumers have also spoken by their behaviour. If we were to ask a group of Canadians to define “Canadian content”, it would be difficult to get consensus. The platforms that Canadians subscribe to, the shows they watch and the content they consume would probably not be considered Canadian content by all Canadians.
Maybe listening to Canadians rather than dictating to them what the government wants them to see as Canadian content would poise the government to better serve Canadians. If we were to ask a group of Canadians how important Canadian content in media is, I suspect about half would say it is important. If we were to ask that same group how much Canadian content they actually consume, what platforms they subscribe to and what shows they watch, the answer would most likely be pretty different.
Perhaps, for once, rather than dictating to Canadians, the government that supposedly represents their interests ought to take the novel approach of listening to them. While it is listening, it should ask them what they think about the carbon tax, the cost of living, this so-called green and woke agenda, their media priorities and whether they feel safe on the streets. This is Conservatism 101. The market is the best indicator of what Canadian people want, because it is driven by Canadian people. Rather than accept this reality, the government that thinks it knows better than Canadians how to spend their money, consistently pushes back against the market to achieve its own ideological purposes.
At the end of the day, the market determines the viability of a product, including media, so we need to address these issues. Conservatives agree with that, but the weaknesses of this legislation are secondary to the sad reality that the government lacks credibility. It is a serial offender, guilty of doing the very things it claims this legislation would address.
Only a new, Conservative government would be able to address these important issues, and we will address them head-on—
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- Jun/20/23 4:48:26 p.m.
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We now have to go to questions and comments.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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Madam Speaker, I find myself standing on my feet in the House quite often, reciting the Conservative Party platform, which I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be doing. However, I will read to that member what he ran on in 2021.
He was knocking on doors, and this is what he was selling to people: “Canada’s Conservatives will: Introduce a digital media royalty framework to ensure that Canadian media outlets are fairly compensated for the sharing of their content by platforms like Google and Facebook.” I am literally reading their party platform. This is what they ran on, and that is exactly what this bill is about.
I understand that Conservatives are abandoning their platform en masse, because they have already done the same thing on pricing pollution. Would the member like to inform the House of any other Conservative platforms that they are so rigidly against, but that they ran on under two years ago.
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Madam Speaker, every time the member for Kingston and the Islands stands up after one of my speeches, I am just looking forward to the question. I know it is going to be a lob, so I am teeing this one up.
Conservatives absolutely believe that tech giants need to pay their fair share. What we do not believe is that governments should be picking winners and losers. In this legislation, 75% of the winners will be made up of these three companies: the CBC, Rogers and Bell. That is not fair.
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Madam Speaker, my Conservative friends are very good at criticizing, but they offer very little by way of solutions to real problems. For all the years that we have been talking about fighting climate change, we have constantly criticized the government, and rightly so, because the Liberals are absolutely useless at fighting climate change. However, the Conservatives do not offer any meaningful solutions to real problems.
The revenue sharing in Bill C‑18 is a real problem. In my riding, there is a weekly newspaper that had 10 journalists five years ago. Now there are only two left. How can they cover all the events? There are six federal ridings and there is simply no way they can cover all the regional news, which is extremely important.
What solutions does my colleague have to offer for this problem that is real and widespread across Canada?
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Madam Speaker, the member for the Bloc raises a very important issue. I think of the small periodicals in my riding. I think of the Southeast Journal, The Clipper, the Niverville Citizen and even The Carillon. These are not the media outlets that are going to benefit from this piece of legislation. The member asks, rightly, what our solutions are. We are going to come up with solutions, and we are going to announce them in our platform in the next general election. Canadians are going to be incredibly impressed, and we are going to implement those solutions as soon as we get elected.
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Madam Speaker, as much as I am tempted to ask my hon. colleague what those solutions are now, and I am sure Canadians probably want to know what they are now, I digress, because I am not quite certain. As the member is reluctant to give them today, I hope he may provide them to everyone here in writing.
I want to make a quick differentiation about something that, for a long time, New Democrats have called for; this is the difference between the needs and the wants of Canadians. The member speaks directly to the market. As a matter of fact, we need to ensure that a market is well-balanced to ensure that the things Canadians actually need to obtain to live, such as food, water, homes and, in this case, good information, are actually available to them.
The member did not speak directly to the concern that I think is important in this legislation, which is why I think we can probably agree that there needs to be a process ensuring that our small businesses, particularly news outlets in small rural communities, can actually get the information they are working for produced on to the websites people are seeing the news on. This is important for small communities, because people are doing the work. They are doing the journalism in their communities to talk about the good work happening, whether it is in Edson, Drayton Valley or Fishing Lake, so that when people go to the news, they can actually have access to it. Right now, these companies are saying that they will not, and they are benefiting to the tune of nearly $10 billion.
Could the member speak to how important it is to balance those two?
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