44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I usually say that it is a pleasure to rise and comment on a bill, but this time I am not sure it is a pleasure.
The bill seeks to amend the Financial Administration Act so that the Treasury Board can no longer impose mandatory vaccination. The bill also seeks to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001. According to the bill, all those laws should provide that mandatory vaccination is a thing of the past and can never again be required for COVID‑19. I feel there is something missing in this bill. In the health bill, we could also prescribe a disinfectant to make sure that we do not get any germs, as Trump did in his public statements when COVID‑19 first hit and we were waiting for a vaccine. That element is missing from the bill and we could move an amendment to that effect.
This bill is just one more attempt to politicize vaccination. The hon. member for Niagara West was behind Bill C‑285, which was similar to this one. It is easy to descend into demagoguery. At the time, the hon. member compared the vaccine mandate for federal public servants to something that the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea would do. I can say right away that the Bloc Québécois will be voting against the bill and that it refuses to play into the hands of conspiracy theorists.
I say this with all due respect, because everyone is entitled to their opinion. The hon. member's past positions on vaccines and the kinds of petitions that he has sponsored, however, make it difficult to see what he is trying to do with this bill as anything other than yet another attempt to discredit vaccines. I only have 10 minutes to speak, but if I had more time, I could go back in history and talk about the times when there were no vaccines. I could talk about infant mortality, the Spanish flu and the First World War. We have seen how much of a difference vaccination has made.
The sole purpose of this bill concerns an issue that should be off-limits to partisan games. COVID‑19 has been a tragedy, not a conspiracy. The seven waves of COVID‑19 took the lives of nearly 18,000 people in Quebec, more than 50,000 people in Canada and 6.5 million people worldwide.
The Conservatives, however, have no sympathy for the victims, for the health care workers or for our young people and all the sacrifices they made to protect our seniors. Their sympathy is for pandemic deniers. The Conservatives decided to turn their backs on it all and vote against the principle of Bill S‑209, which called for March 11 to be designated as COVID-19 pandemic observance day. Shame on them. Pandemic denialism may be part of their DNA, along with denying climate change and insisting that it is not real. Both these realities, however, are having profoundly negative societal effects in terms of health and poverty. I think these issues deserve more attention, not a sideshow.
The Conservatives not only do not want to recognize this tragedy, but they are now proposing to deny the vaccination that allowed us to save many lives and get through the pandemic. I am not absolving the Liberals, who were not entirely innocent throughout this pandemic. They also used vaccination for partisan purposes.
Let us not forget that in 2021, they called an election for no reason in the middle of the pandemic, when health measures were in force. The Liberals hammered home their message on mandatory vaccination for partisan purposes. It was a game against the Conservatives to go after a segment of the electorate. It was no more edifying than that.
That is a dangerous game, because it just diminishes a debate that should be based on knowledge and evidence, not partisan interests.
As we know, the government often improvised or delayed taking action when managing the crisis. Take, for example, border controls and the delays in procuring equipment and vaccines. We understand that it was a crisis situation and that sometimes urgent action needs to be taken. However, in the end, some major setbacks fortunately forced us to rely on getting people vaccinated very quickly. It was almost unprecedented how it was possible to create a vaccine that then helped us to significantly stabilize the situation.
France, Germany, the United States, England, the list of countries that adopted a vaccine passport for transportation is very long. We have to remember the situation we were in. Hospitals around the world were overburdened. We saw the images, not just in Canada, but in Europe. So many people died that people did not even know where to put the bodies. That was a tragedy. Vaccination finally enabled us to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. I think that goes to show that research and development and science help us move forward when we are confronted not with a minor cough but a global pandemic.
To deny that by banning vaccine mandates in labour laws and in transportation, and to say that if someone has COVID-19, it is open season and they can show up without being vaccinated and completely ignore a vaccine mandate, that is like giving up the tools we have to protect ourselves in a public health situation.
Making vaccine mandates permanent would have been going too far, much like saying that Parliament should be hybrid permanently is going too far. That is too much. We have to be able to consider the context. The Bloc Québécois has never been in favour of making vaccination mandatory, because that would be impossible. Mandatory vaccination is not possible, unless you round people up and force them to get the shot before they can leave. That would be impossible. There were, however, constraints placed on those who did not want to be vaccinated, and those constraints were warranted.
What is regrettable about the Liberals' partisanship at the time when it was made mandatory is that it did not take into account a position-by-position analysis. Were there any positions where this was not an issue? Were there any other work positions? This is true for both federal employees and those in federally regulated businesses.
Labour relations analysts and advisers were very serious in saying that employers should assess the situations in which the work was carried out by staff. That was not done either. It was done indiscriminately.
Some unions decided to go to court on behalf of their members. There was not much in the way of case law, but case law did support demanding this as a condition of employment, given the specific context we were in. With this bill, the Conservative Party wants to say that they are against this, that it does not make sense and that it should be eliminated from all our laws.
Our labour and transportation laws already do not require vaccination. Our laws say nothing about this. They will certainly not be amended to explicitly say that, in the future, there will never again be an obligation to be vaccinated.
Just think of the H1N1 flu epidemic. It was a serious flu. People were asked to be vaccinated if they wanted to travel. I had to travel, so I got vaccinated. That is life, when there are—
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- Jun/20/23 6:08:14 p.m.
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I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member, but her time is up. I even gave her a little more time.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.
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Madam Speaker, before I move into the bill, I want to acknowledge the sacrifices that every Canadian has made over the past three years.
The high school graduates of this month are the first cohort to have spent all of their high school years under COVID. I think about all the rites of passage that were missed and compromised in an effort to keep people alive and well during COVID–19, such as missed weddings, celebrations of life, graduations, births, birthdays, all of it. I think about Canadians across this country who fought for the last three years to keep their families healthy and safe. I think about the unpaid caregivers who gave up their work and sidetracked their careers to support the needs of their families and friends. Of course, I think of the frontline workers and paid care workers, like nurses and long-term care workers, who took on all of the institutional care when families and volunteers were shut out. I acknowledge their heroic work and that they are experiencing high levels of burnout and moral stress. This needs to change. These workers deserve better working conditions and respect.
This pandemic has also disproportionately affected women and immigrant women, who are the backbone of the care economy. Their employment and educational opportunities have been sidelined as they stepped up to take on more paid and unpaid work.
Women have also experienced an increase in gender-based violence throughout the pandemic.
Women have shouldered a significant burden in the health and social care sectors, accounting for 70% of the workforce dedicated to combatting COVID–19 globally. These brave women have faced heightened risks of infection, while grappling with the challenges of maintaining their own health and safety.
By considering the broader societal impact, we recognize the importance of prioritizing the health and well-being of all individuals irrespective of gender. That reality is protected in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Unfortunately, last week we saw a bill brought to this House by the Conservatives to create a double standard when it comes to who should have health freedoms. The Conservative Party wants to uphold what its members would call health-related freedoms in Canada, but at the same time oppose reproductive health freedoms for women and diverse genders.
The bill we are talking about today, Bill C-278, claims to protect the health rights of those who choose not to vaccinate, yet the double standard shows that the Conservative Party has a biased view of who should have access to health care and who should not. This bill emerged from the Conservative leadership race, initially introduced by the member for Carleton, who has been a vocal opponent of the COVID–19 vaccine requirements, labelling them as a means to exert control over individuals' lives.
In addition, the member for Niagara West, who brought this bill forward, actively supported the 2022 convoy occupation in Ottawa, and aligns himself with an ideology of medical freedoms while actively opposing reproductive rights. Although I will not speculate here on the motivations of the sponsor of this bill, I will note that decisions regarding vaccination policies should be based on evidence and the advice of experts rather than driven by political considerations.
The New Democrats firmly support an approach that balances the rights of individuals who have chosen not to be vaccinated with the collective rights to health and safety. We must ensure that public health decisions and laws are grounded in scientific research and data rather than being influenced by political rhetoric or ideology.
Coming back to the bill, this proposed legislation has faced criticism in the community. It has been called out because it solely targets COVID–19 related vaccine requirements. The potential ramifications of this legislation have not been duly investigated, and at a time when health organizations and experts have already called for an end to the vaccination exemption, this bill is not aligned with reality. However, the Conservatives have no concern for reality, but prefer to work to advance their partisan agenda.
Let us look at what they are proposing. They are proposing to amend the Financial Administration Act, the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act without due diligence. It has taken over a year to get the Canada disability benefit through this House and here are the Conservatives proposing to change a number of acts. It is just not bound in reality.
These wide-ranging changes do not help workers or the economy, so let us get back to reality. Current and past Liberal and Conservative governments were not prepared for a pandemic. Our health care systems were underfunded. There was a shortage of Canadian-made vaccines and PPE, as previous governments sold off our manufacturing capability. Long-term care workers, nurses and workers across the nation were exploited and continue to be exploited. They were taken for granted for decades. They deserve better.
The New Democrats support these workers and all workers that make society function. Workers deserve to be supported, and we must ensure that they are protected with laws that matter to them and funding they need to support all Canadians, pandemic or not. They deserve no less, and the NDP will fight to correct these long-standing deficits.
Just yesterday, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby tabled a bill, Bill C-345, to protect firefighters, paramedics and other responders. The member for Vancouver East continues to fight tirelessly for immigrant workers to get the immigrant status that they deserve. It is our collective responsibility in society to protect workers as they protect us.
The current nursing and health care shortage has certainly proved that there is a lot of work to do to improve working conditions. The Liberals need to take seriously the work of solving the health care crisis, including nursing shortages, and to take immediate action to work with provinces to fix critical needs, including by investing in housing that workers need. The Prime Minister must not continue to let down nurses, care workers and all workers.
The Liberal government has a responsibility to be part of the solution and to act on other gaps, such as protecting Canadian manufacturing of vaccines and PPE and investing in research and development in every corner of this country. The Liberals and the Conservatives need to do more to support workers and communities, put people ahead of corporate profits and spend less time on ideological partisanship.
I close by reminding the government that Canadian health systems are on the verge of collapse. Frontline workers have been heroic, yet this heroism has resulted in burnout, fatigue and early retirements. As we work through this reality, more federal investments are needed in health care and community. There needs to be respect for women in the care economy, because they have always been the true backbone.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to my colleague's private member's bill, Bill C-278, an act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel.
This bill is an important chance to right some of the wrongs Canadians endured during the COVID-19 pandemic, including and especially the violations of their rights and freedoms.
Formally, the bill:amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.
The bill also amends the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001, to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.
This bill was initiated by our leader before it was taken up by my colleague, the hon. member for Niagara West.
The right to one's own medical choices is sacrosanct. The COVID-19 pandemic presented an unparalleled challenge to daily life for all Canadians across all areas of life and business. In its haste to ensure Canada was able to weather the pandemic as well as possible, the government of the day made some decisions that ultimately had serious negative effects on thousands of Canadians across the country.
The pandemic was undoubtedly a scary time for all, but instead of working with understanding and compassion, the Liberal government employed rhetoric that was cruel to its opponents. In particular, those who were hesitant to receive COVID-19 vaccines were made to be ridiculed and were discriminated against.
We now have the chance to take a sober second look at the outcome and aftermath of the pandemic. While it can be argued that the vaccines helped many, the way the government mandated their use in certain areas cannot be repeated. I am speaking about mandating vaccines as a requirement for employment and travel.
Particularly when it became clear that the vaccines were not a silver bullet and could not stop the spread of COVID-19 wholesale, the serious restrictions put on unvaccinated Canadians became unconscionable. In August 2021, the Liberal government mandated vaccination against COVID-19 for all federal public servants, employees in federally regulated transport industries and passengers on commercial air travel, interprovincial rail service and cruise ships. In all, more than 1.235 million employees were subjected to that mandate, more than 8% of the total number of workers in Canada. Those who could not or would not receive the vaccine and did not have an exemption were put on unpaid leave or fired.
Thousands of Canadians were denied their rights to freedom of mobility. The charter grants them the freedom to enter and leave Canada, but for a period of almost three years, six million unvaccinated Canadians were trapped in their own country.
Certainly at the beginning of the pandemic, in the first three weeks, nobody knew what this was, how serious it was or what we should do. After three years, it was clear that people who were fully vaccinated, such as I am, could get and transmit COVID the same as the unvaccinated. All the members of this House, many of whom had COVID during this time, were busy flying back and forth and taking trains in the country, but the unvaccinated were unable to go anywhere. That was discrimination.
Thousands of Canadians were unable to see loved ones across the border. It was a situation I became well acquainted with in my border riding office. Families were split apart. Parents were unable to share custody of young children. Loved ones were unable to say goodbye to dying older parents on the basis of mandates not based on science.
I have people in my riding who are married to people who live just across the border. They were prevented from being with their spouses for years. This is just unacceptable.
Worse still, some workers who lost their jobs were ineligible for employment insurance benefits as of October 2021. Employment and Social Development Canada issued a notice at the time to enforce vaccine mandates to help them fill out records of employment, documents that are necessary in applying for the benefits. According to The Canadian Press, “The department said if an employee doesn't report to work or is suspended or terminated for refusing to comply with a vaccine mandate, the employer should indicate that they quit, took a leave of absence or were dismissed potentially disqualifying them from EI.” While indeed it is an employer's right to set the rules of conduct for their workplace, for the federal government to instruct the employer to deny employees Canadian government benefits they had paid into was wrong. How many Canadians suffered and how many families went without because of this direction?
The EI system is an insurance premium system. A person pays their premiums, qualifies with their hours and collects the benefit, yet at the same time that the government was handing out CERB cheques of $2,000 a month, it was preventing people who were terminated for not being vaccinated from getting any money at all.
Furthermore, a year ago in June, the government refused to repay employees who lost their jobs due to the mandate the first time. Reporting in the National Post at the time states: "The ... government says it will not repay any salary to federal public servants who were suspended since October because of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.” This was at the time the mandate was being lifted. This was after months of calls for the government to reverse the mandates, not only from me and my colleagues but also from the major public service unions, including PSAC, PIPSC and CAPE. All had filed policy grievances against the employer's vaccine mandate for federal bureaucrats. At the same time, many other countries had released and stopped their mandates, following the advice of the World Health Organization after it said they were not effective. It took the government much too long to reverse these policies after much harm had been done.
I must say that it was not just Conservatives who opposed these divisive policies that had been imposed by the Prime Minister and the government. A few Liberals even had the courage to call out the Prime Minister for his efforts to divide Canadians. The Liberal MP for Louis-Hébert said, "A decision was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize," further saying, “I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions.” Even the former Liberal finance minister admitted that the Prime Minister used vaccines as a political wedge, saying, "I didn't see that as something that was helpful."
Today, millions of Canadians remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. We cannot allow the freedom of millions of people to make their personal medical decisions to ever be compromised again. We cannot discriminate against millions of people for their personal medical choices. We cannot stand in this House and say we stand up for Canadians while leaving out a significant portion of the population.
it is clear that this extreme restriction of freedoms must never happen again. Hopefully we will never see the like of another COVID-19 pandemic, but there could be other similar threats out there, and we need to be prepared. It cannot be our main line of defence against a pandemic to arbitrarily limit the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
This bill, Bill C-278, will help to ensure that. We must not limit employment or travel on the basis of vaccination. We must not limit the operations of our House of Commons or our federal public service or our important industries on the basis of vaccination; it must be down to the individual's choice.
I will share one example of something that happened in my riding of Sarnia—Lambton.
At the beginning of the pandemic, nurses were heroes on the front line. They wore their personal protective equipment and there were no vaccines. Then, subsequently, when the vaccines came forward, there was a vaccine mandate put in place. Even though all the nurses were wearing the same protective equipment and there was no science or evidence that there was any transmission and the unvaccinated ones were being tested every day, which gave even more of a guarantee, the unvaccinated ones were all fired. Four weeks after all the unvaccinated nurses left the facility, there was an outbreak of COVID-19 among the COVID-vaccinated nurses. What was accomplished was misery in many people's lives and nothing positive whatsoever.
It is time to replace the fear sowed by the Liberals with a new hope. We must take these lessons learned and enshrine them into law. We can have a Canada where personal medical choice is protected, a Canada with productive and profitable trade and travel. We can bring it home to your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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Madam Speaker, I do not really know what to think of the slogan from the members opposite, “My home, your home, bring it home”, or what they are really trying to get at. However, at the end of the day, it is definitely not about freedoms. They should look in the mirror and talk about women's rights and quite possibly apply that same principle of freedom.
I am thinking in terms of what we have witnessed over the last few years. I believe that Canadians from coast to coast to coast have come together and recognized that, as the world went into this pandemic, it was going to take a team approach. I want to acknowledge the sacrifices that were made by virtually everyone in dealing with the pandemic.
In listening to the comments from members opposite, we heard a lot about the sacrifices that were made, some very personal. They dealt with deaths, births and everything in between. I want to acknowledge that at the very beginning and commend the actions of Canadians as a whole.
My colleague made reference to Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister, and quoted what he had said. Before I expand on that, I want to make reference to the fact that, as a national government, right from the very beginning, we were clear that we would have the backs of Canadians—
An hon. member: What did John Manley say?
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- Jun/20/23 6:28:22 p.m.
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Order. I want to remind members that there are no questions and comments during this part of the debate. I would ask them to hold on to their thoughts. If they wish to debate this, they may put their names up when I call for resuming debate.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Madam Speaker, what Canadians knew and understood was that, whether it was the Prime Minister, the cabinet, members of the Liberal caucus or others, we made it very clear that we would have the backs of Canadians going through this pandemic. We took a team Canada approach, as we worked with provinces, territories, indigenous leaders and many other stakeholders at a time when we needed the country to come together. Therefore, when former prime minister Brian Mulroney ultimately provided the compliment to the Prime Minister and the government, I think that same principle applied. As a government, we did a good job, but it was a collective good job. It was Ottawa working at its best with the different stakeholders, and we made a difference. Lives were saved as a direct result. A lot more time was saved with people not having to be in hospitals—
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The hon. member will have seven minutes the next time this matter is before the House.
The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.
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Madam Speaker, I am returning after the hour of PMB. I would like to thank my colleague from Niagara West for presenting that piece of legislation to the House. I would also like to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies.
I left off saying that, for many reasons, I am very concerned about the direction of Bill C-18, for the reason that it would create risks to the independence of the press. My conclusion from all the items I listed prior to coming to that conclusion was a larger conclusion, which is that the government likes to control everything.
I gave some examples that were provided to me through different media sources, and I will continue some of those examples now. This is very interesting commentary that Canadians have left on the Substack of Michael Geist, and these comments include the following: “I wonder if the Liberals view C18 as a win-win situation. If Google and Facebook pay then the media will be more likely to support the Liberals in the next election.”
We have seen this happen before, of course, where the Liberals pay the media and then it feels compelled to report positively on the government of the day. In fact, we just heard the deputy House leader make reference to an article. We know, not off the top, if this journalist would have been subject to this type of situation, whereby they felt compelled to print something positive about the government of the day.
Another comment reads:
The potential consequences of this bill are deeply concerning. Even its supporters acknowledge the serious flaws that could lead to significant losses for Canadian media, including lost links and deals. The fact that the government is willing to silence criticism from local media organizations raises alarm bells about the lack of accountability and transparency surrounding this legislation.
This is similar to what we saw with Bill C-11. The comment goes on:
If passed as it stands, it could result in reduced access to news for Canadians and diminished revenues for Canadian news organizations. It is crucial that we address these issues and strive for a balanced solution that supports the sustainability of Canadian media while preserving the public’s right to information.
Another comment off the Substack of Michael Geist, who has been a strong commentator on the negative aspects of Bill C-18, is from a Canadian named Brian, who writes:
Haha. The driving of the final nail into the Canadian news media coffin has begun. Once the referrals to news sites from social media and web searches stops, so will the traffic to those sites stop and so will the advertising revenue they enjoy from that traffic. The last revenue stream for those news organizations will dry up faster than a puddle of water in the Sahara desert.
Michael Geist himself makes a comment, which is really damning, on the government cutting off debate, which is nothing new for us. Unfortunately, we have experienced time allocation several times in the House. He says, “The government cut off debate at second reading, actively excluded dozens of potential witnesses”; this is pretty par for the course as well. It “expanded the bill to hundreds of broadcasters that may not even produce news,” which is interesting considering that they accuse us over here of providing misinformation. It “denigrated online news services as ‘not real news’, and shrugged off violations of international copyright law.” This is a larger problem altogether.
In fact, I believe it was the member for Hamilton Mountain who said the quiet part out loud in committee by claiming that online news outlets were not news. That is news to me. After apologizing, she never spoke up again at committee, but she chose not to maintain her silence in the House today.
DB writes, “After Bill C11 and C18 why should anyone trust this government? It's clear they value the interests of media organizations over the interests of Canadians.” That is my point, as I go to close here. The Liberal government wants to control everything. It wants to control our democratic systems, as we have seen with its hesitancy to do anything about the situation regarding foreign interference and call a public inquiry. It wants to control the cycle of our economy, keeping Canadians in poverty with higher taxation but giving back tiny bits. It wants to control our day care systems, in terms of providing no solutions for different types of families and taking away work from female entrepreneurs.
The good news is, in the member for Carleton, we will have a prime minister that will allow for freedom, and we will see all these things go the way of the dodo bird.
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Madam Speaker, I have an unbelievable fact. Here is what the Conservative Party said:
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.
They even make reference to Australia and France. This is what the legislation is doing. I heard the critic say, “Do not answer it.” I hope she does answer.
At the end of the day, how does the member justify going to her constituents, campaigning on doing what Bill C-18 is doing and, then, voting against it? It sounds as though the member is either being intimidated by giant tech or just selling out with the rest of her party.
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Madam Speaker, it is pretty rich for this individual to talk about intimidation when it was his leader, in fact, who intimidated such women as Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Celina Caesar-Chavannes.
Unlike the media after this has passed, I speak freely, and I will continue to do so.
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Madam Speaker, for the past few years, Google and Facebook alone have been gobbling up 80% of the advertising revenue in Canada that used to go to small regional weeklies, small community radio stations like the ones in my riding, and small community television stations, which I have in my riding as well. That money is no longer going to the regions, small weeklies or small news producers, it is going to large international billionaire conglomerates.
I really cannot understand how the Conservatives can rise in the House today and defend these billionaires, who are going to continue to make billions if we do not legislate to stop them. We have to work for our journalists, our weeklies, the people in our regions who produce news for local residents. I really cannot understand how the Conservatives can stand up and do this.
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Mr. Speaker, what I find really interesting is that Facebook has said it will no longer share news on its platform once Bill C‑18 passes. That means that news and local media will no longer have a voice. That includes Quebec media.
I think that it is very important for my colleague to consider the impact of Bill C‑18. The fact that Facebook will no longer share local news will have an impact on Quebec.
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Madam Speaker, we know that the majority of the Conservatives' Bill C-18 amendments side with web giants to give them loopholes and stronger negotiating powers, instead of supporting Canada's news media. That is not a surprise, because we know the Conservatives are all about big business, big media and the ultrawealthy.
Would the member explain why your party consistently neglects to protect small—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Ms. Leah Gazan: Point of order, Madam Speaker—
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- Jun/20/23 6:40:30 p.m.
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I have already called out the member once today. I do not think she wants me to call her out again about the heckling.
I want to remind the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre that she should address all questions and comments through the Chair and not directly to the member.
The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.
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Madam Speaker, I think Canadians expect more from us than to act like goons in the House of Commons.
Would the member explain why her party consistently neglects to protect small start-up independent online publishers and news media outlets in Canada?
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Madam Speaker, I am certain the member for Winnipeg Centre was not referring to my colleagues as goons. I am sure she has more respect for her fellow members in the House than that.
The member and her party are the ones in the coalition with the government of big business, the government that gave money to Loblaws, for example. I think that before she accuses the official opposition of such acts, she should really take a look at who she is in bed with first.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-18 tonight.
The question I have for Canadians watching this evening is this: Does the Prime Minister want to control what they see and hear about him on the Internet? My colleagues have already mentioned what the Prime Minister has done, with previous examples. Jody Wilson-Raybould is a classic example of trying to control people in this House. He has also overlooked foreign interference to win elections, frozen the bank accounts of protesters and established mandates. There are countless other things showing that the Prime Minister's ultimate goal is control. He is not quite comfortable unless he has full control.
The predecessor to Bill C-18 is Bill C-11, the way I see it. Legislatively, the Prime Minister has already implemented a censorship bill. It has been called that by many people, including the Conservatives, and he rammed it through the House. I became very familiar with the previous iterations of this bill, Bill C-10 and Bill C-11, and he has now censored by law, through the CRTC, user-generated content. He wants to control it. He might not like the video that I post on YouTube. Freedom of speech still reigns in this country for now, but the Prime Minister may say he does not really like what the member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies is saying, so off he goes and he can no longer be on YouTube or social media.
We already see that the Prime Minister is gaining control by censoring Canadians, but let us look at what Bill C-18 would do, not in an opposite way but in another corner of what censorship does. This is by influencing what big media have on their newscasts.
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The question is on censorship and what the Prime Minister considers he is doing in a positive way to influence media in his favour. This is the way I phrase it: Who does not get the money and who gets the money? This is from an article entitled “Sue Gardner: Bill C-18 is Bad for Journalism and Bad for Canada”. On who does not get the money, she says, “This process will benefit big legacy media companies at the expense of startups and indie publishers.” She goes on to say, “Meanwhile, many small and indie publishers are actually excluded from C-18; the bill excludes operations that employ fewer than two journalists, and excludes those ‘primarily focused on a particular topic’ in favour of those that make general interest news.”
That is a question we have to ask when talking about control. Small publishers are much harder to control, and big media is a lot easier to control. Just give them millions and billions of dollars and away we go.
Let us talk about who is getting the money. The same article says:
If news organizations became dependent on money from the platforms to sustain their operations, as they surely would with the passage of Bill C-18, this dependence would create an incentive for them to pull their punches in how they covered the platforms.
That is an example where media might say it does not want to go after someone because, after all, they are writing the cheques.
What is even more concerning, based on what I have alluded to regarding the control of big tech, is the control of government. This is from the same article:
For journalism to be trusted, it needs to be—and perceived to be—independent from government, and willing and able to be critical of government.... Bill C-18 deepens government involvement in the industry. This creates an incentive for the industry to be soft on the government, and it will further reduce trust in journalism.
That is not from me; that is from this writer. They continue: “And anything that reduces trust in journalism is dangerous—especially right now.”
I started by talking about who gets the money. Let us look at what the money looks like.
I have an article by Samantha Edwards entitled “What to know about Bill C-18, the proposed law that could affect Canadian news publishers”. It states:
A report from the PBO said of the around $329-million the bill would generate for news outlets, around $247-million would go to broadcasters such as the CBC, Bell, Shaw and Rogers.... “The fact that three-quarters of the money will be going to broadcasters, some of which are the richest companies in Canada, plus the public broadcasters which are heavily subsidized already, undermines the government’s whole premise of the bill”....
What is the temptation? I have already talked about it. The temptation, of course, is about somebody writing cheques for millions and billions of dollars: Is the media going to be as truthful to the public as it should be when reporting about them? What is its first goal? Is it to provide news and truthfulness to Canadians? Right now, the government is saying that if the media wants a big cheque, they have to say this or that. We know the Prime Minister is already about control and wants to control what people say about him. Will he use this as a heavy stick? I believe he will.
We have already talked about the control that Bill C-11 gave to the CRTC. The CRTC is influenced by the Prime Minister and cabinet. It says it clearly right in the bill. I have an article from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute entitled “Extortion, Dependency and Media Welfare—The Liberals’ Bill C-18”. About halfway through, it states, “Those in favour have no qualms about creating a news media industry permanently dependent upon the good graces of the two most imposing powers in the lives of citizens these days: Big Tech and Big Government.” As a former chair of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, I saw how powerful big tech was and is, and the government working together with these guys is a really scary thing for those who care about freedom in the country. I will go on: “All involved will huff and puff self-servingly, while the [Prime Minister's] government happily renders media companies ever-more dependent on federal funding.”
It is not me saying this but articles that are concerned about the very same measures that this controlling Prime Minister, who has already implemented a censorship bill, is now trying to use to covet those two big entities so as to have the narrative go his way.
One interesting bit of testimony I saw when I was doing some research, because I knew I would be speaking to this, was from Liberal Senator Paula Simons in her speech from the Senate debate. Here is a clearly Liberal senator, a former media person, who is very concerned about what this bill brings if passed. I will read a couple of her quotes.
“More than that, I’m asking if it’s wise. How independent can the Canadian news media be if they are so deeply beholden to the goodwill and future economic success of two foreign corporations?” She is referring to big tech in this instance.
She goes on to quote Mr. Greenspon, from 2021, at a Senate committee: “...inviting the platforms to negotiate deals with individual publishers can badly distort the information marketplace. People have expressed concerns for decades that advertisers influence news agendas.” This is exactly what I have been saying. This is a person who has been in the industry her whole life. He went on: “They have massive public policy agendas of their own, including tax policy, regulatory oversight, data, et cetera.... You are here to strengthen the independent press, not to create new dependencies.”
Here is another quote from the senator: “And are we comfortable giving unprecedented new regulatory powers to the CRTC to intervene in the business of print journalism and to require mandatory media codes of ethics, given the free press has never before been subject in any way to the authority of the CRTC?”
I will finish with this. Who controls the CRTC? We already heard that it is cabinet and the Prime Minister. Members heard my question, the question that I started with: Does the Prime Minister want to control what we see and hear about him on the Internet? Absolutely, yes.
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Madam Speaker, talk about being paranoid.
It is interesting. The member talked about Bill C-11 and how the government wants to censor everything. He then went on to Bill C-18 and said we are going pay off the media so that the media will give us nothing but positive stories. The real manoeuvre, no doubt, is the fact that we were able to fool the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens into supporting the Liberals in bringing all of this together to pass this kind of legislation so that the Prime Minister of Canada would be almighty and powerful. That is the type of tinfoil hat talk that I think we are seeing across the way.
Does the hon. member really believe what he is talking about? Is this the type of thing he is promoting through his social media?
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