44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
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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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to pick up where we left off last night.
I have to say I was a little disappointed. We had a great opportunity to debate Bill C‑18 last night, but we were cut off at about 6:30 p.m. in the middle of my speech. I had about 12 minutes to go. The classy thing to do would have been to let me finish my speech before interrupting the proceedings. Let us not talk about that right now. Let us talk about Bill C‑18 for the time we have left because, as everyone knows, the House just voted in favour of time allocation.
During the debates on Bill C‑18, there was a lot of talk about money. Basically, people talked about the financial difficulties news outlets have been experiencing for decades, ever since the web giants came on the scene and helped themselves to the lion's share of advertising revenue. People have talked a lot about money, which is certainly important because that is the crux of the matter, obviously. That is what news outlets need in order to succeed and keep providing the essential service they provide: high-quality, independent, fact-checked, thorough information; essentially, news that meets recognized journalistic standards.
Bill C‑18 will benefit the news sector. It will most likely help save many news businesses. That is the objective of the bill, and I think that it will largely achieve that objective. Today, I also wanted to talk about something else that Bill C‑18 will help preserve or even save, and that is journalism itself. We have heard all kinds of things about eligible news businesses and which businesses would benefit more than others from this bill and from the regulations and regulatory framework that will be put in place by Bill C‑18. However, we are forgetting to define and discuss journalism itself.
With the advent of social media and digital platforms, it is true that we have seen the emergence of new types of news media, new types of businesses, new ways of disseminating information. However, we have also seen more news businesses engaging in what we might call advocacy journalism. In some cases, it could even be described as activist journalism, a form of journalism that involves embracing a cause and using the medium to provide news to the public in a way that is biased in favour of that cause. One example would be environmental journalism. We agree that the cause is worthy, but environmental journalists will always deliver the news with an activist slant. I have nothing against that, but is that journalism in the true sense of the word? No, not really, in the same way that a certain type of media outlet might have a political bent. I know some people will say that CBC/Radio-Canada has a pro-government, pro-Liberal bias.
What is journalism, really? Journalism is a profession that demands a lot of meticulous work and a lot of passion. It has certain standards, certain rules that I would hazard to say are accepted around the world. Its first guiding principle is independence. What does independence mean for journalism and for journalists? It means the ability to work unfettered by the influence of a government, company, movement or cause. That is what journalistic independence means. The second guiding principle is handling the news in a meticulous way. That means having an almost obsessive passion for truth-seeking and fact-checking, while remaining objective.
The other guiding principle is respect for individuals and groups and respect in handling sources.
These are the guiding principles of the journalism profession. I am not saying that advocacy journalism, activist journalism or opinion journalism are bad. However, they are not necessarily what we are trying to protect through Bill C‑18. That is why we included eligibility criteria in Bill C‑18. News outlets eligible under the regulatory framework proposed by Bill C‑18 will have to espouse a code of ethics. The code in question may not necessarily mirror the journalistic standards and practices of CBC/Radio-Canada or the ethics guide of the Quebec Press Council. However, the media outlet would need a code, even one scribbled on a piece of paper, that reflects its commitment to complying with the guiding principles of journalism.
I think this should offer some comfort to people who think that Bill C‑18 will favour certain large media outlets that they believe show a bias for the government and could act as a conduit for the government's opinions.
I do not think that what I am about to say will be a big surprise to members who did not participate in the debates on Bill C-18. My Conservative friends were not very supportive of this bill and they do not generally like what we call the mainstream media, the major news media outlets. I am talking about traditional media companies like CBC/Radio-Canada, Vidéotron, Bell Media and Québecor, of course. I am talking about these major companies that produce the news. The Conservatives find them biased because, in general, they take positions that are not relayed as the Conservatives would like, for all sorts of reasons. Generally, the populist spin gets filtered out in the mainstream media, which adopt journalistic standards and adhere to broad journalistic principles.
I will now digress briefly, since we are talking about CBC/Radio-Canada. I know someone who has worked in the news service for a good part of his career and who received complaints from the public. On the French side, Quebec separatists have often accused Radio-Canada of being federalist and not reporting the news or doing so in a biased way when it comes to the separatist cause. Conversely, Quebec federalists find that Radio-Canada is a gang of separatists. This person I know told me that when it comes to the news, if he receives the same number of complaints from people who complain that they are being too federalist relative to those who complain that they are being too separatist, he feels that they did a good job, that they worked objectively and that they were “on the right track,” as my friend, the House leader of the Bloc Québécois and member for La Prairie might say. In short, it is all a matter of perception.
However, there is something that is different about the mainstream media. I do not want to advocate for CBC/Radio-Canada, but in general, these major media companies are objective. Obviously we see biases from time to time, but not serious ones. These major media outlets must change course and correct the situation when they make a mistake, when they err, when they are, for example, partisan, or biased, or handle a news item badly. They all have mechanisms for receiving complaints, processing them and making retractions as needed. Knowing how to make retractions after recognizing that a mistake was made is also one of the major principles of journalism.
I am talking about mainstream media, but I also spoke earlier about the new media, new forms of news media that we have seen emerge, media of all kinds. There is a lot of opinion news, as I said. I wondered whether these media had to be neglected. The answer is obviously no.
Changes are happening in the news sector. Everyone acknowledged that when we studied Bill C‑18. A lot has changed. The fact is that news companies need to adapt, transition to digital technologies and make sure they reach people where they are.
Consumer habits have changed in recent years when it comes to the news. People get their news on social media. They go on Facebook, for example, or they search for a particular piece of news or subject using Google. These are now the ways we get our news. What is more, these outlets and general content companies sell huge amounts of advertising, since 80% of advertising is said to now be in the digital sector. I think it is normal that these outlets and these companies, which profit heavily from the news sector and the content generated by newsrooms, contribute to the content they are benefiting from. It is the least they can do.
I am well aware of the fact that Bill C‑18 will not solve all the issues with the news sector, the media in general and culture, the latter being addressed more specifically in Bill C‑11. Bill C‑18 will not solve everything. There will still be problems and challenges. In my opinion, it is normal that governments come to the aid of a sector as fragile as the news sector. It is a fragile sector, but it is essential.
Clearly, we will need more tools to help the media. That is obvious. The fund the Bloc Québécois is proposing would be a very effective tool, allowing us to collect royalties from the digital giants that are making outrageous profits and use them to support more fragile media, such as regional media. I think that would be a good solution.
Once again, the Bloc Québécois is the party proposing solutions rather than simply opposing suggestions and obstructing Parliament. I would be very pleased to discuss this with my colleagues and to make a more detailed proposal to the government.
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Madam Speaker, I was so eager to hear the end of my colleague's speech because he is proposing solutions. In the Bloc Québécois, we do not just pick fights. We propose solutions and stay positive.
Now, we know that there is filibustering going on. We know that the official opposition does not support this bill. However, the committee heard from Mr. Sims, the father of the Australian bill. Yes, there were fears following that bill, but there are things that Bill C-18 fixes.
Can my colleague tell us how this interview with Mr. Sims went and why Mr. Sims was unable to convince everyone?
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- Jun/20/23 1:43:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very entertained by my hon. colleague's speech, but I was wondering when he might discuss Bill C-18.
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- Jun/20/23 2:00:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will speak to this now. In fact, when the Speaker thought the member was heckling and asked her to stop, she did not continue to do so. She was speaking to a colleague. However, when we consider the outrageous interruptions that came from the member who just spoke and the member for Kingston and the Islands during our leader's four-hour speech recently, when they would not allow him to even get through what he had to say minute to minute, we are talking about the acceptance of an apology that was given when demanded. It was accepted that the language that was spoken had been unparliamentary, and the apology was given. It is not consistent ruling for the member for Lethbridge to be told she cannot participate in debates afterward.
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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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Madam Speaker, I have that ATIP right here. I did research this before making that speech and I think it is very convenient that the member read out one sentence of the entire document.
What is specifically in here is reference to a whole host of grievances that have been put into the ATIP. To extract that one sentence to mean the Prime Minister is being investigated for a particular incident is an exaggeration. I know that the Conservatives know this too, because they did not once bring it up in question period today. If the Conservatives thought there was a scandal to be had, can anyone imagine them just sitting on their hands over there and pretending it does not exist? Why will the member not bring it up in question period?
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Madam Speaker, that is why this legislation is before the House. It is here specifically for the purpose of trying to give those resources to those news organizations. In my speech, I spent five minutes describing a set of conditions yesterday that led to a wild spread of misinformation. We need this legislation to help combat that kind of stuff.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I was in the middle of my speech and just learned the reason I was summarily cut off, censored, from speaking to the online censorship bill.
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