Senator Housakos: If I understand correctly, senator, you’re essentially saying that journalists need these platforms in order to magnify their work and have more reach. By the same token, they would like to quantify how much monetization is out there in order for them to get their share. That’s the problem.

This is where I’m not quite sure if this bill achieves that goal, and I’m not quite sure how you actually put a number on it.

To go back to copyright, my understanding — I’m not a copyright expert — is the moment the journalist puts out — into the public sphere — their article, for example, then they’ve made it public. It’s being disseminated on all these platforms with their consent because, to your point, they want to magnify their article.

In both those cases, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You either jump into that milieu or you don’t — where I come from.

[Translation]

Senator Miville-Dechêne: In a nutshell, we don’t know the value of this content shared on the internet.

As we speak, a lot of private deals are being struck between Google and certain Canadian media outlets. We don’t know the value of these contracts, but we do know that Google, faced with the “threat” of the coming law, is making deals with the media. The fact that Google is doing this means that it sees value in doing it. In our capitalist world, few private companies make deals if they don’t feel the need to do so.

In a way, the platforms are admitting that this journalistic content has value. Based on the rumours we’ve heard, we know that most of the agreements currently require the payment of 30% of the cost pertaining to journalists, based on the number of journalists on staff.

Still, you’re quite right in saying that there is too little transparency in this bill and a lot of unknowns. At some point, the hammer will fall. The government will want to know how many agreements there are and will wonder if that is enough for the law not to apply, as was the case in Australia. Then there will be a race because Google does not want legislation, does not want arbitration and does not want agreements to be imposed either. The government is betting on the platforms — and Facebook does not seem to be doing this — signing agreements before the law goes into force, because that way, the law will not apply. That is what the Government of Australia and the Government of Canada are betting on.

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, on January 12, Postmedia, the country’s largest newspaper chain, released its first-quarter fiscal update. The quarter begins in September and ends November 30, and it has traditionally been the most lucrative one for Canadian newspapers since it includes the back‑to-school period, Black Friday and the run-up to Christmas. But, this quarter, Postmedia’s numbers were bleak — a net loss of $15.9 million.

Twelve days later, the other shoe dropped. The company announced that it would be laying off 11% of its editorial staff across the chain. That means paring already gutted newsrooms right down to the bare bones.

Those cuts weren’t the only blow. Staff at the biggest Prairie newspapers — the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun; the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun; and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and the Regina Leader-Post — were told that they would never come back to their once-vibrant newsrooms again. The newsrooms have closed. The few staff remaining will work from home, as they have been since the start of the pandemic.

The Calgary Herald building, a hilltop landmark, has been sold to U-Haul. It’s almost too on the nose to be real. The Saskatoon and Regina buildings are also for sale.

Now, Postmedia has a complicated lease agreement, which means it can’t divest itself of its Edmonton site so easily. For now, the elegant five-storey building, which sits on one of downtown Edmonton’s most historic corners, stands empty and abandoned — a ghostly reminder of the days when newspapers were powerful forces for community and democratic good.

Of course, it’s not only Prairie papers that are in trouble. Postmedia papers in St. Thomas, Sarnia and Owen Sound, Ontario, are now publishing only three days a week. And just this week came the parallel announcement that New Brunswick’s major papers — the Telegraph-Journal, Moncton’s Times & Transcript and Fredericton’s Daily Gleaner — would be daily no more, publishing only thrice weekly.

These papers — like so many across the world — have had their economic model derailed by digital disruption. Their advertisers, large and small, have moved to online sites, such as Craigslist, Kijiji, Autotrader, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Google and Facebook. Their subscribers have stopped paying — either because they were happy to get their news for free online, or because they could no longer see the value in paying more and more for papers that were shrinking and shrinking each passing year. More than that, local newspapers are facing fierce online competition for their readers’ attention. Once upon a time, papers had regional monopolies — not just on advertising, but on our time and our interest.

Today, Canadians can access the news of the world in real time, whether their tastes run to The Guardian, Le Monde and The Washington Post, or to Fox News and the Daily Mail. Whatever your taste, there’s a news site for you. You are no longer limited to getting your news from your daily paper, your hometown radio station or your local supper-hour TV newscast.

Meanwhile, new digital competitors are popping up across the country trying to serve readers who are interested in specific topics or specific points of view. Many of these publish award‑winning journalism about the climate — about Parliament, about social and technological issues — but they have a reach and an ecumenicism that they cannot match that of the broadsheet daily paper.

In some ways, Canadians have never had as many options to be informed. Information from around the world is literally at our fingertips. But, in other ways, we have never known less about what is going on in our own cities and towns without local reporters to cover city council and school board meetings, without local investigative journalists digging into local scandals, without local feature writers telling local stories.

And so now we have before us Bill C-18, which is designed to throw a lifeline to struggling news sites, large and small, all across the country. The premise is deceptively, intoxicatingly simple. Google and Facebook have lots of money. As Senator Miville-Dechêne has told us, they have pockets full of it. They dominate the Canadian advertising economy. The government estimates that those two companies alone command 80% of Canada’s advertising market, and they surely share links to Canadian news sites — links they don’t pay for. So why not ask them to pony up to support the newspapers, newscasts and news sites because advertising revenues have evaporated?

The bill requires Facebook and Google to enter into negotiations with news organizations: from the very largest, to tiny papers with owner operators, to Indigenous and campus radio stations. If they can reach private agreements, they will be exempted from the bill’s provisions. But if those exemptions are not granted, companies will be required to enter into binding, final offer arbitration.

It’s a tempting proposition, especially when promises are being thrown about that Bill C-18 will force Google and Facebook to pay for 20 to 30, even — as Senator Harder suggested this week; the first I have heard that number — a full 35% of the operating costs of Canadian newsrooms. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, perhaps more modestly, has estimated that the program should bring in about $329.2 million a year.

But the idea that we can or should force two American tech giants to underwrite the independent news upon which Canadians rely is a logical and ethical fallacy. The bill seems premised on a core proposition that the reason print media outlets have lost their revenues is that Google and Facebook are somehow stealing news stories and then monetizing them to sell ads, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how digital advertising markets work.

Facebook’s algorithm privileges content that generates engagement, and a story about the Kamloops school board or a Senate debate isn’t sexy or juicy enough to do the job. Sadly, yes. A 2021 study for Nieman Lab found that less than 4% of posts viewed in the Facebook news feed actually linked to news stories, and since then Facebook — pivoting to video to fend off the challenge of TikTok — has retooled its algorithm to show people even less news.

Jean-Hugues Roy, Professor of Journalism and Media Economics at Université du Québec à Montréal, estimates that Facebook made $198.8 million in revenues stemming from Canadian journalistic content in 2022, but that was actually down from $210 million in 2021.

Professor Roy posits that, of that sum, about $99.4 million could be shared with the Canadian news industry. But even that rather rosy estimate will be far from enough to subsidize the costs of newsrooms across the country — and especially not if that sum keeps declining.

For its part, Google doesn’t post ads on its news site at all. Google News makes no money. It’s really there as a loss leader to keep people on the site longer.

It’s not that Google and Facebook benefit hugely from sharing news: They get little or no direct economic benefit from sharing news content.

Google and Facebook are advertising behemoths who dominate the internet and the advertising market with an unrivalled and unprecedented power. According to the Transnational Institute, in 2021 Google was the most visited website in the world, with monthly traffic of 92.5 billion visits. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the second most visited site, with 34.6 billion monthly visits. Facebook comes third, with 25.5 billion visitors a month.

The only Canadian website that ranks in the top 20? Pornhub, with 3.3 billion visitors a month, gives them the peculiar distinction of attracting more views than Reddit or Bing.

Yes, Google and Facebook have a stranglehold on eyeballs and advertisers. I’m not asking for you to sympathize with them. I’m just asking whether it’s sensible to demand that they underwrite Canadian newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and news sites, including tiny websites whose work is almost never shared or indexed on those social media platforms at all.

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?

Back in June 2021 when we were debating Senator Carignan’s Bill S-225, a bill with parallels to Bill C-18, our Transportation and Communications Committee heard from the witness Edward Greenspon, the former editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail, who was by then the President and CEO of the Public Policy Forum.

Here’s what Mr. Greenspon told us in 2021:

. . . 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. In fact, it was rare to find an advertiser that had enough of a market share, more than 1% or 2% of a publisher’s total revenues, to do so. In contrast, I can well imagine a platform accounting for 10% or more of a news organization’s revenue under this system. They have massive public policy agendas of their own, including tax policy, regulatory oversight, data, et cetera.

He went on to warn us, “You are here to strengthen the independent press, not to create new dependencies.”

We should heed his advice now. With Bill C-18 we are creating an even greater economic dependence and giving Google and Facebook even more power than they already have over what we read and what we see — and, indeed, what we think.

The mechanisms proposed in Bill C-18 render us even more vulnerable to their corporate decisions, decisions over which Canadians will have absolutely no control.

As we watch the slow-motion meltdown of Twitter, accelerated this week, it seems to me naive — nay, foolhardy — to assume that Google and Facebook will be golden geese whose golden eggs can sustain our free press in perpetuity. If and when Google and Facebook are no longer cool or fashionable or trustworthy, where will that leave us?

I have many other questions about the bill as we move toward committee study. Realistically, how much will small, rural and ethnocultural or Indigenous papers and radio stations actually benefit from this program even if they negotiate collectively? How much should we want to subsidize large players such as Rogers or Bell Media or failing legacy firms like Postmedia, especially if that makes it harder for innovative start-ups to compete with them?

What guarantees do we have that companies will spend their subsidies to increase news coverage as a net increase as opposed to paying down debt or rewarding their executives? Is it reasonable, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated, for CBC and Radio-Canada — already funded by the government — to receive, by far, the largest share of this new money? What will be the impact on our respect for copyright law and the principles of fair use and to our obligation under the Berne Convention, given Bill C-18’s somewhat cavalier hand waving away of traditional copyright protocols?

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?

My friends, I was a professional journalist in this country for 30 years. I believe that responsible journalism is essential to the health of a civil society. It’s easy to look at the crisis in Canadian journalism and exclaim, “Something must be done!”

Well, this is something, but what will it actually do? Not, I fear, what we would like.

Thank you, hiy hiy.

Hon. Colin Deacon: Would my seatmate kindly take a question?

Senator Simons: I have contemplated it long and hard. Here is the challenge: Many of these small independent sites are struggling for market share both in terms of readers and advertisers because they are competing with the legacy dinosaurs, shall we say.

There is a strong argument to be made that if you prop up traditional broadsheet newspapers with a failing business model, you will inhibit the capacity of new competitors to come into the marketplace. On the other hand, as I said in my speech, some of those new competitors serve rather niche markets and do not give the broad community coverage that a local daily newspaper did. I’m very torn and I think those companies are too. Some of them initially came out quite critically of Bill C-18 and the premise that they will have to somehow band together — because there are no newspaper unions in this country. They will have to find other similarly situated companies and come together as a collective and then go together to negotiate with Facebook and Google.

How will they pull those collectives together? Do they have the legal bench strength to go toe to toe with two of the world’s largest corporations? It is a very interesting question.

Some of those small publications have already made successful deals with Google — more with Google than with Facebook — but they have made successful deals to showcase their work. Whether those deals are going to get ripped up now and whether Google and Facebook are actually going to be less likely to be supportive are very good questions. We just do not know yet.

Senator Simons: I would love another five minutes, with the indulgence of the chamber.

Senator Simons: That is a very good question. I wish I could answer in French, but I think it would be better for everyone if I answered in English. It will be easier for both of us.

[English]

You are right. I have also been critical of the idea of the government funding journalism through the local journalism fund.

It is a very difficult proposition to have an independent press that is reliant on government subsidies, no matter how arm’s-length they are.

It is also very problematic to have newspapers be so dependent upon two corporations instead of on the traditional subscriber base and traditional advertisers.

I have spoken with academics such as Vivek Krishnamurthy at the University of Ottawa, who suggests that the more appropriate model would have been tax credits — very robust and generous tax credits, so that if you subscribe to a Canadian publication, online or in print, you would get money back. And if you were an advertiser and you placed your advertising in your local weekly newspaper or your local daily newspaper or on your local radio station, you might also get a subsidy back from that. That would allow consumers of news and purchasers of advertising to vote with their eyes and vote with their feet and have there be a direct correlation between what people want to read and what people want to support and getting money back from the government so that it sort of — it washes the money, like Pontius Pilate.

We have painted ourselves into this corner. I have spoken recently with publishers of small-town community newspapers who are in despair because one of the bread-and-butters of their market was that the local town would advertise in the local paper. If you had a bylaw hearing, if you were announcing some city change, the town spent money in the local town paper. Now they do not do that. They buy a much cheaper ad online or they don’t even buy an ad; they just make a post on Facebook. As a result, if we do not support our local media, it dies. If we are going to make a choice in this country that we do not care about having local news, then that is exactly what we’ll end up with, with no local news.

I also met a couple of weeks ago with Jordan Bitove, the new owner and publisher of The Toronto Star, a very big name in the Toronto business community, who said that he is knocking on the door of the big banks and the big car companies, saying, “Hey, put your display advertising back in the paper because if you don’t, there won’t be a paper.”

We have choices to make too, and I’m not sure that we have made the right ones.

Hon. Patricia Bovey: Senator, I wonder if you would take a question?

Senator Cotter: I would be pleased to, Senator Bovey.

Senator Bovey: Thank you for sponsoring this bill. I think it’s a very important one — you and I have talked about some of the issues our Canadian colleagues face.

You mentioned that the federal-provincial agreements are to be made so there won’t be clawbacks. I wonder if you can confirm that, based on the discussions you’ve had with the minister. As you know, I’ve been working with one young person with a contract from my office, and it was to be clawed back by the Manitoba government by two thirds. We managed to extend the contract, so it was only clawed back by one third. I fear that what we’re paying is far from close to a living wage.

I would really appreciate more discussion, if you can, regarding what the ceasing of these clawbacks would be so that the federal funds can really top up their financial situations.

Senator Cotter: Thank you for the question, Senator Bovey. I know that you — and many other senators in this place, and members of Parliament in the other place — are often working on an individualized basis to assist people with disabilities in order to minimize their vulnerability and enable them to get ahead in the world.

The messages I hear from the minister and her office are that a — kind of — line in the sand is no clawbacks. As you will know, a lot of this has been delivered through provincial jurisdictions. These will be direct payments to people within federal authority.

A lot of the provincial regimes differ from one another. In some places, the situation you described could exist, but in another province, perhaps, it doesn’t — but something else might create a challenge. The receipt of money triggers other unfortunate moderations and consequences.

I think those will probably end up being negotiated on an individualized, federal-provincial-territorial basis so that the fit achieves the goal of, essentially, no clawbacks — no loss as a result of the generosity of this benefit, which will be significant in dollar terms when it’s put together.

I can’t tell you more in detail, except that there is this — kind of — line-in-the-sand commitment on the part of the federal minister. I’m supportive of that, and, as I’ve said, if there are ways that I can help both the minister and provincial leaders make that fit together, then I’m keen to do it, and I think it will be a success.

I hope it will occur in a really timely way. Your passage of this bill would officially unlock that process.

Thank you.

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Harder, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator Bellemare, for the second reading of Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.

Hon. Pat Duncan: Thank you, Senator Cotter, for your sponsorship of this bill. I appreciate the intent, as you’ve so eloquently described, and I have full respect for our colleagues in the other place.

Because you mentioned in your speech that you’ve pored over all the documents, the testimony and so on, as well as pored through the bill, my question is as follows: Where in the federal‑provincial-territorial consultations do the Workers’ Compensation Boards, which are independent of government, fit?

I’m thinking of a long-term claimant with something, such as a diagnosis of PTSD, where sometimes you will get the Workers’ Compensation Board saying, “No, you’re fit to return to work, or we’re done; you’ve reached the limit.” Yet a doctor would still diagnose that person with a disability.

Would this be of assistance to them? Is this subject to the clawback? Where does that consultation fit?

Senator Cotter: I’m not very knowledgeable on the specifics about the link to workers’ compensation, but I do know that there has been consultation and dialogue with — let me call it — the insurance industry. When you think about workers’ compensation as a form of insurance, where workers and employers pay into it, to try to figure out the intersection there as well — and the minister and her office have advised me that they have identified that, and have been working to ensure that people are not damaged by the benefit where they would get here, and it would not undermine benefits to which they’re legitimately entitled to in other ways.

I will make a further exploration about the workers’ compensation point because I think it’s a very good one.

Hon. Éric Forest: My first words will be to thank you from the bottom of my heart for agreeing to sponsor this bill, which is so important and speaks to our values of solidarity and equity.

My concern is a bit on the periphery of the bill because there are still many things to define, including eligibility criteria and what this eligibility will entail. The devil is often in the details, and I hope that this complementary information will be delivered quickly.

In listening to you, we realize that there are persons with disabilities who benefit greatly from the love and support of the people around them, and you yourself are a living example. However, we know that in Canada, more than 10% of taxpayers don’t even file a tax return. Many of those people are isolated and have disabilities. They are the most vulnerable members of our society.

This may not be germane to the bill, but I really want to know if we will be able to create certain tools in order to identify these people. We are currently unable to reach them because we don’t know who they are. What’s more, they get lost in administrative limbo because they don’t file tax returns, yet they’re the most vulnerable people in our society today.

[English]

Senator Cotter: Thank you, Senator Forest. It’s a very legitimate question, and an important one.

One provision of the bill provides access to the bill’s implementation and delivery to income tax information, so people who are obtaining tax credits, for example, will be able to be identified. You are right that there is a black hole of people disconnected from government in all kinds of ways, largely through their impoverished circumstances and disability. I think the bill — if it does not fail — will not achieve its objectives unless it can reach out to those people.

What has happened with respect to this bill and the conversations that have been going on for too long, really, in the last couple of years, in particular, is that the disability communities at the national, provincial and local levels are unbelievably engaged with this bill. I hope, perhaps, with support from the government, there is a way in which outreach can be made to those folks so that they will know about the bill. There’s a commitment in here that making application, and the like, is intended to be disability barrier-free, so hopefully it will be possible through that kind of outreach.

Speaking from my own personal experience with Inclusion Saskatchewan, with whom I’ve worked a little bit over the last number of years, it feels to me, in a really lovely way, that they have their fingers on — I don’t want to say every family in Saskatchewan that has someone with a disability, but I think the local communities know, and their commitment to this bill is so powerful that it won’t be a perfect success; yet, I think, it will be a far greater success than one might think, sitting in Ottawa, reflecting about it.

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Thank you for your speech, senator. Like you, I support the bill. I think it’s much needed.

I am, however, concerned whenever there’s unanimous legislation from the House of Commons. Unfortunately, I base that on years of experience of what I call their manic behaviour. We had the recent pension bill here that, for years, the House of Commons refused to support and then it’s suddenly unanimous.

As you know, it’s not our job to delay this legislation but to make sure that it’s fundamentally sound in the implementation. I mentioned the Veterans Charter when I was first appointed. The House of Commons spent two and a half minutes in total on the legislation. They sent it to us. We sent it to the Department of Finance; we did not send it to the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee. Who doesn’t want to assist the men and women who serve our country? We passed it only to find out years later from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that it shortchanged our veterans by millions and millions of dollars they would have received if it had not been changed.

So, further to the question recently asked, the Guaranteed Income Supplement is an excellent example of a valid program, but in terms of its implementation — many of us worked on it for years. You had to file income tax or, if you don’t owe any taxes, you don’t have to file income taxes. In my home province, hundreds of low-income seniors were not getting a benefit they were entitled to because they didn’t want to pay somebody $50 to file their income tax when they didn’t have the skill set to do so.

Would you share my concern that, notwithstanding the many people saying to pass this, it’s very important that the Senate committee will do the work the House of Commons committees often do not and make sure we have a superb program, with all the wrinkles out of it, before we pass this legislation?

Senator Cotter: I agree entirely with the sentiment you have expressed, Senator Downe. The challenge is to put that together in an organized way.

But in this context, the bill proposes that be done through regulation, so we will not be able to get a very significant parliamentary oversight of that process. It’s intended to be done in as transparent a way as possible, but the construction of it will reside in regulations, I think.

This is my last observation: The result is that we may be comfortable and satisfied — and this is our job — that the markers are right in this bill. I think they’re pretty good. You may identify some that could be better. But it is consciously intended to be a framework. To be frank about it, that places a significant degree of trust in the ministry and the officials to put it together. There’s quite a bit trust that I’m prepared to repose there.

The nice additional thing is the commitment that the disability community will be engaged with that process every step of the way.

[Translation]

Hon. Marty Klyne: Senator Cotter, I have to hearken back to the days of COVID and monies going out in CERB payments, top-ups to social assistance and such. There was a significant problem in some provinces and territories where they did claw back on the social income assistance side of things, which was tragic. I want to support this bill. I’d like to see it go to the people who are eligible for it and not to help the provinces and territories balance their books.

One of the problems the last time was that it took a while for someone of authority, whether it was the minister responsible or the Prime Minister himself, to tell the provinces and territories that this is intended for people with a disability and not for any other purpose. It is not for clawing back. They need to get some agreement in that place so that it is not clawed back. Otherwise, we’re going to be providing false hope. Just by citing this bill in consideration, it’s providing hope. Let’s make sure it’s not false hope.

Senator Cotter: Thank you, Senator Klyne. I took this out of my speech, so maybe I’ll shove it back in to answer you, if I may.

I worked as a deputy minister in a provincial government for a dozen years, and when Ottawa steps forward and provides support for a program or initiative, it’s a natural consequence that provincial departments look for ways they can generate savings for themselves. Provincial ministries of finance have that expectation. It’s almost like the law of gravity, in a way.

For a bill like this, that seems to be bad faith, if I can put it that way. This initiative is to try to help those who are among the most in need in our country, so I’m fully supportive of the minister’s message. I don’t know every little trick that provinces tend to do, and it’s not exactly illegitimate in general terms; provinces have financial obligations to their people, and rightly so, to us, in our own provincial worlds. In this case, I think it would be dishonourable, and it’s important to minimize, and ideally eliminate, that happening in every respect. To the extent I can be helpful regarding that, I’ve indicated a willingness to talk with people and examine the programs that we can ensure stay in place at the provincial level.

I entirely agree with the modest degree of anxiety you’ve identified.

Senator Downe: Thank you, Senator Cotter, for taking so many questions. I think the number of questions is a reflection of the passion senators have to get this legislation absolutely correct.

You talked in response to my earlier question about the framework and the regulations. I think it’s very important and I’m wondering if you share my view that at the committee, that senators on that committee are able to nail down officials from the various government departments on exactly how they intend to proceed.

It has been my experience that the more we have on the record, the more we can pursue after the fact if they’re not doing what they said they would do. Like you, I have a lot of trust that this is going to proceed, but, as accountants like to say, I like to trust and verify and I think that is a way to do that. I hope, given your background, you would be well suited to do that on the committee as well. Are you thinking along those lines as opposed to generic, general questions when it gets to committee?

Senator Cotter: I agree with your observations, Senator Downe. I’m really honoured to be connected with this bill in a meaningful way and I want to be as fully participatory as I can and help to see it produce the best result. Thank you.

Senator Pate: As you’re no doubt aware, along with Senator Petitclerc, I was one of the initiators of the letter that went out from 50 senators, in large part because the government was not acting as they had promised and as had been indicated in the previous budget.

I have no doubt in the faith and the intention of the minister in this respect. I do have significant concerns, however. One of the main issues raised by disability groups initially — and then, in my understanding, they were pushed off and, some would say, pressured to be silent — is on the issue of adequacy. Legal experts also say a key issue not in the bill is adequacy.

While there was a Royal Recommendation on adequacy, when that was raised in the other place, it was deemed out of scope. As Senator Downe and others have said, that seems a little odd when the focus is on bringing people out of poverty and, as you’ve indicated, trying to ensure that people with disabilities not only have enough but that they have an opportunity to thrive in this country.

I’m curious about how you see us best able to support this process, given all of these issues, given the many questions you’ve already been asked around clawbacks, adequacy and access. How do you see us addressing that particular issue when it’s very clear that legal experts seem to agree that our failure to include adequacy could be one of the keys? And many courts have said that, unfortunately, we keep asking people with the least to keep dragging the government back to court to enforce actions. What can we do best to ensure that that’s in there, given the limitations on our ability with respect to fiscal challenges?

Senator Cotter: Beyond trust, which I have quite a reservoir for with respect to this bill, I accept your point, and I would have been probably happier if an amendment had occurred in the other place that made that a little bit stronger. I think it will still get delivered on.

On the question of it being ruled out of scope, I am again out of my depth. Senator Seidman, who is the critic of the bill, and I have talked about the significance and meaning of that. I think that’s deserving of exploration. I just hope it gets done in a timely way and that the question of whether there is a need for the bill to be strengthened along those lines and how that can be done gets meaningful consideration at committee. I am happy with the bill in its present form, but, of course, that’s a call for all senators to make.

[Translation]

Hon. Diane Bellemare: Congratulations on your speech and this bill. This initiative is a credit to you and also to the government. However, my question is the following. Since the bill will be implemented through regulations, how will people with disabilities be assured of receiving a sufficient income? All the bill’s parameters are vague. Why didn’t we decide to create a cost-shared program with the provinces, for example, to ensure that the benefits are adequate?

[English]

Senator Cotter: I don’t have a complete answer on that, Senator Bellemare. On the question of negotiating shared-cost initiatives, those are complex, as you know. My guess is that there is a time for that. My experience in a provincial government was that there are times when the Government of Canada wants to move — let me say unilaterally — to do a good thing, and direct payments are often a model that is embraced in that respect. There are days in the province when I would have liked a different approach, but this seems to be an attractive and more immediate response.

It does require work to make sure that the provinces don’t take advantage of the initiative, because we are talking about, I don’t know how much, but a lot of money that will make its way to people with disabilities. It will actually infuse provincial economies because people with disabilities are disproportionately in the lower areas of the income status and stratosphere of Canada and they tend to spend the money not on trips to Hawaii or Palm Springs, but to pay for rent and food, to support their families and try to make ends meet. There will be benefits out there, and I think the idea is to try to get them quickly, and shared-cost programs would have been a bit of a challenge.

It’s also a bit more complicated here because it wouldn’t be a greenfield that you would start with, but a situation where the provinces have their own and some disparate — in fact, no two are the same. Each one of those would require a careful and lengthy dialogue. It’s going to be challenging enough as it is.

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-29, An Act to provide for the establishment of a national council for reconciliation.

On December 2, 2022, Natan Obed, the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization, which does represent Inuit in all regions of Canada, stated in an interview with Nunatsiaq News that the bill was not co-developed and, as such, is not endorsed by Inuit beneficiary organizations across Inuit Nunangat.

During a press conference on Parliament Hill, President Obed clearly stated that:

The processes that the Government of Canada has used to come to the space where they had the first iteration of the bill were not co-developed with Inuit.

Colleagues, this is an important statement that concerns me that we need to look closer at. Whenever we hear it said in relation to government legislation, and I would say especially legislation which affects Indigenous peoples, we need to pay attention to the alarms that it raises. The Inuit-Crown Co‑development Principles were released by the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee, or ICPC, one of three permanent bilateral mechanisms created by the Government of Canada to facilitate government-to-government relationships between the federal government and representatives of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

These permanent bilateral mechanisms, or PBMs — yet another acronym — as they are commonly referred to, are meant to tackle the unique priorities of Canada’s different groups of Indigenous peoples. First Nation priorities will not necessarily be the same as Inuit priorities, and the same can be said of Métis priorities.

The actions that result from the various PBMs are meant to be significant steps in furthering Canada’s reconciliation agenda, as they are driven by Indigenous peoples and are undertaken with a whole-of-government approach. So I think it is significant that these co-development principles, which were released in November of 2022 after months of negotiation around the Inuit-Crown Partnership table, bore the logos of ITK, the various regional Inuit beneficiary organizations and the Government of Canada. It showed the commitment that all the represented parties were making to move forward on legislative policy and other efforts related to Inuit in a truly collaborative manner.

The document opens with this paragraph:

The Co-Development Principles outlined in this document provide guidance for collaborative work undertaken by Inuit and federal partners, including but not restricted to the work of the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee, as well as co‑development undertaken pursuant to the Inuit Nunangat Policy. This includes the development of content for federal legislation, regulations, policies, programs, services, and initiatives, and monitoring and evaluation criteria (collectively referred to as “initiatives” or “processes” below). These principles shall be read together with the guiding principles of the Inuit Nunangat Policy.

The principles highlight the importance of good faith negotiations and state that, “Co-development is substantive and maximizes collaboration.”

It also highlights the need for joint design and delivery and respect for governance and decision making. The latter is described as:

Co-development processes improve Inuit and federal decision-making by providing accurate and transparent information to leaders prior to a decision being made. . . .

So the argument that President Obed has made via his press conferences and subsequent interviews on this bill is that it fails to meet the basic minimum standards of co-development that are included in this document. Given the fact that it bears the government’s logo, this important point cannot be overlooked.

The engagement leading up to the first draft, according to information provided during the consideration of the bill in the other place, was conducted by the interim board and transitional committee of the TRC’s council.

Senators, while this work is welcome, it cannot and should not count as the type of engagement required by these co-development principles I have just referred to, and under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Even the TRC’s Call to Action 53, which has led us to this bill, was also explicit that the legislation to establish this council should occur “. . . in consultation and collaboration with Aboriginal peoples . . . .”

Has Canada truly delivered on this Call to Action in consultation and collaboration with Aboriginal peoples by punting the duty to consult on this bill to the interim board and transition committee?

It is the sole responsibility of the Government of Canada to conduct the engagement on legislation that meets the co‑development principles as laid out in the ICPC document, and it is also Canada’s responsibility to meet the threshold of obtaining free, prior and informed consent on legislative initiatives that impact Indigenous peoples as outlined under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

May I ask you to pay careful attention with me to the exact words and high expectations clearly laid out in Article 19 of UNDRIP with respect to legislation:

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

Honourable senators, this is a very clear, high standard which Canada has committed to in Bill C-15. I submit that this bill, Bill C-29, is clearly a legislative measure which affects the Inuit in my region and the other regions Inuit live in Canada.

How shall we deal with what the respected national leader of the Inuit in Canada, an organization which clearly represents Inuit in Canada, says was not co-developed as envisioned by UNDRIP and Bill C-15, and not followed as set out clearly in the principles for co-development agreed to by the Inuit in Canada? Shall we overlook this disrespect for co-development in a bill which, ironically, is aimed at advancing reconciliation? Or shall we insist that our federal government start again, but this time undertake a true co-development process for this reconciliation bill?

It is the federal government that has the resources to engage with Indigenous peoples properly, and the federal government needs to ensure that we are engaging with all Indigenous peoples.

We have heard time and time again that the Assembly of First Nations, or AFN, does not represent all First Nations people in this country. By only engaging with the three national Indigenous organizations, we are leaving out people such as traditional treaty holders who do not feel represented by the AFN. We are leaving out some modern treaty holders and folks who live off-reserve. When we’re talking about something as important as reconciliation, we cannot afford to keep leaving people out of the conversation.

So on principle I have some concerns about this bill. After speaking with President Obed directly, I believe that it is not entirely clear whether this bill supports or supplants the Inuit-Crown Partnership process. I have been assured by officials — and I should thank Senator LaBoucane-Benson for facilitating a discussion with officials on this very point — that it simply supports and complements the process by reporting on progress made with regard to reconciliation generally.

However, I’ve also been told that it will be up to the first board of this proposed council to set their mandate and that they will have flexibility in determining the depth, breadth and scope of their work. To my mind, unless we are more explicit on the expected role of the council as complementary to the permanent bilateral mechanisms, it would be possible for the board to set their agenda in a way that could directly or indirectly interfere with the important work of these important tables, and that would be an unnecessary complication to a process that, at least for the Inuit, has clearly found its rhythm over the past seven years. They have done important work with tangible results.

I would also like to point out, honourable colleagues, that the timing of this bill is of concern to me. I recognize that it responds to a TRC Call to Action. However, let us look at the political landscape at the time the recommendation was made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The federal government did not have in place an explicit policy of government-to-government interactions with Indigenous communities, instead relying on the relationship as defined in the Indian Act, the Constitution and various other pieces of legislation. There were no permanent bilateral mechanisms and no formalized process for advancing Indigenous-led initiatives and priorities. While I understand the government’s desire to address the low-hanging fruit and continue to make progress on implementing all 94 Calls to Action, as they promised to do eight years ago, the fact of the matter is that the establishment of the council, I would submit, now makes less sense than it did in 2015.

I also feel the timing is wrong given the expected report on Bill C-15’s implementation. As you know, the UNDRIP implementation consultations are legislated to end this year, and both houses are to receive a copy of what should be a co‑developed action plan.

I feel it would have been more prudent to wait for that plan, as there may be other mechanisms that are better suited to monitoring the overall progress of this government’s reconciliation agenda brought forward by Indigenous partners.

For instance, during the proceedings on Bill C-15, the Inuit repeatedly brought up the need for an Indigenous human rights tribunal and accountability measures led by Indigenous people. At the ICPC table — the Inuit-Crown table — the need for an Indigenous human rights tribunal and a new, modern treaty review commission have been on the ICPC agenda since 2017 and 2015 respectively. These would seem to be more concrete and targeted ways of addressing issues surrounding reconciliation efforts than the proposed non-profit entity in this bill and an annual report to Parliament. We do not need more reports. We need tangible action and rigorous accountability mechanisms.

I also believe that we need to ensure that we take the time, during the committee study of this bill, to look at the question of who is included and who is represented. This is also going to be controversial. As I said earlier, we are leaving a lot of people out of important conversations. When we constitute the board, certain Indigenous groups and organizations are given specific seats that they can nominate a board member to, while other legitimate and representative organizations are not. The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, who represent urban, off-reserve and unregistered First Nations, were given a seat when the committee in the other place amended the bill, but that amendment was removed when the bill was again considered by that chamber. Given the known issues around registration under the Indian Act, senators should carefully consider whether we should put them back in.

While the Native Women’s Association of Canada was granted a seat, giving an important voice to First Nations women, the voices of Inuit women were not included with Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada left unrecognized in the bill.

Colleagues, in speaking to this bill on second reading, it is my hope that we can give this bill the due consideration it needs in committee. I think we should hear from as many partners and stakeholders as possible. If the committee decides to proceed with this somewhat problematic bill, I trust that the minister was sincere when he told Nunatsiaq News in their December 2, 2022, article on this bill that he was “. . . open to any reasonable amendments in the Senate.”

Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?