Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Carignan, do you have a question?

Hon. Denise Batters: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on the government’s motion to invoke time allocation on the Senate’s debate on the message from the House of Commons on Bill C-11. As you have heard throughout this debate, the Senate’s amendments on Bill C-11 were the product of an intensive committee study process. The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard nearly 70 hours of testimony from 140 witnesses, with 67 additional written submissions on this topic. The committee studied this issue tirelessly.

Since we received the message, the product of that committee study, back from the House of Commons, we’ve debated for only six hours before Senator Gold gave notice of the government’s intent to invoke time allocation. The Senate government leaders, first Senator Harder and now Senator Gold, have boasted for years about this government’s disdain for invoking time allocation and the lack of necessity for them to ever employ it. So why is the government choosing to invoke time allocation now?

After almost eight years of governing, it is appalling that the Trudeau government is choosing to impose time allocation in the Senate for the first time on Bill C-11, of all bills. With this move, the Trudeau government is censoring debate on a censorship bill.

The irony is not lost on Canadians, honourable senators. Canadians have lost a lot of trust in this Trudeau government as this legislation has worked its way through Parliament. The backlash from Canadians has been fast and furious, as citizens, and especially young people, resent the government’s attempt to interfere with the content Canadians can access and produce online.

Honourable senators, I know your email inboxes and telephone voice mail are just like mine: overflowing with emails and phone calls from Canadians opposed to Bill C-11. It is sometimes overwhelming, but it is indicative of the fact that many Canadians understand that their freedom of access to information and their freedom of expression are at risk with this legislation. People, especially young people, routinely stop me to register their opposition on this bill, not only Conservative-leaning people but also lots of people who have previously voted for the Trudeau government, as well as those who haven’t ever been engaged in politics before.

Canada’s domestic online content producers — musicians, artists and influencers — are largely united against this bill because of the negative implications this bill has in limiting their reach online and, in turn, curtailing their livelihoods.

Time allocation is one of the most political parliamentary procedures. Many senators in this chamber assert themselves as independent and devoid of partisan affiliation, but they will ultimately turn and vote for the use of the legislative guillotine on Bill C-11 simply to support this Trudeau government.

Honourable senators, don’t be fooled. Time allocation is just the government’s very blunt tool to cut short debate and force their agenda through Parliament.

In this place, one of our roles as senators is to safeguard and preserve the rights and interests of minorities that may be overrun in a House of Commons elected by representation by population. How is invoking time allocation in accordance with that aspiration, honourable senators? I submit that it runs roughshod over the very minority interests senators are sworn to protect.

Why is the Trudeau government pushing so hard to see that Bill C-11 passes both houses of Parliament as soon as possible? The timing is perhaps curious, but not difficult to understand. Canada is in the midst of a national affordability crisis, where Canadians are finding it difficult to secure the very necessities of life, like a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has increased the cost of bureaucracy by 50%, yet finds itself embroiled in the biggest public service strike in Canada’s history, something that could only be accomplished by the most incompetent money managers in the Trudeau government.

Once Bill C-11 is passed, I suspect the Trudeau government will move to prorogue Parliament soon in an attempt to lower the heat and distract from its many scandals — and they’re really dodging quite a few scandals, honourable senators.

First and foremost, of course, is the alleged Beijing election interference scandal that continues to dog Prime Minister Trudeau, following him like a bad stench. Tied into that is the mess that his family’s Trudeau Foundation has devolved into. We’re told one day that the Prime Minister hasn’t been involved with the Trudeau Foundation for ten years, even though his brother signed the agreement for a questionable donation that points right back to the Chinese Communist government. In fact, you might even be tempted to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, until you open the newspaper and discover his office hosted a meeting of the Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials right within the confines of his Prime Minister’s Office.

Every day seems to bring more bad news for this Prime Minister, and we know that answering for his behaviour is not high on the list of his list of priorities. Prorogation has the advantage of keeping the Prime Minister well away from a pesky and intrusive opposition and media questions on Parliament Hill. Instead, he can hide away out of view, waiting until his Special Rapporteur magically reveals, just before the May long weekend, that — surprise — there is no need for a public inquiry into Beijing election interference, leaving the Prime Minister free to go to as many $9,000-a-night luxury beach villas as he wants. Surf’s up.

Meanwhile, with Bill C-11 rammed through Parliament, the long arm of the Trudeau government will have the ability to manipulate and influence the information Canadians see and produce online, just in time for another election. How fortuitous.

Honourable senators, you don’t have to provide Prime Minister Trudeau with political cover by passing this legislation. Our Senate produced 26 very solid and reasonable amendments to Bill C-11 after weeks of careful study, research and witness testimony. What did the Liberal-NDP majority in the House of Commons do with them? Sure, they accepted 20 of the 26 amendments, which sounds like a win, until you look closer and discover that they rejected some of the most substantive amendments. That included the most important amendment on exempting user-generated content, proposed by two Trudeau-appointed senators, Senator Miville-Dechêne and Senator Simons, from the largest group in the Senate.

The Trudeau government passed the amended bill back to the Senate, and now it is once again our choice to make. The government still refuses to protect user-generated content in the actual legislation, instead insisting that appending such a promise in the wording of the motion will suffice. The motion reads:

That the Senate take note of the Government of Canada’s public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user-generated digital content and its commitment to issue policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission accordingly . . .

Honourable senators, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve seen Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal promises come and go. Do you remember electoral reform, 2 billion trees, clean drinking water on all reserves and a carbon tax capped at $50 per tonne? It’s funny how those promises just vaporized into the ether. This one will too.

The Trudeau government wants senators and, by extension, Canadians to just trust them, kind of like how the Senate government leader consulted with our leader before declaring a failed agreement and moving time allocation — that kind of trust? There is no reason to think that this Liberal promise will hold up any better than any of the many other broken Liberal promises.

The Liberals forced this message through the House of Commons side and now they are forcing it through the Senate with this imposition of time allocation. Honourable senators, here is your chance to prove your independence. We have the opportunity and the obligation to push back for the benefit of all Canadians who value freedom of thought and expression. If those of you who were appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau vote with the government to shut down debate, consider that to be the last vestige of the independent Trudeau Senate. You hold the majority here, so you decide. Here is hoping you choose wisely. Thank you.

[Translation]

Hon. Peter M. Boehm: Honourable senators, I rise tonight at this late hour not to offer any new groundbreaking analysis on this well-debated topic of time allocation, but simply to join other colleagues in offering my opinion.

This has been a contentious and at times heated debate, as has been the case with Bill C-11, generally. While there is much disagreement about the use of time allocation, it is clear that all senators in this chamber are acting in what they believe to be the best interest of Canadians.

I support the motion. I do not agree with the argument that the government is stifling debate, because the facts simply do not support that assertion. Colleagues, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications has done extraordinary work in studying Bill C-11, both in comprehensiveness and length. In the Senate alone, along with a pre-study of Bill C-11 that began on May 31 of last year, Transport and Communications held 31 meetings on the bill from the time it began its study on October 25, 2022. It heard from 138 witnesses over the course of 67.5 hours of meeting time. Beyond this incredible number of witnesses who appeared before the committee, it received another 67 written submissions. Of the 31 meetings held, 9 were just for clause-by-clause consideration, which began on November 23 of last year.

During clause-by-clause consideration, 73 amendments were proposed, 26 of these 73 proposals were adopted to a total of 11 different clauses. There were 13 subamendments proposed, of which 2 were adopted, along with 8 recorded votes.

Let us all spare a thought for the fortitude of the procedural clerks and other committee staff who handled all of that. Colleagues, those statistics do not even take into account the eight days overall during which debate occurred on the messages between the Senate and the House of Commons between February 2 and April 19 of this year.

There is also, of course, the work of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. That committee heard from 80 witnesses in 32 hours over 12 meetings from the time it began its study on May 24, 2022, and debated approximately 100 amendments in its three clause-by-clause sessions, which began on June 14 of last year. It also received 52 written submissions. That, colleagues, is just Bill C-11.

Of course, there was also a full study done on Bill C-11’s predecessor in the last Parliament, then Bill C-10, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and the Senate began second-reading debate before the dissolution of the Forty-third Parliament.

The Senate has spent more time on Bill C-11 — everyone has said this — than it has on any other piece of legislation in its 156-year history.

Honestly, colleagues, what more is there to say? The Senate, especially the members of the Committee on Transport and Communications, has more than done its work. The committee listened and debated, and so has the Senate. To argue that the government is crushing debate is simply not true.

This is the first time this government has invoked time allocation in the Senate since the start of the Forty-second Parliament in December 2015, nearly seven and a half years ago. In the Forty-first Parliament, however, under the previous government, time allocation was invoked 21 times in less than four years. It seems that support for time allocation depends on where you sit in the chamber.

I will close by reiterating again, colleagues, that time allocation is appropriate in this situation, where the bill in question has been so thoroughly and exhaustively debated, with its principle being debated over two different Parliaments. There is nothing left to say on this bill that has not already been said many times. I thank you, colleagues.

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Carignan, do you have a question?

Hon. Denise Batters: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on the government’s motion to invoke time allocation on the Senate’s debate on the message from the House of Commons on Bill C-11. As you have heard throughout this debate, the Senate’s amendments on Bill C-11 were the product of an intensive committee study process. The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard nearly 70 hours of testimony from 140 witnesses, with 67 additional written submissions on this topic. The committee studied this issue tirelessly.

Since we received the message, the product of that committee study, back from the House of Commons, we’ve debated for only six hours before Senator Gold gave notice of the government’s intent to invoke time allocation. The Senate government leaders, first Senator Harder and now Senator Gold, have boasted for years about this government’s disdain for invoking time allocation and the lack of necessity for them to ever employ it. So why is the government choosing to invoke time allocation now?

After almost eight years of governing, it is appalling that the Trudeau government is choosing to impose time allocation in the Senate for the first time on Bill C-11, of all bills. With this move, the Trudeau government is censoring debate on a censorship bill.

The irony is not lost on Canadians, honourable senators. Canadians have lost a lot of trust in this Trudeau government as this legislation has worked its way through Parliament. The backlash from Canadians has been fast and furious, as citizens, and especially young people, resent the government’s attempt to interfere with the content Canadians can access and produce online.

Honourable senators, I know your email inboxes and telephone voice mail are just like mine: overflowing with emails and phone calls from Canadians opposed to Bill C-11. It is sometimes overwhelming, but it is indicative of the fact that many Canadians understand that their freedom of access to information and their freedom of expression are at risk with this legislation. People, especially young people, routinely stop me to register their opposition on this bill, not only Conservative-leaning people but also lots of people who have previously voted for the Trudeau government, as well as those who haven’t ever been engaged in politics before.

Canada’s domestic online content producers — musicians, artists and influencers — are largely united against this bill because of the negative implications this bill has in limiting their reach online and, in turn, curtailing their livelihoods.

Time allocation is one of the most political parliamentary procedures. Many senators in this chamber assert themselves as independent and devoid of partisan affiliation, but they will ultimately turn and vote for the use of the legislative guillotine on Bill C-11 simply to support this Trudeau government.

Honourable senators, don’t be fooled. Time allocation is just the government’s very blunt tool to cut short debate and force their agenda through Parliament.

In this place, one of our roles as senators is to safeguard and preserve the rights and interests of minorities that may be overrun in a House of Commons elected by representation by population. How is invoking time allocation in accordance with that aspiration, honourable senators? I submit that it runs roughshod over the very minority interests senators are sworn to protect.

Why is the Trudeau government pushing so hard to see that Bill C-11 passes both houses of Parliament as soon as possible? The timing is perhaps curious, but not difficult to understand. Canada is in the midst of a national affordability crisis, where Canadians are finding it difficult to secure the very necessities of life, like a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has increased the cost of bureaucracy by 50%, yet finds itself embroiled in the biggest public service strike in Canada’s history, something that could only be accomplished by the most incompetent money managers in the Trudeau government.

Once Bill C-11 is passed, I suspect the Trudeau government will move to prorogue Parliament soon in an attempt to lower the heat and distract from its many scandals — and they’re really dodging quite a few scandals, honourable senators.

First and foremost, of course, is the alleged Beijing election interference scandal that continues to dog Prime Minister Trudeau, following him like a bad stench. Tied into that is the mess that his family’s Trudeau Foundation has devolved into. We’re told one day that the Prime Minister hasn’t been involved with the Trudeau Foundation for ten years, even though his brother signed the agreement for a questionable donation that points right back to the Chinese Communist government. In fact, you might even be tempted to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, until you open the newspaper and discover his office hosted a meeting of the Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials right within the confines of his Prime Minister’s Office.

Every day seems to bring more bad news for this Prime Minister, and we know that answering for his behaviour is not high on the list of his list of priorities. Prorogation has the advantage of keeping the Prime Minister well away from a pesky and intrusive opposition and media questions on Parliament Hill. Instead, he can hide away out of view, waiting until his Special Rapporteur magically reveals, just before the May long weekend, that — surprise — there is no need for a public inquiry into Beijing election interference, leaving the Prime Minister free to go to as many $9,000-a-night luxury beach villas as he wants. Surf’s up.

Meanwhile, with Bill C-11 rammed through Parliament, the long arm of the Trudeau government will have the ability to manipulate and influence the information Canadians see and produce online, just in time for another election. How fortuitous.

Honourable senators, you don’t have to provide Prime Minister Trudeau with political cover by passing this legislation. Our Senate produced 26 very solid and reasonable amendments to Bill C-11 after weeks of careful study, research and witness testimony. What did the Liberal-NDP majority in the House of Commons do with them? Sure, they accepted 20 of the 26 amendments, which sounds like a win, until you look closer and discover that they rejected some of the most substantive amendments. That included the most important amendment on exempting user-generated content, proposed by two Trudeau‑appointed senators, Senator Miville-Dechêne and Senator Simons, from the largest group in the Senate.

The Trudeau government passed the amended bill back to the Senate, and now it is once again our choice to make. The government still refuses to protect user-generated content in the actual legislation, instead insisting that appending such a promise in the wording of the motion will suffice. The motion reads:

That the Senate take note of the Government of Canada’s public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user‑generated digital content and its commitment to issue policy direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission accordingly . . .

Honourable senators, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve seen Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal promises come and go. Do you remember electoral reform, 2 billion trees, clean drinking water on all reserves and a carbon tax capped at $50 per tonne? It’s funny how those promises just vaporized into the ether. This one will too.

The Trudeau government wants senators and, by extension, Canadians to just trust them, kind of like how the Senate government leader consulted with our leader before declaring a failed agreement and moving time allocation — that kind of trust? There is no reason to think that this Liberal promise will hold up any better than any of the many other broken Liberal promises.

The Liberals forced this message through the House of Commons side and now they are forcing it through the Senate with this imposition of time allocation. Honourable senators, here is your chance to prove your independence. We have the opportunity and the obligation to push back for the benefit of all Canadians who value freedom of thought and expression. If those of you who were appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau vote with the government to shut down debate, consider that to be the last vestige of the independent Trudeau Senate. You hold the majority here, so you decide. Here is hoping you choose wisely. Thank you.

[Translation]

Hon. Frances Lankin: Honourable senators, I’ve listened very carefully to the discussion tonight. It has ranged from a clear discussion of the merits of using time allocation at this point in time into discussions about reform of the Senate, where we’re headed or where we should be headed. There is no doubt there is a lot of disagreement in this chamber still. I live in hope that we will continue to have these discussions and perhaps come to a point where we can see a road forward together.

One of the things I would like to say about the speeches I’ve heard tonight is that there isn’t one of them with which I didn’t agree with some elements of what people said. I also disagreed with some elements of what people said.

One of the things that makes it difficult for me with my particular temperament and not being able to keep quiet when Senator Plett says certain things — of course, he can’t keep quiet when I say certain things either; it’s good across the floor — is when a position of the meritorious behaviour of the opposition is put forward as only speaking on behalf of Canadians. We all speak on behalf of Canadians. There are Canadians who have polarized views on this particular piece of legislation before us, as there is on others.

This is on both sides; I include this for the GRO — the Government Representative Office — as well as for the opposition: There isn’t a monopoly on representing what Canadians think. There are tons of scorn heaped upon us from people opposite who say that we’re not independent and put a partisan label on us. That would suit their purposes in terms of their concerns about a loss of official opposition status in a reformed Senate. We understand that those are the things at stake, but all of the people here represent voices of Canadians.

Your job, as has been said, is to bring forward and highlight the voices of Canadians who are not heard through other processes. That does not mean that we will necessarily all agree with what all of those voices have to say. It’s like just a couple of hours ago, maybe it was, when Senator Plett took a shot at me and said that I said that the Rules Committee worked on consensus and that should never happen. Well, no, but I don’t think the Rules Committee works on consensus; I think the Rules Committee puts forward a position of working on a consensus and certain people say, “No, no, no. We don’t have a consensus.” For me, that is exercising a veto, essentially.

We have these tensions, and I think they come primarily from a different understanding and desire for the direction of the Senate.

When it comes to what that means at this moment with the time allocation motion in front of us, I have a history in partisan politics and I hate time allocation motions. I think people should be responsible enough to take the debate as far as it needs to go to hear the variety of voices and to ensure that we have a deliberative discourse that allows us to hear each other.

There is nothing about how this chamber operates that actually supports that.

When I got here, I was appalled when I saw this practice where one person would speak and another person would stand and take the adjournment. It would sometimes be two or three weeks before we got back to that person. How do you listen to each other and ensure you have a coherent debate going forward? I was told that senators needed time to prepare after what they heard.

Maybe it’s not a good example — maybe it’s just the example that I lived in the Ontario legislature — but when we had debates and discussions when a bill came forward, we worked at it and didn’t skip around and adjourn and not come back to it. We talked things through. We got to a point where, responsibly — most of the time — the points had been made. They’d been heard in committee; they made sure there was a full range of witnesses. In fact, every group was able to put forward names, so you could tell there was a full range of views coming forward. Then we debated it out in the legislature, and we came to the point where we voted.

The problem here — and the reason it sticks in my craw that I’m going to support time allocation — is because I have seen with this bill that we have had fulsome debate. In fact, nobody has really talked about the fact that there was a bill in the prior Parliament — Bill C-10 — that was the same as this. It has been around a few times here. We’ve had fulsome debate in this chamber. We had fulsome committee hearings. If that makes up for something that was lacking in the other chamber, as Senator Wallin pointed out, then we have done that; we have made up for that.

I think the characterization that I heard earlier tonight from the leader of the opposition, namely that the government was ramming this through, was unfortunate. I don’t think that is an accurate description. We are at the message stage. For those who are listening and wondering what this is all about, we don’t have the bill before us right now. We are debating putting a time limit on how long we can debate about the message that came from the other place, and the question, fundamentally, is do we accept the message or send it back? And yet, a number of people there would propose that the six hours that have been set aside, one, is not enough; two, is the representative ramming it through; and, three, is not respectful of the voices. None of that, in my view, is true.

I wish we would have an opportunity to have a real debate about the vision of reform in the Senate. If the opposition is tired of feeling like they’re not respected in the things they say, I would say that I respect them in the things they say. I don’t often respect them in the things they do in terms of how they conduct themselves in this place, but I have to say that sometimes I descend to the same level. I apologize for that, Mr. Speaker. You’re the one who has to worry about that the most.

But I would love to have that discussion. I’m not opposed to seeing opposition voices and the Conservative values brought forward. I believe in cognitive diversity. I believe in having all these views on the table. I do oppose you trying to label who I am in my politics, like the colleague directly across from me who tonight said, “You’re a Liberal.” That’s interesting. I voted Conservative, and I’ve voted New Democrat. Sorry, Prime Minister, I’ve never voted for your party.

Don’t tell me who I am. I have my own values and politics, and I bring them to bear in the best way I can in the spirit and respect of what I think this chamber is about. The basic problem is that I don’t think we have an agreement about what this chamber is about.

Thank you very much, Your Honour.

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Do you wish to speak or ask a question, Senator Audette?

The Hon. the Speaker: You have one minute.

The Hon. the Speaker: Do you wish to speak or ask a question, Senator Audette?

Hon. Michèle Audette: I’d like to ask Senator Batters a question.

The Hon. the Speaker: You have one minute.

The Hon. the Speaker: It was moved by the Honourable Senator Gold, seconded by the Honourable Senator Gagné that, pursuant to rule 7-2, not more than a further six hours of debate be allocated for the consideration of the motion, as amended, to respond to the message from the House of Commons concerning the Senate’s amendments to Bill C-11, An Aact to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, as you know, two and a half hours were set aside for debate on this particular motion. It is now two minutes away from the time when we are required to vote. Unless some senator wishes to enter debate for two minutes, I will put the question now. Shall I put the question now?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, as you know, two and a half hours were set aside for debate on this particular motion. It is now two minutes away from the time when we are required to vote. Unless some senator wishes to enter debate for two minutes, I will put the question now. Shall I put the question now?

The Hon. the Speaker: It was moved by the Honourable Senator Gold, seconded by the Honourable Senator Gagné that, pursuant to rule 7-2, not more than a further six hours of debate be allocated for the consideration of the motion, as amended, to respond to the message from the House of Commons concerning the Senate’s amendments to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Hon. René Cormier: I rise to speak to the time allocation motion. I’m not doing so thinking of the government nor the Leader of the Opposition. I’m not doing so thinking of the Leader of the Government in the Senate nor the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. I’m not doing so to convince or prove to anyone in this chamber that I’m an independent senator. I’ve spent part of my life defending my identity and it is not in this chamber that anyone is going to impose an identity on me that I don’t identify with.

When I think about the people in my province and in Canada, I have much more important work to do. I rise thinking about the artists and the cultural sector that participates, thanks to their creations, in their vision of the world and their humanism, the economic, cultural and social development of our country and the development of our culture in the world.

The points raised over the past few hours have highlighted anew the important issues around modernizing the Senate. The need to modernize our institution becomes apparent when we end up in situations like this and I thank all those who elevate the debate constructively.

I rise as a senator with a background in the arts and culture, but above all as a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which studied Bill C-11 and was first to tackle this bill in the pre-study that began on May 31, 2022.

The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications heard from 138 witnesses and held 31 meetings, including nine meetings for clause-by-clause consideration. We spent a total of 67.5 hours in meetings. This made it possible for the committee to carry out an exhaustive study, and I weigh this word carefully. We heard the testimony of content creators, broadcasting experts, representatives from academia and former presidents and commissioners of the CRTC; associations representing artists and workers in the music and audiovisual sector; associations representing the interests of Indigenous, Black and racialized people; persons with disabilities; and official language minority communities.

The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications did a considerable amount of work, and I was impressed by the work of the committee members, the expertise around the table, the diversity of viewpoints, the pertinence of the questions and the value of the changes. I thank all committee members for their remarkable work.

In addition to the work that was done upstream and during the committee study, my team and I received numerous calls and emails from concerned artists, associations in the audiovisual sector, directors and producers in the music and music publishing sector, in both anglophone and francophone communities. They all asked us to pass Bill C-11 quickly.

As evidence of that, I will repeat the short sequence of public testimony that Senator Dalphond highlighted in one of his speeches last week, which speaks to the sentiment of the cultural sector around Bill C-11.

On March 31, after the other place adopted the message proposed by the government, Bill Skolnik, the co-chair of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expression, said, and I quote:

In a climate of acrimony and misinformation, we salute the work and courage of the elected officials who, for the past two years, have tirelessly supported the cultural sector and ensured the sustainability of our cultural sovereignty.

Hélène Messier, the other co-chair of the same organization, said, and I quote:

Over the past few months, Senators have conducted a rigorous analysis of the bill and made some improvements. We salute their work, but invite them today to take note of the decisions of the elected officials and to move the bill in its current state towards Royal Assent as quickly as possible.

At a time when The Globe and Mail recently published an article saying that Bill C-11 is likely the bill that’s been studied the longest in the history of the Senate, I can’t help but commend the patience and resilience of those in the arts and culture community who are affected by Bill C-11 in some way. We can’t leave Canada’s music and audiovisual communities out in the cold. That is not an option. They have waited far too long for this bill.

Every week that Bill C-11 isn’t passed means that the CRTC has one less week to begin its work of consulting stakeholders. It will take the CRTC about two years to complete this monumental work. Once these consultations are complete, the mechanisms that will allow platforms to contribute to Canadian content and its discoverability will finally see the light of day. In other words, that is when our artists and cultural community will finally be able to benefit from this bill.

Acadian culture forms the core of my identity. Acadian music has been my livelihood and is what has allowed me to stand before you today. It has shaped my people, the Acadian people. The music industry in Acadia has developed through the initiatives of a structured set of networks and professionals who have discovered and supported Acadian talent.

I’d like to quote a passage from a book entitled L’état de l’Acadie, which gives an overview of Acadia today.

At a time when the music industry has been completely transformed and online listening is leading to a drop in revenues and jeopardizing the ecosystem of the music industry, particularly that of the most fragile players who perform in francophone minority communities, the solution undeniably lies in regulations that promote a more equitable sharing of revenues among the various components of the music industry.

Bill C-11 is the starting point of an important societal and cultural project. The time allocation motion was carefully considered and I believe it is supported by solid arguments. I believe that I’ve expressed in this intervention the reasons why I find six hours to be insufficient. When we’re in the process of creating something, we reach a point where we’ve asked ourselves questions, where we want to go further and we want to delve even deeper. However, when we create something and think of the public waiting on us, we say to ourselves that it is time to adopt this creation, in this case Bill C-11. Thank you.

[English]