Bill C-11 (Historical)

Copyright Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Copyright Act

This enactment amends the Copyright Act to
(a) update the rights and protections of copyright owners to better address the challenges and opportunities of the Internet, so as to be in line with international standards;
(b) clarify Internet service providers’ liability and make the enabling of online copyright infringement itself an infringement of copyright;
(c) permit businesses, educators and libraries to make greater use of copyright material in digital form;
(d) allow educators and students to make greater use of copyright material;
(e) permit certain uses of copyright material by consumers;
(f) give photographers the same rights as other creators;
(g) ensure that it remains technologically neutral; and
(h) mandate its review by Parliament every five years.

Bill C-11—Time Allocation Motion

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will be a 30 minute question period. I invite hon. members who wish to put questions to the government to rise in their places at the beginning of the question period so as to gauge the number of speakers who may wish to participate. As in the past, we have generally considered that one minute is a good timeframe for questions to be put and, similarly, for the response.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to start off by saying, another day, another motion to terminate, to muzzle debate in this House, another anti-democratic motion, but that would not be fair to the government.

What I should be saying is, another week, another motion to muzzle debate, to terminate debate, to strike severe blows to the democracy that should be functioning in this Parliament. Because, including this motion, this will be the 15th time that the government has moved either closure or time allocation in 73 sitting days. That is more than one a week now. The speed at which the government is bringing in these motions to terminate debate, to strike blows to democracy is occurring more rapidly than at the start of the session.

Every time it happens, one more record is set that belies anything but that this Parliament is being turned into a farce. We are not being given the opportunity, either on this side of the House, in opposition, or on the government side, the people in the backbenches in particular, to have any meaningful debate on bills that are before this House on issues that are confronting this country. The government is shutting down debate repeatedly.

I say to the minister responsible for this, and to the House leader, how many more times will we see this? Will I have to stand every single day to face these motions?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after months of the NDP delaying and obstructing important legislation, it has actually revealed its true agenda. It intends to delay all legislation as long as it possibly can. That explains why the NDP has almost never agreed to hold a vote on any piece of legislation in this House.

Last week, I issued an invitation to come to an agreement on moving forward with legislation. The NDP member for Acadie—Bathurst revealed the NDP plan to delay and obstruct all legislation by putting up every speaker possible. He justified this by saying the rules allow that every member has the right to speak. Indeed, that is the case. It is called “a filibuster” when parties put up every single speaker. The normal practice is not to do that.

The bill that we are talking about today has already been the subject of 75 speeches in this House and an opposition to block it from even getting to second reading.

By contrast, the identical bill, word for word, was sent to committee in 2010 after only seven hours of constructive debate in this place so that it could be reviewed in detail and improved through amendments.

If the NDP members had their way, Canada would go the way of other countries, such as the United States and countries in Europe, that have faced a political gridlock in a decision that caused economic uncertainty that threatened the world economy.

That is not what we want from our government. That is not what Canadians want. We are going to continue to have a productive, hard-working, orderly government that makes decisions and does the work that Canadians sent us here to do.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions or comments. I will add, as I should have done earlier, there will be a preference given to opposition members, in terms of putting questions to the government in the course of this 30 minute question period.

The hon. member for Westmount—Ville-Marie

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the identical bill that the House leader refers to is Bill C-32. I was involved on the legislative committee. Of course, after hearing about 150 witnesses and receiving untold written submissions, when it appeared in its new form as Bill C-11 under the new Parliament, not a single comma had been changed. This leads us to the conclusion that there was no intention to do anything with all that testimony that occurred before the committee.

The House leader mentioned that he invited the opposition to tell him how many speakers it would like to put up at second reading. We came forward, in the Liberal Party, and said we would like to have eight speakers. We were hoping that perhaps he was turning over a new leaf and was going to allow some proper debate. Then we find out today the time allocation is two days. We will be lucky if we get two or three speakers.

Is this an indication of the goodwill that the government is showing toward democracy?

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, I will address the first part of the member's question. He is right. We have tabled the exact same bill. It is not because we are not interested in having a parliamentary debate. We put forward the exact same bill and sent it to a legislative committee. His hon. colleague, the critic responsible for this, and I have spoken about this. We are sending this, not to the heritage committee nor to the industry committee which already have very busy agendas on their own, but to a stand-alone legislative committee, specifically on this bill, so that we can have exhaustive consideration of this bill and consideration of the amendments. We have been very open about that.

We tabled the exact same bill on purpose. We had a legislative committee on Bill C-32. We want to have a legislative committee on Bill C-11 to continue the debate. We want this process that began a year and a half ago to continue right through passage of updated copyright reform. We want to hear the opposition amendments. We want to hear what the opposition has to say. We want to continue the debate substantively, with actual amendments, at the legislative committee. We want to move it forward. It is time we get this done, and it is time the opposition stops delaying.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, again, we have a time allocation motion. I am really having a hard time understanding this. In parliaments similar to ours, in New Zealand, Australia and England, for instance, this measure is very rarely used and the Speaker has the power to say that it is not an appropriate time to use it.

In my opinion, a time allocation motion should be used only during a national crisis, for example, for safety's sake, or in the case of an impending war. That is absolutely not the case here. I absolutely do not understand why time allocation motions are being used the way they are now. Time allocation loses all meaning. Using a time allocation motion should truly be reserved for cases of extreme urgency. The way it is being used now diminishes the meaning of using such a motion.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture)]

Mr. Speaker, first, we are all well aware that the NDP's strategy is to block virtually all bills. That is what the member for Acadie—Bathurst said. He revealed a plan to impede the progress of all bills by putting forward as many speakers as possible to justify a strategy in which members have the right to speak.

As my colleague, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, pointed out, many speeches have been given during the current session. During the last session of the previous Parliament, there were, once again, 17 speeches with a range of exchanges concerning bills C-32 and C-11. Before that, there had already been 27 hours of debate.

That is why we are saying it is now time to pass the bill as is. We will accept amendments in committee, but it is time to leave vinyl and VHS behind and move into the digital age. We have to move on without further delay. To do otherwise would be to let the nation get bogged down in yet another political impasse and fail to fulfill our international obligations according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the hon. government House leader.

My concerns with time allocation on Bill C-11 are similar to those of the hon. member of the official opposition. I am concerned that the government House leader and the Conservative Party members do not give the respect that is required toward the functioning of Parliament as a whole and I wish they would. I know the government House leader objected to my tribute to Vaclav Havel, for example.

Free speech in the House is something that should matter to all members. We are elected as equals. In this case we see time allocation over and over again. When we debate time allocation, the inevitable result is representatives of smaller parties, and I admit it only applies to five of us here, such as me for the Green Party, are deprived of the opportunity to debate. The House of Commons itself is the Government of Canada, not an individual party. The result of time allocation, particularly when the government House leader said that to have a full debate under Westminster parliamentary democracy would in itself represent an instability which would jeopardize our economy, suggests that the Conservatives find democracy not only inconvenient but dangerous.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the topic of the legislation before us, the government is actually restoring the identical bill from the previous Parliament to where it was in the previous Parliament so we can continue consideration of it.

I know it is my hon. colleague's first term. This is my 12th year as a member of Parliament and I can tell her that except for the Liberal government's Bill C-2, the response to 9/11, this legislation will have had more consideration at a stand-alone legislative committee and parliamentary and public consideration with all of the tens of thousands of submissions we received from Canadians in person and in writing and the consultations we did across the country before we drafted the bill. Then we drafted the legislation.

There was reaction to Bill C-32. The committee was considering the bill. I think the committee on Bill C-32 received over 100 witnesses before it, giving us constructive criticism and feedback on how the bill could go forward. Then we had an election.

However, we want to continue all the hard work that was done on Bill C-32. We want to carry it forward with Bill C-11 and continue the process as though it was uninterrupted because there is so much at stake and so much went into the drafting of the legislation.

My hon. colleague should know that this bill will have had more consideration by Canadians at two stand-alone legislative committees and more time in the House than any bill Parliament has seen since the Liberals' Anti-terrorism Act back in 2001. That shows our commitment to ensuring we listen to all Canadians when it comes to getting intellectual property right.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise on this issue.

I happened to be the chair of the special legislative committee on Bill C-32. That bill received some debate in the House and with all party agreement it moved through second reading and to committee where committee heard from about 125 different groups and about 70 witnesses. There was a great deal of opportunity to work on the bill. Unfortunately, the election happened and at the point the committee's work came to an end.

The fact is a lot of work has already been done on this legislation. I have been here on a number of days in the House when we have had debate. Many members have already had an opportunity to speak to the bill.

Other than to delay and obstruct the legislation getting to committee, maybe the Minister of Canadian Heritage could tell us if there is any other reason that the opposition does not want us to move toward having a vote on this, getting the bill to committee and getting the work done so we can do what we can to ensure we protect jobs with this legislation.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the dedication of my hon. colleague from Leeds—Grenville to this issue has been very helpful. His work on the legislative committee has been important.

Just in the past few hours, as we have said as a government that we want to go forward with this legislation, a number of folks have come forward to support this. I want to read into the record what some of the folks have said, who by the way are not necessarily habitual Conservative supporters, but people who recognize the legislation will be balanced and responsible in the way that we go forward.

A press release was just sent to me from IATSE, which is the international union that represents members employed in stagecraft, motion picture and the television production and trade show industries. This union backs this legislation. It says, “The IATSE applauds the government for moving forward with this bill, The Copyright Modernization Act, because the bill will help ensure a stable entertainment industry which is what keeps its 16,000 employees working”.

This legislation is important for the Canadian economy. It is time to get down to work in committee, listen to the amendments of the opposition and move forward with something.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I admit that, in these circumstances, I find it difficult to rank the irritants raised by this issue. I also admit that, unfortunately, I do not have a statistician working for me. However, based on the figures provided, the Conservatives believe they are justified in moving time allocation when just 75 members have spoken to a bill. According to my quick calculation, it seems to me that there are 308 members who have the right to speak in the House. Until the last member who wishes to rise has the opportunity to do so, it is too early for such a motion.

[Some hon. members]

Bravo.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

I would therefore like to support the member for Acadie—Bathurst, who is not here; he does not systematically obstruct debate but fights for the right of elected members and the people of this country to speak. He has my respect.