Francis Scarpaleggia

[Committees of the House, March 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, entitled “Main Estimates 2023-24: Votes 1, 5 and 10 under Department of the Environment, Votes 1 and 5 under Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and Votes 1, 5 and 10 under Parks Canada Agency”.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, this is a very technical bill, but my understanding is that the amendment in the Senate could encourage music companies to share music on platforms like YouTube instead of on music services like Spotify and Apple Music. The bill is quite clear that it is not meant to regulate the small, independent creator. As a matter of fact, it says here that proposed paragraph 5(2)(h) of the act would require that regulatory policy:

(h) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which this Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on any class of broadcasting undertakings if that imposition will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1).

There are checks and balances all through this bill to ensure that the small, independent creator is not brought into the scope of this legislation. It is important to note that there are safeguards throughout the bill, including with respect to freedom of expression.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, right now traditional broadcasters have to make payments to the Canada Media Fund, which is used to help in the production of Canadian content. At some point, through regulation, the streaming services will also have to contribute a portion of the revenues they earn in this country from Canadian consumers into the Canada Media Fund in order to help with the production of Canadian content for streaming.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is a good question; unfortunately, I do not have a precise answer for it.

However, the member hit on another important aspect of this bill, which is that it is not only about discoverability of Canadian content creators but also about levelling the playing field and making sure that streaming services pay their fair share. It is really not fair at all that traditional broadcasters have to contribute to the Canada Media Fund but the streaming services, the foreign-owned streaming services, have been able to skirt that obligation. This bill would help make things more balanced, and that is a very important point that the member has raised.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I think a great part of this bill is driven by the need to provide support to Quebec content, as well as other Canadian content, and that is why stakeholders in Quebec are so in favour of this bill. The stakeholders have been consulted by the government over and over, and Quebec stakeholders are particularly keen on this bill, and for a very good reason.

I think it is a very important bill, not only for all Canadian creators but for maintaining the vibrancy of Quebec culture, which has shown itself to be extremely vibrant. It is an effort to maintain that vibrancy in the new technological environment that we have with cyber-communication.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the law is very clear. I read the phrase in the law that said the government, and that includes the CRTC, cannot dictate algorithms. If by “criteria” the member means a request or a requirement that streaming platforms provide some visibility to Canadian content, I think that is a pretty wide-open criterion that leaves a lot of leeway to streaming services to do that in the manner they think is most appropriate.

One of the points of this bill is to make sure that Canadian creators can find space on streaming services, the same way CanCon was meant to make it so that radio could provide space for great Canadian music, which now dominates the world.

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to speak to this bill. I spoke to Bill C-10 in the previous Parliament and I have spoken to Bill C-11 in this Parliament, and this debate around the Conservative amendment provides an opportunity to speak again.

I would like to start out by saying that Conservatives fancy themselves experts on all things to do with markets and the marketplace, but ironically they do not appear to understand markets. They do not seem to understand marketing distribution systems and networks, and the convergence of interests, big money interests, that occurs within these systems and networks.

In any market, big players, through their market power, can control distribution of product, physical or cultural. They can distort markets by deciding what consumers can have access to. It is an immutable law of the marketplace, as ironclad as the law of gravity itself, that the big players seek greater and greater market power, including through vertical integration. For example, distributors often seek to become producers of product. In the cultural sector, they seek to become producers of content. We see this with the big streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. In the case of Amazon, a company that was basically a mail-order house has also become a streaming service that does cross-marketing. When people order something on Amazon, they are asked if they want to subscribe to Amazon Prime.

Streaming services not only distribute content; they produce it more and more. It goes without saying that they have an interest in all of us being properly exposed to the content they produce at great cost. What is more, we see platforms like Google and Meta using their monopolistic muscle to intimidate duly elected governments, which I find unacceptable. This is whom the Conservatives are defending: the big streaming platforms, not the small, independent creators. They are sidling up to the big kids in the schoolyard. We are a long way from Adam Smith's free market of equals who bargain in the town square and achieve a fair equilibrium.

On the subject of algorithms, the bill is clear: The government cannot dictate algorithms to streaming platforms, end of story. The book is closed on that. In fact, it was never opened. Proposed subsection 9.1(8) of the bill reads, “The Commission shall not make an order under paragraph (1)‍(e) that would require the use of a specific computer algorithm or source code.” That is in black and white in the bill and has been since the very beginning, yet we keep hearing from the other side that somehow the government is trying to control algorithms. When members are characterizing what is in the bill as fake news, I find that very Trumpian. It is not fake news; it is fact, and it is fact in black and white in legislation.

There is also an assumption in the narrative of the official opposition that social media algorithms mean freedom, but algorithms are not the doorway to freedom. They can be straitjackets, straitjackets of the mind. They can be blinders. We know they can lock people in echo chambers that amplify their own ideological biases. Social media algorithms are not necessarily designed to expand one's horizon. On the contrary, they can be designed to narrow one's field of vision. They are myopic and can be used to promote specific economic and political interests. It can be through algorithms that biases are reinforced and, in some cases, that misinformation is given a high-octane boost.

Let us look at radio by way of analogy. Radio of the 1970s, when CanCon was introduced by a Liberal government, is not so different from streaming today, even though the Conservatives have tried to tell us that these are apples and oranges and cannot be compared. We can superimpose the Conservative position onto 1970s radio and see what would have happened if that argument, that ideology, had been applied to music on radio.

The opposition says that Bill C-11's discoverability features cannot be compared to CanCon, that they are night and day, apples and oranges. They argue that we needed CanCon when faced with the limited resource of radio frequencies and that this solution is no longer needed because the web is limitless and opportunities to be heard are infinite.

I agree about the web. It is an infinite ocean of limitless voices, large and small, and herein lies the contradiction in the Conservative narrative. How can there be censorship by governments, or anyone else for that matter, in the endless ocean that is the World Wide Web? It is an oxymoron to speak of censorship in the cyber-era, unless we are in North Korea, where Conservatives appear to think we live. Today's challenge is not censorship, but misinformation and disinformation amplified by bots and algorithms.

Let us go back to CanCon and radio. The reason we needed CanCon was to counter a powerful, U.S.-centric distribution system whose financial interests were not necessarily those of Canadian music creators. Without CanCon, radio stations would have played only music provided to them by multinational record companies with an interest in promoting the musical artists they invested in. How would radio stations have decided what songs to play from all the music supplied to them? Playlists would have been compiled according to listener requests, requests based on the music supplied by the record companies and played on the radio, and on record sales at record stores stocked with records also supplied by the same foreign-owned record companies.

In a sense, without a requirement for CanCon, which is a form of discoverability, the de facto music industry radio algorithm would not have left much space for great Canadian music.

Finally, the Conservatives say that if Canadian culture cannot make it on its own, without any kind of government support, then it should face the judgment of the marketplace. They seem to view Canadian culture as the latest automobile.

If the Conservatives are so vehemently opposed to government intervention, the support of culture, are they asking that we eliminate Telefilm and the Canadian film or video production tax credit, which support Canadian films, many of them award winners? I think that is one of the questions that need to be asked here.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same topic. I believe that whether a member is still present in the House or not, the member should be permitted to ask questions. In question period, a member of the opposition will address a question to a minister who may not be there, and someone else will get up and answer in place of the minister. Therefore, the fact that a member is no longer in the House does not mean that one should not have the opportunity to ask questions, even if they are not going to be answered.

[Committees of the House, March 22nd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development on Bill S‑5, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, to make related amendments to the Food and Drugs Act and to repeal the Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination Act.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

[Health, March 21st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, studies estimate that nearly 1 million Canadians will be living with dementia by 2030. Throughout the pandemic, people with dementia and those who care for them have been disproportionately affected.

Last week, our government announced $68.3 million in investments in research on aging and brain health. Can the Minister of Health explain how this money will contribute to the health and well-being of people with dementia, their families and their caregivers?