Bill C-10 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Broadcasting Act to, among other things,
(a) add online undertakings — undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet — as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings;
(b) update the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in section 3 of that Act by, among other things, providing that the Canadian broadcasting system should serve the needs and interests of all Canadians — including Canadians from racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds — and should provide opportunities for Indigenous persons, programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and that is in Indigenous languages, and programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities;
(c) specify that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) must regulate and supervise the Canadian broadcasting system in a manner that
(i) takes into account the different characteristics of Indigenous language broadcasting and the different conditions under which broadcasting undertakings that provide Indigenous language programming operate,
(ii) is fair and equitable as between broadcasting undertakings providing similar services,
(iii) facilitates the provision of programs that are accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities, and
(iv) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which that Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on a class of broadcasting undertakings if doing so will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy;
(d) amend the procedure relating to the issuance by the Governor in Council of policy directions to the Commission;
(e) replace the Commission’s power to impose conditions on a licence with a power to make orders imposing conditions on the carrying on of broadcasting undertakings;
(f) provide the Commission with the power to require that persons carrying on broadcasting undertakings make expenditures to support the Canadian broadcasting system;
(g) authorize the Commission to provide information to the Minister responsible for that Act, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, and set out in that Act a process by which a person who submits certain types of information to the Commission may designate the information as confidential;
(h) amend the procedure by which the Governor in Council may, under section 28 of that Act, set aside a decision of the Commission to issue, amend or renew a licence or refer such a decision back to the Commission for reconsideration and hearing;
(i) specify that a person shall not carry on a broadcasting undertaking, other than an online undertaking, unless they do so in accordance with a licence or they are exempt from the requirement to hold a licence;
(j) harmonize the punishments for offences under Part II of that Act and clarify that a due diligence defence applies to the existing offences set out in that Act; and
(k) allow for the imposition of administrative monetary penalties for violations of certain provisions of that Act or of the Accessible Canada Act.
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Online Streaming Act

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I apologize for doing what I did indirectly that I am not allowed to do directly. I am sorry about that.

This bill continues to be an assault on freedom. There is no doubt about that.

I gave a speech on Bill C-10 in the last Parliament, and the bill made significant reference to the fact that there was going to be algorithmic transparency. That is something I was in favour of. Algorithmic transparency is something we definitely want to see.

The challenge with that concept, which comes out of this bill, is not so much that algorithms will be transparent but that the government will be able to dictate the outcome of these algorithms. That is the challenge we see.

This particular bill, Bill C-11, is again bringing the government into these spaces. We hear, over and over again, from the Liberals that they want to level the playing field.

I have a significant story about folks in my riding who would like to start a radio station. It is very easy to start a podcast in this country. There are a number of hosting services available. People are able to use Facebook Live if they want to. There are a number of ways to start a podcast, and in probably an hour someone can have their own podcast.

On the other hand, to get a TV or a radio station started in this country is difficult, particularly in a part of the world like the one I come from, which is vast and large and where there are no other radio stations. There is only a handful of people living in northern Alberta, where there is one radio station, which is the CBC. If other folks come along and would like to start their own radio station, the amount of time and energy they would need to spend to try to start a radio station in northern Alberta would be significant. We have seen this over and over again.

I am glad to hear that the Liberals want to level the playing field, so to speak. When it comes to starting a radio station in a small town in northern Alberta, folks have worked on it for literally a year. They have spent a year trying to get approvals for a radio station in northern Alberta. They could get a podcast up and running immediately.

I point out that the Internet in rural Alberta is somewhat spotty. It is probably better than in most other parts of the country, given the fact that we have the oil patch everywhere and it brings the Internet everywhere, but besides that it is still not the same as it is downtown, so the Internet is not readily available. If someone starts a podcast in northern Alberta, they may have some trouble with the Internet.

To start a radio station, something that could be broadcast to an entire community with local news and that sort of thing, the amount of paperwork and effort someone has to go through to start that radio station is immense, never mind the cost of doing that. Setting up the facilities just to broadcast is probably $20,000.

With a bill like this, the government could be trying to level the playing field and make it easier for Canadian content generators to get their content on the airways so their local communities could hear it, but it is not doing that. Instead, what the government is trying to do is pick winners and losers, which is something Conservatives have been saying all along.

The freedom of being Canadian is that people can take their message to the public square regardless of what the government has to say about it. The thresholds for starting a radio station are immense in this country, and the government is entirely responsible for that.

I am not saying the government should get out of that. In the radio space, I believe there is specifically a role for the government. We cannot have the folks with the most powerful radio kicking everybody else out of the radio waves. That would not be appropriate. We would just end up with a war.

In northern Alberta, where there are two radio stations in a small town, certainly we should be able to organize and tell one station that it gets 98.1 and the other that it gets 93.7. As long as they are not interfering with anybody else and there is not another radio station for another 300 kilometres, I do not see what the big deal is and why there are all the regulatory processes. It should be that they can start their radio stations, get rolling and not mess with the other folks.

I understand that, when we get into Toronto, for example, where there might be hundreds of radio stations all competing within one or two notches on the dial, it is going to get a bit more confusing and it is going to take more to manage that. That is the role of the government. The role of the government is to manage the differences between those radio stations.

Rather than trying to make the Internet services operate and be regulated as if they are radio stations, how about working the other way and make it much easier for the radio stations to operate so someone can start a radio station as easy as starting up a podcast in this country? That would be levelling the playing field, in my opinion. That would be trying to ensure that no matter the method of bringing one's voice to the public square, they are able to do that regardless of which mode they are using. That would be fantastic if we could level that playing field. I think that is entirely within the CRTC's wheelhouse.

Instead, we see it going the other way. We see more radio and TV legacy media struggling to compete with the new platforms and instead of the government taking the shackles off, reducing red tape and making it easier for them to compete, the government is going to put more red tape and more regulations on the Internet. Then they will take money from the Internet and transfer that wealth from Internet service providers back to the legacy media. That is where I really think this bill falls flat on its face.

This whole question of Canadian content becomes a really interesting debate. For example, there are several podcasts and folks I listen to. One of them is called Viva Frei. It is by a YouTube sensation out of Montreal. He is a good Canadian guy. He has his own YouTube channel. He is a lawyer by trade and he explains the law and how the law works here in Canada. He is generally at odds with what the Liberals are up to. Are the Liberals going to be disputing whether he has Canadian content? Would they be concerned about who is contributing to his online following? That is exactly the kind of thing we are talking about.

Another one I follow is Redneck's Québec. It is another one I am really excited about. His antics on the snowmobile are impressive. Larry Enticer is another one I think is great, along with Rut Daniels. These are all great Canadians who have their own following on the Internet, and it is, in my opinion, definitely Canadian content. However, how and where are these decisions going to be made? Will these folks, whom I really appreciate on the Internet, be given the benefits of this new regime being brought in by Bill C-11?

I hope I have been able to explain the two issues around this bill, which are who defines what Canadian content is and also the levelling of the playing field. We do not have to bring the streaming services up to the same amount as the radio stations, but rather bring the radio stations down so they can compete with the streaming services.

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

Madam Speaker, certainly I am pleased with Bill C-11 so far, but there are things that trouble me within it, for instance what happened in amendments to Bill C-10, in the last Parliament, to Canadian ownership of our Canadian broadcasting. That seems to be a little bit more wobbly. There is a lack of clear support for smaller producers and smaller creators, but there is this other piece of work that we need to do on broadcasting, and that is what I will ask my question about.

When will we see the government provide a comprehensive framework legislation and funding to get the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation back to what it should be doing? Ever since it put Wheel of Fortune on air and competed with private broadcasters, I have felt that the CBC, as it should be, was slipping between our fingers.

When we talk of this country not being unified, I think of Peter Gzowski, who has passed away. He and Morningside used to hold us together in the same way that watching the news with Knowlton Nash held us together. Something has gone wrong with the CBC. I am a big fan, but I feel as though competing with private broadcasters has not been the way to go, and we need to get back to a CBC that is more like the BBC.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, I am very excited to speak to the bill today.

In the last couple of minutes, I heard the words “misinformation” and “disinformation”. In our own society, it seems like information put out there by the woke society is good information, but if somebody has a difference of opinion, it is horrible information.

I want to give an example from my own province of New Brunswick, where this is prevalent. When I was an MLA from 2010 to just last summer, there were two major projects in New Brunswick. One was the Energy East pipeline and the other was a natural gas project. At the time, natural gas did not get widespread support and it ended badly: We never developed the industry. With the Energy East pipeline, we could not get support from the Province of Quebec at the time, for whatever reason, and that project did not happen either.

If we look at what is happening around the world today, it would be misinformation to tell Canadians, particularly New Brunswickers, that those two projects were not worthy. We can see what is happening in the world today, and if we look at the energy sector around the world, New Brunswick is very well positioned in its gas industry to have a pipeline sent from Alberta to both New Brunswick and Montreal. These would have been very good projects. However, we are not going to hear that from the Liberal Party of Canada. We are also not going to hear it from the Green Party of Canada. We cannot have it both ways.

What do we see here today? The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is at stake. I am not a lawyer, so I will speak about this in general terms that are understandable. Subsection 2(b) of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms says:

freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression...freedom of the press and other media of communication

This subsection guarantees us all the liberty to express ourselves without reserve or coercion from the state. That is a core principle of our constitutional heritage in this country. Although it was embedded in the charter in 1982 by the Prime Minister's own father, it goes back hundreds of years through the English liberty this parliamentary system transmitted from one generation to the next. As Sir Winston Churchill said, “Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”

We see that in this country. I understand the precedent of a war and how that is the biggest issue of our time, but in this country, all too often the woke community can go out and spew what it likes, drive it down everybody's throat and then try to compare us to American politicians, which could not be any further from the truth. That is an example of misinformation and disinformation.

This bill seeks to take away that right and those freedoms. Do not take my word for it. I can quote directly from one of at least two former commissioners of the regulatory body that would be empowered under this bill to control Internet content. Peter Menzies described the bill as an assault on freedom of expression. Another former CRTC member explained that it would allow political appointees to determine what we see and what we say on the Internet. Senator and great writer David Adams Richards, from my home community of Miramichi, said something along the lines of it being like a knife through the heart of the freedom of expression we enjoy in this country. These are quality names and very well known individuals who have some very strong points on this topic.

I forgot to mention that I am splitting my time with the member of Parliament for Haldimand—Norfolk.

There is a lot we do not know about this bill because numerous of its amendments were voted on before they were even made public to the committee. The Liberals want a series of bureaucrats, unnamed, unelected and unknown, to decide what Canadian content is heard and not heard.

I will give the example of mainstream media. Mainstream Canadian media often runs American political content without Canadian content. It gives a strangely outward and seriously biased opinion on the content and feeds it to the Canadian public without any local content, and it includes its opinion each and every time. However, we pay for this as Canadian taxpayers. Long gone are the days when media put out the facts and let the public decide what was right, what was wrong, what was Liberal, what was Conservative. The public used to determine these things of their own accord. As a country, we got along better then, and we need to somehow get back to that.

Another example is a community association in a Canadian neighbourhood telling us about local food drives. It is in a Canadian neighbourhood, it has a Canadian author, it has a Canadian story, it is a Canadian initiative in a Canadian city and it is read almost exclusively by Canadian readers, yet it would not be considered, presumably, Canadian content and therefore would be demoted.

That is just the daily pedestrian content we get online. What about the more conscientious stuff? The government is going to decide what kinds of political views are Canadian. Of course, endorsing the Prime Minister's left-wing agenda and his ideology will be a prerequisite of Canadiana. We can be sure of that. Liberal Party members have effectively been saying for generations that they and only they represent Canadian values and, therefore, that only the values they espouse would be considered Canadian for the purpose of this act alone.

Not only can the Liberals not tell us what content would be acceptable and what would not, but they cannot tell us who would be subjected to the bill. Originally, they had an explicit exemption for users, the everyday Joe and Jane who post stuff online. It is called user-generated content. The justice department said not to worry, that the bill would not affect any of them because there is a very specific exemption that excludes them. However, the Liberals showed up at committee and, all of a sudden and just like that, here we go again. It is another example of a government that cannot be trusted.

What is the issue here? The Liberal government has introduced Bill C-11, formerly Bill C-10. Last year, the Liberals passed Bill C-10 in the House of Commons without allowing a full debate at the heritage committee to address many outstanding concerns from experts and parliamentarians on how that legislation would affect Canadian rights and freedoms on the Internet. Canada's Conservatives support creating a level playing field between large foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters while protecting the individual rights and freedoms of all Canadians. Canada is home to many world-class writers, actors, composers, musicians, artists and creators. Creators need rules that do not hold back their ability to be Canadian and have global successes. Earlier I gave an example of Senator David Adams Richards, a well-renowned writer from Miramichi.

This bill is a near copy of the Liberals' deeply flawed Bill C-10, and it fails to address the serious concerns raised by experts and Canadians. While the government claims there is now an exemption for user-generated content, the legislation would allow the CRTC to regulate any content that generates revenue directly. People need to be free to see anything that is available so they can make their own decisions for themselves, a liberty we have in this country, on what is important, what is right, what is wrong, what is just and unjust and what the facts are.

Now more than ever, Canadians need to know that their freedom is their own, that it does not belong to politicians, bureaucrats and judges, that it belongs to each of us and that on this founding principle, people can feel free. Freedom is paramount. It is the one liberty we all want and need, and each of us is prepared to fight for it, especially those in the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member opposite's service on the justice committee and I look forward to working with him in this Parliament.

I think he makes an interesting point on the tactic taken with legislative drafting. However, one thing is clear in the context of the debate on this bill, and it was quite vociferous regarding Bill C-10 in the 43rd Parliament: People want a surety that user-generated content by an individual person posting something to a platform like YouTube will not be caught. That is why we put an express exemption to that very effect into this legislation.

This has been cast wide because the platform and the nature of the streaming services are wide. However, with an adequately tailored exemption, I think it is clear to Canadians that we are not here to limit freedom of expression unnecessarily. What we are trying to do is to actually empower freedom of expression by creating more of that expressive content and by empowering the creation of more Canadian content through this funding model.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today and speak to Bill C-11 and to continue this discussion that has been going on for quite a while. It has been at least a year since a bill similar to this one was introduced in the last session of Parliament. That bill, unfortunately, did not make it past the finish line, but what we have here is an improved version of the bill we saw before, a bill that tackled some of the challenges and obstacles, rightly or wrongly, that were put forward in particular by the opposition.

I want to go back to one of the comments that was made just a few minutes ago by the Conservative member who was responding to questions. He said something very important. I think it is important because it represents a lot of the narrative that we are going to hear over the next few days.

I forgot to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Parkdale—High Park.

We will hear a lot of the language that is being used. We just heard the previous member say that we do not want to allow the government to control what people watch. If anybody is going to be following this debate, I want them to pay close attention to the fact that as the debate goes on over the next few days or weeks, we will hear that language quite a bit from the Conservatives, because this is the exact language they used last time. It is language that tries to suggest to Canadians that the Government of Canada sits behind a desk and decides what people can watch and what they cannot watch. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the original bill did and what this bill is proposing to do now is not to regulate what people watch but to broaden the pool of what is available to them.

If someone has the perspective that we should be homogeneous in terms of everything that is in front of us since we live in North America, that there is no problem with being just like the United States, that we do not need our own individual identity and individual culture, then that is one thing. If that is somebody's position, although I disagree with it wholeheartedly, at least that would be the position of someone who still understands the facts. However, in fact this bill does not suggest that. What this bill does, and what I prefer, is that we provide Canadians with the opportunity to watch programming that is produced by Canadians and for Canadians as an option that someone can watch.

It is very similar to the CanCon rules that apply to radio stations. Right now, if someone in Canada has a radio station that broadcasts over FM and AM bands, they are subject to a rule that a certain amount of the content that is played during the day has to be Canadian content. I live in a border city that is not that far from Watertown, New York, and quite often we find radio stations trying to circumvent those rules. They would set up their transmission tower in Watertown, even though all of the broadcasting was happening in Kingston. It was being sent over to Watertown, New York, where it was then being broadcast from towers, and I am sure over 90% of the listenership was Canadian people because the broadcast audience was a Canadian audience in Kingston.

As the technologies develop and as we see new technologies come online and as the Internet becomes a dominant force in the consumption of content, it goes without saying that if we believe in making sure that Canadian content is in that pool of availability for those who are consuming it, we have to ensure that the Canadian content is there. That is the difference.

This is not about controlling what people see. I trust that we will have a more thorough debate on it this time around, but the rhetoric last time with Bill C-10 came down to suggesting that the federal government was trying to regulate all social media in order to determine what was put in front of people on the Internet, and that could not be further from the truth. This has always been about making sure that content is available.

What does this bill do specifically? Let me just highlight some of the important points. It brings those online streaming services under the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Act because, as I previously mentioned, they are not. It will require online streaming services that serve Canadian markets to contribute to the production of Canadian content. This is what I was talking about. When Netflix or these other agencies are selling to Canadians, they have to invest in Canadian culture and Canadian-produced content.

Again, we might not agree with that. We might think that we are so globalized now that we can just get everything from wherever we want, and that should not matter. That of course is a position to take on this matter, but it is not the position that I take. It is not the position that the bill seeks to improve upon, because we recognize that it is extremely important that a portion of that content remains Canadian.

This also prioritizes support for content for francophone, indigenous, LGBTQ2+, racialized and other equity-seeking creators. It ensures online broadcasters will showcase more Canadian content, as I previously mentioned, and it modernizes outdated legislation to bring it into the 21st century.

It is also important to talk about what the bill will not do, despite the fact that I do not think that even my saying this now will change what we will hear. We are going to hear people in the chamber over the course of this debate say that it will do these things, but it will not impose regulations on content everyday Canadians post to social media. If someone uploads something to YouTube, they would not be subject to it even if they have a lot of followers, unless they are making money off it, in which case they would be similar to other businesses making money off it. There is an important point there that I will get back to in a second, because even those who do upload will not necessarily be subject to this.

It also does not impose regulations on Canadian digital content creators, influencers or users, as I said, and it will not censor content or mandate specific algorithms on streaming services or social media platforms. I have already touched on this point, but it is important to mention it again because this is what we will hear over the course of this debate. We will hear that the Prime Minister is personally sitting behind a computer somewhere trying to set an algorithm so that people see more content that he likes.

I know we are going to hear that, because that is the rhetoric that happened with Bill C-10. I have no doubt that we will hear it again with Bill C-11, although I really hope that we do not, but if history is an indication of anything in the House, when these issues come up, Conservatives know exactly which ones are going to be the ones that they can push that will engage public reaction whether or not they are true.

I want to go back to the first comment I made when I was talking about the things it will not do, which was to impose regulations on everyday Canadians. This is important, because the member who spoke previous to me brought up the fact that if someone uploads a video or content and they are making money off it, they are subject to legislation. That is actually not true. There are three criteria, and these are “and” criteria, not “or” criteria, that need to be met in order for something to be considered commercial content. In determining whether the content is commercial content, the regulator will need to evaluate three elements. One is whether the content is monetized, which goes to the member's comment a few minutes ago. However, two other things also have to be present. One is whether the content exists on another non-social media platform, such as Spotify, the radio or TV. The other is whether the content, such as a song uploaded to YouTube, has a unique international standard music number. Those are the three items that need to happen for this legislation to apply.

The previous statement that somebody would be subject to it as long as they are making money off it is actually not the case. There are three criteria that need to be met.

I know that my time is coming to a close, but I wanted to say what this really is about. I hope that everyone will at the very least support the fundamentals of ensuring that the Canadian pool of content remains robust and available to Canadians, because if we look back at the decades that have gone by, the last 70 years or so, the Broadcasting Act, even though it did not apply to the Internet, is what made sure that the content remained available for Canadians to see.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of South Shore—St. Margarets to speak on Bill C-11, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act.

I was executive assistant to Canada's foreign minister when the Broadcasting Act was last amended in 1991. Email was a new thing. Foreign Affairs communicated with embassies through telex. There was no social media, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or TikTok. Therefore, the revision to the Broadcasting Act under Bill C-11 is long overdue.

I will try to summarize what I believe to be the good, the bad and the ugly of this proposed legislation, and I will start with the good.

There are several important provisions in this legislation that I support, including the requirements to support the increased production of Canadian content by online service providers such as Netflix. The greater support of indigenous programming is also a good start. Coming from Nova Scotia, I also appreciate the increased support and focus on independent production of broadcasting material. It is a step forward that this bill protects the intellectual property of Internet service provider algorithms.

Now let me turn to the bad. We are hopeful that, when this bill reaches committee, the government will be open to amending it to deal with our primary area of concern, the regulation of speech on the Internet. It is true that in proposed subsection 2(2.1) and proposed subsection 4.1(1) the government has excluded individual users of social media from CRTC regulation. A similar commitment was made in Bill C-10 in the last Parliament but removed by the government at committee stage.

However, we were asked in Bill C-10 in the last Parliament, now Bill C-11, to trust the government in its commitment not to regulate individual freedom of speech. This is asking too much of Canadians who no longer trust the government. We should all be concerned when governments flaunt the law with the SNC-Lavalin scandal, abuse the public purse for family benefit in the WE scandal, ignore the views of those it disagrees with and legislate against free speech with the Emergencies Act.

Where are the “just trust me” elements of this bill? They come in proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2. This is the ugly part of the bill. Proposed section 4.1 exempts individual users of social media from the content control of the CRTC. While this is true to some extent, the government presents a legal pretzel in proposed section 4.2. Let me explain this confusing Liberal legal pretzel. The addition to this bill of proposed section 4.1, which says that censorship by the CRTC will not apply to individuals uploading content to an Internet service provider, sounds good, but what the government giveth, the government takes away in proposed section 4.2, where the government can regulate an individual’s Internet content if it generates any sort of revenue. Without knowing or seeing these regulations, this is a broad power to censor the individual.

The government is telling Canadians not to worry and to just trust it. Canadians do not trust the government. We should be especially concerned when the government, under this bill, seeks to legislate on what Canadians can and cannot say if it generates any revenue at all. Individual content creators with fledgling businesses are now being asked to trust the government that, through policy and regulation, they will not be censored. There are no legislated guarantees in the bill to prevent them from being censored.

In his last public address on April 11, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln said that “important principles may, and must, be inflexible.” Freedom of thought and speech are principles with which the Government of Canada must be inflexible in defending, so much so that Pierre Trudeau placed these inflexible freedoms in section 2 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It guarantees freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, the very freedoms that are core to our democracy. Our defence of them must remain inflexible, as Lincoln said.

Let me be clear that our freedoms have limits. For example, in a country like Canada, people cannot incite hate speech or other violent forms of language. Both our common law and Criminal Code have placed limits on that freedom. The distinctions in our Criminal Code are just and ensure the protection of the most vulnerable in our society. If the government wishes to seek further protections for those impacted by racism and other discrimination, I know my Conservative caucus is willing to co-operate, and the Criminal Code is the appropriate legislative vehicle for such restrictions.

Bill C-11 contains more disturbing open-ended online censorship regulatory power for the government. This legislation would allow the CRTC to regulate any content that generates revenue directly or indirectly in proposed paragraph 4.2(2)(a). That means virtually all content would still be regulated, including that of independent content creators earning a living on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Spotify.

What does “indirectly” mean? The government asks for us to just trust it. Last Parliament, Conservatives were quick to point out the flaws in the nearly identical bill, Bill C-10. It was not just Conservatives sounding the alarm. Experts, lawyers, academics and many more people testified at committee and spoke publicly about the problems with the bill.

A former CRTC commissioner said that the bill would be like a hammer to intimidate freedom of expression. Today, given the continued development of technology and the conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, much of that dialogue takes place on places like Facebook, Twitter and other websites. This bill would infringe upon the ability Canadians have to post online and to express themselves freely, even if their post “indirectly generates revenues”. Furthermore, the bill would infringe on the rights Canadians have to access content online, which means that the right to view freely would be infringed upon if the bill passes.

To all my colleagues, I ask if they trust the government to decide what they can say, read and watch online. Bill C-11 would give new, undefined power over the Internet to the CRTC, which was built to balance the needs of competing broadcasters, not those of citizens.

The only regulator of thought a Canadian should deal with is themselves. I can assure members that constituents in my riding do not want the censorship elements of this bill rushed through the House of Commons without thoughtful debate and hearings. They want clause 4 amended, and I trust the government will listen to Canadians in this respect at committee and amend this bill.

I ask members to be guided by the words of Lincoln that important principles must be “inflexible”. Be inflexible in defending free speech and amend the section of this bill that would give the government the ability to censor individuals on the Internet.

It is my hope that courage will manifest in all MPs and we can all work toward a Broadcasting Act that upholds the freedoms of Canadians, improves Canadian and indigenous content, supports independent production and does not stifle speech online.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Madam Speaker, speaking of the last bill, Bill C-10, the amount of opposition we received, especially from the younger population, from university students, was unbelievable. It was one of the times I received calls from students at the university level and from average Canadians complaining about the control that the government wants to have over broadcasting in general and specifically YouTube and Spotify. That is why this bill is no different from Bill C-10. That is why we need to vote it down and it should not be passed.

Emergencies Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, there is indeed an emergency in this country. Indeed, there are a series of emergencies.

There is the emergency of the family whose 14-year-old daughter has attempted suicide after two years of isolation from sports, social interaction and other healthy activities that sustain a happy and heartful mind. There is the emergency of the federal public servant who, for unrecognized medical reasons, cannot get vaccinated and is now deprived of an income and a job. There is the emergency of the trucker who was hailed as a hero while driving our goods and services across international borders unvaccinated for over two years, who suddenly was declared a public health threat and deprived of his job as well. There is the emergency of the 32-year-old still living in his mom's basement, because under the pretext of COVID, the government printed so much money that it now costs $836,000 for the average house. There is the emergency of the single mother trembling as she walks down the grocery aisle because she cannot afford a basket of affordable goods, because the government has inflated her cost of living. There is the emergency created by the regulatory gatekeepers who keep people in poverty by blockading first nations people from the ability to develop their own resources and blockading immigrants from the ability to work in the very professions for which they are trained and qualified.

These are the emergencies we should be addressing, but instead the Prime Minister has created a new emergency. What is his motivation? Of course, it is to divide and conquer. How did this all start? Let us remember that the Prime Minister suddenly imposed a brand new vaccine mandate on the very truckers who had been free to travel across borders without a vaccine, and he did it at a time when provinces and countries around the world were removing vaccine mandates. He did it to a group of people who are by far the least likely to transmit a virus, because they work and sleep all by themselves 22 hours a day.

Media asked his health minister and his chief medical officer for evidence supporting the decision. Neither had any. In fact, the medical officer said it was time to return to normalcy, yet the Prime Minister, in spite of all these facts, brought in this new mandate to deprive people of their living, because he knew that it would spark in them a sense of desperation. If he could deprive them of their incomes, they would be so desperate that they would have to rise up and protest, and then he could further demonize them, call them names, attack their motives, belittle them and dehumanize them in order to galvanize the majority against the minority.

This must be the political opportunity his Deputy Prime Minister spoke about when she described what COVID represented to the government. The Liberals have attempted to amplify and take advantage of every pain, every fear and every tragedy that has struck throughout this pandemic in order to divide one person against another and replace the people's freedom with the government's power.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it started immediately. The government attempted to ram through a law that would have given it the power to raise any tax to any level for any reason without a vote in Parliament. It tried to pass Bill C-10 to strip away free speech online. Thankfully, Conservatives blocked it from doing so. The Prime Minister's authorities have said they want to track Canadian cell phones for the next five years. Now this, the Emergencies Act, is the latest and greatest example of attacks on our freedom.

Ostensibly, it was meant to stop blockades, which had already ended before he even brought forward this legislation. In Alberta, in Manitoba and at the Ambassador Bridge, those blockades were ended peacefully, in some cases with protesters hugging the police officers and bringing the matters to a successful close, so that goods and services could resume.

Instead, in that context, the Prime Minister brought in a law that not even Jean Chrétien brought in after 9/11 killed dozens of Canadians in a terrorist attack, that not even former prime minister Harper brought in when a terrorist murdered a Canadian soldier at the war monument and came running into Centre Block spraying bullets in all directions, and that not even the current Prime Minister brought in when blockades by first nations were standing in the way of those who were attempting to build the Coastal GasLink pipeline. For the first time in this law's three-decade history, the Prime Minister brings it in to address what he says was a protest in front of Parliament Hill.

Ironically, this power goes beyond any of the protests and/or blockades the Prime Minister claims to want to address. For example, it would allow governments and banks to seize people's bank accounts and money for donating to the wrong political cause. One journalist asked the justice minister if small sums donated, for example, to support an end to vaccine mandates could get someone's bank account frozen. The minister did not deny it. Instead, he said that people who make donations of that kind should be very worried.

To freeze people's bank accounts is not just an attack on their finances but on their personal security. If their bank accounts are frozen, they cannot buy food, they cannot buy fuel, they cannot pay their children's day care fees and, under this law, they can face this personal attack without being charged with a single, solitary crime.

The Prime Minister says that this is time-limited, yet his own finance minister said she wants some of the tools to be permanent. He said it will be geographically targeted, yet his own parliamentary secretary for justice said that “the act technically applies to all of Canada”. The rules apply everywhere and indefinitely.

Finally, there is nothing in the act that limits the kinds of financial actions that could lead to people's accounts being frozen, and if they are frozen unjustifiably, the act specifically bans people from suing either the bank or the government for that unjustifiable treatment, opening the door for people who have nothing whatsoever to do with either the blockades or the protest having their bank accounts frozen without cause.

The Prime Minister says he wants to do this to remove the blockades, blockades that have already been removed. He says he needs these unprecedented powers in order to bring our country's order back to the pre-protest period, although across this country that has already occurred.

I say to the House that I oppose this unjustifiable power grab and, as prime minister of Canada, I will ensure that no such abuse of power ever happens again.

However, I say that we should end some of these blockades. Let us—

Online Streaming Act

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C‑11. During the 43rd Parliament, I gave a speech at second reading stage of the previous bill, Bill C‑10, and I am pleased that this new version is being debated in the House.

I believe that, in a way, this bill represents a second chance. It gives the official opposition a second chance to clearly support our creators and to hold to account a massive industry that is gaining influence by the day. I am obviously speaking about the digital broadcasting industry, otherwise known as streaming services. This bill offers a second chance to hold the web giants at the heart of this industry to account.

The Conservatives say they support the little guy, but by opposing Bill C‑10 in the previous Parliament, they sided instead with the giants, the most powerful players, those dominating the public space in the digital era.

Our creators play a key role in our society and our economy. They are not just here to entertain us, to serve as a distraction from everyday living or to offer an escape from real life. They have a much more profound and important role. Creators reinforce our identity and help it grow in a world that is constantly changing and evolving. Creators hold a mirror up to our society. They show us who we are, both the good and the bad.

Creators help us learn about and understand our past. They also serve as a beacon, illuminating a future full of possibility. Creators embody the soul of a people, a nation, a country, and their work feeds that soul. If we do not take care of our artists and creators, if we do not ensure they can earn a living, if we allow them to wither and die, our collective soul will pay the price.

Artists motivate us as individuals and as a society. They motivate us to keep building. For example, when we experience an exceptional piece of art, especially one that reflects our own stories and our own reality, it imbues us with a sense of pride in who we are and what we can accomplish. This pride motivates us to keep building our community and sharing our perspective with the whole world.

I am thinking of the work of Jean-Marc Vallée, who passed away recently. We recognize ourselves as Quebeckers in his films, particularly C.R.A.Z.Y and Café de Flore. We also hear our voice in his Hollywood movies like Big Little Lies, Dallas Buyers Club and Demolition Man. His Hollywood projects generated economic spinoffs for Quebec and Canada, even in my community of West Island in Montreal. I have a friend, Gavin Fernandes, who worked with Jean-Marc Vallée for a long time doing post-production work on some of his films.

In very practical terms, arts and culture are an economic force. As for the sectors targeted by Bill C-11, let us look at broadcasting. Broadcasting contributes roughly $9.1 billion to Canada's gross domestic product. That represents 46,556 jobs.

The film and video sector contributes approximately $4.3 billion to the Canadian economy, which translates into 71,868 jobs. Finally, the music and sound recording industry injects $572 million into the Quebec economy, which translates into 8,286 jobs.

I would take it one step further. Contributions made by the creative sector transcend the industries I just mentioned. Creativity is at the heart of nearly everything in a modern economy like Canada's, where things like ideas, experiences and symbols are increasingly consumed alongside physical products.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie for his excellent speech and comments, which line up with most of our ideas.

I would like his take on the work that was done on the former Bill C‑10. The Bloc Québécois made a lot of suggestions, additions and corrections to improve it. We are now faced with the current Bill C‑11, which I certainly think could easily be passed once it is studied.

The thing that bothers me is the $80 million a month that skips over the creators and goes straight to the broadcasting bigwigs. It makes me so mad. As a singer-songwriter myself, I know that all of my colleagues are up in arms over this.

Does my colleague also believe that we must deal with the bill urgently and efficiently?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am familiar with Bill C‑11, having spent a lot of time working on the previous bill, Bill C‑10, which addressed the same issues but was not passed by the Senate. This is a new version, but it is almost identical to Bill C‑10, with some changes.

To set the stage, I think it is important to talk about tax fairness. Yesterday, I was listening to prominent left-wing economist Thomas Piketty on the radio. He said that getting the ultrarich, the billionaires, the big corporations, the web giants like GAFAM, to pay is key to being able to create societies that are fairer and more egalitarian, societies where we can pay for social programs to take care of our people, our communities and our neighbours.

This bill is a step in that direction. Unfortunately, the federal government, be it Conservative or Liberal, has not yet done anything to make these web giants pay tax in Canada. I can already hear the Minister of Canadian Heritage saying that it is not up to Canadian Heritage, it is up to Finance. He is right. I know that.

I am just saying that we have a major tax fairness problem preventing us from making necessary investments in health care, post-secondary education and infrastructure. Middle-class workers are always the ones who end up paying for those things, while the rich find a way out and go hide their money in tax havens. Big companies like web giants are still not paying tax in Canada. That is absolutely scandalous, and we should all be outraged.

I invite the federal government—I urge it—to heed the demands of those on the left, of progressives and the NDP, among others, and tell these companies that enough is enough. Google, Apple, Facebook and their ilk need to pay tax. They make mind-boggling amounts of money. They are literally stealing our money, and the middle class, the workers, the people we represent in our ridings, are the ones who always end up bearing the tax burden.

We are not talking about taxation in Bill C‑11, but about a certain fairness in financial contributions to support our cultural sector. That is the link between the two. It is a small step, but a significant one for our artists, creators, and national, local or regional productions. It is becoming absolutely essential to be able to make this shift. It is high time that we did so. We are already lagging far behind.

The last version of the Broadcasting Act was enacted in 1991. It is now 2022. Spotify, Netflix and all these online streaming services did not exist in 1991. Fortunately or unfortunately, I remember it as an entirely different era. One thing is certain: we have a regulatory and legislative framework that is outdated and archaic. As the member for Trois-Rivières stated, it is literally from another century and must be adapted for the present day.

Back then, the federal government was able to step in and pass legislation on TV and radio broadcasters because the airwaves had been declared a public good. Since they were a public good, the government could step in to oversee and regulate the use of these airwaves. That is not true of the Internet. The Internet is not considered a public good or even a public service, which is unfortunate. I do think it should be a public service. Back then, the legislation was drafted based on the concept of public airwaves for radio and later for television. We are light years beyond that.

We in the NDP welcome this kind of legislation, which aims to ensure that everyone is treated equally by bringing those who do not currently contribute to funding Quebec and Canadian cultural production in line with those who do. This should have been done a long time ago. We said this last year, before the election. Governments have been dragging their feet on this issue. It is culture, our cultural sector and our artists, who have suffered and unfortunately continue to suffer.

I find it particularly hypocritical that the Liberals argued for urgent action on the former Bill C-10, after introducing it too late in 2021 and then calling an election, knowing full well that this would kill the bill, which would die on the Order Paper in the Senate and therefore not receive royal assent.

The Liberals' political self-interest and the tactical, partisan decisions they made in the hope of gaining a majority led them to knowingly and willingly abandon the cultural sector and our artists. Because of the Liberals, these artists will have to wait months, maybe even a year, before this problem will be solved and the various stakeholders will help fund our cultural productions through the Canada Media Fund or other funds.

This sector has never been more in need of our support. The cultural sector, along with tourism, has probably been hit hardest by the pandemic. This is particularly true for the performing arts, which are not as affected by Bill C‑11 and the Broadcasting Act but still employ a lot of people, who are desperate and struggling. The past two years have been extremely difficult, which is one more reason we need to be diligent and mindful in designing the best bill possible.

If this act is only reviewed every 33 years, it becomes even more important that we do a good job now, since we do not know when we will have the chance to make any changes.

As I was saying, technology has left our current system in the dust. On the one hand, our broadcasters and cable companies pay for arts, TV, film and music productions. On the other, web giants, all the online and streaming broadcasters, do not pay a penny to support the telling of our stories.

This inequality, this inequity, this is what needs fixing and should have been fixed a long time ago. We are ready to work in good faith with our friends in the cultural sector to change this situation and find a solution to this problem.

The NDP supports the bill in principle, just as it supported the old Bill C‑10. We want to work with our cultural sector, not just because we like culture or because it is what defines us as humans, but also because it is an important economic sector with tens of thousands of jobs. Those jobs in turn support cities, towns and regions. Lots of those jobs are in Quebec, in Montreal, and, I am proud to say, in my riding, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, where I am fortunate to represent a very visible, active and creative artistic community that I am very proud of.

I would like to raise the two questions that we have, and I look forward to hearing what the minister has to say about them and talking about them in committee.

One thing that derailed the debate the last time was the official opposition's very partisan speeches. The Conservative Party was getting a great kick out of raising the doubts and concerns of people who were worried about being regulated and managed by a government body like the CRTC. However, a fair reading of the previous bill showed that such would not have been the case.

It seems the Liberals were worried that the debate would shift or derail like that again, so the new bill seems even more forceful with regard to what we generally refer to as cat or baby videos, which will not be subject to CRTC regulations. Users and user-generated content will be excluded.

That is stated and reiterated in the bill. We could discuss that, but I think we are headed in the right direction. That is not the purpose of the bill. The purpose of the bill is to make individuals and companies that use social media for business purposes and generate a significant amount of revenue contribute.

That is where things are unclear right now. For example, how will we calculate YouTube's contribution if we are making a distinction between commercial and personal or private use? I am saying YouTube, but the same would be true for TikTok, Facebook or Instagram.

These platforms and social media sites are used a lot for professional and business purposes. That is fine, but we need to make sure that we have a mechanism for determining the value of the commercial use of TikTok or YouTube, for example, and excluding private or personal use.

Based on the preliminary discussions we had with officials from Canadian Heritage, the answer is unclear. They seem to be floundering, unsure how they are going to find a solution. I suspect that they will end up negotiating with each of these platforms.

If we do not have transparency tools for obtaining information on the proportion of personal use versus commercial use, information that is held by these social media platforms and online streamers, how does the Liberal government plan to negotiate with these giants to ensure that they are not pulling a fast one?

How do we make sure that they stop failing to contribute their fair share and stop saving money on the backs of workers who actually do contribute by paying taxes in Quebec and Canada?

We need to seek clarification, and I think this is going to be important work to do in committee. The Minister of Canadian Heritage is going to have to explain this to us.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is the concept of discoverability. I have questions about this, and I am not the only one, because I heard my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois, including the former heritage critic, also raise this question. The bill touches on the issue of funding for various cultural activities, and the web giants now have to chip in.

We must ask ourselves one important question: Will consumers see this content? It is all well and good to say that there may be a Quebec film in the Netflix catalogue, but if it never appears on the home page when the app is opened, if people do not even know it exists, they are not going to watch it. The same goes for a TV show or a song.

For our artists and singers, YouTube is a major means of monetizing and selling their work. The Liberal government is telling us that it wants that work to be seen and found by consumers, but it does not want to intervene in the algorithms of these social media platforms and online streamers.

I am scratching my head a little and wondering how this will be verified. The home page and suggestions shown to each consumer may vary based on their streaming history, previous searches, areas of interest and also, I believe, a significant amount of data that these web giants share in order to create customer profiles.

How will we know if Cœur de pirate's latest song is easy for people to find when they are looking for music on YouTube?

I was told that these people will have an obligation to deliver and that they will look at the overall picture. I have no idea how they are going to monitor all that, collect the data and be able to verify whether the discoverability mechanisms are real or just wishful thinking and a declaration of intent.

I understand that algorithms are also a trade secret. This may be a touchy subject, but I have yet to get a clear answer on how we can achieve this from a technical standpoint without tweaking the algorithms. I think these are important questions.

If the bill simply says that it is very important for Quebeckers and Canadians to have access to TV shows, films and songs from Quebec and Canada and that it is important that they be able to find them easily, but, in reality, none of what the bill says is enforced or enforceable, then the bill will fall short of its goal.

There are some worthwhile aspects, such as funding, national production, discoverability and diversity. The bill does take some steps in the right direction. For example, it contains some guarantees in terms of French-language content production.

As a member of Parliament from Quebec, it is obviously very important to me and to the people I represent across Quebec, and to francophones outside of Quebec and to people all across the country, that French-language works can be produced and are discoverable. We must avoid making the same mistakes the Liberals made with their big agreement with Netflix, when they seemed to have completely forgotten French-language or Quebec content. There were no guarantees.

The NDP is very much in favour of focusing on indigenous productions and indigenous-language content creation. That is something that has been neglected over the years, and there is some catching up to do. Investments are required. We are talking about money, about regional and provincial support. I do not know if we are going to want to look at quotas, but the fact that we are even talking about this and making it a priority is a step in the right direction. This is something that the NDP will emphasize strongly when we are studying the bill.

The bill addresses other points worthy of our attention, such as the idea of cultural sovereignty. If we cannot find a way to tell our own stories, the stories of our regions and towns, we will be crushed, completely overtaken. Our identity, be it Canadian, Québécois, indigenous or something else, will suffer. We have to be realistic. We are right next to the United States, the epicentre of global cultural imperialism. We need to make sure we have the tools to protect Quebec and Canadian content and our ability to produce it. We have to protect our content and promote the use of local talent. Quebec and Canadian artists have to be able to participate and be in those productions. They need exposure and recognition. That is crucial.

Bill C‑11 misses the mark in that it fails to mention CBC/Radio-Canada. The government could have gone there. It could have included CBC/Radio-Canada. There is nothing in this bill about the independence of its board of directors or the role of advertising at CBC/Radio-Canada. That is something the NDP would have liked to see.

We have also been anxiously waiting for legislation that was promised by the federal government, including support for newsrooms to deal with the issue of online broadcasters using content created by journalistic sources. Sites like MSN take articles from here, there and everywhere without paying to use or disseminate them. This is a big problem.

Considering the situation in downtown Ottawa right now and the interference of far-right groups in some of the protests, I think a bill on online hate and radicalization would be extremely important. We really want the Liberal government to do something about this. We are still waiting for the Liberal government to take action to support journalism work and newsrooms, and to address online hate.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is on the official opposition's attitude rather than the substance of the bill.

It is no secret that during the study of Bill C‑10 in the last Parliament, the official opposition did everything it could to prevent it from getting passed by using a variety of different tactics.

Artists, creators and the entire cultural community are calling on us to do everything we can to get this bill passed quickly. They say that they have been waiting long enough.

Does the member for Perth—Wellington agree that we can be constructive by proposing amendments, but without slowing down the process?

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise in the House as the Conservative critic for Canadian heritage and present the official opposition's response to Bill C-11, the online streaming act.

I want to begin by recognizing and celebrating the contributions made by our creators, including artists, actors, musicians and everyone who works in the Canadian arts, culture and heritage sector. There is no doubt that Canada is home to world-class talent that has found success at home and around the world.

Meanwhile, our young talent continues to develop, which will contribute to our national culture for years to come. This is especially true of the exceptional Quebec and francophone talent that we all want to see flourish.

These creators and artists deserve to be treated fairly and to have the tools they need to succeed. They deserve an economic environment that allows them to be fairly compensated for their work as they tell our stories, whether through music, prose, movies, television or, increasingly, online content.

The Broadcasting Act has not been updated in any meaningful way since 1991. Believe it or not, times have changed a little since that time. When I was a seven-year-old kid in 1991, the phrase “be kind, please rewind” reflected so much of the broadcasting world. Now, three decades later, as a legislator, I can acknowledge that times have changed. Technology has changed, and how Canadians enjoy Canadian stories has changed.

What has not changed, as has been acknowledged, is the legislative and regulatory framework that governs this sector. The Government of Canada and, through the government, the CRTC must update their approach to the treatment of arts, culture and media to reflect the realities of the third decade of the 21st century. As many of colleagues know, my riding is home to some of the great cultural institutions in Canada, including the Stratford Festival, Drayton Entertainment, and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Moreover, our community has a vibrant music scene through events, such as Stratford Summer Music, and it is becoming an destination for television and film production.

When I was asked to serve as the official opposition's shadow minister for Canadian heritage, I was certainly honoured to do so. It has provided me with the remarkable opportunity to meet with so many arts and culture stakeholders from across the country. I have met with many artists, musicians and creators who are deeply invested in the future of the industry and the future of this very particular piece of legislation.

The Conservative opposition agrees that the existing system is outdated. However, we have watched the government fail and waver in its efforts to modernize the Broadcasting Act, adapt to our new digital reality and prepare for future disruptions that we cannot even predict today.

That is what the government and the CRTC ought to be doing. They should be there to ensure they are not in the way of the next disruption or the next innovation. Rather, they should be there to lay out the ground rules to ensure that when that next disruption happens, when that next innovation happens, it happens right here in Canada, and that it allows Canadians and Canadian creators to benefit from and export our top-notch talent around the globe.

In fact, in our 2021 election campaign platform, we committed that a Conservative government would conduct a full review of the CRTC to ensure that it better reflects the needs of Canadians and does not prevent Canadian broadcasters from innovating or adapting to changes in the marketplace. Speaking of election platforms, I want to be clear about where our Conservative opposition stands on updates to the Broadcasting Act related to foreign streaming service.

In our platform, we clearly stated that we would support legislation that updates the Broadcasting Act to deal with the realities of an increasingly online market and the need to provide businesses with certainty and consumers with choice.

We will require large streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime to reinvest a significant portion of their Canadian gross revenue into producing original Canadian programming, of which a mandated proportion must be in French.

If they fail to do so on their own in a given year, they will be required to pay the difference into the Canada Media Fund. The proportion chosen will vary based on the nature of the streaming service and would be determined based on the best practices of other jurisdictions, such as those in Europe and Australia, as well as the nature of the Canadian market.

Content reinvestment requirements will also recognize and incentivize partnerships with Canadian independent media producers.

We were also very clear in our platform that we would do this while ensuring that Canadians who uploaded content to social media platforms continued to enjoy freedom of speech and the ability to express themselves freely within the confines of Canadian law.

Let me be clear. Most Canadians understand and expect that large, foreign-owned streamers ought not to be given advantages over the regulated Canadian broadcasting sector. Large, foreign streamers should pay their fair share. What is more, it is logical to expect that those who benefit from the Canadian regulatory regime should also be expected to contribute to Canadian content. We want to see Canadians telling Canadian stories.

Much has been said about the origins of the current regulatory regime. In reviewing the interventions of past colleagues on this topic, I was drawn to the comments of the then minister of communications, the Hon. Marcel Masse, from November 3, 1989. At page 5,546 of Hansard, Minister Masse states:

...let us retrace the development of our broadcasting system. How did it start? How can we define it? Since its beginning, Canadian broadcasting has had to adjust to Canadian realities: the proximity to the United States, a vast and sparsely populated territory, as well as the existence of two official languages. Every measure taken by public authorities since the turn of the century can be explained by these economic, social and cultural challenges, which lie at the root of the bill before us today.

The minister goes on to state:

What has changed, however, is the technology of communications and the significant evolution of Canadian values.

With the important addition of the consideration of indigenous languages and culture, I would suggest that commentary, provided in the House on that November day in 1989, rings true today as well with the challenges and opportunities faced in today's broadcasting system here in Canada.

While we are going down memory lane, I want to turn back to something not quite as far back as 1989 and look at what happened in the previous Parliament with the former bill, Bill C-10. As all members of the House will remember, and many Canadians watching this debate will remember, in the previous Parliament the iteration of Bill C-10 was one of the most poorly managed and poorly messaged policy proposals that I have seen from the government.

The new bill, Bill C-11 picks up where the old Bill C-10 left off. That flawed bill made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The decisions that were made by the government seemed to fail from drafting to introduction to third reading.

Conservatives were not alone in our concerns with Bill C-10. Many individuals and organizations were concerned about free speech and the implications of government overreach and expressed strong concerns with the former Bill C-10. Professor Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law, called the former Bill C-10, “an exceptionally heavy-handed regulatory approach where a government-appointed regulator decides what individual user generated content is prioritized”.

He further pointed out that “no one—literally no other country—uses broadcast regulation to regulate user [generated] content in this way.” Even the Senate, which is now filled with a plurality of senators who were appointed by the current Liberal Prime Minister and who generally share his agenda and ideology, refused to pass Bill C-10 before the Prime Minister called his unnecessary attempt at a power grab in the summer of 2021 election.

One of the main flaws with the former Bill C-10 related to user-generated content, which we will hear a lot about in my comments and the comments throughout this debate. Under that bill, there was originally an exception, proposed section 4.1, which would have allowed those who generated content on social media sites like YouTube and other content-sharing sites to be excluded. However, at committee, government members removed that exclusion, meaning the CRTC could have regulated the content individual users put up on those social media sites.

Further complicating the matter was the unclear and unaccountable authority Bill C-10 proposed to give the CRTC. Bill C-10 proposed to give the CRTC broad new powers, but not clear direction on what those regulations would be. With little to no government oversight, it was concerning that an unaccountable government agency would be enforcing and controlling what people see and do not see on social media sites, which brings us to the current bill before the House, Bill C-11.

I can appreciate a certain irony that this bill was introduced on February 2, groundhog day, because it certainly feels like we have been here before. When I was first appointed as shadow minister for Canadian heritage, I spoke with and I wrote to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and had wonderful, productive conversations with the minister. There were two things in particular that I urged him to do. First was not to reintroduce the flawed former Bill C-10 in the same form. The second request I thought was important was, should he introduce amendments to the Broadcasting Act, that the government not interfere with the work of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and that we as parliamentarians be given the opportunity to properly study and, if necessary, amend this bill. That is still my hope.

I want to talk a bit about what this bill would not do. It would not reduce the current regulatory burden faced by incumbent Canadian broadcasters, nor would it reduce the costs to Canadian broadcasters. The government could take immediate action today to support Canadian broadcasters by adopting Conservative policies.

As I said in this place and elsewhere, the CRTC part II licence fees should be scrapped. These fees amount to a tax on Canadian broadcasters and do nothing but provide additional revenues to regulators and, by extension, the Government of Canada. In fact, in the 2019-20 fiscal year, these part II licence fees amounted to $116,594,742. In the 2018-19 fiscal year, they were $113 million. In those two years alone, that amounts to a quarter of a billion dollars that went to CRTC coffers, rather than contributing to Canadian programming. This bill, unfortunately, would not scrap part II licence fees.

As I hinted at earlier, we will be talking a fair bit about user-generated content. In the old Bill C-10, there was an exclusion for user-generated content, which was then excluded at committee in the melee that was clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-10. In Bill C-11, the government has reintroduced an exclusion on user-generated content on social media and it is known as proposed section 4.1 of Bill C-11. However, in what can only be considered the ultimate in bureaucratic language, the Liberals added an exclusion to the exclusion as proposed section 4.2. This exclusion to the exclusion is so broad that the government, through the CRTC, could once again regulate wide swathes of content uploaded to social media.

I want to quote from key stakeholders who operate in the field. Matt Hatfield, from Open Media, said this:

Trying to exclude user generated content from CRTC regulation is a good step, and an acknowledgement by the government that last year’s Bill C-10 was a mistake.... The problem is that it isn’t clear if they’ve actually excluded user generated content. They’re working from a foundation of a clean separation of professional and amateur content on the Internet that simply doesn’t exist. Major Canadian Internet productions like podcasts could find themselves in the worst of all worlds—subject to CRTC regulation, while not able to seek CanCon funding.

What concerns me, and what concerns our official opposition, is the impact that this will have on creators, especially digital first creators who have found success in the digital world and should be encouraged rather than hindered.

According to a 2019 report from researchers at Ryerson University, “there are an estimated 160,000 Canadian content creators on YouTube, including 40,000 who have enough of an audience to monetize their channels. These 40,000 creators have in turn sparked the development of nearly 28,000 full-time jobs”. That is 28,000 full-time jobs through this type of digital first Canadian creation. This is just one small aspect, one positive economic part that we could realize through new media.

It is not Conservative politicians alone who are raising concerns about the impact this would have on digital first creators. We are raising these concerns on behalf of creators from across Canada.

Scott Benzie, the managing director of Digital First Canada, shared this about Bill C-11: “Bill C-11 still has many issues for Digital First Creators, the 'sandbox' that is said to be given to the CRTC is too broad and could include every piece of content online. Most concerning though is that there is still room in the bill for the government to force platforms to put 'approved' Canadian content ahead of independent Canadian content and artificially manipulate the algorithms. Even in the best case scenario this bill only has downsides for Digital First Creators while the traditional media industry gets their funding doubled.”

We can go on to Morghan Fortier, CEO of Skyship Entertainment, who shared these comments: “In Canada, digital content creators have built a successful thriving industry on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and others that export a huge amount of Canadian content to the rest of the world. Creators bring revenue from other countries back home to Canada and use it to hire Canadian workers, and pay Canadian taxes. They've done this through their entrepreneurial spirit, their hard work, and largely without government interference or assistance. This achievement should be supported, celebrated and encouraged.”

I know my time is running short. I do want to offer a few final comments about Bill C-11, including the broad powers that are delivered to the CRTC. We, as parliamentarians, have a duty to examine and review proposals of the government. The challenge with this piece of legislation is the degree to which government envisions delegating its regulatory power to another entity, in this case, the CRTC. This is being done without, as of yet, clear policy direction from the government as to how these regulatory powers would be interpreted.

This “just trust us” approach does not inspire confidence. One example is the concept of discoverability, which could be so broad and vague that Canadians would be rightly concerned about what content the CRTC would have prioritized for Canadian viewing and, by extension, what would be further deprioritized for viewing by Canadians.

Also, Canadians want to know what constitutes Canadian content in the digital world. As I mentioned before, we want to see Canadians telling Canadian stories, but what is not clear is how the CRTC would adjust its criteria to ensure that real Canadian stories are captured within the CanCon rules.

We, as the official opposition, will be clear in our position on this bill. While we will not be supporting this bill at second recording, we will nonetheless fulfill our role as Her Majesty's loyal opposition in proposing reasonable amendments at committee. Our Conservative opposition will be there for Canadian creators, artists and broadcasters in asking the tough questions and raising important concerns here in the House and at committee.

[Ian Scott]

I didn't expect to answer a question about broadcasting today.

I would imagine that we might well be asked to appear before the heritage committee to discuss it. I have only had an opportunity to look briefly at the new legislation as tabled.

What I perhaps would like to say about it is that the discussion I watched and heard at committee in relation to the predecessor bill, Bill C-10, and section 4.1 really went to how user-generated content would be treated. My understanding of the new legislation is that it says user-generated content won't be...unless it is subject to specific regulatory measures introduced by the CRTC.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I'm pretty sure you've had time to make this your bedtime reading over the last few days.

Last year, when Bill C‑10 was being studied, a particular clause was removed. That created quite a controversy afterwards, which probably contributed to the failure of this bill. This is clause 4.1, which was reinstated in Bill C‑11.

I'd like to hear your comments on how the clause was worded in the current version of the bill.