This bill was last introduced in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2021.
Steven Guilbeault Liberal
In committee (Senate), as of June 29, 2021
(This bill did not become law.)
This is from the published bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In response to the minister on Bill C-10, the NDP has supported the process to this point for Bill C-10, but we are waiting for a full discussion and the final bill to make our decision.
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Madam Speaker, we are talking about free speech. The government's Bill C-10 intends to censor artists and creators who are achieving success online.
We were in the middle of going through Bill C-10 clause by clause in committee, which is the normal and right legislative process here in this place. The government does not want any more problems to be discovered with its bill, and it is plagued with them, by the way.
Why is the government shutting us down? It is nothing less than a gag order.
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Madam Speaker, no other democratic country in the world uses its broadcasting act to censor what Canadians post online. Let that sink in for just a moment.
It would appear that the Prime Minister wants Canada to be likened to countries like North Korea and Communist China. Experts have called Bill C-10 the most regressive piece of legislation they have ever seen.
Why is the Liberal government so determined to rush it through, to silence our voices and to move on this piece of legislation that it is shutting down debate within committee?
Steven Guilbeault LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague that the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-10. The NDP supports Bill C-10. The Greens support Bill C-10. Obviously, the government supports Bill C-10 and artists across the country support Bill C-10.
The real question is, why has the Conservative Party decided to side with some of the wealthiest companies in the world, such as Google, instead of supporting our artists?
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Madam Speaker, “how low can they go” is the name of the game when it comes to free speech with the Liberals and their attack, time and time again.
Bill C-10 undeniably threatens the voices of Canadian creators. MPs have contended for them by standing up for their voices and their right to both freely express and be freely heard. What the government is doing now is nothing less than a gag order. Censoring the voices of creators was not enough. Now it is having to stop members of Parliament from debating this atrocious bill at committee.
Why is that?
Steven Guilbeault LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party is attacking our artists and artisans. Every month that goes by, the Conservative Party is depriving Canada's artistic community of $70 million. Bill C-10 will make web giants pay. I do not understand why the Conservative Party has decided to stand with some of the richest companies in the world, such as Google, rather than support our artists.
Steven Guilbeault LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Madam Speaker, I would remind my colleague that Bill C-10 is the result of the Yale report, issued by a commission that worked for over 18 months and received 2,000 submissions from across the country.
Furthermore, Bill C-10 is supported by the entire arts community across the country. A petition signed by several thousand artists supports Bill C-10. As recently as last week, The Globe and Mail published a letter signed by several leading Canadian artists who also support Bill C-10.
The problem with Bill C-10 is that the Conservative Party unfortunately does not want to support artists.
Steven Guilbeault LiberalMinister of Canadian Heritage
Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say that the premise of my colleague's question is completely false because public servants who are independent from the Department of Justice Canada conducted an independent analysis of Bill C-10 and the deputy minister appeared before the committee to say that Bill C-10 falls completely within the framework of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The committee has already adopted a clause in Bill C-10 that states that the CRTC must exercise its power within the limits of freedom of expression, journalistic freedom and creative freedom—
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Madam Speaker, in Bill C-10, the Liberals are attacking freedom of expression and net neutrality. Now, they are attacking the freedom of expression of the parliamentarians who are examining the bill in committee by imposing a gag order. That is unbelievable. The problem with the bill has to do with freedom of expression, and to solve it, they are imposing a gag order with the help of the Bloc Québécois.
Is there a Liberal in the House, a single one, who will have the courage to speak out against this undemocratic move?
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Madam Speaker, I am pleased that we have come back to questions and comments. I will take the opportunity to say that despite the uproar around the current debate, there is no reason to abandon our decorum and lose our dignity as MPs. Some of the comments we have heard are cringeworthy to say the least.
The government's decision to move a time allocation motion to speed up the work in committee is not without consequence, as we have seen this morning. For months, Bill C-10 has been held up because it was so late getting passed at second reading and because of the Conservatives' systematic obstruction at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
Far too often we have seen the Liberals filibuster to impede the will of the majority of members of a committee. We saw that at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the Standing Committee on National Defence and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
However, when it comes to Bill C-10, it is not just the committee that is being held hostage by the Conservatives, it is the entire cultural sector. We have a responsibility to be reasonable. Time allocation must be an exceptional measure—
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
Madam Speaker, as I was saying when making my fourth point, which was about freedom of expression, the deputy minister of justice appeared at committee and said that Bill C-10 was entirely consistent with freedom of expression in Canada.
Furthermore, with respect to legislation governing the CRTC, I would point out that the CRTC is not a state within a state and must also abide by Canadian laws, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Madam Speaker, the minister is using every trick in the book to make people believe that the Conservatives are anti-culture and standing in the way of Bill C-10. We all know the bill is bad. Many experts who testified at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage said so.
The bill now has over 120 amendments, more than one-quarter of which were put forward by the government itself, even though it wrote the bill. Every member of the committee did everything they could to fix the problems with Bill-C10. What the minister is not telling us though is that the work hit a roadblock when he decided to amend the bill midstream to include social media. That was when people, including experts, former CRTC commissioners and thousands of Canadians across the country, started raising objections.
The only reason why it is taking so much time to study a bill with over 120 amendments, not to mention all the proposed ones, is the work of the minister himself, who introduced a bad version of Bill C-10.
The government is therefore imposing time allocation on a bill that is fundamentally wrong because it attacks freedom of expression. The minister is attacking the freedom of expression of parliamentarians who are trying to do their job. I would like to know one thing. Instead of telling us that we are preventing work from moving forward and are anti-culture, could the minister explain to us how he can justify imposing—with the help of the Bloc Québécois, I might add—time allocation on parliamentarians while we still have 40 amendments to study together?
In committee, the main problem was that the Liberals opposed our request to hear from the Minister of Justice for two weeks before finally agreeing. If they had agreed from the beginning, we would have had two more weeks to work on this. If they had agreed to reinstate section 4.1 of the Broadcasting Act, as we tried to get them to do, we would be moving forward in a logical manner to try to fix this bad bill. How does the minister explain his mistake and his mismanagement of this file, which has brought us to a complete dead end?
Bill C-10—Time Allocation MotionBroadcasting ActGovernment Orders
Ottawa—Vanier Ontario
Liberal
Mona Fortier LiberalMinister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance
moved:
That, in relation to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, not more than five further hours shall be allotted to the consideration of the committee stage of the bill; and that, at the expiry of the time provided in this order, any proceedings before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on the said bill shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Madam Speaker, well, at least we have avoided repetition, but today we were talking about Bill C-10.
The government understands the need to act quickly. The regulations for the broadcasting industry need to be reformed because the current version of the act is over 30 years old and because, today, Canadian content is created in a very different context than it was in 1991.
I am happy to speak in support of Bill C-10. I look forward to the opportunity for our creators to travel all across our country, even to Alberta, to create these wonderful stories.
Julie Dabrusin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage
Madam Speaker, Bill C-10 is an absolute priority for our government and for the cultural sector. It has been 30 years since the Broadcasting Act was modernized, before Canadians turned from video stores to streaming services to access their movies and shows. Over that time, foreign web giants have stepped into that void and they made money in Canada without any requirement that they contribute a portion of those revenues to our cultural industry.
We have an uneven playing field where traditional Canadian broadcasters have regulatory obligations and the foreign web giants do not. We are levelling that playing field, while creating greater support for an important part of our economy. I am happy that the member opposite raised the issue about cultural productions in Alberta because the Canadian cultural sector employs many Canadians across our country on shows like Heartland, which is filmed in Alberta.
Since Bill C-10 was introduced on November 3 of last year, the proposed legislation has received more than 20 hours of debate in the House of Commons. Even during that first debate in this place, the Conservatives vowed to block the bill. There have been more than 40 hours of dedicated study at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Witnesses provided over 100 in-person testimonies; dozens of written submissions were accepted and looked at. The bill itself is the response to a 2019 report called, “Canada's communications future: Time to act”, which received more than 2,000 submissions. All that is to say there has been considerable study and debate on this bill.
Having witnessed the Conservatives in power for the 10 years previous, once we formed government we ensured that all bills must be accompanied by a charter statement. The Department of Justice Canada's analysis has confirmed that Bill C-10 remains consistent with the charter's guarantee of freedom of speech, as has our supplemental analysis after amendments were made at committee. I would like to add that the original Broadcasting Act contains a section that remains unchanged, which states that it must be interpreted in a way that respects freedom of expression and journalistic and creative independence. That has been there for the past 30 years. We added a further clause, at committee, that repeats its protections specifically for social media companies. The bill is consistent with our right to freedom of expression.
I would like to go back to the amount of time that has been put into the study of this bill, which, over the past weeks, has included tremendous amounts of repetition. Every moment lost as a result of the Conservative Party of Canada's filibuster has deprived the Canadian economy of important investment in our culture and jobs. Each month, an estimated $70 million that Bill C-10 would add to our broadcasting, audiovisual, music and media sectors and would support the 170,000 people who work in those sectors is lost. Instead of going to our artists, creators and cultural workers, and Canadian stories, we are seeing that money remaining in the pockets of foreign tech companies.
In conclusion, Bill C-10 would even the playing field. It is not fair the way the system is working now. I understand the Conservatives have opposed levelling this playing field from the very beginning. That is their choice, but Canadians want fairness and that is what Bill C-10 would deliver.