Bill C-11 (Historical)

Online Streaming Act

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) specify that the Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation;
(c) update the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in section 3 of the Act by, among other things, providing that the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) serve the needs and interests of all Canadians, including Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages, and
(ii) provide opportunities to Indigenous persons, programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and that is in Indigenous languages, and programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities;
(d) enhance the vitality of official language minority communities in Canada and foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society, including by supporting the production and broadcasting of original programs in both languages;
(e) 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 English, French and Indigenous language broadcasting and the different conditions under which broadcasting undertakings that provide English, French or Indigenous language programming operate,
(ii) takes into account, among other things, the nature and diversity of the services provided by broadcasting undertakings,
(iii) ensures that any broadcasting undertaking that cannot make maximum or predominant use of Canadian creative and other human resources in the creation, production and presentation of programming contributes to those Canadian resources in an equitable manner,
(iv) promotes innovation and is readily adaptable toscientific and technological change,
(v) facilitates the provision to Canadians of Canadian programs in both official languages, including those created and produced by official language minority communities in Canada, as well as Canadian programs in Indigenous languages,
(vi) facilitates the provision of programs that are accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities,
(vii) facilitates the provision to Canadians of programs created and produced by members of Black or other racialized communities,
(viii) protects the privacy of individuals who aremembers of the audience of programs broadcast, and
(ix) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which the Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on any class of broadcasting undertakings if that imposition will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy;
(f) amend the procedure relating to the issuance by the Governor in Council of policy directions to the Commission;
(g) 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;
(h) provide the Commission with the power to require that persons carrying on broadcasting undertakings make expenditures to support the Canadian broadcasting system;
(i) 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;
(j) 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;
(k) 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;
(l) 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
(m) 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

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is an absolute honour to have the opportunity to raise concerns and share my displeasure with what is going on right now with Bill C-11. It is being rammed through Parliament after having pretty substantive debates. I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Yorkton—Melville.

I want to start out by indicating that I believe Bill C-11 is a deeply flawed piece of legislation. I am not the only person who thinks so, and Conservatives are not even the only people who think so. The Prime Minister's own independent senators had so many concerns when the bill went to the Senate that they provided a series of amendments that would help make this bad bill less bad.

I applaud them for the diligent effort they put forward in calling additional witnesses and exploring other pieces of the bill. They made a number of amendments to the bill that were rejected by the government. It really showed the hand of the government that the ultimate goal of this bill is actually to allow the government to decide what does and does not count as Canadian content and what people would and would not see. It became explicit in the rejection of some of the substantive amendments that came from the Senate that this was, in fact, its modus operandi.

I share this because, until this point, the government was claiming that its intent was not to have the power to be the content regulator. However, in the rejection of one of the amendments, it actually said that it wanted the Governor in Council to regulate this content. This means that the government is giving itself the power to decide what it wants people to see online and to pick what does and does not count as Canadian content. I think it is a really scary thing for any government of any stripe.

This means that one will no longer get to pick what one wants to see online. Instead, the government gets to pick what one has a chance to see online to begin with. I do not want that power being given to any government of any political stripe. I do not think that is how things should go.

I know I am not alone in those fears and concerns. I have had countless people reach out to me. I have had average, everyday normal people who do not normally pay attention to politics reach out because they are really concerned about the contents of this bill. They are concerned that this is going too far and that this is a step towards absolute censorship.

While members opposite have made all kinds of jokes and seem to talk down the fact that we have these concerns, the concerns are real. They are legitimate, and they deserve to be addressed. Instead, we just get a whole bunch of nonsense and belittling, and that is not how this should be going. There is nothing progressive about censorship. The progressive parties are claiming that this is a progressive bill, but I am not sure how censoring anyone is progressive.

One of the pieces I really want to get into is how flawed the very definition of Canadian content is. I have a list of some things that are not considered to be Canadian content. I was kind of shocked at how vast the list was. I did not capture everything, but here is a small list of things I found in doing some research for this.

The Handmaid's Tale series that is on Hulu, and in Canada it is on Crave, is not considered to be Canadian content despite being written and based on Margaret Atwood's very famous book. It was filmed here in Canada. A part of the series was set here in Canada. It is not considered to be CanCon because the ownership is not Canadian; therefore, that is not Canadian content.

Turning Red, a Pixar film on Disney+, is set in Toronto. The main character is a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl. It is a really cool movie. I really liked it. It even has real superstar Canadians on the cast, like Sandra Oh. Can members guess what? It is not Canadian content. Again, it is the ownership piece.

Deadpool 2 was filmed in Vancouver. It stars Canada's number one cheerleader, Ryan Reynolds. It was even co-written by Ryan Reynolds, a Canadian who was born in Vancouver, and as I said, one of Canada's biggest cheerleaders. However, it did not have enough Canadian production, so sorry, it is not Canadian content. That is just on the film side.

Now, let us go into the music side because this is kind of fun. A good chunk of Justin Bieber's music is not Canadian content because it was recorded outside of Canada and he collaborated with artists from around the world. It is the same thing with most of Bryan Adams' music. Bryan Adams is an iconic Canadian rock star. Most of his music actually does not fit the qualifications to be CanCon because he partnered with Mutt Lange on a large part of his music. Céline Dion is an absolutely celebrated Canadian artist. Most of her newest music is not considered to be CanCon. My Heart Will Go On is not CanCon. It is crazy.

However, here is where the CanCon definition gets really fun. There are some real quirks in this. Snowbird, which was a hit by Elvis Presley, in fact does count as Canadian content because the music and lyrics were created by Canadians. Another unique one that fits into this bill is Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar. That is a great song. Growing up, we heard it a lot on the radio. We had a classic rock station in Fort McMurray, KYX 98, and it played Hit Me With Your Best Shot a lot. I am now understanding why: It met the Canadian content requirements.

I talked about the things that do not make sense in how CanCon is currently described and put out. We are now saying that the CRTC has done such a great job with film and music and defining what is and is not Canadian content that we are going to give it the whole Internet and hope that it does not screw it up. That is scary. This is a space where Internet is limitless. It is not something that can easily be kept in a little box like radio or television broadcasting because it is not technically and typically broadcasting. Anyone with a phone can produce a hit video. Anybody who has a unique idea can do this.

I grew up in Fort McMurray, which is a melting pot of everything from around Canada and the world. So here I am standing with my Nova Scotia tartan. I am not from Nova Scotia. My grandfather lived in Nova Scotia at one point. However, I am sitting here, giving a speech and wearing a Nova Scotia tartan as someone who is not from Nova Scotia, because growing up, I got to experience Atlantic Canadian culture, Cape Breton culture and culture from B.C. and Vancouver Island, and I saw a whole bunch of variety in what Canadian culture was. The scary part is that we are now going to be letting bureaucrats in Ottawa, the “Ottawa knows best”, the ones who have probably never experienced some of what Canadian culture actually is decide what counts and what does not count and what Canadians get to see on the Internet and what they do not get to see. That is a scary spot to be in.

In my area, if someone says they are from Ottawa and they are here to fix their problem, people are typically a little concerned, probably a bit more than a little concerned. I say this because it is serious. Some of the colleagues from the other side have been really concerned that they have only been hearing the same things over and over again from Conservatives, and part of it is that some of the experts they have been quoting up to this point are experts in their field.

I am going to quote one person from the University of Calgary. She is the Canadian research chair in cybersecurity law and associate professor, Dr. Emily Laidlaw. She said:

The indirect knock-on effect of this legislation on internet users and what they seek, receive and share online is important to the analysis. If the adverse effects of the provisions on social media users are too great, then the interference with free expression is disproportionate and unconstitutional.

She said this in her transcript when she was speaking to the Senate. The government has rejected some of the Senate's amendments. The Senate amendment that made this bad piece of legislation less bad did not take into account the fact that there are serious concerns when it comes to the constitutionality of this.

I really would hope that everyone can agree that we need a bit of a pause. We need to go back to the drawing board on this and revisit so that we have the best possible legislation.

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

Madam Speaker, it has been a very interesting debate on Bill C-11. I quite seriously think there is a deeply held belief that this bill is going to hurt freedom of expression that is entirely on the part of members and the Conservative caucus.

I am so grateful, and I am not going to claim that law school makes a person understand everything, but statutory interpretation is one of those things that one gets a good skill for, being able to read a piece of legislation. Where one finds freedom of expression is protected in this bill is in the Broadcasting Act, and then we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which defends freedom of expression.

Nothing in this bill could possibly reduce Canadians' freedom of expression, nor has it ever been the case that anyone, before this debate, has ever conflated protecting Canadian content with censorship.

They are completely different concepts. I am very frustrated at this hour of night that we are still debating Bill C-11 without really debating it, because there were places I wish it had been improved. There are questions of whether there is a two-tiered approach to our cultural industries. However, there is no doubt that creators in this country have been losing the opportunity to make a living because of the competition from online streaming services that are big-time—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Madam Speaker, if we want to talk about the bill in particular, let us get to what we are supposed to be debating tonight.

On Bill C-10, there was a portion in there that had an exemption for programs and that users could upload on social media. In other words, there was an exemption for user-generated content. I do not know if the member is actually familiar with that term.

In Bill C-11, they put the exemption back in. What clause was that? Moreover, in what clause did they actually put an exemption on the exemption?

If the member knows the bill that well, why did they put that exemption on an exemption and what clause was it?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, first off, let us deal with the “something, something, North Korea”. There is nothing in Bill C-11 that transforms Canada into North Korea. The comments are saddening and horrific when we think of what North Korean citizens are living through. The reality is we are seeing forced starvation in North Korea, massive prison camps and a population that is under very clear tyranny.

For Conservatives to invoke North Korea in talking about Bill C-11 does a profound disservice to North Koreans who are living through an absolutely horrendous totalitarian regime that oppresses them, tortures them and kills them. Any Conservative who mentions North Korea, immediately, in my mind, has zero credibility on the issue of Bill C-11, which is a bill that basically obliges big tech to provide some support to the Canadian cultural sector that has suffered profoundly, particularly over the last few years. We have seen, in some parts of our cultural sector, the loss of three-quarters of the jobs that existed. What Bill C-11 would do is provide a boost to our cultural sector. It would not provide prison camps, forced starvation, torture or systemic human rights abuses.

Second is the issue of tyranny, the “something, something, tyranny” that has been raised by Conservatives. The reality is that big tech, as we know now, and I will come back to this shortly, already forces content on Canadians. We have seen this with the references to the “Stop hate for profit” campaign, which includes endorsements from the Southern Poverty Law Centre and the Anti-Defamation League. The reality is big tech, with their secret algorithms, forces content that is often profoundly harmful to Canadians.

Let us look at the third part, the “something, something, freedom”. Conservative MPs supported the so-called Freedom Convoy that denied the freedoms of thousands of members of this community of downtown Ottawa the right to actually go to work as 600 to 700 businesses were forcibly closed by the so-called Freedom Convoy extremists. Seniors and people with disabilities were denied the right to medication and the freedom to get groceries through that period as the roads were blocked. These extremists ran their trucks, blasting their air horns 24 hours a day, denying freedom to thousands of residents of Ottawa Centre to actually get a good night's sleep, work, get groceries and get medications.

Conservatives supported all of that oppression of the people of Ottawa Centre. When Conservatives use the word “freedom”, I find it disingenuous, beyond belief, given the kind of oppression that they have recently supported in this area.

When Conservatives stand up, obviously not having read the bill, obviously having no reference to the bill, and do not even talk about the arts and culture sector and the loss of jobs, do not talk about big tech and how they are imposing their content on people, I say to myself that we have three parties in the House that are supportive of Bill C-11 and one party that prefers to choose big tech over the rights of Canadians to actually see Canadian content. That, indeed, is the essence of Bill C-11.

It forces big tech, which contributes virtually nothing to Canada, to actually start supporting Canadian content and Canadian artists. We saw this decades ago when big American music companies basically decided to impose American artists on Canada. Canadian parliamentarians at that time had the foresight to tell them to hold on, that they had to reserve a spot for Canadian content, because our Canadian musicians have talent and ability, that they were not going to simply impose foreign artists in the Canadian market, and that they were going to have to create a space for Canadians as well.

We saw the results of that, a renaissance beyond belief with Canadian artists and musicians, television programs and producers, Canadian movies not only being extraordinarily popular in Canada but right around the world.

Now, we have big tech pushing back with the support of its acolytes in the Conservative Party. Big tech is saying it wants to impose content on Canada and that it does not want Canadians to have a space. It does not want discoverability of Canadian artists and Canadian talent. Four out of the five parties, if we include the non-recognized parties in the House of Commons, are in the process of saying they are going to stand up for Canadian artists, for Canadian jobs and for the right of Canadians to see Canadian content, to hear Canadian content and to hear those stories about each other. Whether from British Columbia, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador or Nunavut, we are going to hear from each other, despite what big tech says.

That is the reality. That is the essence of the debate tonight. It is not about North Korea or repression. It is about allowing Canadians to hear each other's voices. That is what is so essential to this debate. It was missed by every single Conservative speaker, and I can only surmise that they have all missed the point of the debate because they have not read the bill. What they have read is the latest fundraising pitch from Conservative Party HQ, and that seems to be the only reason they are dragging this debate through this evening with such ridiculous, wacky and over-the-top exaggerations and making up of things that simply are not in the bill. We heard one Conservative member say that, because of Bill C-11, the government is going to be able to track Canadians on their cellphones.

That is unbelievable and unbecoming of this place. It is unbecoming of a member of Parliament to say that, but not a single Conservative corrects the other Conservatives. They just sit together stewing in their misinformation nexus, rather than address the bill itself. Of course, as I mentioned, the NDP succeeded in getting more amendments passed than any other party, because we were focused on improving the bill and making it even better. To my regret, and I think to the chagrin of most Canadians, Conservatives were just there to monkeywrench and vandalize, rather than to actually try to improve the legislation so it would be in the best interests of all Canadians.

When it comes to the Senate amendments, because we had, as New Democrats, the opportunity to build a better bill we are proud of, particularly when it comes to indigenous peoples, we have clearly improved the bill. It is for those reasons we believe it should be passed, sent back to the Senate and adopted, so we can get Canadian actors and musicians working again and building more Canadian jobs.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my Green Party colleague for her question. I think it is an important one.

If we are being realistic, the Conservatives are using scare tactics for political fundraising purposes. That is what we are seeing. They are doing this for purely partisan reasons, to collect data, collect money and fill the Conservative Party coffers. They are spreading misinformation and worrying people for nothing.

In my opinion, the Conservatives are demonstrating a distinct lack of sensitivity when it comes to culture, the cultural sector and artists, when all of the artists' associations in Quebec and Canada strongly support Bill C-11, formerly Bill C-10, and think it is absolutely necessary for their future and our future as a cultural nation.

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

Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to tell my hon. colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie that I totally agree with what he said in his speech. It is so hard to be here and have a debate when some parties are saying that this is not true and that Bill C-11 is regressive and violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Why does he think the Conservatives have become so successful on social media these days with ideas that are completely false? Bill C-11 does not in any way infringe on the right to freedom of expression.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to let you know, in a very polite way, that I will be sharing my time with my very hon. colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby, who has some very important things to tell us and all Canadians.

Before I get to the heart of the matter, I will say that I have been listening to my colleagues from the Conservative Party for a few hours now and I am seeing things that are rather fascinating and disturbing.

The first thing I find fascinating is their insistence on quoting Margaret Atwood. I would just like to remind my Conservative colleagues that Margaret Atwood is a great defender of women's rights, including the right to abortion. If they are fans of Margaret Atwood, I hope to hear them quote her soon to defend a woman's right to abortion. I am sure that they watched the series The Handmaid's Tale and they were able to learn a few lessons.

The second person they are quoting, and I think that is amazing, is George Orwell. I would just like to remind my Conservative colleagues that George Orwell was a socialist who fought in Great Britain and went to Spain to fight with the republicans against the fascists. I hope to hear them quote George Orwell often in the weeks and months to come, maybe even during the election campaign. I have some quotes for them, free of charge, if they want. It would be my pleasure.

We are talking about something that is very important for Quebec, Canada, all our regions and our communities, but also first nations: the cultural sector. It is really important for our identity, be it the Québécois nation, the Canadian nation, first nations, Métis, francophones outside Quebec, that we have the means and resources to be able to tell ourselves our own stories. It is important to have the resources to create our television programs, which describe what is happening in our communities, along with our challenges and hopes, and that we give this work to our local creators and artists who will work to be able to say, here is what is happening in Quebec, Ontario, the north, the Maritimes or British Columbia.

We have a system that was put in place years ago in which the government has a role to play in supporting our artists, creators, artisans and technicians, as does the private sector, which benefits from this cultural production. This production has value in its own right, intrinsic value, that makes us stand out from other countries and nations around the world and enables us to say that this is who we are, here are our ideals, here is what is happening in our country, here are our concerns and here are our expressions. I think it is essential to have the right legislative, regulatory and financial framework to keep that. We are also talking about thousands of jobs in almost every community across Canada, and it is extremely important to maintain this capacity to produce cultural content.

In the agreement created 30 years ago, those who supplied the pipeline needed content for it. They made money from this content. Therefore, they had to help finance the content. The cable companies at the time were the pipeline and were forced by the Broadcasting Act to contribute, in particular, to the Canada Media Fund, which helped produce Canadian television and film. This balance was a given and benefited everyone. Cable companies made a very good profit. They had certain obligations, but it made it possible to produce content in Canada, with Canadian artists who told Canadian stories. That was 30 years ago.

The problem is that cable companies are no longer the only ones in the picture. Digital broadcasters have arrived. When the act was written, the Internet did not exist.

This law must be modernized to ensure that these web giants, who are using a new medium, are also required to contribute to and support Quebec, Canadian and indigenous artists and creators.

Essentially, that is what Bill C‑11 is about. We keep saying this over and over again, and I am going to say it again, despite the Conservative fearmongering. There is something I cannot understand: If Videotron, Bell, Shaw and Rogers must contribute to cultural production under the bill, why would YouTube, Google, Disney+, Netflix and Apple TV be excluded? These web giants have basically been given a tax gift for the past 10 years. They have basically been told that they have the right to profit from Canadian content and cultural production without having to participate in it. It is like giving them a giant tax break that is completely unfair and unjust. I find it absolutely fascinating that the Conservatives are now saying it is okay that Google, Apple TV and Netflix do not need to pay.

The Conservatives are defending big corporations, multinationals that are making tons of money off Quebec and Canadian consumers. The Conservatives are lining up behind these web giants and these big corporations. That is what they are doing right now, using completely false pretences to scare people.

When it comes to Bill C‑10 and Bill C‑11, it feels like every day is Halloween for the Conservatives. They wake up every morning and think of ways to scare Canadians. They use emotionally charged words like “dictatorship”, “censorship” and “totalitarianism”. Wow. I have to wonder whether those folks have ever even seen a CRTC decision. That is not exactly what is going on. These decisions have actually been used to promote local cultural creations. I do not see how we are becoming like North Korea because we want to promote our television programs, our films, our artists, our singers. No one is being forced to watch or listen to anything. If someone is not interested, they can simply turn off their TV, radio, iPhone or iPad screen.

Give me a break. This fearmongering is an attempt to convince people that the federal government is suddenly going to decide what Canadians will see. That is ridiculous.

A couple of weeks ago the leader of the official opposition called the CRTC a woke organization. I could not believe it. Anything the Conservatives do not like they call “woke”. I attended CRTC hearings in a previous life, and I can say that CRTC officials are quite beige. It is a pretty square organization. They are talking nonsense on the Conservative side.

I believe that the CRTC has made good and bad decisions. There are reasons to criticize this organization, but it is a bit of a stretch to call it a far-left organization. Words have meaning, after all, and we need to be careful.

We recently celebrated the International Day of La Francophonie. One of the themes of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie is discoverability of works. We must be able to ensure that people can find songs, works, broadcasts and movies in French on Netflix. Everyone celebrated the Francophonie in the House, but when Bill C‑11 is being studied, the Conservatives forget all that. It is no longer important now.

The NDP put in the work and improved Bill C‑11 to ensure that French-language works are more readily accessible and also to provide more support for first nation and Inuit cultural productions and for community organizations that make content and news.

I realize that Bill C‑11 may not be perfect. However, this bill has all the provisions needed to guarantee freedom of expression and to support our culture, artists and artisans. That is why the NDP is proud to support it.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I am going to read a section of Bill C-11, which reads:

(3) This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with

(a) the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings;

I wonder if the member agrees with me that indigenous groups like the Maskwacis, who were mentioned earlier, will not be negatively impacted by this bill.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if the people across the way want to listen, here is the quote from Michael Geist.

He said, “To be clear, the risk with these rules is not that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard.” That is the fundamental problem with this. He then continues:

In other words, the CRTC will not be positioned to stop Canadians from posting content, but will have the power to establish regulations that could prioritize or de-prioritize certain content, mandate warning labels, or establish other conditions with the presentation of the content.... The government has insisted that isn’t the goal of the bill. If so, the solution is obvious. No other country in the world seeks to regulate user content in this way and it should be removed from the bill because it does not belong in the Broadcasting Act.

Bill C-11 was so bad that, when the NDP-Liberal coalition sent it to the Senate, even the Liberal-appointed senators sounded the alarm. It was written so terribly that the Senate returned the legislation back to the House of Commons with 29 amendments.

I found it interesting that the Liberal-appointed senators, after hearing from experts, proposed an amendment that would reduce the amount of regulation that Bill C-11 would have on social media, but guess what? The minister has already indicated that the Liberals will reject the amendment, which came from their own senators. If the government is unwilling to listen to its own senators, how can Canadians believe they will be heard?

There is a reason I am here with my Conservative colleagues at nine o'clock at night to oppose Bill C-11. Canadians want the Liberal government to keep its hands off the Internet. Although this may be our last chance to stop this bill in this Parliament, Canadians can be hopeful knowing that it will be killed once Conservatives are elected to clean up the Liberal government's mess. Until then, I will, once again, be voting against Bill C-11.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-11. Nearly one year ago, I spoke to Bill C-11 in the House of Commons, and I expressed my opposition to the bill, a bill that would regulate the Internet. I have said it before and I will say it again: The Internet is supposed to be open and free. It is supposed to be open and free to create one's content and choose what one reads, free from government overreach.

However, here we are, once again, debating Bill C-11, a bill that would give the government the power to regulate what people see and hear on the Internet. If Bill C-11 passes, the government will give itself power to control what people watch. Instead of giving Canadians more of what they want to see, YouTube would be instructed to give viewers more of what the government wants them to see.

This could be our last chance to stop this bill from becoming law, which is why so many Canadians have reached out to their MPs to oppose Bill C-11. As I have said before, Bill C-11 is legislation to regulate the Internet. The Liberal government wants to influence what people see while they are browsing the web. It wants to push specific content to the top of their screens so they see it first. Consequently, other content will move down their screens so they see less of it. This is what the Liberals really mean when they say they want to make content more discoverable.

Back in the day, as my other colleague mentioned, the content we saw and heard was controlled by a small group of large players. Whether that was a small group of radio tycoons or a small group of television moguls, there were a limited number of people who decided what content we consumed. We were limited to what we could read, listen to or watch through traditional media channels. One of the reasons Canadians were limited in the content they could consume was that the government regulated television and radio through the Broadcasting Act.

The Broadcasting Act meant that TV and radio stations had to have broadcast licences to operate. TV and radio stations needed to meet specific government-imposed rules concerning what they could air and what proportion of their content had to be Canadian. My colleague mentioned this earlier today when she explained how television and radio had been managed as a finite resource. However, the Internet is not a finite resource. Its content can be infinite. People no longer have to tune in to the soap opera at a specific time in order to consume content. The Internet allows consumers to access what they want, when they want it.

Now the government wants to regulate the Internet like it regulated traditional television and radio stations. The Liberals claim that Bill C-11 is needed to modernize the Broadcasting Act. Instead, they are taking an outdated government approach to traditional broadcasting and applying it to a free and open Internet. The Liberals want to place regulations on content that goes beyond large companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. They want to apply the same regulations to user-generated content, whether it be a local podcaster, the independent content creator or even the individual uploading videos to social media. The Liberals claim they have included an exemption for user-generated content, but they also added an exemption to the exemption, making such effort effectively meaningless.

What happens if someone decides to violate the Bill C-11 regulations? Well, the fines could be as high as $25,000 for a first event by an individual and $10 million for an offence by a corporation. The government thinks that Canadians are incapable of choosing what they want to read or watch on the Internet. The government believes that Canadians need help navigating through their social media streams. It believes Canadians would be better off if the government were deciding what they see and hear on the Internet.

The other day, the Prime Minister was hosting a town hall and spoke about the importance of the government keeping Canadians safe from the Internet. He could not hide his belief that it is the government's job to protect Canadians from the Internet. The Prime Minister's mentality is that the more government the better. He said, “the Internet means there's a lot of people spending a huge amount of time in places that governments have no ability to keep you directly safe from Internet companies, specifically the web giants like Facebook and Google”.

The Prime Minister believes that only the government can keep us safe. No wonder he wants to regulate what we see and hear online. If his government can regulate the Internet, it can decide what is best for us to see.

I know the Prime Minister likes to call the opposition “despicable”. Do members know what is despicable? It is despicable for the Liberals to target the freedom of individual Internet users in Canada. It is despicable for the government to push certain content to the top of our screens and therefore move other content down our screens. It is despicable for the government to overwhelmingly reject the advice of experts and digital content creators across this country. That is right, it is not just Conservatives who are opposing Bill C-11. Experts across the country are alarmed.

This following is a statement by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist on Bill C-11.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if the member across the way is asking me whether or not Bill C-11 is charter-compliant, I will note that the charter compliance review would have been done by his colleague, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, who is the same person responsible for bail reform. Members will have to forgive me if I have my doubts.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, the entire debate from the Conservative Party is so divorced from the reality of what Bill C-11 would do that I do not even know where to start. On the last point, we had indigenous groups coming forward, proposing amendments and seeking to move forward on Bill C-11.

I do not know where the hon. members get their idea that this bill would engage in some sort of censorship, that the three parties in support of this bill are in favour of censorship and that members on this side of the House, who stand up for charter rights, are in favour of censorship. Where does this come from?

I know the member and all Conservative members mentioned one particular academic. Can they name another one, perhaps even a constitutional expert, who is opposed to the bill and has raised concerns about charter rights in this country?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the amount of correspondence he got from constituents and people from all across his riding who were concerned about Bill C-11. I have heard a lot of concerns from people in my area around this.

I am wondering if the member could perhaps go into a little more detail on some of the specific concerns he heard from regular, everyday, hard-working Albertans.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak on behalf of the constituents of Red Deer—Lacombe about an issue that I am hearing quite a bit about. Before I go any further, I will note that I am splitting my time with my friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.

Bill C-11, the online streaming act, and in the previous Parliament Bill C-10, is causing a lot of concern and a lot of debate here in Canada. We are not debating the bill per se anymore in the sense that it has been returned to this place. This does not happen very often. Those who are still able to freely watch this at home need to understand that it is very rare for the Senate of Canada to return a piece of legislation to the House of Commons, because normally MPs do their due diligence in the legislative process here. It goes through committees, where we hear from witnesses and hear from experts, and we can generally amend legislation in the House of Commons. I am not saying it ever goes to the Senate in perfect format, but if we are actually doing our job here, the Senate would have very few recommendations or changes to propose for a piece of legislation.

That is not the case with this particular piece of legislation. I believe there were 26 or 29 amendments made by the Senate. I can tell members how many Conservative senators there are in the Senate. I think there are 15, so that tells us that the vast majority of senators in the Senate are not in the Conservative caucus. However, that Senate, by a majority vote, decided to report the bill back to the House of Commons with well over 20 amendments, some of which the government has decided to accept. They are largely the innocuous ones. The important ones, dealing with what people can freely say online, what constitutes Canadian content and what the government and the CRTC can regulate, have not been accepted by the government, so we are in this debate now, in this standoff.

I want to be fair to the government in my analysis of the legislation, so I want to talk about the correspondence I have gotten in my office from Canadians and from my constituents in regard to the bill. We know how it is when we go to a convention. There is the “yes” microphone and the “no” microphone, with people speaking in favour of something and people speaking against something, so in fairness to the government, I will talk about the correspondence I have received that have a positive view on Bill C-11.

Now that that is out of the way, I am going to talk about all of the negative things we are hearing from constituents. Not since the proposals on firearms have I had this much uproar in my constituency. Actually, I have not had this much uproar since back in 2017, when the previous finance minister, Bill Morneau, tried in the summertime to change the tax laws in this country, which created so much furor.

Not one person in my constituency has written into my office to says they agree with everything the government is doing on Bill C-11, and there are people in my constituency who use social media, watch Netflix and watch Disney+. They are those who have not cancelled Disney+ and saved themselves from financial ruin, according to the current finance minister. All kidding aside, they have not, and here is why: It is because they trust the people who are being very critical about this piece of legislation. They are largely objective people.

Margaret Atwood has said, “bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write” and that bureaucrats should not be in charge of deciding what is Canadian. She has referred to all of this with two words that I think should make every member of this House stand still and think for a second: “creeping totalitarianism”. That is from Margaret Atwood, a voice of reason. Everybody around the world has read, understands or has access to some of the fine works of Margaret Atwood.

Senator Richards, who was appointed by the current Prime Minister and is himself a novelist, in his January speech in the Senate said that Bill C-11 is “censorship passing as national inclusion”. I hear this all the time. I do not know what my colleagues hear, but basically when we hear the government talk about inclusion, what it really means is that everybody who agrees with it is included and everybody who disagrees with it finds themselves on the outside looking in and feels like they are foreigners in their own country. Our country has never been more divided, and there has never been less trust in institutions. We only have to go back to a little over a year ago to see what the reaction has been to the divide-and-conquer approach the current Prime Minister and the government have taken.

Senator Richards goes on to say, “Cultural committees are based as much in bias and fear as in anything else. I’ve seen enough artistic committees to know that. That what George Orwell says we must resist is a prison of self-censorship.” This is Orwellian language being invoked by a Senate appointee of the current Prime Minister. He also said, “This law will be one of scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be.” That is what an intelligent, articulate senator, a novelist appointed to the Senate of Canada, is on the record as saying in a speech in the Senate.

It is shocking that we find ourselves here in this place reviewing this legislation again after everything we said when it was Bill C-10 and before Bill C-11 went to the Senate. It has now come back to us with the senators confirming all of our suspicions, all of our concerns and all of the problems we identified for the Canadian public.

Professor Michael Geist, who has been a perennial witness here, is one of the most learned people when it comes to free speech and all of the laws pertaining to it. He is the University of Ottawa's Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. On digital content, he says, “Canada punches above its weight when it comes to the creation of this content, which is worth billions of revenue globally. We are talking about an enormous potential revenue loss for Canadian content producers.”

This is at a time when Canadians are having an increasingly difficult time making ends meet with inflation, the carbon tax, the cost of living and the cost of housing. Everything is going up in this country. If we go back to January, Jack Mintz wrote an article about this. In 2015, the cost of the federal government service was about $38 billion a year. Today, eight years later, the cost of public service salaries is $58 billion, an increase of $20 billion. It is an increase in the size of the federal public service in Canada of over 30%, so there are 30% more people working for the Government of Canada now than there were in 2015. Have things gotten better? Have people gotten their passports quicker? Are people getting across the border quicker? Are people getting anything done? Are any of the services needed by my fellow Canadians getting done in a quicker and more timely fashion? The answer is clearly no.

Why on earth, why in the name of everything that is good about the free country we live in, would we increase the size of the bureaucracy even more through the CRTC and give it the ability to do to the Internet what it has done to cable TV and radio? Canadians are no longer watching. They have tuned out. They have tuned out to the point where the government has had to spend $600 million just to prop up legacy media outlets because nobody is interested in their mandatory content.

Why do we not hear from them? We can hear from many people. I have been a member of Parliament here for 17 years, and I hear from people I disagree with all the time, but that does not make me a bitter or jaded person. It does not make the information I am hearing more or less valuable. We need to hear from everybody, and everybody should have the ability to say what they need to say. When they are not heard, when they feel like they are not being heard and when they feel like their government is working against them all the time, they start doing things they would normally not do. We saw that manifested on this Hill for three weeks last year. This is the kind of governance we are getting from the folks across the way.

The implementation of this bill is going to be a blunder. There is no reason for me to believe that increasing bureaucracy and the capacity of the CRTC is going to create a better outcome for the people of Canada than the current 30% massive increase in the size of the government we have already seen. On behalf of my constituents who have written me, I would urge the government to at least reconsider its position on the amendments and accept all of the amendments the Senate has proposed, because it would at least make a horrible bill somewhat more bearable.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if the government, or the member who props up the government and supports everything it does, but sometimes not, and keeps the Liberals in power so Canadians cannot have a say on this disaster, wanted to have a piece of legislation that focused directly, solely and only on that topic, they could have put it forward and we could have been debating that, but that is not the only consequence of Bill C-11, so we are not.