Bill C-11

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

[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 that the Internet means there is a lot of people spending a huge amount of time in places that the governments have no ability to keep people 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.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there are few values more important to the people I represent, as they are to my colleague who just spoke, than advancing freedom and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially when it comes to the creeping, reaching, interfering and the heavy hand of government and its agencies.

I oppose Bill C-11 because it is not just about what its proponents claim. It will be a way for the Liberal cabinet and CRTC gatekeepers to control what Canadians see, say and hear online. The Liberals have ignored and ridiculed the concerns about Bill C-11’s impacts and potential unintended consequences for Canadian media of all kinds and for everyday Canadians. Thousands of Canadians, and Conservatives, have spoken out for three years, so now, at the very final stage before it becomes law, the charitable assumption that its proponents are unclear or unintentional about the risks and potential consequences can no longer be entertained.

Bill C-11 remains an attempt by the Liberals to regulate the Internet, with unprecedented powers for the CRTC and no clear guidelines or guardrails on those censorship powers.

The other parties argue for the bill on two main grounds: modernization of the Broadcasting Act and that it will enhance and expand Canadian content and culture online.

The truth is that Bill C-11 goes backwards on Canadians' successful online innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism by regulating it with the Broadcasting Act. Instead of promoting Canadian content as a whole, Bill C-11 will pick winners and losers, prioritize and deprioritize content, and therefore shape what Canadians see, regardless of their actual preferences, and whether Canadians can be seen or heard under its criteria, which will be decided by the CRTC and ministers. To be clear, on this point, I really do not care what party it is. This power, in particular, should not be extended to any.

Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives measure success by outcomes delivered, not money spent. The challenge of how to best expand and promote Canadian content is clearly not going to be done as well by Bill C-11 as it is already being done by the private sector, hardly a surprise. For example, the Motion Picture Association Canada is responsible for half of domestic media production and spent $5 billion in 2021 alone. That private sector investment is five times the amount allotted in Bill C-11. This is more of the costly coalition’s usual MO of spending lots of tax dollars regardless of results, despite the private sector’s obvious leadership. It is a government gatekeeping and taxpayer-funded solution in search of a problem.

The core problem with the way Bill C-11 deals with the concept of Canadian content is that, one, it does not actually define it and enables politicians to tell the CRTC what it is, and two, any person or business may be restricted since their content can be pushed up or down if it is decided that they fit or that they are not Canadian enough.

Canadians do not have to decipher the truth from our back-and-forth here. Currently, the CRTC’s definition of Canadian content often depends on copyright ownership, which big streaming services usually keep, instead of, say, Canadian staff, locations, writers, actors, compositions, art or stories.

The power granted to politicians is clear in Bill C-11. Section 7 of the Broadcasting Act states, “the Governor in Council may, by order, issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters”. Well, “Governor in Council” means a cabinet minister. Conservatives tried to remove that clause to ensure that the CRTC chair would be free from political interference, but Liberals blocked it, so the power is there.

After the costly coalition pushes through Bill C-11, Liberals will write up a set of backdoor regulations for the CRTC and then apply some sort of values test to every YouTube video, Facebook post, TV show, documentary and radio show, and it is endless. Social media is caught because of Bill C-11’s definition of “online undertakings” and “programs”, which can include images and sounds where written text is limited. That could mean videos, podcasts, photos and memes, but not written posts or news articles.

Clauses 9 and 10 could empower the CRTC to adopt so-called discoverability rules that would force social media sites like YouTube to modify algorithms and affect how often videos are seen on social media feeds, based on the yet-to-be determined criteria for what is and is not sufficiently Canadian. Bill C-11 clearly makes the Canadian government and the agency the regulator of the Internet. The Broadcasting Act states that the regulations will prescribe “what constitutes a Canadian program”. If the content is not Canadian enough, it will get slapped with fees and taxes, and it will be censored. If it is Canadian enough, it will continue just as it does now.

Bill C-11 will also force content creators, from small YouTubers all the way to Netflix, to pay fees to the Canada Media Fund, but it does not define who will be exempted and makes creators pay based on a points system that value-tests whether their content production is Canadian enough.

The winners would be government-subsidized broadcasters, such as the already advantaged government-funded CBC, which would get even more funding with Bill C-11. The losers would be the independent innovators driving Canadian digital leadership, and often young Canadians. So much for the democratized free market of ideas that the Internet embodies.

Conservatives proposed to define discoverability and limit government algorithm manipulation, as well as amendments to ensure greater transparency of the CRTC and its decision-making, but the Liberals rejected them.

Digital entrepreneurs have grown rapidly on YouTube and Instagram. They create brands off their channels and the advertising revenues their videos generate. They are worried that they would not qualify as Canadian enough, and that small channels, with only a couple of hundred subscribers and next to no revenue, will suddenly be forced to pay government, or even get fined up to $25,000 per day, as in proposed section 32. It is crazy that a young Canadian YouTuber could get fined because they are not Canadian enough.

Conservatives also tried to remove proposed subsection 4.1(1), which may be referenced by members opposite as exempting normal Canadians from these CRTC rules, but the Liberals put in an exemption to the exemption right after, so there is actually no change.

The Liberals plan to reject the amendment that would explicitly encourage the CRTC to regulate professional, copywritten content, which seems to be their actual aim, instead of individual user-created content. Even then, it does not change the discoverability rules that would control and prioritize what Canadians see and hear, thereby controlling the content creators.

Experts warn that this will happen. Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies says that under Bill C-11, Canada will “become a global leader in restricting online speech and meddling with news media.” Canada’s top legal scholar and digital content expert, Michael Geist, whom the Liberals now deride when we quote him, says it will restrict who can hear Canadian voices: “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.” If Canadians do not have the freedom to hear it, then the creator does not have free expression.

Forty thousand creators from Digital First Canada signed letters calling for these rules to be removed. The Liberals ignored them. Prominent and diverse Canadian YouTubers, like J.J. McCullough, Morghan Fortier, Justin Tomchuk and Oorbee Roy, have all spoken about their concerns about what Bill C-11 would do to their viewership and their income.

J.J. McCullough said:

Given that YouTubers make videos of every genre imaginable, from fitness to architecture to political commentary, it is frankly terrifying to imagine that government may soon have a hand in determining which genres of video are more worthy of promotion than others.

In summary, anyone proud of the tremendous success of Canadians on YouTube should be deeply concerned about the damage that Bill C-11 could do to their livelihoods.

If MPs pass this bill into law, no one can say they were not warned about the potential consequences. The level of uncertainty and concern, as much about what is not defined as what is, and the potential impact on the core value of free expression should be enough for the costly coalition to hit pause and fix this bill.

That is the duty of policy-makers, the duty of MPs, to ensure that legislation does what they claim and to mitigate unintended consequences before passing laws. MPs must defend the values of Canadians' right to freely, without censorship or risk of consequences, express their views, so long as they are not inciting harm or hate, whether or not they align with the views of anyone in here. That is our job.

No government agency responsible for broadcasting in a free and democratic society should have powers to censor, control and regulate as proposed in Bill C-11. Canadians have fought and died to defend rights to free thought and expression.

I will close with these words:

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye

Margaret Atwood was talking about love and pain. That is what Bill C-11 would do to what Canadians can see and hear online. She says Bill C-11 is “creeping totalitarianism”. I would not presume but it is probably fair to say she is not a Conservative, but she is a world-renowned Canadian artist and icon, and Bill C-11 supporters should actually listen to her before it is too late.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to get up and ask my colleague from Calgary Shepard a question, because “there's always something to do.”

The government of the day has subsidized media outlets across this country to the tune of over $600 million because these media outlets that are highly regulated by organizations like the CRTC and forced to follow these rules cannot generate the advertising revenue or the interest they need because the government is dictating to them what they can and cannot do. Does my colleague see Bill C-11 doing the same thing to digital content creators on the Internet?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad I caught your eye so I can speak to this piece of legislation. I know I started speaking on it, but I guess the government made a mistake in its original motion. I was so keen to make sure I was here to add my voice and the voices of my constituents on this.

Years ago, when this bill was known as Bill C-10, which then got converted to Bill C-11, I remember standing at a Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast in my riding in the community of Auburn Bay. The hosts served two to three thousand people that day. I stood at the front of the line, and before people got their pancakes, they had to interact with me.

I had a great many constituents tell me the number one issue they wanted to talk to me about was Bill C-11. I was floored that some of them knew the number for a piece of legislation. A lot of young people wanted to talk about it. What they knew was that Bill C-11 was coming through and would have an impact on free speech, and they did not like it. I asked them what they knew, and we had an exchange about it.

The majority of emails I get are in opposition to Bill C-11 and also in opposition to Bill C-21. I have had a handful, which I could literally count on one hand, of people who have had positive things to say about Bill C-11.

People are extremely upset with the government over the Senate amendments and which of the amendments it has chosen to proceed with and which it has not. One of the Senate amendments it rejected would have protected user-uploaded content.

As we know, with most user-uploaded content, there is a possibility for someone to make revenue from it when they have a channel. All of it is captured by these amendments that the government would be accepting in Bill C-11. Bill C-11 is still a deeply flawed piece of legislation.

Before I continue, I want to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Lakeland, who I am sure will do a terrific job speaking on behalf of her constituents as well.

I want to go through the legislation, specifically section 7, which I have the most concerns with.

In my home, my kids go on YouTube and streaming services exclusively. We do not have cable. There is no over-the-air TV like back in my day. When I say “back in my day”, I still remember when there were black and white channels.

In Communist Poland, there were only two channels we could get. They were both in black and white. The joke always was that the regime had set up a second channel to prove to people the first one was not that bad. I do not remember it, but the first time I got to watch TV in colour was when I came to Canada in 1985. It was a nice thing to see that colour TV was something we could get.

My kids do not have that experience at all. They go onto YouTube and I go onto YouTube as well. I am going to mention two particular channels I love, because they are by Canadian content creators who would be impacted by Bill C-11.

The first one is an Ontario channel called TheStraightPipes. It is two guys from Ontario who review cars. They just get vehicles and review them. They would have to go to the CRTC to get a licence that says the videos they post are Canadian content.

They are from Canada. They are Canadian content creators. Even when they travel to America, I still think of their videos as Canadian content. Would they be eligible for a licence for their Canadian and international audience to be able to look at their videos if they go to America and do them?

The second one I want to mention is my favourite, and I mentioned it earlier in the previous stage of debate on Bill C-11 It is Leroy and Leroy. If people are not on Instagram checking out these guys from Saskatchewan, they are missing out.

Leroy and Leroy is the funniest comedy channel about funny street signs all over Canada. I will always remember the one video they uploaded of a “no parking” sign on a straight road somewhere in Saskatchewan. I know it is really difficult to figure out one straight road from another in Saskatchewan. It is a rural road, there is a “no parking” sign and there is just nothing there that someone would be concerned about vehicles blocking.

I wonder whether they would have to keep reapplying to the CRTC as Canadian content creators. Are they Canadian enough? When they travel outside of Canada to do their comedy routine, would they be Canadian enough?

I have a Yiddish proverb. I always have a Yiddish proverb. I am going to butcher the pronunciation of it.

[Member spoke in Yiddish]

[English]

It means, “Truth has all the finest qualities, but it is shy.” I am glad we are having this debate this evening, because it is an opportunity for the shyness to come out and the truth to come out.

Many members on the opposite side do not like the fact that we call this a censorship bill. We say the CRTC is going to be able to control what people see and hear online, but that is what many of the witnesses have been saying.

Countless witnesses, professors and academics, people who have specialized in writing, including a constitutional lawyer who used to work for our justice department, have expressed concern over the content of the bill and how the bill is written. When there is a disagreement between experts and the common, everyday people who write to my inbox telling me they are upset with the contents of the bill, I am going to trust my constituents, the real experts when it comes to legislation before the House. They are the ones I represent here. They are the ones who are going to have to live with the decisions we are making and the types of legislation we are going to pass.

I am very concerned with section 7. It reads, “For greater certainty, an order may be made under subsection (1) with respect to orders made under subsection 9.1(1) or 11.1(2) or regulations made under subsection 10(1) or 11.1(1).”

We write these laws in this manner. I am not burdened with a legal education, thankfully, but I did go back to the Broadcasting Act to see under which sections the government would be able to direct things. This one would allow cabinet to issue, under the heading “Policy directions”, any of the objectives of the broadcasting policies set out in a different subsection, or any of the objectives of the regulatory policies set out in a different section. It starts by saying, “the Governor in Council may...issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad policy matters with respect to”, and then it goes into detail.

The next section I will talk about is licencing. Everything to do with licencing would be impacted as well, because the government would be able to direct the CRTC through a policy directive and tell it what to do. That is all in section 7. It goes on to talk about regulations generally, and we find that in many pieces of legislation.

For those constituents who are perhaps watching this and will use this as an explanation when I go through this, it goes from literally 10(1) all the way down from (a) to (k), and the government covers everything down to what respects the audit or examination of the records of licencees.

What does that mean? Is it that, if Leroy and Leroy gets a licence with the CRTC to prove its creators create Canadian content, the creators can be audited, such as with respect to how many videos they did in Canada versus not in Canada? If TheStraightPipes brings in an American vehicle, or a vehicle perhaps manufactured elsewhere, are the creators going to be audited on that?

The bill talks about distribution, mediation rules and respecting the carriage of any foreign or other programming services by distribution undertakings. What happens if TheStraightPipes decides to do a joint episode with an American channel? Does it need a special licence, a different licence, and have to pay a fee? Is it Canadian content enough?

All these broadcasting rules are being brought into the age of YouTube, and they do not really apply here where the cost of production is so low and so close to people. However, in the bill, there are things about advertising, Canadian programming and what constitutes Canadian programming, which is where this Canadian content comes in.

Again, there are a schedule of fees, performing of the licence and the undertakings, which are all being covered, and it starts with the policy directives that can be set by the Government of Canada. A lot of different groups have expressed concerns about it. Like I said, it is probably the number one issue emailed to me or in the phone calls I get in the office.

I talked about the Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast outside the Auburn Bay A&W, which was hosting it. The gentleman who runs it, Balwant, is a great community activist. He is always helping different charitable groups and supporting them.

There are a lot of groups and individuals who think this is bad legislation: Digital First Canada; OpenMedia; J.J. McCullough, who is an independent journalist but has his own YouTube channel as well; Justin Tomchuk, who is an independent filmmaker; and the Digital Media Association. The list goes on and on.

This piece of legislation is bad. It is about censorship, or it would give the opportunity for it, and if the government really meant for it not to be not to be known by that, it would have abandoned this piece of legislation. It would have gone back to the drafting process and drafted a better bill.

This entire situation could have been avoided. Motions were tabled that actually did not do what they were supposed to do, and then the government came back and tabled a different motion because it is just trying to ram the bill through the process, and that has not worked out for the government. I think there are way more Canadians who know about Bill C-11 and about the CRTC than ever before, and the vast majority of them in my riding are opposed to Bill C-11.

I am going to vote against Bill C-11. I will continue to advocate against it, because that is what my constituents want me to do. Hopefully, through this intervention here in the House of Commons, I have been able to demonstrate that the legislation, particularly section 7, and its amendments to the Broadcasting Act are completely on the wrong track. The government needs to kill Bill C-11.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting debate today, and I rise to speak on Bill C-11.

I was here for Bill C-10, which went on until the Liberals finally realized it was problematic, shipped it off to the Senate and called an election because they knew they had a bad piece of legislation.

The Internet is an interesting place, but the expression of opinions has been going on for a long time.

I do not know if anybody in this House has been to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London. People can stand there and express any opinion they want. There are libel laws in the Criminal Code; we understand that. However, people can stand on that corner and express their viewpoints. There is no censorship and no control. If they attract an audience, the audience might like to listen. If they do not attract an audience, so be it, but they still have the opportunity to do that.

In 1989, the World Wide Web was introduced as a tool for communication and connection, for the free flow of information no matter where one was located. One did not have to be on Speakers' Corner but could be anywhere in the world. According to Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with founding the Internet, the web was a universal linked information system that “evolved into a powerful ubiquitous tool because it was built on...principles and because thousands...have worked...to expand its capabilities based on those principles.” That is how the modern-day inventor of this particular tool stated it.

Since then, it has exploded. At least five billion people in the world are using it. I remember being on a corner in Beijing, China, and the street vendor selling a watermelon was using the Internet. It has exploded around the world. It can be used to shop, browse and communicate freely. It can be used for anything one wants at just about the click of a button. This is the power of the Internet.

The government wants Bill C-11 to level the playing field, but I do not think this is the leveller. Despite what the government says, Bill C-11 would change the way Canadians interact with the Internet, and I do not agree with the how. Bill C-11 flies directly in the face of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition Charter. The charter talks about the right to network equality, “universal and open access to the Internet’s content, free from discriminatory prioritisation, filtering or traffic control on commercial, political or other grounds.” It talks about the right to accessibility and expression, “the right to seek, receive, and impart information freely on the Internet without censorship or other interference.”

However, the heritage minister has continued to stonewall against some of our concerns. As Conservatives brought forward amendments that people were sharing with us, the government did not accept them and then went to the Senate after ignoring the amendments we wanted to make. Unfortunately, Bill C-11 stands in the way of Canadian innovation and tells Canadian creators that their aspirations can only be achieved with the help of the government. There is a phrase: “I'm here to help you. I'm from the government.” In my world, I tell people to run now and run like hell. When somebody from the government says they are here to help, people should run.

For decades, the Canadian arts and cultural sectors have reached global audiences without government choosing the next success story. In my riding, as in many rural ridings, over 40% of the people do not have access to broadband. The Auditor General stated that less than 60% of rural Canadians have broadband access. Maybe that is what the Liberals should be working on, not controlling the Internet.

When there are people in Canada who do not even have reliable Internet, we should be looking at that. However, the crux of Bill C-11 culminates in what the government has been doing since it took office. It wants to spend, regulate and control more. Enter Bill C-10 and then Bill C-11 to mandate the CRTC to regulate the Internet.

I have been on the heritage committee for a long time. There was a report with a recommendation that people should only be board members on the CRTC if they lived in the 613 area code. That was the Yale report recommendation. I am not sure about the CRTC when people have to live in Ottawa to be on the board.

Often during committee we heard that the CRTC was the only organization capable of achieving such a wide regulatory order. This bill would lead to the addition of even more government employees and costs, which would be significant whether done in-house or contracted out. It would be a huge cost. Not only would the scope of the CRTC reach Canadian radio waves and TV screens, but now it would also reach the Internet.

In 1997, a former Liberal MP, the Hon. Roger Gallaway, said:

[T]he Internet is the system linking computers all over the world, allowing the free flow of information. Now the new chair of the CRTC...has stated that her commission intends to regulate the Internet to ensure adequate levels of Canadian content. If information is flowing freely how and why is [the commissioner} going to measure its Canadiana?

Rather than spend our money in such a fashion perhaps a suggestion of redirecting her cash to libraries, book publishing or literary programs would be infinitely more meaningful. Regulating the flow of information is in a historical sense an extraordinarily dangerous step. I would suggest that regulating the flow of information is in fact censorship.

As parliamentarians I suggest that we stop the CRTC's flight of fancy before it takes one further step.

Does it sound familiar? History repeats itself, this time at the behest of the government. In 1997, when the Internet was but a fraction of what it is today, the concerns of regulatory censorship in what is Canadian content was being raised by the Liberals.

More recently, Canadian writer-director Sarah Polley adapted a screenplay from a novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. She won an Oscar for her film Women Talking. Will the CRTC acknowledge that this production qualifies as Canadian content? Whether productions have significant involvement by Canadians is not considered by the CRTC to qualify as Canadian content.

Turning Red is a Pixar film written and directed by a Canadian, set in Canada and with Canadian characters. Does it count? No, it does not; it is not Canadian. Under Bill C-11, that decision would fall to cabinet, its order in council, the governor. Yes, that is the one that says they are going to give the directions to the CRTC. I do not think any party should be making those decisions and directing the CRTC.

At least the previous Bill C-10, a bill that died in the last Parliament, included an explicit exemption for user-generated content. However, then the Liberals removed it from their own bill. Members of the government realized they would not be able to tighten the grip on Canadians' viewing habits should that exemption remain. Therefore, they tried again with Bill C-11 and told Canadians not to worry but to trust them. That is another phrase. It gets scary when somebody says, “Trust me”.

A careful examination revealed complicated ways in which they can still be regulated. The Senate introduced an amendment intended to explicitly rule out user-generated non-commercial content, but the government rejected that too. The Liberals rejected the Senate, Canadians and the exemption. That must say it all.

As Canadians' foremost expert on Internet and copyright law, Dr. Michael Geist said, “For months, [the Minister of Heritage] has said ‘platforms in, users out’.... We now know this was false. By rejecting the Senate amendment, the government’s real intent is clear: retain the power to regulate user content. Platforms in, user content in.”

If the CRTC is given this mandate, it may direct social media platforms and streaming services to develop the algorithms to favour and disfavour based on a certain criterion, but one we do not know. No one but the government knows. The screening occurs through discoverability. When one opens a browser on a platform, such as YouTube or Facebook, such results would be screened artificially based on a CRTC directive. This needs to stop.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There was a question as to the charter statement on Bill C-11. I was hoping to get unanimous consent to table, in both official languages—

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

Mr. Speaker, again, from Conservative speaker after Conservative speaker, we are getting conspiracy theories and dog whistle politics. Does the hon. member truly believe that three parties in the House would support a piece of legislation and that none of those members would raise concerns about being brought in line with countries like North Korea and Russia? I asked the previous member this. Is it not an insult to the people living in those regimes to even come close to comparing them?

I know the hon. member was not at committee and did not hear this. Could he name just one constitutional expert in this country who has raised concerns about it? No one has, yet they point fingers, yell and scream. They are yelling down the Twitter rabbit hole, hoping it yells back at them with money, over complete misinformation and disinformation about Bill C-11. Can the hon. member name one constitutional expert?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I just want to advise that I will be sharing my time with my little buddy from Bow River.

It is, again, an honour to rise and speak today in the House. Unfortunately, I am speaking about another oppressive piece of legislation, and with the current Liberal government that could be almost anything, to be honest. In this case, it is the Liberal online censorship bill, Bill C-11. It is known as an act that would impose restrictions on free speech and open the door to government censorship on the Internet in Canada, which is the long title of the bill, or whatever name the Liberals want to give it.

From the beginning, the Liberals have sought to force the bill through Parliament without proper deliberation or consultation. Though Canadian content creators, experts and Canadians in general have spoken out on the bill and the increased power it would give the government, they have been largely ignored. The Liberals rammed Bill C-11 through committee without leaving time for amendments, and they continue to conceal their true intentions and the very real consequences the legislation would have on the Canadian Internet, on social media and on the personal freedoms of Canadians.

If the Liberal government were to commit to getting Bill C-11 correct, as it claims it has, instead of steamrolling democracy, the Senate would not have had to do the government's work for it. It is rare that the Senate does not pass legislation that has already passed through the House. The Senate sending Bill C-11 back to the House with significant amendments, not only in quantity but also in content, shows that there is something seriously wrong with the Liberal piece of legislation before us.

Bill C-11 seeks to regulate audiovisual content on the Internet through an arm of the government called the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, commonly known as the CRTC, which has traditionally been responsible for regulating radio and television. The bill would put the CRTC in charge of creating and implementing regulations for the Internet for the very first time. Bill C-11 has been controversial since it was introduced in 2020. Disguised as an incompetent and misguided attempt to modernize Canadian content regulation, the bill is nothing more than censorship by a dictatorship.

The Liberals introduced Bill C-11 to take something old, the Broadcasting Act, and use it to try to bridle something relatively new: the Internet. In trying to doing so, the bill is the very opposite of modernization. By placing greater control in the hands of the government and granting less autonomy to individuals, Bill C-11 would create the very opposite of a free and equal society. It would be something closer to the Prime Minister's country of admiration: the basic dictatorship of China's Communist government.

Canadians who have been shut out by Canada's traditional media gatekeepers are finding their voices on places like Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and YouTube. Unfortunately, Bill C-11 would stifle the voices of digital-first creators and hinder the ability of Canadians to find the content they may like. In effect, Bill C-11 would place an Internet czar, the CRTC, which would pick what content gets moved to the top of one's search menu and what content gets pushed to the background where it ought never to be discovered.

In this way, Bill C-11 is a direct attack on digital-first creators, on our choice as viewers and on the advancement of the arts and culture in Canada in this century.

After listening to testimony from digital experts, Canadian YouTubers, indigenous creators and others, the Senate introduced an amendment, one of many, that would encourage the CRTC to exclude some user-generated content from regulation. However, not only is this amendment not guaranteed to pass in the House, but it also does not go far enough. With or without this amendment, under Bill C-11, the CRTC would still be able to compel platforms to promote CRTC-approved Canadian content.

The Liberals claim that bringing in more government intervention will boost Canadian culture. I believe this is absolutely false. As countries ruled by oppressive leaders have shown us, more government control does not lead to creativity and innovation, nor does allowing more power ever cause governments to further respect its citizens' rights and freedoms.

Under this bill, the CRTC would have the power to regulate user-generated content, in other words, anything created, posted and produced on the Internet. As such, although the government claims that this bill is geared toward supporting Canadian culture and levelling the playing field, Bill C-11 would actually remove freedom and choice away from Canadians while unfortunately, and not surprisingly, it would put more power and control in the hands of the government through the CRTC.

According to a report done by Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa expert on broadcasting and online regulations, “No other democratic nation regulates user-generated content through broadcasting rules in this manner...Canada would be unique among its allies in doing so, and not in a good way.”

This designation of the government having the power to determine what qualifies as Canadian content should alarm Canadians and members of the government alike. Bill C-11's stated purpose of promoting Canadian content would essentially give the government, through the CRTC, the power to determine what qualifies as Canadian content. Under this guise of promoting Canadian content, the government would be able to designate certain opinions, certain stances and thoughts in general as un-Canadian and thus deserving of censorship.

We have seen the Prime Minister shut down and silence Canadians who disagree with the government already, determining their opinions to be un-Canadian. We have seen him render Canadians invisible and exclude them from society, deciding that certain medical choices and beliefs are un-Canadian. Now if Bill C-11 passes, the same Prime Minister, through the CRTC, would have the power to extend his pattern of dividing, stigmatizing and silencing Canadians he disagrees with on the Internet.

Ultimately, Bill C-11 would put Canada in step with countries like North Korea, China, Iran and Russia, which is totally unacceptable and altogether dangerous. In reality, Bill C-11 is yet another attempt by the Liberal government to silence any perceived dissent and to forward only a Canada that aligns with the government: in this case, the Prime Minister's vision and ideals.

This bill is simply another in a long list of misguided and out-of-touch policies. It demonstrates that after eight years under the Prime Minister, Canada is broken. Legislation that seeks to regulate and oppress Canadians has been the norm under the Liberal government. While Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis, struggling to feed their families and to heat their homes, their government is focusing its resources on extending its already heavy hand into the everyday lives of its citizens.

The bottom line is that the Liberal government has failed to be transparent and continues to show contempt for democracy and parliamentary procedure by consistently using heavy-handed measures to adopt what can only be described as oppressive and unprecedented legislation without proper scrutiny.

Bill C-11 is nothing but another Liberal assault on Canadian citizens and their personal freedoms. That is why it failed in the Senate and why even a modified version ought to be voted down by the House. If it is not, I hope the Senate does the right thing and punts it back to the House with even more amendments.