Bill C-18

Online News Act

An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada

This enactment regulates digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to its sustainability. It establishes a framework through which digital news intermediary operators and news businesses may enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries. The framework takes into account principles of freedom of expression and journalistic independence.
The enactment, among other things,
(a) applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to specific factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses;
(b) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting those factors;
(c) specifies that the enactment does not apply in respect of “broadcasting” by digital news intermediaries that are “broadcasting undertakings” as those terms are defined in the Broadcasting Act or in respect of telecommunications service providers as defined in the Telecommunications Act ;
(d) requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies;
(e) requires the Commission to exempt a digital news intermediary from the application of the enactment if its operator has entered into agreements with news businesses and the Commission is of the opinion that the agreements satisfy certain criteria;
(f) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting how the Commission is to interpret those criteria and setting out additional conditions with respect to the eligibility of a digital news intermediary for an exemption;
(g) establishes a bargaining process in respect of matters related to the making available of certain news content by digital news intermediaries;
(h) establishes eligibility criteria and a designation process for news businesses that wish to participate in the bargaining process;
(i) requires the Commission to establish a code of conduct respecting bargaining in relation to news content;
(j) prohibits digital news intermediary operators from acting, in the course of making available certain news content, in ways that discriminate unjustly, that give undue or unreasonable preference or that subject certain news businesses to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage;
(k) allows certain news businesses to make complaints to the Commission in relation to that prohibition;
(l) authorizes the Commission to require the provision of information for the purpose of exercising its powers and performing its duties and functions under the enactment;
(m) requires the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide the Commission with an annual report if the Corporation is a party to an agreement with an operator;
(n) establishes a framework respecting the provision of information to the responsible Minister, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, while permitting an individual or entity to designate certain information that they submit to the Commission as confidential;
(o) authorizes the Commission to impose, for contraventions of the enactment, administrative monetary penalties on certain individuals and entities and conditions on the participation of news businesses in the bargaining process;
(p) establishes a mechanism for the recovery, from digital news intermediary operators, of certain costs related to the administration of the enactment; and
(q) requires the Commission to have an independent auditor prepare a report annually in respect of the impact of the enactment on the Canadian digital news marketplace.
Finally, the enactment makes related amendments to other Acts.

Online News Act

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am concerned. I said that right off the top. When Bill C-18 was introduced over a year ago, the bill was designed to help local newspapers in this country. Now we find out when we peel back the onion that public broadcaster CBC, Rogers and Bell, are going to get 75% of the funding from Meta and Google. Why are they at the trough?

We dealt with Bill C-10 and Bill C-11 before, which pertained to those industries. Bill C-18 was designed for newspapers, as we have found out with the department saying only $150 million will be raised. Is it $150 million, or what the PBO said is a bigger pot of $239 million?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on this important issue, Bill C‑18.

I sense that he is concerned about the issue of local and regional media, and I share that concern. I have had the opportunity to talk to people in the media back home who have told me to do something, but we clearly continue to have concerns about Bill C‑18.

Nevertheless, should we not help our local media by moving forward with Bill C‑18 and making sure that our small media outlets are really covered by this plan? The other option is to do nothing at all, slow down Bill C‑18 and throw the door wide open to the libertarian model embraced by GAFAM and their ilk. Should we not make sure they are fully covered by the bill?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, right off the top, I want to state the Conservatives agree that Meta, Facebook and Google should pay. I keep hearing the Liberals, NDP and Bloc say that the Conservatives do not believe that. We do. I will talk about it in my speech, because we do believe that Meta and Google should pay. As for what they are going to pay, let us find out, because there is a big difference between what the government thinks publishers are going to get and what the PBO thinks is going to be available.

Bill C-18 came out of committee just last Friday, and this week I think we are going to see its quick passage. I really enjoyed the intent of the bill when it came out. When it was first introduced over a year ago, I loved it. It was all about helping local media. I was part of that media back in Saskatoon for years on the television side. However, Bill C-18 was about local newspapers then. That was the objective of Bill C-18 when it was first introduced over a year ago.

Our Conservative team then invited Saskatchewan and Alberta newspaper associations to testify at committee. We need Meta, Facebook and Google to pay for news. I have stated that. However, what we heard from Steve Nixon, executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, was that the bill needed to include one-person operations to really make an impact on saving the news industry in Saskatchewan. Steve Nixon mentioned in committee that only four or five operations are going to be eligible in Saskatchewan. Through amendments, those with one and a half people and over will get money from Meta and Google. We wanted it at one, but we did not get that in committee.

Dennis Merrell of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association said that only 50% of Alberta weeklies would qualify for money under Bill C-18. There are one-person newsrooms in Alberta, but they do not count. They would get no money out of this bill. Two people are needed to qualify.

The bill had all the right intent to preserve rural reporting of news, yet we did not get there. Unfortunately, the bill was hijacked early with the lobbying of the CBC, Bell Media and Rogers. They found a way to convince the Liberal government that they needed more money.

Many already made deals with Meta and Google before we even started in committee. This was kind of funny, because Colin McKay, representing Google, came to committee and admitted it already had 150 publishers signed up. Those with the ability to make the deals beforehand have made the deals. They saw what happened in Australia, so they made deals before the bill was even introduced, and they get the first cut of the money.

How much did these agreements go for? We do not know and probably will never know. Torstar, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Le Devoir and others have made one-off agreements with the tech giants. The little guys, whom I feel for, are left to defend for themselves. They may have to join others to negotiate. If not, they are done and will close.

We agree with Kevin Desjardins, president of Canadian Association of Broadcasters, who said there will be winners and losers with Bill C-18. It did not have to be this way, but I would say before we got started on this bill, it was all decided beforehand.

I believe, as the Conservatives believe, that the CBC should not be involved at all in Bill C-18. The CBC is already funded by the taxpayers of this country to the tune of $1.2 billion, yet the government, in the fall economic update, gave it another $42 million, with $21 million to deal with this year and another free $21 million to deal with next year.

Let us level the playing field. How do we do that when the public broadcaster already gets $1.2 billion and an additional $42 million? We can say we are going to level the playing field, but tell that to rural Manitoba. Tell that to rural Saskatchewan, Alberta or even Ontario, where they are trying every day to make payrolls.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the public and private broadcasters would get $248 million of the $329 million paid out annually through this bill. It is possible that the CBC will be the single biggest winner. Why should that happen? As I said earlier, it gets more than enough funding through the taxpayers of this country.

An interesting note is that heritage department officials came up last week with the number that they thought Meta and Google would pay newspapers and those involved in Bill C-18. Their number was $150 million, which kind of surprised me a bit because the Parliamentary Budget Officer, a long time ago, said there was going to be a pot of $329 million. However, 75% of the $329 million will go to CBC, Rogers and Bell. The little guys will fight over the rest.

Unfortunately, these local newspapers are struggling now, and the national players have already lined up and made their agreements with Meta and Google. With the one-horse show we are seeing in rural Canada, too bad for local newspapers. They thought they were going to get help in Bill C-18 because the Liberals talked about it a year ago, saying this is a bill for newspapers. However, it turned out to be anything but.

Instead of looking through the classifieds, we know that everyone goes to social media. People sell their furniture on Facebook Marketplace. Companies put jobs on LinkedIn. Service classifieds go to sites like Craigslist. It has all changed; we see it. Papers have always made their money through the classifieds, but that no longer happens.

Then there is the concern about subscriptions. They are getting cancelled because everyone wants free stuff and they are getting it for free online right now with Facebook, Google and so on.

Finally, there is advertising. The Liberal Party of Canada spent $4 million on Facebook. It could have helped rural Canadian newspapers instead of spending that on Meta last year. The federal government spends a lot of money on Facebook, Google and so on.

Local papers used to be a primary target for government advertising and information about government programs. Years ago, they got some advertising and it helped them a lot. However, they got very little this time. When the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act was passed by the government, it gave most of the money to the big boys, such as Facebook, Google and so on. Much of the traffic does not go to the local newspapers now.

We have heard from industry on more than one occasion, both large and small outlets, that the government simply does not advertise as it used to. It does not make its way down to the local newspapers or outlets in any meaningful way. Instead, the government has turned more and more to online advertising on social media.

I heard about the issue when the government was advertising the COVID relief programs. Most of the money went to the big tech conglomerates, which is a bad outcome for local news. Many papers across this country have been forced to close up, leaving a void in their communities.

I am especially worried about the archives when a newspaper closes in a community. Where do the archives of that newspaper go? We should all be concerned about Canadian heritage. When a newspaper closes its doors, so does the history of a community. It is not replaced by Facebook and it is not replaced by Google. That should concern everybody in this country.

We heard testimony from department officials that funding is only afforded to the outlets with one and a half journalists or more. Many of these outlets will be left behind to perish. This is tough because we had a newspaper in Davidson, Saskatchewan, that sold for one dollar. It is still operating. Two years ago, it sold for one dollar and it is still producing local news in the Davidson area today. I feel that many of the papers in rural Canada will sell for one dollar, but the problem is that instead of selling, they are going to close their doors for good.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, what is clear is that we want to keep the Internet free and we do not want the government choosing what needs to be done there. To do that, the best thing to do is get rid of Bill C-18 and allow the tech giants to fund something that small media outlets could themselves divide.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, I, in turn, congratulate our colleague from Sarnia—Lambton for Saturday's happy occasion. I wish her many years of wedded bliss.

I heard my colleague express some concerns about the eligibility of news businesses. I just want to distinguish between Bill C‑21, which we have also been hearing a lot about, and Bill C‑18. Unlike the first bill, in Bill C‑18, the government did not include a list of businesses that are excluded or included.

On the contrary, the bill has a list of criteria that businesses must meet to be eligible. This clause was improved by an amendment that requires eligible businesses to also follow a code of ethics based on fundamental principles of the journalism profession.

I want to know if my colleague, who voted against this amendment with her Conservative colleagues, believes that this amendment actually guarantees that eligible businesses will be serious, rigorous news businesses. I would like to hear what she has to say about that.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, no, I do not believe the bill would do what its purpose intends.

Let us be clear: Facebook, Meta and Google have publicly said they are willing to donate funds that could be split up among smaller local news media. That would involve no government bureaucracy. It would mean the government is not picking who can be in and out. There would be nobody saying something is a violation of freedom of the press or freedom of the Internet. That could still happen, and my recommendation to the government is that it ought to happen.

That being said, I certainly do not think Bill C-18 in its current form would do anything more than give the nests of CBC, Bell and Rogers more money.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-18, in part because there has been so much misinformation and disinformation being spread by the government, including the minister and the NDP, about the bill.

First, let us talk about the situation that brought us the need for the bill.

Across Canada, local small media organizations have been disappearing. Many of them have gone out of business, in the hundreds. Even before the pandemic they were in disarray. The idea behind the bill was to try to help these local small media organizations.

When we look at clause 4 of Bill C-18, which I will read because it is important and it is the only clause I voted for, it states:

The purpose of this Act is to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of independent local news businesses.

That is the intent of the bill, and I am very much in favour of that. A lot of the local media outlets, like the ones in Sarnia—Lambton, are going out of business. Where else are we going to get the local news content that we all want to have?

The idea was to somehow create a fund that would then be shared among local media outlets. The problem started there, because then the idea was to make tech giants, the digital network intermediaries like Facebook, also known as Meta, and Google pay every time somebody shared a news link.

The Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that there was no value in sharing a link. In fact, the whole purpose of the Internet is the freedom to share information that is of interest to us and others and there should not be a value put on it. As soon as we start to put a value on it, for example, that we will only charge a value and give to the news intermediaries, it is a very short step to say that everybody who shares that is sharing something of value and why should it not happen with all of them. That was the problematic premise of the bill, which just got worse. The definitions with respect to who is included or excluded are being made by the government.

Freedom of the media is a fundamental principle in Canada. That means we cannot have the government determine who is in and who is out, who can participate in this and who cannot, yet that is exactly what has happened in Bill C-18.

To make it worse, there are so many vague definitions in the bill, which have been criticized by critics, people who are copyright experts and many others. They have said that a lot of these things will need to be clarified. The government's response was not to worry, that they should trust it because it would define them in regulations, with no parliamentary oversight. That is a very dangerous situation.

The reality is that Canadians do not trust the government. Polls of late show that only 22% of Canadians have trust in government or politicians. That is four out of five who do not trust the government to do what is right, and I am in the four out of five. There was no willingness to take amendments that would have clarified the definitions and put some of these things down, with the oversight of the different parties at committee. That was the first thing.

Then the Parliamentary Budget Officer did a study that said that with the money that Facebook and Google would be giving and the approximate volume of the different links that would be shared, there would be a certain pot of money to be shared. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it was $350 million and the department officials said it was more like $150 million. Therefore, it is somewhere between $150 million and $350 million.

However, the most interesting finding was that the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that 75% of the money would go to Bell Media, Telus and the CBC. The whole point of this bill is to try to help the local small media outlets. If Bell, Telus and the CBC walk off with the lion's share, that leaves very little money left to share among the little ones.

Why should we be giving any more money to the CBC? The government already gives billions of dollars to the CBC. In fact, it just figured out that the CBC should not have to go looking for advertising money and, really, should be publicly funded for another $400 million.

There is CBC, which is likely to get the lion's share, already being funded and now taking away from the very individuals we want to benefit in this bill. It makes absolutely no sense.

In terms of trying to keep the government from excluding the voices it does not want to hear, we tried to bring some clarity to the definitions. At the beginning, it said there needed to be at least two journalists. Other than being recognized in the Income Tax Act, there was not a lot of clarity brought. Some of the amendments were brought to keep out foreign interference, but there were many ethnic and smaller outlets that were mom-and-pop shops, where maybe the owner was the blogger.

We were very happy to support that concept, but unfortunately it was tangled in with a bunch of things we could not support.

The government has the ability to fix that. It has since excluded any organization that does not have more than two journalists, and I think that is a problem.

The other thing is that the Governor in Council will get to decide everything, and then the CRTC, once it has decided who is eligible to play in the game, is going to provide the oversight for this process. When the CRTC officials came to committee, I asked if they had a lot of experience with regulating oversight of digital news intermediaries. They fully confessed that no, they have no experience in that area. It is ridiculous for the government to want to decide who can win and lose and play in the game and then put the CRTC, which already said it does not know anything about managing this, in charge. This is just a recipe for disaster.

Facebook, Meta and Google have been very clear that they want to help small media outlets in this country and would be very happy to donate that $350-million pot and let a consortium of small news media outlets decide among themselves how best to split it up so that there is sustainability. There needs to be fairness.

We introduced amendments at committee to include indigenous voices. I think there are other ethnic voices in our country that have been excluded by the definitions, but if we took the money and had a panel that was looking at the local small media outlets, it could be fair in making sure there was an equitable dispersion.

Instead, Bell Media, which already shut down a whole bunch of small media outlets, is going to get part of that, 75% of it. What do we think giving it more money is going to do? It is going to continue to shut down small media outlets, and it is not going to achieve the purpose of the bill.

There were concerns expressed after Australia implemented a similar legislative model. Facebook at that time threatened to shut down content. It said it did not want to participate in this. It did not want the government regulating the Internet and regulating free speech. There was a shutdown, and then there was a renegotiation and changes were made.

When we recommended that those changes be brought to the bill and that we could learn from what was problematic in the Australian experience, we learned that it was about this phrase “undue preference”, which meant it was going to be illegal in Bill C-18 for those platforms to do what they do, which is using algorithms to upvote and downvote content. They try to keep hate speech down and things that are misinformation down, and they try to upvote things that people are interested in, things that are popular, so they need to be allowed to do that.

That was another problem we saw with this bill.

Then there are the privacy concerns of sharing information. The CRTC has a broad ability to ask people for any information it needs in order to verify that they are eligible, and then there are going to be arbitrators involved, who are not necessarily bound by the same codes of confidentiality. I have a privacy concern about that.

When it comes right down to it, we did everything we could to recommend that the government abandon this bill and instead work with the big tech giants to get a fund, get it together and divide it up among the local media outlets, so that the people who really need it will get that help.

However, here we are, in the middle of the Christmas season. Love did come down at Christmas, and not just for everyone in general but for me specifically. I am very happy to announce that I got married and so, with that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

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

Madam Speaker, I invite Conservative members to read the bill. It is always very important to read the bill before coming into the House.

What Bill C-18 does is provide an obligatory process of negotiation. Big tech has been vacuuming up money from communities right across the country, including Pembroke, Burnaby, New Westminster and communities across the length and breadth of this land. Big tech is now obliged, as it is in Australia, to fund local journalists and local publications. Big tech has benefited enormously from the journalism that has been done in communities across this country. It is now obliged to pay its fair share, because there is an obligatory negotiation process.

I am particularly proud of the NDP amendment that puts in a strict timeline, so big tech cannot play around. It cannot skate around in circles. It is obliged to negotiate fairly and fund local journalism. I am proud of the NDP amendments that were adopted. I am proud of the committee members for working together.

Bill C-18 is a bill that will benefit all Canadians, including indigenous people.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his work. The amendments that were adopted expanded the scope so it would apply to all indigenous communities and to indigenous journalists. Bill C‑18 now allows indigenous publications and indigenous journalists to receive funding. That is a big improvement. Transparency and accountability are in the bill now, thanks to the NDP's amendments. The member for Drummond also proposed some very valuable amendments.

As far as transparency is concerned, the most important amendment is the one that ensures that owners who operate a small publication somewhere in Saskatchewan or in Alberta are now eligible even if those operators are also journalists. Even if they work part time, they are eligible. Every party around the table voted in favour of that amendment. The only party that voted against it was the Conservative Party.

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

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North is asking me to imagine what it is like to be in the mind of a Conservative and I have great difficulty in doing that.

I found a bit of a muddle from the Conservative side, and we have seen this before in other legislation. On the one hand, Alberta community newspapers and Saskatchewan community newspapers stepped up. These are newspapers that basically represent nearly half of the Conservative caucus. Their representatives came to committee and said that Bill C-18 has to be adopted, but to improve the aspects from journalism so that more journalists and more Canadian newspapers can benefit from this.

Conservatives should have taken their marching orders from their constituents, including the local community newspapers across Alberta and Saskatchewan who said that Bill C-18 was needed but improvement needed to be brought. The NDP brought forward that improvement. The NDP brought forward an amendment that would allow for a two-person operation, even if they are owners and operators of that business, to access the money that would come from big tech and those negotiations. What did the Conservatives do? They voted against the NDP amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to conclude my remarks by thanking members of the committee. The 16 amendments from the NDP that were adopted have improved Bill C-18 immeasurably, and we have a much better bill coming into the House.

I look forward to questions and comments from my colleagues.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada, be read the third time and passed.

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

Mr. Speaker, I understand I will be having to split my time before and after question period.

I wanted to start off with a tribute to Jim Carr. We have this tradition in place that we refer to members of Parliament by their riding names, like the member of Parliament for Winnipeg South Centre. When they pass away, as Jim did, and we received the sad notice of that yesterday, we can use their real names as opposed to their riding names. It is a sad moment, and we have been through this over the last few years with a number of members of Parliament.

With Jim, it was particularly saddening, because tomorrow we would have been paying tribute to him in the House of Commons with a round of speeches. We were aware that we needed to do that, and I think all 337 of us would have loved to have had Jim hear those words of praise for him. We will now be doing that in his absence and in his memory.

It is important to note that his popularity was such that within the NDP caucus a number of members of Parliament wanted to rise to speak. The tradition is one speaker from each party. We had difficulty determining that in our caucus, because people respected Jim so much. He was a gentleman. He was very eloquent. He was passionate about Canada. He will be sorely missed, and I want to pass on my condolences to his family. As we pay tribute to him informally through the course of our work today, having had to suspend the House yesterday, I know that through the course of the week and tomorrow, we will be paying more formal tributes to him. He will be missed.

The object of the debate for the next few minutes is Bill C-18.

My first letter as Canadian heritage critic to the Canadian heritage minister right after the election in 2021 was to push the government to bring immediately to bear a bill that would force big tech to start making its contributions to Canadian society.

As members know, over the past few years we have seen a hoovering up of ad revenues, which have decimated our community news, whether we are talking about radio stations or newspapers, right across the country. My community of New Westminster Burnaby has lost two publications: the New Westminster News Leader and the Burnaby News Leader. We continue to have Burnaby Now and the Royal City Record. We also have new online publishers and two community online publications that do a terrific job: the Burnaby Beacon and the New West Anchor.

The reality is that the impact has been felt right across the country. It has decimated local news and it has meant fewer journalists. What has been worrisome about this is that at the same time we have seen a parallel rise, because big tech has not taken any sort of responsibility for the rise in hate, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia. These two trends are connected.

On the one hand, there is pressure on local community media that brings us together in the community and ensures that people understand that even if their neighbours are different, they all share the same values and goals in the community. Second, there is what I would not even say is big tech's reluctance to curb hate. What it has actually done is promoted it, because extremism, hate and disinformation help to fuel revenues for it. It has been proven many times that the algorithms big tech uses help to foster hate and conflict in the community. Big tech profits from that. The increase in so-called “engagement” leads to more revenues for them.

The importance of bringing forward a bill like Bill C-18 to force big tech to start to provide that support for local community journalism is absolutely fundamental.

That is why the NDP, right after the election, told the government it had to bring forward this legislation on the Australian model. Although it has many weaknesses, which I will perhaps address in the second half of my speech, the Australian model is also a good one, because it stared down big tech. The Australians decided that even though big tech was threatening to withdraw, they were going to push companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to take responsibility and provide funding for journalism. It paid off.

Therefore, we pushed the government, and it introduced Bill C-18, which represents a significant step forward in forcing big tech to provide supports for local journalism and journalism right across this country.

The reality is that when Bill C-18 was tabled, it was a bill that we supported being brought to committee, but at committee we wanted to improve the bill. There was much that was missing in the bill regarding transparency, supporting local community press and journalism, supporting non-profit journalism, and allowing indigenous news outlets to have a role. There was radio silence regarding indigenous news outlets.

We had to fight to get all those things into the bill. We brought it to committee, and I am pleased to announce today that 16 NDP amendments were adopted by the committee working together to ensure just that, a better Bill C-18, one that we can be proud of. It includes, in a comprehensive way, indigenous journalism and indigenous news outlets. It ensures community supports. It ensures that the community radio and non-profit outlets can benefit, and it ensures transparency. Therefore, I am pleased to say that because of the NDP's work, and working with committee members from all parties, Bill C-18 is better than ever, and I am proud to support it in the House of Commons.

I look forward to the second half of my speech after QP.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby for his comments and also for being such a pleasure to work with. We enjoy ourselves, but we also work efficiently. I think he too has a strong desire to improve the bills that are brought before us. That was certainly true of Bill C-18.

Several very important amendments were made to this bill, which is much better today than it was in April, when it was introduced in the House. Obviously, I have a soft spot for the amendment I proposed to demand a certain quality of journalism by imposing, as part of the eligibility criteria, a code of ethics that must be followed, with the basic principles of journalism.

My colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby also proposed some very significant amendments on which we were in complete agreement, particularly on the recognition of community media and the importance of indigenous media in Bill C-18. Some very important progress has been made.

Now, how will this work out in practice? I look forward to seeing how the businesses in question will benefit. However, one thing is certain. The amendments have considerably improved the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Drummond for his great work. The committee members worked really well together.

We made a number of changes to Bill C-18. Which of the amendments that were made to improve Bill C-18 does my colleague think is the most important?

I think that the original bill was good and that the bill now before the House is much better. I know that the member also helped a lot with that.

In his view, which of the amendments that were adopted is the most important?