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.
