I understood that the heritage committee was a place for promoting the arts, so I thought, what better thing to do than quote Shakespeare, one of the world's most famous artists.
It is interesting that members of the government side are now trying to censor what I do and don't say here in a parliamentary committee on a censorship bill. I don't know how many times we can go around this Orwellian tree. It looks like an awfully strange action for a government to shut down debate on a bill this important, giving a notice to the committee that it only has five hours to finish up the work and then send the bill back so that it can ram it into law so that the censorship can begin before Canada Day. That is really what the government's agenda is.
The reason I mention the issue of Canadian content, Mr. Chair, is that this really comes down to who decides. Who decides what is Canadian content? I haven't heard a single name of a CRTC official who's going to be on this decision desk, looking at content and saying, “Oh, yes, that qualifies. Well, there's a maple leaf in that one, so it's in. The other one only has a beaver and some maple syrup, so it's not quite Canadian enough. The third one, of course, might have a Canada goose in it, but that doesn't quite meet our criteria of 'Canadian'.” We know what Canadian content will be when the bureaucrats and the government officials have a chance to decide. It will be pro-government, liberal-leaning, boring, statist content that is approved of by the establishment crowd in general and the liberal glitterati in particular. That's what will be qualified as Canadian content.
Of course, the reason the government needs a bill like this is that if it just allowed people to choose what they wanted to watch with the clicks of their fingers, it knows that people would choose differently from what the government wants. They would choose to listen to dissenting voices, as they do. In fact, on my social media, we do reach millions of people, about four million people a month, but I'm not, probably, Canadian enough for the government officials. I suspect that the audiences I reach who consume the information I provide would be deprived of that point of view in favour of a more approved message, something that the CRTC would be confident in allowing them to hear.
When someone can't win the debate, what do they do? They shut down the debate and put themselves in charge of that debate. That's why I'm here today: to stand up against censorship and to fight back on behalf of the millions of Canadians who demand their right to free speech.
I also note that when the government claims there is support for this bill, all it does is quote lobbyists. It doesn't quote artists; it quotes lobbyists. What this bill would effectively do is favour those content producers who have the best lobbyists rather than those who have the best products. Whenever the government decides who is seen and heard, then those who have influence in the government become the deciders of what gets heard and what does not. Of course, the everyday man and woman who produce content in their own way will be disadvantaged because they don't have political influence. It will be those organizations quoted so often by this minister that have their voices heard because, of course, they have the influence in Ottawa. They have the money. They have the big broadcasting corporations funding them. They will have a megaphone that everyone else will lack.
This is about, basically, converting the power of the state into a louder megaphone for the favoured few at the expense of the voices of the very many. That's why I'm proud to fight against it. I am also proud that a Conservative government would repeal—