I will be as fast as I can. Thank you.
I just want to respond and say that I think this is a good amendment. I'm happy to support this extra oversight. I think that's great and I'm very thankful to Mr. Rayes for bringing this amendment forward.
However, I want to also just bring up the idea and to flag that when Mr. Shields spoke about legal opinions, and the legal opinions being those of the ministry or the government or of those who are contracted by the CRTC, it's important that we recognize that there was a letter sent to the Prime Minister by 14 of Canada's pre-eminent broadcasting, telecommunications and entertainment lawyers, with decades of experience, who spoke very clearly about the concerns that have been raised by some of the Conservatives.
They made it very clear that the commission is not being given any powers to infringe on Canadians' charter rights, that this is clearly outlined in the Department of Justice's update to the charter statement and that these lawyers agree with the conclusion. They say:
Bill C‑10 would restrict the powers the Commission would have over social media services to: mandating financial contributions to support Canadian programming or the recovery of regulatory costs; discoverability, so Canadian creators can be more easily discovered and promoted online; registration, so the Commission knows which services are operating in Canada; and audit powers, to ensure compliance with all of these powers....
They also said it is simply false and completely ignores that:
Users who upload content to these social media services would not be subject to the Act, as specified in proposed Section 2.1. Moreover, the Commission would not have the power to constrain the content on social media services, set program standards for these services or the proportion of programs on these services that must be Canadian.
Also some very smart legal opinion around this country has come forward and said some of the concerns that are being raised by certain members of this committee are completely unfounded. I think it's important that we get that on the record.
I realize I'm at the very last and at the tail end here, but I do want to make sure that that gets put into the record.