Oh, oh!
Evidence of meeting #105 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was platforms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #105 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was platforms.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
I'm not really, but I wish that he hadn't corrected you.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Okay. That means you do not have a two-and-a-half-minute round, Mr. Julian.
9:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Palmer, in your opening remarks, you talked about the dangers of getting it wrong and the dramatic impact this could have on Canadians.
I'm wondering whether you could expand on that a little bit further.
9:50 a.m.
President, Internet Society Canada Chapter
Yes. The danger is that Canada is not an essential market. It's a good market for the major tech platforms—however you describe them—but it's not critical. It's perfectly possible for platforms to simply not serve the Canadian market.
It's a bit of a danger with the really big platforms, such as Netflix, for instance, in the streaming sector, but I think it's really critical with the smaller and innovative services that are coming along. If the price of entry to the Canadian market becomes too steep for new services or for minority services, Canadians will suffer, because those will not align and act in Canada. If they're not available in Canada, then Canadians are losing out.
The primary purpose of the Internet is to be demand-driven and not supply-driven. The Canadian system is designed to be supply-driven rather than demand-driven. When that's applied in various sectors, one can see that Canada can lose out—and individual Canadians lose—from the lack of access to new products and innovation.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Mr. Palmer, I want to tap into this a bit further.
You said that choice needs to be preserved for Canadians in terms of their use of the Internet, but you also talked about its needing to be demand-driven. Do you want to explain a little bit more about what you mean by “demand-driven”?
9:50 a.m.
President, Internet Society Canada Chapter
The Internet makes the individual the curator of his experience. They can choose to watch videos on Instagram or TikTok. They can watch streaming services like Netflix. They can look for free. They can go for a paid subscription, etc. These are all possible. The critical fact is that it is the individual who chooses what they are going to see.
The traditional model of both print and broadcast programming or content is that it's a push. You get what they're offering, and that's all you get. You can switch from channel A to channel B, but you cannot choose what's going to be on channel A.
We get to choose now. We have a vast choice of products and services. We get to choose what we want to watch, when we want to watch it, how we're going to consume it and on what platform, etc. These are hugely freeing and liberating and individual self-realization steps that are critical, I think, to the kind of society we want to eventually have.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Mr. Palmer, in the nation of Canada, of course, within our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 2(b), freedom of speech is protected, which of course is the exchange of information. At the same time, it would seem that there's some appetite in the country for greater regulation among tech giants.
How do you balance that? How do you balance between the Internet being this vast and magical space where people have access to information and can curate that according to their desire and where the exchange of ideas can take place freely, and also wanting to make sure that people are able to do that in a way that is...? I don't know. Should they want to do that in a way that is safe?
9:55 a.m.
President, Internet Society Canada Chapter
I mean, “safe” has a number of definitions here. It is very difficult to be able to say when you shouldn't be able to access certain information or certain services. This is a dilemma that lawmakers and individuals are going to face constantly and chronically in this space.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Mr. Palmer.
I will now go to the Liberals with Anna Gainey.
Anna, you have five minutes, please.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'm sorry. You're still having problems with your laryngitis.
Go ahead, Michael Coteau.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to go to you, Mr. Riekeles, for a perspective or maybe a bit of a brief on the history of what's taken place in Europe to combat intimidation, the spread of misinformation and disinformation, and the promotion of hate through the different platforms.
Can you give us any advice from the successes and failures from Europe? What should Canada really be looking at to learn from what's taken place in Europe?
9:55 a.m.
Associate Director, European Policy Centre, As an Individual
I think the headline reflection I have relating to advice is this: The idea that dealing with these issues has to be voluntary needs to be fought back against. I think this is very much the story of tech regulation since its inception, in a way.
In the case of platforms, we have in fact been leaving it in as a regulatory anomaly. If you go all the way back to the liability exemptions in the U.S. communications act, in section 230, and the corresponding rules in the e-commerce directive in Europe, this was an anomaly. If you go to the history of how one has been regulating communication, there have been two fundamental principles. One has been to protect the secrecy of one-to-one communications. The other principle has been to do public interest regulation of one-to-many communications.
There have always been battles around this, but that has been—
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I'm sorry. Can you explain that further? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I didn't understand that part. Can you explain that?
9:55 a.m.
Associate Director, European Policy Centre, As an Individual
All right. I can try to explain it.
If you send a letter through the post office, that is private. It's one-to-one communication. Nobody has the right to open it. You can write whatever you want.
If you are broadcasting something on the radio, TV or Internet, then in principle, one should think, that's one-to-many communication. There is very strong public interest in setting the rules. While of course allowing for freedom of expression, which is constitutionally central in all our societies, still, the history of our society has been that one sets rules for the regulation of one-to-many communications.
When the Internet came, when you got the communications act and you got the e-commerce directive, one started to create exceptions from this, liability exceptions. This is the basic framework that has made it so that, if you are a press publisher, you have very strict rules that you need to abide by. If you are an Internet platform, where you are communicating information to perhaps many more people and making much more money from it, you have been largely exempted from this. I am—
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Is that because regulators have failed to keep up with the technology, or has there been a conscious decision to ignore it?
10 a.m.
Associate Director, European Policy Centre, As an Individual
I think it's very much a mix of that.
The Internet came to us with the idea that Internet equals democracy. Let it happen and it will do all kinds of good for our society. Of course, the benefits have been amassed in a number of areas, but clearly there are also things that haven't been that good.
I think that a lot of the ideology that accompanies it has been very strong in convincing lawmakers and policy-makers that one could live by a self-regulatory model. This is what you have seen being perpetuated throughout the history of tech regulation all the way to this day.
Just last week we got an agreement on the AI act in the EU. The reality of the matter is that most jurisdictions are going for voluntary solutions. That, of course, is what tech is pushing for all the time in its lobbying and in its efforts.
If there is any lesson, I would say that, on the EU side, we have two formidable pieces of legislation now, which are the DSA and DMA, but they're coming 10 years late. That is because when the issues of duty of care, for instance, with relation to information or commercial transactions online started being discussed, the answer was always, let's make this—
10 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I think you're going to get cut off in a second, so I just want to say thank you.
10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
We were going to Mr. Champoux, but a vote is being called.
I would ask the committee if there is unanimous consent to go another 15 minutes.
