Thank you.
I appreciate the clarification, Mr. Ripley, because, as the members around this committee table will recall, when the heritage minister was here at this committee he continually used the term “commercial content”. You'll also recall that I asked him to define that term. You'll also recall that he wasn't able to. It's now been clarified that the term doesn't actually exist in the legislation.
What we are trying to get at with this amendment, CPC-1.01, is in fact a definition around the type of content that would be captured by this legislation. If it is supposed to be what the minister is referring to as commercial content—which, again, isn't a definition or a term that appears in this legislation—then it would seem that a financial threshold should be set.
You'll also recall that at that same committee meeting, when the minister was here, I asked him what that threshold or monetary intake might be. He was not able to define it. In fact, he continually went in circles, bringing me back to the fact that the CRTC would consider proposed section 4.1(2) and from there make a decision as to whether or not certain content would be regulated by this legislation or if it would be left out.
It is incredibly disingenuous of the minister to use “commercial content” when it doesn't exist in the legislation. It's dangerous for Canadians not to have a clear threshold laid out in terms of who is going to be captured and who is not. For individuals who are perhaps making an income “directly or indirectly”, as the legislation says, then instead of allowing the CRTC to go after an individual who might be making $5, $10, $15, $100 or maybe even $1,000 directly or indirectly from the content that they're generating, perhaps this committee should act with the appropriateness required and put a monetary threshold in place in order to protect individuals who are simply using TikTok, YouTube or Spotify to get a message out as an individual.
To capture in this legislation individuals who are simply trying to make a name for themselves—make a go of it—and who are small pieces of the puzzle, if you will, to ensure that they pay, for example, 30% of their revenue to the art fund is absolutely ludicrous. Again, it's incredibly irresponsible for this committee to let this legislation go through without any further definition around that.
If, in fact, the minister is truthful in wanting to level the playing field and go after large streaming companies to make sure that they “pay their fair share”, then he should go after the large streaming companies. Leave the individuals who are trying to make a go of it on YouTube, TikTok, Spotify or Twitch alone. Stop punishing them.
The way we ensure that is by creating a threshold as to who is in and who is out. If an individual makes $150 million, that's fine. I guess they can be captured by this legislation. If it is someone making a few thousand dollars, please do the respectful thing and leave them alone. It's up to the members of this committee to make that decision.
The members of this committee have a decision in front of them. They can go after individual Canadians who are making a go of it within new media spaces, which is incredibly harmful—it's punitive in nature—or they can set a financial threshold and go only after the large streaming companies, which is what the minister has stated his intent is. Unfortunately, however, it appears to be incredibly disingenuous, because the language is not reflected in this legislation.