Thank you.
Madam Chair, I think it's important for us to note that when he was at committee, Mr. Menzies brought up the need for a financial threshold. One of the reasons why his words should be considered quite heavily is that he actually is a former CRTC commissioner. During his testimony when he was before this committee he encouraged us to consider putting in place boundaries around who would be captured by this bill and who would not, and he suggested that this could be done by establishing a financial threshold.
I'll quote him directly. He said:
A lot of risk to investment and innovation can be mitigated and a lot of uncertainty can be avoided if you were to just make it clear in the legislation that it applies only to streaming companies with annual Canadian revenues of $150 million or more. The CRTC could then debate with them whether they are reinvesting in Canada and its cultural and industrial goals in an appropriate fashion. In other words, if the government's goal is to, as was initially described, “get money from web giants”, then go get the money from web giants and make it clear that everything else will be left alone to continue the innovation and investment that have defined Canada's creative sector in the past decade.
Madam Chair, to the rest of the members of this committee, through you, I would contend that it is due diligence for this committee to consider a financial threshold in terms of who is in and who is out, who is captured and who is not, so I would ask us to give consideration to my colleague's amendment, which has been granted here today, and that we support our digital-first creators by ensuring that they will not be captured and, in fact, that this legislation will only go after large streaming companies.