Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 18th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, Mr. Shields.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I prefer to do it as we have done it in the past, so I'm objecting to the change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Shields, when I asked if anyone opposed Mr. Julian's suggestion, no one raised their hand, so we were moving on with this unanimous motion from Peter; everybody has agreed that we move this way.

As Mr. Housefather so kindly explained, we're going to go with all of the pieces, but we won't say at the end of it, “Shall clause x carry?” That's all we're doing. We're not changing anything else.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

On a point of order, Madam Chair.

I don't recall you asking for everyone's consent to proceed in this way. The legislative clerk, Mr. Méla, stated that all committee members would have to agree if we wanted to change the way we proceed when doing a clause-by-clause consideration, but you did not ask us the question directly.

Perhaps we need a bit more clarity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. I had asked for opposition. Hearing none, I thought that meant it was unanimous. I'm sorry. We will go through it again, then, Martin.

Is there unanimous consent to proceed with Mr. Julian's suggestion?

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have a point of order.

I'm sorry. My hand has been up, and I haven't been acknowledged. I wish to be acknowledged before we go to a vote, whenever you have a moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I am sorry, Mrs. Thomas. I didn't know if your hand was up from the last time or not.

Go ahead.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I would just ask that the clerk perhaps clarify what Mr. Julian has proposed. Given your own misunderstanding or confusion around his proposal, of course, I would hope that you would sympathize with the rest of us. It's not clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Certainly.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

There does need to be greater clarity before we call a vote on this.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Méla, can you comment on this suggestion by Mr. Julian, please?

[Philippe Méla]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm not quite sure myself, so would Mr. Julian like to reiterate? I'm not sure if you want to go through all the amendments that are in the package one at a time and then come back to each clause. Is that it?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

The legislative clerk is absolutely right. What I'm proposing is that we go through the amendments. There are amendments that will be dropped and withdrawn, of course, so as we go through the amendments, we then complete consideration of the amendments.

The reality of clause-by-clause is that we always have the possibility of regrouping the adoption of clauses. My experience has been—because I've done it both ways—that this actually speeds up consideration because you can have adoption of clauses in groups if there is unanimous consent to do so—but after we've considered the amendments. After we've seen the overall composition of the bill, we then go back and adopt the clauses as amended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Méla, would you comment, please?

[Philippe Méla]

I'm just thinking about the possible consequences once we go through all the amendments and adopt the clauses, I suppose, one after the other. Let's say we go through the whole package of amendments and go back to clause 1. Is that to simply adopt clause 1, possibly as amended, or to reopen...?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

As I said, I've done dozens of bills this way. I've done some bills in the way that is currently laid out. I just find it helps to facilitate.... We do the amendments. Then we do clause-by-clause adoption. As I said, with unanimous consent, we can adopt a series of clauses, which helps to facilitate the completion of the bill.

However, I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this, Madam Chair. I just hoped we could get this through quickly. If there's objection, we can go the other way. I just felt that this would be a way of facilitating consideration, but I didn't think we would be spending this much time on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right.

Now that it is very clear.... I think I misunderstood what Mr. Julian was asking for, as well, so now he has clarified it. He is suggesting that we could do it either the way we did Bill C-11—and the way I have done clause-by-clause for bills in the past—or we could go with his suggestion.

Is there unanimous consent to follow Peter's suggestion?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay, so we do not have people wanting to do this. We do not have unanimous consent, so let's go to the other way that we have always done it before.

Thank you very much, Peter, for your suggestion on efficiency.

We will begin.

(On clause 2)

As I said before, we will postpone the title and we will begin with clause 2, which is Conservative amendment 01.

[The Clerk]

Mr. Bittle has his hand up, followed by Mrs. Thomas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Bittle, go ahead.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much.

I'd like to turn to Mr. Ripley and ask him if there are any issues with this particular amendment.

[Thomas Owen Ripley, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage]

If I've understood the amendment correctly, it would modify the definition of digital news intermediary by removing the reference to the legislative authority of Parliament, if I've understood that correctly. I would defer to the mover in terms of what the motivation is behind that amendment.

The way the definition of digital news intermediary is currently structured, it recognizes that activity on the Internet is an area of shared jurisdiction between the federal government and provincial governments. So the key definitional concept there is online communications platform, including search engines and social media services, and it just puts down a marker that what the government is seeking to subject to this framework are those online communications platforms under the legislative authority of Parliament.

It's a question of jurisdiction.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Ripley.

As there is a jurisdictional issue, we'll be opposed to this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Shall CPC-01 carry?