Mr. Speaker, today in this House we are holding a crucial debate for Quebec. We are talking about culture and protecting culture. We are invited today to deliver speeches on a Bloc Québécois motion. I would like to read the motion so that those watching us can understand what this debate is about. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, any government initiative having a direct impact on Canadian telecommunications policy or Canadian broadcasting policy must be put to the House through the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for consideration.
What prompted consideration of this motion today was an order imposed on the CRTC by the former industry minister, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and hon. member for Beauce. He is also here to defend the interests of Quebec, but through this order, the CRTC's regulatory framework is being weakened regarding telecommunications control. This lacks transparency and courage and in fact relies on such orders to weaken the regulatory framework of the CRTC. Instead of taking a legislative route—which would be the right way to go for such an exercise, since this measure tarnishes the Broadcasting Act—the government is circumventing democracy yet again.
The Conservatives want to control everything. They are ignoring the interests of the general public. They are bending the rules of the House, they are bending the law. This order, issued by the former industry minister, violates proper procedure. When one wants to change legislation, new legislation is proposed and various people affected by that legislation are asked to come to a committee to debate the issue. Then parliamentarians debate the issue here in this House. Eventually, the bill is passed or defeated. Then, if it is passed, the Senate approves or not.
So they do not want to take that approach. They have no use for all that. There are a lot of Conservatives here who were elected in the last election, especially in the Quebec City area. Where are they this morning? Where is the new Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Status of Women and Official Languages? She could be here debating with us and telling us how this new procedure will protect Quebec culture.
Parliament has recognized the Quebec nation, but there is a difference between recognizing it as a kind of folklore and recognizing its culture, how it expresses itself, the kinds of support that should be given to its culture, and the struggles it has endured over the years. I want to give the House a bit of the history. Today we are far from those struggles, with a highly federalist Conservative government that does not want to hear how these struggles relate to the debate at hand.
Why have regulations? Regulations provide a better framework for deregulation in the telecommunications sector. They are there to permit competition, but a healthy competition with some guidelines. What the Conservatives want now is to provide no guidelines for the unfettered deregulation of the marketplace. There has been a lot of criticism of this. Cultural circles in Quebec are very concerned. I do not know whether the minister is aware of all this criticism. I hope that she has met with these stakeholders and will correct her aim, but we do not hear her pouring forth her indignation over what the Minister of Industry is doing. I have been a member of Parliament now for 15 years and have worked on a lot of things. I even sat on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for three or four years and remember the debates between the industry and the heritage sector.
In those days we stood up for ourselves. We did not want the industry to deregulate telecommunications because of the effect it would have on culture. The Conservatives, apparently, never heard this message or it is just not one of their priorities.
What they want to do with this new order is ensure that the CRTC no longer controls prices, which seems very contradictory to us. The act says that as soon as there is competition, the CRTC must get involved. What they are doing is contrary to the act, which says that there must be regulations when there is competition. They are doing the opposite by telling the CRTC that it should abstain from regulating if the market is not competitive enough. There are a number of ambiguous points here.
A certain political party—a certain government—is not even complying with the Broadcasting Act and does not even have the courage to debate this here in the House. Thus it has had to issue an order to force the CRTC not to comply with the act and especially not to take any more steps to regulate the telecommunications sector.
This very conservative tactic of the Conservatives is meant to circumvent this House and stick a spoke in the wheels for people who might want to challenge the Conservatives’ intention of deregulating the telecommunications industry. That is the real face of the Conservatives when it comes to protecting culture.
Today, given how the new technologies are developing, we are well aware that a telephone is used for something besides talking or communicating between two or more people. It is also the messaging route. Telephone technology does more than just telephone. This is precisely because of the multiple nature of the new information technologies.
Quebec has no way of responding to this; it is passive, because the CRTC is under federal authority. How could Quebec bring some order to this? Quebec has no CRTC. In fact, the question was raised earlier of a Quebec radio-television and telecommunications commission.
I note that a colleague from my region was nodding agreement, or seemed somewhat skeptical. When you want to defend your culture, when you want to defend the culture of Quebec, you can recognize the nation, but you have to see what that means. You cannot just put on a show in the House. All of the consequences have to be there. With this order they could at least have been consistent with recognition of the Quebec nation.
Quebec therefore has no way of pursuing that course, of regulating that entire industry, of making rules for the telecommunications industry to encourage competition. They say that they want to encourage competition, that this is the Conservatives’ goal, but the route they are taking is dubious and is not agreed to by all of the stakeholders in Quebec, who are following this issue closely.
We would have liked to see a genuine debate between the industry and the broadcasting industry on this issue. However, we do not seem to have a minister who has the kind of courage it takes and who can impose his will.
I recall the debates we had in committee with the Liberal Party members on the issue of broadcasting and telecommunications. We certainly did not expect that the industry would fall into line and approve of deregulation with no rules, which could have a definite impact on the deregulation process.
I would like to draw the attention of this House to a few things said by Yves Mayrand, vice-president of Cogeco. He referred to a number of arguments that show that regulation is necessary and desirable in some cases. When you want to win the argument, it is easy to say that the Bloc does not want to have competition. On the contrary, we know very well that competition is in the public interest when it comes to setting prices for the consumer. Deregulation in the form that is desired, where competing companies would get a small market share or a single company would have a monopoly, would not represent the kind of balance that is desirable for the telecommunications industry.
Mr. Mayrand first expressed “deep concern that political decision-making now appears to be the norm in Canadian telecommunications, taking precedence over quasi-judicial decision-making by the independent administrative body formally entrusted by Parliament with the job of ruling on telecommunications regulatory issues, including forbearance”, as I explained earlier.
Mr. Mayrand went on to say:
As a result, independent fact-finding, proper evidentiary assessment, and due process have all taken a beating, in our view, with a resulting loss of trust in the due process.
Second, the proposed order is also at odds with basic principles of competition law, as it completely ignores significant market power and market share of the incumbent telephone companies where SMP still prevails.
I will now read the third objection raised by Mr. Mayrand:
—the proposed order would immediately eliminate the incumbent telephone companies 90-day win-back restrictions throughout Canada, even where alternative local access services are still not available. In practice, this means that in local exchange areas where Cogoco Cable has not been able to launch an alternative service yet due to facilities or interconnection constraints—and there are still a number of those in our footprint—the incumbent telephone company could immediately target in those local markets each and every new customer signing up for our alternative service with special and confidential offers, thus making it uneconomical for us to launch there.
As we can see, the competition largely ignores what already exists. It also ignores the vulnerability of certain businesses when it comes to developing markets either because they have no interconnection facilities or because the businesses are not yet in operation. This could result in raiding activities by the new businesses focusing on the well established clientele on the existing businesses, as Mr. Mayrand pointed out.
Mr. Mayrand goes on to say:
Fourth, the proposed order is at odds, in our view, with several recommendations of the report of the government's own experts, the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, published less than a year ago, on the way to manage the transition to deregulation of incumbent telephone companies.
But more importantly, when will the government focus on a new Telecommunications Act, instead of rewriting the decisions of its regulator?
This question was asked by Mr. Mayrand himself. This is what the government is doing, this is what the former industry minister, the member for Beauce, and now Minister of Foreign Affairs, is proposing.
In addition, “the mere presence test is unworkably vague”, according to Chris Peirce, from MTS Allstream. He went as far as to say that the order “supplants the statutory obligations of the CRTC with the mere presence test”, adding that it infringes upon the Broadcasting Act, and the related regulations, which is supposed to come under the CRTC.
The government has always been looking to deregulate. The Liberals, too, wanted to deregulate. But the battle was being fought at Canadian Heritage, where culture was at stake. The purpose of culture is to protect content, but we know full well that, in the absence of control over what the content is in, content will be affected.
I would also like to come back to Quebec's desire to established what could be called a Quebec CRTC.
Establishing such a CRTC would not require reopening the Constitution, since we know very well that several opposition parties in this House would not agree to that. Nonetheless, it would allow the powers in that field to be transferred through administrative regulations. In fact, the CRTC could transfer its powers to the Quebec CRTC. Powers have already been transferred in the field of transportation as well as in connection with human resources initiatives. The law was not changed; through an administrative arrangement, the responsibility was vested in the ministers of Human Resources and Transport.
The Quebec CRTC initiative is a simple one in and of itself. It is designed to protect the diversity of sources and ensure a plurality of voices. Above all, it would guarantee a francophone content within the various technologies of today. Quebec is asking for the jurisdiction over broadcasting based on the fact that the message conveyed is first and foremost a cultural one, which falls under provincial jurisdiction. If Quebec is asking for it and the other provinces do not, it is because we feel that our culture is threatened.
During my time on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, we prepared a report of over 1,000 pages. I recall the member who presented it. She may now be named. It was Liza Frulla, who sat as a Liberal. She had entitled it "When Cultural Sovereignty is Threatened". At the time, I found it somewhat hard to swallow, but then I said, why not? She felt that cultural sovereignty was threatened, as the title put it, and I wondered, why not us? Our cultural sovereignty is doubly at risk. I recall the complementary opinion we wrote in connection with this report of the House of Commons. We explained the fight of all Quebeckers. It is not just sovereignist. People who consider themselves nationalist fight as well, a fight not just obtusely aimed at federalism which does not give Quebec culture the wherewithal to better, more carefully and quickly manage its various avenues.
The government says the Supreme Court deemed this jurisdiction federal. The areas go beyond the borders of the provinces. Since 1929, Quebec has called for jurisdiction over broadcasting, since the message transmitted is a cultural one. I recall certain political players. In Quebec, Taschereau voted for legislation on radio. In 1932, the federal government established its own broadcasting legislation, which it called the Canadian act.
I see a smile on the face of a Conservative member elected in my region. It is all very well to laugh, but the current Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities had, at the time, prepared a bill in this regard. The funniest part is that this member is sitting in this House today, and what is he doing to protect communications? He did not call for a Quebec broadcasting commission. When he was minister of communications in Quebec, he called for—as did Liza Frulla-Hébert—the return of these powers to Quebec. Now, today, sitting in this House among the ultra federalists, he has forgotten what he said as minister in the National Assembly. The same can be said for Liza Frulla—