Mr. Speaker, I am rising in the House today to follow up on a critical question related to our cultural industries.
The minister's consultations were held in the fall. One point was repeatedly brought to the attention of the minister and her staff, and, I hope, to that of other departments and ministers. On October 26, I asked a question in this regard. I basically said that ADISQ is in crisis over streaming, print media is asking for help transitioning to digital media, and creators are once again considering purchasing advertising spots in children's programming, which is unbelievable.
In the meantime, the Minister of Canadian Heritage keeps giving a free pass to Facebook, Google, and Netflix, who are not paying their fair share and are literally working under the table.
I asked the Minister of Canadian Heritage whether she was finally going to stand up for the ecosystem for which she is ultimately responsible. She is a proud defender of that system, which she herself rightly refers to as an ecosystem. I asked her to ask her colleague, the finance minister, to ensure that these people pay their fair share.
She replied that the upheaval in the media and entertainment industry is precisely what prompted her and her team to take leadership on this issue and go beyond what was asked in her mandate letter, which is true. I commend her for that.
She was vague about the issue of sales tax, which is the most basic tax, the harmonized tax, or the GST, which usually covers most of our economic activities related to consumption.
It is unfair and there is no reason why some businesses do not have to collect these taxes and report their sales figures in Canada. I would call that freeloading. It is unbelievable and very difficult for consumers to understand why their invoice from services such as Apple Store or iTunes shows no tax, no GST, no QST on a transaction for a song, but that they pay tax on certain apps that they download from the same service.
When we dig a little deeper and ask tax and excise officials questions, they tell us that this situation, this irregularity, may be due simply to the fact that iTunes and the Apple store are aggregators and that if the product the aggregator is selling is made in Canada, it is taxable. That seems utterly absurd to me. It is contrary to the spirit of the law to put our own businesses at a disadvantage.
Consider services such as Shomi or the defunct Crave, which attempted to compete with the likes of Netflix, which is global in its reach. Here is the scenario. Suppose Netflix has 10 million subscribers in Canada. That is a made-up number. Multiply 10 million subscribers by about $100 per year, and that is $1 billion. If those transactions were taxed, that would be a lot of money. That is some significant corporate revenue that should be taxed and should be contributing to our system.
I would like to know if the Minister of Canadian Heritage or her department has had any word from the Minister of Finance about this.