Mr. Speaker, the Conservative members of the heritage committee wish to present a supplementary report, as our view is very much in contrast with that of the Liberal majority. Overwhelmingly, the recommendations of the majority members on the committee have embraced an effort to turn back the clock in the media world and keep things the way they were to try to replicate the ways of the analogue world in a new digital world.
This is a fool's errand; the world is changing and change brings disruption. Some see this disruption as a problem, but higher taxes and government control of the news is not the answer to the problem. Efforts to turn back the clock to an earlier age are doomed to meet with failure. With the transformations of the digital world, the media are genuinely democratizing for the first time. No longer is a citizen's influence limited to choosing which newspaper to read or which television news to watch. Now every citizen can use the online digital world to report news and opinions and distribute them. This is a welcome environment.
The committee is seeking new ways to tax Canadians to pay for efforts by the government to involve itself in the production of news for Canadians. Canadians do not need more and new taxes. The Conservative members of the committee strongly oppose any proposal to implement a Netflix tax, Internet tax, or any other news tax on Canadians.