Madam Speaker, before we begin discussions on regulating content on the Internet, let us recognize that Canada has 38 million regulators. They are called customers. They are the people who decide what they watch. With the click of a mouse, they can choose the content that serves their interests. For the same reason, the ability to produce unique and diverse content is greater today than ever before. The advent of the Internet, far from limiting the production of Canadian content, has vastly expanded it by dramatically reducing the cost of production and distribution.
If members really think about it, the cost of producing and distributing content today is probably 99% lower than it was just 25 years ago. There are 14-year-old kids who can produce their own movie trailers on their laptop computers and broadcast them before as many eyes as want to see them, without spending a single dollar beyond the purchase of a bit of software and a laptop on which to design them, and the quality is probably superior to what Hollywood would have been able to create just a few decades ago.
This has democratized and expanded the scope of content. It has allowed minorities, and people with particular interests not held by the majority, to reach audiences. Back in the old days, people had to compete for real estate in HMV, the local record store or the local Blockbuster, and if someone was not among the top 50, they did not get that real estate. Even if their product was interesting to 3% of the public, they could not sell it to anybody, because they had no means of getting it to the public and they could not generate the capital to produce it in the first place.
I will acknowledge that the changes to which this bill proposes to respond are actually good changes. They are democratizing changes. They spread out power and diversity, which is something we should allow and that freedom provides.
The current government seeks to extend its reach and broaden its tentacles into the Internet.