Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on behalf of the free-speaking riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
When I spoke on Bill C-10 last December, I called this bill a fraud, an attack on freedom of expression, and a particular danger to the rights of Canadians speaking minority language. Since debate at second reading, this bill has become so much worse. The bill was already an assault on freedom of expression, but the process to ram this bill through Parliament is an assault on the foundation of parliamentary democracy. Undemocratic means have undemocratic ends. In the end, what we have is a bill so flawed, so regressive, so illiberal, the government must cut off all debate.
When I spoke against the Internet censorship bill at second reading, I highlighted how this bill is an offence against Canadian values. It is an attack on freedom. It is an attack on truth. It is an attack on multicultural heritage. Even before this bill was made worse in committee, it was an affront to freedom of expression. By removing the clause protecting social media, the Liberal government has made the violation so clear that every Canadian is now aware of the threat to their freedom.
This bill offends Canadians' sense of honesty by perpetuating a fraud and claiming video delivered over the Internet is the same as a video delivered by broadcast. Internet video streaming has more in common with video rental stores, movie theatres or book stores than they do with broadcasters. Internet video streaming, movie theatres and book stores sell a product to Canadians. Broadcasters turn Canadians into the product and sell them to advertisers.
One business model sells the work of cultural expression to Canadians. The other business model uses works of cultural expression to sell Canadians to big business. Broadcasters sell Canadians to advertisers using publicly owned airwaves and regulated cable monopolies. The federal government has the authority under the Constitution to regulate broadcasters. Movie theatres, video rental stores and book stores fall under provincial jurisdiction, even if they are foreign owned.
The bill is unconstitutional even before it attacks the charter. Canadians are already fed up with Super Bowl commercials being substituted. How do Liberals think they are going to like the idea of their favourite YouTube streaming video being substituted by some CRTC-approved Canadian video? They would never try this with books or movies.
Canadians are not forced to buy a Canadian book to read A Game of Thrones. Canadians are not forced to watch a Marvel movie filmed in Vancouver to attend a foreign film festival. If the Liberals tried this with books or theatres, it would be clear that this wrong. However, the problem with this bill is the violation to freedom is more subtle, at least it was until the government removed section 4.1. That is when it stopped being a subtle attack on a freedom of expression and became a full on assault.
The government will claim it has no interest in censoring Canadians' cat videos, but that is not the concern. The concern being expressed, since the removal of section 4.1, is not that the CRTC will take down YouTube posts, it is that YouTube would take down or de-prioritize videos in order to comply with regulations. A counter argument that we should not worry about cabinet putting its thumbs on the CRTC scales because of the regulatory system takes a hit when one considers that Bill C-10 streamlines the process of cabinet giving directives to the CRTC.
That is not to say the Prime Minister would go around ordering YouTube posts to be taken down. It is just the limitations on what any future cabinet could do is reduced. Deleting parliamentary committee oversight of cabinet directives to CRTC may not be Orwellian, but it is what an Orwellian-minded government would also do.
I do appreciate the attention being drawn to regulations because that is where the original threat to freedom of expression lies. Compliance with these regulations comes with a relatively fixed costs. For Netflix that cost can be spread out over seven million Canadian households, but for a smaller streaming service, that cost may be spread over 700,000, 70,000 or 7,000 households.
As the popularity of the type of expression decreases, the cost to receive it increases. The only cost to receive any broadcast expression is the cost of a receiving device, but streamers charge end users. The whole point of having that freedom is not to protect the majority or popular expression, but the minority or unpopular expressions. This is not to say that web giants cannot be regulated, but fundamentally they are not broadcasters and cannot be regulated as such without impacting freedom of expression.
As I said earlier, Internet streaming services are more akin to movie theatres and bookstores, both of which are currently restricted under provincial registration. Is that closure a limitation of freedom of expression? It sure is. Is that reasonable in a free and democratic society during a pandemic? Ultimately that will be for the courts to decide, but at least there is a public purpose other than to grab some cash for the well-connected.
The point is that movies, bookstores and Internet streamers can be regulated, but it has to be in the public interest and by the appropriate level of government. Just as we have regulations that say someone cannot build a bookstore made out of dry kindling, someone cannot build a digital service that threatens to burn down democracy and not expect some public interest.
Any opposition to Bill C-10 is being framed as opposition to Canadian culture or logically extending to opposition of the Canadian content system. It only furthers the attempt to force a new digital world into an old analog paradigm, which also cuts off discussion on how to update the Canadian content system to the digital world. The whole idea of needing a system to feature Canadian artists to Canadians comes from a time when we were culturally insecure, but we are not that country any more.
We are the most diverse country in the world. We import culture and we brag about it. We are a proud, confident country. We do not live next door to the United States on the Internet. We live next door to everyone online. Canadians are amazing and our artists are awe-inspiring.
At the end of the day, cutting through the government rhetoric about Bill C-10, it is not about protecting culture or online harms. It is about money and rent-seeking. The government needs money and needs industry interest groups with euphemistic names to say nice things about them in French.
Until now the cost of this rent-seeking was largely borne by advertisers or CRTC-inflated cable bills. The government likes to claim that it will go on to fund artists, but it really ends at the money going to producers and their lobbyists.
The difference now is that the costs will not be paid by web giants, but by consumers. The methods to collect the money are media fund levies, regulatory compliance costs, a new digital service tax and HST on top of all of it. Together this adds up to a massive regressive excise tax. There is an HST credit to offset the regressive nature of that tax, but there is no rebate for the GST or the Canadian content media levy.
The government is not forcing web giants to pay. It is forcing low-income Canadians to pay and to pay the most. It does not have to be this way. We can regulate online businesses in the interest of public safety, and we can do it without threatening freedom of expression.