Madam Speaker, it is an absolute privilege to rise in debate today. I must say, without commenting on who is or is not in the House, that the government benches have not looked this good in years.
I am happy to speak on Bill C-10, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts. The idea or belief behind this act, and some of the goals that the minister espoused, are laudable. As the member for Saskatchewan said earlier, the Broadcasting Act absolutely does need to be updated, there is no doubt about that, but it infringes upon one of the most sacrosanct principles in our country, and that is our freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are really the pillars of all the freedoms we enjoy today. I would like to talk a bit about how people have talked about the importance of freedom in the past.
One of my favourite books in the entire world is The Republic written by Plato, the musings of Socrates. Socrates said a couple of things that are critical to this debate. I own a couple of horses. I love horses and think they are beautiful. Socrates talked about a horse in particular and said that someone may have a beautiful, fantastic horse, but in the absence of any type of motivation or being pushed forward, it would lose its strength. Socrates likened himself to a fly that kept the horse swishing his tail, kept the horse moving and getting stronger. That is what the discussion is in many ways on the Internet. It is that fly that keeps people and discussions going, keeps pushing our discourse to be better.
Alexis de Tocqueville, one of my other favourite political philosophers, said, “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.” This was de Tocqueville talking about the Internet 200 years before the Internet existed. He captured the very essence of our democracy. The foundation of our democracy is the citizens that underpin it. Never before has there been such a democratization of information and the ability to contribute.
When members of other parties chastise Conservatives and say our concerns are not legitimate, it goes to the very heart of who we are. In fact, the reason I am so passionate about this is because I want members of the Green Party, the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberal Party to always be able to express themselves. That starts to be limited and gets pulled away. Oftentimes when we lose our freedoms, it is not in one swift blow. It is often bit by bit. Conservatives stand as the guardians not just for our freedoms, but for everyone's freedoms, including members of all parties in this House.
There is no doubt that there have to be some reasonable restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, but it is my contention that this legislation has gone too far. I have noticed there have been questions recently as to what specifically this bill would do to limit freedom of expression. Let me go through this and explain it specifically to members. This is not just bluster; there are legitimate concerns.
Bill C-10 defines undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet for reception by the public by means of broadcasting apparatus. This means that we are now including the Internet in the Broadcasting Act. Conservatives are okay with the idea for massive followings with $100 million in revenue or the Netflixes of the world. There is some discussion to be had there, there is no doubt, but for the individual provider, as it says in proposed subparagraphs 9.1(1)(i)(i) and 10(1)(i), among other things to adopt, “requiring social insight such as YouTube to take down content it considers offensive and discoverability regimes.”
What that means is that within this bill, as it is currently written, there is the ability to push content up or down. What does that mean? That means a government, a bureaucracy, the CRTC can say, “This content, we believe, is more agreeable or more Canadian than this other content”.
The reality is that the misnomer in this whole debate is that Canadian content producers are not doing well. The opposite could be true. Canadian content producers are some of the largest producers per capita of YouTube content in the entire world. Our content creators are doing a fabulous job, and we need to reward them for that, not penalize them.
We should not just be pushing people down randomly, and that takes the most positive view. I would certainly hope that, if this legislation ever came into place and the CRTC became responsible for the algorithms pushing content up or down, it would stay non-partisan.
However, sadly, colleagues and all Canadians have witnessed something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. We saw a case where there could have been interference with the independence of the judiciary. That was the SNC-Lavalin affair. What happened there was a potential direction of the Prime Minister's Office to an actual investigation of SNC-Lavalin for deferred prosecution.
This should never, ever happen. In fact, prior to this case, to me the independence of the judiciary was sacrosanct. I did not think that even the Liberal government would consider it, or that it would even be in the realm of possibilities, but we saw that it was.
Seeing that is conceivable, is it then also conceivable that a government of the future could potentially put pressure on the CRTC to favour one particular political viewpoint? I would render to the House that, if in fact a government could potentially interfere with an independent legal investigation, it is completely possible that this could happen. That would be a limitation of our freedom of speech, which would be incredibly dangerous to our democracy. As I said, freedom of expression and freedom of speech are the underpinnings of all our freedoms. They are the shields that protect our freedoms, going forward.
When we get to this, the health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by the citizens. Those were de Tocqueville's words on the importance of democracy.
It is important that we hear from all the citizens, and that includes the House of Commons. Unfortunately, we have had a gag order put in place. The irony of all ironies is that we are here defending freedom of speech, and the government put a gag order on us defending freedom of speech, saying that there is not an issue of freedom of speech. The irony there is just too rich.
We need to go back. We need to peel back the boards here. We need to go right back to the studs and we need to look at this legislation and start over again. It is absolutely flawed. Anyone who heard the minister's interview on The Evan Solomon Show knows that there is a significant problem with this.
Long live freedom, and long live Canada, the greatest country in the world.