Debates of May 11th, 2022

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the chamber and speak on behalf of the residents of Chatham-Kent—Leamington and, indeed, on behalf of agriculture across Canada.

I am also pleased to speak to my colleague from Huron—Bruce's private member's bill, Bill C-234, which affects so many constituents, including our own family farm.

The bill seeks to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act by adding natural gas and propane to the list of qualifying farm fuels, and that is for the purposes of both grain drying and heating and cooling farm buildings.

I did have the opportunity to speak to this bill's predecessor, Bill C-206, in the previous Parliament where it was passed, only to die in the other place when the Prime Minister called the unnecessary election.

Our farmers are the first environmentalists and our farmers are great competitors. They can hold their own against anyone, but not with one arm tied behind their back. They cannot continue to be first-rate environmentalists when they are hamstrung by policies that their competitors do not face.

Before getting into the specifics of this bill, I wish to remark on four different framing points that will outline where I am going.

One, as I just stated, as individuals, farmers are environmentalists by nature and by necessity. The drive to leave the land in a better condition than when they found it is innate to every farmer that I know. Farmers are environmentalists by necessity. It is the condition of their land, the condition of their flocks and of their herd that supplies the farm family with a return on their labour, on their investments and on their inputs, so it is in their own self-interest to leave the vehicle of their own prosperity in better condition for the next generation.

Two, collectively, agriculture has a strong record of reducing its environmental footprint, be it through the adoption of low till or no till; be it through the refinement of working through nutrients, such as through the lens of the 4Rs, putting the right nutrient at the right place at the right time with the right amount; be it through more intensive use of cover cropping or rotational grazing. Farmers have largely done all of this without regulation and without additional taxation or without an additional government-imposed price signal. I will come back to that point in a moment.

Three, agriculture has a strong record of innovation, of adopting new technologies, such as the use of GPS technology on the farm, the use of variable rate technology in seeding and in crop protection products, robotics in our dairy sector, and climate controls and automation in our greenhouse sector. Believe me, as soon as a viable commercial alternative to fossil fuels is available in rural Canada, farmers will adopt it and quickly, without the stick or a price signal embedded in a tax. That leads me to my final framing point.

Four, by and large, farmers are price takers. They cannot effectively pass along cost-input increases to their buyers.

Let these four points set the stage for my remarks on Bill C-234. When we initially debated its predecessor, Bill C-206, the harvest from hell in 2019 had just occurred in western Canada. That really demonstrated the need for this carbon tax exemption. It was a particularly wet fall where, with frost and rainfall, et cetera, interrupting the harvest, the use of natural gas and propane was required to put the grain into a storable condition.

Farming in Ontario and in eastern Canada requires the use of grain dryers each and every year, particularly for grain corn, but also for soybeans, wheat, canola, oats, et cetera.

When we studied Bill C-206 in the previous Parliament at committee, we did look at alternatives to fossil fuels. In many parts of our economy, electrification is a potential alternative, but given the obvious nature of agriculture being situated in rural Canada and the lack of our grid capacity, this is simply a non-starter.

We also looked at a second option, and that was the use of crop residues as a fuel source. That means gathering them after harvest and then burning them in heaters. While there are some prototypes being trialed, they are simply not available at scale.

Even more problematic with this approach, crop residues are incorporated into the soil or are left on the surface, and they become organic matter for our soils. They sequester carbon and they increase soil organic matter levels, which help both with crop production and our climate goals.

The voluntary adoption of reduced or eliminated tillage provided improvements in soil moisture retention, a reduction of soil erosion and, of course, an increase in carbon sequestration, all without the imposition of a tax. This is something that was not acknowledged in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act.

It does not make sense to apply a tax to reverse the environmental improvements that the farmers put in place voluntarily. However, the question remains, does it make any sense at all to apply such a tax on fossil fuels to increase the agricultural community's focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels? The answer to that is no, for several reasons.

There simply are not commercially viable, scalable alternatives to using natural gas and propane available today, but because there are not viable alternatives, the demand for fuel tends to remain unaffected by price. That makes these additional fuel charges simply an additional tax and an inefficient policy to lower carbon emissions. This very fact was confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The recent budget, which has been alluded to in other speeches here this evening, did put some more funds into the agricultural clean technology fund to upgrade present drying systems to a higher efficiency, but these funds only have the potential to update 500 of the 50,000 grain dryers across Canada. That is 1% of them.

Also, as opposed to granting an exemption from paying the carbon tax, they have proposed in Bill C-8 a rebate program to maintain, in their words, a “price signal” to the farm community to change their ways even though there are no viable alternatives.

I explored with several of my constituents the impact of these two approaches. My riding is a large rectangle and in the northeastern corner, Ron and Francine Verhelle farm with their family. This past year, they needed 89,670 litres of propane to dry their almost 7,000 tonnes of corn. They paid over $5,550 in carbon tax. If the 2022 conditions on their farm are the same, they are anticipating that cost to go up to almost $7,000 this year. Under the Liberal plan, the eligible farm costs on their farm would have to be over $3.2 million using the planned $1.73 per thousand in eligible farm expenses in order for that rebate to recoup their carbon tax cost. Farm input costs are definitely skyrocketing, but fortunately they will not be that high or no farmer will be in business this coming year.

Paul Tiessen and his family farm just down the road from my home farm. They are a third generation grain farm and their total natural gas bill for 2021 to dry 107,000 bushels, or just over 2,900 tonnes, of corn this past year was $10,010, of which almost $2,500 was a carbon tax. Under the Liberal proposal that would have been in place for 2021 rebating back $1.47 per thousand in expenses, they would only get a fraction of their carbon tax cost returns from this past crop.

My final point is simply to call for basic fairness in the marketplace. Our Canadian grain competes directly with American grain. It is priced off of the Chicago Board of Trade. No customer of grain will pay more for Canadian grain because it incurs a carbon tax, not if they can source it from the Americans.

The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act did exempt gasoline and diesel fuel on the farm for this very reason and Bill C-234 is looking to correct the oversight regarding natural gas and propane for grain drying and barn heating and cooling.

Surely if the government cannot control its spending ways, it does not have to use farmers' bank accounts as a cashflow mechanism to finance its own spending. Making farmers pay this carbon tax in the fall and then having them file their taxes the following spring to apply for a rebate, all that does is return a portion of their costs plus now incurring all the administrative costs on the farm and the administrative burden on government to manage this program.

In fact, this past budget estimated that cost for the government alone to be $30 million. What does that do? All that does is serve to increase the size of government and not add any additional value to our climate goals.

In conclusion, I would again urge all members of the House to support passing a bill that removes the potential of being at cross purposes for lower greenhouse gas emissions. Please support the removal of a tax where the users have absolutely no viable options and please support basic inherent market fairness.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all the speakers who have presented this evening. I would especially like to thank my colleagues from Chatham-Kent—Leamington and Beauce. They are both farmers and are very familiar with the costs of operating a farm and making a living at it.

The member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington highlighted pretty much everything I wanted to talk about, but the key point I would like to highlight, in addition to that, is that we still have an outstanding issue with the fertilizer tariff in this country. That is going to add another $100 per acre to the corn crop and other crops, in addition to all the other issues we have. In addition to the carbon tax that farmers are paying to dry their grains and heat their barns, this is another tariff that has not been dealt with by the government. It is our belief that on March 2 there should be tariff relief for farmers on that. It is millions of dollars and they need the help now.

The member made another good point when he talked about how the fall economic update from the Liberal Party highlights the carbon tax rebate. It is $1.47 per $1,000, and as I said in my first speech, I thought it was $1.47 per $100. If we calculate it at $1.47 per $1,000 and $1.73 per $1,000 of eligible farm expenses, it is a slap in the face to farmers.

I welcome the Liberal member who spoke earlier today to come to my riding, the ridings of the members of Chatham-Kent—Leamington and Beauce or any rural riding. She should talk to some farmers, get in the cab of a tractor or combine, stand around while the grain is being dried in the fall and see what it is like. She would have a whole new appreciation for the programs she is trying to create.

Farmers get no credit for the carbon they sequester on farms through their crops, the fall crops they plant for cover crops, the grasslands, the hay and the hay lands. They also do not get any carbon credit for the sequestration that takes place on their ethically managed woodlots. There are thousands of acres in my riding and hundreds of thousands of acres of ethically managed woodlots across the province of Ontario and beyond. They get no credit for that.

The idea is that a farmer is somehow a huge emitter, contributor or whatever, but we should be embracing these individuals. We should be looking to them to learn some of the best practices that have been in place in this country for over 100 years. That is where we need to begin the discussion. We need to cut this unnecessary tax on farmers' natural gas and propane to dry their grains and heat their livestock barns.

We do not want farmers to walk away from their livestock barns because they can no longer afford to heat them. We want them to be able to keep those barns warm to keep the chicks warm when they are first moved into the barn, or keep the hog barns warm when the weaners are at a very young age and very small. That is what we want to do, so I would ask all members of Parliament, particularly the Liberals, to reconsider this and take a long look at what we are talking about. They can maybe replay the tapes and see.

I would like to thank all the farmers across this country for what they do day in and day out. Right now, they are in the cabs of their tractors in my area planting corn, thinking about soybeans and trying to get things right, but they are facing huge costs for fuel and fertilizer. What is it for? It is to feed the country and the rest of the world. That is what we have to keep in the backs of our minds when we are looking at all this stuff.

I would like to thank farm groups, farm families and the complete supply chain that works 24 hours a day this time of year to keep crops growing. Let us look at agriculture, the environmental good it does and the economic good it does. It is the number one economic driver in the province of Ontario, so let us support it. Farmers are a line of credit, as the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington said, for our GST and HST rebates. They are the government's line of credit in AgriStability, and now with this new program, they will once again be the government's line of credit.

I humbly ask for support. Let us get the bill to committee. Let us have some farm groups come. Let us have some farmers come and explain the pain they are feeling right now and the relief Parliament can provide them.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The question is on the motion.

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

The hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I respectfully ask for a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, November 25, 2021, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, May 18, 2022, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6:30 p.m. so that we can continue with the business of the House.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from May 5 consideration of the motion that Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment to the amendment.

Online Streaming Act

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I remember the discussions we had about Bill C‑10 during the previous Parliament, especially with respect to potential breaches of freedom of expression and concerns about social media users being taxed. These same concerns are being raised again, even though the summary, clause 2 and clause 4.1 clearly state that users will not be taxed and even though there are no clauses that restrict freedom of expression.

I now want to talk about access to culture.

It is not right that it is easier for francophones to access Korean content than it is to access media in their first language on some sites. Out of curiosity, I watched a few of the Korean offerings suggested to me and I enjoyed the production, set design and costume quality.

Bill C‑11 will ensure that francophones have access to content that is just as good a quality in their language and will ensure that non-francophones can do what I did and watch content that is made in Quebec and in Canada. Curiosity is something to be developed.

If we want to encourage curiosity and interest, we need to make it easier to access good-quality content, and that is what Bill C‑11 will do. Some members will tell me that people who want access to francophone culture just need to seek it out like I did, but that is a troubling thought.

Why should I have to go looking for expressions of my culture when others never have to look at all to have access to expressions of their own culture?

Are those who might say such a thing really telling me that the only good culture is culture that is readily accessible, or in other words, American culture?

Could it be that they have no problem with the fact that they have no access to content about their own culture, Canadian content? Could it be that they think Canadian culture and American culture are similar?

I can almost hear those same individuals telling me that those two cultures are not one and the same. In that case, why would they not want more people to have easier access to Canadian culture? Why would they not want francophones and francophiles from Quebec, Canada and elsewhere in the world to have access to Quebec and francophone content just as as easily as they do to American or anglophone cultural content?

Bill C‑11 will allow online streamers to broadcast culture and improve access to the cultures present in Canada.

To sum up, for anyone who cares about their own culture, Bill C‑11 is a good bill that deserves to move through the legislative process in good faith on all sides. It deserves it because we should never have to let our culture be managed by a foreign culture.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I studied economics at university. When classes started, we were given a model of a very competitive market where power was shared equally. However, we quickly learned that whoever controls the distribution network can successfully distribute their products. In my opinion, this bill is designed to influence the distribution network, so that everyone can distribute their products.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, often, the way it works is that, in order to get access to cultural programs or what have you, users have to ask for it. However, on the Internet, users are highly influenced by what the algorithms decide to show them, and that can be a bit more problematic. If broadcasters are encouraged to present more Canadian content, this will pique consumers' curiosity and interest in the excellent content that is available in Quebec and Canada.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of concern about the fact that time allocation was moved on this bill. I also have serious hesitation about being able to trust the government members, who are saying to simply take them at their word that it is not impacting the ability of Canadians to have free expression on the Internet, especially after some of the outrageous things that the previous minister of heritage said. He said that he was not censoring the whole Internet; he was simply censoring some of the Internet.

My question, though, is very simple. Does the member support our very simple request that the government provide the terms of reference that it will be providing to the CRTC prior to the bill being passed so that members in this place can understand exactly what is being asked of the CRTC when it comes to the impacts that this bill would have on Canadian content?

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question.

Since I do not have in front of me the proposal my colleague's party wants to make to the government on the CRTC, I will not give a direct answer. However, that being said, it is important that things be done right. For that to happen, we need to move the bill forward through the legislative process and examine it in committee.

I encourage all my colleagues to read Bill C-11. I know that this bill is thick, but we need to take the time to read it clause by clause, to understand what it means in lay terms, and to look at every side of the issue, so that we can thoroughly examine it in committee and then make proposals that make sense.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, we know that every artist and the entire arts and culture sector in Quebec support the bill. There must be something in it that helps protect francophone culture.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, this bill will not only give funding to artists, but that funding will also give those same artists the opportunity to showcase our culture, particularly francophone culture, which is extraordinary. Francophone culture is unique in the Americas, and even though some of us may have a funny accent, that is part of our charm.

This bill will also help us to shine.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is kind of a pleasure to speak to Bill C-11. I will offer a few things based on a career, at least my first career, of dealing with the CRTC as a broadcaster, as a person who was on the radio and occasionally on television, and especially as a manager of stations that were required to follow the CRTC regulations.

The concerns that have been expressed about Bill C-11 need to be paid attention to. We should not just dust them off and say there is no problem here. The questions are legitimate, but we also need to drill into the details and see exactly what the implications are. When we do that, we are going to end up feeling a lot more secure and confident that Bill C-11 is going to add significant value to Canada.

First of all, this is the Broadcasting Act that we are talking about. The Broadcasting Act relates to broadcasters. I want to quote a couple of things that kind of settle what we are talking about. The first is:

undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings...

In other words, basically we are saying that the web platforms that distribute and carry programming to Canadians will be classed as broadcasters. The legislation also says:

the [Broadcasting] Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service

In other words, cat videos, homegrown YouTube and even the productions that someone may have spent some money to develop will not be covered. They will not be influenced by this.

Further, there is one exception that we need to note in the legislation. It says:

A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service—and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate...does not, by the fact of that use, carry on a broadcasting undertaking...

I want to go back to my radio days. It was 15 years of misspent youth, but an amazing education in a lot of ways. I got into the radio business just after the initial Canadian content regulations came to radio, and here is how that worked. The original rules said that 30% of the music that we played from 6 a.m. until midnight had to be Canadian content. I will describe what that is in a second. Later, the CRTC and the governments of the day came forward with a formula in which the radio stations had to contribute to a fund. Initially, it was called the Canadian talent development fund. There have been other names and other versions of it.

The two things were that, first of all, we had to profile Canadian content, and then later we had to contribute financially to the creation of Canadian content. What we are doing here now is no different from what was done 50 years ago.

How did we know what Canadian content was? In the radio business, every record had what was called the MAPL logo. It was a system that identified music, artist, production and lyrics of the piece. The rule was that anything produced after 1971 or 1972 had to have two of those categories covered as being Canadian to be classified as a piece of Canadian content. It was tough in the beginning, I have to say. I had grown up listening to radio that was free to play anything it wanted at any time, within reason. I will get to that, but the fact is that all of a sudden we had to play Canadian content. In those days it was scarce; at least, the kind of music we wanted to program on our station was scarce. I still today cannot listen to Snowbird by Anne Murray because we played it to death. It was what we had at the time. That no longer exists, and it is because the Canadian content rules led to the development of a Canadian music industry that punches way above its weight around the world.

There was a unique proposition to those early CanCon days that is totally different from what we face today. Radio, by its nature, is very linear. The listeners listened to the piece of music I had on the air, and got it in the order that I gave it to them. If they were going to listen to our station, they would get that 30% of Canadian content, period.

It is different in this case. We are asking online broadcasters to simply make Canadian content available. The people who use Netflix go in and there are little tiles that show them all of the movies available. What this rule would do is tell Netflix that it has to make sure that Canadian content is represented in those tiles. People do not have to choose it, but they have to know that it is there. That way, we are going to at least give Canadian creators access to audiences who can choose to view or listen to their material, or not.

The actions of the regulator have certainly changed throughout my lifetime. Sometimes, when I talk to kids in schools, they ask me what it was like in the old days when I was a kid: when we would ride our dinosaurs to school and all that good stuff. When I was a kid, Canadian radio stations were not allowed to play commercials on Sundays. If they played a recording, they had to announce that it was a transcription so that people would not think that the performance was live. That was then.

Over the years, the broadcast regulator updated, streamlined and allowed things that were not allowed previously. I remember only two times, or maybe three, when the Canadian regulator stepped in and got in the way of a licensed broadcast undertaking.

One was at one of the first stations I ended up working for: CJOR in Vancouver. The family who put the station on the air was forced to sell it because it lost control of the programming. The programming in the mid-1960s was pretty rough, when we look at the community standards of the day.

Another refers to a general category of radio called radio poubelle: garbage radio or trash radio, which has been a unique property, particularly in the Quebec City area. Station CHOI was forced to be sold, again because it could not control some of its announcers who were doing some hideous things on the air. I could quote them, but will not because members really do not need to hear the sorts of things that were going on there. The CRTC had been more than patient, but it was far beyond what anybody could ever accept.

With respect to the obligations of the broadcaster, there was an article co-written by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin entitled, “Regulate the System, Not the Speech”. When we look at Bill C-11, what it is really going to do is regulate the broadcaster so that it is responsible for the material that is played by it. I could play any record I wanted, but if I did not follow Canadian content rules the broadcaster, i.e. the station I worked for, would get into trouble, but nobody was standing over my shoulder saying that I had to play this song next or that I could not play a record, except if it did not match the format. It is not the content producers, but the platform that provides the content to the public, that the bill will regulate.

By making Canadian content more available to Canadians, we will do something about that cultural, and I use this word advisedly, juggernaut to the south of us, particularly when it comes to French production. One of the most delightful things in my time as a member of Parliament has been that I have a home in Quebec. I love it here. Quebec is such a wonderful, unique thing and we must do everything we can to protect this unique culture in a unique country such as ours.

I will end it there to let us go to questions, but I have to say that although some of the fears may be quite legitimate, they actually do not get borne out when we look at the details behind Bill C-11.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate a fellow British Columbian speaking here tonight.

The gentleman has described his experience in radio with the CRTC, but the Internet operates on much different principles. I speak to younger constituents who specifically cite the concerns around net neutrality. Net neutrality is literally a commitment by governments to not hold back data unless it is illegal content, but now the government, through the CRTC and some unknown policy directive, will throttle back and block certain content from being seen by consumers when they want to see it, which violates the very principle of net neutrality.

The member might say this is about the platform and the consumers and making sure they can see it. Does he not see that the Internet functions much differently, and that this would violate net neutrality?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member misunderstands what net neutrality is.

The notion came up that the network providers, basically the people who allow the streaming, would constrain access to bandwidth unless more money was paid to get more bandwidth. This would certainly choke off the ability of content providers to stream, let us say, movies, etc., unless they ponied up the money to get the bandwidth to do it.

That is what was meant by net neutrality. The government has been firmly onside that everybody deserves the same treatment by those platforms, so that any content put into the platform would be treated equitably and equally across all potential users.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to note that I really appreciate my hon. colleague's wonderful radio voice.

I have to pick up on the comment by the previous speaker, my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party. I appreciate much of what was said, but I think the analogy between a radio station in the 1980s is not a completely apt metaphor for the Internet today. The average radio station listener could not add to the content or participate in generating content on the radio station. It was a one-way platform, whereas the Internet is something the public meaningfully participates in.

I am interested in my hon. colleague's comments on that. More particularly, I have constituents who are concerned that there would be an attempt by the government to regulate and cause broadcasters, in this case online providers, to remove content that is deemed hateful: in other words, that requires a subjective determination. They are worried that this may lead to censorship of the Internet. I am curious about my hon. colleague's thoughts on that. Is he concerned that Bill C-11 may lead to that consequence?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's question, and I also appreciated his comments on my output here.

I think we have to be concerned about that, absolutely. That said, I think we have seen very clear examples of Twitter, particularly, banning people for some of the things they have put on it. Facebook will send people to “jail” if they put things on there that they believe offend community standards, and of course the CRTC has done that sort of thing at the two stations I mentioned.

That kind of regime has always been in place, but community standards tend to rule. We can get away with things now on conventional radio that we could not dream of doing when I was still on the air, and certainly not when I was a kid. Things change. Community standards change. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, in her article, said that we should regulate the platform but let the platform deal with the content. That is probably the best way to go forward.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Madam Speaker, does the member really think that the CRTC is the right entity to regulate the Internet?

The CRTC has spent more than 14 months trying to renew the CBC licence. It spent over a year trying to implement a three-digit suicide prevention hotline. It has a chair who has private meetings, and goes out for beers, with one of the largest businesses that it regulates: Bell Canada. The government wants the CRTC with some unknown policy drive to do this. Does this member really think the CRTC is going to be able to regulate the Internet?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, yes, I do. I think the CRTC has demonstrated over time that it keeps in touch and stays in sync with community standards. It uses a very light touch, if we really look at some of its pronouncements over time. In fact, if—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We have to resume debate.

The hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, the Internet is an incredible invention. We have all the information in the world in the palm of our hands. Just as the creation of the printing press in the 1400s changed the course of history forever by allowing information to be disseminated to the masses, rather than just to the elites of society, bringing literacy to millions of people, so too has the Internet revolutionized how we exchange ideas and amplify our voices. It has brought freedom of knowledge and expression to billions of people.

Before the printing press, censorship of dangerous ideas by the elites was easy. All one had to do was round up the heretics who held fringe or unacceptable views, hang them high in town square and burn their handwritten notebooks. With the use of the printing press, dangerous ideas could be shared far and wide, leading to the Protestant Reformation, the scientific revolution, the French Revolution and the age of enlightenment, just to name a few.

Likewise, the Internet and social media have helped spark political revolutions and political movements. They have empowered brave resistance to foreign dictators, like our Ukrainian friends against Vladimir Putin and their courageous fight. Social media has helped empower that and allows for the exchange information at a rapid pace.

We really do live in extraordinary times. This is especially true for our online Canadian content creators. “Influencer” is now a career choice, and Canadian musicians, painters, bakers, commentators and do-it-yourselfers can access billions of people to share their ideas and creations with the click of a button. All one needs is an Internet connection and a smart phone.

Actually, one needs one more thing. They need a government that believes in their freedom to do so. Unfortunately, Canadians are experiencing a government that is trying desperately to control the Internet.

From the very wild and extreme online harms bill, to Bill C-18, the online news act, and now Bill C-11, the online streaming act, which we are debating today, Canada's Liberal government is really butting into every aspect of our online world. It is proclaiming it is here to help and that it will show those big, scary boss streaming services, such as Netflix and Spotify, who the boss is and save us all from the scary, dangerous ideas on the Internet.

In reality, these three Internet bills all have the same aim, which is to regulate what we see when we open our cell phone apps. Canadians may remember how Bill C-10 exploded in controversy last year, but it died on the Order Paper. It is back now in Bill C-11, and while the Liberals claim they have fixed the concerns we had with Bill C-10, Bill C-11 is really just a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The issue with Bill C-10 was its control of user-generated content, the posts and videos that we share and upload on social media. The Liberals say that issue was removed in Bill C-11, but experts do not agree. Notable communications law professor Michael Geist has pointed out that the CRTC has the power, with Bill C-11, to subject user-generated content to regulation, should it so choose.

If folks at home are asking what the CRTC is, it is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which has heavily controlled what we have seen on TV and heard on the radio over the past 50 years. Bill C-11 essentially expands the CRTC's powers not only to streaming giants such as Netflix and Spotify, but also to the podcasts, audiobooks and news channels we consume online. It will not just control Canadian-produced versions of those things, but anything coming from anywhere in the world that Canadians want to consume online in Canada.

More than that, Bill C-11, in fact, provides the Liberal cabinet the power to tell the CRTC how to regulate streaming platforms, how to define what Canadian content is and the general policy direction of these Internet controls. It is important to note that cabinet does not have this power currently over TV and radio. This will be a new power. Under the existing law, the CRTC is not directed by cabinet. It is independent, so it can be free from political interference, which is very important. However, this will no longer be the case under Bill C-11. Cabinet will have power over what we see on Internet, which represents an unprecedented expansion of government power.

The bottom line is that Canadian creators have more freedom now, before this bill comes in, than they ever did before with TV and radio. One can become a YouTube star. It is far more accessible than trying to break into network television. Why would the Liberals want to impose the same CRTC regulations they have on TV and radio onto our online platforms? It really does not make sense if we are talking about boosting our Canadian content creators. We know that over 90% of those who are watching our Canadian content are from outside of Canada.

The number of influencers online in Canada earning $100,000 a year or more is rapidly increasing every single year. I really do believe the last thing our online content creators need is the Liberal government sticking its fingers into the regulation controls and messing around with the algorithms that have facilitated the ability of our homegrown creators to share their content with the world.

YouTube, in fact, has alerted the online community and has issued strong warnings to the Liberal government about the negative impacts of Bill C-11, warning that it risks downgrading Canadian content in other countries. If we artificially bump up Canadian content here, and if for whatever reason that Canadian content is not catching the interest of Canadians, the algorithm will actually downgrade that content abroad in competing markets, such as the United States, for example, which a lot of influencers in Canada depend upon.

I do feel that Bill C-11 is not the only thing we need to be worried about. It is worrisome, but there are two other bills as well. There is Bill C-18, which is the online news act, and it has some issues. It has been criticized as interfering in the independence of our news media because it controls how we share news articles on platforms such as Facebook by forcing these platforms to pay news agencies every time we share a news article. Lots of people share news on their Facebook platforms. It is odd this bill would be needed, because this practice is great for news agencies. When one shares their content, it takes us right to their website. It is free advertising.

Australia tried to do the same thing as what is proposed in Bill C-18. Facebook played hardball and banned all sharing of news articles on Facebook until it was able to negotiate something with the Australian government. There are serious issues here. Facebook raised in committee that it is not opposed to doing the same thing in Canada.

Bill C-18 is really just more control from government, but it is not even half as bad as the online harms bill. This is a very scary Internet control bill. In the last Parliament it was known as Bill C-36, and it died on the Order Paper when that unnecessary $600-million election was called, but the Liberals are trying to bring it back again.

It is important to say I welcome a conversation on how we can better fight terrorism organizing online and better enforce existing laws concerning things that are considered fraud, libel, inciting violence, and in particular, child pornography or the sharing of intimate images online without consent. Those are all very important conversations and legitimate issues that need to be addressed.

However, the online harms bill would create a government regulator of speech on the Internet that would decide what is harmful and must be removed. It would be very subjective, depending really on who is behind the curtain dictating what is harmful. Andrew Coyne, in the Globe and Mail, said the bill is “direct state regulation of [online] content”. This is pretty significant.

Twitter said this, which is really concerning:

People around the world have been blocked from accessing Twitter and other services in a similar manner as the one proposed by Canada by multiple authoritarian governments (China, North Korea, and Iran for example) under the false guise of ‘online safety,’ impeding peoples’ rights to access information online.

Twitter is literally comparing this online harms bill to China, North Korea and Iran. It is pretty shocking.

The Liberals are throwing around terms like “misinformation” and “disinformation” whenever they do not like something we say, and we know free speech is constantly under attack. Anything one says these days can offend someone. I am concerned about what bills like Bill C-11 and the online harms bill would do to our freedom of expression online.

Although society has evolved, before the creation of the printing press, the establishment would essentially murder heretics with unacceptable views and burn the books later on. We are not immune to authoritarian control of our freedom of expression.

We would also do well to remember rights and freedoms are not always eliminated in one fell swoop. Often governing authorities will just pick at them bit by bit under the guise of it being for our own good, telling us that they know better than us and they will keep us safe. We have seen this happen in China and it is happening in Hong Kong.

Considering that when he was asked which country in the entire world he most admires, our Liberal Prime Minister said China's basic dictatorship because of its ability to get things done, we should listen when the Prime Minister tells us who he really is. With these three Internet control and censorship bills, I do believe he has made his intentions quite clear. We should all be very, very concerned.