Madam Speaker, I want to begin by acknowledging that we are here on traditional unceded Algonquin territory and say meegwetch.
It is a great honour to speak to Bill C‑11 this evening. As everyone knows, this bill would amend and modernize the Broadcasting Act, something that has not been done in 30 years, even though we have seen enormous changes in the various delivery platforms. The biggest changes have to do with online streaming rather than television and radio broadcasting. There have been changes for our actors, creators and musicians and with respect to the issue of Canadian, Quebec and indigenous culture.
First of all, this bill is not perfect. I have problems with certain aspects of it, but I have decided to support it anyway, and I will explain why. I thank my colleague from Kitchener Centre, another Green MP. We made different decisions, but we agree on the problems and the reasons why he will be voting no and I will be voting yes.
It is a complicated bill. I want to start with a few things, just to clarify what it is not. Moments ago, a very talented new member of Parliament, the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, spoke about wishing that we could put in a more concrete, entrenched form that freedom of expression and freedom of speech are respected in this land and that every Canadian knows they have a right to those things.
I would say, with all respect to that member, we have that. We have the right of free speech in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Beyond that, the act that this bill amends but does not cancel, repeal or wipe out the words of, the Broadcasting Act, has for the past 30 years entrenched the right of Canadians to freedom of expression. Nothing in this modernization in Bill C-11 would change, in any way, our right to freedom of expression. This bill does not censor anything. It does not change what we can see and what we cannot see, or what we can hear and what we cannot hear. It attempts to achieve greater protections for many different varieties of Canadians against the powers of the new digital world.
I am going to focus a little time on some specific examples. Before I talk about the good the bill does, let me say where I hope we will observe closely how the bill works, and be more than prepared to take it up again within the next year or two. I would suspect we would, if we have the problems that we fear we may have with the failure to make sure that Canadians who in the government's intentions are not supposed to be caught by this bill, are not, and if we have problems differentiating the impact of the bill on those people from the impact on the large digital platforms, whether it is Netflix, Crave or HBO. We are not intending to capture users who place their content on YouTube.
One of the differentiations that I found quite useful, and that I actually heard from Professor Michael Geist, was that there is a difference between a platform, a place where we can put things, that is “curated” versus one that is not curated. That is the word he used. I wish the government had used that kind of language in Bill C-11, because I think it would clarify things a great deal.
In other words, instead of concentrating on who does what on a platform, we should differentiate between the systems and differentiate between the platforms. If we were to say there was this area where there was a conscious effort to promote certain content, it would be a curated place. This is versus one where everybody could put stuff up: It is not being curated to meet a certain purpose. If it is being curated to meet a certain purpose or to create different profit, that would have been a better differentiation than we have in Bill C-11. What we have in Bill C-11 has left us divided.
I do not disagree one bit with my colleague for Kitchener Centre that this bill should be much better and clearer on the question of platform versus user. Platforms will be in and users will be out: I believe that is the government's intent, but the drafting does not make that sufficiently clear. I think we will have to go back to it and improve on and clarify this.
I remain concerned that the CRTC has a lot of clout and power in this. I hope we see that the CRTC is guided by the best information from people who are skeptical about this bill to make sure its use does not do anything but improve the situation for Canadians, both those who enjoy the products of creators and those who create. I hate to use the word “consumption” as if people consume culture, and I will not use it. People who enjoy culture, who are edified by culture and who feel ennobled by culture, those of us who are essentially the audience, need to benefit from this act just as the creators do.
Regarding the discussion around platforms versus users, I do not think the government has it right yet, so why am I going to vote for this bill?
When I look at the creative community, there is no question about this as it is empirically documented. The rise of the digital broadcaster has reduced the economic status of Canadian musicians and Canadian creators versus those in the U.S. Just to give members one example from the world of music, a traditional broadcaster generally sent 49¢ out of every dollar from Canadian music to the U.S. That sounds like a lot. Then, we see that the digital broadcaster sends 64¢ out of every dollar to the U.S. From 49¢ to 64¢ is a big difference to someone who is living on those earnings. In fact, I do not know how Canadian musicians can live on their earnings. In the past year, in 2021, on average Canadian musicians writing their own material earned $67 total in royalties from digital streaming platforms. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that people who are writing their own music in Canada have their income reduced just by virtue of what medium they use to share that material.
We need to have a Broadcasting Act that promotes Canadian creators within Canada and overseas, and we hope this bill will improve things. Certainly, the Canadian Media Producers Association, the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, SOCAN, and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, ACTRA, are saying that for their own survival as artists we need desperately to redress that imbalance. When it goes onto a digital platform, Canadian artists are paid less. They are valued less, and will turn from that career because they cannot make ends meet. As the rise of digital access to creativity overtakes the traditional, the situation will only get worse, and that is the trend line we see with the digital media and the online sharing of everything from music to film, video and TV.
There is a huge creative class in Canada. As a matter of fact, just to give some context for it, the membership of the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers is 175,000 people. By the way, SOCAN does not just promote these brilliant creative people, but it actually runs the system that collects the royalties and distributes them fairly, so when we go outside of that system we are seeing the funds to pay musicians the royalties they deserve slip through their fingers without capturing it. That is why SOCAN is so strongly in favour of Bill C-11.
The same is true of how people feel across the spectrum of other artistic endeavours. We have heard a lot in this place about films like The Handmaid's Tale. It is hard to say one loves The Handmaid's Tale when, as a feminist, one would wonder how Margaret Atwood could see the future coming before we did. I dread the day I go to shop with my debit card and it is taken from me. It is not sufficiently Canadian content when the leads, the producers, the people holding the cameras and the people yelling “cut” are not Canadian. That is what Bill C-11 hopes to repair.