Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois's supplementary opinion seeks to address the issues raised by all of the witnesses and stakeholders who participated in this study. It seeks to resolve the underlying problem behind the current crisis facing Quebec broadcasters, which is driving their calls to reduce the quota. I am talking about the unfair competition from foreign digital platforms, the American web giants that profit from the Canadian and Quebec market and make billions of dollars in profits.
That is why we are recommending that the government reinstate the 3% digital services tax, which would have been a first step toward tax equity. This tax would have generated $7.2 billion over five years, and the government could have allocated that money to a dedicated fund for the cultural sector, particularly the broadcasting industry.
Recently, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, took a step in the right direction by requiring online streaming companies, such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, to invest 15% of the revenues they generated in Canada in Canadian content, with a view to easing the burden on traditional broadcasters. However, the federal government later asked the CRTC to backtrack on that decision. The Bloc Québécois is recommending that the CRTC instead uphold this decision and that the billions of dollars in profits be used to support French‑language music broadcasters.