Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to this motion moved by the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
I have never been a member of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, but I have served as a replacement at that committee at times. I always found that the committee operated well. Its members understand the importance of the official languages and the importance of advancing the cause of language equality. The committee's work is extremely important. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of our representative on that committee, the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, who does tremendous work. She is bilingual and speaks several different languages. She is a staunch defender of the French language, both official languages and bilingualism in general. She wants people to speak minority languages. Regardless of what language we speak in Canada, she is always there to defend language rights. I would like to acknowledge her work and the work of the committee.
Now, the motion before us today has been amended and, at the end of my speech, I will move an amendment to the amendment. It is coming later. The committee's motion reads as follows:
That the committee report to the house its deep condemnation of the CBC using a Paris-based audio studio to record a podcast, choosing it over a Quebecois-based recording studio to avoid the Quebec accent.
It is true that there are no more beautiful accents in the international Francophonie than the Québécois, Acadian, Franco-Ontarian, Franco-Columbian and western Canadian francophone accents, our local accents. Wherever I travel in the world, whether it be in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America or the Caribbean, these accents have a truly magnificent reach.
It does not make any sense that the CBC used this Paris-based recording studio. That was a big mistake. It is only right that the committee reminded the CBC that this never should have happened. That is important because we need to be proud of our francophone heritage and our French language in Canada. No matter what the accent, whether it be Acadian, Franco-Newfoundlander, Franco-Columbian or Québécois, it is important to be proud of one's language. It is therefore important to say that this was not a good decision.
Other CBC/Radio-Canada decisions are open to criticism, including the bonuses, as my colleague from Churchill—Keewatinook Aski has repeatedly pointed out. The idea of giving bonuses to senior CBC/Radio-Canada executives while cutting basic journalism and services across the country makes no sense. For the NDP, taking care of this journalism is what really matters across the country. That necessarily means investing in basic journalism. Communities need to talk to one another, whether it is in English or in French. We have witnessed the erosion of good journalism from one end of the country to the other because a growing number of big chains, sometimes foreign chains, are buying up assets in Canada and often shutting down newspapers, which is killing local radio and TV journalism.
Now more than ever, it is important to focus on investing at the local level, so that communities know what is going on in their own backyard. An NDP government will do just that. It will require CBC/Radio-Canada executives to invest locally in order to encourage local journalism so that, regardless of where they live in the largest democracy on the planet, people know what is going on in their community.
That is important. That is why we condemn the idea that executive performance bonuses should take precedence over local journalism. We believe it should be the other way around. That is what an NDP government will do.
Now, let us talk about Radio-Canada's qualities. Sometimes, a bad decision is made, and people are quick to say that it is not a good decision and that we need to talk about it. The fact is that Radio-Canada's journalism is something that people across the country are proud of. It has won hundreds of journalism awards not only domestically, but also internationally. Not once in my political career have I seen a single Conservative MP stand up to congratulate CBC/Radio-Canada for winning another award given out by independent judges. They have never done that.
What the Conservatives want is to destroy the public broadcaster. They have been very clear about that. The member for Carleton says it is possible to eliminate all the services in English and eliminate all of CBC's English-language journalism, which has won hundreds of awards, without touching Radio‑Canada's French-language journalism. That is ridiculous, and it shows how little respect the Conservatives have for the average Canadian. The Conservatives are saying something that is obviously false, thinking that everyone will simply accept this falsehood coming from the Conservatives.
Vancouver has services and several radio stations. Naturally, there is an online service that has millions of subscribers. People watch Radio‑Canada news on their computers more often than on TV. The radio is also very popular.
The Conservatives are saying that they are going to do away with the whole English side and that even if all of the French-speaking journalists end up on the street, they will somehow magically keep working. That is ridiculous. Radio-Canada would be wiped out in western Canada, in Edmonton, Regina, Calgary and Winnipeg. Radio-Canada would be destroyed in Atlantic Canada, in Moncton, Halifax, Saint John and Charlottetown. Everything would be wiped out and destroyed in Ontario, in Sudbury, Toronto and Windsor. All of Radio-Canada's services would be cut in Ottawa and Quebec City. Services would be cut everywhere in Quebec, including Montreal, Saguenay—Lac‑Saint‑Jean, where I lived for many years, the Eastern Townships, Sherbrooke, the north shore, the Gaspé, the Lower St. Lawrence, Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, the Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
The Conservatives are claiming that they are somehow going to magically succeed in protecting Radio-Canada while they destroy the CBC, which is completely ridiculous. It is dishonest to say that. When we look at the Conservatives' track record for the years when they were in power, we can see that they have no respect for official languages. They made no progress whatsoever for official languages at either the provincial or the federal level. When the Conservatives are in power, they destroy all of the services that are offered.
For a francophone who believes in official languages, voting Conservative is voting to put an end to all possible services. According to the Conservatives, these people, these taxpayers, do not have the right to any services in their language. That is what history shows. I am not talking about the stance being taken by the Conservatives because, of course, the member for Carleton will always hide his real motives, which involve major cuts.
If we look to the past, we can see what the Conservatives will do for official languages and for Radio-Canada once they are in power. In the past, they gave extremely generous and irresponsible gifts to billionaires. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, they gave $30 billion a year for tax havens, $116 billion in liquidity supports for Canada's big banks, and billions upon billions of dollars for CEOs. What the Conservatives do is give to the rich. That is their reason for being. The Conservative Party is a party for the rich. As the member for Carleton criss-crosses the country to meet with rich people, he always asks those well-off people to donate the maximum amount in support of his pro-wealthy policies. He did so just this week.
When we look at how the Conservatives operate, it is clear that they are very bad at managing money. They also make cuts to public services. We saw all the cuts they made. As far as pension plans are concerned, they told people that they would no longer be allowed to retire at 65, that they would be forced to work extra years. They also said they were going to cut services to veterans. They do not want these people to have access to services, even though they have sacrificed their lives and sometimes their health for our country. Of course, we also saw cuts to health care and social housing.
The member for Carleton brags about having built six affordable housing units in his entire career. Let us compare his career to that of the NDP leader. The member for Burnaby South did more over the past 20 weeks than the member for Carleton did in 20 years: dental care, pharmacare, affordable housing, anti-scab legislation, and the list goes on. In 20 weeks, the member for Burnaby South did far more to help people than the member for Carleton did in 20 years.
What the Conservatives did when they were in power was cut, cut, cut. They made cuts to all services so they could give money to billionaires. That is how the Conservatives operate. That is their reason for being. They are also going to make cuts to services provided in the official languages. French-speaking taxpayers will no longer be entitled to services that should exist. In a bilingual country where citizens pay taxes, people should have access to services in their own language, but no, that will not be the case with the Conservatives, because they make cuts to all services, and they will make cuts to this one too.
They are also going to destroy CBC/Radio-Canada. It is all based on Trumpism. It is no surprise that, in the United States, Trumpism targets good journalism and all of the award-winning journalists. This movement attacks public radio and public television so that news sources are once again concentrated in the hands of billionaires. That is the way they operate, giving everything to billionaires so that ordinary people do not have access to proper, professional news. CBC/Radio-Canada is not immune to criticism. I would not say that it is always 100% accurate, but it is possible to get an apology from the public broadcaster. Mistakes are sometimes made, but they are corrected. That is the difference. With billionaires who own newspapers and TV networks, no corrections are ever made, because the billionaires are the ones who decide on the message and on what people should hear.
I think it is harmful to our democracy that Conservative members want to make cuts to all independent sources of news and ensure that a single class of people, namely billionaires, gets to tell us what to do. Francophone members of the Conservative Party from Quebec are also defending these actions and say they are ready to see CBC/Radio-Canada collapse. If they were honest with their constituents, I am sure these people would tell them that they want nothing to do with the Conservative attack on CBC/Radio-Canada, that they want quality journalism, and that when Radio-Canada or the CBC makes a mistake, they want it corrected. These people want local journalism. They want to know what is happening in their community, in their region and in their country.
I wanted to raise this before reading my amendment to the amendment. It makes me sad to know that journalists are not appreciated. I want to point out today in the House that there are quality journalists at CBC/Radio-Canada. They work hard every day to keep Canadians informed. I thank them for their work.
Before reading my amendment to the amendment, I would like to say one last time to my Conservative colleagues that they need to be honest. Trump's victory in the U.S is not a sign that Canadians are going to be okay with the truth being kept from them. It does not mean that it is time to start peddling conspiracy theories and killing effective journalism to prevent Canadians from having access to the facts, the truth and information, which is so important. Canadians do not want that. They want the opposite. They want to have access to information that is based on science and facts.
If we want to overcome the challenges that Canada is facing, such as climate change, poverty, the lack of social housing, the fact that families are struggling while billionaires receive so many gifts from the current government, as they did from Harper, we need access to information. It is vital to support CBC/Radio‑Canada's important broadcasting mandate.
I move:
That the amendment be amended by adding, after the words “to avoid the Quebec accent”, the following: “and redirect any amount received as a bonus or performance pay to support CBC/Radio-Canada's important broadcasting mandate”.
