Tracy Gray

[Online Streaming Act, March 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman.

I am always proud to rise to speak on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country on legislation we have before us. Bill C-11 is before us tonight at this very late hour. It would amend the Broadcasting Act.

Our constituency office has received hundreds and hundreds of emails, letters, phone calls and messages on this bill. Every time I am out in the community, people come up to me, letting me know how they do not want Bill C-11 to pass, as well as the former Bill C-10.

I think it is amazing that along with soaring gas and grocery bills and rising rent and mortgage payments, residents in my riding are letting me know that in addition to these very important topics, they are also concerned about this bill, which would affect their use of the Internet. I think it is because all of these topics affect their lives every day.

That level of attention is warranted because of what the government is proposing for this legislation to pass. It would cause unprecedented changes in how Canadians go about their daily lives online. Local residents in my community, Mitch and Lori, wrote to me to say that Bill C-11 represented the tipping point of government overreach.

Benji wrote to me to say that Bill C-11 would represent a major step back for our country.

Were Bill C-11 to pass, which it looks like it will with the Liberal-NDP coalition, those members in this House would be gifting the Liberals the power to play censor on what Canadians can see, if it does not match what they determine to be classified as Canadian content. The beneficiaries are the oldest legacy companies whose viewership has decreased. This bill would allow the government to have a policy directive implemented through actions like criteria. The government would give authority over online licensing and other matters. The only thing is that we have no idea what these would all be.

Bill C-11's twin bill, Bill C-18, would help failing legacy media companies looking for government cheques. They have found a perfect partner in the Liberals' desire for greater control of everyday Canadians' lives. A free and democratic country like Canada should never seek to empower the government with censorship powers to protect failing companies.

Canadians are rising up against the bill and against the Liberals for not listening. Bill C-11 is the government's proposed updating of the Broadcasting Act to provide the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, the power and authority to regulate online content platforms.

The stated reasoning behind Bill C-11 is to bring the CRTC into the 21st century, while supporting Canadian artists and promoting the spread of Canadian content over that of international competition. While that may seem like a noble goal, there are reasons Canadian artists, legal experts and digital content providers are speaking out against this bill. In fact, this legislation is going to suck content creator innovation into an antiquated Broadcasting Act black hole.

There are profound questions about using the CRTC bureaucrats as online regulators, as would be granted by Bill C-11. Here I am again in this House standing against bureaucracy and government overreach. This bureaucracy, the CRTC, took over a year to implement a three-digit number for mental health emergencies, despite that action being called for unanimously by all members of this House. This organization has proven to lack accountability. It regulates the telecoms and we know that Canadians pay some of the highest rates on the planet.

The questioning we did at the industry committee last summer of the CRTC, that I was part of at the time, on the Rogers' outage was like we were questioning a telecom executive and not an executive of the regulator.

The CRTC's expertise is primarily regulating radio waves, television feeds and advertising. If this bill passes, it would also be tasked with regulating user-content generating websites, like YouTube, where users upload hundreds of thousands of hours of video content every minute but even assuming they could do it, the federal government should not be policing what will be defined as Canadian content when using social or digital media platforms.

Canadians are right to question an organization having the power to censor or impose what content will be prioritized for Canadians to see online.

Here is the most concerning part: The criteria will come later and we have no idea what the criteria will be. We are just to trust the Liberals.

A free and open Internet is the gold standard of open, democratic nations around the world. The bottom line is that what we will search for and see online will be different after the CRTC puts in place its regulations, which will change online algorithms.

The former vice-chair of the CRTC, Peter Menzies, has come out strong, all along the way of this legislation. Of this legislation from the past Parliament, to which there really are few changes in the new legislation, he said, “Overall, it ensures that going forward all Canadians communicating over the internet will do so under the guise of the state.”

Then, in November 2022, Mr. Menzies stated, “If Bill C-11 passes and Internet regulation falls into political hands, Canadians will regret it for the rest of their lives.”

Many of the very people the Liberals say Bill C-11 would help do not even want it. There was extensive testimony, at both House of Commons and Senate committees, by content creators, digital experts and professors. Without Bill C-11, Canadian artists are succeeding in making their full-time livings producing content on digital platforms with the support of fellow Canadians and viewers from around the world, receiving billions of views.

Canadian social media stars bringing their concerns to the federal government about their content being hidden because of Bill C-11's regulations found themselves ignored. Over 40,000 content creators affiliated with Digital First Canada called for the discoverability rules in Bill C-11 to be removed. The government is not listening to all of these voices.

What is discoverability? It really is about, when one searches online, what comes to the top based on what one is asking about and what one's interests are. This legislation would change discoverability, because the CRTC would come up with criteria that would rise to the top.

The Liberals have refused every offer of good faith regarding Bill C-11, not just from regular Canadians but also from the government's appointed senators. Most of the senators are independent who sent an unusually high number of amendments, after months of study, back to the House of Commons.

The minister responsible made it clear he was rejecting all amendments that attempted to restrict the powers he sought for himself and the CRTC.

Once again, this has never been about good legislation, better regulation or updating our laws. It is about control for the Liberal government.

Some Canadians have already gotten a sneak preview of what life with Bill C-11 might be like. Recently, Google announced that, because of another overreaching online law, Bill C-18, it started a test run to temporarily limit access to news content, including Canadian news content, for some Canadian users of Google.

This was not an outright ban. However, people were searching and not seeing what they did before, and that is my point here. Censorship by big government or big tech has the same results.

When I debated the government's original version of this bill in the previous Parliament, I said that Canadians did not want this deeply flawed legislation that would limit speech and online viewing.

The number has changed from Bill C-10 to Bill C-11. Sadly, everything else has stayed the same, with some minor amendments from the Senate. The most important Senate amendments have been rejected by the government.

Canadians still do not want it, but the Liberals and their coalition partners insist on passing it. It is time for a government that protects consumer choice and encourages Canadian creators instead of getting in their way.

[Telecommunications Act, March 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, that is one of the parts of the bill that philosophically sounds like a great thing that the bill could work on, but again, we do not have any details. It is a great objective, but we do not really have any strategies or any other information, so that is something that definitely could be asked at the committee as well.

[Telecommunications Act, March 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, that is certainly something committee members could ask the expert witnesses when they are there at committee. Maybe they could delve into that more to see what those issues are and what the opportunities might potentially be for amendments. That is one of the things that could be looked at in the committee. Certainly the committee members there could ask those questions for the witnesses.

[Telecommunications Act, March 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the great question from my colleague. That is a great recommendation, and I will just give a very specific example. One of the roles that I have had in my career was the privilege of being on the board of one of the largest credit unions in Canada for 10 years. We underwent extensive training and cybersecurity was one of the topics that we had to do.

I was able to take some of that training and bring it into my small business that I had at the time. I remember thinking that I wished a lot of other small business owners could be going through the extensive training that I just went through. That is a great approach and something that we should definitely work on.

[Telecommunications Act, March 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I think a part of the piece of legislation is that we really do not have the details, and that is part of the concern, so I am hoping that, if it goes forward to committee, some of that could be worked out, because that is part of the concern right now.

We have the topic and we know what the overarching desire is and what the fines may be, but we do not actually know what all of the regulations would be, and that does raise a lot of concerns, especially for small businesses that do not really know at this point what the bill would mean for them. Hopefully that will come out at committee and there will be more information added, potentially as amendments to the bill.

[Telecommunications Act, March 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak today in the House on Bill C-26, an act respecting cybersecurity, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other acts.

With every passing year, Canadians are increasingly moving their lives online. They communicate with loved ones through email, messaging, photo sharing, video calls and more. They can order their entire grocery orders, rent cars for the weekend and book appointments with a click in an app.

As more and more Canadians choose to put more of their lives online, it falls to us, as members of Parliament, to ensure our cybersecurity laws are as protective of their personal and private information as possible.

The next generation of Canadians are increasingly building their professional and personal lives online. At the same time, they face mounting threats from foreign actors, ranging from scammers to state actors. These actors have shown they would use any tactic, from identity theft to cyber-attacks, to exploit Canadians and attack our institutions.

That is why the legislation we have before us today is essential, and why getting it right the first time is even more important. In particular, it must protect our online information while not crushing our small business start-ups under mountains of red tape.

On this side of the House, my Conservative colleagues and I believe that, as currently constructed, Bill C-26 fails to account for the welfare of small business start-ups by adding more red tape and placing burdensome costs on our homegrown technology sector. As constructed, this bill would directly affect start-ups by adding further bureaucracy that would drive up their starting costs. It would overburden with regulation the small telecommunications providers, the companies that provide our families and businesses with access to a global market online.

Wrapping them in red tape could risk our access to competing on the world stage. The Liberal government has already made it hard enough for start-ups, and the Liberal record on small business has been one committed to mazes of bureaucracy, punitive fines and penalties, and rising inflation. A Liberal economy of high tax and wasteful spending has already made it hard enough for start-ups.

Through the overarching premise of this cybersecurity bill, we know that it is needed. We absolutely need to update our cybersecurity laws, while at the same time we cannot allow Bill C-26 to add unnecessary burdens to business, especially small businesses.

I am particularly concerned about how this bill's regulations would also apply to businesses “irrespective of their cyber security maturity”, implying that providers who already have advanced electronic protection measures would still have to comply with the new regulations of the bill. This means that businesses could not continue using their current, possibly more robust, cybersecurity systems. Instead, they would have to disregard their current cybersecurity measures and replace them with the newly proposed government model.

Even Canadian businesses that have already worked hard to protect their customer security at accepted global standards would still incur more cost despite their robust electronic security measures. They would need to invest in government-regulated security measures, incurring costs such as inspection, extra time, installation and further training. They may have to completely overturn their superior standards for the government's preference.

The thing is, we do not know what the regulations would be or how they would affect businesses, because the actual regulations have not been developed. That is how the government does a lot of its bills. There are great titles, with few details. We are expected to just trust the Liberals to figure it all out later, behind closed doors, with no opportunity to study them at committee with expert witnesses.

Imagine if this regulatory framework were applied to any other business. Suppose we were regulating changes in the banking security industry. We would require that every Canadian bank and credit union tear its building down to the ground, brick by brick, and then rebuild itself from scratch. That really does not make sense.

Now is the time when we should be encouraging competition and bringing in more telecommunications companies. We know Canada has some of the highest telecommunications costs in the world. As more and more Canadians move their lives online, whether for banking, social media or work, adding more tape in this bill, as mentioned, would make this transition far more difficult. Costs never remain in the businesses' ledgers forever; they are inevitably always passed on to the consumer.

As a government, we should encourage the next generation of Canadian entrepreneurs who are innovating.

I will mention, as a sidebar, that I was formerly on the industry committee and we did a quantum computing study, which was, frankly, terrifying. It was about how Canada could be exposed to bad actors, which could affect every part of our online lives. As these technological advances develop, we have to be aware of risks and be able to stay ahead of technology.

These enterprises, businesses and telecommunications providers do not need more red tape; they need a stable market without uncompetitive government interference. We know very well how easy it can be for the government to build regulations that only the largest providers of an industry can shoulder. Without attention to scale, a single fault of noncompliance could instantly wipe out a smaller company. The legislation would allow ministers and bureaucrats to levy fines as high as $15 million without special consideration, such as the size of a company's user base.

Nonspecific details like that are music to the ears of our largest telecommunications providers. Monopolization of our telecommunications sector is something Canadians are already concerned about. We must always proceed cautiously, so as not to turn away innovation and new businesses entering the market, which creates healthy competition. For example, these fines could also be enacted under the vague term of “protecting a critical cyber system”. This vague terminology can leave a lot of leeway for government ministers to injure Canadian businesses with rampant fines.

There is already a shortage of online and electronic security professionals in Canada. According to the Business Council of Canada, an estimated 25,000 personnel are needed in the cybersecurity industry. Instead of dissuading these crucial professionals from joining this industry and helping keep Canada safe from domestic and foreign cyber-threats, let us provide a better framework and encourage them to build new businesses in this essential industry. Let us not scare them off with red tape and penalties.

As members can see, the legislation proposed for Bill C-26 has some significant concerns that require amendments at committee. Regulations being made with a lack of transparency behind closed doors, after the bill passes, is a concern. Conservatives will be looking to make amendments to the bill at committee as we hear from experts.

As I mentioned earlier, my Conservative colleagues and I encourage and support new, updated and secure cybersecurity measures being put in place, especially as more and more Canadians move their lives online. However, by placing more and more red tape on small and start-up businesses and providers that have already been in the industry for years, the bill would effectively dissuade businesses from entering this market and providing more services for Canadians. Large and mature businesses can handle the related costs of Bill C-26, but the associated expenses could crush small businesses.

I have worked, for much of my career, around various regulated industries and have seen, all too often, red tape and regulations making it too hard for small businesses to even start or to stay afloat without being acquired by larger firms, as small companies just cannot keep up with the regulatory compliance.

Cybersecurity threats affect all our communities. In January, an international ransomware group claimed responsibility for an Okanagan College cyber-attack in my region. Let us keep Canada safe by building clear online security measures that would encourage start-up professionals and businesses to help build up our cybersecurity infrastructure to a world-class standard. We will not accomplish this goal if we continue to add burdensome fines, penalties and red tape.

[Democratic Institutions, March 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, allegations emerged that a Liberal MP urged Beijing not to release the two Michaels. The ministers here today so far are evading being honest with Canadians.

For the 20th time today, on what date did the Prime Minister first hear about these serious allegations reported in the media?

[Committees of the House, March 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I spoke to this in my speech. We need to cut taxes. We need to have no tax increases and we also need to look at ways that we can cut taxes for small businesses, for families. That has to be a priority. We should not be increasing any taxes at this time. That should not be in the budget.

[Committees of the House, March 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country.

Today, we are discussing the finance committee's pre-budget consultation report. I want to start off by saying right out of the gate, and I have talked about this many times in the House, that we as Conservatives oppose all tax increases at this time. That includes the excise tax increase, the payroll tax increase and the carbon tax increase, the last of which increases the price of everything that is shipped across the country.

To set the stage, inflation is at a 40-year high and we know that food inflation is higher. When inflation was around 6%, food inflation was over 11%, almost double.

I did a survey in my community. I send out surveys that go to every residence, and it is amazing how many thousands of people mail them back. It is such great information for me. It is such a great way for me to gain feedback from the community, in addition to all the other types of outreach I do. I would say that over 70% of the people who filled out that survey said their food costs were up 20% to 30%, and food prices can be higher regionally across the country. When food inflation is this high, it definitely makes it very hard for everyone to pay their bills, in particular people who are on fixed incomes, like seniors. It has been reported that 1.5 million people went to a food bank in just one month.

Before I came here to debate this motion today, I had the honour of sitting for a while on the finance committee, where a chief economist from a bank said that he expects insolvencies to increase. The CIBC has said that one in five mortgages it has in its portfolio is in a position where the borrower's monthly payment is not high enough to cover even the interest portion of the loan. People are struggling, and now is not the time to increase any taxes.

What I would like to talk about for most of my time today is the excise tax increase. To go back a bit regarding this tax increase, in 2017, the Liberals put in place an escalator tax on the alcohol excise tax. “Escalator” is just a fancy bureaucratic word for automatic, so it is an automatic tax increase that does not go into budgets and is not debated every year. At the time, Conservatives, industries and stakeholders asked the government not to do it. They were very concerned that it might trigger trade challenges. In fact, it did with Australia. During that time, Australia said that it was unfair, and over the course of a few years, an agreement was made with Australia and was announced on the Canadian side.

I should mention that previously, some wineries with domestically grown grapes that were made into wine were exempt from paying the excise tax. This was done many years ago to build up and assist this value-added industry and agriculture. The agreement made was that these wineries, and we later learned cideries as well, had to start paying this excise tax. That was the agreement the Canadian government announced. However, back in Australia, they were announcing they won the trade challenge, so it was interesting how the communications came out. What has happened with that? The Canadian government has had to come up with different formulas to fix that situation with domestic wineries.

In addition to that, the excise tax is increasing every year, and it is tied to the CPI, which means it is tied to inflation. Therefore, when inflation is higher, this tax increase is higher, which then perpetuates inflation even more. As of April 1, there will be the highest tax increase ever, at 6.3%, and because inflation has been high this year, we are already tracking to have a high tax increase as we go into next year.

Just dealing with this year, this is really going to affect the producers. It is not only the manufacturers, which could be the wineries, breweries, cideries and distilleries, but this tax increase then trickles down to the retailers who will be selling these products. It trickles down to the restaurant owners, who are still having a really tough time coming out of the pandemic, and, of course, ultimately to consumers.

For disclosure, I worked for 27 years in the British Columbia beer and wine industry, so I worked on all sides of the industry. I remember at different times, when, for example, the provincial government was changing some of its formulas around taxation, so winery or brewery operators would have to make a very difficult decision on how long they would absorb that increase.

To really simplify things, as an example, people's wine might be on the shelf at $19.99 a bottle. Now they have to make the choice. Do they put it up to $20.19? It is such an odd number. Therefore, they make the decision to keep it at that price for a while and then realize they cannot and they have to eventually pass this on. They will make a decision. They will take the hit for a while, but ultimately it has to be passed on. Those are the tough decisions that business owners, especially small business owners, make every day.

In Kelowna—Lake Country, there are 27 wineries, 21 breweries, and eight cideries and distilleries combined. These are farm-to-glass industries. These are value-added industries. All of these will be affected. This is just another cost that will be added on, which does not have to be because there is no benefit to those organizations. It is strictly a tax, and we should not be increasing any taxes at this time.

We know that small businesses represent most of the businesses in Canada. They represent most of the businesses in my community.

As I was talking about the trickle-down effects of this, Restaurants Canada shows that more than 50% of the licensed restaurants in Canada are losing money or barely breaking even. Again, as these cost increases are being passed on, it will affect them.

The CFIB reported that the average small business owner took on $150,000 in new debt. Most business owners have not paid off this debt. Of course, with rising interest rates, their debt is costing more. Therefore, for any of them who work in this industry, this will just be affecting them even more.

Beer Canada wrote on behalf of eight brewery worker unions. I will read a quote from it. It states, “Canada is experiencing the highest cost of living increases in a generation. This is squeezing family budgets and making workers in the brewing sector nervous about their jobs.”

Wine Growers Canada wrote to the Minister of Finance and said that with the addition of federal/provincial ad valorem taxes in the pricing chain, the next rise in excise duty would increase wine prices by at least 10¢ per litre, with long-term impacts on restaurants, hotels, bars, retailers, farmers and wine growers.

Members can see that this is going to dramatically affect a lot of these industries.

I wrote to the finance minister recently. I will just quote part of what I wrote to her. I said, “Producers will be left with the choice of absorbing this cost increase and adding it to their debt loads or passing on this cost to both consumers and our restaurant and hospitality businesses, fuelling inflation more.” I have not heard back from her.

I will also say that when I was first elected back in 2019, this was one of the first topics that I started advocating on, because I had so many small business owners in my riding coming to me, saying that this affected them every year, That was before we had this record high inflation.

With that, I am standing with small business owners in my riding and across Canada, and we need to stop all tax increases.

[Criminal Code, March 22nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-283, the “end the revolving door” act, once again.

I want to thank the member for Kootenay—Columbia for his initial work and research on this legislation during the previous Parliament, and my colleagues who have spoken to the bill. I also want to thank those who work in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. I hope we can move forward with this legislation to provide the Standing Committee on Public Safety the opportunity to study how this can improve our justice system and give people hope to recover from addiction.

Kelowna—Lake Country residents, the people of British Columbia, and Canadians from coast to coast to coast have seen first-hand the devastating impact the addiction crisis has had on families, communities and the individuals themselves. Residents in my community want people to be held accountable for their actions, while at the same time to have compassion and get addiction and recovery help to those who need it.

My “end the revolving door” act is an opportunity for parliamentarians of every political stripe to come together to move forward with a common sense approach to improving our justice system and helping those struggling with addiction. No one piece of legislation can serve as the panacea for those who are repeatedly re-entering the criminal justice system who have mental health and/or addiction challenges.

This legislation offers an additional tool to help reduce recidivism, address our mental health and addiction crisis, and improve the public safety of our communities. Expanding the sentencing options available in our justice system and assisting those whose lives have been ravaged by addiction is the right thing to do. No one is served when repeat reoffenders are in a revolving door system where it is reported that more than 70% of those sentenced to federal penitentiaries have addiction issues.

We must ensure that the effort of curative treatment is focused and provided for those who have found themselves incarcerated and who want help to turn their lives around. A dedicated addiction treatment facility operating inside an existing Correctional Service of Canada facility would help support this work. Many who work around the criminal justice system have told me that this would put a stop to the revolving door for many.

I want to thank those who have supported this legislation, from the national level to my backyard, who think we should not waste one moment to move forward. The City of Kelowna mayor and council passed a motion unanimously supporting this legislation.

Lissa Dawn Smith, president of Métis Nation British Columbia, said that Métis Nation BC strongly supports the implementation of more effective addiction and mental health services within the federal penitentiary system through Bill C-283. It knows that Métis people are over-represented in the correctional system and that Justice Canada needs more tools in its tool kit to address the root causes of incarceration.

Tom Smithwick, founder of Freedom's Door, which is a vital organization dedicated to hope and healing for those suffering from addiction, including those recently released from incarceration, expressed how it makes sense to start a recovery process while incarcerated. He said, “The whole system would save money. The human need would be met. There totally is hope”.

It is in that spirit that I hope Parliament moves to advance this common sense legislation to the Standing Committee of Public Safety for further study. I hope that we will not waste this crucial opportunity that we have as elected representatives to help reduce recidivism, give hope and healing to those struggling with addiction, and end the revolving door.

Therefore, I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, special order or usual practice of the House, if a recorded division is requested today in regard to the second reading of Bill C-283, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (addiction treatment in penitentiaries), it shall be deferred to the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions later today.