Bill C-11 (Historical)

Online Streaming Act

An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Broadcasting Act to, among other things,
(a) add online undertakings — undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet — as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings;
(b) specify that the 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, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation;
(c) update the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in section 3 of the Act by, among other things, providing that the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) serve the needs and interests of all Canadians, including Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages, and
(ii) provide opportunities to Indigenous persons, programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and that is in Indigenous languages, and programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities;
(d) enhance the vitality of official language minority communities in Canada and foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society, including by supporting the production and broadcasting of original programs in both languages;
(e) specify that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) must regulate and supervise the Canadian broadcasting system in a manner that
(i) takes into account the different characteristics of English, French and Indigenous language broadcasting and the different conditions under which broadcasting undertakings that provide English, French or Indigenous language programming operate,
(ii) takes into account, among other things, the nature and diversity of the services provided by broadcasting undertakings,
(iii) ensures that any broadcasting undertaking that cannot make maximum or predominant use of Canadian creative and other human resources in the creation, production and presentation of programming contributes to those Canadian resources in an equitable manner,
(iv) promotes innovation and is readily adaptable toscientific and technological change,
(v) facilitates the provision to Canadians of Canadian programs in both official languages, including those created and produced by official language minority communities in Canada, as well as Canadian programs in Indigenous languages,
(vi) facilitates the provision of programs that are accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities,
(vii) facilitates the provision to Canadians of programs created and produced by members of Black or other racialized communities,
(viii) protects the privacy of individuals who aremembers of the audience of programs broadcast, and
(ix) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which the Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on any class of broadcasting undertakings if that imposition will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy;
(f) amend the procedure relating to the issuance by the Governor in Council of policy directions to the Commission;
(g) replace the Commission’s power to impose conditions on a licence with a power to make orders imposing conditions on the carrying on of broadcasting undertakings;
(h) provide the Commission with the power to require that persons carrying on broadcasting undertakings make expenditures to support the Canadian broadcasting system;
(i) authorize the Commission to provide information to the Minister responsible for that Act, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, and set out in that Act a process by which a person who submits certain types of information to the Commission may designate the information as confidential;
(j) amend the procedure by which the Governor in Council may, under section 28 of that Act, set aside a decision of the Commission to issue, amend or renew a licence or refer such a decision back to the Commission for reconsideration and hearing;
(k) specify that a person shall not carry on a broadcasting undertaking, other than an online undertaking, unless they do so in accordance with a licence or they are exempt from the requirement to hold a licence;
(l) harmonize the punishments for offences under Part II of that Act and clarify that a due diligence defence applies to the existing offences set out in that Act; and
(m) allow for the imposition of administrative monetary penalties for violations of certain provisions of that Act or of the Accessible Canada Act .
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Online Streaming Act

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, the committee gave our colleagues the opportunity to study the bill with much closer scrutiny. That study lasted 12 meetings, where the committee heard from 80 witnesses and received 52 written briefs, but do not worry; the Conservatives still managed to delay and distract. They filibustered during the meeting at which the minister was supposed to appear and they filibustered the committee's clause-by-clause consideration.

They can try to deny it today, but the member for Lethbridge admitted it herself. She said, and this is a direct quote, “I did filibuster at committee”.

Fortunately, our colleagues in the Bloc and the NDP have decided to join us in modernizing Canada's broadcasting system through Bill C-11, and 38 amendments passed at the heritage committee, which included amendments from all recognized parties. Despite the Conservatives' best efforts, the bill made its way to the Senate.

Very well. At this point, I think it is valuable to remind my colleagues that the Conservative Party of Canada is the only political party recognized in both the House of Commons and the Senate. Senator Leo Housakos, the proud Spartan, who is both the Conservative critic for the bill in the Senate and the chair of the committee that reviewed it, is a regular in “Kill Bill C-11” videos posted by the Leader of the Opposition on social media.

Ironically, those videos, I might add, would not be impacted whatsoever by this bill, no matter what he claims. The best word to describe the Senate committee's study of Bill C-11 is “robust”.

Starting in June 2022, the committee spent over six months reviewing the subject matter of Bill C-11, hearing from 138 witnesses over 40 meetings. The members did not mishear me. I said 40 meetings, dedicated to considering the subject of this very important bill. Senators spent nine of those meetings in clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-11, including three-hour meetings, making it the longest clause-by-clause consideration in Senate history.

The bill emerged with amendments from all recognized parties and groups in the Senate, of which we are pleased to support close to 80%.

Here we are, over a year later, hearing the Conservatives urging us to send the bill back to committee, after over 100 hours of committee study, over 200 witnesses and dozens of written briefs, including from Telelatino in Toronto. I know that the folks at Telelatino produce great ethnocultural broadcasting, and they are in support of this wonderful bill.

This does not even include the countless hours of debate and study of the previous version of the bill that contributed to the online streaming act. As it stands, this bill has amendments from all recognized parties and groups in both houses of Parliament. It has truly been a group effort, and the future of Canada's broadcasting system is better for it.

The Conservatives are now bringing up Quebec. It is great they are finally paying attention, but they must have missed the two unanimous motions passed by the National Assembly to support the Broadcasting Act and the entire Quebec cultural industry pushing for the bill's swift passage.

The reality is throughout this process there have been endless opportunities for Conservatives to work collaboratively to defend Canadian artists and creators. Every time, they have chosen to side with foreign tech giants to maintain the status quo.

On this side of the House, we believe in doing more for Canadian culture, not less. We know in the prior Conservative administration how much less its members did for Canadian artists and culture and how they cut spending on Canadian culture, artists and content creators. We will not do that and we have not done that. We will continue to support the Canadian arts sector, culture sector and content creators.

I know this has been brought up many times throughout the debate, but there is an urgent need for this legislation. It cannot be overstated. The integrity of Canada's arts and culture system is at risk. We owe it to the tens of thousands of Canadians working in the arts and culture sector across the country. We have done the work as parliamentarians and now it is time to pass Bill C-11.

Many of us watch streaming services that provide content over what are called non-traditional methods. My wife and I really enjoy Ted Lasso, and the third season of Ted Lasso is coming out on March 15. We very much enjoy it. It is very well written. It comes across on I believe Apple TV+ and we pay a monthly fee for that. That content provider would now be subject to the Broadcasting Act, and it should be, much like Canadian broadcasters have been subject to the Broadcasting Act for decades.

Finally, to end off, the Broadcasting Act has not been revised since 1991. I wish to applaud all members of both the House and the Senate on those committees who have worked so judiciously, even when their opinions did not converge, to be unified and even when they disagreed vehemently and passionately from potentially different ideological bents on how they view the Broadcasting Act and how they view the CRTC. However, they did the work Canadians sent them here to do, and particularly in the House of Commons. They did the work their constituents elected them to do judiciously and diligently to bring forth the best possible legislation with regard to the sector we are talking to, which is broadcasting and updating the Broadcasting Act after three decades, or since 1991.

I look forward to questions and comments from my colleagues and I hope everyone is having a wonderful and productive day and week.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is great to be here this afternoon, and I hope all of my colleagues are having a productive day.

I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-11, the online streaming act. This important piece of legislation will level the playing field by requiring online streaming services to support Canadian artists and culture, just as Canadian broadcasters have been doing for decades.

As we have all heard many times, the last time the Broadcasting Act was updated was over 30 years ago, in 1991, when yours truly just finished high school, I believe. Since then, the way content is broadcast to audiences has changed dramatically, but our system is stuck in the 20th century and needs to be updated. After over a year of thorough study in both Houses of Parliament, the finish line, yes, is in sight.

Conservatives have recently started claiming that parts of this bill have not yet received the appropriate scrutiny by parliamentarians. I beg to differ.

With all due respect, I fail to understand how they can genuinely suggest that this bill has not been studied enough. At every step of the process, they have attempted to delay and distract from the issue at hand, which is bringing the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century to support Canadian artists and creators.

To show just how much this bill has been studied, let us take a trip down memory lane. On February 2, 2022, Bill C-11 was tabled in the House of Commons. Second reading debate started on February 16, 2022. Over the course of five days of debate, we heard over 15 hours of speeches from 48 members of Parliament in all recognized parties, including 29 Conservatives.

Conservatives then claimed that they did not have enough time to debate but then moved concurrence motions that blocked their own ability to speak and debate on the bill. They did this during the previous iteration of the bill in the last Parliament and on Bill C-11 in this Parliament, when they cut three hours of debate time and prevented their own members from having the opportunity to speak. I note the irony. Ultimately, these obstructionist tactics have only hurt the Canadian artists and creators that the online streaming act, Bill C-11, seeks to support.

Fortunately, Bill C-11, finally—

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would just like to put this to the member across the floor. The former Bill C-10, in its original version, included an exemption for programs that users upload onto their social media or, as it was called, user-generated content. The Liberals voted to take that out of their own bill in committee, which really builds confidence in Canadians, and resisted Conservative attempts to reintroduce it. They then put it back into Bill C-11, but then put in an exemption to the exemption that basically makes it meaningless. If Canadians are supposed to trust the government and believe what it is saying, this flies in the face of that.

Will the Liberals put that amendment back in and make it very clear to Canadians?

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

Madam Speaker, I think my point was made though. The member for St. Albert—Edmonton is making a lot of content today with the very unfortunate comments he made in that committee meeting, if anybody is looking for content.

I would like to say that I am just the warm-up act today for the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge, who will be speaking after me. Please applaud the member because he deserves it.

I want to read a quote from Gord Sinclair, a member of The Tragically Hip, who appeared before the committee when it was studying this bill. He said:

Gord Downie wrote in our song Morning Moon that if “something's too cheap, somebody's paying something”. Every song ever recorded can now be streamed for less than $10 a month. The somebodies in this case will be the future you and me when we realize that we've undervalued the contribution of Canadian musicians and songwriters.

He went on to say, “Streaming is here to stay, but the platforms...must contribute to the long-term health of the arts”.

I bring that up because I am obviously very proud to come from and represent my riding. Part of my riding is a municipality that The Tragically Hip calls home. If we dive a little deeper into Mr. Sinclair's testimony in committee, the band attributes its entire success and becoming so renowned in Canada to having the proper tools in place to make sure that its content got exposure.

Why is that important? It is important because we are a country of rich cultural diversity that has a lot to offer in the arts. However, the concern is that we have another market right over the border, literally fewer than 10 kilometres from my riding, where the market is 10 times the size. It would be very easy for the Canadian market to be consumed into the American market.

When we think about it, it has 10 times the population and effectively 10 times the number of artists. To compete against that is very difficult, regardless of the incredible contributions that Canadians give to the arts. That is why, in the 1970s, legislators said that we needed to preserve the culture and the unique identity that comes from having Canadian artists able to perform and create.

I have been listening to this debate since it started yesterday. I heard the member for Lethbridge tell this story about how back in the day, all an artist needed to do was bundle together their best hits, put them on a tape, bring the tape to a radio station, beg them to play it and hope to get on the air. The successful ones would make it, and the others would not.

She left out a very important point, which is that the radio stations were required to play a certain amount of Canadian content. The number has changed, it is not relevant, but at the time, 30% of the content had to be Canadian.

Yes, those Canadian artists had to compete against every other emerging artist, collaborator and songwriter, but they only had to compete within the realm of that 30% against the other Canadians. They did not have to compete with a market 10 times our size right over the border.

I get the Conservatives' angle on this. They like to take the free market approach and say everything is about the free market. I get it. That is where they come from on this. What they need to do is come to terms with the fact that they just do not want to support Canadian content. They think that Canadian content needs to go up against the market 10 times our size to the south and just let the chips fall where they may. I think the majority of Canadians disagree with that position.

We have seen the success of The Tragically Hip, which I will always use as my reference. It was able to get into the Canadian market and become known as one of Canada's best bands as a result of having that incredible opportunity to gain exposure when it would have been difficult otherwise. Therefore, I cannot help but wonder why the Conservatives are doing this. Why are they so insistent?

It became quite obvious a couple of days ago, when I saw a fundraising email sent out by the Conservatives. This contained a screenshot of one of my tweets and basically said that I was agreeing with a reporter's assessment of Bill C-11. They know they can raise money off this. That is what this comes down to: politics as usual. I have said this many times in the House because it is true. All they are interested in is the politics around it.

The email talked about censorship and the right to freedom of expression. It talked about how they know that we are not telling the truth and asked Canadians to help kill the bill, with a big “Donate Now” button underneath. That is what this is about for the Conservatives. That is it.

We can recall when the first version of this legislation came about, when in all honesty, the Conservatives were able to get a lot more attention on the issue than they are now. I think Canadians have now seen through them. However, they were not as interested in this until they were able to make it a sensational issue like they are now and like they did then. I do not think they are really that successful at doing it now because the vast majority of Canadians realize that Bill C-11 is not about censorship, infringing on rights or trying to do anything malicious. Rather, it is about ensuring that Canadian content continues to get exposure and that Canadian content creators have the opportunity for their material to be shared.

If members do not agree with that or think that government should play a role in it, it is a legitimate policy and a legitimate position to take. That is at least taking a position. They would at least be coming in here and saying that they do not believe in CanCon, they do not think it is relevant or necessary anymore and artists should fend for themselves. If that is the position of the Conservatives, which it looks like it is from the writing on the wall, then they just need to come clean about it and say that. They should not dress it up with these words about censorship and freedom of expression being infringed upon. That is absolutely ludicrous.

The member for Lethbridge, although quoting someone else, said that with Canada going down this road, it likens us to North Korea. Can members imagine that? That is talking to one's fringe base. What Canadian witnessing that would actually sit there and think that Canada is going to be like North Korea if this passes? Nobody would ever actually think that, except—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, about two years ago, the Conservative member for Lethbridge said that Bill C-11 was just a way to protect old, out-of-date Quebec artists that nobody cares about anymore. My riding boasts our national poet, Gilles Vigneault, an extraordinary man.

I have two questions for my colleague.

Does he, too, feel that our national poet is an old, outdated artist?

He has also been giving shout-outs to videos of dishwashers, washer, dryers and refrigerators. Is that his definition of quality Canadian content that makes him proud of his culture?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to be here today.

Listening to the comments from the other side of the aisle, one would think that the world is falling down or something to that effect. In fact, Bill C-11 is very prudent. It is a good step and a very big first step in modernizing the Broadcasting Act, which has not been modernized since 1991.

In fact, it would do nothing to discourage creation or streaming for Canadians who wish to produce content. It would encourage more Canadians to produce Canadian content. Who would not be in favour of such a goal, to have more Canadian content seen, listened to and read by Canadians from coast to coast to coast? This is a bill that has been debated on both sides, in the Senate and here, for hours upon hours and with amendments brought forward. Would the hon. member not agree that this is the best way to produce legislation, when we have both Houses working, witnesses coming forward and the committee doing the work that Canadians sent those MPs here to do?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are here today talking about the Liberals' online censorship bill, Bill C-11. That is what this is. It is an attempt by government to meddle in the leisure time and the cultural and social education that Canadians have. Sometimes, under the Liberals' proposal, Canadians would have to pay for it. Canadians will subscribe to services and pay for their own Internet service and the Liberals would decide what they should be watching and what they should not be watching.

It is interesting, but not surprising after eight years of the Liberal government, that it is on full display now for Canadians that it is a government that wants to control what Canadians see and control what Canadians think.

This is a theme we have seen over the last eight years with a Prime Minister who is always looking to silence his critics and who is also looking to discredit those individuals who have the reputation, who are able to hold him to account. A few obvious examples comes to mind. We will first talk about media.

The Prime Minister has said on more than one occasion that stories that have appeared in mainstream media like The Globe and Mail are false, that they are fake news or misinformation. Then it comes to light, as was the case in the SNC-Lavalin scandal where the Prime Minister was found to have used his position to interfere in the criminal prosecution of his friends, that the story in The Globe and Mail was correct.

We must not let that get in the way of a good cover-up from the government. It wants to be able to control the narrative, even when there are members of the King's Privy Council who push back against the government and push back against the Prime Minister. Instead of taking that advice, that sober second thought, what did the Prime Minister do? In the case of Canada's first female indigenous attorney general, Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, when she spoke truth to power to the Prime Minister, he fired her. He kicked her out of cabinet. When another eminent Canadian, a minister of the Queen's Privy Council, Dr. Jane Philpott, spoke out on that issue, he kicked her out of cabinet too.

Canadians are best served when they get truth and honesty, and not when we have a government that is looking to exert control. That is the pattern we have seen with the government. When we are hearing from Canadians and from experts that this would affect what Canadians are able to watch and see online, we should take notice. It should give the government pause, but instead, what is it doing? It is dismissing its critics and saying it is misinformation. We have seen that pattern before.

When the Senate, Canada's chamber of sober second thought, brought forward amendments to protect some of the areas where we have heard the greatest concerns from Canadians with respect to user-generated content, the government dismissed those amendments out of hand. It said it was absolutely not going to do that, but not to worry as the bill does not affect user-generated content.

Why would the government defeat those amendments at committee and why would it refuse those amendments from the Senate? It is because, make no mistake, Bill C-11 would regulate and censor what people see. It would make the government, the Prime Minister through his Minister of Canadian Heritage and through the CRTC that reports to him, the regulator of what we can see online.

It would also censor what one can say. When I say the bill would censor, I mean the government and the Prime Minister, through his Minister of Canadian Heritage and through the CRTC. They would make sure that homegrown talent would not be able to rise to the top based on its quality.

We have seen countless examples where, against the odds, against media giants and production company giants around the world, not the least of which is the United States, Canadian content has flourished. Digital content of course is at the heart of what a lot of Canadians see and do online. The marketplace of ideas should be a meritocracy, but the government is afraid of that. The Liberals are afraid of that. They want to decide who the winners are and who the losers are, when it should be the consumers. It should be Canadians who get to decide.

We hear a lot about favourite programs that people grew up watching or listening to. No one made them watch it because it was Canadian. If it was quality, Canadians consumed it. Now that there is more content, there are more opportunities for Canadian content to flourish, and that is exactly what is happening.

We have a content creator in my riding, and I am not confused. It is McMullan Appliance and Mattress. Corey McMullan from McMullan Appliance and Mattress, which on a county road in my community, is a viral Internet sensation. He is not making cat videos. He is not doing any crazy stunts. He is talking about fridges, washers, dryers and stoves.

His honesty and his authenticity has caused him to gain global celebrity, and with that has come revenue for his business. He is able to sell products online. People buy them from him online because he talks about it. He is not advertising and he is not paying for advertising, but the innovation, the entertainment value and the character of this gentleman have propelled him to such fame and credibility that folks in my community in southeastern Ontario will take their pickup trucks from North Bay and drive all those hours to my community to buy an appliance from Corey because they trust him.

This type of obviously Canadian content is now going to be subjected to a test by the government, where it will decide if it is Canadian enough. We have heard other speakers talk about productions that are made in Canada, written by Canadians, produced by Canadians and have Canadians who star in them, but they do not meet the standard for Canadian content.

If the Liberal government is not prepared to exempt user-generated content, we need to ask why. Why does it refuse to recognize Canadians should have the freedom to say, to think and to watch whatever they want? I believe in my community and I believe in Canadians. I believe in people like Corey McMullan rising to the top based on that sometimes indefinable quality that Canadians are recognized for around the world. That is why, for a very small population, so many actors of stage and screen, so many people who write and produce, and so many people who create are household names. It is not because the government made people like them. It is because Canadians are extraordinary and we are extraordinary because of our freedoms.

After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, Canadians have had enough control. That is why a Conservative government would repeal this bill and that is why we believe we need to kill Bill C-11.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if my translation device is broken or not, but am I hearing the Bloc Québécois supporting a bill that gives power for bureaucrats in Ottawa and the federal government to control what the people of Quebec see on a search engine result? I could have bet on a lot of things, but I never would have bet that the Bloc Québécois would be supporting Bill C-11, especially when the provincial government and numerous groups in that province have said this should not be standardized and centralized by the federal government. Shame on the Bloc Québécois for doing what it is doing.

The Bloc Québécois was wrong on Bill C-5. Bloc members voted for it and now they are regretting it. They are going to vote for Bill C-11, and I will bet $10 that in about a year, they will be regretting that too.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague spends a lot of time in the House. I would encourage him to read clause 7 of this piece of legislation. That is the exact reason why Conservatives have major concerns and are calling out this bill as flawed.

Liberals have had so many opportunities in the House of Commons, in the Senate and in committee, through amendments, to do this, but the reality of the situation is true. They are punting the power to the CRTC behind closed doors, to create algorithms on what goes up in searches and what goes down. That is control. That is censoring something.

If it is organic and what people want to watch, and the Liberals do not like it, they could put a formula in and make the company have it go down. If they have these big lobbyists who advocate to tweak that formula, all of a sudden search results can go up. It was not a problem until Bill C-11 came along and the government's intent. It has had every opportunity to clarify it, and it refuses.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, first and foremost, the member referred to the Liberals and the NDP. It is the Liberal members of the House of Commons, the Bloc members of the House of Commons, the NDP members and the Green Party members. It is only the Conservative Party that is spreading the misinformation that is out there.

The member stood in his place and tried to give a false impression, saying that the government is trying to control what Canadians are watching. In no way whatsoever can the member cite anything within this legislation that would prevent a Canadian from watching whatever he or she wants to watch on the Internet. There is nothing there, so we would think that would stop.

The motivating factor for the Conservative Party on Bill C-11 is purely finances, feeding a frenzy of individuals it wants support from. I say “shame on the Conservative Party” for not protecting cultural industries and the arts in Canada.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, normally, there would not be much debate in the House when we talk about making updates to the Broadcasting Act, which came into effect in 1991. At face value, most Canadians would say that a lot has changed since then. A little thing called the Internet came along, and most would agree.

I have talked about this topic in the House before and I am pretty proud of myself. I am pretty sure that I was the first MP in Canadian history to put Boyz II Men in the parliamentary record, when talking about the legislation before us, because times have changed a little bit. Back in 1991, Boyz II Men, Bryan Adams, MC Hammer and Monty Python were on the charts. I wanted to put that in the record again, and I am glad I have done that.

The goals of the Broadcasting Act have been reasonable: respecting official languages and providing an avenue for Canadian content in the traditional media at the time of TV and radio. Here is the thing I have said in the House, sadly, on many issues over and over again: Only the NDP and the Liberals, working together, can take something so mundane and so innocuous and make a disaster out of it when it comes to policy.

Here is how I know that. Outside of the Ottawa bubble, there are not too many Canadians who know what Bill C-4 or Bill S-252 or Bill C-39 is when it comes to government legislation. We know that the government is in trouble and we know it is on the wrong side of public opinion when a bill title becomes famous. In the last couple of weeks or couple of months, Bill C-21 has become synonymous with an attack on rural Canadians, indigenous communities and hunters, when the government tried to ban commonly used hunting rifles. Here we are now, with the famous term “C-11”, known by millions of Canadians across the country today as the most blatant attempt by the Liberals and the NDP, and bureaucrats in Ottawa, to have control over what Canadians see and what they search on the Internet.

If that was not convincing enough, Bill C-11 being a household name to millions of Canadians, we know we are in trouble when Conservatives and Margaret Atwood are on the same page, pushing back against the government. She is a wonderful Canadian, one of the most regarded and successful Canadian artists and content creators this country has ever seen. Canadians do not have to take my word for it or believe this side of the bench if they do not want to. Canadians will take Margaret Atwood's word on Canadian culture and content any day of the week over that of the Liberals and the NDP.

I want to give members the dictionary version of what she said. She said some pretty harsh things, calling out the government on Bill C-11. When we break it down and use the dictionary to further define what she is calling out the government for, it is creating a centralized and dictator-like system of control that requires complete subservience to the state.

This is bad legislation. They know it. It has been ping-ponged back and forth between the House of Commons and the Senate. It is back in the House of Commons, and it is going to go back to the Senate. Every time there is a committee hearing, every time there are more witnesses testifying, there are more questions than answers about what the government is doing here with this bill. From consumer groups to legal experts to content creators, many, many groups from every walk of life and every angle on this topic are calling out the government's direction and how bad and how flawed the bill is.

I am proud to stand as a Conservative to say that when we form government, we will repeal Bill C-11. We will kill Bill C-11, as simple as that.

Let us get into the weeds and talk about some of these pieces bit by bit. One of the things we hear the Liberals and the NDP say is that we need to support Canadian content more.

When I think about that, I pull up a list and say, sure, let us support Canadian content, things like Deadpool. It was filmed in Vancouver, starring Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, with a screenplay by Canadian Paul Wernick, based on a Canadian comic book character.

We have Canadian Bacon. Who could forget that? There is John Candy, a legendary Canadian actor, in a story involving Canada.

I talked about Margaret Atwood. We have The Handmaid's Tale, based on her book. When we look at the production, the series was filmed in Mississauga, Toronto, Brantford, Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Cambridge.

I think of Canadian content like All or Nothing, a series on the Toronto Maple Leafs. It is a five-part series that followed the Leafs for months during the 2020-21 season. It is narrated by a Canadian, Will Arnett. It used Canadian crews.

Is this all Canadian content? No, every one of those examples I just cited does not meet the definition and criteria for Canadian content in the definitions that we have.

Bill C-11 is currently 56 pages long, and any Canadian can go online and look at it. They can hit Ctrl+F and search. Nowhere in there does it talk about modernizing and cleaning up that definition. I will argue that this is not about Canadian content, but about something else.

Every time, we put an amendment forward to clarify. If the government wants to debunk a myth and say that what we are saying is not the case, it can clarify it and put in amendments to say what it is not, to exclude certain things. The government refused to do so. It says, “Don't worry. We are not going to determine that. It's going to be the CRTC.”

This brings me to my next point, about another fundamentally flawed part of the legislation. The CRTC is an Ottawa-based acronym. Federal acronyms go left, right and centre around here. It is an agency in Ottawa, and on the Quebec side as well, in the national capital region, full of bureaucrats who, behind closed doors, would not only set the rules for what is Canadian content, but also, through the bill, be directed to start controlling the search results we have on the Internet.

Members heard that right: “behind closed doors”. We have asked repeatedly to put some sunshine, sunlight and transparency on those protocols. There are no criteria in the bill. There is no public formula. There are no clarifications or guardrails on what those protocols are, so for Canadians, when it comes to what they search and what they want to see, whether it is searching on Google, Crave, YouTube or any other platform, as a Canadian here and now, the government will control what goes up in search results and what goes down, and we would not be able to find out the algorithms and calculations it uses, because of CRTC bureaucrats doing it behind closed doors. They never have to share their reasoning, or what I call “showing their homework”. That speaks volumes.

The Prime Minister and the NDP will say not to worry because the CRTC is an arm's-length agency of the federal government. “It is independent,” they say. Let us just debunk that right now. The CRTC reports to the Liberal Minister of Canadian Heritage. Its chair and the commissioners who are working there and leading that organization are appointed directly by the Prime Minister and the Liberal cabinet.

Nobody believes it is arm's-length, and nobody believes the legislation is about Canadian artists and everyday Canadians, because if it were the right thing to do and the popular thing to do, and if there were no problems about it, the government would have made that whole process a lot more public, rather than punting it over behind closed doors.

The bill is not about sunlight. It is not about Canadian artists and content creators. I say the bill is a Trojan horse, because there are some very big cheerleaders for it. The bureaucracy at the CRTC would be exploding in size. The size of the Internet is massive. The amount of content uploaded every single day is huge. It is going to take an administrative swarm of new bureaucrats to go through, and the people who are going to hit the jackpot, the people who are doing cartwheels in downtown Ottawa, are the lobbyists who would be hired by all these groups, associations and artists to try to lobby to get them, when the CRTC goes behind closed doors, to take what is going on.

As I share my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, we will continue the commentary on this and how it works. If someone is a budding content creator in north Winnipeg, a Franco-Ontarian or an indigenous artist in northern Canada, in Nunavut, they can currently upload, and may the best content win. The cream of the crop rises. Canadians will determine what they like and what they want to watch, and that should be the most popular search result. That is the most organic way possible. Trust me, the best way is to let Canadians do their own work and let the organic way go. Good videos go to the top. We have thousands of artists who have made a living by creating content and continue to do so. We do not need to fix what is not broken.

I will wrap up by saying that Bill C-11 is bad. It is online censorship. Ottawa telling 37 million Canadians what they should watch and see is wrong. The Liberals and the NDP have had years to get this right, and now they are just being stubborn.

We oppose this bill now, and as a Conservative government, we would kill Bill C-11.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her passionate speech.

She began by talking about art. Art certainly offers a certain perspective on nature. Something becomes art when the viewer decides that it is artistic. An author once said that to read a book is to write another. The artistic aspect certainly lies in someone viewing it more than its distribution. We know that everything in the art world is what ultimately constitutes culture.

I want to ask my colleague what impact Bill C-11 will have on culture.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House and represent Peterborough—Kawartha.

I will start by saying that art is subjective. Art is in the eye of the beholder. What may be amazing to me and what may be amazing to members is completely subjective. How in the world could we ever allow bureaucracy to dictate what is art? That is a question I would ask as we look into Bill C-11.

There is nothing more inclusive than the Internet. It does not matter where we live or what we look like, there is a place for us online, for now, but Bill C-11 jeopardizes this freedom. It jeopardizes this free market.

I can remember walking into a room with online content creators, mom bloggers who had created a community that literally saved the lives of women who were suffering with postpartum, who were suicidal, who were struggling with their mental health. These women were extreme introverts, meaning they otherwise would not have been able to create this medium if there were not able to flip open their computers and write something online that connected them to hundreds, thousands and millions of people, built a community and allowed their voices to be heard.

If we go to the Canadian government website, it states this about competition: “Competition pushes individuals, firms and markets to make the best use of their resources, and to think outside the box to develop new ways of doing business and winning customers. This not only drives productivity up, it also improves our own standard of living.”

Bill C-11 would go after a competitive market that needs zero government interference. Online content creators are making their own destiny. They are building communities. They are raising money for not-for-profits and charities. They are connecting people all over the world. It is a major concern when the government wants to interfere, dictate and control what it thinks people at home should be watching.

Artistry and creation are not a choice. If we ask artists, they will tell us they did not choose it; it chose them. They have to create. It is what fuels them. It is simply who they are.

What someone values as art or great content is completely independent of the consumer. I may love Cat and Nat, two Toronto-based “mompreneurs” who built an empire by creating an online space for moms. They were, for the record, turned away by countless broadcast agencies and had the door slammed in their face multiple times, but because of the free market of the Internet, they were able to build an empire and connect millions of moms. They are from Toronto, Canadian content creators.

What about “Train with Joan”, made by the 70-year-old Cobourg-based woman who transformed her life using physical fitness and now reaches millions of people online? She is the inspiration so many of us need to know that it is never too late to change our mind and body. Would she have been given an opportunity on a broadcast station? Would she have been given the same opportunity that the Internet allowed her to reach the people she reached?

It is called choice. It is called the freedom to find and choose what to watch. Why in the world would we ever want the government to decide what is worthy of being seen and what is not? This is what Bill C-11 would do. It would give the Liberals the control to decide what we see and watch online.

In the online world, we often hear of a term called “organic reach”. This is the ultimate goal for a content creator. A creator puts content online and the free market decides if it is worthy of liking, sharing and commenting. We have already seen organic reach being meddled with by Facebook and other platforms because of paid reach tactics, a play-to-play system, which has caused problems, so why in the world would government want to meddle even further with this system? Why in the world do we want the government to decide what we watch and see?

Jim Morrison said that those who control the media, control the mind. I really want people to think about what this legislation is and why it is being tabled. Famed Canadian author, Margaret Atwood said it best, saying that this is not a problem that needs fixing. She said, “It is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to create.”

The approach of how this bill has been managed is awful and simply undemocratic. In the House, for those who do not know, a bill must be approved at all three readings before it is sent to the Senate to be approved and given royal assent. The Senate should be a safeguard for Canadians when major concerns are raised. There were 26 amendments put forth by the Senate. This is a very high number and speaks volumes to the fact that this bill should be thrown out.

What is the point of the Senate and expert testimony if the Liberals refuse to listen? How is this supposed to build trust with Canadians when people are silenced? When people are silenced, that is censorship, and it is our job as elected officials to bring balance to this room, to find the common ground, to listen to both sides.

I will tell the Liberals, as somebody who has a background in broadcasting, the Broadcasting Act one hundred per cent needs to be updated, but this bill is trying to regulate a free market space of the Internet, and there is no place for the government to do that.

Simon Wiesenthal, a famous Nazi hunter and fighter for human rights, said, “Freedom is not a gift from heaven. One must fight for it every day.” The Tour for Humanity bus was here on Parliament Hill yesterday. I had the opportunity to tour it.

Censorship does not work. History has shown us this over and over again. The Liberals have refused to make the policy direction to the CRTC on how the legislation would be implemented public until after the bill is passed. Let us think about that for a second. The Liberals have refused to make the policy direction to the CRTC on how the legislation would be implemented public until after the bill is passed.

If the Liberals main intention is to promote Canadian content, why in the world would they ask us to sign first and ask questions later. This is so sketchy. Why not just tell Canadians now? What are they hiding? Why are they not being transparent?

Critics are furious, and so they should be, because the heritage minister announced a complete rejection of the senators' work that excluded user content from CRTC regulation after he said they would not. Somewhere right now there is a quirky, talented, gifted content creator who has not discovered that they fit somewhere. They have been told no. Maybe they have not found their community. Maybe they have not found their tribe. However, they hit the upload button, and all of a sudden, their world changes and so does that community's world.

There is much that is great about the Internet. For better or worse, it is here. I have to be honest, I am absolutely shocked that the NDP does not see the value of independent, free market content creators who are doing so much good for social justice and all the things they fight for in the House. It is shocking to me that we are having this fight when we are here to elevate voices of Canadians, to give them the freedom to use their voice for good. It makes no sense to me why we are fighting this bill.

I came here with an open mind, with optimism that we are here to elevate voices. This bill is censorship. It makes no sense. I appreciate and agree a hundred per cent that the Broadcasting Act needs to be updated, but this bill is not achieving that. Its intent is to control online content.

I will end with this: Enough is enough. Stop with the controlling legislation, and please, kill Bill C-11.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendments made by the Senate on Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, and of the amendment.

Canadian Heritage

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague was saying, we are now in the home stretch of the passage of Bill C‑11.

I would like to remind members that Bill C‑11 seeks to ensure that Quebec culture and Quebec and Canadian artists have their place and can succeed in the new digital world.

The Government of Quebec shared its demands concerning Bill C‑11. It is asking that Quebec have a say in CRTC decisions that impact Quebec culture and that the Quebec act respecting the status of artists be respected.

How will the minister respond to Quebec's demands?