C-10 headed to HoC; Bloc adds 5 year review of act

A debate which Canadian Heritage Committee chair Scott Simms has jokingly said was “so exciting we could sell the rights to Netflix” has finally come to an end. The committee completed its clause-by-clause review of Bill C-10 Friday afternoon, days after the House of Commons passed a time allocation “gag” order earlier in the week. The committee spent its allocated five hours on Wednesday and Thursday debating three Conservative amendments that would have further protected social media users from potential regulation. After its time was up, the committee proceeded to vote on approximately 38 proposed amendments with any further debate. No sub-amendments were allowed under the house’s orders. The votes took place in the last few minutes of Thursday’s meeting and continued into Friday afternoon. In total, seven government amendments, and four from the Liberal party, managed to pass through. The Conservaitve, NDP and Bloc Québécois each got one proposed change to the bill passed. Because of the time constraints, Simms opted to only read the amendment numbers out loud rather than the content of each one, much to the dismay of Conservative MP Alain Rayes. “At this point no one knows what we're voting on. Could you please continue to at least read the amendment? I know there's no debate but it might be interesting, at least for our viewers, those listening to us, to know what we're voting yes or no about,” Rayes said. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa and an invited witness in the early part of the committee's review of the bill, also took to Twitter to express his disappointment in the lack of transparency. “Having spent hours watching Bill C-10 committee hearings, I’m out. MPs are voting on amendments that have never been made public, no experts to ask, no discussion, no debate. This is what Liberals, NDP and Bloc voted for. This is not how laws are supposed to be made in Canada,” he wrote on Thursday during an earlier session. Friday’s meeting ended at 3:30 p.m. The only parties to respond to The Wire Report’s request for the written version of the amendments that passed were the Bloc Québécois and NDP. The committee clerk also did not respond by deadline. The Bloc Québécois, with support of the one NDP member and four Conservatives, passed an amendment to have a “comprehensive review of the provisions and operations” of the Broadcasting Act, every five years which “must be undertaken by the committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons or of both”. The amendment further stipulated that whichever committee(s) does the review, must submit a report within one year, to both the Senate and the House of Commons, “that includes a statement of any changes that the committee recommends.” The NDP’s motion -- one of the few to be passed unanimously -- gave powers to the government to increase the administrative monetary penalty amounts set out in the act. “Bill C-10 provides that the government may make regulations under its new administrative and monetary penalty powers. Our amendment provides for the addition of a section that proposes that the Governor in Council may make regulations to increase the amount of penalties,” the MP NDP MP Heather McPherson’s office wrote to the Wire Report in an email. Currently the act reads that “a person who commits a violation is liable to an administrative monetary penalty, in the case of an individual, of not more than $25,000 for a first violation and of not more than $50,000 for each subsequent violation; or in any other case, of not more than $10 million for a first violation and of not more than $15 million for each subsequent violation.” -- Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

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C-10 headed to HoC; Bloc adds 5 year review of act

Broadcast | June 11, 2021

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