Ottawa – POLITICS – Alain Rayes, Conservative Shadow Minister for Canadian Heritage, issued the following statement on Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act, and to make consequential amendments to other Acts currently being debated and amended in the House Committee on Canadian Heritage.
“Conservatives continue to oppose Liberal Bill C-10 and are voting against its main clauses in committee. While we support creating a level playing field between large foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters, C-10 is a bad piece of legislation giving too much power to the CRTC to regulate the internet and provides no clear guidelines for how that power will be used.
“Last Friday the Liberals went further than ever before by voting against the section of their own Bill that would have at least partially exempted individual users who upload videos to social media sites like YouTube and Facebook. They even promised to introduce a new amendment to regulate apps. This is another unacceptable attempt to target the freedoms of individual internet users by what University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist has described as, ‘the most anti-internet government in Canadian History.’
“While still intending to vote against the entire Bill, Conservative committee members offered a compromise amendment that would at least have protected individual users and smaller players in the market by exempting streaming services and social media users with less than 50 million dollars a year in Canadian advertising and/or subscription revenue from CRTC regulation under C-10. The Liberals rejected this as well. There could be no clearer proof that the Liberals are not just going after large foreign streaming services, they are also targeting ordinary Canadians.
“Conservatives will continue to stand up for the freedoms of Canadians who post their content online and oppose C-10 at every stage of the legislative process.”
