By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Four hours worth of meetings on Friday and Monday barely advanced the progress of Bill C-10 at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and as more time passes and so little is done, there is real risk now of the bill simply withering and dying.
The Friday meeting dealt with only two amendments, both of which were defeated, and three amendments that were ruled out of scope by the chair of the Committee, Liberal MP Scott Simms.
We thought the Committee might have returned to its normal business of clause-by-clause consideration and, oddly, most of the talking was done by the MPs supporting the bill, so we can’t rightly call it a filibuster.
However, all that changed when the Conservatives introduced an amendment that would reinstate Section 4.1, the one which excluded social media companies from regulation by the CRTC. The Government, on April 23 had introduced an amendment to remove that Section, which passed, and then which created an uproar, some arguing that by removing the social media exemption, the Government wanted to regulate user-generated content.
The government has tried to make the case that it only wants to regulate social media companies when they act like broadcasters – and to make sure the web giants add some element of Canadian content discoverability to their algorithms, but muddled messaging and worries of government and regulatory overreach has drowned out whatever the Liberals intend, or intended.
So, since then, the Conservatives have slowed down the work of the Committee.
By trying to reinstate Section 4.1, the whole two hours of the Monday meeting was spent debating the Conservative amendment that was finally defeated by the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. And we are now in full filibuster mode again.
The next meeting will be held on Friday, June 4.
Parliament breaks for the summer on June 23.
