Resumption of clause-by-clause consideration met by stalling tactics
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – In a quickly scheduled evening meeting the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage resumed its review of the content of individual sections of Bill C-10, which aims to amend the Broadcasting Act.
Right away the committee went back to the discussion over whether the amended bill complies with the Charter of Rights.
The first hour featured an overlong speech (a classic filibuster) from Conservative MP Rachel Harder, about the importance of the Charter of Rights compliance for the bill being studied. She may have a point, but the stalling tactic angered some on the committee.
Then, a motion was tabled to put an end to the debate over an amendment from the Liberals over Ms. Harder’s request to get a new Charter Statement from the Minister of Justice. A vote was called with the Bloc Québecois’ MP voting with the government, allowing the motion to pass and setting aside Harder’s complaint.
This meant the debate over suspending the clause-by-clause examination was over even though it became evident that MPs, including the Bloc MP did not know what that they voted on, so the resumption of the examination happened, more or less, by accident.
Nonetheless, the clause-by-clause process resumed and Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin, Parliamentary Secretary of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, introduced a new amendment to the bill which would place limits on how the CRTC could regulate social media posts and platforms, but apparently also included some wording about forcing some sort of Canadian content discoverability on the likes of Facebook, TikTok and others.
Since we can’t see the text of the actual amendments being debated (the committee members all have the wording), it’s hard to make sense in the moment what, exactly, is being discussed.,
Meanwhile professor Michael Geist, a strong critic of the bill, contradicted Dabrusin on Twitter. This was mentioned live by Alain Rayes, the Conservative critic, which brought another round of comments.
After two hours of fruitless debates, no amendment was approved.
The next meeting is tomorrow (Friday) at 1 p.m.
