Conservatives vying to stall government’s efforts to get quick passage of C-11 in committee
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – When committee members from all parties agreed last week to hold a minimum of 20 hours of meetings to hear witnesses, including the first five hours on autopilot (no motion would be entertained), it led us to believe everything would go smoothly, relatively speaking, in the Heritage Committee’s study of Bill C-11.
The government’s efforts, however, seem to have been thwarted by delaying tactics and outside events, such as votes in the House of Commons and main estimates studies by the committee.
The 20 hours of study on C-11 might have been compromised by two votes in the House on Monday and Tuesday, so more meetings were scheduled this week for Thursday.
Amendments
A committee business discussion alluded to the fact that the committee might have wanted to start the next phase of its study of C-11 – clause-by-clause consideration – next Monday, at which point it would adopt each section of the bill as well as study various amendments. The tabling of amendments was also discussed with a proposed deadline of Friday, June 3, at 4 p.m. There was no conclusion on that front.
Main estimates
On May 30, the deputy speaker of the House of Commons filed a motion to extend the deadline of the Heritage Committee study of main estimates beyond May 31. If that motion passes in the House, it could impose additional delays down the line since we believe the main estimates should be prioritized over legislation in the work of the committee as they provide for the funding of government operations.
Charter statement
Also yesterday, Conservative committee member, Rachel Thomas, introduced a motion to get the Justice and Heritage ministers and their staff, to appear in front of the committee to explain the discrepancy between the charter statement and a comment made by the chair of the CRTC last week regarding whether the Commission could regulate user-generated content.
There is little doubt that this motion could be adopted but debate on this can go on forever and stall the work of the committee. Thomas presented the motion at 5:18 p.m. and was able to keep the floor until 6:30 p.m. at which time the committee stopped to allow the interpreters to have at least half an hour until they resumed doing their work.
It was not clear whether the meeting was adjourned in a proper way, but the meeting ended at that point. We do not think Thomas will be getting a Christmas card from the chair of the committee, Liberal MP Hedy Fry, who chaired the meetings remotely (which is not ideal, we offer).
CRTC chair and staff
At 7 p.m., the meeting (originally scheduled for 4:30 p.m.) started with the CRTC basically being asked to respond to Thomas’ assertion. The CRTC asserted there was not a discrepancy between the charter statement and what the CRTC chair had said. That discussion basically ate up the whole hour.
Another meeting was held later with representatives from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Motion Picture Association-Canada, Netflix, Québecor and YouTube. That meeting ended at 9:20 p.m.
Senate
Meanwhile, in the other place (Senators, to highlight their independence, never refer to the House by its name), the Senate entertained a government motion to begin a pre-study of Bill C-11, in the Transportation and Communications Committee of the Senate, to accelerate the process of adopting the bill. The committee will also be allowed to meet while the Senate is adjourned. It is not clear how often committee could meet since there were mentions of a scarcity of rooms and personnel to hold such meetings. The motion was carried at 22:13 p.m.
We expect the Senate committee will adopt many amendments, which will also delay the adoption process.
Conclusion and C-18
This sounds eerily like the debate over Bill C-10, the previous iteration of Bill C-11, which died on the order paper when the election was called last year. At the time, there was a valiant attempt to push for its adoption but it failed.
We expect next week the House will adopt a time allocation motion to curtail the Conservative’s stalling tactics in the committee.
Meanwhile, even though the House adopted a time allocation motion for Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which has already been referred to the Heritage Committee, it might be caught in a bottleneck.
The next meeting for Bill C-11 will be held later today (Wednesday, June 1) with the Association québécoise de la production médiatique, BCE, Black Screen Office, the Canadian Media Producers Association, FRIENDS and Public Interest Advocacy Centre as witnesses. A committee business meeting will be held afterward, hopefully not in camera.
Tomorrow, the Minister of Canadian Heritage is finally scheduled to appear. Two other meetings have also been scheduled with witnesses to be determined bringing the total hours to 20 hours of meetings as agreed upon.
