Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, it is always a bit intimidating to follow my esteemed colleague from Drummond, who enlightens us with his knowledge. We know that he is very passionate about the issue before us today, and that came through in his remarks. I will begin my speech with an analogy to explain the subject we are discussing today. Imagine a charming little village somewhere with several public parks that are the envy of many of the villagers in the surrounding areas. People gather there to play with their children. One day, a business from a neighbouring town decides that there might be some money to be made. It decides to organize festivals and parties in the small neighbouring village’s parks and it charges people to attend. This all happens little by little. People buy tickets and come have a good time. The business then leaves and continues paying municipal taxes in the other town. One day, the municipal councillors in the small village with the beautiful parks realize that they are paying to maintain these parks, which are deteriorating faster because they are being used for festivals. They then decide to bring a resolution before the municipal council proposing that a portion of the cost of maintaining the parks be charged to the company using them to make money. That makes perfect sense, so the village passes the resolution. One day, the mayor of the village stands up and says that he has veto power and that he is going to use it. He wants to maintain a good relationship with the mayor of the neighbouring town, so to avoid offending him, he is repealing the levy that his municipal council had imposed on the company from the other town. However, since the parks do still need to be maintained, he decides to raise taxes in his own village and make the folks there pay for maintaining the parks. I believe that if this were ever to happen in any village, there would probably be a public outcry, and with good reason. That is precisely the situation we are facing today, because the government has decided to overturn an order of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, imposing levies on web giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ that are making money in our territory without supporting the local cultural community that is suffering as a result of their actions. It is important to protect content creators in Quebec and across Canada, but especially in Quebec, because Quebec culture is not just another commercial product. As we know, French is a minority language in North America, and our way of compensating for our demographic reality is by making our culture vibrant and resilient. It is important to support it. By supporting content creators, we allow them tell our stories, and their voices will fall silent if we do not support them. If their voices are silenced, we will be left hearing only the stories of others, rather than the stories that have shaped who we are. I sincerely believe that our government colleagues share our views on the importance of protecting culture. If we asked them whether it is important to protect culture, I am sure that they would say yes and that they would mean it. That is not the issue. The issue is that they do not have the courage to make decisions that will actually protect culture. I am not trying to impute motives today. I am simply saying that they do not have the political courage needed to stand up to the United States and the web giants. There are two parts to our request today. First, the government must give the cultural industry the $600 million that it was promised and that has still not been paid out. The government is saying that the money is coming, but the clock is ticking. Since the government decided to abolish the levy of 5%, which was supposed to increase to 15%, the cultural industry has been left without support. This is urgent. As I was saying, there are really two parts to our request because that $600 million is not a lasting solution. We cannot truly ensure the survival of the cultural industry with money taken from taxpayers’ pockets and doled out by a government that could change at any time. The tariff crisis has reminded us of how important stability and predictability are for all industries, and that is especially true for the cultural industry. Moving forward, what we are asking the government to do is to respect the CRTC’s decision. The CRTC is an organization with its own governance structure and its own expertise. The CRTC holds public hearings and consultations. Citizens, businesses, artists, associations and community groups all participate. The CRTC knows what it is doing when it makes a decision, and the decision to raise the levy from 5% to 15% was based on concrete evidence. Ultimately, what we are asking the government to do is to respect its own law, which gives the CRTC full discretion to require the web giants to pay whatever amount it deems appropriate. What we hear in response is the completely misleading argument that the money collected from the tech giants would ultimately end up being passed on to taxpayers. When the government takes $600 million to partially offset this loss of revenue, where does that money come from? The government does not have any money of its own. Its money comes from taxpayers’ pockets. Ultimately, it passes the bill on to taxpayers and, what is more, it also passes it on to people who may have chosen not to subscribe to Netflix, Amazon or Disney because they want to support Quebec’s cultural sector. It passes this bill on to them to avoid making the American giants pay. The Liberals argue that this cost would simply be passed on to consumers, but it is worth noting that the European experience has already shown that that is not the case. There are a number of other factors that can contribute to higher subscriber fees, but I would like to quote an expert from the École des médias at the Université du Québec à Montréal on the issue of affordability. Professor Catalina Briceño has stated that the affordability argument raised by the Minister of Culture is misleading too. A private company can always justify a price increase on a wide range of grounds, including rising costs, shareholder expectations for profitability, required investments or other considerations. Unless Ottawa has secured an explicit commitment from these companies, which we would certainly like to see, there is no guarantee that subscriber fees will not increase in the short or medium term. The Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions has also pointed out that the experience of other countries, particularly in Europe, contradicts that argument. In other words, the amount consumers pay to companies like Amazon could still increase, even in the absence of government-imposed levies. As I mentioned, predictability is also important. Systematic levies on web giants would bring in billions of dollars in revenue, a far cry from the $600 million that the government is promising. What is more, this revenue would be ongoing and would not be subject to any dubious political discussions, as could happen with a future change of government. Ultimately, all this will serve absolutely no purpose. My colleague from Drummond mentioned the government’s backtracking on the digital services tax. This was done on the sidelines of the G7 summit in the hope of encouraging the U.S. government to refrain from adding tariffs and perhaps to come back to the negotiating table. However, it has been over a year and a half, and we see where things stand today. Did it change anything? The answer is absolutely not. In fact, it is probably perceived as a sign of weakness that the U.S. government can focus on, and there has been one step backward after another. It was all for nothing. The key thing to remember is that, for the web giants, Quebec and Canada are just a market and a way to make money. However, for the cultural community, the people of Quebec and Canada are channels through which they keep their stories, their endeavours and their culture alive. This is a reflection of the soul of our cultural agents. If the government cannot muster the courage to correct the inequity between the web giants and our content creators, unfortunately, a part of what we are and who we are is doomed to disappear. That is why the discussion we are having today in the House is so important.
