Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, Quebec is a nation, one to which this House sometimes pays lip service in order to downplay the legitimate aspirations of Quebeckers. Here in North America, we are a minority and are different: the village of the indomitable Gauls, francophones drowning in a sea of anglophones. We need to nurture and cherish that difference, despite the fact that the Meech Lake accord and the Charlottetown accord did not recognize even the concept of a distinct society. Culture, our culture, is one of the pillars that shape our identity. It is a force that brings us together to laugh, reflect, cry, create and work. The cultural industry is a treasure that showcases and presents who we are. Despite its claims to the contrary, culture is far from a priority for the current government, which is using concessions on this file in a futile attempt to curry favour with the U.S. administration to the benefit of the major U.S. digital platforms. By going ahead with abolishing levies for online streaming platforms, the government is causing experts such as Catalina Briceño to wonder whether it is putting our cultural ecosystem at risk of being dismantled. She warns that by exempting online streaming platforms from levies intended to support Canadian content, Ottawa is putting an entire industry at risk. As she explained, after the Prime Minister stressed the importance of being “at the table” when international decisions are being made, he now risks putting our cultural gains “on the menu”. He is doing so without the slightest hesitation. We cannot and must not accept that. That is why, on this opposition day, the Bloc Québécois is asking the government to make the interim payment of $600 million promised to the cultural sector for the current year and to uphold the CRTC’s decisions imposing levies on streaming services. There are some things in this life that are inevitable and money is one of them. To survive and thrive, the cultural sector also needs a real infusion of funding, stable financial support that will help it reach its full potential. Unfortunately, since money does not grow on trees, on May 21, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, issued a regulatory policy based on the Broadcasting Act that was intended to force online streaming companies to triple their investment in Canadian programming by allocating 15% of their revenue to the creation of local content, rather than 5%. This CRTC policy sparked a rather predictable outcry from the major American streaming platforms who consider local culture to be a thorn in their side. That caused a chain of three reactions. First the American companies refused to contribute. Second, the Conservative Party defended the United States and digital billionaires. Third, the Liberal government backed down, overturned the CRTC’s decision and basically apologized to the U.S. government for existing. The major American streaming platforms pitched a fit and Ottawa backed down. The president of the Union des artistes, Tania Kontoyanni, said it well: “It is devastating and utterly disheartening to let the tech giants intimidate us like this.” The irony is that, in society, we rightly condemn and denounce intimidation. However, the government bends over backward for the bully and ends up grovelling before it, using spurious arguments to justify its cowardice. The Liberal government has already backed down like this before. Indeed, on June 29, 2025, the Liberal government formally scrapped the digital services tax—the infamous Netflix tax—in order to advance trade negotiations with the United States. As we can see, the government’s main excuse at the time was not the cost of living crisis but the trade dispute, and it got us nowhere. More than a year later, the Liberal government’s trade negotiations with the United States have been about as productive as trying to grow a plastic decorative tree from Walmart. The last time it backed down, on June 3, 2026, the Liberal government offered a very different explanation. The official reason now invoked by Ottawa is that the fees paid to broadcasters and streaming platforms would be passed on to consumers in the form of price increases, and the government did not want that to happen. The government attempted to justify its decision by saying, “At a time when Canadians face cost-of-living pressure, now is not the time to make culture and entertainment more expensive.” Who could possibly be against virtue? We, too, want to make culture and entertainment accessible, but not by kowtowing to American cultural and financial hegemony. While he was at it, the Liberal Prime Minister might as well have said that Quebec culture is too expensive, and that American entertainment is so much better. It is all well and good to play the tough guy by claiming an “elbows up” political stance, but it is hard to land a blow when kneeling before one’s bully. Sadly, in the face of the appetites of American web giants, the Liberal Prime Minister has decided to put Quebec’s cultural industry on the menu and has relinquished Canada’s ability to defend its cultural sovereignty and to enact laws that apply to everyone equally and that legitimately aim to support Quebec culture and ensure the discoverability of Quebec cultural productions. To me, politics is a noble pursuit. The Liberal government must respect citizens and stop treating them like idiots. I find it insulting when I hear the government say that it abolished levies on American broadcasters and platforms to save taxpayers money. Let us think about this for a moment. At the same time as it backed down in the face of American pressure, in order to save face, the Liberal government announced a commitment to provide $600 million annually to Canada’s audio and audiovisual sectors. Those funds are intended to replace the revenues that would no longer be generated through levies on online streaming platforms to support Canadian culture. If I understand correctly, on behalf of the online streaming services, Ottawa will now pay the contributions that were supposed to support Canadian content creation. In other words, taxpayers will be expected to shoulder the burden instead of American tech. The Liberal government is therefore passing the web giants’ financial responsibility on to Canadians while claiming that it is doing so in the name of affordability. Let us be clear about the logic here. Canadians are being asked to pay so that Canadians do not have to pay. That is the rationale behind the Liberal decision not to require the digital giants to contribute. The only difference is that the government is doing it in a way that it hopes will go unnoticed. I find that level of hypocrisy deeply troubling. The reality is that the federal government does have a responsibility to support the cultural sector as it competes with online platforms, just as various industries have received assistance in coping with the tariff dispute. However, in the interest of fairness, that support should not be provided as a substitute for the fair contribution that should be made by American platforms. That is why the Bloc Québécois is calling on the government to immediately disburse the $600 million in emergency support that the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture promised to the cultural sector on June 3, 2026, and to uphold the CRTC’s decisions imposing levies on streaming services, as set out in the Broadcasting Act. The Bloc Québécois motion calls for two simple things: respect the authority of the CRTC and make the $600 million payment immediately.
