By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Friday morning, the C-10 drama was transported to the floor of the House of Commons as the Liberal government has had enough of the bill’s delay and so had announced it would introduce a motion to limit the time allocated to debating the new legislation meant to update the Broadcasting Act.
Normally, this measure is applied to House of Commons work only, but it can be applied to Committee work. However, it is exceedingly rare to use it to limit the time of committee work.
So, Mona Fortier, Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance, at 10 a.m. sharp rose and announced that “not more than five further hours shall be allotted to the consideration of the committee stage of the bill; and that, at the expiry of the time provided in this order, any proceedings before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on the said bill shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.”
As one can expect when a measure to limit the debate is presented, it creates some commotion, and that’s exactly what happened on Friday morning when numerous Conservatives MPs rose on Points of Order where they questioned the validity of such a measure. Rachel Harder, the conservative MP from Lethbridge and one of the most vocal opponents of the bill in committee, told the House applying that measure to committees was only used three times in the last 50 years, the last of which during the Chrétien days to thwart stalling tactics from the Bloc Québécois.
This is ironic, because it appears that the Bloc would support such a motion allowing C-10 to pass. We can point to the fact that the Leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet had said on the show Tout le monde en parle on May 16 he would support a motion to introduce time allocation.
It apparently took two weeks for the Liberals to dust off their rule book and find this trick to attempt to ensure passage of the bill. That, and the fact the person in the Speaker’s chair was the assistant Deputy Speaker, to us shows some level of improvisation and lack of commitment.
So on Friday, the motion was introduced, to be followed by 30 minutes of questions. It did not go smoothly. Despite the Assistant Deputy Speaker, Alexandra Mendès, confirmation that the motion was legitimate, members rose constantly to raise points of order. We then heard both the Green Party and the NDP opposed the motion but the Assistant Deputy Speaker quickly lost control of the situation and at some point, with some Conservative members attending virtually, were shouting “point of order” and arguing point while the minister was trying to explain the reasons of such a motion. Normally, a member who has not been recognized by the Speaker puts themselves on “mute”.
Finally, at 11 a.m., with the Speaker at her wits’ end, it was agreed to resume the normal order of business without the motion having been debated the full 30 minutes. So, the spectacle will resume on Monday at noon.
Heritage Minister Guilbeault noted the committee, in its first four meetings, dealt with 79 amendments and then, during the next 11 meetings, “is when the Conservative Party started systematically obstructing the work of the committee, only seven amendments were studied or voted on. At this rate, it would likely take more than six months of committee meetings before the committee is able to bring this bill back to the House,” said Fortier during the debate. Some 40 more amendments are still on the roster, and the session for Committees ends on June 10, according to the House of Commons Sitting Calendar.
Of note, both the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) and the Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video, (which translates as “Québec Association for the Recording, Concert and Video Industries”) issued news release praising the efforts of the government to adopt the bill and blamed the Conservatives for delay. “Unfortunately, the Conservatives’ filibuster did not allow MPs to vote today on this motion,” the CDCE release stated. “It is however urgent to act.”
Minister of Canadian Heritage, Steven Guilbeault, said Friday in a press release: “Throughout the day, we have witnessed more obstruction by the Conservative Party of Canada, blocking the advancement of Bill C-10 and preventing elected members of Parliament from doing their job. We are now facing an additional week of undue delays in the study of this important legislation that will bring fairness to our broadcasting system, and hundreds of millions of dollars to the 170,000 artists and cultural workers in music and broadcasting. The Conservative Party of Canada’s recklessness is costing the creative sector yet another $16M this week alone. It is time Conservative MPs stop siding with US big tech against Canadian workers and creators and trading Canada’s cultural sovereignty for political games.”
The $16 million/week figure is simply this assumption, divided by 52.
The Heritage Committee Meeting on Friday met for two hours after these events and did not bring any surprises. A Green Party amendment was brought forward and to the frustration of Liberal MP Anthony Housefather at what was happening – where Conservative MPs would ask questions of the sponsor of the amendment, Green Party MP Paul Manly, who cannot even vote in the Committee or ask questions to Canadian Heritage staff – because everyone knew full well the Manly amendment would not even get a single vote and the discussion is clearly a tactic to delay the working of the Committee, Housefather said this is why time allocation is needed, which then created more controversy and further delayed the work at hand.
The meeting was adjourned without a vote on the Green Party’s amendment.
The next Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 7 at 11 a.m. and it is the last regular meeting planned at this time.
The Committee has the ability to schedule more meetings, but little time remains to do much more before the end of this Parliamentary session on June 23rd.
