Bill C-11

Online Streaming Act

An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Broadcasting Act to, among other things,
(a) add online undertakings — undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet — as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings;
(b) specify that the Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation;
(c) update the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in section 3 of the Act by, among other things, providing that the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) serve the needs and interests of all Canadians, including Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages, and
(ii) provide opportunities to Indigenous persons, programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and that is in Indigenous languages, and programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities;
(d) enhance the vitality of official language minority communities in Canada and foster the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society, including by supporting the production and broadcasting of original programs in both languages;
(e) specify that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) must regulate and supervise the Canadian broadcasting system in a manner that
(i) takes into account the different characteristics of English, French and Indigenous language broadcasting and the different conditions under which broadcasting undertakings that provide English, French or Indigenous language programming operate,
(ii) takes into account, among other things, the nature and diversity of the services provided by broadcasting undertakings,
(iii) ensures that any broadcasting undertaking that cannot make maximum or predominant use of Canadian creative and other human resources in the creation, production and presentation of programming contributes to those Canadian resources in an equitable manner,
(iv) promotes innovation and is readily adaptable toscientific and technological change,
(v) facilitates the provision to Canadians of Canadian programs in both official languages, including those created and produced by official language minority communities in Canada, as well as Canadian programs in Indigenous languages,
(vi) facilitates the provision of programs that are accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities,
(vii) facilitates the provision to Canadians of programs created and produced by members of Black or other racialized communities,
(viii) protects the privacy of individuals who aremembers of the audience of programs broadcast, and
(ix) takes into account the variety of broadcasting undertakings to which the Act applies and avoids imposing obligations on any class of broadcasting undertakings if that imposition will not contribute in a material manner to the implementation of the broadcasting policy;
(f) amend the procedure relating to the issuance by the Governor in Council of policy directions to the Commission;
(g) replace the Commission’s power to impose conditions on a licence with a power to make orders imposing conditions on the carrying on of broadcasting undertakings;
(h) provide the Commission with the power to require that persons carrying on broadcasting undertakings make expenditures to support the Canadian broadcasting system;
(i) authorize the Commission to provide information to the Minister responsible for that Act, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, and set out in that Act a process by which a person who submits certain types of information to the Commission may designate the information as confidential;
(j) amend the procedure by which the Governor in Council may, under section 28 of that Act, set aside a decision of the Commission to issue, amend or renew a licence or refer such a decision back to the Commission for reconsideration and hearing;
(k) specify that a person shall not carry on a broadcasting undertaking, other than an online undertaking, unless they do so in accordance with a licence or they are exempt from the requirement to hold a licence;
(l) harmonize the punishments for offences under Part II of that Act and clarify that a due diligence defence applies to the existing offences set out in that Act; and
(m) allow for the imposition of administrative monetary penalties for violations of certain provisions of that Act or of the Accessible Canada Act .
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Online Streaming Act

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is kind of a pleasure to speak to Bill C-11. I will offer a few things based on a career, at least my first career, of dealing with the CRTC as a broadcaster, as a person who was on the radio and occasionally on television, and especially as a manager of stations that were required to follow the CRTC regulations.

The concerns that have been expressed about Bill C-11 need to be paid attention to. We should not just dust them off and say there is no problem here. The questions are legitimate, but we also need to drill into the details and see exactly what the implications are. When we do that, we are going to end up feeling a lot more secure and confident that Bill C-11 is going to add significant value to Canada.

First of all, this is the Broadcasting Act that we are talking about. The Broadcasting Act relates to broadcasters. I want to quote a couple of things that kind of settle what we are talking about. The first is:

undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the Internet as a distinct class of broadcasting undertakings...

In other words, basically we are saying that the web platforms that distribute and carry programming to Canadians will be classed as broadcasters. The legislation also says:

the [Broadcasting] Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service

In other words, cat videos, homegrown YouTube and even the productions that someone may have spent some money to develop will not be covered. They will not be influenced by this.

Further, there is one exception that we need to note in the legislation. It says:

A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service—and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate...does not, by the fact of that use, carry on a broadcasting undertaking...

I want to go back to my radio days. It was 15 years of misspent youth, but an amazing education in a lot of ways. I got into the radio business just after the initial Canadian content regulations came to radio, and here is how that worked. The original rules said that 30% of the music that we played from 6 a.m. until midnight had to be Canadian content. I will describe what that is in a second. Later, the CRTC and the governments of the day came forward with a formula in which the radio stations had to contribute to a fund. Initially, it was called the Canadian talent development fund. There have been other names and other versions of it.

The two things were that, first of all, we had to profile Canadian content, and then later we had to contribute financially to the creation of Canadian content. What we are doing here now is no different from what was done 50 years ago.

How did we know what Canadian content was? In the radio business, every record had what was called the MAPL logo. It was a system that identified music, artist, production and lyrics of the piece. The rule was that anything produced after 1971 or 1972 had to have two of those categories covered as being Canadian to be classified as a piece of Canadian content. It was tough in the beginning, I have to say. I had grown up listening to radio that was free to play anything it wanted at any time, within reason. I will get to that, but the fact is that all of a sudden we had to play Canadian content. In those days it was scarce; at least, the kind of music we wanted to program on our station was scarce. I still today cannot listen to Snowbird by Anne Murray because we played it to death. It was what we had at the time. That no longer exists, and it is because the Canadian content rules led to the development of a Canadian music industry that punches way above its weight around the world.

There was a unique proposition to those early CanCon days that is totally different from what we face today. Radio, by its nature, is very linear. The listeners listened to the piece of music I had on the air, and got it in the order that I gave it to them. If they were going to listen to our station, they would get that 30% of Canadian content, period.

It is different in this case. We are asking online broadcasters to simply make Canadian content available. The people who use Netflix go in and there are little tiles that show them all of the movies available. What this rule would do is tell Netflix that it has to make sure that Canadian content is represented in those tiles. People do not have to choose it, but they have to know that it is there. That way, we are going to at least give Canadian creators access to audiences who can choose to view or listen to their material, or not.

The actions of the regulator have certainly changed throughout my lifetime. Sometimes, when I talk to kids in schools, they ask me what it was like in the old days when I was a kid: when we would ride our dinosaurs to school and all that good stuff. When I was a kid, Canadian radio stations were not allowed to play commercials on Sundays. If they played a recording, they had to announce that it was a transcription so that people would not think that the performance was live. That was then.

Over the years, the broadcast regulator updated, streamlined and allowed things that were not allowed previously. I remember only two times, or maybe three, when the Canadian regulator stepped in and got in the way of a licensed broadcast undertaking.

One was at one of the first stations I ended up working for: CJOR in Vancouver. The family who put the station on the air was forced to sell it because it lost control of the programming. The programming in the mid-1960s was pretty rough, when we look at the community standards of the day.

Another refers to a general category of radio called radio poubelle: garbage radio or trash radio, which has been a unique property, particularly in the Quebec City area. Station CHOI was forced to be sold, again because it could not control some of its announcers who were doing some hideous things on the air. I could quote them, but will not because members really do not need to hear the sorts of things that were going on there. The CRTC had been more than patient, but it was far beyond what anybody could ever accept.

With respect to the obligations of the broadcaster, there was an article co-written by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin entitled, “Regulate the System, Not the Speech”. When we look at Bill C-11, what it is really going to do is regulate the broadcaster so that it is responsible for the material that is played by it. I could play any record I wanted, but if I did not follow Canadian content rules the broadcaster, i.e. the station I worked for, would get into trouble, but nobody was standing over my shoulder saying that I had to play this song next or that I could not play a record, except if it did not match the format. It is not the content producers, but the platform that provides the content to the public, that the bill will regulate.

By making Canadian content more available to Canadians, we will do something about that cultural, and I use this word advisedly, juggernaut to the south of us, particularly when it comes to French production. One of the most delightful things in my time as a member of Parliament has been that I have a home in Quebec. I love it here. Quebec is such a wonderful, unique thing and we must do everything we can to protect this unique culture in a unique country such as ours.

I will end it there to let us go to questions, but I have to say that although some of the fears may be quite legitimate, they actually do not get borne out when we look at the details behind Bill C-11.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate a fellow British Columbian speaking here tonight.

The gentleman has described his experience in radio with the CRTC, but the Internet operates on much different principles. I speak to younger constituents who specifically cite the concerns around net neutrality. Net neutrality is literally a commitment by governments to not hold back data unless it is illegal content, but now the government, through the CRTC and some unknown policy directive, will throttle back and block certain content from being seen by consumers when they want to see it, which violates the very principle of net neutrality.

The member might say this is about the platform and the consumers and making sure they can see it. Does he not see that the Internet functions much differently, and that this would violate net neutrality?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member misunderstands what net neutrality is.

The notion came up that the network providers, basically the people who allow the streaming, would constrain access to bandwidth unless more money was paid to get more bandwidth. This would certainly choke off the ability of content providers to stream, let us say, movies, etc., unless they ponied up the money to get the bandwidth to do it.

That is what was meant by net neutrality. The government has been firmly onside that everybody deserves the same treatment by those platforms, so that any content put into the platform would be treated equitably and equally across all potential users.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to note that I really appreciate my hon. colleague's wonderful radio voice.

I have to pick up on the comment by the previous speaker, my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party. I appreciate much of what was said, but I think the analogy between a radio station in the 1980s is not a completely apt metaphor for the Internet today. The average radio station listener could not add to the content or participate in generating content on the radio station. It was a one-way platform, whereas the Internet is something the public meaningfully participates in.

I am interested in my hon. colleague's comments on that. More particularly, I have constituents who are concerned that there would be an attempt by the government to regulate and cause broadcasters, in this case online providers, to remove content that is deemed hateful: in other words, that requires a subjective determination. They are worried that this may lead to censorship of the Internet. I am curious about my hon. colleague's thoughts on that. Is he concerned that Bill C-11 may lead to that consequence?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's question, and I also appreciated his comments on my output here.

I think we have to be concerned about that, absolutely. That said, I think we have seen very clear examples of Twitter, particularly, banning people for some of the things they have put on it. Facebook will send people to “jail” if they put things on there that they believe offend community standards, and of course the CRTC has done that sort of thing at the two stations I mentioned.

That kind of regime has always been in place, but community standards tend to rule. We can get away with things now on conventional radio that we could not dream of doing when I was still on the air, and certainly not when I was a kid. Things change. Community standards change. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, in her article, said that we should regulate the platform but let the platform deal with the content. That is probably the best way to go forward.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Madam Speaker, does the member really think that the CRTC is the right entity to regulate the Internet?

The CRTC has spent more than 14 months trying to renew the CBC licence. It spent over a year trying to implement a three-digit suicide prevention hotline. It has a chair who has private meetings, and goes out for beers, with one of the largest businesses that it regulates: Bell Canada. The government wants the CRTC with some unknown policy drive to do this. Does this member really think the CRTC is going to be able to regulate the Internet?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, yes, I do. I think the CRTC has demonstrated over time that it keeps in touch and stays in sync with community standards. It uses a very light touch, if we really look at some of its pronouncements over time. In fact, if—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

We have to resume debate.

The hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, the Internet is an incredible invention. We have all the information in the world in the palm of our hands. Just as the creation of the printing press in the 1400s changed the course of history forever by allowing information to be disseminated to the masses, rather than just to the elites of society, bringing literacy to millions of people, so too has the Internet revolutionized how we exchange ideas and amplify our voices. It has brought freedom of knowledge and expression to billions of people.

Before the printing press, censorship of dangerous ideas by the elites was easy. All one had to do was round up the heretics who held fringe or unacceptable views, hang them high in town square and burn their handwritten notebooks. With the use of the printing press, dangerous ideas could be shared far and wide, leading to the Protestant Reformation, the scientific revolution, the French Revolution and the age of enlightenment, just to name a few.

Likewise, the Internet and social media have helped spark political revolutions and political movements. They have empowered brave resistance to foreign dictators, like our Ukrainian friends against Vladimir Putin and their courageous fight. Social media has helped empower that and allows for the exchange information at a rapid pace.

We really do live in extraordinary times. This is especially true for our online Canadian content creators. “Influencer” is now a career choice, and Canadian musicians, painters, bakers, commentators and do-it-yourselfers can access billions of people to share their ideas and creations with the click of a button. All one needs is an Internet connection and a smart phone.

Actually, one needs one more thing. They need a government that believes in their freedom to do so. Unfortunately, Canadians are experiencing a government that is trying desperately to control the Internet.

From the very wild and extreme online harms bill, to Bill C-18, the online news act, and now Bill C-11, the online streaming act, which we are debating today, Canada's Liberal government is really butting into every aspect of our online world. It is proclaiming it is here to help and that it will show those big, scary boss streaming services, such as Netflix and Spotify, who the boss is and save us all from the scary, dangerous ideas on the Internet.

In reality, these three Internet bills all have the same aim, which is to regulate what we see when we open our cell phone apps. Canadians may remember how Bill C-10 exploded in controversy last year, but it died on the Order Paper. It is back now in Bill C-11, and while the Liberals claim they have fixed the concerns we had with Bill C-10, Bill C-11 is really just a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The issue with Bill C-10 was its control of user-generated content, the posts and videos that we share and upload on social media. The Liberals say that issue was removed in Bill C-11, but experts do not agree. Notable communications law professor Michael Geist has pointed out that the CRTC has the power, with Bill C-11, to subject user-generated content to regulation, should it so choose.

If folks at home are asking what the CRTC is, it is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which has heavily controlled what we have seen on TV and heard on the radio over the past 50 years. Bill C-11 essentially expands the CRTC's powers not only to streaming giants such as Netflix and Spotify, but also to the podcasts, audiobooks and news channels we consume online. It will not just control Canadian-produced versions of those things, but anything coming from anywhere in the world that Canadians want to consume online in Canada.

More than that, Bill C-11, in fact, provides the Liberal cabinet the power to tell the CRTC how to regulate streaming platforms, how to define what Canadian content is and the general policy direction of these Internet controls. It is important to note that cabinet does not have this power currently over TV and radio. This will be a new power. Under the existing law, the CRTC is not directed by cabinet. It is independent, so it can be free from political interference, which is very important. However, this will no longer be the case under Bill C-11. Cabinet will have power over what we see on Internet, which represents an unprecedented expansion of government power.

The bottom line is that Canadian creators have more freedom now, before this bill comes in, than they ever did before with TV and radio. One can become a YouTube star. It is far more accessible than trying to break into network television. Why would the Liberals want to impose the same CRTC regulations they have on TV and radio onto our online platforms? It really does not make sense if we are talking about boosting our Canadian content creators. We know that over 90% of those who are watching our Canadian content are from outside of Canada.

The number of influencers online in Canada earning $100,000 a year or more is rapidly increasing every single year. I really do believe the last thing our online content creators need is the Liberal government sticking its fingers into the regulation controls and messing around with the algorithms that have facilitated the ability of our homegrown creators to share their content with the world.

YouTube, in fact, has alerted the online community and has issued strong warnings to the Liberal government about the negative impacts of Bill C-11, warning that it risks downgrading Canadian content in other countries. If we artificially bump up Canadian content here, and if for whatever reason that Canadian content is not catching the interest of Canadians, the algorithm will actually downgrade that content abroad in competing markets, such as the United States, for example, which a lot of influencers in Canada depend upon.

I do feel that Bill C-11 is not the only thing we need to be worried about. It is worrisome, but there are two other bills as well. There is Bill C-18, which is the online news act, and it has some issues. It has been criticized as interfering in the independence of our news media because it controls how we share news articles on platforms such as Facebook by forcing these platforms to pay news agencies every time we share a news article. Lots of people share news on their Facebook platforms. It is odd this bill would be needed, because this practice is great for news agencies. When one shares their content, it takes us right to their website. It is free advertising.

Australia tried to do the same thing as what is proposed in Bill C-18. Facebook played hardball and banned all sharing of news articles on Facebook until it was able to negotiate something with the Australian government. There are serious issues here. Facebook raised in committee that it is not opposed to doing the same thing in Canada.

Bill C-18 is really just more control from government, but it is not even half as bad as the online harms bill. This is a very scary Internet control bill. In the last Parliament it was known as Bill C-36, and it died on the Order Paper when that unnecessary $600-million election was called, but the Liberals are trying to bring it back again.

It is important to say I welcome a conversation on how we can better fight terrorism organizing online and better enforce existing laws concerning things that are considered fraud, libel, inciting violence, and in particular, child pornography or the sharing of intimate images online without consent. Those are all very important conversations and legitimate issues that need to be addressed.

However, the online harms bill would create a government regulator of speech on the Internet that would decide what is harmful and must be removed. It would be very subjective, depending really on who is behind the curtain dictating what is harmful. Andrew Coyne, in the Globe and Mail, said the bill is “direct state regulation of [online] content”. This is pretty significant.

Twitter said this, which is really concerning:

People around the world have been blocked from accessing Twitter and other services in a similar manner as the one proposed by Canada by multiple authoritarian governments (China, North Korea, and Iran for example) under the false guise of ‘online safety,’ impeding peoples’ rights to access information online.

Twitter is literally comparing this online harms bill to China, North Korea and Iran. It is pretty shocking.

The Liberals are throwing around terms like “misinformation” and “disinformation” whenever they do not like something we say, and we know free speech is constantly under attack. Anything one says these days can offend someone. I am concerned about what bills like Bill C-11 and the online harms bill would do to our freedom of expression online.

Although society has evolved, before the creation of the printing press, the establishment would essentially murder heretics with unacceptable views and burn the books later on. We are not immune to authoritarian control of our freedom of expression.

We would also do well to remember rights and freedoms are not always eliminated in one fell swoop. Often governing authorities will just pick at them bit by bit under the guise of it being for our own good, telling us that they know better than us and they will keep us safe. We have seen this happen in China and it is happening in Hong Kong.

Considering that when he was asked which country in the entire world he most admires, our Liberal Prime Minister said China's basic dictatorship because of its ability to get things done, we should listen when the Prime Minister tells us who he really is. With these three Internet control and censorship bills, I do believe he has made his intentions quite clear. We should all be very, very concerned.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, according to Freedom House, an organization that has been around since before the Second World War, Canada is the fifth freest country in the world, but I am sure that the Conservatives know better than that organization does.

It is interesting. This member brought up the issue about dictatorships. I heard her talk about what Twitter was saying, but I did not hear her give her—

[An hon member]

I just said “authoritarian regimes”.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member will be able to respond. I am asking her a question.

The member told us what Twitter is saying, but she did not tell us if she agrees with what Twitter is saying. I will go back to a comment from the member for Thornhill. She said, “Canada will also become the first country to regulate online content created by people living in Canada. We will be in good company with dictators like Iran, Turkey and North Korea.” That is a bunch of manufactured outrage.

I wonder if the member can comment and answer the question of whether she agrees with the comment from Twitter and whether she agrees with the comment from the member for Thornhill. Does she believe that we will actually be similar to the countries I just listed?

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, what is really concerning, and what I discussed in my speech, is giving the Liberal government the ability to decide what is misinformation and disinformation. That is very concerning.

Just the other day, our critic and our shadow minister for defence quoted an Ottawa Citizen news article talking about the military surveillance exercise that flew around the convoy, which was taking photos and recording audio. They said it was a training, which is fine. She did not include anything that was not in the mainstream, far-from-conservative publication, the Ottawa Citizen, yet the Prime Minister of the country said that she was guilty of spreading misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to quote a few key sections of this bill for my hon. colleague.

In the bill, proposed subsection 2(2.1) says:

A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service — and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or the agent or mandatary of either of them — does not, by the fact of that use, carry on a broadcasting undertaking for the purposes of this Act.

Proposed subsection 2(2.2) reads, “An online undertaking that provides a social media service does not, for the purposes of this Act, exercise programming control over programs uploaded by a user of the service”.

Finally, proposed subsection 2(3) of the act reads:

This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent with

(a) the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings;

I just wonder what my hon. colleague's take on those is. Does she not feel that they make it clear that users of the Internet are not covered as broadcasters and that the changes to the act would be consistent with the concept of freedom of expression?

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, proposed section 4.2 of the bill actually provides an exception to the exception that would allow the CRTC to regulate user-generated content.

Further, proposed subsection 7(7) would provide the Liberal government's cabinet the ability to, in essence, dictate the policies of the CRTC concerning online content. Again, it is very concerning. These are new powers for the CRTC that did not exist before for radio and television, and they are powers the Liberal government is now taking for itself to dictate what we read and see online.