Canadian Heritage Committee on March 22nd, 2021

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. St-Onge.

I'd now like to turn to Mr. Bernhard from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

We know that a copyright bill is going to follow Bill C-10.

Would it not be appropriate to provide a solid foundation in Bill C-10 for what comes next?

[Daniel Bernhard]

I will not talk about bills that don't exist. We always hear about the next piece of legislation that, for example, will force Web giants to pay for news content. The current bill is all we have. So I would not like to support or challenge a bill that doesn't exist.

Bill C-10 needs to be improved, and that's what we are doing today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much.

We have Ms. McPherson for two and a half minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We did have the minister join us earlier on as we were examining Bill C-10, and I was concerned, as I know many people were, when he told us that Facebook and YouTube were not exempt from Bill C-10.

I'm just going to give my last two and a half minutes, if I could, to Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Could you talk about what you think of the answer of the Minister of Canadian Heritage that Facebook and YouTube are not exempt from Bill C-10?

[Daniel Bernhard]

When I heard that statement, I was prompted to pull my hair out, but as you can see, there's not much left to extract, so I had to express my frustration in other ways.

As I said, this is a very misleading statement. For the minister to say that companies like Facebook and YouTube are not exempt and that they'll only be regulated when they behave as broadcasters is very misleading, because, as I said in my opening remarks, if they were not behaving like broadcasters, then there would be no need for the exemption in the first place. They are broadcasters according to the law.

The question is, how do we regulate this properly? Our view is very simple: Remove this exemption for social media. Remove all that. Instead, just say that if you're too small, you will not be regulated, and if you're bigger, you will be. That leaves it open for new formats to emerge. It means that if you're Grumpy Cat, maybe there are certain standards or applications that will apply to you, but not to Mr. Guilbeault's uncle with his cat videos, which, we presume, are not very well viewed, according to the minister's comments.

For him to say they are not exempt from the law is extremely misleading, because clause 4.1 clearly says that they are exempt from the law. We have to ensure that not just the content but also the infrastructure is governed. Should it be in French? Are there rules about discoverability? What about emergency alerts?

I found the minister's answer unsatisfying, and I hope that the committee will improve the bill in the ways that I just mentioned.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

For my very last question, I will go back to Unifor to get a little more clarity on that fund to support local news.

First of all, could you talk a little bit about how much of that $830 million should be going to fund local content and which agencies should be responsible for distributing that?

[Howard Law]

The injection of up to $800 million into the system was something the minister suggested, and other commentators have said that's probably in the right ballpark.

That growing overall pie of industry broadcaster distribution contributions is obviously going to be divided up in a number of ways, and it could include local news. That would be administered by the CRTC—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Law. I'm sorry, but I have to stop you right there.

We'll go to Ms. Bessette to finish.

Go ahead, please.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will start with the ACTRA representatives.

During the course of the study, committee members have often heard that, to keep the arts and entertainment industry competitive in Canada, artists' intellectual property must be protected.

How can artists' intellectual property be protected in Canada?

[David Sparrow]

I think you may have heard in the past when we've deputed about copyright specifically that while audio performers have copyright protection, audiovisual performers do not have copyright protection. This means that when I do a performance and somebody in a foreign country is using my image and my performance in order to make money, it doesn't necessarily flow that I am able to seek compensation for that, because we have not protected audiovisual artists for that.

It is very important that in future we continue to fight for this and get Canada to put those types of protections for audiovisual artists into the Copyright Act.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Ms. Kelly.

Ms. Kelly, you said to my colleague [technical difficulties].

Do you have examples of measures that have been successfully implemented by countries other than the United States to promote their original content?

[Marie Kelly]

We can get you more examples, specifically of how the original content is promoted. There are other countries. I would say that in Great Britain the BBC has done a really good job of doing this. It's not usually the U.S. that is promoting it in that way, because it is the larger entity that has the well-known system.

The only thing I would actually throw into this, which we haven't talked about, is a star system. A star system promotes individual artists, individual actors so that they are the draw towards the movies. The U.S. does this extremely well, as do other countries. We don't even have a star system here in Canada that could highlight individuals who are actors, who would then bring in the work towards them.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

My last question will be for Ms. St-Onge.

Ms. St-Onge, you mentioned that you would like to see funding for French-language content secured. Section 5(d) of the policy direction requires that “an appropriate portion be directed to the creation of French-language programming”.

Is that provision a step in the right direction?

[Pascale St-Onge]

Yes, absolutely. It is a step in the right direction.

Now, the word “appropriate” remains to be defined. It could have been a more decisive word, like “significant”, for example. If we base it only on the proportion of Canadians who are francophones, as is the case for current funding of French-language productions, it means less money for them. This has an impact on working conditions, which are not as appealing for francophones.

So the word “appropriate” still needs to be defined.

[Lyne Bessette, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, everybody. That draws us to a conclusion. I apologize. We went a little bit over time.

We have to deal with one other thing, for budgetary reasons.

Before we do that, I want to say a huge thank you to our guests who came here today: from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, David Sparrow, Marie Kelly and Raj Shoan; from BCE, Jonathan Daniels and Alain Strati; from the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance, Jay Thomson; from the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, Pascale St-Onge and Julien Laflamme; from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Daniel Bernhard; and, finally, from Unifor, Howard Law and Katha Fortier. Please give our best to Mr. Dias.

Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us.

Before we adjourn, we have a bit of work to do. As you know, in relation to the study “Relations Between Facebook and the Federal Government”, there is a budget of $1,500 we need to pass for the equipment that is needed in order to do that meeting.

Do I see approval of this budget for that particular study? Seeing no dissension, it's approved.

Thank you very much, everyone. We will see you on Friday, the 26th.

The meeting is adjourned.