Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I am Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance, or CCSA.
CCSA represents about 100 independent communications companies across the country that provide bundled TV, Internet and telephone services to Canadians mostly living in smaller communities in rural areas. Our members include, for example, Cooptel in the Estrie region of Quebec, HuronTel in southwestern Ontario, and Milk River Cable Club in southern Alberta.
CCSA was formed in the early 1990s, around the same time that the current Broadcasting Act came into force. Like the act back then, our members at the time did not contemplate the growth in size and influence of the foreign digital giants. But also like the act back then, our members did not contemplate the massive consolidation that would take place in the Canadian broadcasting industry. Neither the act nor our members contemplated that just three domestic companies—Bell, Rogers and Quebecor—would come to dominate Canada's communications marketplace and that, through ownership of most of Canada's TV services and Canada's largest BDUs, Internet and wireless providers, those three companies would become Canada's own vertically integrated domestic giants.
In fact, those domestic giants have since become so big and influential that the CRTC recognized that it had a problem, namely that the giants now had both the incentive and the ability to engage in anti-competitive behaviour that could harm other broadcasters and Canadian consumers. To address that problem, the CRTC has established various safeguards that preclude the domestic giants from favouring themselves in ways that would increase costs and reduce choice for TV consumers.
Those consumer safeguards include a code that ensures you don't have to subscribe to the giants' unpopular TV channels to get their popular ones. The safeguards also include provisions in the digital media exemption order that ensure you can subscribe to your Internet provider of choice—and not just the giants' Internet services—to access the giants' online services like Sportsnet NOW and TSN Direct.
In its current form, Bill C-10 puts those consumer safeguards at risk. When we first reviewed the bill, our concern was that, in focusing on the foreign digital giants, it ignored the growth in size and influence of our domestic giants. We've come to realize, however, that the bill does the exact opposite. Instead of ignoring our domestic giants, it actually embraces them, but not all to the good. Specifically, our concern is that, as written, the bill will enable those giants to favour themselves in ways that will serve to increase costs and reduce choice in our broadcasting system. It will enable them to do exactly what the CRTC warned they would do if left unchecked.
Now much has been said in these hearings about how the bill will level the playing field. That's true, but the field it will level is the one that the [Technical difficulty—Editor] field of the giants. It will tilt even further in the giants' favour the other fields in the system, where smaller and independent players go up against those giants.
Bill C-10 and the draft direction contemplate imposing regulatory obligations on Netflix and others and relaxing existing obligations for Canadian broadcasters. Notably, it's the domestic giants that seem to have focused the most on supporting such regulatory relief. It would be easy to assume that the relief they seek relates solely to their CanCon spending and exhibition obligation. But make no mistake: They will also aggressively pursue relief from the consumer safeguards the CRTC has imposed on them.
This isn't speculation. The giants are already using the courts to challenge the CRTC's jurisdiction to establish and enforce those safeguards. If left as is, Bill C-10 will embolden the giants in their effort to escape the CRTC's consumer safeguards. To prevent [Technical difficulty—Editor] consequences and to protect consumer choice and affordability, particularly in smaller and rural communities, the bill needs to confirm the CRTC's jurisdiction to establish and enforce its safeguards against the giants, including those contained in the digital media exemption order. We've provided suggested language in our written submission.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.