Canadian Heritage Committee on March 22nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Hello, everybody, and welcome back.

We are, of course, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. We're now studying Bill C-10 in detail, with clause-by-clause to follow. We have a couple more meetings with witnesses.

We have a good list of witnesses today, and I want to thank them for coming.

For the sake of transparency, colleagues, you will notice that we had Shaw Communications originally invited. Unfortunately they weren't able to make it, so we filled in that empty slot. We now have six groups of witnesses. They'll get five minutes each.

Today we have a new format. We're going to go the full two hours with all of our witnesses, instead of breaking it up into three in the first hour and three in the second hour. There will be a health break in between. If I forget it, please remind me that I've forgotten it. Nevertheless, let's get straight to our witnesses.

We have the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, ACTRA, represented by David Sparrow, national president and performer; Marie Kelly, executive director; and Raj Shoan, general counsel. We also have BCE Inc., represented by Jonathan Daniels, vice-president, regulatory law; and Alain Strati, assistant general counsel. We have, from the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance, Jay Thomson, chief executive officer.

From the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, we have Pascale St-Onge, president; and Julien Laflamme, coordinator, research and women's services, Confédération des syndicats nationaux. Also, from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, we have Daniel Bernhard, executive director. Finally, last but by no means least, from Unifor, we have.... I'm not sure whether Mr. Dias was able to join us, but we have Jerry Dias, national president; Howard Law, director of media and national representative; and Katha Fortier, assistant to the national president.

Before we get into this, I see that Mr. Manly, from the Green Party, has his hand raised.

Mr. Manly, go ahead.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm having a really hard time hearing you, Mr. Chair. I don't know if other people are having the same problem, but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

I see a few nods, so you seem to be onto something.

How are we doing? Is that better?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

It sounds as if you are miles away.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Yes. That's reflective of many things, but thank you, Mr. Manly.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Chair, just as a note, you're fine on the floor audio. It's probably only on the translation channels that there's a problem. I hear you loudly and clearly on the floor.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Chair, it has something to do with the interpretation. When I turn the interpretation off, your volume is fine, but when I turned on the interpretation and set it to, in my case, English, that's when we had problems with echoes. For whatever technical reason, I think it has something to do with the interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

I'm assuming right now you're having a hard time hearing me. However, this way it's fine.

I'm going to stay on this channel right now. Nod your head in the affirmative if you can hear me okay. I see a critical mass of nods in favour of hearing me, if I might put it so boldly. That being said, let's proceed.

Mr. Manly, was that your intervention?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

It was, but if anybody wants to give up a little bit of time for me to ask questions, I'm more than happy to take it. You can email my P9 if you're willing to share time for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much.

Everybody heard that, I hope. Great.

Now we're going to go straight to our witnesses. You each get up to five minutes. I know we have the full two hours. I'm going to give you only a little bit of flexibility, so please help us out.

We're going to start with ACTRA first. I need a hand up to see who's going to start.

Mr. Sparrow, you have up to five minutes. Please proceed.

[David Sparrow, National President and Performer, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, committee members and staff.

My name is David Sparrow. I'm a Canadian performer and the national president of ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. Joining me today are Marie Kelly, ACTRA's national executive director; and Raj Shoan, ACTRA's general counsel.

On behalf of our 27,000-plus professional performer members, we are pleased to appear today before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to share our thoughts as part of the committee's study of Bill C-10.

We have been following the progress of this bill. Like other industry stakeholders, we want to ensure a strong and vibrant industry for Canadian content, which is why we are pleased to see that the proposed legislation will require online undertakings, including foreign services, to contribute to the production and discoverability of Canadian programs.

We do, however, have concerns about some of the other proposed changes in the bill and the impact they will have on our industry and, by extension, Canadian performers.

I'll pass it over to Marie Kelly, our national executive director.

[Marie Kelly, National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]

Before any changes are made to the Broadcasting Act, we would first like to acknowledge that the existing act has both served us well and been remarkably technology-neutral. Therefore, we believe any changes to the act should only be made if they will help better support and uphold the fundamental purpose of the Canadian broadcasting system, which is to ensure that Canadians have access to Canadian stories and music, as well as entertainment, information and news programs.

That said, we feel we must take this opportunity today to sound the alarm about a proposal in the bill that could significantly reduce the requirement to use Canadian creativity and talent—one that would put Canadian stories and storytellers at risk.

While production activity in Canada is booming, even following pandemic closures, there is growing concern that opportunities to tell Canadian stories are decreasing and that Canadian content production in both English and French is lagging further behind. Recent headline-grabbing announcements of the cancellation of Canadian shows like Frankie Drake Mysteries and Kim's Convenience highlight this problem.

While Canada is experiencing growth in the creation of high-quality English-language films and television shows, we are seeing a downward trend in the production of Canadian content made by Canadian writers, directors and performers. CAVCO data suggests that the number of Canadian productions declined on average by 12.4% each year between January 2017 and December 2020. The growth we've recently seen in television production in Canada has largely been due to higher average spending on the production of television series, not an increase in the number of Canadian shows being produced.

Investment in Canadian drama and scripted comedy programs by both private broadcasters and the CBC is also declining. During the recent CBC licence renewal process, ACTRA noted that CBC English television spending on Canadian drama and comedy programs decreased by 21.2% from 2017 to 2020, even while average costs of production on fiction programs increased.

While we welcome foreign production investment, over the long term we're concerned there will be fewer and fewer opportunities to tell Canadian stories. If we don't create an environment in which Canadian stories and storytellers can continue to thrive, our culture and identity may be lost.

[David Sparrow]

This is why we are gravely concerned with the proposed wording in proposed paragraph 3(1)(f) of the bill. It would remove the requirement that:

(f) each broadcasting undertaking shall make maximum use, and in no case less than predominant use, of Canadian creative and other resources in the creation and presentation of programming....

This change would significantly reduce the requirement to use Canadian creative talent and would devastate our screen-based media production sector. This is an industry that contributes $12.8 billion to our country's GDP and generates 180,000-plus jobs for hard-working Canadians. For me and my fellow ACTRA members, who are already precarious workers, this could lead to a loss of work opportunities for Canadian performers. It is fundamental that we retain the principle of “maximum but not less than predominant use” of Canadian creative and other resources as it applies to Canadian programming.

Paragraph 3(1)(f) should read as follows: “each broadcasting undertaking shall make maximum use, and in no case less than predominant use, of Canadian creative and other resources in the creation and presentation of Canadian programming, and shall contribute significantly to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming to the extent that is appropriate for the nature of the undertaking”.

Our proposal acknowledges the essential role for Canadian creators and retains the concept of “to the extent that is appropriate for the nature of the undertaking”, recognizing that all online services will be contributing to the creation of Canadian content.

In closing, we would again like to thank you for the opportunity to appear today. We would also like to stress the importance of amending the bill in its current form so that it can be implemented as soon as possible.

We look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you so much.

Our next guest will be BCE Incorporated, with Mr. Daniels and Monsieur Strati.

Mr. Daniels, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Jonathan Daniels, Vice-President, Regulatory Law, BCE Inc.]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable committee members. My name is Jonathan Daniels and I am the vice-president of regulatory law at BCE Inc. With me today virtually is my colleague Alain Strati, assistant general counsel, with whom I'll share my time in this opening statement.

As you may know, Bell operates a variety of broadcasting services across Canada—television, radio and online—in English, such as CTV, and in French, such as the recently launched Noovo network. We are also a distributor of Canadian programming through Fibe TV and satellite TV. We provide critical news and information services, ensuring Canadian voices are represented and heard. We also support Canadian talent with contributions to the Canada Media Fund, FACTOR and Musicaction, among others, and through our own Canadian production.

We support Bill C-10 and urge its swift passage into law. It is long overdue.

By now it should be clear that Canadian broadcasters are struggling. Foreign over-the-top providers are thriving in the Canadian market. Over the last four years, they grew their Canadian revenues by over $2.4 billion, while at the same time Canadian broadcasters experienced a drop in revenue of over $1.3 billion. Here's another jaw-dropping statistic. The three largest OTT service providers—Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, the latter of which just launched a little over a year ago—already have more Canadian subscribers, between the three of them, than all of Canada's television distributors combined.

Local television and radio are taking the brunt of the impact from foreign competition. In 2019, 70% of our country's private local television stations and 40% of private radio stations had a negative profit. The pandemic has, without a doubt, aggravated the situation.

Despite all this, we continue to operate, but we do so in a regulatory environment that is outdated and that imposes massive obligations on Canadian licensees while completely exempting foreign OTT providers.

As a much-needed first step, Bill C-10 would correct the structural imbalance by ensuring that OTT providers financially support Canadian programming. OTT has been granted a free pass for over 10 years, and OTT providers have not contributed to Canadian content programming, while taking away subscription and advertising revenue dollars from Canadian broadcasters. In contrast, Bell Media and Bell TV spend close to $1 billion annually on Canadian programming, through either direct expenditures or contributions to funds like the CMF.

However, it is not enough to require OTT to fund Canadian content. As the impact of OTT providers continues to grow and broadcast revenues shrink, the ability of domestic broadcasters to support Canadian content has weakened considerably. We must reduce the regulatory burden on domestic players. This can be achieved at the same time as growing the total expenditures on Canadian content by making OTT providers contribute their fair share.

Alain.

[Alain Strati, Assistant General Counsel, BCE Inc.]

Now let's talk about news and information. Canadians rely on broadcasters for their news, but the stations themselves are struggling. Local television has been unprofitable every year since 2013. This puts immense pressure on our ability to continue to deliver local news.

Bill C-10 recognizes the importance of local news. However, it fails to specifically provide financial support to local news. This oversight must be rectified. Otherwise, we risk losing voices and stories that enhance our Canadian democracy.

As a result, we're proposing an amendment to the bill that would ensure direct financial support for the production of news programming funded by both over-the-top and domestic distributors.

In conclusion, we support Bill C-10 because it lays the groundwork for a broadcasting system that treats all players fairly and equitably, and moves us towards a sustainable broadcasting system.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our views. A complete list of our proposed amendments was included in our written submission to the committee.

We look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Now, for the CCSA, we'll have Mr. Thomson for five minutes.

[Jay Thomson, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Communication Systems Alliance]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Thomson.

Now we go to the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture.

Ms. St-Onge, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Pascale St-Onge, President, Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of Parliament.

First, thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak about Bill C-10. My colleague, Sophie Prégent, president of the Union des artistes, or UDA, can't join us today because she's working.

I want to introduce my colleague, Julien Laflamme, from the research department of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, or CSN. He'll be joining me in answering your questions and providing insight.

The Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, or FNCC, represents approximately 6,000 members grouped into 80 unions. Almost two-thirds of our members operate under the Broadcasting Act. They work for public and private radio, television and digital broadcasters. The federation also works closely with cultural unions, including the UDA, the Quebec Musicians' Guild and the Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec, to name a few. Together, our organizations bring together over 25,000 media, arts and culture workers.

Last week, the FNCC and its partners published a new and very troubling report on the situation of self-employed workers in the cultural sector. In short, the precarious situation that artists, creators and craftspeople in the cultural sector have faced for many decades, combined with the shutdown or increased complexity of activities resulting from the pandemic, has left our members in psychological and financial distress. Of course, the living arts have been particularly affected by the health measures and closures. However, the entire cultural sector has been severely shaken.

I must point out that the average annual income of self-employed cultural workers doesn't exceed the low-income cutoff for a single person in Quebec. In 2017, this cutoff was $24,220. In 2019, none of the cultural activity areas reached this cutoff, not even the film and video industry. This precarious financial situation and the weak social safety net available to self-employed workers make them very vulnerable during crises and slumps. This can't continue.

As a result, we're asking you to ensure that your proposed amendments to Bill C-10 will improve the living conditions of our cultural workers. This should be a priority. We've analyzed the bill in light of the current reality on the ground and we're proposing some significant improvements.

First, the appeal of deregulation and a race to the bottom to help integrate the digital giants is an illusion. In reality, our media and audiovisual ecosystem has been able to thrive because we've protected it from the hegemony of Hollywood and other wealthier and more powerful foreign competitors.

If we want to continue to stand out, not only for our Canadian productions but also for our social fabric, values and diversity, we must ensure that the modernization of our legislation will continue to protect our cultural sovereignty and enable our content to shine.

We believe that, to improve the social and economic living conditions of our artists, creators and craftspeople, we must ensure that the Broadcasting Act has more teeth, particularly with regard to the protection of French. Many jobs depend on this directly, along with the funding of our productions.

Given that the decline of the French language is a hot topic of concern in Canada, clearly the Broadcasting Act is an important tool to promote our language. For us, the changes to the requirement to use Canadian artists and workers are unacceptable, since they will result in fewer contract opportunities and job prospects.

If the digital giants must spend money on productions in Canada, they should comply with our definitions of original Canadian and French-language productions. The same logic applies to the protection of Canadian ownership of broadcasting undertakings. We should limit our focus to acknowledging the existence of foreign-owned digital companies in the broadcasting landscape. In our view, the existing text in the current legislation can continue to apply.

We believe that social media shouldn't be automatically excluded from the new legislation. Instead, it should be specified that the activities of users are excluded. However, the commercial activities of these companies should be included in the legislation, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, should have the power to regulate these activities.

Lastly, the CRTC must have adequate and suitable powers and resources to implement and enforce regulations and requirements, including fines based on company revenues. The licensing or authorization processes, along with the accountability of companies, must be transparent and conducive to public participation.

The regulatory free pass given to the web giants over the past few decades has significantly weakened our media culture and its production capacity. Many job losses among Canadian publishers and broadcasters have been documented, along with downward pressure on working conditions.

Maintaining quality—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. St-Onge.

Ms. St-Onge, I apologize, but we're a little over five minutes here, and we'll have to move along to our next guest.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Mr. Bernhard, please go ahead.

[Daniel Bernhard, Executive Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting]

Mr. Chair, honourable committee members, it is a pleasure to be with you today.

You already know that Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is a Canada-wide non-partisan group dedicated to defending Canadian culture on the air and online.

Here are the choices before you as Friends sees them.

One, should streaming companies like Netflix be required to finance original Canadian content in exchange for the right to make billions here?

Two, should newer broadcasting formats, including user-generated content, be regulated, not just with respect to the content but also to the distribution platforms themselves?

Three, how can we ensure a future for Canadian stories and talent, when the industry is increasingly dominated by American behemoths? Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, and now the Ministry of Heritage, all give the same answer to these questions: “Don't worry. Just trust us. Everything will be fine.”

Netflix wants lower obligations than its Canadian competitors, and this bill would, in fact, allow it to remain entirely unregulated, as it is today. Facebook and YouTube say that users are solely responsible for user-generated content. This bill seemingly agrees, exempting social media, not just for the content but for any regulation of their distribution infrastructure as well. What of the need for thriving Canadian media, telling local Canadian stories? Well, Bill C-10 removes Canadian ownership as a policy objective and waters down key provisions supporting Canadian talent. Further, it does nothing to reinforce the CBC.

Meanwhile, Canadian media continue to bleed. Bell Media has laid off more than 400 people this year, by my counting anyway. Huffington Post shut down its Canadian and Quebec operations this month, and the proposed acquisition of Shaw by Rogers poses a real risk of further closures.

The question before you is really quite simple: Will you pass the law that Facebook, YouTube and Netflix want, or are you on Canada's side? If you're on Canada's side, then you cannot trust the department to fix all of the problems it has created. You must fix the bill yourselves, and the ambiguity around whether Netflix and company should contribute less than Canadian broadcasters, or not at all. Just write it into the bill, if for no other reason than to put the parliamentary secretary at ease. As you know, her riding is home to Canada's major production facilities. For her constituents, lost investment or underinvestment is not just a problem of GDP but actually income taken from their pockets.

You must be more involved further because the minister and the department don't appear to properly understand the reality they are tasked with regulating. Case in point, during his last committee appearance Minister Guilbeault said that YouTube and the like should not be subject to the Broadcasting Act, because government has no place regulating your uncle's cat videos. Minister Guilbeault, have you been on YouTube in the last 10 years?

YouTube is full of professional creators with major production budgets, millions of followers, and hundreds of millions of views. In fact, speaking of cats, how about Grumpy Cat, who has more than 12 million followers on social media, has appeared in Cheerios commercials, and has been profiled on all of the major U.S. networks. The U.K. publication Express estimates that Grumpy Cat, or its owners rather, earned nearly $100 million from these cat videos. That's more than major Hollywood stars.

At the same time, the minister and Mr. Ripley said that Facebook and YouTube were not exempted from the bill, but that they would be regulated only once they behaved as broadcasters. That is a very misleading statement. Social media platforms, especially YouTube, are broadcasters under the legislation. If they were not, it would not be necessary to give them an exemption.

Furthermore, the promise of additional legislation to combat illegal content online is a complete distraction. What about broadcasting standards, the fair allocation of political advertising space, discoverability rules, or requirements to have French user interfaces? Exempting social media from the act will make it impossible for the CRTC to address these culturally important issues.

In closing, your task is simple: Ensure a future for Canadian culture. Don't trust the department to just make it all okay after the fact. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and as it stands right now, the bill before you is Facebook's bill. Netflix's CEO told The Canadian Press he loved Bill C-10. YouTube must also be thrilled. Will you pass Silicon Valley's bill, or will you pass a bill that serves Canada's interests?

It's up to you to make the right choice, and I'm hoping you will.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Now we will go to Unifor.

Ms. Fortier, I understand that you want to start. Go ahead.

[Katha Fortier, Assistant to the National President, Unifor]

Thank you very much.

Good morning. My name is Katha Fortier, assistant to the Unifor national president. I bring regrets from Jerry Dias. He had an urgent personal matter today. With me is our media director, Howard Law. We have 11,000 members in the media sector, including broadcasting and TV production. We thank you so much for the invitation today.

The Broadcasting Act is at the heart of our national mandate for cultural sovereignty. That's something we never stop having to protect and advance, whether it's in trade negotiations or in reform of the Broadcasting Act. For decades the Broadcasting Act has been a pillar of our cultural sovereignty. The goal is to strike the right balance between Canadian content and our openness to the world.

We've weathered this incredible challenge to our cultural sovereignty over the decades. Sometimes these changes have been driven by continental free traders doing the bidding of Hollywood, or by the disruption of new technology. When television arrived in our homes after the war, it didn't destroy radio, because we adapted the Broadcasting Act. Cable came along, and we adapted again. Satellite TV was supposed to be a Death Star that was going to zap the Canadian media industry, but we didn't let it. Each time, legislators and regulators kept their eye on the ball. We maintained that balance between our sovereignty and our openness to global culture, and we did it in a bipartisan way. Some of the greatest champions of the Broadcasting Act reform were Marcel Masse and Flora MacDonald.

Yes, the Internet is the most powerful communications technology yet. AI may be the next one. Then there may be another. We must keep adapting [Technical difficulty—Editor] our cultural sovereignty. Surrender is not an option.

Unfortunately, for the last 10 years the federal government and the CRTC have kept their hands in their pockets watching our cultural protections unravel. Now we are doing something about it. We support the amendments put forward by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, and we especially want to make sure that Canadian ownership rules are reinstated in section 3. Those rules were ignored by the CRTC for 10 years. It tolerated Netflix setting up shop in Canada under the digital exemption and operating, growing and dominating as a cultural juggernaut. We propose replacing paragraph 3(1)(a) with the following: “the Canadian broadcasting system should maximize ownership and control by Canadians”.

We've been following the criticism of the bill. Some of it is hostility to regulation or hostility to cultural sovereignty, but some of the criticism of the bill is fair. There are loopholes to be closed and policy questions to be answered. We are pleased that this committee has asked the minister to answer some of those questions by tabling a draft cabinet directive to the CRTC.

As I said, the bill itself must say that foreign media companies will not be able to buy up domestic media companies, whether conventional or online. Cabinet or the bill should also direct that news broadcasting remain 100% Canadian-owned. Above all, cabinet or the bill must empower the CRTC to dedicate a stream of industry funding for local TV news with strict conditions to tie in to a head count of journalists and media workers. That's missing from the draft directive that has been tabled. Experts and industry leaders appearing before you have already driven this point home.

News is a priority cultural good in our broadcasting world. Journalism is essential to democracy. We saw how true that statement was on January 6 south of the border. We can't afford to be smug about Canadian democracy. Bill C-10 is a generational opportunity to address the underfunding of television news journalism. We can't miss it.

The last thing to say is what Bill C-10 doesn't do. To be fair, [Technical difficulty—Editor] said it would. It does nothing to stem the drain of advertising revenue from all of our media industries, including radio and television, by Google and Facebook. This Parliament has to act on that, and soon. Netflix is just the “N” in FAANG. Bill C-10 must be just the beginning in our defence of our sovereignty.

Thank you very much. Howard and I would be very happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you very much, Madame Fortier. I appreciate that.

Now we go to our six-minute round of questions. Mr. Rayes will start us off.

Before we get there, colleagues, we have a large group in this particular session. I'm hoping to do two full rounds, have our health break and then come back following that. I would ask you to please direct your questions to a person or group to make this go efficiently.

As well, colleagues, please be aware of the gallery screen. If some of the witnesses want to weigh in on a particular question, they can put up a hand or do so electronically, if they wish. I'm hesitant to interfere myself, so I'll ask you to look out for those who want to weigh in on a particular question. Please be aware of the screen in front of you.

Mr. Rayes, go ahead for six minutes.