Evidence of meeting #23 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was crtc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Yorkton—Melville, CPC
Thank you so much, Mr. Geist.
Mr. Menzies, as a former CRTC commissioner, your insight has been valuable.
You've said that using the Broadcasting Act to regulate the Internet is not the appropriate mechanism and in fact is impossible. Can you explain to the committee how unfeasible and inappropriate this attempt is and what you see are the potential negative ramifications of it?
As an Individual
Like I said in my opening remarks, what was needed was a new Canadian communications act, as was recommended by the department of heritage panel that reviewed it.
We have an entirely new framework for our communications infrastructure going into the 21st century. It's one that is distinctly different from the one that was used in the 20th century, where you have people going over the air and you have a closed system with no such thing as user-generated content in history, no such thing as social media and all these new developments. Trying to take all these 21st-century developments and stuff them into a 20th-century construct like the Broadcasting Act is inherently inefficient.
You also have an institution like the CRTC, which has deep cultural patterns built in terms of how things are done. I mean, Ian Scott, bless his soul, was saying last week that regulating the Internet is no problem because it's broadcasting and we've been doing broadcasting for 50 years.
Well, it's not broadcasting. There is stuff that looks like broadcasting that's happening on the Internet. Giving the CRTC control over the entire global Internet as if the only thing that matters on it is broadcasting, without having any other framework for it, makes no sense at all. The Internet is used for all kinds of other things beyond broadcasting.
Eventually, the CRTC is going to have to carve out the section that it wants to deal with, because it's impossible to deal with the infinity of the Internet. That's my suggestion. Carve it out. Make this efficient. Otherwise, you're setting up the Canadian creative industry and Mr. Reeb's company and others for years of uncertainty. It'll take two years before you get settled exactly even who this bill will apply to. Then you're going to have another year of cabinet appeals and, if you make it contentious, you're going to go through court appeals and that sort of stuff.
The CRTC has spent 17 months trying to publish a decision on the CBC's licence renewal, 17 months since the hearing for the CBC/Radio-Canada's licence renewal, which is something that is frankly a ritual. That's why it's unfortunate that the CRTC has been given such scope.
Yorkton—Melville, CPC
Thank you so much for that.
Ms. Fortier, can you briefly—I'm sorry—explain how Bill C-11 will harm digital first creators by playing with discoverability?
Chief Executive Officer, Skyship Entertainment Company
It's going to take longer than nine seconds. I don't know if I'll be able to clarify—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
You may be able to make that point at another time.
I'm going to have to move to the Liberals for five minutes with Chris Bittle.
Chris Bittle St. Catharines, Lib.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Before we begin, I really want to say a quick “thank you” to all of the employees who are here making this happen. I know Ottawa got hit incredibly hard. There were some negative comments about civil servants last week in our committee, and it's truly incredible that we're here and doing this. Thank you all, from translators to the clerk and everyone else for being here.
I'd like to make a quick point. There are a number of witnesses who have been talking about what the chair of the CRTC said in regard to regulating user-generated content. I guess this is politics—people leave out the second line—but the next line of his statement was:
...but if I could just quickly respond to the general tenor of those comments, that's all true today. We could do any of those things today under the Broadcasting Act.
I'd like to ask my first question of Monsieur Payette. In your opening remarks, you said that music has had a hard time reaching Canadian audiences. How would Bill C-11 help Canadian music?
Executive Director, Professional Music Publishers' Association
Thank you for that question.
As I mentioned earlier, right now, the platforms alone choose the winners by using the recommendation tools.
St. Catharines, Lib.
I have a point of order, Madam Chair....
Actually, the translation came on. I'm sorry to interrupt, everyone.
Executive Director, Professional Music Publishers' Association
, I said the recommendation tools are guided solely by the undertakings based on their financial interests. Cultural considerations are simply not taken into account.
The recommendation tools aren't just algorithmic. Even when they are, the platforms sometimes choose key artists, who are then promoted. These artists are thus given a head start in gaining public recognition.
We simply want our music to be able to reach the audience. For that to happen, we need a strong, airtight act that enables the CRTC to do its job.
If I may, I'd like to answer Mr. Geist regarding the numbers from SOCAN, which partly belongs to our members.
Executive Director, Professional Music Publishers' Association
SOCAN now receives more revenue than it previously did, but the royalty distribution involves fewer Canadians.
As I said in my opening statement, when we compare revenue from traditional sources to revenue from online undertakings, Canadians receive 34% of traditional revenue but only 10% of revenue from digital media. Revenue has declined by 69%. It's a dire situation.
I don't know whether Mr. Geist meant that it was good to distribute money internationally. We're interested in the Canadian music sector, and francophone music is currently in crisis. Our revenue is declining. The general rise in the music sector benefits only a handful of international artists, but there has been very little benefit for the local music that's produced in a language other than English.
That's the point I wanted to make here.
St. Catharines, Lib.
Thank you very much, Monsieur Payette.
I'm going to ask my next questions of Mr. Menzies. I think we all agree that the CRTC is bound by legislation and it is then tasked with interpreting that. However, after a big piece of legislation like Bill C-11 is when a policy directive comes in with specific directives to the commission.
Would you agree that a policy directive would be customary in a case like this?
As an Individual
Yes. It would be useful to see what is planned for this one. When Bill C-10 went forward, there was one. A draft, at least, OIC was posted. We haven't seen one yet on this.
St. Catharines, Lib.
That's always been part of the Governor-in-Council's powers in the original Broadcasting Act. A policy directive isn't a novelty item. Is that correct?
St. Catharines, Lib.
The government's been clear about its objective that, between both the bill and the subsequent policy directive, digital first creators and their user-generated content are scoped out. The minister has stated that the policy directive will be unequivocal and that user-generated content will be scoped out.
As a former vice-chair of the CRTC, once the CRTC has received such a directive, can you confirm that the commission cannot scope them back in?
As an Individual
What I will say is that unless there's a different piece of legislation that—
As an Individual
You could say that under Bill C-11, you're not going to use this clause 4.2, but 4.2 might be there to open the door for online harms.
St. Catharines, Lib.
That's a different piece of legislation, so specific to this legislation, you'll agree with my statement, Mr. Menzies.