Canadian Heritage Committee on May 24th, 2022

[Nathalie Guay]

It may be worthwhile to look at the number of petition submissions that have been successful in the past versus the number of petitions submitted. It doesn't happen often, but a few petitions have been successful. In some cases, it made all the difference. A well-known case in 2017 comes to mind. The CRTC did not see fit to establish requirements for the creation and provision of original French-language programming and musical programming when renewing the television service licences held by the large French-language ownership groups. When that happened, a number of our members submitted a petition, which was successful, and it really made a difference.

A process like that would help bring people who have concerns on board. If the CRTC strays from its mission and makes a bad decision, one that hurts Canadian creators—as Ms. Berkowitz and YouTube and other platform users seem to fear—they could appeal the CRTC's decision. If the complaint were deemed valid, a review would be necessary. I think that sort of measure would help reassure people who fear—

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

You think that would restore trust in the commission.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Guay, and thank you, Martin.

I go now to the New Democratic Party for two and a half minutes, with Peter Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going back to Mr. Skolnik because he wasn't given enough time to answer the first question around concerns about discrimination and streaming platforms basically refusing certain content.

I also want to add another question to the mix, Mr. Skolnik, which is around the issue of employment. We looked at proposed paragraph 3(1)(f), which basically gives foreign streaming platforms less obligation than Canadian companies in terms of Canadian employment. I want to know if that is a concern of yours as well.

[Bill Skolnik]

It does appear to do that. I don't even know if that's the intent, but we're very concerned about that possibility.

I'll use the expression “the lowest common denominator”. It creates the possibility for broadcasters, for example, and to a certain extent those who produce, to create the lowest common denominator. Let's say I'm a producer and I have to compete with somebody who is putting a program on platforms. If I want to get Canadian content on, but we don't have the same standards as to what inherently is Canadian and what needs to be done in order to satisfy the obligations for Canadian content or Canadian participation, then I'm going to want the same thing as the other guys.

We're very concerned that the standard remain at a high level, and that everybody who wants to take advantage—and must take advantage—of the Canadian content, and is obligated to provide that percentage, has the same regulations so that we do not lower our own domestic producers' obligations by saying that we're going to be fair. We are fair. We're going to make it the same for everybody, and that is a big concern.

Employment is an issue. We're very pleased that the foreigners come here and produce here. They actually help a lot in the training. However, it doesn't take away the fact that we need to be altruistic about this. We need to say that we have to tell our own stories and we'd like to take advantage of it. These are not mutually exclusive things. We want both and we can get both, and we've had a history of getting both. Look at the Juno rules. Look what they have done.

That's all we're asking for. Keep things going. Keep them the same way, and keep them Canadian.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

That wraps up this round. I would like to thank the witnesses for coming and having such patience answering questions. It is a complex issue.

I would like to thank the committee. Let's take half an hour for a health break. I'll see you back at 2:30.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We'll resume this meeting.

I will just again mention that there are a couple of things to remember.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those of you participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English and French for whichever you would like. I will remind you that all questions should be addressed through the chair.

We are meeting again to discuss Bill C-11.

Witnesses, I just want to remind you that you each have five minutes for your organization to present, and then we go into question and answer rounds.

I will begin by calling you by name, and you can begin your five minutes.

We will begin with the Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo with Eve Paré, the executive director, and Marie-Julie Desrochers, director of institutional affairs and research.

I don't know which of you will be speaking, so I'll just let you begin for five minutes, please.

[Eve Paré, Executive Director, Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo]

The Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo, ADISQ for short, represents independent businesses in Quebec dedicated to the development of musical artists. On behalf of our members, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to comment on Bill C‑11. I am joined today by Marie‑Julie Desrochers, our director of institutional affairs and research.

In Canada, independent businesses are responsible for 95% of French-language music production. That sets us apart from the rest of the world, where large companies dominate the market. The Broadcasting Act has for decades been instrumental in that minor miracle. The act has helped homegrown French-language music spread, structure itself as an industry, reinvent itself and reach the public over the years.

In Canada's French-speaking markets, two out of three songs played on commercial radio are French. On satellite radio, our francophone music has secured a meaningful place for itself among hundreds of English-language channels, despite the initial protests of companies claiming they weren't able to showcase our homegrown music. Our television music programs are broadcast almost weekly on our public and private general interest networks.

All of these showcase media have such a rich and diverse supply of music to draw from thanks, in large part, to broadcasters' contributions, most of which are paid to Musicaction and the Radio Starmaker Fund. Both of those mechanisms are dedicated to funding the production and marketing of French-language music in all its forms, and do so admirably. As a result, artists are able to launch and build lasting careers in Canada and abroad.

The effects of that virtuous circle are impressive. According to the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec, music produced by local artists accounts for 50% of music purchased by Quebeckers in any given year. People like and choose homegrown music, but first, they have to have exposure to it.

As you know, the way people consume music is changing. Online media represent an increasingly large share of that consumption, alongside conventional media. In March of this year, Léger conducted a survey commissioned by ADISQ, and what it reveals about how the two types of media coexist is quite telling. The results show that 60% of Quebeckers identify the radio as a tool for discovering new artists, making it the most popular medium for musical discovery.

The survey also reveals that 61% of people now listen to music using an online service. Unlike conventional media, online services are completely unregulated, to the point that the effects of the act have been waning for far too long, both funding-wise and promotion-wise. What that means in concrete terms is alarming. ADISQ uses data from Luminate to measure what Quebeckers are listening to every week on online audio services. Just 8% of the tracks people listen to are French.

That is why action is so urgently needed, and Bill C‑11 could finally make the difference. In order for those changes to truly matter, we recommend looking at them through two lenses.

First, the bill should end the unjustifiable inequity currently undermining our ecosystem by treating conventional and online companies differently. The effort to achieve balance, however, must not lead to a lower standard. The support provided by conventional media remains crucial and should be supplemented by online media. That means the bill should safeguard the Canadian character of conventional companies, protect minority languages, enshrine the use of Canadian resources as a clear goal and, above all, adopt a technology-neutral approach so that it covers all services that affect Canada's cultural sovereignty, today and tomorrow.

Second, it is necessary to ensure that the CRTC has the staff, funding and enforcement powers it needs to carry out the ambitious renewed mission with which it is being tasked. No matter what some may argue, the CRTC does not have too much power. All it needs are the proper tools to counterbalance the disproportionate power currently held by foreign companies, which are driven solely by profit.

Some claim that the cultural community is advocating for a handful of creators and producers, but those who do misunderstand the attachment people have to their culture. According to that same survey, 70% of Quebeckers who stream music want platforms to recommend French-language music made in Quebec. Approximately 73% of people think the government should pass legislation to make it mandatory for Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and similar music platforms to contribute to the funding of such music. That's what you call widespread support.

The work you will be doing in the weeks ahead will benefit Canadians and creators alike. By supporting the diversity of cultural expression, you promote freedom of expression, expand consumer choice and strengthen Canada's democracy. For Bill C‑11 to do what is promised, Parliament must pass a strong piece of legislation that covers all the services operating in our ecosystem and that provides Canadians with a nimble regulatory framework for decades to come.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Matthew Hatfield from OpenMedia, you have five minutes.

[Matthew Hatfield, Campaigns Director, OpenMedia]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm Matt Hatfield and I'm the campaigns director at OpenMedia, a grassroots community of over 200,000 people in Canada who work together for an open, accessible and surveillance-free Internet.

I'm speaking to you from the unceded territories of the Stó:lo, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam nations.

OpenMedia is not made up of academics or lawyers. We're a citizens' group. I'm here today to ask that you ensure that the online streaming act respects the choices and freedom of expression of ordinary citizens.

The Internet works nothing like traditional broadcasting. I say that knowing full well that we're gathered to discuss a Broadcasting Act reform bill that would give the CRTC, a broadcasting-era regulator, the power to treat Internet content as if it were broadcasting. However, holdover ideas from the radio and television era are the reason for the deep confusion you've run into as a committee in trying to keep Bill C-11 and its predecessor, Bill C-10, from seriously overstepping the government's intent.

Traditional broadcasting was a top-down system in which the wishes and preferences of Canadians could not be directly expressed. Our only choice was to watch what a broadcaster chose to air on a few dozen channels, or not to watch at all. No one gave us a chance to share our own thoughts and voice, outside a few proud local community stations with limited reach.

The Internet is utterly different from that. Every day, we each make hundreds of choices among millions of channels and pieces of content online. Many of us take on the next step and share our words, jokes and passions back into that system through the same distribution platforms. We're not passive recipients of the Internet. We're active participants in crafting the feeds we want. We follow the individual creators we like and we use platforms like Patreon or YouTube to earn revenue from our fellow Internet users.

Treating the broadcasting system and the modern Internet as fundamentally similar would seem like a joke if the consequences were not potentially so serious.

We've heard for over a year that Bill C-10 and Bill C-11 would never regulate user content. Minister Guilbeault's team pretended that excluding users personally as legal entities meant their content was safe from CRTC regulation. That was untrue. Minister Rodriguez's team is telling us that they've fixed it and that user content is now excluded, but last week CRTC chair Ian Scott confirmed that this is not true and our content is still subject to CRTC regulatory control under Bill C-11.

You need to fix this. We understand that the CRTC believes it has always had the power to regulate our user audiovisual content online. That's a theoretical position and it doesn't matter very much to ordinary Canadians. Concretely, you are now considering a bill through which the CRTC will explicitly take up and use very broad regulatory powers that it has never exercised before over the Internet. The minimum safeguard you must adopt would be ensuring that user-generated content is fully, plainly and definitively excluded from CRTC regulation.

Proposed subsection 4.1(2), which reincludes most of our online user content in the CRTC's control, is the heart of the problem. The three criteria laid out do not meaningfully protect any of our content. More or less, everything earns revenue online, everything has unique identifiers attached to it, and all major online platforms are going to be broadcasting undertakings registered with the CRTC.

All we're really getting from the government right now is a flimsy promise that the CRTC won't misuse this astonishing extended power and a policy direction that they won't even let Canadians see yet. That's not good enough. Policy directions can be changed at will, which means that at any time, a future government could issue new CRTC guidance requiring they regulate our posts directly.

Our online rights must be legally entrenched, not informally promised. Canadians need proposed subsection 4.1(2) to be removed altogether, or much more definite limitations to be placed on it. You must clearly exclude all of our podcasts, TikToks, YouTube channels and social media posts from this bill. Leaving this dangerous loophole clause this wide open is not responsible. It's leaving a door ajar for future mass censorship of Canadians' personal online expression.

While respecting the content we produce, our government must also respect our right to freely choose the content we consume. We would never tolerate the government setting rules specifying which books must be placed at the front of our bookstores, but that's exactly what the discoverability provision in proposed subsection 9.1(1) of Bill C-11 is currently doing. Manipulating our search results and feeds to feature content that the government prefers instead of other content is gross paternalism that doesn't belong in a democratic society. Any promotion requirement on platforms for government-selected CanCon should respect our choices and limit itself to optional or opt-in results, not mandatory quotas.

People in Canada are looking to see whether public officials like yourselves are going to defend our fundamental rights. Since last year, OpenMedia community members have sent over 53,000 individual emails to our MPs and the Department of Canadian Heritage on Bill C-10 and Bill C-11.

While our community is interested in seeing Canadian stories told in the 21st century, it cannot come at the price of a blank cheque to the CRTC to take regulatory authority over our audiovisual posts, or having the government decide what we should be watching and listening to. We urge you to fix Bill C-11's overreaching on both these fronts before the bill leaves your hands.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Next we have Mr. Kirwan Cox, executive director for the Quebec English-language Production Council, for five minutes, please.

[Kirwan Cox, Executive Director, Quebec English-language Production Council]

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen of the standing committee, thank you for giving us this opportunity to meet you and express our support for Bill C-11, which is desperately needed and long overdue. We hope Parliament passes this legislation as soon as possible.

I am Kirwan Cox, and my colleague is Kenneth Hirsch, from the Quebec English-language Production Council. We represent the English-language film, TV, and media production industries in Quebec. Our objective is to increase the production of films and television by the official language minority in Quebec, which, unfortunately, is now at its lowest level in history. QEPC strives both to increase the vitality of English programming in Quebec and to support Canadian content in both official languages across the country.

Today, we will focus on the official-language minority elements of the act. We are very pleased to see that the official-language minority measures adopted by this committee in Bill C-10, and passed by the House of Commons, have again been proposed by the minister in Bill C-11.

Not since the original Official Languages Act was passed over 50 years ago has any legislation been more important to the vitality, if not the survival, of both official-language minorities than Bill C-11 as now written.

We hope you will support these measures that are so important to us, to our French colleagues, and to the larger Canadian cultural sector.

[Kenneth Hirsch, Co-Chair, Quebec English-language Production Council]

Thank you, Kirwan.

I'm Kenneth Hirsch, co-chair of the Quebec English-language Production Council.

That said, we do have concerns with the terminology used in Bill C-11. We want to be sure that the language in the act is clear and unambiguous. The nomenclature that appeared in Bill C-10, “official language minority communities” in English, and “communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire” in French, has been replaced in Bill C-11 by the expression “English and French linguistic minority communities” in English, and “minorités francophones et anglophones du Canada” in French.

Thus, the French version of the new wording proposed in Bill C-11 removes the word “community”, which is an important concept for organizations working for these communities and distinguishes them from the majority. To avoid these problems, we would propose that Bill C-11 should return to the term originally used in Bill C-10, which we prefer: “official language minority communities”, and in French, “communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire”.

In addition, Bill C-11 should expressly define these minorities as English-speaking communities within Quebec, and French-speaking communities outside Quebec.

We thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hirsch.

I will go to the next group of witnesses, Unifor, with Randy Kitt and Olivier Carrière.

You have five minutes.

[Randy Kitt, Director of Media, Unifor]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak and provide comments today.

I'd like to acknowledge that I am on the unceded territories of the Haudenosaunee and the Mississaugas of the Credit first nation.

Unifor is Canada's largest private sector union, with more than 310,000 members across Canada working in 20 economic sectors. Our union represents more than 10,000 media workers, including 5,000 members in the broadcast and film industries.

In 2009, Red Deer lost their TV station, making them the biggest city in Canada not beside a metropolitan centre that doesn't have a TV station. Since then, employment in private conventional television has decreased by more than 30%.

This committee got it right in a 2017 report, when you talked about the importance of local news and its role in holding power to account, strengthening democracy and building community. Community has never been more important. Social media has proven to divide us, pitting neighbour against neighbour. We are more polarized than ever, but a strong Canadian media can build community.

This committee said:

Local media...perform a fundamental civic role by supplying reliable, timely and unbiased information on community affairs. They ensure public and private institutions are held to account.

The media also reflect our country's diversity.... They build bridges between cultures and support the integration of newcomers.

You also said the following:

We recognize the challenges the media face and we believe that steps must be taken to help them navigate this tumultuous period. Therefore, the Committee has developed the following statement of principle:

Given the media's importance as a reflection of Canada's diversity and a pillar of our democracy, the Government of Canada must implement the necessary measures to support the existence of a free and independent media and local news reporting.

Go ahead, Olivier.

[Olivier Carrière, Assistant to the Quebec Director, Unifor]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair.

My name is Olivier Carrière, and I am the assistant director of Unifor Québec.

I'll pick up where my colleague Randy Kitt left off.

The local program improvement fund, or LPIF, was created in 2009. At the time, the problem was clear. The CRTC understood that and everyone agreed that the way to fix it was to set up a fund to support local news. In 2014, the CRTC unfortunately changed its tune. Suddenly, a fund to support news was no longer necessary because of the return of advertising revenue.

The CRTC got it wrong. After eight years of decline, it is now clear that the content offering is more and more out of touch with the realities in Canada and Quebec. American media now dominate our living rooms, with no regard for local programming or news.

That is why we can't let the CRTC make these decisions single-handedly. We believe Bill C‑11 should be amended.

Specifically, Unifor supports the bill but recommends that subsection 11.1(1) of the new act be amended by adding paragraph (d), which would establish a fund.

The paragraph reads as follows:(d) developing, financing, producing or promoting local news programming and coverage, using contributions paid by distribution undertakings to related programming undertakings or by distribution undertakings or online undertakings to an independent fund. In making regulations respecting the distribution of the contributions, the Commission must take into account the local presence and staffing of the programming undertaking.

That is paramount. Funding for local news must be tied to the actual number of local human resources needed to produce that news. In our view, that is the most reliable way of ensuring that industry funds will be spent solely on the purpose for which they are intended: making sure that Canadians have access to relevant and timely local news coverage they can count on. In order for people to access relevant news coverage, someone has to make it available.

The Broadcasting Act was created to protect Canadian voices in a marketplace in which they would not otherwise receive support. That has not changed. Bill C‑11 merely updates—or modernizes, if you prefer—the law. The local news model was upended and now deserves some consideration.

I'll turn the floor back over to Mr. Kitt.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Kitt, you have 30 seconds left.

[Randy Kitt]

Thank you.

The Broadcasting Act and the CRTC prevented foreign broadcasters from entering our market for decades, allowing a thriving media industry that heavily supported local news. This committee got it right again when taking on the Rogers-Shaw merger, when you said, “it is essential that Canadians have access to local news that reflects their identity and reality.” Almost all witnesses in this study said that local news is critical to a strong democracy.

To sum up, local news is in crisis. Local news is essential to the public good. We know that a local news fund administered by the CRTC can work, because they've already done it successfully. Bill C-11 is just a much-needed update to the Broadcasting Act to ensure that Canadians have access to Canadian local programming, which couldn't happen if we let these Internet giants control our media.

Let's not get sidetracked by noise. Let's get Bill C-11 passed with this small amendment to ensure a sustainable future for local news. Let's all imagine a world without news, imagine that void, and now imagine that you could do something about it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Kitt.

Now we are going to move into what is known as a question and answer segment. This first round is a six-minute round. Remember that the six minutes include a question and an answer, just so the time doesn't get away from you.

I will start with John Nater from the Conservatives.

Mr. Nater, go ahead for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses this afternoon. It's been great to hear the different opinions and commentary on Bill C-11 and suggestions to go forward.

I am going to start my questions with Mr. Hatfield from OpenMedia, and then I'll probably bounce around and try to hit a few other witnesses afterwards, if I have time. I'm sure the chair will give me an extra two or three minutes at the end just to get to some extra questions here.

Mr. Hatfield, your organization is in an interesting position, because you're not an industry group and you're not a stakeholder group. You're a citizens' group. I often think that this perspective—the user perspective, the consumer perspective, the perspective of the general public—isn't always heard in these types of discussions, especially when we're getting into the more technical issues with something like the Broadcasting Act.

I just wanted to give you a chance to talk and to give us that perspective. What is the public saying? I think you mentioned that 53,000 Canadians have contacted you and, through you, other members of Parliament. What is the commentary? What is the message you're hearing from those who are subscribing to your campaigns?

[Matthew Hatfield]

Thank you so much.

I think the fundamental message from people is that they're not against there being more funding for Canadian cultural content, but they don't want it to come at the cost of their individual choices or at the cost of their own content potentially being regulated in some ways by the CRTC.

There are a lot of ideas that get pushed around about how to set the system up equitably, but I think part of what makes the Bill C-11 conversation so difficult is that there's a lot we don't know about what the government intends or what the CRTC actually intends here. We would have much preferred if there were much clearer instructions about how the CanCon system was going to be redeveloped in this bill.

We recognize that some of that can't be done in the legislation, but we really have no idea how 1980s definitions of what is Canadian are going to be updated and who is going to be in and who is going to be out. We think it should be a fair system, equally accessible to creators creating for every platform across the Internet, for online creators as much as for more traditional legacy media.

Our concern with the way things are set up right now is that it seems to be aimed at a sort of maximalist capture of giving every power to the CRTC, with very little clarity about how they're going to be using it. That's why in my comments today I've really focused on what I think the most important remaining piece is, which is defending the experience that ordinary Internet users have, getting their content fully excluded and getting their feeds left alone.

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

Thank you for that. I was going to go in a different direction, but now I'm going to go in a different direction based on some of the comments you just made about Canadian content and about what it is and what it isn't.

A concern that has been brought to me privately by a number of stakeholder groups is that no one, yet, has seen the policy directive from the minister that will go to the CRTC. It's not clear what will be considered Canadian or not Canadian under the new CanCon rules, which would of course feed into the concept of discoverability and how the CRTC will implement discoverability.

I guess my questions for you are these: What clarity would you like to see? What clarity do you think Canadians would like to see in terms of, one, what would be considered and what would not be considered CanCon, and two, how that would feed into a discoverability system, both on what we consider to be the streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Disney+, Crave and Amazon, but also on the other sites, the YouTubes of the world and the TikToks of the world, which do have some commercial content but also have primarily user-generated content? How would you foresee this? What clarity would you like to see in terms of directives from the government?

[Matthew Hatfield]

Well, I'm not going to try to define the future of CanCon on the spot, just because I do think that should run through a public process with a lot of back-and-forth between people.

I think our concern is that the system looks like it's steamrolling to being implemented without taking the seriousness of that redefinition into consideration, and that on day one, if it launches, it's not actually going to be about supporting Canadian content or supporting the wide diversity of identities we have in Canada now, and it's going to default to forcing content from the legacy media outlets, from Bell and from the CBC, into people's feeds. Some of that is very good content, but people want a lot more than that from the Internet. Certainly, they would want to make sure that all the great Canadian creators they consume now are in the system. The system is completely unable to support them currently.

We would like to see the points system fixed up so that it's accessible to anyone creating Canadian cultural content, and we would like to see the bill set up so that it's not imposing regulatory broadcasting obligations on Canadians in a way that's completely inappropriate, I think, to the goals of the bill.

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

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but would it be safe to say that the government ought to provide its policy directive sooner rather than later, so there is at least some level of certainty for Canadians in terms of how this bill will be implemented going forward?

[Matthew Hatfield]

Absolutely. I don't know if that decision is in the hands of this committee, but we'd certainly like to see it as soon as possible.