Canadian Heritage Committee on May 24th, 2022

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

I know, I know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll open with a few points that were mentioned earlier.

First of all, Madame Desrochers and Ms. Paré, you mentioned a survey that's currently being undertaken. I've tried to listen in French and understand in my second language, but I'm not always successful. Could you just clarify who that survey is targeting and who's conducting that survey on YouTube users?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

It's people living in Quebec who are 18 years old or more. It was made by Leger for ADISQ, and it shows strong support for the legislation.

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

Great. I appreciate the clarity on that. It would be beneficial to the committee—if you would be willing—to share that data once it's completed.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

We have data in our mémoires, and we will share the official survey when we have it.

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

That's wonderful. I appreciate that.

I want to follow up on another point that was raised earlier by Mr. Hatfield, and I want to direct this to you as well.

In terms of the opt-in provisions of discoverability, Mr. Hatfield suggested that for the user experience, there should be a way to toggle that on and off for someone who's looking to seek out Québécois content or Canadian content. There should be a way that they can toggle that, especially given some of the interest from users who may be looking for content from outside our borders.

Would your organization support giving consumers the option to toggle on and toggle off that side of discoverability?

[Eve Paré]

I'm not sure I understand why a creator would want to exclude themselves from discoverability measures. So for us, that is not a question that has come up.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

If I may specify something, we've never—

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

Just to clarify, perhaps, I was thinking more so about the consumer or the user of the different online platforms and whether it would be an option for them to toggle on or toggle off their promoted content.

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

It's not something we would support, but we don't expect people to look for content from Quebec. We just expect them to look for content they might like, and sometimes what is proposed happens to be made in Canada or made in Quebec. If we do that the right way, that's the way it works. It's not because you want to listen to something specifically from Quebec. You just want to listen to something good that sounds similar to the other artists you like and it happens to be made in Quebec.

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

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but if I understand correctly, you want the content to be available, especially Québécois content, but still provide the consumer with the choice to decide whether they click on song X or song Y depending on what is of interest. Is my understanding correct?

[Marie-Julie Desrochers]

We absolutely don't want to prevent people from listening to what they want on demand.

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

Thank you for that.

I want to go to Mr. Kitt from Unifor very briefly. One of your colleagues, Howard Law, made the comment, “Discoverability is streaming-speak for ‘promotion of content.’”

I'm curious if you could expand on that and what we see with all the different platforms, whether it's Google, Netflix or Disney+. Each has its own unique algorithm, for lack of a better word, that targets the user experience. When you're saying discoverability is the promotion of content, do you see any way that will have a negative impact? I'm thinking specifically about Canadian content and when one type of Canadian content would be promoted over another type of Canadian content.

[Randy Kitt]

I don't now the context of Howard's comments, but there's been a lot of discussion about discoverability. We take the position—like Michael Coteau mentioned earlier—that Canadian content is important and it ought to be supported. The discoverability of that content ought to be supported.

The notion that there's a free-market Internet.... Nothing is for free. These companies target and design those algorithms for maximum profit, not for my viewing enjoyment. It's important that we ensure that our Canadian content creators are discoverable.

I'm not an expert by any means in these matters, so I'll leave that up to computer experts. I think it's important that Canadian content creators are discoverable.

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

I would agree in the sense that we want to see Canadian content. I want to enjoy Canadian content, but I would be somewhat surprised if none of these platforms took into account the user experience because they're going to lose subscribers awfully quickly, as we're seeing in some contexts with the user experience.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, John.

I will go to Lisa Hepfner for five minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to assume everybody can hear me okay.

I would like to direct my questions back to Mr. Kitt with Unifor.

I'll let you expand a bit on your last comment. You were talking about how it's not really a free market out there. Algorithms and companies are deciding the content. It's not like it's a free-for-all. It's not CRTC imposing rules, but companies are making the algorithms.

[Randy Kitt]

That's correct.

Again, I'm not an expert on that, so I imagine that we all like to watch good content. The idea that people are losing subscribers is maybe because there is not enough good content or that we've watched it all too quickly. I don't know.

I'm not an expert on algorithms. I think discoverability is important.

[Lisa Hepfner]

Let's go back to what you are an expert in. You're from Unifor and you represent journalists, camerapersons and the people behind the scenes. You've seen that there has been a decline in the number of those people employed in journalism over the past number of years.

We heard earlier today that a very small percentage of YouTubers actually make money on the platform. Of the ones that do make money, 60% of them make less than $10,000 a year.

What do you think your members would think of that sort of job opportunity?

[Randy Kitt]

When we're talking about a revenue threshold for regulating content, we were looking at $10 million, so I don't think anyone had any concerns about those types of regulations for TikTok users—

[Lisa Hepfner]

I'm sorry. Maybe I wasn't clear, Mr. Kitt.

Of the people who make money on YouTube, which is a small percentage, 60% of them make less than $10,000 a year. Would a journalist be employed for that amount of money? Is it a viable career option for a Unifor member?

[Randy Kitt]

It is absolutely not.

[Lisa Hepfner]

You started off your segment talking about how important local news is in our communities. You said it has never been more important. I'm wondering if you can expand on that a little.

[Randy Kitt]

Thank you.

When we talk about the fund that we're asking to be enshrined in this act, it's a dedicated revenue stream. Between between 2009 and 2014, the LPIF was a fund that took cable company revenue and directed it into local news.

From 2015 to 2021, the impact of Netflix, Amazon and the rest was about $400 million. That is more than the entire expenditures of all of the local TV news budgets in this country. That is not an insubstantial amount of money that has been taken away from the Canadian news ecosystem because of Netflix, Amazon and the rest. We need a portion of that money put back into the system, so we can adequately fund local news across the country and reach all of our communities. Then every community can have local television news and we'll know what our politicians and our city councils are up to. We can build back our communities.