Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Luc Perreault and I am a strategic advisor for the Stingray Group, which is a member of the Independent Broadcasters Group, more commonly known as the IBG. With me is Joel Fortune, who is legal counsel for the IBG.
Our association consists of 13 independent broadcasting companies that are not affiliated with any of the major Canadian cable or satellite distributors.
The members of our association are television and radio broadcasters working in all areas of digital media. We offer Canadians a wide variety of content: local news, weather information and emergency alerts, documentaries, lifestyle magazines and programs, Canadian and world-class cinema, music, drama and sports. We do this in French, English, indigenous languages and 25 third languages spoken in Canada today.
We support Bill C-11. Canada needs to update the Broadcasting Act to better reflect the Internet and the ever-increasing presence of online broadcasting services in Canada. Our primary concern is that Bill C-11 restricts the CRTC's authority to supervise a critical element of online activity: the oversight of the distribution, discoverability and fair treatment of Canadian apps and services online.
Let me be clear. We are not talking about access to social media services. What we are talking about is access to closed platforms operated by Internet services, like Roku, Amazon and Apple TV, and by Canadian operators, like Rogers, Bell and Quebecor. These large companies use the Internet to distribute third party programming services in the same way and compete directly with cable and satellite.
In the United Kingdom, the government has announced that it intends to empower its regulator, Ofcom, to ensure that the U.K.'s services are offered and treated fairly by these online platforms. Ofcom will have a dispute resolution function to address issues that arise between online platforms and online services. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has already looked in depth into the regulatory treatment of virtual MVPDs. We call them “virtual BDUs” in our system. The FCC's review relates to whether these virtual BDUs should have carriage obligations for local television signals. This review remains open.
In other words, other major jurisdictions, including the U.S., are already seized with online distribution issues. Their expert regulatory agencies, Ofcom and the FCC, are exercising or being given the jurisdiction that IBG-GDI and others have proposed be included in Bill C-11 that are now absent.