Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Vice-Chairs, committee members and staff.
I'm Eleanor Noble. I'm a Canadian performer and national president of ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. Joining me today is Lisa Blanchette, ACTRA national's director of public affairs and communications.
On behalf of ACTRA's 28,000 members working in English-language screen productions across Canada, I am pleased to appear today to share the artist's perspective as part of the committee's study of Bill C-11, the online streaming act.
We've been closely following the progress of this bill and, like other industry stakeholders, we also want to ensure a strong and vibrant industry for Canadian content for years to come. That is why we were pleased to see that the proposed legislation will require online undertakings, including foreign services, to contribute to the production and discoverability of Canadian programs.
While we welcome the majority of the changes in Bill C-11 to amend the Broadcasting Act, we wish to voice our concern about some of the bill's amendments that would have a significant and detrimental impact on our industry, jobs and our culture. As a working Canadian performer, I can tell you that Canadian content production is at risk.
Before any changes are made to the current Broadcasting Act, we should acknowledge that the existing act has both served us well and has been remarkably technology neutral. Therefore, we believe that any changes being contemplated 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 original Canadian programming and music, as well as entertainment, information and news programs.
With that said, we must take the opportunity today to sound the alarm about a proposal in the bill that could significantly reduce the requirement to use Canadian creative resources and other resources. It would put Canadian stories and creators at great risk.
While production activity in Canada is booming, even in the face of varying public health restrictions over the past two years, there is growing concern, because opportunities to tell Canadian stories are decreasing and Canadian content production in both English and French is lagging further behind. We're seeing a downward trend in the production of Canadian content, owned by Canadians and made by Canadian writers, producers, directors and performers.
“Profile 2021”, released this past April by the Canadian Media Producers Association, captures the economic activity in the screen-based media sector between April 2020 and March 2021. The report highlights that Canadian content production declined by 12% in that period, while foreign service production saw a marginal increase of 1% over the same time period.
We welcome foreign production investment over the long term, but we're concerned that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities to tell Canadian stories. If we don't create an environment in which Canadian stories, storytellers and creators can continue to thrive, our culture and identity may be lost. We must maximize the use of Canadian talent.
To address the emergence of global online streaming services now providing programming to Canadians, Bill C-11 creates two classes of broadcaster: Canadian broadcasting undertakings, including domestic online undertakings; and foreign online undertakings. This approach becomes problematic when a lesser standard is introduced for foreign services. Specifically, proposed paragraph 3(1)(f.1), which we speak about a lot, establishes a lesser standard for foreign services, instead of adopting the stronger language found in proposed paragraph 3(1)(f), which governs Canadian broadcasting undertakings.
Creating this two-tier approach would significantly reduce the requirement for foreign online undertakings to use Canadian creative talent and would devastate our screen-based media production sector. This is an industry that contributes more than $11 billion to our country's GDP and generates over 216,000 jobs for hard-working Canadians. For me and for my fellow ACTRA members, who are already precarious workers, this could lead to a loss of work opportunities for Canadian performers.
The purpose of the online streaming act is to equalize obligations between broadcasting undertakings to “level the playing field”, in the words of Canadian broadcasters. There is no rationale for establishing a lesser commitment for foreign online undertakings operating in Canada, given their financial strength and market clout. The goal must remain to create a level playing field between domestic and foreign undertakings.
ACTRA, along with other industry peers like the Directors Guild here today, agree that Bill C-11 must be amended to remove any reference to a lesser standard for foreign services. We have included a proposal to amend paragraph 3(1)(f).
We also support the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and Racial Equity Media Collective. They've also put in proposals.