Thank you, Madam Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about this important bill.
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, or CAB, is the national voice of Canada's private broadcasters, representing more than 800 members around the country, including the vast majority of private radio and television stations and specialty services.
The Broadcasting Act is fundamental to the way that broadcasters are regulated in Canada, and as you've certainly heard, it's well out of date.
I know you’ve heard from many parties on this bill and its predecessors, and you know the essentials: That technological change has vastly transformed the way that Canadians receive and consume audio and visual content, and Canadian broadcasting policy has failed to keep pace with this change.
Unregulated foreign players have had a decade to enter the Canadian marketplace without any hindrance or oversight, and Canadian broadcasters compete directly with them for subscribers, the rights to content, advertisers and audiences. Moreover, Canadian broadcasters must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in part II fees annually, which do nothing to sustain or develop the Canadian broadcasting system, while foreign players pay none.
Canadian broadcasters deal with a substantial regulatory burden. Simply put, Canadian broadcasters play by the old rules and unregulated foreign platforms play by their own rules.
This is why this legislation is so important. Canadian broadcasting companies must plan several years ahead to determine how to invest in Canadian content and talent. Faced with long production cycles and increasing costs, modern media businesses cannot afford to make split-second decisions. That is why Canadian broadcasters are desperate for regulatory clarity and certainty. They need to know the rules they and their foreign competitors will be operating under to plan their businesses, and they need to know that the rules will be fair and equitable.
This is why we welcome the introduction of Bill C-11.
Bill C-11 was introduced to level the playing field. It acknowledges the presence of foreign digital platforms and would require them to contribute to Canada’s broadcasting policy objectives. For Canadian broadcasters who are asked to carry the entire burden of supporting the audiovisual creative sectors, it’s well past time for a system that is fair, equitable and flexible.
Canadian broadcasters are willing to compete, but they cannot do so in a system that allows increasingly dominant players to take as much as they want and only give back as much as they like.
We have often heard that this legislation was introduced to ensure we continue to tell Canadian stories, and for most Canadians, the most important stories they see and hear every day come from our newsrooms. Maintaining vital, independent and professional newsrooms in communities across the country is a fundamental commitment of Canada’s broadcasters. However, to be clear, this is a commitment that has seen them lose tens of millions of dollars over the past decade. It is unsustainable without urgent policy reforms.
In an era of misinformation, it is critical that we continue to support newsrooms that reflect Canadian communities. We know that digital streamers don’t have the interest or the wherewithal to do this.
It has always been the case that the entertainment programming that draws the largest audiences in Canada helps to sustain the news and information programming. Allowing foreign streamers to continue to skim all of the financial benefit from access to the Canadian market without giving anything back will ultimately reduce the number of Canadian voices being heard—fewer Canadian artists, and critically, fewer Canadian journalists.
While we fully support the passage of Bill C-11, we have three very focused amendments that we feel are essential to ensuring the bill does not entrench an inequitable, two-tiered system between regulated broadcasters and currently unregulated streaming platforms.
This includes amendments to clause 3, where we have asked for foreign streamers to contribute to a production fund where their spending can be monitored; to clause 5, where we are seeking to ensure that there is not a two-tiered system of regulatory obligations, but a fair and equitable approach to Canadian entities and their larger foreign competitors; and to clause 11, to resolve the inequity of part II fees.
It is vital that we get this legislation right. It is vital that we pass it, so we can move forward as an industry and usher in a broadcasting system that reflects today’s realities.
Thank you. I look forward to any questions you may have.