Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Justin Tomchuk. I'm a filmmaker, musician and entrepreneur based in Montreal. Along with my fiancée, I run two YouTube channels with sizable followings.
We produce what is known as user-generated content. Since our productions derive revenue “directly and indirectly”, as described in proposed paragraph 4.2(2)(a) of Bill C-11, it's clear that we would fall under the umbrella of the proposed regulations.
The first YouTube channel we operate covers how Canadian products are manufactured. The first company that we featured was a new business in Montreal that makes handmade candy. All videos that we made with them have gone viral, with their most popular one achieving 30 million views. From that, their company has made a ton of international sales and became well known online to the point that American tourists were crossing the border just so they could visit their shop in person.
We’ve since featured a guitar maker in Montreal whose video is approaching 10 million views; a cutting board company in Nova Scotia that reported a huge spike in online sales; and a maple syrup farm near Ottawa that received a wholesale order from as far as Kuwait. Some of our videos were shot entirely in French and still received millions of views from a mostly American audience.
All these videos were shot out of our own pocket, qualifying for no available arts funding, and despite that, they accomplished all of this economic activity. We never received any government funding whatsoever, because we don’t qualify for it. Either our productions are deemed too small and we’d lose the intellectual property of our content, such as with the NFB, or we disqualify from arts funding because our productions are commercial in nature. In fact, because our business pays tax, we contribute funding to these programs that exclude us.
The second YouTube channel that we operate is a series of animated shows, and the majority of revenue is derived from merchandise sales such as clothing, posters, toys, vinyl records, etc., products that I source myself, some of which are from Canadian manufacturing companies. These products are exports and bring revenue into Canada and into manufacturing jobs.
Our channels have highlighted Canadian products for the world to see and purchase. Unfortunately, Bill C-11 would make that more difficult and potentially destroy our visibility internationally.
Bill C-11 implies vague changes to these platforms to prioritize Canadian content to Canadians, but it would in turn deprioritize Canadian content to an international audience. The social media platforms cannot allow Canadian content to enjoy heightened exposure to Canadians without detracting exposure internationally, as it creates an uneven playing field on the platform. Less Canadian content would be shown globally as a result.
Second, the recommendation algorithms consider whether a viewer stays to watch the content and for how long. Forcing Canadians to watch CanCon content through recommendations will result in lower audience retention, as the recommendations would no longer be based on their interests. This further deranks a video’s standing and damages its visibility. Thus, this bill would hurt the exact content it is trying to promote.
Ninety-seven per cent of our viewers are international. Bill C-11 would make Canadian content a mirror instead of a window. It would stifle independent productions, result in more piracy, breed resentment among consumers and make it more difficult to attract an international audience to purchase Canadian products.
Proposed subparagraph 4.2(2)(a) needs to be removed from Bill C-11. Bill C-11 needs to make the distinction between paywalled premium distributors such as Netflix and user-generated social media platforms such as YouTube. The bill should be scrapped entirely, as it makes any online undertaking available in Canada, regardless of size, burdened with the obligations of the CRTC, which would reduce access of international content to Canadians. If this bill comes to pass, other countries may see it as precedent to adopt similar regressive laws, resulting in less Canadian content being shown internationally, effectively destroying any homegrown media and making it harder for even legacy media, not just digital creators like myself, to have access to emerging, premium, international distributors.
A solution to the problem Bill C-11 is trying to fix is to make streaming platforms give consumers the ability to filter content by region so that Canadian content can be shown when it’s sought and not by force. If we are concerned with how these social media companies are impacting us as Canadians, we should legislate transparency into how the algorithms recommend content before we enforce changes to them and damage an entire thriving online industry.
Thank you.