Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre defines the consumer interest in broadcasting as ensuring that consumers benefit from access to a wide variety of programming in the broadcasting system that offers choice in an affordable manner.
Unlike in 1991, consumers now pay for almost all broadcasting, whether with money or with personal information, including their online subscriptions, cable TV and video on demand, delivered by a BDU, or over the top, via the Internet. Consumers are now a key stakeholder in this debate. We are of equal importance to creators, platforms and producers.
We believe that extending CanCon financial support requirements to online services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, and even social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, when used as program distributers, are generally supported by Canadians.
However, the bill grants the CRTC discretion to set the financial and potential other obligations of online undertaking registrants, no matter their size or type, provided they distribute any programs, which is overbroad. To solve this, we support an amendment to the bill exempting small online undertakings below a high Canadian revenues threshold, perhaps $150 million, from financial and other conditions. This threshold would not affect registration or information requirements.
Consumers naturally resist the insertion of CanCon into automated plays or algorithmic suggestions of platforms such as YouTube, and digital first creators are concerned that such discoverability tools will backfire and reduce their audiences.
PIAC believes that the user-generated content problem can be addressed by redefining “discoverability” as not one concept, but two: static discoverability and dynamic discoverability.
Bill C-11's only new mandatory broadcasting policy requirement is proposed new paragraph 3(1)(r), which states:
online undertakings shall clearly promote and recommend Canadian programming, in both official languages as well as in Indigenous languages, and ensure that any means of control of the programming generates results allowing its discovery;
Clearly, discoverability is key to the drafters and must stay in some form. This policy objective mandates both static discoverability and dynamic discoverability. The first half could be satisfied by a banner ad on YouTube that simply links, upon a consumer's click, to selected CanCon. It is static. It is unobtrusive and likely unobjectionable to consumers, but still clearly promotes and recommends CanCon.
The second half of the new policy objective is dynamic. It requires AI prediction tools to insert a CanCon video or song into a user's auto-play feature or to dynamically suggest links. It is intrusive and disruptive to the user's expectations and experience. It is overkill to achieve the goal of “promote and recommend” CanCon. It is even more intrusive than the exhibition requirements on traditional broadcasters, because the online world is a world of abundance and consumer choice, not scarcity, where mandated exhibition makes more sense.
Digital first creators are rightly concerned that the bill's requirement to use dynamic discoverability will backfire and actually demote the importance of, and user engagement with, their content. Canadian users who are involuntarily exposed to discoverability links will avoid or react negatively, thereby signalling to the AI globally and in Canada to demote the content.
The solution is to require only static discoverability tools and to require any Canadian content creator who wishes to have their content promoted, even by static discoverability, to apply to a new CanCon authorization authority, likely the CRTC. This will allow digital first creators the choice to continue to operate untouched by this entire regime, which PIAC believes they want, or to have their content promoted in the limited sense of static discoverability.
PIAC recommends amending proposed paragraph 3(1)(r) to remove the last 15 words, thereby directing the CRTC to satisfy the bill's discoverability requirement with only static discoverability tools.
I welcome your questions. Thank you.