Canadian Heritage Committee on June 6th, 2022

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister.

I've looked through the bill—it's a big bill—and I can't find commercial content defined. Could you tell me where it is in the bill?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Proposed section 4.2 defines the criteria that will explain what commercial content is. What we call “commercial content” will be caught based on the three criteria.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's the legal pretzel clause—

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

What?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The legal pretzel clause. It's the one that has triple negatives and would have screwed up Stéphane Dion. That's in proposed section 4.2

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

No. I don't know the expression about the pretzels, but—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's doesn't say commercial content in terms of—

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

It says that commercial content will be based on the three criteria in proposed section 4.2. They are there.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Proposed subsection 9.1(8) says algorithms aren't involved. Nonetheless, the government says that Canadian content will be higher up in the search engines and the streaming services for people to see.

How is that going to be achieved? How does Canadian content get pushed up the screen as users see it, when there is no algorithmic control?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

There won't be any from the CRTC. The CRTC is precluded from playing with algorithms and we would never want the CRTC—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

How are you going to measure the outcomes of that—

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

That's exactly...you said the word.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

—in terms of seeing how it goes? How are you going to watch it? You're going to have to look at the algorithms and the performance.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

The outcomes are what we're interested in. What YouTube does is their thing.

There are other options. You can have, for example, on the home page...it doesn't even touch algorithms. Maybe you can have a Canadian section. Maybe you have a playlist of Canadian content. There are other options, but it's—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

No individual company is—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Nater]

I apologize, Mr. Perkins and Minister. That is the five minutes.

I am being ruthless with this round. It is 4:27. I know the minister has to leave at 4:30.

We'll start Mr. Housefather's five-minute round. It will be up to the minister if he can stay for the extra 2.5 minutes for the full round of questions.

Mr. Housefather, the floor is yours.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, we are happy to have you. I will keep it brief.

First, Mr. Minister, when it comes to proposed section 4.2, we've heard a lot of comments about what is regulated or what is not regulated. Can you clarify again that content is not regulated?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Absolutely. It is not.

There are people trying to make others believe that the CRTC is there and that the government, through the CRTC, wants to know what people produce and if their videos are fine or not, and if we're not happy with it, we're going to take it offline. No.

The CRTC said it before: they're not interested in that content. The only thing we're looking at is what becomes part of commercial content, and that is defined in the criteria in proposed section 4.2.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Exactly.

There have been a lot of comments about proposed paragraph 4.2(2)(a) and the ambiguity with respect to direct or indirect revenues. Normally, if someone was interested in supporting a bill and wanted changes to it, they would propose amendments to the section of the bill that they were confused about. Is that correct?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

If there was any interest, yes, but I don't sense a lot of interest on that side.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I understand.

I have just one more question, Minister.

As I see it, the bill contains a number of provisions that are vital to our cultural sovereignty and the protection of Canadian culture, especially French-Canadian culture.

Can you talk more about that?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

The bill contains something very important, and unfortunately, it doesn't get a lot of attention. I'm talking about the objectives we want to achieve by passing the bill. We want to make sure we can continue to tell our stories, listen to our music and watch our films.

The content being created elsewhere in the world is great. There's no denying that, but we can't turn our backs on what we produce, what we create, because it speaks to our identity. It's us, it's who we are, and it's how we tell our story.

On one hand, the bill will ensure that there is more funding for the creation of Canadian content, including indigenous, English-language and French-language content, as well as content produced by various communities. On the other hand, the bill will ensure that the content is available and easy for people to find. That's how it works today.

Mr. Housefather, as you may recall, back in the day, record stores would have certain music playing when customers got to the cash as a way to showcase the artist. Nowadays, artists are discovered online: everything depends on their online exposure or lack thereof.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I completely agree. I realize that you have a busy schedule, so I will let the chair conclude this half of the meeting.

Thank you, Minister.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, John Nater]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Owen Ripley, for your time this afternoon.

We will proceed with the second panel in a few minutes, but thank you, Minister, for your time.

We will suspend briefly as we switch over the panels. Thank you, colleagues.