Thank you, MP Thomas.
Through the chair, if I may, the framework as intended in the bill is again to incentivize digital news intermediaries and news businesses to come to voluntary agreements in relation to the exemption criteria. The idea is that the CRTC would assess the agreements in relation to those exemption criteria.
The power to issue an interim exemption was a recognition that in doing that assessment, the CRTC could conclude that a platform was close but, for example, may be missing a degree of regional representation or something like that. The idea behind an interim order was that rather than it being “no exemption, and now you must go to mandatory bargaining”, it's a tool to provide to the to CRTC to say, “Your agreements fall short in this particular area. You have a period of time to go and rectify that, and then essentially we will reconsider whether you merit an exemption.”
If I understand MP Julian's amendment on the table, it's, one—as he has indicated—to specify that the interim exemption period cannot last longer than a year. My understanding of the consultation language that is being proposed is that it would essentially require the CRTC, prior to concluding whether the DNI merits an exemption at the end of the interim period, to go back and do another consultation. I think that's our understanding of the amendment, but I certainly defer to MP Julian if he has a different intention in mind. Partly that's because, based on the amendment that this committee passed last time we were here, there will already have been a public consultation on the question of whether an exemption should be granted or not.
In summary, there's public consultation on exemption; then CRTC issues an interim order, and then our understanding of what MP Julian is proposing is that prior to rolling that over into a longer exemption order or not, there would have to be a subsequent second consultation.
