Sure. I'll try to be brief. Thank you for the question.
In Europe, RT and all Russian state media have indeed been pulled from most airwaves. In many parts of Europe, RT is also inaccessible online. If you go to RT's website, you are blocked from seeing information on that platform. RT's feeds on platforms like YouTube are also blocked. I think this is extremely helpful because, nowadays, you don't need a cable or satellite connection to access that media.
The U.K. has banned CGTN and CCTV for airing confessions on their broadcasts. This was done quite some time ago. That same question came up at the CRTC in terms of licensing CGTN and CCTV a number of years ago, but I don't think it went anywhere. CGTN and CCTV are equally dangerous to RT. These platforms are being used to weaponize information against the western world, including for Canadians in the English-speaking and Chinese-language media information spaces. Canada is a bit of an outlier in terms of allowing those Chinese state media platforms to remain on Canadian broadcast systems.
I'll also add one other point about RT.
A situation has come up whereby there appears to be some evasion around the removal of those channels from our broadcast systems. There are two companies—one is eTVnet and another is based in Germany—selling devices in the Canadian marketplace. They cost around $15 or $20 apiece. They're somewhat like Amazon fire sticks. The user can purchase this device, put it on the back of their television and get the full array of Russian state media on that television. By some estimates, up to 40% to 50% of Russian diaspora members use these devices to get around that broadcast ban.
Preventing broadcasters like CCTV and CGTN from broadcasting is one thing, but we also need to look at this issue more broadly in terms of the platforms being used to broadcast information via the Internet.