Madam Speaker, Irene Berkowitz published a report on behalf of her and her colleagues called the “Watchtime Canada” report. I have spoken about this in the House before. There are over 160,000 Canadian YouTube content creators right now and, under the existing rules, 40,000 of them have been able to monetize and hire 28,000 Canadians.
These particular content creators have been able to produce such good content, made in Canada by Canadians, that it is now pushed up and they are able to make a living from it. Is the member not concerned that by arbitrarily changing the rules we will see other Canadian content that may not be as high quality get pushed to the front of many Canadian YouTube screens? That could harm an industry, these mom-and-pop operators that have worked so hard to produce high-quality content.
Is the member not concerned that by changing those rules, it actually may harm some Canadian content that is already being watched because it is great content, not because it meets an artificial algorithm dictated by the CRTC?