Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for that question. There are a couple of things. One would be just to stress off the top—and again, this perhaps picks up on some of the committee's debate from yesterday—that the effect of proposed section 2.1 would mean that any individual who is unaffiliated with a social media company, no matter how big their following is or how much money they make, is not to be considered a broadcaster for the purpose of the act.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't have the legal budget at the tip of my fingers. What I can say to you is that CRTC decisions are subject to judicial review on a regular basis in the sense that there are applicants who choose to have decisions reviewed by a court. Some of those are fairly high-level, high-profile proceedings, and others are less so.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Shields, for the question. There would be a few things I would underline with respect to the amendment that has been tabled. The first thing is to highlight a point that came out in the committee's discussion with respect to the charter and freedom of expression, and to remind the committee that, of course, the CRTC is bound by the charter.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. The expectation is certainly that the CRTC would consider the charter in making its decisions. Again, the CRTC already has a team of independent legal counsel that would provide that opinion. To your point, publishing those legal opinions would obviously then subject them to external scrutiny.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Chair. You're right. My apologies for forgetting that first question in your first batch.

Canadian Heritage committee  The impact on the discoverability piece is minimal. What this amendment that's on the table would do is, again, clarify or deem that social media services do not exercise programming control over unaffiliated content that's uploaded to those services. Again, in part, it would be Parliament answering the question of fact very clearly that it considers all programming that's uploaded to social media services by unaffiliated users not to be under the programming control of those social media services.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The emphasis I would put on this is that we would expect the regulatory obligation to focus on the expected outcome. The way that would be put into effect—again I just caution against necessarily assuming where this lands—is assuming that the focus is on our wanting a greater percentage, or representation, of Canadian creators or artists to surface in search results.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I never want to presume. When you look at online services like Spotify, the reality is that you do see less Canadian, francophone artists, for example, surface in search results. Indeed, the reason that discoverability powers were included in Bill C-10 from the get-go was to recognize that if we want to make sure that our Canadian artists and creators are being surfaced on these platforms, the CRTC needs the tools to do that.

Canadian Heritage committee  The committee has had an opportunity to discuss this issue before. It is most relevant with respect to discoverability measures or powers that are being given to the CRTC, because I think there's an appreciation on this committee that recommendation engines that are used on services like Spotify or Netflix or social media services like YouTube or others employ algorithms that underpin those recommendation engines.

Canadian Heritage committee  As the committee is aware, Bill C-10 as tabled includes a definition of “programming control”. That term is used in a few places in Bill C-10. You will see a couple of references to it throughout the policy objectives section. With respect to regulatory powers, you will see it referenced in one place, in proposed paragraph 10(1)(c), with a discussion of programming standards.

Canadian Heritage committee  The impact of this amendment on whether social media companies make a financial contribution or not, based on my assessment, is none. Again, the only relevant point when it comes to the regulatory powers would seem to be proposed paragraph 10(1)(c), where you see the use of the term “programming control”.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the question, Mr. Shields. The point I was trying to make during our last meeting was that Bill C-10, as tabled, does not have thresholds in the legislation, in terms of determining whether an online undertaking should be regulated by the CRTC and should be required to contribute.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the question, Mr. Housefather. Perhaps I will begin by reiterating that the government's position, when it tabled Bill C-10, was acknowledging that there will be many smaller services that are not scoped into the act because of that requirement for there to be a material contribution.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Chair, to wrap up, I would suggest to Mr. Housefather that the department's perspective is to perhaps express a bit of caution when picking numbers without a full regulatory proceeding to get some evidence and basis on the table. Whether a service has a low number of subscribers or a high number of subscribers, they can still potentially make different contributions, again depending on that revenue level or that subscriber level.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the question, Ms. Dabrusin. I'm not able to give a definitive amount to that on the spot. It would take us going back and looking at some of the analyses the department has done underpinning that $830-million number to look at how it might intersect with some of the thresholds that are being put forward.