Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear from here in Treaty 4 territory. I'd like to state for the record that I am not employed by nor am I on contract to any company or person asking me to advance the perspective I will share with you today.

Canadian Heritage committee  Like I said in my opening remarks, what was needed was a new Canadian communications act, as was recommended by the department of heritage panel that reviewed it. We have an entirely new framework for our communications infrastructure going into the 21st century. It's one that

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. It would be useful to see what is planned for this one. When Bill C-10 went forward, there was one. A draft, at least, OIC was posted. We haven't seen one yet on this.

Canadian Heritage committee  They're not. You don't see a lot of them.

Canadian Heritage committee  No.

Canadian Heritage committee  What I will say is that unless there's a different piece of legislation that—

Canadian Heritage committee  You could say that under Bill C-11, you're not going to use this clause 4.2, but 4.2 might be there to open the door for online harms.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm not sure what your statement was.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's hard to say—

Canadian Heritage committee  You'll have to ask somebody else on that. I don't have a whole list of data in front of me today to answer that question. No doubt—

Canadian Heritage committee  The CRTC has a lot of talented people there, but I don't think it has the structure yet to be able to regulate this. It needs to learn about issues like user-generated content, which is why it would be a good idea to take it out of the bill. If you wanted to carve out just a si

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it would probably unfold over about five years, particularly with all the other legislation that's coming forward to it. It's going to be doing newspapers and it's probably going to be doing online harm. I'm assuming why clause 4.2 is there. It has all kinds of things com

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for this opportunity. For the record, I am appearing as a private citizen and I'm not a member of a political party. I worked in the newspaper business for close to 30 years and served as a CRTC commissioner for almost 10 years. I am familiar with how things work. I c

Canadian Heritage committee  I do. In terms of Bill C-18, the fact that it directs any money from this commercial agreement to have to go to news is certainly well intended, but if this is a commercial transaction between two willing parties, what business does the CRTC or the government have, for that matte

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, the CRTC is going to be a very busy place these days. There's a search on for a new chair. The initial search had to be extended, so the incumbent has been extended for four months. It will take that new chair a year to organize the place the way he or she wants. Yo