Senate begins C-10 analysis with broad debate

Senators are looking beyond the free speech issues raised by critics of the revised Broadcasting Act and instead are focusing on what some senators say are other problems arising from the bill, as C-10 crawls its way to the finish line. “Despite what you may have read or heard, this is not an act about censorship, it does not limit your free speech. The bill however does dramatically increase the potential for regulatory gatekeeping, it may especially limit the service which we're able to subscribe, and we can rightly debate the merits and demerits of that model," Paula Simmons of the Independent Senators Group said. The bill, she added "imposes to my mind an absurd level of direction and specificity about how streaming services curate and display Canadian content. I think those amendments are fundamentally wrongheaded,” she said. Her comments came Wednesday afternoon in the Senate after the sponsor of Bill C-10, Senator Dennis Dawson of the Progressive Senate Group, moved it for a second reading. He urged his colleagues to send it to the standing committee of Transport and Communication as soon as possible. “This bill deserves a lot of attention and scrutiny, and we need to perform our duties as the chamber of sober second thought -- it was never the intention of the government to run it through the end of the session -- so I'm happy to do it today,” Dawson said. “As it reaches us there have been over 100 amendments with numerous sub-amendments, the Bloc and the NDP do not hide their contempt with this chamber, and it would like us to trust their analysis of the bill and accept it blindly, rubber stamp it, and not give it the second thought that it deserves.” During questions, Senator Leo Housakos of the Conservative Senate Group took issue with Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault's claim that Bill C-10 will result in $830 million per year in additional investments in Canadian culture consistently, but “has refused to provide any calculations, explaining what formula he used to come up to those numbers.” He added that Guilbeault’s claims are in contrast to Liberal claims that Bill C-10 needs to pass for the government to find out how much money the streaming services are making in Canada. “If that's the case, how do they even know how much money the bill will raise and what are the basis of their promises to the art sector to come up with figures like that,” Housakos asked Dawson. Dawson replied that the question would have to be put to the Department of Heritage Canada, which is organizing briefings on the bill Monday, but that some of the estimates are based on what some online streamers are assumed to be making. Senator Pamela Wallin of the Canadian Senate Group said she disagreed with much of Dawson’s speech and asked why language was removed from the bill that would have exempted social media undertakings from the bill. She said that although user’s themselves are not subjected to the act, streaming services themselves can “start to censor content that people don't like” through the government’s discoverability requirements. She also said a “much simpler way” to get revenue from big tech was to impose taxes rather than put user generated content on the line. Dawson pushed back against Wallin’s comments by bringing up Wallin's time as a former television journalist, and current work in podcasting , saying that similar rules apply to traditional broadcasters and that the CRTC has “never stifled free speech” in the past. “I'm surprised the question would come from you who had been involved in broadcasting for so long. Can you give me cases where the CRTC issued you directives on what you're allowed to say and not say? That is just not what happens. And the only thing they're doing is they're going to be applying the same rules to YouTube as they apply to you,” he said. In his debate speech to the Senate, Dawson also said that Bill C-10 will empower the French cultural industry online, noting that 47 per cent of Francophones watch predominantly English language content on Netflix Inc. whereas 92 per cent of Francophones watch French language services on traditional television. However, during debate, Independent Senator Tony Loffreda, raised concern that the bill does not meet the needs of all Canadians, calling C-10’s handling of ethno-cultural content “an issue that has generated little interest in the other place.” Stakeholders have argued “that the Broadcasting Act and Bill C-10 fail to provide full and equal participation of Canada's racialized communities as operators in the broadcasting system,” he said. He added that the bill states that the Canadian broadcasting system -- through its programming and employment opportunities -- must serve all Canadians, but does not address diversity for operators and owners by not providing any specific support, protection or equal status to ethnic media outlets. He further took issue with a new provision of the act that states the broadcast system must provide opportunities to produce programming in Indigenous languages, English, or French or in any combination of them, which he “strongly supports” but said does not go far enough to protect other ethnic groups. “There are so many media outlets across the country that offer great quality insightful and entertaining programming in other languages that deserve formal recognition,” he said. Simmons questioned whether regulation on the internet is even needed as Canada’s cultural policy was adopted back when there was a limit of broadcasting spectrum for radio and television. She added that the Canadian cultural industry, according to pre-COVID-19 data, has never been more robust. “Here is the core question: Is cultural protectionism the fundamental model we wish to employ in 2021 or do we need a paradigm shift that puts the emphasis on preparing our tech sector and our cultural sector to be robust players on a global stage?” — Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

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Senate begins C-10 analysis with broad debate

News | June 24, 2021

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