If it doesn’t pass and there’s no election, it will continue in the fall
By Bill Roberts
AT MOMENTS HE LOOKED a bit like that deer in the proverbial headlights.
Minister Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage, was in virtual conversation with Prem Gill, CEO of Creative B.C. on Thursday at the virtual Banff World Media Fest.
It was also somewhat of a hot seat.
“Look, I’ve been minister for 20 months and 18 of those were under Covid… it’s been a steep learning curve,” shared Guilbeault as he acknowledged his baptism by flamethrower at the Ministry.
And with Bill C-10, “we’ve had 120 amendments in committee, which is totally normal… and initially the committee did well, until one party decided to play politics with C-10… But with the help of the Bloc Quebecois, we’ve brought the bill back to the floor (of the House of Commons) for third reading… and I’m confident that we’ll be able to vote on the bill… and then send it to the Senate… so it’s still possible that it could be adopted… every day that passes, those chances are going down obviously, but it’s still possible.”
The Minister added that, “There’s talk of an election… if that happens C-10 will be a central part of that platform… but I’m dedicated to making this happen even if it (doesn’t get done ahead of the coming summer recess and) happens in the fall.”
(Ed note: The overwhelming assumption in Ottawa is a fall election is a slam dunk certainty. Last week, those MPs who already know they won’t be running again spent time in the House saying goodbye to their colleagues and constituents.)
Gill then asked about Guilbeault’s own pandemic screen-viewing habits, and he bravely covered the waterfront of Gem, Crave, Amazon Prime… but admitted to being “a big fan of Kim’s Convenience thanks to my wife… though I came to it late.”
And he was candid that, after spending so much Covid time in front of a computer screen, “I’ve got to unplug… and that means reading books.”
It’s clear Guilbeault has earned his creds with the Canadian screen production community and I can’t remember when a Heritage Minister has been such a player in the weekly, if not daily, news cycle. This by providing urgent pandemic relief via distribution of $500 million for the cultural sector; and a $50 million insurance backstop which “we needed to have… government get into insurance for production sets.”
It’s been successful, but quite unusual for the federal government to be in insurance. “Indeed the (Liberal’s 2021) budget was historical”, according to the Minister, “with $60 million over three years to the CMF for equity-deserving groups and underrepresented professionals… $40 million for the Indigenous Screen Office… an additional $105 million over three years to Telefilm… plus there are virtual export activities in this virtual world … virtual trade missions in Europe, like Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands (thanks to Creative Export Canada)… where there is an appetite for international collaboration and coproduction.”
I was exhausted just listening to him.
“Look, the pandemic makes us understand the real importance of the arts and culture,” Guilbeault said, adding his job is to see “how government can be the best possible partner to make that happen.”
Returning then to Bill C-10, the minister explained “the regulatory framework going into the future will need to be agile and nimble… for 30 years things have been set in stone… but at the rate of change in technology and society, we can’t wait another 30 years… I don’t think we have the luxury of doing that again.
“What we’re trying to do is have a system where regulation can evolve over time without necessarily having to come back for legislative change which can be challenging, difficult (and) take a long time,” he continued. “If our ecosystem isn’t adequate, the companies, independent producers, writers and creators will ultimately suffer… that’s our motivation for Bill C-10.”
“People think C-10 was controversial, wait until we table this legislation!” – Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault
Gill took the hook on regulation and challenged Guilbeault on the right definition for Canadian content. This had a particular British Columbia spin, with 80% of that province’s productions having U.S. or other international partners.
Guilbeault, however, wasn’t about to cross that sensitive political direction/civil service implementation line. “We would like the CRTC to look into this… I do think there should be due process at the CRTC where it can it can hear stakeholders, have proper consultation… this is something that hasn’t been looked at for some time and the world has changed quite a bit since then… C-10 is about modernization, web giants paying their fair share, but ultimately it’s about updating the broadcast system, which needs to include discussion and evaluation of Canadian content.”
Guilbeault also stuck to the rough estimate of projected new cash coming from the web giants such as Netflix, Spotify, Disney+ of around $830 million to the Canadian production industry (although we’ve been told by the ministry this number is an “illustrative estimate”).
He also suggested some additional advantages of C-10. For example: “Currently in the Broadcasting Act, Indigenous production is mentioned as pretty much ‘if you feel like it’… but in this new legislation it is mandatory.” This is a major reason APTN CEO Monika Ille told us she supports the bill.
And he provided a peak at ongoing processes where he’s “actively looking at ways to provide more equity, including tax credits to support these (Bill C-10) initiatives… putting our money where our mouth is… incentive mechanisms for equity-seeking groups, where production companies get tax breaks and also about who makes the decisions… including in Crown Corporations,” he said. “If we keep nominating white guys over 50, we won’t see the kind of systemic change we need”.
Asked by Gill if he’d encountered any true surprises in his ministerial tenure, Guilbeault referenced his 2019 book The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or, in French, Le bon, la brute et le truand, which tackled some of the negatives related to artificial intelligence (AI).
Indeed, in that treatise, he cites Facebook over 30 times, attributing everything from Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the tearing sound we hear in our social fabric, to the ubiquitous platform. So, it was understandable that, in his view, “there is a role of public policy to maximize the benefits and minimize the perverse aspects of social media,” he said.
“We now have a coalition of countries like Germany, Finland, France, looking at these issues… and soon we’ll see a charter,” explained the minister. “We can’t let the technologies run the show anymore. Online harms, left unchecked, give us what we saw in January (the mob insurrection at the Washington D.C. Capitol)… We saw how far hate speech and abuse can go.
“If you go back to the Yale Report, there were so many other recommendations we want to look at and start implementing.” – Guilbeault
“Online hate doesn’t stay online… and it needs government intervention. Of course, that has its challenges and it’s complicated, but it needs to be done,” he continued. “Myself, and many of my Cabinet colleagues, have been working on legislation regarding online harms, around hate speech, incitement to violence, terrorism… people think C-10 was controversial, wait until we table this legislation!”
Getting close to wrapping up this virtual BWMF session, Gill wondered what had shifted for the Minister regarding anti-racism matters. “My riding in downtown Montreal includes China Town,” he said, “and much violence is directed at the Asian population… So I’m working with the city and the province… so much comes back to dis- or mis-information that happens online. Debate needs to be more civilized.
“Let’s not give the most extreme echo-chambers a free rein.”
Finally, after asking the audience not to despair over the fate of Bill C-10, Minister Guilbeault predicted “this is just the beginning of our agenda to modernize the ecosystem. If you go back to the Yale Report, there were so many other recommendations we want to look at and start implementing.
“We went for one thing (Bill C-10) and we can see how challenging that has been, but it’s not that difficult that it shouldn’t be done… it’s about cultural sovereignty.
The Broadcast and Telecommunications Legislative Review report (a.k.a. the Yale Report) came in at 235 pages, and had 97 recommendations, so Guilbeault may need a full 44th session of our Parliament to achieve that goal. Plus, there are telecom recommendations in it, so we wonder why Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada minister Francois Champagne has yet to say anything about it.
In the end, Guilbeault left us with this: “Ministers from other countries are looking at Bill C-10, like Ukraine, to prevent their media from becoming just extensions of Hollywood.”
