By Ahmad Hathout
Organizations representing news media and their workers are warning the CRTC not to redirect any of the $100 million they were earmarked by Google toward public interest participation in CRTC proceedings related to news linking matters.
The Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF), which bankrolls public interest participation in CRTC proceedings, filed a Part 1 application this summer requesting that the commission expand its mandate to include matters pertaining to large technology platforms that must pay to link to Canadian news content under the Online News Act. Google has already agreed to put an annual inflation-indexed $100 million into a fund to continue hosting that content.
But the BPF has had a history of funding sustainability issues, and organizations tied to the media industry are pleading with the CRTC not to redirect any of the allocated Google money to the fund if it were to expand its mandate.
“These annual payments by Google are intended to be dedicated entirely to the production and creation of news content,” News Media Canada (NMC), which represents 550 print and online news outlets, said in its submission. “It is integral that the maximum amount of these monies is used for this purpose.”
The NMC noted that the “news media sector in Canada is in a very precarious state, and many areas are in a state of crisis,” and that “there are no provisions in the Online News Act for funding of public interest participation on these matters.”
Canada’s largest private sector union, Unifor, said it’s supportive of the broader mandate, but agreed that the money should not be redirected from the existing Google fund. Instead, it said that Google should be putting new money toward the fund as a condition of being exempted from the regulation.
Friends of Canadian Media, a non-partisan “citizens movement” for Canadian voices in Canadian media, said it is “generally supportive” of the BPF’s application and that an expansion of the mandate appears appropriate – so long as you put aside the funding question. On the funding question, the FCM had indicated in its submission on the Google exemption proceeding that it would support the CRTC requiring the search giant to provide the appropriate funding to an expanded BPF – but cautioned that this not be a redirection of money from the existing $100-million pot.
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) agreed in its own submission, stating that it doesn’t object to the expansion of the mandate “as long as any such funding comes from digital news intermediaries (i.e. Google) and not news businesses and is over-and-above” the $100 million to which Google has agreed.
However, the CAB also said it isn’t too sure of the need for such public participation, seeing as the CRTC is only playing regulatory backstop to commercial negotiations. The regulator, in this case, would only be overseeing through a bargaining framework and code of conduct the relationships between the news businesses and the platforms. “These are primarily bilateral business issues, rather than questions with direct and immediate impact on the Canadian public,” the CAB said.
The BPF has previously said that its funding situation has been precarious with its existing portfolio of matters in front of the CRTC.
The organization, which spawned in 2011 as a condition of Bell’s purchase of CTV assets, relies on what’s called “tangible benefits,” which are monies that only come as a condition of approving broadcasting acquisitions that are now not so common. The most recent lifeline comes from Rogers, which was ordered to put money into the fund as a condition of its purchase of Shaw’s broadcasting assets.
But the question on the mind of intervenors in this matter is, how long will the money last and, will it support an expanded mandate?
The CRTC is already considering whether to force Google to bankroll that public participation in exchange for exempting the search engine giant from the Online News Act for a five-year period after it reached an agreement on payment with the Canadian Journalism Collective – the rep for the news side. It has also said it’s looking into the long-term viability of public participation in CRTC matters.
The Disability Screen Office, a national not-for-profit seeking to improve disability representation in the sector, said the CRTC should only expand the mandate after it has figured out the BPF’s funding situation.
Broadcaster Eastlink said in its submission that the BPF failed to prove that it requires such a funding mechanism, claiming it hasn’t provided evidence that public interest groups would be unable to participate in such proceedings absent such funding. It also said the BPF failed to address whether there are other sources of funding for that end. It added that the application is “premature” anyway because the CRTC is currently exploring this question of funding as part of its regulatory overhaul roadmap.
“The Application is premature insofar as it assumes the BPF will not soon be replaced with an alternative approach to funding public interest interventions,” Eastlink said in its submission, citing the CRTC’s regulatory plan which includes new ways to fund public participation. “Accordingly, it is possible the Commission may choose to implement a new approach that would render the BPF obsolete.”
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC), both stakeholders in and beneficiaries of the fund, filed a joint application laying out their support for an expanded mandate.
