By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Bill C-10 passed second reading unanimously last Tuesday and was officially referred to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for study, which of course, has already begun.
The prior two meetings on the bill to amend the Broadcasting Act were, for all intents and purposes, labelled a pre-study of the legislation, in order to get a heard start hearing witnesses before the bill was approved in second reading.
So, officially, the meeting last Friday was the first meeting to officially look at the legislation.
However, the committee chair informed members and witnesses at the start of the meeting there would be a vote in the House of Commons which members had to be present for, and so the committee only heard the first panel. The meeting was then suspended until March 12th.
So, the members heard the presentation heard from the Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Independent Broadcast Group.
The second panel, which was to be the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Motion Picture Association-Canada and Quebecor Media Inc. will now be heard from on March 12.
“The sector welcomed the introduction of Bill C-10,” said Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), in his speech. He described the dire financial situation of private broadcasters: “Private, conventional TV stations posted a negative margin of seven per cent in 2018-19—the seventh consecutive year of losses. And that was before Covid-19.”
He then quoted a study which said local radio and television would lose $1 billion between 2020 and 2022.
“But it is not enough to simply apply a parallel regime to extract additional dollars from digital giants. We need to rebalance obligations, and create a modern, agile, sustainable regulatory framework that will allow Canadian broadcasters to adapt to the marketplace for decades to come,” said Desjardins.
Finally, he ended by saying that while the bill is not perfect (and not all broadcasters are behind the CAB’s position) and warned committee members that while they would hear from a variety from groups, they should not add to the regulatory burdens of Canadian broadcasters. Pointing to producers saying that “they may even suggest that the CRTC oversee the commercial relationships between broadcasters and producers, or that additional quotas for certain programming be instituted. This is simply not the time for such discussions,” he explained.
Incidentally, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) will be making a presentation to the committee on Monday, February 22.
While Independent Broadcast Group (IBG) members are also mostly part of the CAB, IBG views C-10 differently, likely because they are not part of vertically integrated entities like the CAB’s largest members.
“Some elements of the emerging Internet of 20 years ago are now dominated by a few web giants—and governments around the world are awake to the potential harms this can cause. But Bill C-10 is not.” – Joel Fortune, IBG
“One thing is missing in Bill C-10,” said Luc Perreault, strategic advisor for Stingray, a member of the IBG, “is regulation of distribution over the Internet.”
Joel Fortune, IBG’s counsel, added, “the CRTC’s authority to oversee companies that use the Internet to distribute programming services will be stripped away.” The IBG fears Bill C-10 will allow existing pay-TV carriers to dodge existing broadcast distribution undertaking regulations as they transition as many customers as possible to IP-based delivery systems – like Rogers (with Ignite), Shaw (with BlueCurve), Videotron (Helix), Bell (Fibe), Telus (Optik) and Cogeco (Epico). Those video platforms, because they are internet-delivered, would fall outside the confines of the Act, rendering existing BDU regulations moot and subjecting IBG members to all sorts of uncertainty.
Of course, members of the IBG benefit from today’s carriage rules imposed by the CRTC.
“Canada’s cable, satellite and IPTV distributors are all moving to Internet-based distribution. Once these established distributors move to the Internet, the foundation for the CRTC’s existing rules will be gone,” Fortune added. “Some elements of the emerging Internet of 20 years ago are now dominated by a few web giants—and governments around the world are awake to the potential harms this can cause. But Bill C-10 is not,” Fortune said.
The chair, in proposing to hear the other panel and have a discussion with those groups, indicated that the March 12 date had been originally slotted for clause-by-clause consideration of the bill – which indicates C-10 is moving quickly.
