By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – After a week of complaints that Bill C-10, the bill to update the Broadcasting Act, would instead cause all Canadians’ YouTube videos and Instagram posts and so on to fall under CRTC jurisdiction, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said late Monday a new amendment is coming to try and fix the fuss.
On April 23, when Julie Dabrusin, Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, proposed to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that Section 4.1 of Bill C-10 should be removed because it “has created some confusion for people on whether or not social media is excluded or included, so we recommend voting against proposed section 4.1… because we would be making it clear that social media is included, if they’re acting like a broadcaster.”
Section 4.1 exempted social media platforms from broadcasting regulation and dropping it made it seem to some as though user generated content would now be regulated, even though C-10’s section 2.1, which has been adopted by the committee, exempts users, and was confirmed by the department.
Little did she know then by removing that clause, more confusion would be created and to such an extent that some now expect the Bill will no longer be adopted in committee before the end of this parliamentary session.
Section 4.1 stated: “This Act does not apply in respect of (a) programs that are uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service—who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or the agent or mandatary of either of them—for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service; and (b) online undertakings whose broadcasting consists only of such programs.”
Some, such as Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and strong opponent of the bill, jumped on his digital podiums: “This is a remarkable and dangerous step in an already bad piece of legislation. The government believes that it should regulate all user generated content, leaving it to regulator to determine on what terms and conditions will be attached the videos of millions of Canadians on sites like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and hundreds of other services.”
People familiar with professor Geist know that he has become the go-to voice for consumer media when it comes to Internet and cultural policy who has thousands of followers.
Also, former vice-chair of the CRTC Peter Menzies was quoted this weekend saying: “Granting a government agency authority over legal user generated content—particularly when backed up by the government’s musings about taking down websites—doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.”
That was enough to get Conservatives to rise to battle. So, on Friday morning, Conservative MP Rachel Harder filed a motion in committee to stop the clause-by-clause amendment process and request that the Justice Department provides a new Charter statement since the removal of Section 4.1 significantly modifies the bill, rendering the initial Justice statement okaying Bill C-10, moot.
Section 4.2 of the Department of Justice Act requires the Minister of Justice to prepare a Charter statement for every government bill to help inform public and Parliamentary debate on government bills and make sure they’re on side with existing laws.
The debate on this motion, however, was cut short with a dilatory motion that passed with NDP support.
The Committee was only able to pass one amendment on that day.
Then, over the weekend, Minister Guilbeault did not help his cause by appearing on CBC and seeming unable to explain why section 4.1 was included in the first place.
Then this (Monday) morning, before the Committee started work, the NDP issued a news release stating it would vote “in favour of a motion that puts Bill C-10 on hold while the Department of Justice conducts a new Charter compliance analysis and calls on the Minister to appear in committee. The NDP plans to table a sub-amendment that puts a timeline on the motion to make sure the conservatives are not using this as an opportunity to delay the advancement of the bill indefinitely.”
The Committee was only able to pass one amendment during its two-hour Monday meeting before another motion was introduced with the same wording as on Friday, but amended by the NDP MP, Heather MacPherson. Her amendment was approved but the committee ran out of time before the main motion was voted upon. So, this debate will resume at the next meeting on Friday.
Then, during a lacklustre performance in Question Period where he was directly challenged to answer a specific question about getting a new statement from Justice by MP Harder, Minister Guilbeault instead deflected with a disappointing example of political “whataboutism” and finally tweeted later in the day that he would introduce another amendment to ensure user content is not regulated under the new Broadcasting Act.
“We also wanted to make sure that the content that people upload on social media won’t be considered as programming under the Act and that it won’t be regulated by the CRTC. And that’s why we will bring forward another amendment that will make this absolutely clear.”
However, the Minister’s aggressiveness and the attitude of some Liberal members on the committee give little hope this bill will resume its path towards third reading, unless some serious good faith discussions occur between now and Friday. So far, some 78 amendments have been dealt with, out of a total of 118 on the docket and while the NDP and the Bloc are still supporting the Bill, the Conservatives are intent to stop it.
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, however, in an email to members on Monday, have given up on C-10.
“Bill C-10 had plenty of warts… The Bill was plagued from the start by sloppy, thoughtless language, and by multiple gaffes on the part of Liberal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault,” reads the Friends message to members.
“Nobody wants the government to censor social media, but there are plenty of other necessary regulations that have nothing to do with Canadians’ expression rights, for example, to prohibit companies like Facebook and YouTube from showing beer ads to kids, which has happened. But the government bungled these sensitive parts of Bill C-10 quite badly.
“First, they proposed to exempt YouTube and Facebook from regulation all together, simply because their content is user-generated. Then they tried to fix their error but only made things worse, opening the door for opportunistic pundits and academics to proclaim that free expression is under threat. This argument has little merit, but it has prevailed in the media,” continues the email.
“Opposition parties control the Heritage Committee in this minority parliament. Instead of using their power to overrule the government and fix the bill, they have decided to stoke the outrage.
“At this point, it is highly unlikely that Bill C-10 will become law.”
