By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The next tranche of funding from the federal government’s $500-million emergency response fund for cultural, heritage and amateur sports organizations during the pandemic announced two months ago will be rolled out in the coming days, while legislation modernizing the Broadcasting Act will have to wait until Parliament resumes its normal sitting this fall, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said on Tuesday during a Covid-19-prompted virtual edition of the Banff World Media Festival.
The deadline for applications for the first phase of funding concluded on June 12, and was targeted to organizations which have already received financial support from Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund.
Guilbeault said that the next phase will involve the allocation of $200 million to organizations that have yet to receive federal funding, such as museums, small broadcasters, third-language media and live performance companies.
“What we’re trying to do in the arts and culture sector is to save the ecosystem,” the heritage minister said in an online question-and-answer session with Anja Karadeglija, editor of The Wire Report. “We understand we may not be able to save every single entity, every single organization – but we are going to try to save as many as we can so that when we do emerge out of this crisis, the ecosystem is fairly intact and we didn’t lose along the way whole elements of that ecosystem.”
“We understand we’re not helping everybody, but everybody needs help.”
He also said the federal government is trying to find a solution to the problem film and television producers are experiencing in obtaining Covid-related insurance coverage, something the CMPA says needs about $100 million, not in cash, but as a backstop, as we recently reported.
Had Parliament not been devoted to only addressing Covid-related legislation during the pandemic, June was the month when Guilbeault intended to introduce amendments to the Broadcasting Act based on some of the recommendations from the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel report released in January.
He said the bill would seek to ensure “that all content providers, including web giants, support the creation and discovery of Canadian content.”
“Over the years there’s been this inequity that has installed itself into the Canadian system where we have content providers that are subject to rules and guidelines under Canadian law [and] are contributing to Canadian cultural content and its discoverability, and you have another set of content providers that do not have the same rules,” said Guilbeault. “We want to create a more equitable and fair system for all content providers, and ensure that our artists and producers and creators can continue telling our stories.”
He said the forthcoming proposed legislation will include measures to modernize some aspects of the CRTC, too.
“We shouldn’t have something that’s extremely strict and difficult to change because technology evolves very quickly – and we don’t get, as policymakers, to revisit these elements very often.” – Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault
“Our regulation should be nimble. We shouldn’t have something that’s extremely strict and difficult to change because technology evolves very quickly – and we don’t get, as policymakers, to revisit these elements very often,” explained Guilbeault, who added that the last time the CRTC underwent major reform was in the 1990s.
“What we’re trying to do with the Broadcasting Act is really look at those who produce content as opposed to those who distribute content,” he said. “In terms of Google and Facebook, I don’t think that in the Broadcasting Act there will be a lot of things looking at what they do. This would be done most likely on what we will do on neighbouring rights, which would be a separate piece.”
The federal government also plans to introduce new legislation, according to Guilbeault, to “support and sustain a healthy news and information sector,” beyond some of the initiatives already taken, including a series of tax credits worth $594 million for Canadian media announced in last year’s budget but suspended during the pandemic.
One model Canada is considering is the approach taken by France in its use of neighbouring rights based on a copyright directive by the European Union requiring digital platforms, such as Google and Facebook, to compensate online news outlets for content posted.
“Those who benefit from the media content of our news and information agencies in Canada should be paying their fair share if they’re making money from this,” said the Heritage minister, who added that he didn’t believe the federal government should be directly funding the country’s news organizations, even though that’s still, ostensibly, the plan.
“The idea is, through negotiation, to come to an agreement with the web giants as to what an adequate framework for compensation would be.” – Guilbeault
“If Facebook or Google uses an article from The Globe and Mail, CBC or the Toronto Star, right now those news organizations that produce the content in the first place get a very, very small portion of the money that’s made by those web giants distributing it,” said Guilbeault. “The idea is, through negotiation, to come to an agreement with the web giants as to what an adequate framework for compensation would be.”
“So if you’re using an article from Le Devoir, well obviously it doesn’t have the same value from a monetary perspective as using an article from The Globe and Mail or from the CBC.”
