Happy Monday everyone! Was finally pointed in the right direction to track down the original amendments the Senate made to C-11, and I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about the House’s response to these amendments, so we’re going to take a look at what the Senate wanted to do and how the House responded!
What does the House agree with?
So we’ll start with the easier bit, what changes did the Senate introduce that the House is happy with?
For the most part both the Senate and the House agree on new clauses that clarify that the Broadcasting Act and the CRTC will need to protect the privacy of individuals, journalistic independence, and freedom of expression. They also agree on changes that add or clarify cases where C-11 is pushing for more diversity in content, including ensuring that Indigenous people have access to the broadcasting system no matter where they live. They also both agree that the broadcasting system should help promote local journalism as well.
Disagreements
And now for the fun part! What has the House rejected and sent back to the Senate?
The first more noteworthy disagreement is over a Senate amendment that would add the requirement of an age-verification system. It would have required online undertakings to implement an age-verification system to prevent children from accessing anything with a sexual nature. The House is rejecting this amendment on the grounds that it’s beyond the scope of what C-11 hopes to accomplish. (The stated goal of C-11 is to update the Broadcasting Act to include online undertakings and how regulations around them should be formed. This amendment definitely doesn’t fit that description, though it sounds like the Senate has a Bill coming through the pipes that would add an age-verification requirement anyway so we’ll see more about this later)
The next bit the two disagree on is a change to the priorities of what the CRTC needs to consider when making regulations involving online broadcasts. (Streaming)
The version of C-11 that the House passed would consider:
- The extent to which a program, uploaded to a social media service, directly or indirectly generates revenue
- The fact that it’s been broadcast, in whole or in part, by a service that is required to be licenced or needs to be registered with the CRTC but is not a social media service
- The fact that the program has been assigned a unique identifier under an international standards system (Copyright)
The Senate wants to remove the issue of revenue as a consideration, and replace it with a focus on copyright protections. (Specifically that the considerations need to be a) if it contains a sound recording assigned a unique identifier and b) if it’s been uploaded to social media by the owner or licensee of the copyright of the sound recording)
The House disagrees with this change because it doesn’t adequately cover the scope of copyright and social media, would limit the CRTC’s ability to make regulations surrounding this, and would limit the broadcasting system’s ability to adapt to new technologies. (Copyright detection measures could change in the future, and limiting our broadcasting system to these unique international identifiers would prevent them from updating to the new measures)
The Senate would also remove the CRTC’s ability to impose conditions on a broadcasting undertaking regarding the proportions of different genres being broadcast. The House is against this because it would reduce the diversity of available programming. (Worth noting here that under C-11 these conditions would be a case-by-case basis with each broadcasting undertaking. So the CRTC could potentially decide that Netflix needs to increase the amount of programs they make available that involve Indigenous communities, but would make no change to Disney+. It wouldn’t be a blanket “Everyone needs to have 30% of their broadcasting be Canadian content” situation. Though of course they could also just impose that condition on everyone anyway.)
The next change has a bit of back-and-forth happening. When passed by the House, C-11 has a clause that makes it so when the CRTC is making regulations about what counts as “Canadian Content” they have to consider if Canadian producers, including independent producers, have a right or interest regarding the program (such as having a copyright on it) that allows them to control and benefit in a fair and equitable manner from the exploitation of the program. (So the CRTC could decide that a program only counts as Canadian Content if a Canadian producer holds the copyright on it and would benefit from it being broadcast)
The Senate wants to change it to consider “Canadians” instead of “Canadian producers”. The House sort of agreed and wants to change it so Canadians stand to benefit “in a significant and equitable manner”. I’ll admit I’m a little fuzzy on just what’s happening here, but it looks like broadening it to “Canadians” ensures there’s no question about if an online content creator counts as the producer or not, and the House wants to ensure the majority of the benefit for a Canadian program goes to Canadians as well.
There’s a few more part of C-11 after what I just mentioned that add additional considerations involving Canadians and the content that is created (such as if a program furthers Canadian artistic and cultural expression). The Senate wants an amendment here that would make it so none of that can define a regulation made regarding what counts as Canadian Content. The House has rejected amendment because it would remove the ability for the CRTC to make sure that Canadian content is made by Canadians, which has been the main definition of Canadian Content for a while now.
The next amendment the House rejected would make it so the CRTC would need to hold hearings after the creation of certain regulations. The House has rejected it because the CRTC is expected to hold hearings before creating these regulations, and they feel having a second hearing is unnecessary and would slow down everything the CRTC does.
The last amendment that was rejected by the House would make it so the CBC would not be allowed to enter into any contract or agreement that would result in broadcasting an ad or announcement on behalf of an advertiser that is designed to resemble journalistic programming. The House rejected this one because, again, it’s outside of the scope of what C-11 sets out to do and because they’d like to do further studies on how best to set up the CBC to meet the needs of Canadians in the new broadcasting landscape.
Final note regarding these amendments and the House’s disagreement is that the Motion to reject C-11 as the Senate had amended it was passed, 202 in favour and 117 against, with the Conservatives and the Green Party being the only two parties opposed to it.
Senate Response
On April 27 the Senate passed C-11 with the changes the House requested above. They aren’t going to insist on their amendments. They also wanted to let the House know that they’ve noted the government’s public assurance that C-11 won’t apply to user-generated content and that policy direction given to the CRTC will reflect this.
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