Bill C-10 is a proposed amendment to the Canadian Broadcasting Act, introduced on November 3, 2020 by Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault during the second session of the 43rd Canadian Parliament. The bill seeks to amend the Broadcasting Act to account for the increased prominence of internet video and digital media, by adding undertakings that conduct "broadcasting" over the internet to the regulatory scope of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Bill C-10 has faced criticism for granting a large amount of power to the CRTC, who are unelected regulators and receive very little guidance from Parliament or the government. Its unclear applicability to user-generated content on social media services has also faced concerns that it infringes freedom of expression.
Bill C-10 is a proposed amendment to the Canadian Broadcasting Act, introduced on November 3, 2020 by Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault during the second session of the 43rd Canadian Parliament. The bill seeks to amend the Broadcasting Act to account for the increased prominence of internet video and digital media, by adding undertakings that conduct "broadcasting" over the internet to the regulatory scope of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Bill C-10 has faced criticism for granting a large amount of power to the CRTC, who are unelected regulators and receive very little guidance from Parliament or the government. Its unclear applicability to user-generated content on social media services has also faced concerns that it infringes freedom of expression.
Henry: Hey everyone. It's Henry, Mike and Chris of The Decentralists and we've got a new hot topic today and it's got a great name, actually. Regulation rigmarole. Well, what's it all about? It's about politics. Let me explain. In Canada, bill C 10 is a proposed amendment to the Canadian broadcasting act introduced back in November, 2020 by the minister of Canadian heritage, Stephen Gil Bow. Now this bill seeks to amend the broadcasting act to account for the increased prominence of internet video and digital media. By adding undertakings that conduct broadcasting over the internet to the regulatory scope of the Canadian radio, television and telecommunications commission known as the CRTC. Bill C 10 has faced criticism for granting a large amount of power to the CRTC who are actually unelected regulators and receive very little guidance from parliament or the government. It's unclear applicability to user generated content on social media services also faced concerns that it infringes on personal freedom of expression. So Mike, in layman's terms, why are so many folks up in arms over bill C-10?
Mike: You kind of alluded to it in the intro. It's politics, right. You know, so in broad terms, bill C 10 is, like you said, in the intro is an amendment to the Canadian content regulations. Basically, it's called CanCon. Right and as a, you know, recording professional, you know a lot about CanCon right. Which is why I'm interested to talk to you about this topic, but CanCon and I'm not the expert is essentially a set of rules to support Canadian content producers, right? So, they have something similar in England for the BBC and things like this. The idea is, is that, especially for a country like Canada, where your content has really been driven by what's happening across the border in the United States, cuz we're so close. If you want to prevent the Canadian let's say recording and music and artistic industries that are fledgling because we're one 10th of the size of the United States. What you basically do is you put in these regulations or these rules that say if you are licensed as a broadcaster, okay in Canada, you need to abide by certain rules, which say that, you know, between the hours of 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, certain percentage of your content, I think you said it's 35% of the content on say radio stations.
Henry: 55% in the evenings on television.
Mike: Right and so you have these, so that means if you're a television station or you're a radio station, the content you display has to be 55% and 35% Canadian content. Now that rule says nothing about online distribution. So, the guys like Netflix, okay, you can get Netflix in Canada and there's lots of people out there who use Netflix as their primary television. Well, everybody has it. Right? Well, pretty much right. What you now have is, you know, this large group of Canadian television viewers getting their content from an online platform like YouTube or Netflix. Those guys do not have to follow the Canadian content rules because the internet is not considered a licensed broadcasting.
Henry: It's not broadcasting and of course these Canadian content rules were envisioned and created before the internet existed.
Mike: Well, exactly. But I mean, in certain respects, you know, let's face it, right. It's something that if you can't license it, then you can't put rules around it, then you can't enforce anything. Right. So, I think this is part of where it starts to get finicky and then, you know, because you're what they're really trying to do, right. Is you think about it, you've got a government which is politics that makes decisions based on the will or the whims or the whatever of the voting population. Then you've got the regulators that they put underneath them that are kind of the stick. You know, they're the ones that get to go and write you tickets based on breaking the laws. right. So, by doing this and saying, it applies, what they're in effect doing is saying, now the CR TC can go and knock-on Netflix's door and say, I need to see 35 or 55% of all of your content that you display to a Canadian be Canadian and if you don't, I'm gonna find you. Exactly.
Henry: So, we still have to get back to my question. That was a great explanation. Sorry of what it is, but why are people up in arms?
Mike: Go ahead, Chris. You take this one. Okay.
Chris: Well, Henry the fear is that CanCon is going to apply to user generated content. And the user generated content is really what drives social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
Henry: Right. Okay. So, so you're saying that though, these regulations are conceived to ensure that people like Netflix and Google and all these people have content when they're actually targeting Canadians, the fear is your average person, Canadian or whatever, who is creating a, a, a video for TikTok or, or on YouTube, they would have to abide by the same conditions. Well, aren't they Canadian though?
Chris: How do you know?
Henry: Okay. Yeah, no, no, that's a good that's a very good point.
Mike: Yeah. Like, I mean, think about it right.
Chris: The other thing is that a big component of CanCon is regulators have to assess what is, and what is not culturally Canadian and for broadcasting, that was great for, you know, it's, it's given us a lot of great team shows has said has,
Henry: Great bands think about the music industry here absolutely.
Chris: But you know, like if the basic cat video, right. How do we assess that as culturally Canadian?
Henry: Of course, and do we even bother, right? I mean.
Mike: Well, but I think that's of the problem right. At the root of, at the root of the problem, the way I see it is, is you've got politicians, right. There's a lot of them nowadays in all over the world who are looking to take a swipe at big tech, as we know, well, they deserve it. Well, they're not popular. Okay. But if I think what you're seeing here, Henry is the challenge. When politicians for a political reason, try to, you know, put something forward, that's meant to resonate with voters and say, yeah, let's go and protect Canadian content, but they don't think it out. Right. They don't think out the implications of what it means to allow a regulator to not only determine what, like Chris said, what the bar is, what is Canadian content, but then basically to leave it vague enough where that regulator should they choose, could go after somebody who's making cat memes or things like this, like TikTok is 15 second videos. How is TikTok supposed to supposed to say well these 15 second videos, like what if the CRTC says, well, that's considered a broadcast. And now all of a sudden TikTok has to find a way to make sure that that of all the 15, second videos that are posted there, X percent of them have to be.
Henry: Canadian when they're okay. I don't even think, I don't even think that's the biggest issue because I don't think these regulations or the government ever really wants to regulate people doing their own contact.
Mike: Well, yeah, but I mean, but that's the thing, right? I mean, look what you're seeing here, Henry, you're seeing politicians putting a bill forward, they're getting pushback from people saying it could be, it could be interpreted very broadly.
Henry: That's and the go Mike, that's the problem because you know, what's gonna happen. Yeah. The reason that they've put that in there yep. Is so when the deep pockets of Netflix yep. Get into the courtroom in the future, they say, well, I'm broadcasting on the internet and I'm streaming. And you are, you are, you are putting these regulations onto my content. Why don't you do it to the people who do their 15, second, little YouTube cat videos? That's the reason.
Mike: For it. Well, I understand that Henry, but when you, when you create the regulation and you give a regulator, the ability to assess and assign fines and things and determine the CanCan. Right. And it's vague. Yeah. Okay. At the very best you know, I talked about it a little bit this week in, in a, in a blog post, or I think it was last week, but you know, at the very best, what ends up happening is you've got guys like Netflix who already have 10,000 lawyers and Google who already have 10,000 lawyers. All these guys, Facebook TikTok, all this, they can go into court and they can argue the opposite and say they it's too broad. So you see, but you start to see what starts to happen. Okay. People start to question the fact they're going well, wait a second.
Mike: I'm a Canadian. I use, I broadcast my show on YouTube. Right. Or maybe I'm maybe I'm and now what do I need to do? If YouTube is now under some regulation, then maybe the, what happens now, do I have to fill out some form on before I submit my YouTube video that says saying Canadian and give them my passport number. Yeah. And my identity to prove I'm a Canadian. So that, so that YouTube doesn't get sued. Maybe what YouTube says is if I can track the Mac address, Canada, I'm not gonna let you post a video because it's too much of a hassle for me to go through this process. Every time somebody posts a, something to my channel in, in Canada.
Henry: Right. You know what I mean?
Mike: I see what you're saying. Cause you would literally, you would literally have to do it for everyone.
Henry: So, guys, do we agree that the idea behind the bill is valid?
Mike: Absolutely. So do I? Absolutely. I without a doubt, we need to, we have a right and a need to protect Canadian content producers without. Yeah.
Henry: I think we all agree with that. And in fact, many didn't many decades ago, but it has proven the quality of the art that we, you actually have produced has been very much helped by the fact that there has been these CanCon rules.
Mike: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely go. It's just not a clear-cut thing with the internet, you know? Oh, it's not like, it's not like you can go and, and you can say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build a new art museum for Canadian art in Toronto or in Vancouver or in Ottawa. Right. That's something that you can do. Right. You could say that's a direct level of support. Whereas this type of thing is, is, you know, at best can be, you know, interpreted as a way to make the internet giants somehow bend to Canada, a country of 40 million. I mean, Facebook almost walked away from Australia, which is around the same size as us over trying to regulate their search or, or their advertising and search results.
Henry: Okay. So, a good point. So, Chris, I wanna get your take on this. And I also want to hear from Mike too, but is this kind of regulation the proper approach to control the content on the internet?
Chris: Well, I think we have to look at why CanCon worked before. And that's because when you look at television and radio, there's, there's only so much room on the dial.
Henry: Yeah. There was only a hand, there was only a handful of stations and at the most it got up to about 12
Chris: Yeah, and so you need a license to be able to broadcast. Right. The law dates that, that if you're up, if, if you're, let's see a pirate radio station trying to take some, somebody else's you know, space of F dial away that's right. Then, then then you get punished that's right.
Henry: You were shut down,
Chris: But this isn't a problem with the internet. Right. Anybody tomorrow can register a domain name and do whatever they want. Exactly. Voila. You have a website going up and running, right. The question isn't so much about availability of content. The question is, are we allowing big tech to monopolize the thought space of our internet? Yes. Because as time goes on Google occupying more and more space. Oh yeah. Right. They, they, they're not just number one in search they're number one in email, they're number one in video. You know, if, if they had their way, they, they would be, they would be running everything on the internet. Right. And, and Dito, Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There's really only full four or five big internet companies that are running everything. Right. It's surely crazy to me that Amazon owns whole foods, but also owns a video streaming service. Yeah. and also owns Twitch, which broadcasts video games. Right. Right. And I, I think the CRTC should go after companies like this, which are taking more and more of, of our of our thought space up. Right. But the question is, and I don't have an answer to this. How do you go ahead and, and, and make it so that, you know what,
Henry: That's a very good way of putting it. Maybe one just taxes the hell out of them and then apply a certain percentage of that to Canadian producers.
Mike: So, there you've nailed it Henry. Right. You know, that is the truth of what cuz if you think about it, what is CanCon? CanCon is a way for the government of Canada to ensure that there's funding in some form for Canadian content that they don't have to cough up. Right. that's basically, that's basically what it is. Okay and it's attack, it's a tax on broadcasters to make that they can that to make them fund the building of an industry that probably ended up, you know, that ended up with us now being a huge centre for film and video production in Vancouver and in Toronto, he Calgary Regina, you know, places like this. Right. That's what it's about. But so what's the smart move. Well, the smart you say, well, isn't it easy. I'm just gonna put a tax on Facebook. Right. And I'm gonna put a tax on Amazon.
Mike: I'm gonna put a tax on Google. I'm gonna a tax on all these guys and say, I'm taking 1% of everything that you make in Canada and I'm going to make your cough up to support Canadian artists. Right. Spotify and Apple and all these guys fall into that. But I don't know if you remember, we talked about, this was about a year and a half, two years ago, the French government decided to try to do this. Yes. They said, we are putting a law in place that says that the government of France gets a tax of X percent on the revenues that these social media and these internet companies derive from people in France. It seems logical seems fair. Two days later, they get slapped with threats of sanctions on and, and tariffs and all this because it's Eve as a challenge to the sovereignty of the us government's right. To tax and treat its corporations the way it wants to. Hmm. But these are not just us corporations anymore. That's what the internet has done. Yeah. I mean, it's clear, you used to be clear, you, you put up a tower and you would broadcast a signal that covered a certain area. And if that area was in Canada, Canada could put whatever laws they wanted in front of you. And, and, and this is essentially an attempt to do the same thing, but, but it's, it's, it's not the right way of doing it because it's just
Henry: Something that's gonna create a bunch of more money and work for lawyers and judges Australia. They went the tax route, didn't they? Well,
Mike: Yes and that was for news content. Correct. Right. So that, but that was, remember we had a chat with Daniel Bernhard of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting? It was great. And how it was a great way of thinking about it. Right. You just literally say guys, I'm sorry, but you know, you do 6 billion a year. You've gotta do a deal to produce this content and support Canadian Australian journalists. Why couldn't you do something like that to support Canadian artists?
Henry: Yeah. Maybe that's the answer.
Mike: Know, know what I mean is you just say, look, I'm sorry guys, if you're gonna do business in Canada, you've gotta follow the same rules. But then all of a sudden what happens trade war with the United States?
Henry: Well, let me, let me ask you this. The internet has changed everything as we know, but let's think about the way everybody used to buy music. You'd go to the record store, you'd buy a cassette or a record or a CD or a DVD. Okay. A physical commodity. Yes. That you took home. That was a great thing. And you owned it for personal use. Great. Correct. Now, you know, what's happened. Everybody knows what happens, but no one really talks about it. The internet changed things. So, so much that every music and video retailer is gone. Yep. Everyone is out of business. Complete, completely decimated. Yep. So I, I, I hate to be the devil's advocate and I hate to say this, but well, if the internet is a free all, can we not let Google, Amazon, Netflix essentially take all the business from all of the TV channels and radio channels and they'd be gone too. Is that not fair? Because it happened with music.
Mike: You know? See, it's not fair. No, but okay. So they're apples and oranges there. Okay. Yeah, because I think that one of the reasons why everybody, one of the, one of the, I think the valid reasons to be moan the loss of record stores and video stores. Okay. The most valid reason is there were a lot of people that worked in those businesses and they lost their jobs. Okay. Let's face it. Okay. Of course, they didn't all get hired at Spotify. Right. You know, and, and these 10 companies, when it comes to valuation of their business versus, and the, and the revenues they make versus the number of employees they have, it's very small, you know? Right. So, Facebook is worth like three times what say General Motors, Ford and Chrysler altogether are, and Facebook has 80,000 employees and those for car companies have a million employees. Okay. Right. So, there's this distortion there, but it's one of these things where the problem is, is what Chris said. I think that's where the solution is, is how do you determine the content is Canadian? Okay. So one of the reasons why these, these big tech companies basically don't get taxed anywhere is because there's all of these global tax regulations and stuff. Right. They're trying to, you know, you saw this, they're trying to do a minimum 15% corporate tax globally. For example, actually the reason that if I'm Microsoft and I set up my company incorporated in, in Ireland and I'd run all the transactions through a computer in Bermuda, I don't pay taxes. So it's very difficult to basically say to a guy like a Facebook, how much money do you make in Canada? Right. Because they don't need to report it and they don't. They'll just say, we don't have those kind of statistics cuz we don't charge anything. You know what I mean? It's a free service. Right. I mean maybe Netflix, a little easier, if you can mandate that, they tell you how many subscribers they have in Canada. But I think that's the kind of that's corporate secrets. The, you know what I mean? If what you could do is think of part of this architectural problem, right? Netflix is one thing Amazon prime is one thing. Youtube is one thing it's not YouTube Australia, YouTube, Canada, if you broke up like, like that, then the internet doesn't exist. Right. Whereas Netflix is a little different cuz they do that, right. If you're in the UK, you get a certain Netflix. If you're in Canada, you get a different one. So that can, they can, a Netflix can accommodate. That's true. But this, because this thing is fuzzy in terms of its being applicable to online opening up, like you said, it's open enough for the government to say, now we can go after these guys if we want to through the CRTC. Right. But if, if you can't determine where the content is made or who's created it or whatever, it just becomes this, this, you know, endless spiral of doom or whatever you want to call it. Right. Whereas if instead, what you folk was a clear, you know, not invasive put yourself in a Canadian government database thing, but some way that you could let's say meter or watermark or somehow denote a piece of content that you created a meme, a video, a poem, a song, right. As Canadian by the nature of where it was created and who created it, just, you know, self-reporting kind of thing, you know, this idea of you record a song Henry and you record it on your computer. And then like when you press a button to send it and post it somewhere, it gets watermark as a as a Canadian piece of content. Okay. and now that stuff can, you know, now you got, you got a clear way of being able to look at how much Canadian content is actually being put out there because your incentive would be to report. Right. And now all of a sudden you're saying, I can guarantee that any place on this planet they're playing this song that I just created. That's Canadian content. Yeah. You know, that maybe that's a way that you can now tax them. Right.
Chris: Well, I think we also need to look at certain success stories and I just wanna highlight something that has worked in, in the current landscape are, are all of you familiar with a TV show called Letter Kenny?
Henry: Love it. Oh, absolutely.
Chris: Yeah. So, letter Kenny started as just this viral video on YouTube. Okay. And then bell media signed the creator of letter Kenny to do a regular show. Hmm. Now that show letter, Kenny, if you wanna watch it, it's exclusive to crave TV, right? Yeah.
Henry: As a matter of fact, I've been wanting to watch all of them and the platforms that I have, and I don't like to have a whole ton won't allow me, I have to get crave to watch it. And I haven't done that yet.
Chris: That's right. So, so crave, if, if you're not Canadian is a Netflix competitor based in Canada. Yep. Owned by one of our big corporate giants bell media and the show has proved so popular. It's hilarious. It's gone international claim.
Mike: Absolutely. I have friends in the states who, who buy the t-shirts.
Chris: Yeah. And you know what, you know what, because letter Kenny is ex is exclusive to grave Americans, Australians folks from South Africa, they're now getting VPNs specifically. So, so that they could subscribe to, to create,
Henry: That's really, really cool. I didn't realize that that's a great story. I guess I better pay for it.
Mike: Well, see, but this is the thing, Henry. Right. You know, you, you, you just nailed it. I mean, you, you get crave, you can watch it. Right. But like Chris said, that show wouldn't exist without a YouTube platform that had got it out in the first place.
Henry: Yeah. Because essentially, it's democratization of video production. Everybody's doing, everybody's getting better at, and then finally it's picked up by someone it's the same thing with, with in mental synthesizers and recording inform equipment way back in the seventies and eighties. And then people started doing it on their own summarized at the top. Okay. So, question about this bill, cuz we're going back to the bill here. C 10. This bill is vague. It is absolutely imperfect. I believe almost any bill maybe or might be, but do we accept an imperfect bill and pass it or do we try to create and come up with a, a better or perfect one? All the while these internet giants are, are, are taking more control of the internet. What do you think?
Chris: I think they need to get back to the table and try as they can to, to make the language more enforceable because as I said, I don't know how some bureaucrat is going to go through TikTok right now, go through a whole bunch of cat videos and go Hmm. This one, this, they never will.
Henry: It's impossible. They never will. Right.
Chris: But, well, that's right. So, I mean, I think that it, whatever bill you have, it has to be enforceable. I like the intention. I think they just need to go back to the board and yeah. Tighten up the language, make it enforceable.
Henry: Okay. No good point. Mike, what do you think?
Mike: Something similar? I think, I think the issue is regulation. Like if what we truly want to do is protect Canadian content producers. Okay. Regulation is not be, especially in the context of the internet as we've discussed is not practical. Okay. So, it doesn't mean, so what it basically means is that when it becomes this, this crazy quagmire of where does it apply, where does it not apply all CRTC by putting this bill through is it's just, it's them saying we could find you if we wanted.
Henry: Yeah, exactly. And that's just ambiguous, vague nonsense. Right. If what you want to do is protect Canadian content, stand up and say, Canada has a cultural heritage of multilingualism multiculturalism. Absolutely. Even our television and our, you know, our music is multicultural. We have a great, there's great indigenous shows I've seen too.
Mike: We have a great culture to share with the world. Okay. And these online platforms are, have too much roll over when, how and where that's shared, especially in Canada. Right. So we need you guys to pay a tax to support the continuing creation of Canadian content. Yeah. End of story. Right. End of story. I agree with you as well done and just, you know, do it like a value added. Yeah. You know, why don't they just turn around and say, you know what, there are 42 million Canadians in Canada. I think it's 38 and or whatever it is. There's 38 million Canadians. You owe us 1%. Yeah. For each of them. Yeah. That's on your platform. Yeah. I don't really care. You know, the it's gotta be a tax if they're do it. It has to be a tax. They have to be willing to stand up. When somebody, when people south of the border start going bananas. But it has to be a tax. These, these guys don't pay. They because they don't have to, because there's lots of things, they can do to screw things up. Right. Or move things around as we talked about. So they don't have to pay. But they have all of the control. Like Chris said, four people basically based in the United States control the majority of the media and advertising that people on this planet see. None of those people in those other countries are getting any support for their cultural industries either. So, I think it's the right thing. I think it's great that there's a controversy. I think it's great that people are seeing this and having opinions, but they have to keep focused on what's the, what's the true of a bill, like C 10 it's to fund Canadian content and, and preserve our heritage.
Henry: Yep. I think we need a little tax from, I agree. Especially when you consider, you know, in a couple months, apparently one of 'em makes so much money. He's gonna go up in a rocket and orbit the earth.
Mike: Yeah. On his own personal rocket, probably in his backyard.
Henry: Right. Anyway, gentlemen, thank you so much. I this was a really interesting one. It made me think in a whole bunch of directions that I hadn't yet. Michael, thank you, Chris. Thank you so much for this hot topic and hopefully it won't become another regulation rigmarole part 2, 3, 4.
Mike: Well, Henry, I think it's very likely that it will, because I just read this morning that the Senate went into recess for the summer and has refused to pass it. so we're gonna be talking about C 10 for another, you know, whatever it is, three or four months, however long those guys are off on Holidays.
Henry: Well, to address Chris's point, maybe they can start again and do a really good bill or to address your point. Mike. Maybe we can just tax the clothes off them and keep some of that money. Yep. Thank you,
Mike: Gentlemen. Thank you.