THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, September 27, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to study the subject matter of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. I am Senator Leo Housakos, senator from Quebec, and chair of the Transportation and Communications Committee, and I would like my colleagues to briefly introduce themselves.
Senator Dawson: Senator Dennis Dawson, Quebec.
Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Cormier: Senator Cormier, New Brunswick.
Senator Manning: Senator Fabian Manning, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Sorensen: Senator Karen Sorensen, Alberta.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, Quebec.
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.
Senator Clement: Senator Clement, Ontario.
The Chair: We’re meeting to continue our examination of the subject matter of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.
Joining us for the first panel, I’m pleased to introduce and welcome Monica Auer, Executive Director of the Forum for Research Policy in Communications and she’s here with us today; Pierre Trudel, Professor, Law School, Université de Montréal, here by video conference; and Irene Berkowitz, Senior Policy Fellow, Audience Lab at the Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, also with us by teleconference.
Welcome to the Senate. Thank you for joining us this morning. Each of you will have a brief five-minute period to make your introductory remarks and then we’ll be turning it over to my colleagues for a Q and A, and we’ll begin with remarks from Ms. Auer.
Monica Auer, Executive Director, Forum for Research and Policy in Communications: Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable senators.
FRPC is a non-profit organization that undertakes empirical policy and legal analysis of Canadian communications. We support Bill C-11’s passage by the Senate, if amended. Our remarks address the rationale for Canada’s broadcast laws and Bill C-11’s improvements and problems.
Many people believe that broadcast laws are obsolete because the Internet has solved spectrum scarcity, but Canada’s broadcast laws also wired the nation, protected national security during two world wars, limited harmful broadcasts and ensured broadcast warnings during local emergencies. They reduced foreign broadcasters’ destabilizing impact on Canadian broadcasters in return for their production of important programming such as Canadian news. Bill C-11 builds on those principles. Its most helpful changes are in Part II of the Broadcasting Act. They clarify the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s powers over individual broadcasters and empower it to levy fines for non-compliance.
Unfortunately, Bill C-11 is also incoherent, makes errors and leaves gaps. Clear and coherent laws state Parliament’s intent and are readily understood by the public, but Bill C-11 is not coherent and not readily understood. Where Parliament declared that broadcasters should be regulated, Bill C-11 empowers the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to regulate user-uploaded content, and in turn, regulate users, directly and indirectly. We propose dropping proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2 altogether. Broadcasters’ operations, not internet users, should be regulated.
Bill C-11 also contradicts Parliament’s declaration that a single independent public authority regulate broadcasters by giving cabinet the final say over nearly all CRTC decisions. Compared to the current act, Bill C-11’s re-politicization of broadcast regulations will further erode Canadians’ trust in government and the broadcast media, along with accountability.
Next, the proposed additions of subsections 7(7) and 10(1.2) and section 34.995 should be dropped.
Bill C-11 reaffirms that broadcasters enjoy freedom of expression and that Canadians are entitled to differing views on matters of public concern. A late addition by the Canadian Heritage Committee during its amendments to Bill C-11, unavailable to witnesses such as ourselves who testified before that committee, would now also enable the CRTC to address disinformation and greatly widen its authority over broadcast speech.
Next, the proposed addition of subparagraphs 3(1)(s)(v), 3(1)(d)(iii.4), 3(1)(i)(ii.1) and 3(1)(i)(iv) should be dropped.
As for errors, Bill C-11 is not using the correct definition of “decision.” That definition is in the Telecommunications Act already and should be consistent with the Broadcasting Act.
Bill C-11 at last requires the CRTC to disclose its evidence and thinking, but only to some communities that its decisions that would affect adversely.
And the proposed subsection 5.2(1) should give transparency and accountability to all Canadians in all CRTC proceedings.
And although this is perhaps less an error than a choice, using “should” instead of “shall” in 33 of the broadcast policy’s 39 clauses make them optional and at the CRTC’s whim. It’s difficult to measure this empirically as the CRTC does not publish the useful data you would need to do it, but the 1991 act use of “should” in relation to employment opportunities apparently allows the CRTC to ignore the loss of one out of five radio and TV jobs from 1991 to 2019.
By ignoring employment, the CRTC has literally recreated Baron Thomson’s licence to print money. In 2019, 50 discretionary services that each earn more than $1 million employed no one at all. If Parliament wants goals like employment to be met, it should use “shall,” not “should” or “may.”
Finally, Bill C-11 has gaps. It explains licensing but says nothing about the scope, operation or application of registration. It condones untimely decision-making. Even though the CRTC’s budget and spending have increased by 52% in real terms since 1991 and its staffing by 21%, it took it more than half a year to close more than a third of the 180 disputes it mediated between 2016 and 2021. Broadcasting is a business; we know that. Delays cost money and lost opportunities and disadvantage smaller broadcasters in particular.
I’m at my conclusion, so I’m going to race ahead. It won’t matter if you change Bill C-11 if the CRTC can still ignore the act. It now holds hearings without witnesses. It doesn’t hold hearings that it’s required to for mandatory orders. It doesn’t publish all applications it receives, and it keeps some decisions hidden from public view forever.
It has not filed mandatory reports about the CBC’s non-compliance for 22 years, and obviously the cabinet agreed it has a problem, because of last week’s order-in-council. We respectfully ask you to ensure that in updating this act for the 21st century, you update its approach to coherent drafting standards, transparency, accountability and timeliness. I skipped three crucial paragraphs to meet the deadline.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Auer. Hopefully, you have an opportunity to bring those in during Q and A.
[Translation]
Pierre Trudel, Professor, Law School, Université de Montréal, as an individual: Hello, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am pleased to be with you this morning.
Bill C-11 is intended to ensure that all programming presentation or distribution enterprises, including those online, operate in accordance with the requirements of Canada’s broadcasting policy, as set out in section 3 of the current Broadcasting Act. The bill also proposes significant amendments to it.
In moving forward with this long-overdue update of the Broadcasting Act, Parliament will be doing some necessary and essential catching up for establishing the legislative framework governing audiovisual creation and presentation activities, which depend increasingly on online environments. This update is essential to ensure that our communication system operates in a way that gives Canadians real programming choices, including programming that is the result of Canadian creativity and that reflects the richness and diversity of the country, and above all the existence of the official languages and the First Nations languages of Canada.
Since 1991, the Broadcasting Act has included very clear provisions prohibiting the CRTC from making decisions that violate freedom of expression. This is why I think the fears that are sometimes expressed about potential threats to freedom of expression lurking in Bill C-11 are ill-founded.
Similarly, subsection 9(4) of the current Broadcasting Act already authorizes the CRTC to exempt from the application of the act enterprises whose activities do not raise significant issues for the application of Canada’s broadcasting policy. That is why the many exclusions set out in Bill C-11 make the bill needlessly complex, and needlessly complicate a document that is so important for all Canadians.
I do, however, welcome the proposed addition of paragraphs 3(1)(q) and (r) set out in clause 4 of C-11 in, which explicitly require the CRTC to promote the discoverability of Canadian works.
Contrary to what has been said, algorithms are not technologically neutral. They often work against certain types of production, and in particular against francophone and First Nations producers. On the other hand, paragraph 8 of section 9.1 of the Broadcasting Act, which would be introduced by Bill C-11 at section 10, proposes an unfortunate, unnecessary, and dangerous exclusion. The paragraph would eliminate the option or prohibit the CRTC from requiring the use of a computer algorithm or a particular source code. There is no justification for this exclusion.
Removing the CRTC’s ability to impose recourse to technological instruments consistent with the operation of online environments would paralyze the regulator. In short, it would limit the CRTC to using tools from the past to address technological situations of the future.
These are my main observations on Bill C-11. I would be delighted to answer questions and interact with committee members if you wish. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Trudel.
[English]
Irene Berkowitz, Senior Policy Fellow, Audience Lab at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, as an individual: Good morning, senators. Thank you for inviting me, esteemed colleagues. My views are my own; they don’t represent Toronto Metropolitan University or Internet Society Canada, where I was recently elected a director. I’ve long been passionate about helping Canadian media adapt to the global online era. My PhD inspired a book on legacy media, and I led a groundbreaking YouTube study.
Public policy should solve problems the market cannot. Senator Simons, thank you for asking last week, “What problem is Bill C-11 solving?” Ironically, as others have suggested, some of Bill C-11’s text doesn’t solve but rather causes problems for consumers and producers. I’ll explain and suggest a fix.
For consumers, research confirms that Canadians don’t want government interference in our online experience, and with Bill C-11, it will interfere. For producers, thanks to streaming, Canada’s creative economy is booming. In legacy, there are more jobs and content than ever. The problem is outdated policy. Our producers must be unhooked from linear broadcast. They deserve producer access platform-agnostic funding, which requires rethinking access contributions and Canadian Content, or CanCon. Thank you, chair, for asking if a sports star financed by Nike is less Canadian. My book offers a producer access platform-agnostic matrix that could help reboot CanCon.
Turning to user-generated content, or UGC, this young sector adds $1.1 billion to our GDP, 34,000 jobs and growing, and is diverse without intervention or public funds. It’s not broken. It’s additive and complementary, not competitive, to regulated media.
As noted, Bill C-11 perhaps unintentionally strikes at the heart of UGC’s business model, which is building audiences. J.J. McCullough, who you’ll be lucky to meet shortly, called out Bill C-11’s misstep: “to see this success story as a problem to be solved is preposterous and unnerving . . .
Hitesh Sharma “Tesher” sings in Persian, Hindu and English, and he said that if content is engaging, it does find an audience: “For a self-taught Indian kid from Saskatchewan, with no industry connections, TikTok was a game-changer.”
UGC delivers thousands of Canadian entrepreneurs with free, paperless, instant global export. I’m happy to share more watch time data and inspiring stories, like how YouTuber “The Icing Artist” built her audience, but my main message today is to narrow Bill C-11 to gated platforms. Cleanly delete UGC from scope to avoid challenges and massive CRTC hearings that will be overwhelming and delay benefits to legacy producers. Just a whiff of that paperwork that’s been discussed could send UGC producers scurrying across the border to upload. Without the edit, it’s lose-lose-lose for consumers, legacy and UGC producers.
There is no reason to regulate UGC any more than video games or books. We do need harmonized data for the whole media sector. I don’t understand why Liberals are protecting big players against little guys. I was in the room when Creative Canada, which promised not to protect old models, got a standing ovation. In our past, rhetoric claimed otherwise, but regulation embraced U.S. media giants — I’m talking now about ABC, CBS, and NBC — to ignite our own industry. It worked. No one stopped Canadians from inventing Netflix, Spotify or TikTok, whose American, Swedish and Chinese roots reflect today’s global era.
Looking back, what was our 20th-century problem? Industry building. We did it. Our 21st? Audience building. And here is the thing, protection works to build an industry. We did it. Competition works to build an audience. With Canadian creators already leading every UGC genre, YouTube and TikTok announce initiatives to help new creators build more audiences.
In closing, the word “heritage” means preserving positive values, not antiquated ideas or business models. Otherwise, Toronto Metropolitan University would still be Ryerson, Bill C-11 would not have all its new diversity language and I wouldn’t be here today on Zoom. How we’ve always done it is not wise governance. So my title for the Bill C-11 debate, which I realize is winding down, is this: Past v. future: What will we choose? Thank you. I’m so honoured to be here, and I truly look forward to all your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
My question is for Mr. Trudel. You testified that you believe the CRTC should explicitly have authority over user-generated content and the algorithm source codes that dictate discoverability. You also said that Bill C-11 gives Canadians the effective opportunity to choose programming or to produce the broadcast programming that reflects the rich diversity of our society and the existence of Canada’s official languages and the languages of our Indigenous people. What do you say to the witnesses who have come before this committee and said that forcing platforms to base algorithms on anything other than the consumer’s own behaviour and preferences, which is what Bill C-11 does and what you’re advocating for, will negatively impact consumer choice, eroding consumer trust until the point that consumers tune out the content and even the platforms altogether? That goes against what you’re saying about consumer choice, doesn’t it Mr. Trudel?
[Translation]
Mr. Trudel: First, for consumers to have real choice, productions must be accessible. The way the Canadian broadcasting system operates provides support for production, not only for dominant, English-language productions, but also for productions in the other official language and in Indigenous languages. To this end, the key players in the system have to invest in and contribute to the production of Canadian works. That is how consumers can have real choices. Otherwise, the only choice is what is offered by the international industry of audiovisual productions. It is a partial choice that excludes many productions, specifically those from minority communities in Canada.
Secondly, I think the fears about user-created content are ill-founded. Since 1991, the Broadcasting Act has not only allowed, but required the CRTC to focus exclusively on undertakings whose activities have a significant impact on achieving the goals of Canada’s broadcasting policy. As to the suggestion that the bill would lead the CRTC to control user-generated content, I consider that a complete exaggeration, at the very least. By all accounts and in accordance with what the law allows, the CRTC is required to focus exclusively on enterprises whose activities have a significant impact on achieving the goals of Canada’s broadcasting policy.
Two points. First, either user-generated content has a major and significant impact on achieving the objectives of the broadcasting policy, as set out in section 3, in which case I do not see why we would exclude user-generated content from the regulations. Second, people argue that such content is primarily the work of small companies or individuals who conduct activities and enter the production and creation market, in which case, if there is no significant impact on achieving the objectives of the broadcasting policy, it would not be regulated. That is why I consider the claims that Bill C-11 targets user-generated content to be wholly unfounded.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Trudel.
Senator Cormier: I wish to welcome the witnesses to our committee. Mr. Trudel, under the current bill, the orders issued by the CRTC pursuant to clause 9.1 do not require public hearings. Some witnesses said this should be corrected and that the CRTC should hold hearings before issuing orders, and that this should be codified in the legislation. What do you think?
Mr. Trudel: I completely agree with that. The strength of Canada’s broadcast regulation system is its ability to be open to the public and to different points of view. I would say in fact that this is an oversight. From my reading of the act, the CRTC can always hold public hearings, but it would probably be better to require the CRTC to hold public hearings before issuing an order that could have a significant impact.
You have to bear in mind that the CRTC is sometimes called upon to make orders affecting a very small number of enterprises. We cannot hope for national hearings in such limited situations. The CRTC has to have some leeway. That said, the principle should be that orders are preceded by a public hearing at which each interest group may be heard.
Senator Cormier: You referred earlier to freedom of expression. Talk to us about the artists’ concerns. From your understanding of the act, would the CRTC have the power to regulate creators directly?
Mr. Trudel: My understanding of the Broadcasting Act is that the CRTC does not have that power; rather, it has the power to regulate broadcasting enterprises. The CRTC can issue orders, licence conditions or regulations that apply to enterprises but not to creators directly. So it is indirect.
Moreover, when the CRTC makes those decisions, it must consider the existing provisions of the Broadcasting Act, which the bill would strengthen, namely, provisions that require it to interpret and apply the act while respecting freedom of expression. As a result, the CRTC has the duty to ensure that its decisions are compatible with freedom of expression as recognized in Canada, specifically by the courts, which have the final say in interpreting fundamental rights.
[English]
Senator Manning: Welcome and thank you to our witnesses. My question this morning is for Ms. Auer.
You’ve written that one potential problem with Bill C-11 is what you describe as the exceptional level of discretion that Bill C-11 will give to the CRTC. You take issue — as do I — with the position that Canadians should simply trust the CRTC, pointing to the fact that the CRTC already has limited reporting requirements and limited transparency in their decision-making, as we’ve heard discussed.
Mr. Trudel has testified that he doesn’t believe Bill C-11 goes far enough in giving the CRTC authority over user-generated content and algorithms. How do you respond to that statement? Is it inevitable? What can be done in this legislation to bring clarity to the issue one way or another?
Ms. Auer: I suggest dropping proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2 to remove users from its scope and the CRTC’s authority. The Broadcasting Act is called the Broadcasting Act because it addresses broadcasters. Why, then, would we propose to regulate any kind of user? Moreover, there’s an inconsistency between proposed section 4.1 and the subsection 9(4) exemption power. We’re either keeping everybody in and then registering them, let’s say as users, or we’re exempting them because they’re not able to meet a specific threshold of material contribution. Proposed sections 4.1, 4.2 and subsection 9(4) don’t play well together.
In terms of accountability and transparency, the problem with the CRTC right now is that it is not making its decisions public. Every year, it’s publishing dozens of decisions that you can’t see because there’s no hyperlink and they don’t publish. When we say that the CRTC is transparent, it is simply not. It is holding public hearings without witnesses. I’m sorry — you’ve been very kind to invite me — but the CRTC chooses not to invite anybody to some hearings, including transfers of ownership. So I can see where you might say, “Listen, this is a cable system in Iqaluit. It serves 10 people. We don’t need to call it to a public hearing.” However, when you talk about the transfer of ownership of half of B.C.’s radio stations through an administrative decision and no public hearing, I think I would challenge the notion that the CRTC is (a) transparent, (b) open and (c) accountable. It is not.
Sorry. That sounded really forceful. I’m really a nice person. I’m just letting you know.
Senator Manning: We like to hear just how you feel, as we do with all the witnesses.
Ms. Auer: That was me being calm.
Senator Manning: We are dealing with a very important piece of legislation.
If Bill C-11 is not amended, based on the historical record as you see it, how do you envision the CRTC implementing the provisions of Bill C-11?
Ms. Auer: Any way it likes. I don’t know if you want more than that, but 5(2) of the act gives the commission huge flexibility. It indicates that when you regulate, you should be flexible. Terrific, but then we turn around and say that you most follow subsection 3(1). But the CRTC — for the last 30 years with respect to employment opportunities for which we actually have data — has not actually addressed it at all. I don’t know how you can say that it’s actually implementing the requirement for employment opportunities when one out of five jobs in radio and TV are gone. Perhaps those jobs have fled to the online world. If so, terrific, but why did the CRTC not choose to collect data about these issues 15 years ago? We say that subsection 9(4) works beautifully well. Well, the test in 9(4) is material contribution. Why is it, then, that the CRTC, having had applications before it — at least four that I know of — that have asked it to review the 9(4) exemption of digital media has declined to even publish the applications or consider them? We cannot get the CRTC to actually implement 9(4) properly.
Senator Manning: Thank you on that. How do you really feel about the past performance of the CRTC?
Ms. Auer: I think the CRTC is a critical institution to serve the public interest. I think oversight is impossible because it doesn’t tell you what it’s doing. For instance, it took access to —
The Chair: I hate to interrupt, but Senator Manning’s time has elapsed. I’ll turn it over to Senator Miville-Dechêne and then Senator Dasko.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question for Professor Trudel. Speak to us about algorithms, since you are a long-standing expert on the internet. You said that the government should have retained its power to take action with respect to algorithms. Most recently, however, the government withdrew from this area of jurisdiction and left it up to the platforms to use their algorithms or not, in order to achieve the desired results.
Do you not think that by changing only the static recommendations, that is, by not touching their algorithms, the platforms will be able to present content that is less commonly seen, that is, minority, francophone and Indigenous content?
Is it technically possible, given the way people listen to music, to carve out a definite place for francophone or Indigenous music, without touching the algorithms?
Mr. Trudel: What we need is regulations that enable the CRTC as the regulatory authority to require accountability, and perhaps to require that the algorithms used by platforms that play a significant role in Canada — to require expert input on how these complex technical instrument work, to require audits and evaluations in order to verify whether the content offered to Canadians reflects the requirements and objectives of the Canadian Broadcasting Act, that is, the promotion and discoverability of Canadian works. This can be achieved through different regulatory approaches. That does not mean that the CRTC should itself program algorithms; I do not think that is the right approach. On the other hand, algorithms are complex tools that should be examined like any other tool that delivers programming to Canadians.
It would be a mistake to think that algorithms are neutral tools. It is a stated fact that these tools serve the commercial objectives of the enterprises, and that is indeed the case. Yet it is perfectly legitimate for the act to require these algorithms to also be consistent with the objectives set out in the act, in particular to ensure that Canadian programming is available on the platforms, which in many cases, by default, present all kinds of things and tend to undervalue productions, especially those from minority communities.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: The platform representatives who appeared before our committee told us to be careful because including minority content, whether francophone or Indigenous, in our algorithm formula would adversely affect such content that is not chosen by viewers.
We were told that tinkering with the algorithms and changing the formula would in fact adversely affect minority content, because if viewers do not click on that content, it goes down the list of recommendations. I would say that is the strongest argument. What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Trudel: That is the same as saying that algorithms are by definition neutral and unbiased. In fact, they are categorically biased. They assume that the choices made by consumers who are part of the majority are more important than others.
The Chair: Mr. Trudel, unfortunately, Senator Miville-Dechêne’s time is up.
[English]
Senator Dasko: I’m very tempted by this topic of algorithms, but I’m going to resist for now. I may come back to it.
My questions are for Ms. Auer. You spoke about disinformation. This is a topic we haven’t heard very much about with respect to Bill C-11. Could you just elaborate about what it is you were referring to with respect to what’s in the bill and what you’re looking for?
Here’s another question for you with respect to what you were saying about drops in employment. The way I understand it, the CRTC is not responsible for requiring firms to employ X number of people because they do operate in a competitive marketplace, even though the marketplace for Canadian broadcasters is very highly regulated. Surely you’re not saying that they should be required to hire and keep X number of people. They have to operate in an environment where they can’t keep all the people they may have in the past. Could you talk about those two things?
Ms. Auer: Disinformation was a surprise to me because it was not in the bill presented to the house, Bill C-11. Of course, it wasn’t in Bill C-10 at all. It wasn’t in Bill C-11-1 or in its summary. It wasn’t in Bill C-11-2. It just popped up in the last day of hearings, and suddenly, we have a brand new, major role for community broadcasters. The act refers, for instance, to a community element. That element has been one of the three elements since 1991: community, public and private. However, there was no discussion during any of the testimony or briefings with respect to the new role that community broadcasters would play. Only one of those roles is to somehow support whatever we want to do about disinformation. By putting disinformation in section 3, you now require the CRTC to make decisions about what is and is not disinformation and what the appropriate role of community broadcasters is.
There is a good reason community broadcasters are there, and it’s historical. It’s 1968, we had to bring cable TV into the Broadcasting Act, and we had to make them programmers. Therefore, we have community channels.
Now we want to give the CRTC a huge, new expansive role, not just in terms of disinformation but also local news.
You also mentioned employment opportunities. That’s in subsection 3(1)(d) of the 1991 act. It’s also elsewhere in the act, looking at the notion of resources used to create and broadcast Canadian programs. It is true that the CRTC is not responsible for employment opportunities to ensure that they are equal or equitable. We have human rights tribunals and employment commissions for that. But the act and Parliament spoke to the notion of ensuring that Canadians have employment opportunities in their broadcasting system, and they have lost 20% of those in the programming sector. Maybe they’re in the online world. We don’t know. So that’s the concern. It’s not that they should be saying, “You must hire 15 people,” but not to ask at all?
Senator Dasko: I see, okay.
Do I have any time left?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Dasko: A question for Ms. Berkowitz. Obviously, our Canadian broadcast system is regulated with respect to CanCon. Do you think we should drop all the regulations we have with regard to CanCon in our Canadian broadcast system?
Ms. Berkowitz: Thank you so much, senator, for that truly excellent question. Part of my larger point is that this is a super-complicated question, and removing UGC will only allow this question to be looked at in depth. My book opens with the question, “What are the most important three words in media?” The answer is “audience, audience, audience.” We haven’t built this into CanCon, and we can. We need to integrate a platform-agnostic producer access system.
So no, I don’t think we should drop CanCon regulations. Many countries around the world have evolved these to be more industrial incentives. In fact, many countries have these.
The Chair: The time has elapsed, and I have to move on to Senator Simons. Thank you.
Senator Simons: Shana Tovah to all who celebrate.
My question is for Ms. Auer. I do want to come back to the disinformation part, but I really want to get to your quite bold statement about proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2. Many people have flagged this for us as an area of concern and have suggested various amendments to tweak and twist these sections. You have suggested something quite audacious, which is to eliminate them completely. I am seized with the clarity of this notion.
The government has told us that they need these sections in order to include the very commercial streamers, such as Warner Bros., Sony and the major record labels, who use YouTube as a competitor to Spotify. They’re saying that if they can’t include that kind of highly commercial, extremely profitable content on YouTube, that it puts Spotify at a competitive disadvantage and doesn’t allow YouTube to be sort of forced to tithe into the system.
Enchanted though I am at the moment of the idea of just getting rid of the proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2, I wonder what you would say to the government’s concern that that would scope out major parts of YouTube that are extremely lucrative and that make YouTube unlike other social media platforms.
Ms. Auer: I guess the question is when the average person reads sections 4.1 and 4.2, they read it a specific way and they may not understand the government’s intent. At a certain point, the courts will have to handle this. Will the courts be able to understand the intent of the proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2, given the inherent contradiction between sections 4.1 and 4.2 and 9(4)?
Senator Simons: And section 2.1.
Ms. Auer: Right. I had heard initially someone in the Senate saying they’re looking for practical solutions. You can tinker with every word in Bill C-11. It won’t ever be perfect, nor should it be, because humanity can’t be perfect. However, the proposed sections 4.1 and 4.2 give such power to the commission over individual programs. I want to be clear; I am aware that this does not regulate users but their programs. The question is: Why regulate users’ programs? If you want to address the large social media services, then include those specifically in Bill C-11 and regulate their activities. I’m not understanding why we would treat a user as somehow part of the broadcasting system when we have never treated independent producers as part of the 1991 Broadcasting Act system.
Senator Simons: To be devil’s advocate, what the government would say is that it needs to include the 50% of YouTube that functions like a streamer. Some of it is user-generated content, but there is this whole other chunk of it, the government says, that is directly akin to Spotify in that it is being used as a music channel.
That is not my argument; that is their argument. I’m wondering what the countervail to that would be.
Is there a way to eliminate sections 4.1 and 4.2 — which becomes more tempting each time I say the words — but still allows us to understand that part of what YouTube does is much more akin to what Spotify does than it is to being just a distribution platform for social media users?
Ms. Auer: I think you’ve put your finger on it. You’ve referred now three times to YouTube. Regulate YouTube, but do not use sections 4.1 and 4.2 to purport to regulate the programs uploaded to YouTube.
I hasten to add that if there are issues with copyright infractions, go to the Copyright Act; go to the Criminal Code if there are threats to lives or other serious matters. But the Broadcasting Act should deal with the widely available media — and I don’t want to use the word, but I can’t think of anything offhand — purveyors. Those who provide the content should — and I’m hesitating to say “be responsible for it” because that introduces new legal wrinkles. A single user should not have to fear that he, she or they should have to be registered with the CRTC. That’s my point.
Sections 4.1 and 4.2 are so unclearly written that nobody understands them. If you introduce unclear writing into an act, I guarantee that you will give many lawyers a very prosperous life — not just a few jobs, but it will go on forever. I’m a lawyer, and I think lawyers need lots of jobs, true.
Senator Sorensen: I’m going to continue to address Ms. Auer, and I’ll tiptoe back to the topic of the CRTC.
You’ve expressed serious concerns about the powers afforded to the CRTC, although maybe they are more about the behaviour or performance of the CRTC.
Do you believe that the CRTC is not the right body to regulate Bill C-11, or do you think its authority should be more limited? Feel free to elaborate on what they need to do differently if they are going to be the regulators of Bill C-11. If it isn’t them, then who? When we hear criticism of CRTC connected to this bill, I wonder who else should be regulating.
Ms. Auer: I think Canada needs an independent, arm’s-length regulatory authority. Handily, you have the CRTC with 400 to 500 people there. I think it would be a misuse of public funds to reinvent it, but it should be required to report clearly on what it’s actually doing.
I’ve studied each of the monitoring reports issued since 1997. Do you know that they stopped reporting on how much Canadian content was being aired by program type, by radio and TV, in 2005? They have been providing a financial report card on broadcasters since then and throughout. I think one of the senators mentioned earlier that they had been involved with the programming logs issue. Why do they never report those data? If section 3(1) is all about programming, why don’t we know what’s being broadcast or how much original news there is? I think that’s a serious problem.
In terms of whether there should be someone else, I think that would be an inefficient use of public funds. I think you can correct that through this act by requiring transparency and accountability, et cetera.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests. My question is for Ms. Berkowitz. I hope to get through a couple questions, so I’m looking for pithy and concise answers.
In your testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, you stated: “ . . . I’m deeply concerned that Bill C-11 will chill Canadian media innovation.” You also noted that: “ . . . Bill C-11 does not support Canadian storytelling. It supports old ways that define and distribute our stories.”
Some of the critics of this legislation suggest that the bill is being used to try to protect or prop up legacy media companies such as cable television channels or radio stations. You would apparently agree with that assessment, at least partially.
It seems reasonable to me that the government should update the Broadcasting Act after 31 years if it wants to bring online platforms and streaming services under the purview of the Broadcasting Act, but what could they be doing differently that would alleviate the concerns we’ve heard from digital-first platforms and content creators?
Ms. Berkowitz: Thank you so much. That’s an excellent question. I think the answer can be concise. I agree with my colleague Dr. Auer. What can be done is to cleanly delete UGC creators from this bill. If that’s acceptable in principle, a number of parts of the bill — 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 — could be clarified along those lines.
The truth is that this is a complementary additive, non-competitive sort of gift from the internet. It speaks to the difference between broadcasting and the internet. The data shows that, in fact, this sector is already as diverse as — and in some cases, more diverse than — numbers reflected by StatCan, without intervention and public funds. I think it’s an unnecessary distraction to try to fix something that’s not broken.
Senator Klyne: Just a couple quick follow-ups on the two quotes. When you state, “I’m deeply concerned that Bill C-11 will chill Canadian media innovation,” what specifically led you to make that statement?
Ms. Berkowitz: Thank you. Again, these clarifications are really important, and I agree the bill needs more clarity. Because of the confusion around the inclusion of UGC creators and the sort of well-discussed pretzel logic of proposed section 4.2, I think Canadian UGC creators, especially in the study in which we went deeply into YouTube — they don’t do paperwork. At the whiff of a complicated registration system, they will just take an easier route: go to Buffalo or use a VPN. We will lose the burgeoning addition of this tremendously vibrant, exuberant, creative sector, which produces material that is much more akin to video games or books. It’s not akin to broadcasting. And I don’t know if this has been made clear to everybody yet, but I don’t want to take up my time but I think it will be —
Senator Klyne: Okay, and I don’t want you to take up my time either. Thank you.
I want to ask about your other statement: “Bill C-11 does not support Canadian storytelling. It supports old ways that define and distribute our stories.” How is this done now, and on what platforms or streaming services? And how does the bill not support storytelling?
Ms. Berkowitz: I think the bill supports storytelling that is done in the old way in terms of the Canadian content regulations for linear broadcasting, but there are lots of other Canadian stories that are being told now, as you’ve heard from Netflix and Disney, and there are hundreds of thousands of stories that are told in the UGC sector.
We are actually too narrowly defining Canadian stories, and this is something that really needs a lot of thinking and reworking. Obviously, it needs to be redefined in terms of access and contributions. But it needs to be done. This is a ginormous job, and I would like the bill to make space for this to actually happen by the CRTC.
Senator Clement: Thank you to the witnesses. I appreciated the conversation between Senator Miville-Dechêne and Professor Trudel, so I would like to ask this question to Ms. Berkowitz and Ms. Auer.
We all know that Black, racialized, marginalized people struggle to see themselves represented in all the places and all the rooms. They have tended to support this bill, and I wonder what you would say to them. I heard you say, Ms. Berkowitz, it’s about the audience, audience, audience; but audiences, I would argue, are finding themselves in cozy silos where they’re listening to exactly what they want to listen to from people that look and sound just like them in their language.
What would you say to those stakeholders?
Ms. Berkowitz: Me first?
Senator Clement: Yes, please.
Ms. Berkowitz: Thank you so much. This is such an important question. We were fascinated to remarkably find in our YouTube research that without quotas, YouTube ends up being more, or at least equally, diverse — and very appreciated as such by consumers — as numbers reflected by StatCan.
You have to go about this from the top down and the bottom up. I was reviewing the Canada Media Fund’s annual report yesterday, actually. And they have a tremendous set of programs to fund programs by a lot of equity-seeking groups that are incredibly important. I think that plus the diversity language in Bill C-11 — this is a tremendous characteristic of our country that we are diverse and we are proud of this. I think we’re a world leader in this.
I don’t think there’s any proof that UGC requires the thumb of government to make audiences for UGC content embrace this content, because the data shows that they do.
You can look at a number of creators. We don’t have time to get into the specifics there are creators like Lilly Singh, VanossGaming, NotoriousCree and thousands of others.
I think that audiences authentically flock to good stories well told and authentic content. But we need to stay vigilant in making sure that there are resources for all equity-seeking groups. I think that’s a really precious part of our country, that is world leadership, and we don’t want to jeopardize that at all.
Ms. Auer: The CRTC in 1984 and 1989 conducted content analyses of radio and television broadcasting across Canada to find out the percentage of women on air and found there were very few of them. They enacted self-regulatory guidelines, and all of a sudden, we had more women on air and in programming.
If we want to make sure that Canada is truly reflected properly, it is up to the Canadian regulatory authority to know how many and what kinds of people are reflected in broadcasting, and if are there concerns, it needs to address them. These concerns can be addressed. I don’t think the CRTC right now even tracks, for instance, employment. And although it gathers data on how many people are in programming, technical, administration and other things, they don’t distinguish between the key groups that today we believe should be considered. Why? Why doesn’t it do that? It could.
Senator Clement: Thank you.
The Chair: We only have a couple of minutes left for round two, but I have a very succinct question and maybe I can get a succinct answer.
It seems to me there are two sides to this debate. There are those saying Bill C-11 protects and promotes Canadian arts and culture, and there are those saying that Bill C-11 protects and promotes legacy broadcasters. In your opinions, which one of the two does this do?
Ms. Auer: May I go first?
The Chair: Sure.
Ms. Auer: It’s a two-for question. I think the commission is faced under section 3 with requirements that address the cultural side, but also let’s not forget the political side through the news criteria and under the Canada Elections Act, the availability of information about news.
There is the existence of actual broadcasters. The CRTC made the conscious choice in 1997 — beginning in 1993 really — to encourage highly concentrated media ownership because bigger would do more and better, but it did not. That is on the CRTC. That’s not a problem of the act. So it can do both. I think the goal should not be to protect any single broadcaster, although we must ensure that broadcasters can play in the same sandbox. That is why we always think of Jack the giant killer. That’s the value we promote. You have to kill the big oligopolies. We never have stories about how you work with the big oligopoly by having fair trade, fair measures and equitable discussions.
[Translation]
Mr. Trudel: I would say we have to make a distinction. I think everyone agrees that the CRTC has been dysfunctional for a decade and does not properly fulfill its role. That said, I think a bill such as C-11 is precisely designed to change the legislative framework so that the CRTC has the tools to transform the broadcasting system from a traditional environment to one that is increasingly based on online platforms. That is the true purpose of a bill such as C-11.
Let me also touch on clauses 4.1 and 4.2. They did not have to be included in the bill. The current Broadcasting Act already has a provision that allows the CRTC to exclude from regulation anything that does not have an impact on Canadian broadcasting policy. I do not understand why clauses 4.1 and 4.2 were added since, as stated, they create a lot of confusion.
[English]
The Chair: Ms. Berkowitz, you have the last 30 seconds of this panel.
Ms. Berkowitz: The bill has trouble embracing the online era. The internet solved our small audience problem, and we need to figure out what the new problems are. By and large, the bill tries to shove the internet back into broadcasting rather than starting out fresh and asking, “What is this once-in-600-year disruption doing for us, and where are the new problems?”
The Chair: Thank you to all members of the panel for coming and sharing their views with us this morning.
On our second panel, we are pleased to welcome Mr. Justin Tomchuk, Independent Filmmaker; J.J. McCullough, YouTuber and columnist; and Wyatt Sharpe, Host, “The Wyatt Sharpe Show.” Thank you for joining us this morning. Each panellist will have a brief five minutes for an introduction and statement. After that, we will be going to Q & A with my Senate colleagues. Mr. Tomchuk, you have the floor to start.
Justin Tomchuk, Independent Filmmaker, as an individual: I’m known on YouTube as “umami.” I am a filmmaker, musician and animator based in Montreal. I produced and self-distributed an animated feature film. Just last week, my new animated series “Safe Mode” won an honourable mention at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. My efforts were funded independently through online supporters and fans, 97% of whom live outside of Canada. Proposed paragraph 4.2(2)(a) of Bill C-11 makes it clear that my business will fall under the call of the CRTC’s directives, as I derive direct and indirect income through my artistic efforts.
One of the goals of Bill C-11 is to prioritize Canadian content to Canadians through discoverability measures. There seems to be a misunderstanding at these hearings that algorithm talk is not a concern and is taking up too much time. CRTC Chair Ian Scott described it very clearly: “I don’t want to manipulate your algorithm. I want you to manipulate it to produce a particular outcome.” The CRTC won’t be supplying code to satisfy its desired outcomes; they just care about the end result.
As someone who built a business through these platforms, I can confidently say that these platforms are algorithms. You cannot realistically mandate discoverability outcomes without forcing platforms to change their algorithms. To expand on that, any form of non-algorithmic promotion still displaces content and occupies screen real estate. Whatever you call it, outcomes will prioritize CanCon and will displace others, period.
This spells massive consequences not only for my artistic business but also for anyone who is a producer of manufactured goods, promoter, trader or exporter in Canada who utilizes social media platforms to reach an international audience. If passed, social media and streaming platforms will downgrade CanCon to an international audience. CanCon would have an unfair advantage globally, so platforms will be forced to net zero their performance outside our borders. CanCon content will perform poorly on the platforms because the audience will be mismatched with their interests. You can force a video to play, but you can’t force them to watch it. Canadians will click away and learn to actively avoid CanCon. It opens up Canada to liability by potentially violating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and we can expect retaliatory actions from the United States and the EU. It also sets a precedent for other countries to impose similar laws, compounding the problem and creating nationalistic bubbles of content rather than a free exchange of culture.
Let’s say you own a business in Canada and you export manufactured goods. Bill C-11 will de-prioritize your social media posts to those potentially lucrative international buyers. If you work in tourism, your web series on must-see maritime locations is not being shown to tourists, it’s being shown to people who already live there. If you’re a musician in Canada, Bill C-11 will ensure you won’t receive the necessary global exposure you need to justify an international tour.
Pablo Rodriguez claimed the online streaming bill will bring in $1 billion to the sector, but in 2021, YouTube’s creative ecosystem alone contributed $1.1 billion to Canada’s GDP and over 34,000 jobs. We’re already making these platforms work for us, and it’s not the legacy media. If Bill C-11 disrupts the discoverability of Canadian creators globally, I can see a scenario where some —
The Chair: Mr. Tomchuk, can you slow down your presentation a bit? Translation has to catch up.
Mr. Tomchuk: Sorry, I’m trying to make the five-minute mark. I have a lot to say.
If Bill C-11 disrupts the discoverability of Canadian creators globally, I can see a scenario where some companies with few physical ties will leave the country entirely so they can continue to work unimpeded by these aggressive mandates.
Another glaring issue with Bill C-11 is that there are no revenue thresholds for online undertakings. With the exception of businesses set out in the proposed subsection 2(3), every website that streams videos to Canadians could be subjected to the CRTC’s demands, including myself if I were ever to decide to self-host and promote my own videos and music, as it is becoming cheaper every day to do so. Failing to do so would result in outrageous fines. It’s profoundly anti-competitive and anti-consumer and would stifle any form of Canadian innovation in the streaming space, and that warrants a whole other discussion on its own.
All discoverability mandates need to be stripped from Bill C-11. Canadians already have the choice to watch CanCon programming. There are no scheduling limitations, as is the case with radio or television. At the end of the day, Bill C-11 will do nothing to popularize Canadian content. It will just prop up the billion-dollar legacy media corporations who already receive the lion’s share of subsidies and grants and who are not being unfairly targeted on streaming platforms. They have simply failed to demonstrate an understanding of their audience’s desires. Bill C-11 will not fix that. Thank you.
J.J. McCullough, YouTuber and columnist, as an individual: Hello Senate friends. My name is J.J. McCullough, and I am a professional YouTuber. I run a channel with around 840,000 subscribers, which might sound like a lot, but as I told the House committee when I testified a few months ago, I have barely cracked the top 400 YouTubers in Canada.
The reason why I’m here today is because, over the last few months, I’ve had the honour of helping lead the charge on behalf of a large and thriving Canadian YouTuber community in our fight against Bill C-11. Shortly after I spoke at the House, video of my testimony went viral and was viewed over half a million times, which I think we can all agree is no small feat for a Canadian parliamentary committee hearing and a testament to the depth of interest on this issue. Thanks to that video and several others I’ve made about Bill C-11, I’m often stopped on the street by strangers who are worried about this legislation. When I’m walking down the sidewalk, I’ve even had people pull up in their cars beside me, and yell, “Aren’t you the Bill C-11 guy? Is it really as bad as they say?” And going forward, my answer will very much depend on what this committee chooses to do.
I want to be clear about something: content creators and consumers don’t merely consider Bill C-11 a badly written bill — although it is, and I think Justin has made it clear why — many people consider the bill at its core badly motivated. Of the dozens of online video makers and viewers I’ve heard from, all have been crystal clear that they have zero desire to live under a government with the power to force platforms like YouTube to push, promote, suggest or otherwise encourage certain kinds of Canadian content to Canadians who have not freely chosen to see it. Arguments that doing so will somehow improve Canadian patriotism, nationalism or cultural sovereignty, in the words of the minister, are unpersuasive. The freedom of Canadian video creators to make what they want and succeed or fail based solely on the degree that their content is enjoyed by an audience, domestic or foreign, is seen as a well-functioning status quo few Canadians want overturned. In its current unregulated state, YouTube has produced extraordinary Canadian success stories and given Canadian viewers untold hours of enriching content. To view this as a problem that needs fixing reeks of political obliviousness.
All that said, I know how the Canadian government works, and I am sensitive to the unique constitutional role of the Senate. I know that at this point in the law-making process, people like me should hope for compromise rather than perfect victory. It’s similarly important to concede that proponents of this bill within the Canadian media industry are animated by a sincere desire for fairness. Canadian YouTubers and their audience members that I’ve spoken to are certainly broadly sympathetic to the idea that large tech companies should pay the same taxes and fees as any other media firm doing business in this country. YouTube has in turn suggested that if higher costs are imposed on them, these costs could be passed along to Canadian creators and users in the form of more ads, higher fees or even lower revenues for creators like us, but I think this is a price that many Canadians would literally be willing to pay. Given the choice, I think most creators and their audiences would make a modest financial sacrifice if it meant that government would in turn no longer seek the power to influence the types of videos it believes Canadians should be watching or making.
Another reasonable compromise that would uphold desires for fairness would be to simply lessen existing Canadian content broadcast obligations on old media rather than spread the burden to new media. Legacy broadcasters, after all, are not wrong to believe that internet broadcasters have received historically special treatment. During the 1990s, the Chrétien government made the far-sighted decision to explicitly not grant the CRTC power over online content, believing an unregulated internet would be the best way to let Canadian creators thrive. That prediction has more than come true, as evidenced by the enormous number of Canadians like me and my friends who now make a living producing user-generated content for online audiences the world over.
My hope is that the Senate does what it can to ensure this proven recipe for success is preserved, and if it’s envied, why not afford all media the same privileges? It is freedom of choice and expression, after all, that have always been the greatest enablers of Canadian culture, not the heavy hand of government dictating what Canadians should be creating or viewing. That is the tradition of some countries, but not of ours. In Canada, freedom should never be viewed as an obstacle to patriotism. Thank you.
Wyatt Sharpe, Host, The Wyatt Sharpe Show: Good morning, senators. I appreciate the opportunity to join you today. My name is Wyatt Sharpe. I’m host of my own show on YouTube called “The Wyatt Sharpe Show.” I’m significantly younger, probably, than your average witness appearing before your committee. I’m a 13-year-old journalist, with notable work published in the Toronto Star, on the Loonie Politics website and in some other publications as well. I can be seen on some news channels, including appearing on “Your Morning” on CTV, Global News, CP24 and many more. I highly utilize different social media platforms to share my interviews and my coverage of some of the latest political events with Canadians and the world. I can also be heard on SiriusXM “Canada Talks” radio, NEWSTALK 1010 and CBC Radio.
Let me begin by echoing the words of a good friend of mine and someone I’ve gotten to know, and a good friend of the Canadian journalism industry writ large, Steve Paikin. When he appeared before the House of Commons Committee on Public Safety and National Security on December 6, 2010, he went over the importance of journalism remaining neutral. I want to echo that and hope that you will factor that into any questions you might ask me today. It is ultimately my end goal, and I’m here as the host of my show.
I would like to provide clarification about what my show in particular does. I’ve interviewed many people, including the Prime Minister, the NDP leader, the former Prime Minister of Finland, Canadian premiers and ministers and former White House officials. American talk show host David Pakman was an interesting person I’ve spoken with. I have spoken with White House and congressional reporters, correspondents and many more. I air one show every week from Monday to Friday with few exceptions. In the month of September alone, I’ve interviewed Canada’s Minister of Health, Elizabeth May, Kathleen Wynne, Honourable Senator Denise Batters, Andrew Scheer, Catherine Clark — the daughter of the former prime minister — Canada’s Associate Minister of Finance, the Government House Leader and MPs. Looking overseas as the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine continues, I’ve spoken to the former press secretary to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
One important component of online media is live streaming. On September 19th, I did a live two-hour show from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. covering a historic moment: the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II and her official funeral.
On Bill C-11 in particular, I will say that it has obviously sparked a lot of debate and many opinions have been put forward as it relates to Bill C-11. There are many easily agreeable things I’ve seen come up through being a journalist and with speaking with various people. When you look at the official summary of the legislation, there are some things that may seem agreeable, such as paragraph (a)(ii) under the summary of the bill:
. . . provide opportunities to Indigenous persons, programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and that is in Indigenous languages, and programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities;
These are things that may be easy to agree on, taking into account the different characteristics of and different conditions under which broadcasting that provides English, French or Indigenous language programming operates. Again, as a journalist, I think it’s important that the programming we create is available to people in different languages, regardless of any barriers that they may face. There are certain components that may or may not be agreeable. As I said at the beginning, those conversations will be held as a journalist. I don’t see it as my role to provide my exact opinion, but I still look forward to your questions. Thank you so much.
The Chair: Thank you very much. My question to start off is to Justin Tomchuk. Welcome to our committee.
We’ve heard testimony before this committee that there’s a risk that if other jurisdictions and nations around the world were to put forward legislation similar to Bill C-11, it would limit the opportunities for Canadian content providers to have access to a large international market. However, you’ve noted that another one of the dangers of Bill C-11 for someone like you is that it will force your content on Canadian viewers who may have no interest in what you’re producing, thus creating a lower audience retention rate and driving your overall global ranking downward. The success you are having sounds like the kind of success we should be looking to replicate for others and not blunting, which is what Bill C-11 will do if passed without amendment. It will have the opposite effect on Canadian creators and promotion of Canadian culture that the government proponents of this bill — like our previous witness, Mr. Trudel — claim it will have.
My question is simple. What would you like to see the bill safeguarded from? What changes to this bill would you like to see in order to achieve your objectives? Would you be agreeable to passive discoverability?
Mr. Tomchuk: It’s my opinion that any form of discoverability mandate is going to negatively affect Canadian content creators such as myself, and not only myself, but any Canadian person who uploads to YouTube if they derive an income directly or indirectly. There’s no real change. Honestly, my suggestion would be to remove discoverability mandates entirely from the bill because it’s unlike radio and television where there were a limited number of slots. There’s really nothing preventing anybody from streaming online or making their videos available through the internet, including legacy media companies. They can start their own broadcasting apps just like Netflix or Amazon have done.
The problem that Bill C-11 is trying to solve, which it applied to radio and television before, is that there were regional radio stations, for instance, who only had 24 hours in a day. However, with YouTube, you can pretty much choose whatever you want, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing so.
The Chair: Is it safe to say that we have a situation right now where legacy broadcasters are losing eyeballs, their ratings are going down, their business model isn’t working and yet there seems to be a will to try to go back to the horse and carriage instead of catching up to today’s modern platforms? I look at you and this panel, and you’re the future of this country. The truth of the matter is that the future belongs to the youth, and culture today in Canada, thanks to various platforms like you’re using, is probably reaching more people around the world than ever before.
In your view, shouldn’t we be unleashing that Canadian culture and utilizing this technology to reach out to the world rather than trying to defend a model that is clearly not working financially and is clearly not working when you see the ratings and eyeballs they’re getting compared to what you’re getting?
Mr. Tomchuk: Sorry, could you simplify?
The Chair: Simply put, we have legacy media today whose ratings are going down. Their business model isn’t working, and yet, in my opinion, the government is trying to put in legislation to protect that model. Meanwhile, on the other side, we have platforms like the ones you’re using that are giving exposure to our culture and artists around the world at a fraction of the price and giving them opportunities to promote our culture.
Mr. Tomchuk: I would say yes, legacy media is losing eyeballs, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily because of the technology disruption. For one, I think they’ve been misunderstanding their audiences’ desires. Particularly in the subsidized legacy media industry, a lot of content is getting produced without any real audience there in the first place. Their failure to succeed is not necessarily because YouTubers are disrupting them. They have failed to reach their own audiences in the first place. Thus, the audiences have moved on to YouTube. There is technology, and the younger audiences are more susceptible to using phones and websites like YouTube, so they are losing some of their stature or importance as cultural providers. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s YouTube’s doing that they’re failing, to put it bluntly.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests and panel. My question is for Mr. McCullough. During your testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, you described Bill C-11 as follows:
. . . a bill we did not ask for and do not need, and one that threatens the success we’ve already achieved.
The bill’s aim is to make Canadian content accessible and discoverable, and just as Canadian broadcasting has done for decades, the bill requires streaming services to participate and contribute to Canadian programming and production in an equitable and fair way.
I have a couple of questions on this one. How does this threaten YouTube and streaming services? If you believe it would de-prioritize Canadian content to an international audience — as Mr. Tomchuk referred to — would it not also concurrently broaden your reach across Canadian viewers?
Mr. McCullough: Perhaps it would, but Canada is a relatively small country in the global scheme of things. We have 38 million people in a world of billions, so even if I maximize my Canadian audience exposure, if my international exposure is going down, that is still a net negative overall because the international numbers are so much higher. The potential is so much higher. Being a big hit internationally will always be a much bigger prize than just even being the biggest hit in a Canadian context.
Senator Klyne: How would it get diluted?
Mr. McCullough: If the exposure of the content is being walled in — when we produce videos going forward, if their prioritization is only to promote them to a domestic Canadian audience, and if international viewers are being kept away from that content, that would result in bad things for us, right?
We want the status quo to exist as it currently is, which promotes our content equally to all nations of the world, not exclusively to a Canadian audience.
Senator Klyne: If I understand your point correctly, you’re saying the bill would wall this off, and it wouldn’t be that accessible, discoverable or sought after outside of the Canadian border.
Mr. McCullough: That’s what I understand the motive is. The motive is for Canadian content of a certain sort to be promoted to Canadian audiences and that YouTube, under the CRTC’s future regulation, will be told to treat Canadian uploads in that fashion. So when I or any of us go to upload our videos through the Canadianified YouTube going forward, the priority that YouTube will have to comply with legally will be to ensure those videos are seen by Canadian audiences and not —
Senator Klyne: Where in the bill does it wall off these online streamers or services that are getting drawn into this? Where under the Broadcasting Act will it not be promoting or delivering Canadian content outside of Canada?
Mr. Tomchuk: It’s not specifically written in the bill how or why they would have to detract viewers. However, for instance, on a global platform — let’s just say YouTube because that’s where I upload my content. If I’m receiving extra views within Canada’s borders and you were to look at this from the perspective of someone who lives in Germany, they would say this YouTuber is getting a lot of extra views from within their own country, but on top of that, they’re also getting the regular number of views from everyone else on the global platform. So YouTube will look at that and say that CanCon producers have an unfair advantage on this platform. They’re going to have to actually net zero and detract views internationally. That’s how it would work, essentially.
There are two different problems to that as well. To answer the first question you had for J.J., yes, we would be receiving more Canadian viewers. However, let’s say you’re in a niche category. In Canada, there’s a maximum of 30,000 people interested in that niche. It is very niche, but you can actually have a career off something very small. In Canada, the maximum cap for that niche could be 30,000, but globally it could be a million. If you are showing your CanCon within Canada’s borders, you’re limiting the maximum scope of potential audience members that could be there. If you’re showing them to more Canadians, yes, you’re getting more Canadian viewers, but those Canadian viewers are less relevant to the content you produce.
Senator Klyne: It would be a good time to have a whiteboard. Thanks.
Senator Sorensen: Welcome, guests. I appreciate and have much respect for the demographic represented by our witnesses today.
I’m going to ask each of you a question, so you may need to keep your answers short. I agree with Mr. McCullough’s comment that we are at the stage of compromise in terms of where we are in the process.
Is there anything in this bill that you think would be helpful to Canadian creators if amendments to protect the USG were made?
Mr. McCullough: As I was trying to get at in my comments, there is obviously a financial dimension to the bill. There is a lot of focus — and rightfully so — on the content side, but there is also the idea of getting big tech to pay its fair share. This money then goes into funds like the Canadian content fund that is sprinkled around to help subsidize various artists.
There is a particular Quebec dimension to this issue that is near and dear to a lot of Quebecers, and rightfully so. I understand Quebec occupies a unique cultural space in this country and perhaps relies more heavily on these subsidy regimes than creators like us in the rest of the country — although not for Justin; I know he is in Quebec as well.
The compromise I could see as being reasonable is that we have a discussion that is more focused on financial equity and equality, paying their fair share, ensuring that big platforms like YouTube are paying into things like the Canadian content creator fund to ensure that the subsidy regime — which people can have ideological problems with, but that’s not the debate we’re having now. We’re having a debate about the future of Canadian media and online media. If there is to be a robust subsidy regime that is part of that and if that requires big tech to pay more into it than they presently are, I think that’s a reasonable compromise, if it means that government surrenders some of its ambition in terms of dictating the type of content that Canadians should be watching or making.
Mr. Tomchuk: I’m not just a YouTube creator, like an individual. There are a lot of companies that also have YouTube channels. Some of these companies are producing tens of thousands of dollars per month, upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. A lot of that money goes right back into taxes and the Canada Media Fund.
Personally, I am kind of helping out these legacy media companies by paying my taxes, which goes to the subsidies, which funds the programs that I have nothing to do with and which I’m often disqualified from applying for.
TikTok or YouTube — which are my business partners — having to pay extra for my competition feels a bit unfair to me. As time goes on, we will see that these big telecom industries will be more in competition with small-time creators. Some creators on YouTube and Twitch bring in $100,000 a month and some bring in $1 million a month. In 15 years, it will get to the point where the line will be blurred between what is a big media corporation and what is just a content creator on YouTube.
It seems to me that asking YouTube and TikTok to subsidize CanCon content — by the way, these legacy media companies had nothing to do with the development or growth of YouTube or TikTok or building up the audiences on those platforms to begin with, unlike myself and my colleagues here — I feel it’s unfair that they should have to pay into those systems.
Mr. Sharpe: J.J. and Justin both touched on it, but a lot of different types of people are affected by this. As J.J. alluded to, you have some of the bigger tech giants, like the news corporations, and then you have people like the three of us, who are very much independent content creators who put out content for people to see. I would say briefly, and to be concise, that there are different types of people affected by it. I think that in a certain aspect, Bill C-11 assesses where everyone is at and might offer different ways to support or not support various people, depending on where they’re at.
Senator Sorensen: So one size does not fit all?
Mr. Sharpe: No, I don’t think so.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for being here and representing many generations, all younger than me. I appreciate that very much.
I have a question for Mr. Tomchuk and Mr. McCullough, but probably for all of you.
Would you want to have an opt-out clause from discoverability for YouTubers? In other words, YouTubers could choose to identify themselves as Canadian to benefit from discoverability — some would, I’m sure — or not identify as Canadian and stay in this free-for-all world that seems to fit your ambitions?
Mr. Tomchuk: I would be against that, only because if there is an opt-out system, you’re still going to be displaced by legacy media CanCon content on those same platforms. In any case, if you opt out, you would be at a disadvantage within your own country because the algorithm is displacing you for CanCon content. If you opt in, you’re going to be at a disadvantage globally because you’re being shown to more Canadians and fewer international players. So I would not believe that an opt-out system would be beneficial for creators like ourselves.
Mr. McCullough: I would be inclined to agree with what Justin said. I don’t want to see a situation where Canadian content creators have to choose between their own country and international stardom. The status quo has allowed them to be successful in Canada and internationally.
One of the problems with the underlying mindset or motive of this bill is that it views those two objectives as being at odds, when I don’t think there is any evidence that they are. I think it’s entirely possible to be extraordinarily successful in making Canadian content and still appeal to an international audience. I would say that’s what I do. I make a ton of videos that are very particular in their Canadian focus, yet my audience is still primarily international.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You’ve talked a lot about Canadian content and the freedom to discover it. However, we all know that minority, Canadian, Quebec and French content is not easy to discover on platforms like YouTube.
This freedom that you’re advocating is obviously good for YouTubers who succeed, but it has another impact on minorities. I’m thinking of the French minorities but also the native and Black minorities. This is not easy. Where do you find the right balance there? I’m thinking about Canadian content.
Mr. Tomchuk: I would challenge the notion that these algorithms and big media platforms are discriminating against minorities. If you’re a content creator, there is no gatekeeping involved in uploading something to YouTube. I’m half Indian and Ukrainian. I don’t consider myself a minority, but I also don’t feel like I should have any advantage over anybody else, because the internet is a level playing field.
If you wanted to increase the accessibility or perhaps visibility of Indigenous cultures, I think that a better solution, rather than mandating outcomes, is to provide better access to the internet in some of the underserved regions of Canada.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: What if nobody watches it?
Mr. Tomchuk: Here’s another thing: I could make a video about anything. If no one watches it, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is underserving the topic that I created a video about. It may just mean that not many people are interested in the content I’m offering.
Mr. McCullough: I would agree with that. It’s important that we don’t evaluate the value of any content based strictly on its popularity. Popularity of content means popularity of content. It doesn’t imply a kind of moral worth, as I think we would all know when we think of things that have been popular on television or the internet. It doesn’t imply that that stuff is worth more than anything else. However, I would say that when we look at two of the most successful Canadian YouTubers of all time, Evan “Vanoss” Fong and Lilly Singh, both are racialized people.
One of the marvellous things about an unregulated YouTube is that you do sink or swim based entirely on the quality or popularity of your content. Again, that doesn’t imply a moral worth, but it does suggest an unregulated, free-market-based YouTube, educational and —
The Chair: I hate interrupting, but I am the guardian of time, and Senator Miville-Dechêne is over her time.
Senator Manning: Thank you to our witnesses. I have a question for Mr. McCullough.
In the brief that YouTube provided to the House committee, they argued that Bill C-11, as currently drafted, will put tens of thousands of Canadian creators on YouTube at risk.
We don’t specifically know how the CRTC will administer the legislation we have before us, partly because the government is refusing to release its policy directive to the CRTC on the implementation of the bill and won’t do so until after the bill has passed, which concerns us from many avenues.
Do you believe it will be useful and important to have the policy directive released now? Does the failure to release the policy directive contribute to uncertainty for you and your colleagues?
Mr. McCullough: Yes, absolutely. That is a very important question. That is something I have to explain a lot when random people ask me about Bill C-11.
If you read Bill C-11, you might not see some of the things that we’re worried about, but, in part, that’s because Bill C-11, like a lot of legislation that seems to be passed in this country these days, just delegates authority to some executive branch agency that is charged with hammering out all the specific rules of how the legislation will be implemented on a day-to-day basis. Politicians pass laws that set out broad guidelines and objectives, but then it’s ultimately the executive branch agency, such as the CRTC, that has to come up with the specifics.
It’s true that until we get guidance, until we get a directive from the CRTC of how they are going to use these powers — how they’re going to interpret their mandate to improve discoverability, to improve the promotion of Canadian content as determined by their assessment of what good Canadian content is, how they are going to interpret their mandate to promote the content of marginalized communities and so forth — until we have a clear sense of how that actually is going to be implemented and how YouTube and other platforms are going to be legally required to implement it, we are still in the realm of speculation.
I think that anyone who views people like us as fear mongering or whatever, it is a problem that the CRTC could help alleviate or at least bring some closure to if they released their directive. Although, I am also aware that the CRTC has its own process; it is becoming a sort of pseudo-legislature unto itself and has hearings and procedures unto itself.
But you are correct. Until we hear from the CRTC directly, we are all mostly in the realm of speculation. But that is a case to be made as to why it is fundamentally anti-democratic to pass legislation like this that gives an unelected, unaccountable body like the CRTC so much power.
Senator Manning: In regard to your own operation and your own challenges, what implications would the bill have to your specific operation, without the clarity?
Mr. McCullough: When you talk to YouTubers, as I have, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the future. We don’t really know what our future is going to look like. We don’t know what kind of content we’re going to have to make or how this is going to affect our revenue, discoverability and our bottom line.
This is what we make a living doing. It is not helpful for government to have introduced a tremendous amount of uncertainty into the future of this very vibrant, dynamic and important part of the Canadian cultural economy at this critical time.
This is why I say it’s a solution in search of a problem. Things have been puttering along very well, frankly. As I said, I’m not even in the top 400 Canadian YouTubers. There have been tremendous success stories that have percolated outwards when you think of the staff and various people we’re employing in our businesses. To throw a huge question mark into those operations is tremendously frightening to a lot of people in our positions.
Senator Simons: As someone who spent 30 years as a working journalist, my questions are all going to be for Mr. Sharpe.
When I started in journalism at school at the age of 13, we had to run my newspaper through a Gestetner because there wasn’t a photocopier. That is how old I am. The trouble with my Gestetner newspaper that I handed out on the playground at recess is that people were more likely to punch me than to read my newspaper.
For me, your career illustrates the genius of this moment in our social and cultural history, that you can launch a TV channel and build an audience.
I want you to talk to us about how you were able to leverage YouTube in that way, the trajectory of the path, what your audience is now and what support, if any, you’ve had from YouTube in the building of that audience.
Mr. Sharpe: I would say that social media and the power that social media has to impact and to ultimately allow people to express their messages — which is, in a certain respect, what I’m doing — has obviously grown over the past few decades. I would say that when I first started in January of 2021, even going from there until now, just even releasing my first couple of episodes and interviews on my program, I was not necessarily anticipating the way that it would be able to reach people at the point it has now. Another interesting aspect is you really gauge what type of topics people are interested in. If you do an interview on one topic that gets maybe a few hundred or a few thousand views, then you do an interview on another topic that gets tens of thousands of views, that has also been an interesting way to gauge what issues seem to be important to people.
Senator Simons: I ask this because I have a YouTube channel that doesn’t get as many clicks as yours. I’ve had more success with my podcast. I’m just curious, do you have an average viewership, or does it depend on the topic, the day of the week and that kind of thing?
Mr. Sharpe: That’s the point I was alluding to before. There isn’t a set average. It goes up and down depending on what topics people are interested in. You could have one interview that gets, at best, 500 to 1,000 views. That is not a lot of views. Then you have one interview that gets tens of thousands of views because that is an issue people care about.
I would say it’s an up-and-down trend depending on what issues people are focusing on and how relevant those issues are and how they play into the news cycle.
Senator Simons: For you as a Canadian journalist using YouTube, has YouTube provided you with any supports to help build your audience and get your show in front of more people?
Mr. Sharpe: Not necessarily providing support per se, but the same as any other content creator on the platform. For example, Jeanette Patell, who also came to your committee, I’ve interviewed her. The people behind the scenes at YouTube are all supportive of not just the work I do, but of Canadian journalism and ensuring that Canadian journalism can be seen and be as accessible as possible to Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Senator Simons: I guess this is the question, because the algorithm is always a little like the god in the machine. We never know exactly how it works.
I’m on social media a lot. I met with Facebook a couple of weeks ago, and they told me that they are going to be transitioning away from showcasing news content. I have certainly noticed in my own posts that the kind of content that would have had thousands of views on Facebook three years ago doesn’t seem to be engaging in the same way. I don’t think that’s just me. I’m not less boring than I was.
Sometimes I worry that we put too much confidence in the algorithm to be agnostic. I’m wondering if you ever feel that you would like more clarity from YouTube that would help you as a producer and promoter to understand how to communicate with the oracle that is the YouTube algorithm.
Mr. Sharpe: I think it’s an important point. The algorithm is definitely the way that content is shared with people, and, in many cases, various algorithms are how Canadians find out about the news, but as you have alluded to, there are some algorithms that seem to be becoming less and less reliant.
For me and my show as an example, when Pierre Poilievre was elected as leader of the opposition, interviews about that topic would get thousands of views. Whereas, when you do an interview on a smaller issue, or one that is not as relevant, you could say that it still carries the same level of importance but it does not necessarily seem to be as interesting to people so it gets fewer views.
I think the algorithm is an important aspect, but I also think a lot of politcos, a number of people who are watching the news on a regular basis —
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Sharpe. The time has elapsed for Senator Simons.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, chair, and thanks to the witnesses. This is fascinating. I am hearing everything today, from Gestetners to things that I do not understand or know what you are talking about.
I’ve had questions evolving throughout this presentation. The one that you just finished addressing a couple of questions ago was with respect to the uncertainty; there is no policy directive released. As the CRTC develops a regulatory regime, that regime goes through the Canada Gazette process, and sometimes that is not given the rigour of review that users may want to have.
Is there something else that can be done? I am getting at the appeal process. A regulation comes through, and somebody says, “No, that’s not fair; that’s not right.” There’s an appeal process that, as I understand it, could involve courts and things like that.
Is there something else that could be done? If we could change the system to allow a body such as the Senate, a body such as this committee, to be involved in regulatory concerns that are raised by users so that we can have some certainty about what those regulations are and their effect, is that something you think might be helpful?
Mr. Tomchuk: As was addressed in the previous panel, it seems like a lot of decisions at the CRTC have been not very transparent in the first place.
But, yes, it would definitely be helpful to see what their intentions are by putting forward at least a draft of the directives, because right now it’s a black box that we’re just basically approving that we will find out about later. By then, it will be too late because they have the power to do as they choose to do.
Mr. McCullough: Yes, it’s difficult. To me, I feel like I’m very suspicious of the granting of these powers altogether. It is, frankly, I think just a democratic anxiety, the idea that now we have to go through all of this again and deal with the CRTC’s pseudo-legislative functions, that these executive branch agencies are now acting as miniature legislatures unto themselves with their own hearings and gazetting process, as you alluded to.
Frankly, this process that you’re describing is the way that the parliamentary system is supposed to operate fundamentally, that if we have concerns with a regulatory regime, we should be able to bring it to our elected representatives or our representatives in the Senate. Then, folks like you should be clarifying the terms, limitations and the scope of the legislation.
If there are problems, then we can appeal to our MPs and senators and see the oversight and fine-tuning of the legislation that way. The public and creators don’t have that relationship with unaccountable or mysterious government bodies like the CRTC.
To answer your question, Parliament has to assert itself more if it has anxieties about control over this process.
Senator Quinn: We’re trying to make things more accessible and discoverable. Some of the discussions that I’m hearing here this morning cause me to ask, in attempting to achieve that, is there an opportunity to do quite the opposite? I’m worried that if we try to force people to see Canadian content, for example, the answer could be quite simple: to click away, having quite the opposite effect. Is that something we should be concerned about?
Mr. Tomchuk: Yes, absolutely. Unlike the radio — if you don’t like what’s being played on the radio, you have to sit there and listen to it — on YouTube, one click away and you’re gone.
People will start to resent the content that is being forced on them, so you might end up building an audience that resents the content we’re trying to promote. It is the opposite effect.
Mr. McCullough: I think that we, as Canadians, have all had the experience of turning on the television and seeing some Canadian show that we just don’t want to watch. We ask, why is this being shown? Nobody is watching this. This is clearly not popular. You go on to resent it. You resent CanCon.
CanCon in some corners of this country is a dirty word or is an insult, because it is associated with CRTC mandates forcing content that people don’t really want onto the airwaves and onto their televisions. I think the last thing we want is for that same sort of culture of resentment towards Canadian content to emerge in the internet space.
Senator Quinn: My last question is for Mr. Sharpe. It is an impressive business that you have started at such an early age. The variety of people that you are interviewing is outstanding. The folks that you are talking to during your production and your shows, and outside of that, are you hearing specific concerns about Bill C-11? Are people sharing with you that we shouldn’t do this or we shouldn’t do that?
Mr. Sharpe: I think a lot of the process surrounding Bill C-11 has definitely been, you could say, politicized quite a bit. For example, you have the Conservative Party, back in its former title of Bill C-10, and now the slightly modified Bill C-11, talking about how they believe it’s censorship and not good. Then, obviously, the government describes it as wanting to promote Canadian content. Regardless of the balance between the two of them, those are definitely the two perspectives that are being put forward and the two perspectives that seem to be the most popular.
The Chair: Thank you very much. The time has elapsed. I have to turn it over to Senator Clement.
Senator Clement: Hello to all of you, glad to have you here.
One comment: Just because Ms. Singh is wildly and validly successful doesn’t mean that there aren’t other Black, racialized or marginalized communities that aren’t facing a whole host of barriers in terms of getting their product in front of audiences. I just want to put that out there.
I’m more interested in your success, though, because I’m aware of the work of all three of you. I’m not your typical demographic. I wonder how deeply you analyze the analytics of your data in your accounts. What proportion is Canadian versus international? Do you watch and adjust your work when you see the data is indicating less engagement with certain types of your content?
This is the last piece: Given the power of algorithms and your success already, why don’t you trust that these platforms can ensure that Canadian content will be tailored to users’ interests, as all content already is?
Mr. Tomchuk: There is a valid concern that some of these platforms have algorithms that we don’t really understand how they work. For instance, the problem is that the bill does not address any of that.
We have programs like YouTube, and they are changing their algorithm every week, every month. From what I have researched, I think there’s something like thousands of variables that goes into what constitutes the internal scoreboard of your video.
Personally, as a content creator, I don’t focus too much on the algorithm, because you just have to make the content you’re trying to produce in the first place.
Sorry, I just lost my train of thought there.
Mr. McCullough: I think that there are two types of creators in the YouTube subculture. There are those who I think are very creative and imaginative, like Justin, and have faith that their art will ultimately be rewarded and have been proven successful at doing that.
And then there are some who are really obsessed with the algorithm, the data and the numbers. I’m not like that either. I definitely know that such people do exist. How many viewers am I getting from here? How long is my watch time? I have to make sure that the video is engaging enough that they don’t click away after the first 30 seconds. It can get really obsessive and nuts. I’m not that way.
I make videos that I think will be broadly resonant with my audience, both international and domestic. I make a lot of videos about Canadian stuff, and my audience is primarily foreigners, most are Americans and then Europeans. Canadians are maybe a third or, in some cases, quite a bit less, which I think shows that Canadian content — even explicitly Canadian content like the video that I’m going to make about this whole process — will resonate well with international audiences, because a lot of people are interested in Canada. Many people feel like they don’t know enough about Canada. They want to learn more about this country. They really have a hunger and an appetite for it.
I think that this is a part of the problem, that there is a misunderstanding of Canadian content creators as being these delicate, fragile creatures in need of government’s helping hand because, otherwise, we are just going to wilt on the vine. I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think that’s the case for racialized Canadian content creators. I don’t think that’s the case for LGBT content creators like myself.
The system is not perfect. It is a market-driven system, and market-driven systems can be corrupted or perverted in all sorts of different ways. But I think it’s a pretty good system and it’s working for a lot of Canadians. That’s why we should be skeptical of the government’s desire to put their hand into a working thing and sort of muck around with it.
Mr. Sharpe: In my case, because I’m very much focused on Canadian political news, unless I do a story and coverage on an event that’s happening abroad or in another country like the U.S. — American news, for example — I’m not necessarily looking at either the analytics or the algorithms too much. It’s more looking at those issues that are most relevant and having the biggest impact on people, more specifically on my viewers and people watching my show.
The Chair: On behalf of my colleagues, I’d like to thank the panel for coming before us today and for sharing your thoughts and views on Bill C-11.
Colleagues, we’ve come to eleven o’clock. We’ll continue our work on reviewing Bill C-11 later this week.
(The committee adjourned.)