By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – The 2021 Parliamentary season is back in full swing and the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage began to dig into a pair of important topics over the past few days
This session’s first two meetings, on Friday and Monday January 29 and February 1, dealt with “Relations Between Facebook and the Federal Government,” said the meeting notice – and Bill C-10, the amendments to the Broadcasting Act.
That first meeting was spurred by an email from Kevin Chan, global director and head of public policy, Facebook Canada, sent to the director general of broadcasting, copyright and creative marketplace branch at Canadian Heritage (PCH) which was leaked to the media.
In it, Chan asked the DG to circulate a job posting for a policy manager position at Facebook. Some viewed this as an ethical issue while other thought nothing wrong with it. In any case it was taken seriously enough by PCH to bring the minister, Stephen Guilbeault and his deputy minister and his senior assistant deputy minister, for cultural affairs for a chat.
Remember though, this is politics. During questioning, Minister Guilbeault talked about the next steps in his legislative agenda. Bill C-10 was number one, a potential bill that would deal with online hate was second and the creation of a regulator to deal with social media was third. This social media bill should be tabled before the end of the session in June, the minister said.
Guilbeault was, however, also taken to task by an opposition member who noted in a previous committee appearance, the Minister was asked about the alleged $830 million in revenues that the Netflixes of this world would contribute to the creation of Canadian content under the provisions of Bill C-10 and the Minister had said he would provide it. The committee still has not seen the rationale.
The Committee unanimously voted on the following motion: “That, given that the Minister of Canadian Heritage in his testimony given before this committee on November 5, 2020, committed to providing the members of this committee with the detailed calculation explaining his department’s claim that the passage of Bill C-10 would result in $830 million dollars in additional annual investments in Canadian televised or streaming content by 2023, and, that the Minister has yet to communicate this information to the members of the committee, the committee call on the Minister to provide the aforementioned detailed calculation explaining his department’s claim of $830 million dollars in additional investment in Canadian televised or streaming content before the suspension of this committee’s work for the December Holiday break.”
The Minister agreed to provide it and turned to his deputy minister who went on to say that it could be provided but there had to be a proper briefing given since a sheet of paper would not tell the whole story.
Then on Monday, a pre-study on Bill C-10 started with witnesses from the Association québécoise de la production médiatique, the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française and the Quebec English-language Production Council.
Minority issues were of course at the heart of the discussion. It was repeatedly noted the absence in the Broadcasting Policy for Canada, enshrined in Section 3 of the Act, is silent about the needs of the Official Language Minority Communities. For francophones outside of Québec as well as anglophones in Québec.
“If we are not mentioned, we do not exist,” said Marie-Christine Morin, executive director of the Fédération culturelle canadienne.
Also discussed, were quotas in the Act, such as 30%, 40% or 50% of original non-dubbed French productions stemming from the contributions from the web giants, which would be forked by the CRTC but they would prefer it be included in the Act.
The Association québécoise de la production médiatique also proposed that contrary to the recommendation of the Yale report, Internet and wireless providers should contribute to the production of Canadian content.
The next meeting will likely be held on Friday, with many more to come.
