By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – As bill C-11 faces a final vote in the House of Commons this week, “it’s unclear as to how it will work in practice” and whether streaming giants will be able to “simply repurpose” already made Canadian programming to qualify as Canadian content and how they would pay their fair share toward broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) that require private broadcasters to make a contribution of at least 5% of their broadcast revenues to CanCon and production, according to CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Catherine Tait.
The Senate’s passing of the Online Streaming Act last week was received with some concern as to what was not included in the bill, but that Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s government would not accept a substantial weakening of the bill.
“There is still time to get this right,” Tait told Cartt.ca in an interview following her keynote speech at the Canadian Media Producers Association’s (CMPA’s) annual Prime Time conference in Ottawa on Friday.
“I go back to what was the goal and the purpose in creating this legislative journey in the first place. It was to create a level playing field, and if we ended up with something that simply does not do that, it will have been a gross failure of everybody’s time and effort,” Tait said, singling out Canadian heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and the federal Liberal government for their “enormous” endeavour in addressing the realities and challenges of online streaming into the Broadcasting Act.
Tait said she remains “hopeful” that the federal government, when it sends a cabinet directive to the CRTC — which presents regulations following public consultations on the Online Streaming Act — will both “get it right.
“We heard loud and clear during the two days at Prime Time of the importance of – not just for producers, but for broadcasters – of having a viable Canadian-owned industry,” she said.
“If we give away intellectual property, and make it also easy for streamers to just repurpose whatever they’re spending in the country and call it Canadian content, we will have deeply failed our cultural sector,” she said.
“The idea that Canadian creators can stand up to behemoths like Google or YouTube or Netflix is an absurdity,” said Tait, who acknowledged there is room for those major streamers.
“But we are a very small country and we have to own our own culture. For me, there’s an unequivocal stake that we must hold if we want to control our future.”
At Prime Time, the head of CBC said that “the business model of the foreign streamers is rooted in owning worldwide rights – that’s how they spread the risk on their big bets – against hundreds of millions of subscribers. She also noted that one of the most competitive television markets is English Canada, where the audience share for conventional TV networks is just 30 per cent.
“The risk for us is that this own-all-the-rights business model directly threatens the underpinnings of our domestic, Canadian-owned production model,” she said. “And while service production is good for business, it may be a short-term affair. What happens if foreign-owned streamers push out our domestic broadcasters? Or if market conditions change and the streamers take their business someplace else?”
In her Prime Time address, Tait said that if “Canadians have no control over the property itself — if we do not own it — then we are simply renting our country’s stories and talent” in a “bigger, fancier house.”
“So to put the future of Canadian culture in the hands of others where there could be M&As [mergers and acquisitions], or consolidation or pressures,” said Tait, who at the conference warned that when “shifting economics or consolidation impact the streamers’ profitability,” it would “alter their commitment to funding production in Canada.”
As she underlined in an interview, the need to safeguard Canadian content is “our cultural imperative, which is why we really need to pay attention to how the bill is actually put into practice. That’s the real work that lies ahead in my opinion.”
The CRTC will do the heavy lifting, according to Tait.
“A lot happens in the implementation. I know that as a regulated broadcaster,” she said. “You can say, here are the broad policy directives. But when you get down to your conditions of license, that’s where the rubber hits the road.
“I do really believe that the CRTC’s role is going to be absolutely central. The work isn’t done for the producers. The work isn’t done for Canadian broadcasters. We have to keep on communicating how important it is for this industry,” she told Cartt.ca.
“If you believe in Canadian-owned productions and Canadian companies, then you have to keep working on this.”
Once bill C-11 is implemented “in a way that benefits the Canadian industry, we’ll see more dollars flowing into the commissioning of production of Canadian content,” she said.
Tait on bill C-18
She added that another bill before Parliament, C-18, “we’ll see some dollars flowing to newsrooms for the support of Canadian journalists.”
C-18, also known as the Online News Act, which passed the House in December and passed first reading in the Senate on Feb. 2, would, as the bill reads, require technology platforms that host Canadian news content to pay for it.
Tait said that she is “very heartened” that the CBC has its own section in C-18.
Almost two years ago, in the world’s first media code, Australia’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. entered into an agreement with both Google and Facebook to pay Australia’s public broadcaster for displaying news content on their platforms.
“Our Australian colleagues have taken those dollars and invested in scores of new journalists, so we look forward to being able to do the same sort of thing,” said Tait.
“With whatever deal we would be able to strike with Google or Facebook, we would be transparent about what we do with any dollars earned and we would be very clear about deploying those dollars in the support of news in the region. That literally means more boots on the ground,” she explained, adding that CBC has hired reporters in 16 previously unserved markets, including Cranbrook and Nanaimo in British Columbia, Lethbridge and Grand Prairie in Alberta, and in Kingston, Ontario.
Tait said the funds came from savings realized from CBC’s green initiative to cut back on travel.
Photo via the CMPA
