By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – After barely a day to digest, the Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review panel report claimed centre stage during day one of the Canadian Media Producers Association’s 25th Prime Time conference in Ottawa on Thursday.
One day after releasing their report – 19 months in the making and which resulted in 97 recommendations – chair Janet Yale and fellow panelist Monique Simard provided some insight during a lunchtime appearance.
“Our job was to deliver recommendations on how to modernize the legislative and regulatory framework governing the communication sector in broadcasting and telecommunications,” said Yale. “We really thought about it in terms of how we advance individual economic and cultural prosperity in this country. And from an individual perspective we started from the premise that everyone in Canada deserves to live a connected life.
“From an economic perspective, it’s clear that advanced technologies create incredible opportunities for information and allow businesses to transform their business models allowing them to compete more effectively at home and abroad – and from a cultural perspective, in a world of endless choices and voices, how do we make sure that there are Canadian voices, Canadian perspective among the choices available,” added Yale.
“We decided that we therefore need to embrace that this is an open, global market where people living in Canada should and must have access to any content they want from anywhere on any platform… But nonetheless, we want to make sure that there is a role for Canadian culture in that marketplace.”
CMPA president and CEO Reynolds Mastin, who served as co-moderator of a panel with Yale and Simard, highlighted a question top of mind at the conference as to how foreign streaming services would be brought into Canada’s regulatory system.
The BTLR report did not recommend what has been so often called a “Netflix tax” where consumers would be charged an extra levy on their OTT subscriptions.
It did, however, suggest “a regime that requires such online streaming services that benefit from operating in Canada to invest in Canadian programming that they believe will attract and appeal to Canadians. This approach would ensure a meaningful contribution to Canadian cultural policy objectives and the production sector. It need not result in higher prices for consumers.”
As Yale explained: “We decided to think about was how to bring all media undertakings, whether they’re internet-based or otherwise, into the legislation. We started with two fundamental determinations. One is that it is no longer a gatekeeper model – but starting from the principle that if you benefit from operating in the Canadian market, whether it’s through advertising or subscription revenues, you have to contribute.”
She said the panel then determined “relevant activities” involved. Three categories, or roles, emerged: Curation (think Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave, Spotify), aggregation (think StackTV, MSN News and Yahoo! News) and sharing (think Facebook, YouTube, Instagram), which we reported here.
“In the case of curators, including Netflix and Prime, we feel that a spending obligation is the right approach like it exists for broadcasters today.” – Janet Yale
“The idea was to look at those categories and then give the CRTC the authority to determine what is the appropriate obligations for each,” said Yale. Also, the CRTC would be renamed the Canadian Communications Commission, to more accurately reflect the broader role envisioned by the report.
“In the case of curators, including Netflix and Prime, we feel that a spending obligation is the right approach like it exists for broadcasters today, and that would be based on a percentage of their Canadian-derived revenues – the exact percentage to be determined by the CRTC, recognizing that for the traditional broadcasters on a like-for-like basis there may be a need to lighten their load as well.”
She explained that since foreign streaming services cannot hold broadcasting licenses, they would complete a Canadian “registration.”
According to the BTLR report, the CRTC would administer a new registration regime for “any media content undertaking with significant Canadian revenues” and delivering online media content.
“With this registration requirement, Canada’s policy and regulatory model would no longer be limited by an increasingly out-of-date reliance on licensing as a technique for regulation,” and would apply to both foreign and domestic online undertakings.
Yale believes the investments from streaming services would ensure a “viable model” for the creation and production of Canadian content.
Simard spoke to the panel’s recommendations regarding CBC/Radio-Canada, which would “transform Canada’s public broadcaster into a public media institution with a singular focus on serving a public rather than a commercial purpose,” by, in part, gradually eliminating advertising “on all platforms over the next five years, starting with news content.”
Said Simard, former director-general of the National Film Board of Canada’s French program: “We think Radio-Canada/CBC has to be more daring and risk-taking in its programming – has to go further in its mandate to really serve the public interest.”
Stability in its federal funding – for at least a five-year period, as the report recommended – would assist that objective, she explained.
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault was also at Prime Time on Wednesday, and echoed comments he made to Cartt.ca in a recent interview.
“If it was only up to me, we’d have a bill tabled in the House of Commons in the next few weeks.” – Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault
He reiterated the federal government would table legislation to introduce the broadcasting and telecom reforms the Liberals campaigned on before the last election and which the BTLR recommended before the end of last June. “If it was only up to me, we’d have a bill tabled in the House of Commons in the next few weeks,” he said, noting there is lots on the minority government’s agenda.
“We are also looking at things we can do without legislative changes,” he explained. “We still have regulatory tools – so maybe there are things we can do in the short term.”
But as with last year’s warm onstage chat with Guilbeault’s predecessor, Pablo Rodriguez, the CMPA’s Mastin ensured that Guilbeault – the rookie Member of Parliament for the Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie – made his Prime Time debut in friendly territory.
On the Liberals’ campaign pledge to increase the annual funding for Telefilm Canada by nearly 50%, Mastin asked the Canadian Heritage minister whether the government – in a minority Parliament – remains committed to financially supporting feature-film production.
“Totally,” replied Guilbeault.
The question, however, may be moot.
One of the BTLR recommendations is a merger of Telefilm and the Canada Media Fund.
Photo courtesy of CMPA.
