By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage met for the eighth time to hear witnesses’ testimonies on Bill C-10, the Act to amend the Broadcasting Act, on Monday. We’ve pretty much got a bead on who’s thinking what, now.
We heard again from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (Friends) whose question time had been taken up by committee business and the Fedération National des Communications which could not appear in a previous meeting due to technical problems.
They were joined by BCE, Unifor, and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA). Shaw had been slotted to appear but were replaced by the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA).
It is somewhat unfair to appear at this later stage because all the arguments you bring forward have already been heard before sometimes by you, in the case of Friends.
“We support Bill C-10 and urge its swift passage into law. It is long overdue,” said Jonathan Daniels, vice-president, regulatory law at Bell Canada (echoing what his boss wrote for Cartt.ca). “Over the last four years they grew their Canadian revenues by $2.4 billion, while at the same time Canadian broadcasters experienced a drop of revenue of over $1.3 billion,” he added, referencing the foreign digital streamers.
“And here is another jaw-dropping statistic, the three largest OTT service providers, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, between the three of them, have more subscribers than all of Canadian television distributors combined,” he went on.
What BCE is suggesting is the same as Rogers, Québecor, and Corus did – to “level the playing field” to remedy this imbalance by scaling back regulations the big broadcasters bust satisfy which the likes of Netflix et al, don’t.
Wait a minute, cautioned Jay Thomson, CEO of the CCSA. “The field it will level is the one that the giants play on. And by levelling the field of the giants, it will tilt even further in the giants’ favour the other fields in the system, the fields where smaller and independent players go up against those giants,” he said.
The CRTC has over the years, faced with the dominance of vertically integrated giants, put in place safeguards but the alliance which represents independent network owners worry, “if left as is, Bill C-10 will embolden the giants in their efforts to escape the CRTC’s consumer safeguards,” added Thomson.
These are safeguards which today are also helping members of the Independent Broadcasting Group, who at a previous meeting, supported the amendments put forward by the CCSA.
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting have focused some of their comments on the exemptions for social media. “Many YouTubers operate bigger broadcasting businesses than most licensed Canadian broadcasters. I’m not saying they should all be regulated, but if they are the future, why would we categorically exclude them from all future regulation?
“It is increasingly clear to me that size is all that matters… Small undertakings should be exempt from regulation. Big ones should not,” he added.
The final meeting on C-10 with witnesses will be held Friday as the CRTC and community media representatives face the politicians.
