By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – The Senate transportation and communications committee pushed forth more amendments on the last leg of its clause-by-clause review of the Online Streaming Act, approving an age verification requirement for explicit material on the internet.
“Online undertakings shall implement methods such as age verification…to prevent children from accessing programs on the Internet that are devoted to depicting, for a sexual purpose, explicit sexual activity,” according to a committee-approved amendment this week.
Bill C-11 would give the CRTC the power to further regulate digital platforms, so platforms will be subject to scrutiny to implement those measures.
Other amendments adopted by committee including prohibiting deceptive content that blurs the lines of advertising and journalism, as was seen in the CBC Tandem fiasco.
The committee also removed references to “directly or indirectly generates revenues” to refer to user-generated content. The concern is that users could post to Google’s YouTube, earn a lot of money, and not be subject to the legislation. Senator Dennis Dawson said this would create loopholes for social media platforms to avoid contributing to Canadian culture.
After 69 hours, the committee adopted 25 out of 98 proposed amendments. Some of those approved amendments were not supported by the government.
The bill now moves to the floor of the Senate for the committee report stage and third reading votes.
It then goes to the House of Commons where the lower house will ensure that the version voted by the Heritage Committee and the Senate are the same, so some Senate amendments not approved by government could still yet be removed.
The legislation has the potential to be adopted before Christmas.
Screenshot of Senator Dennis Dawson
