By Christopher Guly
The federal government has formally responded to amendments the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications made to bill C-11 that passed the upper house on Feb. 2 and which has been under consideration in the House of Commons.
In a notice sent to the Senate on Tuesday, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who sponsored the bill when it was introduced in the House on Feb. 2, 2022, highlighted several changes the government would like the Senate to make before the Online Streaming Act is granted royal assent.
The Senate defined “community element” as “includ[ing] the participation of members of the community, through volunteers and a community board selected by members, in the content production of community media in the language of their choice, as well as in the day-to-day operations and administration of not-for-profit community media entities responding to the needs of the community they serve.”
As passed by the House last June, community element included “the element of the Canadian broadcasting system as part of which members of a community participate in the production of programs that are in a language used in the community including a not-for-profit broadcasting undertaking that is managed by a board of directors elected by the community.”
Rodriguez said the Senate’s tweak “does not refer to broadcasting undertakings that comprise components of the broadcasting system which may cause interpretative issues in the application of the act.”
He also disagreed with the Senate amendment that states “online undertakings shall implement methods such as age-verification methods to prevent children from accessing programs on the internet that are devoted to depicting, for a sexual purpose, explicit sexual activity.”
According to the notice paper, “the amendment seeks to legislate matters in the broadcasting system that are beyond the policy intent of the bill, the purpose of which is to include online undertakings, undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the internet, in the broadcasting system.”
Other requested changes include deleting the Senate’s amendment to subsection 18(2.1), which said that the CRTC would hold a hearing after a “proposed order or regulation in question is published.”
That obligation “both before and after decisions are taken by the CRTC will entail unnecessary delays in the administration of the act,” said the government.
Also problematic, from the government’s position, is the Senate’s reference to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in which it said that the CBC “may not enter into any contract, arrangement or agreement that results in the broadcasting or development of an advertisement or announcement on behalf of an advertiser that is designed to resemble journalistic programming.”
That amendment, said Rodriguez’s notice, “seeks to legislate matters in the broadcasting system that are beyond the policy intent of the bill, the purpose of which is to include online undertakings, undertakings for the transmission or retransmission of programs over the internet, in the broadcasting system, and because further study is required on how best to position our national public broadcaster to meet the needs and expectations of Canadians.”
At the Canadian Media Producers Association’s annual Prime Time conference held in Ottawa last month, Rodriguez said the government would support any or all amendments that resulted from the longest study ever conducted by a Senate committee as long as none of them “weaken” the objective for a “modern bill” that recognizes that “we’ve changed the way we look at things.”
In a scrum on Parliament Hill on Wednesday, the heritage minister said the government accepted “a vast majority of the Senate amendments, but some that could create a loophole were not accepted.”
