By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – A Conservative amendment that would place monetary thresholds on which companies qualify for CRTC regulation under new legislation would allow those companies to skirt the rules, according to a Liberal MP Tuesday during a House Heritage committee hearing.
In its current form, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, would give the CRTC the ability to determine which companies must compensate news publishers to host on their platforms links to news articles.
But the Conservatives are proposing an amendment that would place limits on the application of this law by the…
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Will the USMCA become an issue for implementation of C-11?
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Officials from Canadian Heritage told the Senate Transportation and Communications Committee Tuesday that they were in regular contact with their American counterparts about legislation that would give the CRTC enhanced authority to regulate online platforms.
Owen Ripley, associate assistant deputy minister of cultural affairs, said the government is navigating the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal and must ensure it is not offside of the trade agreement with bill C-11, the Online Streaming Bill.
As for whether there would be possible retaliation for further regulating American firms, Heritage officials at…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA — The House of Commons Heritage Committee started considering amendments to Bill C-18, the Online News Act, today and dealt with only three amendments during the two-hour session.
Although they seem to have agreed not to filibuster, the Conservatives clearly used delay tactics that had the effect of angering Liberal and NDP members alike.
This became obvious once the committee took 20 minutes to deal with administrative issues that could have been avoided.
Given the text of the amendments and even the number of amendments are deemed confidential, it is difficult at this stage know how many there are,…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA — This evening, the Transport and Communications Committee of the Senate (TRCM) heard from CRTC chairman Ian Scott (above) who took the opportunity to clarify some concepts and asked to remove amendments passed by the House of Commons Heritage Committee to Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act.
The chair started by stating again that the Commission has no intention of regulating the user-generated content (UGC). “Bill C-11 draws a distinction between the users of social media on one hand, and the platforms themselves on the other. Its intent is to exclude individual users from regulation. I want…
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OTTAWA and PLESSISVILLE, Que. — The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) and the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération) today expressed their concern Bill C-18, the Online News Act, does not include small, not-for-profit news organizations such as community broadcasters.
“The two associations, which represent community TV, as well as other associations representing community broadcasters were unanimous in their briefs to the Heritage Committee studying Bill C-18 that — based on the Australian experience — community media will likely be left out of the news compensation scheme unless amendments are made,” reads a…
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By Monica Auer
IN JUNE 2022, the House of Commons passed Bill C-11-3, the Online Streaming Act, to amend Canada’s 1991 Broadcasting Act. The bill was then sent to the Senate for study and debate. The Senate’s Transport and Communications Committee (TRCM) began its pre-study of C-11 in early June, and has so far heard nearly 130 separate witnesses. It is unclear precisely when TRCM will submit its report and recommendations about Bill C-11 to the Senate, but the latter is expected to sit from now until Dec. 22, 2022, and to resume sitting in early 2023, perhaps as early as…
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By Howard Law
IF JOURNALISTS IN politics are the friends of news media, perhaps it needs new friends.
At the Commons Heritage Committee, former CTV reporter and Conservative MP Kevin Waugh continues to thunder that major TV networks Bell CTV, Rogers City-TV and CBC should be excluded from the “FaceGoogle” Bill C-18.
This Monday at the Senate committee studying the Online Streaming Act Bill C-11, former Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons and former CBC TV correspondent Julie Miville-Dechêne suggested Unifor’s recommendation for better cable and streamer funding of local news was unnecessary because TV companies are set to cash in under…
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OTTAWA – During another meeting of the heritage committee yesterday on Bill C-18, the Online News Act, witnesses indicated there are better ways to address the country’s journalism crisis and argued the bill will not help small news organizations.
Philip Palmer, president of the Internet Society Canada chapter told the committee a broader levy applied to social media platforms and search engines and an independent body to allocate funding would be a better approach to the problems facing Canadian news organizations than Bill C-18, which he said, “threatens the efficiency of news retrieval on the Internet and the ability of…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – This morning, the Transport and Communications Senate Committee (TRCM) met again to hear testimonies from Unifor, the Writers Guild of Canada, the Screen Composers Guild of Canada and the Provincial Council of the Communications Sector of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Except for the latter, all support the bill but brought up issues regarding employment, intellectual property, and the Status of the Artist.
Contributions from the online broadcasters should be provided to produce local news, said Unifor and CUPE, which are unions representing workers in that sector.
“We need an amendment in Bill C-11 to ensure…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – On Oct. 29, the heritage committee of the House of Commons (CHPC) held a meeting to study Bill C-18, the Online News Act.
Before this, on Oct. 21, Facebook (owned by Meta) published a blog post about not having been invited to speak in front of the committee. The committee “appears to have concluded calling witnesses for its study of the Online News Act (Bill C-18),” the post reads.
“But faced with adverse legislation that is based on false assumptions that defy the logic of how Facebook works, we feel it is important to be transparent about the…
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