By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – After a week of complaints that Bill C-10, the bill to update the Broadcasting Act, would instead cause all Canadians’ YouTube videos and Instagram posts and so on to fall under CRTC jurisdiction, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said late Monday a new amendment is coming to try and fix the fuss.
On April 23, when Julie Dabrusin, Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, proposed to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that Section 4.1 of Bill C-10 should be removed because it “has created some confusion for people on whether or not social media…
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OTTAWA – Isabelle Mondou, who on Friday was associate deputy minister of Canadian Heritage and on assignment to the Privy Council office as deputy minister for the Covid-19 response (communications), becomes deputy minister of Canadian Heritage on Monday.
Mondou has worked in government for a long time, mostly in the PCO, and she replaces Hélène Laurendeau, who retired from the job last month.
Photo borrowed from her LinkedIn page.
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TORONTO – The Banff World Media Festival announced this morning Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage, will speak on Thursday, June 17, participating in a virtual keynote conversation during the festival’s Marketplace Week.
With delegates from more than 50 countries, Banff attracts the world’s top creators, producers, showrunners, talent, networks, studios, streamers, press and media companies – and attendees from all countries will be sure to tune in to hear what Minister Guilbeault has to say about Bill C-10 (the bill to modernize the Broadcasting Act which, if passed, will surely have an effect on foreign content providers in a…
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By Len St-Aubin
THINK ABOUT HOW MANY millions of audio and video clips get posted to social media every day. Now contemplate, for a moment, the human and other resources that would be needed to supervise, regulate and control it all.
That is what the Liberal government has just proposed to do with an amendment to Bill C-10 that it pushed through Parliament’s Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting Friday. That will be your tax dollars at work: wasteful, ineffective jobs for regulators, and freedom of expression be damned.
With the deletion of one clause (4.1) in Bill C-10, the bill to…
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Clause by clause process inches along
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – At the outset of the clause by-clause revisions of Bill C-10 on April 19, Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage chair Liberal MP, Scott Simms set the tone: “Buckle up, folks. This is the fundamental core of parliamentary democracy at its best. It’s going to be an exciting time—so exciting that we’ll probably sell the story rights to Netflix.”
Of course, we’re not sure the big streamer largely at the heart of some of these amendments wants to buy that option…
The very first amendment to the Bill was introduced by the Green…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – Monday’s federal budget, the first in two years, but the first ever delivered by a female Finance Minister in Chrystia Freeland, promises to deliver more money for rural broadband, but will find the government collecting less tax from foreign digital services as compared to their domestic counterparts.
Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance, which represents more than 100 independent TV, phone and internet providers serving mainly rural communities, was “pleasantly surprised” that the budget allocated an additional $1 billion over six years toward the $1.75-billion (now $2.75 billion) Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) unveiled…
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TORONTO — Ontario’s French-language public broadcaster Groupe Média TFO announced today Sébastien Pierroz (above) has been appointed as producer of Francophone community content for ONFR+, the broadcaster’s digital platform.
“Having joined the TFO team in Ottawa at the inception of #ONfr in 2015, Sébastien is one of the pioneers of the franchise, whose future activities he will now lead with a vision of continuity, sustainability and openness to new audiences and content,” reads the press release announcing his appointment.
Focused on the development of the platform, Pierroz and the ONFR+ team, based in Toronto, Ottawa and Sudbury, will produce new content…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – We criticize our politicians a lot and for various reasons – and often for good reasons – but after watching the hours of often tedious discussion on the myriad amendments to Bill C-10 which members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage painstakingly went through on Friday and Monday, we probably owe them thanks this time.
Friday, April 16th was the first day where the committee studying the bill which will amend our Broadcasting Act went through it clause-by-clause and examined amendments brought forward. This stage was supposed to have started on the previous Monday, but…
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OTTAWA – On Monday afternoon, the federal government kicked off a national consultation effort with the goal of modernizing the Copyright Act in part so that the “revenues of web giants are shared fairly with Canadian creators,” reads the press release.
This new consultation will build on the 2019 Parliamentary Review of the Copyright Act, which did not result in Act amendments. This review will involve both the departments of Canadian Heritage and Innovation, Science and Industry as both want to ensure the copyright framework “reflects the evolving digital world” when it comes to online entities.
“As the distribution and…
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Merger presents a great opportunity for Minister Champagne
By Konrad von Finckenstein
ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS ANNOUNCED on March 15th its intention to buy Shaw Communications for $26 billion, and of course the transaction must be approved by the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Minister of Industry, Science, and Innovation.
The three entities will undoubtedly consult with each other and co-operate. Logically the Competition Bureau would go first, the CRTC second and the Minister last.
The CRTC approval should be relatively routine. Shaw is a BDU but has no broadcasting assets, having divested them to Corus. Thus, there are no benefits payable under CRTC…
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