Juno News - May 28, 2021


Bill C-10 Explained


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

139.8502

Word count

722

Sentence count

27


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Bill C-10 would give the Canadian Radio, Television and Telegraph Commission (CRTC) the power to regulate internet content just like they regulate traditional broadcasting. But as always, the devil is in the detail. True North's Peter Menzies, former CRTC Vice Chair, Peter Menzie, says the bill is an outrageous abuse of government authority and a national embarrassment.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 In November 2020, Liberal Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau introduced Bill C-10,
00:00:12.160 an act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts.
00:00:18.860 Look, it's no secret that more Canadians are turning to streaming services such as Disney, YouTube, Spotify, Netflix,
00:00:26.720 even TikTok and Instagram to consume their music, entertainment, movies, shows, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment
00:00:35.780 rather than relying on traditional radio and television broadcasting.
00:00:40.560 Well, in Canada, the Broadcasting Act was last reformed in 1991.
00:00:46.000 So, Bill C-10 is ostensibly a way of making the act more relevant in a digital age.
00:00:52.680 According to the Department of Heritage Canada, the revenues of online streaming services are growing by about 90% per year,
00:01:00.560 while traditional broadcasters have been losing about 10% of their audience each year over the last five years.
00:01:06.860 Heritage Canada claims it is unfair for services like Netflix who don't have to pay into the Canadian Content Programming Fund,
00:01:15.020 but cable and radio broadcasters do. Fair enough, right?
00:01:19.240 The Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission, also known as the CRTC,
00:01:26.460 would thus be given the power to regulate internet content just as they regulate traditional broadcasting.
00:01:33.800 But as always, the devil is in the detail.
00:01:37.040 Should Bill C-10 pass, we would be giving the CRTC power to meddle in the discoverability of Canadian content
00:01:45.300 and online platforms and services like YouTube and Netflix would be forced to pay into Canadian content production.
00:01:54.220 Well, if they're meddling in the discoverability, what else are they meddling in?
00:01:58.700 Do you really trust moralistic bureaucrats reverse zealous partisan hacks in the Prime Minister's office to determine what you see online?
00:02:07.380 Many Canadians don't, hence why Bill C-10 has now become a free speech issue rather than just a communications policy discussion.
00:02:16.660 In April 2021, the Heritage Committee, which was studying this act,
00:02:21.360 decided to remove an exemption in the bill for user-generated content,
00:02:27.140 making Canadians wonder,
00:02:28.600 will some individual YouTube channels be hidden away while others receive special treatment?
00:02:33.560 Will they be subject to financial rules and penalties?
00:02:38.440 This is how popular Canadian YouTuber JJ McCullough describes what could happen.
00:02:44.100 What is probably most likely is that if this bill passes,
00:02:47.720 YouTube will soon be legally forced to rig Canadians home, explore, and subscription feeds
00:02:53.500 in a way that will push good, patriotic Canadian YouTube creators and videos to the top
00:02:58.840 while burying foreigners or bad Canadians.
00:03:02.420 At first, the minister in charge of this bill, Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau,
00:03:07.280 said this in regards to the bill.
00:03:09.460 What we want to do, this law should apply to people who are broadcasters or who act like broadcasters.
00:03:18.000 So if you have YouTube channels with millions of viewers and you're deriving revenues from that,
00:03:25.300 then at some point the CRTC will be asked to put a threshold.
00:03:28.760 But we're talking about broadcasters here.
00:03:31.820 We're not talking about everyday citizens posting stuff on their YouTube channel.
00:03:37.260 Well, that didn't go over well.
00:03:38.980 So Gilbeau walked it back and said this,
00:03:41.820 that an individual, a person who uses social media,
00:03:45.500 will never be considered as broadcasters and will not be subject to the obligations or regulations
00:03:51.320 within the Broadcasting Act.
00:03:53.380 And while Gilbeau is on the record saying that pretty much anyone who criticizes this bill is an extremist
00:03:59.640 and that free speech concerns are simply fake news,
00:04:04.320 the reality is that criticism for this bill has come from across the political spectrum,
00:04:09.620 with opposition MPs, civil liberty advocates, lawyers, professors, and former civil servants
00:04:16.420 all speaking out against this bill.
00:04:19.660 University of Ottawa Professor Michael Geist has been incredibly outspoken about Bill C-10.
00:04:25.040 He called it an unworkable, dangerous bill driven by lobbyist demands rather than the interests of Canadians.
00:04:31.920 Likewise, the former CRTC vice chair, Peter Menzies, said that the bill is an outrageous abuse of government authority
00:04:41.180 and a national embarrassment.
00:04:44.400 Well, at this point, it's not even clear that the Trudeau government understands their own bill
00:04:49.120 or the implications of it.
00:04:51.400 That's why it's so important that we Canadians pay attention to what's going on
00:04:55.480 and ensure that the government will not be telling us what we can and cannot watch online.
00:05:00.980 True North has been covering the Bill C-10 controversy in depth from the very beginning.
00:05:06.760 Subscribe to learn the truth and stay informed.