Juno News - Yes, the CRTC is regulating online content

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.320 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show just after

00:01:33.540 one o'clock eastern time here in the nation's capital of ottawa where i am going to be broadcasting

00:01:40.680 from this uh very nondescript generic ottawa hotel room for the next few days now i don't get too

00:01:47.700 excited. I'm actually not up here doing anything to do with the show. I'm working on another

00:01:52.440 project, which I'll have some details about in the near future. The only reason I'm telling you

00:01:57.420 any of this is so that you don't think this is actually my couch because it is not. Although

00:02:01.360 a funny thing about this couch, last time I stayed at this hotel was when I was in Ottawa covering

00:02:07.660 the Public Order Emergency Commission. And I did my show from like the, it was a different hotel

00:02:13.080 room but i like to say they're all you know nondescript and generic and i did my show from

00:02:18.280 this very same couch or that room's equivalent and i had the strangest request from a viewer of this

00:02:25.560 show that wanted to sleep on the couch they thought they would love to be up in ottawa to

00:02:31.560 cover or see the public order emergency commission as well and thought that maybe it would be a little

00:02:36.360 cost prohibitive and they could perhaps share my room with me and i try to be a nice easy going

00:02:41.400 person, but I had to draw the line in the sand there. So this time I'm just showing off by

00:02:46.280 taking the couch to myself for the purposes of the show today. Actually, a couple of blocks

00:02:51.860 from where I am, parliamentarians have voted on who the new Speaker of the House of Commons

00:02:57.060 is going to be. I've got no skin in the game. It to me is like the most uninteresting thing ever

00:03:03.020 because the Speaker of the House is meant to be bland and uninteresting. And the fact that

00:03:07.200 everyone knows who Anthony Roda is because of him honoring a Nazi veteran in the House of Commons

00:03:13.460 is a failure of the institution. The speaker is supposed to be the, I should say the gatekeeper,

00:03:19.160 I don't even mean it in a negative way, but they're supposed to be just the person that's

00:03:23.060 there to shepherd things along and be well-liked to everyone. And it was unfortunate that Anthony

00:03:28.400 Roda, who had done a pretty decent job in that role for however many years he had had it, now

00:03:35.060 gets thrust out the back door in the way that he did. Although I'd say deservedly, but at the same

00:03:41.440 time, it's an unpleasant end to an otherwise unblemished tenure. But you know what? I would

00:03:48.420 love to see Elizabeth May get the gig. Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, is currently in the

00:03:53.280 running. And she was like the only one that couldn't be there in person for the speech. She's

00:03:57.600 dealing with some health issues, she said. So I don't think she's going to get the votes. But man,

00:04:03.620 would that be entertaining if Elizabeth May were the Speaker of the House. So I actually ran into

00:04:08.080 a couple of Conservative MPs this morning, and I said, I know you're going to vote for your guy,

00:04:12.400 the Conservative MP, but it would be great if you could actually put a vote for Elizabeth May as

00:04:19.380 well. I think Canadians deserve something to that effect, but we will have to see where things go 0.99

00:04:25.040 there. One thing I wanted to talk about today in a little bit more detail is the CRTC's takeover

00:04:32.740 of your podcast. Now I spent a fair bit of effort on the show yesterday talking about this and the

00:04:39.100 reason is this is important. This is the manifestation of Bill C-11 which is the government's

00:04:46.520 mass takeover of internet content coming to roost. This is not a particularly surprising

00:04:52.540 development. We've known this was coming but we didn't know exactly what it was going to look like

00:04:57.840 And why that's so important is that one of the warnings I gave when C-11 first came up,

00:05:03.360 one of the warnings I gave was that so much was left to the regulation.

00:05:07.980 So much was left to how the CRTC was going to interpret this law and put it into effect.

00:05:14.040 So we didn't actually get to see the full scope of what C-11 was going to do when the

00:05:19.140 bill was being discussed, debated, and eventually passed.

00:05:22.500 The announcement that came out just like on a Friday before a long weekend, which is

00:05:27.260 always how you know they want to bury it, was the CRTC putting out its requirement for podcast

00:05:32.660 networks and streaming services to register. Now, they had a few criteria. You have to operate in

00:05:39.400 Canada, which simply means you have to be accessible to Canadians. It doesn't have anything 1.00

00:05:44.060 to do with where you're headquartered or registered or where your CEO lives. It is,

00:05:49.300 are Canadians able to access it on the internet? Which basically means yes, because we do not live

00:05:54.440 in a repressive North Korean style dictatorship, at least not yet. The other part is that you have

00:05:59.760 to have $10 million in revenue. Now, I've spent a fair bit of time going back and forth with some

00:06:05.960 people on Twitter about this, because this is kind of being used by the government and by supporters

00:06:12.000 of what the CRTC is doing as an excuse to say, we're not going after the little guys. We're not

00:06:17.300 going after independent content creators. We're just going after companies that have

00:06:22.940 $10 million. We're just going after companies that have $10 million in revenue. Now, this is

00:06:30.980 impossible, impossible to separate from individual content. It's impossible to separate from

00:06:38.480 individual content. And the reason for this is because if you are a streaming service or a

00:06:44.560 network that offers podcasts, like let's be real here, the government is saying streaming service

00:06:50.020 because they're going to make you think about Netflix and Crave and all of that.

00:06:53.500 But when they say that, they also include any website that offers podcasts.

00:06:58.300 So that's Apple Podcasts, that's Spotify, that's Amazon, which has a podcast division,

00:07:03.860 all of these different outlets.

00:07:06.200 How can you offer to people a regulation of networks without offering regulation of the

00:07:15.040 content on those networks, the content available on those streaming services?

00:07:20.020 And that's the part that the government is leaving out here.

00:07:23.920 Pascale Saint-Ange, who's the new heritage minister, she has the unpleasant task of defending this legislation,

00:07:29.860 has tweeted out as though this is just like this perfectly fine, hunky-dory thing.

00:07:34.220 Oh, the Online Streaming Act is just giving you more Canadian stories.

00:07:37.740 It's supporting Canadian music, television, and cinema.

00:07:41.440 It gets global streamers to pay their fair share.

00:07:45.100 So they want Mr. Beast to pay his fair share, I guess, or something like that.

00:07:49.780 No, they're not just talking about Netflix and YouTube and Amazon and Spotify.

00:07:55.160 They're talking about anyone whose show is available on those platforms.

00:08:00.780 Let's just take the politics out of this entirely and focus only on the ideas that the government's using here.

00:08:10.120 Let's just take them at face value that this is about more Canadian content.

00:08:14.480 Well, all of a sudden we're talking about manipulating Canadian content.

00:08:18.280 On YouTube, it's easy to see how this would happen.

00:08:20.660 YouTube manipulates its algorithm.

00:08:22.760 They have to serve up a certain quota of Canadian content.

00:08:25.940 It's going to be government-approved Canadian content, of course,

00:08:28.980 and they want to include in that diverse voices and all of that.

00:08:32.540 But you also have beyond that the question of what it's going to look like on podcasts.

00:08:38.600 So right now, if you go on to Apple Podcasts,

00:08:41.340 which perhaps you've done to get to this show,

00:08:43.660 you'll see a whole laundry list of recommendations.

00:08:46.320 Maybe for Black History Month, they say, here are black podcasts, or for Pride Month, they say, here are gay-themed podcasts, or in general, they say, well, you might like true crime, so here's a true crime series, or something else you might like.

00:09:00.240 Okay, well, that's all fair and reasonable that they're trying to tailor their selections based on what they think people are going to like.

00:09:07.840 Well, now government's coming in and saying, you have to serve up a certain amount of recommended content that we like.

00:09:15.260 I joked yesterday about like the non-binary Franco-Indigenous quota or something, which

00:09:20.500 you know some variation of is going to exist.

00:09:24.260 But what's happening here is the reality of this.

00:09:28.240 The reality of this is that government is going to be picking and choosing winners.

00:09:32.660 So sure, maybe the government is not saying under C-11, the CRTC is directly regulating

00:09:38.820 the Andrew Lawton show.

00:09:40.220 but make no mistake by regulating the platforms on which this show relies to get to its audience

00:09:49.800 the government is regulating this show in the same way it's regulating Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan

00:09:56.700 one of the most popular podcasts in the world if not the most popular podcast in the world

00:10:01.380 it's not Canadian content so it's going to be on the losing end of this regulatory environment

00:10:08.220 so yes the CRTC is absolutely regulating content because they're regulating what content can be

00:10:16.340 accessed how content can be accessed that's exactly what they're doing here and they're

00:10:22.780 doing all of this while trying to tell us that they're not that's what's so disingenuous about

00:10:28.740 it and I'm afraid to say some people have bought into this hook line and sinker you take for

00:10:34.400 example, this one tweet that I try not to get into Twitter scraps, but Billboard Chris, who's a guy

00:10:40.160 who I know many of you may know because he walks around with a sandwich board with a slogan about

00:10:44.960 gender ideology and hormone blockers and stuff like that for kids. Billboard Chris was actually

00:10:50.560 taking aim at a lot of people in his own audience. He said, if we don't have freedom of speech in

00:10:54.940 Canada, why am I not in prison? Why am I free to say whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I

00:11:01.080 want in defense, in defiance of what our government wants. And there was another long

00:11:05.860 tweet he shared in which he took aim at those who take essentially the conclusion I'm taking

00:11:10.680 from the Online Streaming Act. And I responded to say two things. First off, it's incredibly

00:11:16.860 facile to make the point that because I'm not in jail, we have free speech. To use the gender

00:11:24.620 comparison, that's like saying, because my son or daughter has not been put on hormone blockers,

00:11:30.600 no one in Canada is, which is I think incredibly disingenuous. And beyond that, it's also quite

00:11:36.900 ridiculous to not realize that there are degrees of censorship. There are degrees of freedom of

00:11:42.460 speech. You do not have to look at an environment in which we have North Korean style repression

00:11:47.800 to see that there are myriad restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of expression

00:11:52.240 in Canada. These come about in a number of ways through human rights commissions and their

00:11:56.660 regulations through internet regulations, like we're seeing with C-11 and C-18 and the Future

00:12:03.140 Promised Online Harms Act, and through other means that we see. And I should point out that

00:12:09.640 the fact that you can distinguish the First Amendment in the United States, which has a

00:12:14.180 very rigid and ironclad defense of free speech, from the Section 2B Freedom of Expression Rights

00:12:20.700 in Canada, which are qualified by the so-called reasonable limits section of the Charter of Rights

00:12:27.200 and Freedoms. The fact that these two constitutional protections are different on the surface, on the

00:12:32.020 face, and in application shows that there is just between Canada and the U.S., not even looking

00:12:37.940 anywhere else in the world, a lesser free speech protection in Canada than exists in the United

00:12:44.280 States. Now, someone may say this is defensible or justifiable. I'm not even having that debate

00:12:49.120 right now. I'm just saying that it is completely foolish and wrong to say that we have complete 0.87

00:12:55.060 free speech in Canada and to use as the basis of evidence the sole claim that Billboard Chris is

00:13:00.860 not in jail. Billboard Chris is not in jail, ergo there is free speech in Canada. Now interestingly

00:13:06.800 enough, I was walking around Ottawa this morning and Ontario has this law that prohibits you from

00:13:12.780 demonstrating within a certain radius of an abortion clinic. And this was a law that was

00:13:19.000 put in place directly in response to pro-life protesters that were advocating against abortion

00:13:24.800 in and around abortion clinics. And in Ottawa, there's a clinic that's been the site of a great

00:13:29.040 deal of these protests on Spark Street. So you can actually see on the streets, there are signs

00:13:34.480 saying that you cannot protest inside that zone, that if you're on one side of the sign,

00:13:40.240 you're fine if you're on the other side you're not now as it happened this morning i saw this

00:13:45.060 lovely looking older woman i didn't speak to her but she was sitting down and she had a sign that 1.00

00:13:50.700 was and i to be honest i didn't even read the whole sign but it was to do with faith and abortion and

00:13:55.620 she was just sitting there quietly not minding her own business had she been across the street

00:14:00.320 she would have been arrested 100 she would have been arrested she would have spent time

00:14:06.800 in jail. Maybe she would have gotten a fine, but she would have because other people have. 1.00

00:14:11.940 So it is not actually fair to say that you can say whatever you want, wherever you want,

00:14:16.880 whenever you want in Canada. And again, some people may agree with that. You may say, well,

00:14:22.580 that's a reasonable restriction. We're not debating reasonableness. It is a restriction

00:14:27.280 on free speech. Anything after that is a matter of degrees, which is why I do take things like

00:14:35.040 what the CRTC is doing very seriously. This is a body which has existed throughout its history to

00:14:41.180 regulate airwaves, which are a public good. There is only a finite amount of radio frequencies,

00:14:48.780 of television frequencies. And I get that you need a regulator, a bureaucracy to start divvying that

00:14:53.740 up. And I get that you need to have some compliance, especially on technical issues.

00:14:58.400 The United Kingdom is a great example of what happens when you start adding a much more aggressive

00:15:03.460 and content-focused mandate to their telecom regulator.

00:15:09.880 Ofcom, as it exists in the US, does in fact regulate content.

00:15:13.520 The CRTC does not.

00:15:15.440 And that has not directly changed under C11,

00:15:18.280 but we're seeing a creep in that direction.

00:15:20.820 When they start talking about all of these qualitative things

00:15:23.320 that we need more of, beyond even simply Canadian content,

00:15:26.640 but specific forms, showcasing diversity, all of that,

00:15:30.460 There is a lot to take issue with in this bill. I want to welcome to the program here,

00:15:36.440 Peter Menzies. He is a former vice chair of the CRTC. Peter, it is always good to talk to you.

00:15:42.000 Thanks for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

00:15:45.640 Let me just go back to that distinction between Canada and the UK here. Has there been an active

00:15:52.180 push within the CRTC to try to have a more expansive mandate on content historically?

00:15:57.460 um i'm not quite sure what you mean by that expansive mandate on content they do regulate

00:16:03.380 content the the crtc does that it's through conditions of license and it's done you know

00:16:08.720 transactionally as you were saying as i caught the end of what you were saying you know that's

00:16:13.000 fair it's a the spectrum is a crown asset it's it's a limited resource uh the state has every

00:16:19.240 right to decide how it's used on behalf of canadians and when people apply for a license

00:16:24.120 they accept certain terms and conditions and one of those is that they will conduct themselves in

00:16:29.300 a certain way on air and in you know comply with things like the code of conduct for the Canadian

00:16:35.720 Broadcast Standards Council which at the end of the day can be appealed to the CRTC. So the CRTC

00:16:41.780 tries to keep has tried to keep a long arm on that content regulation but it is there because the

00:16:47.960 Broadcasting Act compels it to make sure that the system is, to use its terms, I believe it's high

00:16:56.300 standard, which is about as subjective as you can get. Yeah, but I mean, that right there is what I

00:17:01.560 was referring to in that, you know, in the UK, they don't really have their equivalent with as

00:17:07.020 much power as the Broadcast Standards Council, which I think has probably helped the CRTC keep

00:17:11.860 its nose clean on really getting into the nitty gritty where a lot of these large broadcasters.

00:17:17.460 And then you bring this into an internet context and we're taking this regulatory authority and putting it over what has been a space that is not completely unregulated.

00:17:26.960 You know, laws that exist elsewhere in Canada still exist on the internet, but you don't have that core requirement there of a limited public good that needs to be regulated as such.

00:17:38.720 Yeah, and that was one of the big problems I found in last week's decisions by the CRTC

00:17:43.860 was that they were making decisions like about online news organizations, online news,

00:17:49.320 and the other one that caught the eye was pornography or adult content, right?

00:17:54.500 And the reasoning was that, well, it wouldn't be fair to leave those guys unregulated

00:18:01.680 when the guys within the license system are regulated.

00:18:06.960 and that makes no sense at all to me because like i was saying if you're inside the license system

00:18:14.060 you it's a transaction you get the license and when you get the license you also get you know

00:18:19.800 you take on these responsibilities and you take on these conditions of license but you also get

00:18:24.540 protected you get you there's all kinds of benefits that come with a license in the

00:18:30.400 unlicensed area you're going to get the same regulation but where's your benefit 0.88

00:18:34.520 yeah i think that's a tremendously important question here and you know right now a lot of

00:18:42.160 the defenders of this are i think being very short-sighted they're talking about effectively

00:18:47.760 oh well all they're doing is asking for their name and phone number and address but it's like okay

00:18:52.200 to do what with it's basically to have the point of contact when they start expanding these

00:18:57.000 expectations and requirements i i think and it's not benign no it's not and and it's it's it's

00:19:04.240 funny how people can just shrug that off. All they're asking for is your name and phone number

00:19:08.100 and address, right? If you were walking down the street and an officer of the law came up and asked

00:19:12.560 you your name and phone number and address, right? That's, I mean, I don't want to over-exaggerate it,

00:19:17.940 but that's a papers, please society, right? I mean, it really is. I mean, it can sound benign

00:19:24.440 and it can be benign, but it can also be, you know, a bridge that you don't want to cross,

00:19:32.460 Right. Particularly when you're it's unclear to me as to what the benefit is of it occurring and what.

00:19:43.500 And just to go back to the limited public good aspect, because not only is there, you know, there are only so many radio stations that you could have conceivably because of the laws of frequencies.

00:19:54.500 But but even within radio programming and television program, you have programming, you have 24 hours in a day.

00:20:01.000 So I can understand and I would question whether Canadian content regulations are relevant today, but I could understand, OK, we have this many hours a day.

00:20:10.020 You need to devote a certain aspect of it to Canadian content.

00:20:12.980 The Internet is finite or is infinite, as we were talking about.

00:20:17.600 And by that, if you want to access Canadian content, you have it available to you.

00:20:22.160 If you want to access American content, if you're an immigrant that wants to access content from your home country or in a foreign language, you have all of that right.

00:20:30.960 And I've yet to hear from the government a compelling reason for how Canadian content is being underserved by the Internet.

00:20:40.620 There isn't really a compelling reason.

00:20:42.820 I mean, we went through this discussion a bit with Bill C-11 in terms of that, especially when people were talking about all we're trying to do is make sure that Canadian content is discoverable on the Internet.

00:20:54.400 Well, there's something called a search tool, right?

00:20:57.300 And all you have to do is open up your Netflix app, go into the search tool and type Canadian or type Canada and all kinds of stuff comes up, right?

00:21:07.580 So they're not really talking about giving people the ability to discover that.

00:21:12.840 What they're talking about is forcing the discoverability on people.

00:21:17.380 And that means suppressing the discoverability of other people.

00:21:21.320 So you end up with a favored group getting, you know, getting bumped up on your feed online and the less favored groups getting less exposure.

00:21:36.100 So, you know, you'll still be able to be free to do what you want to do, but your ability to find an audience for what you're doing will be impaired because of the government's preference for different types of content over others.

00:21:49.820 Yeah, I think that's a tremendously important point you raise, because one of the big challenges here is that it is like one's gain has to be at another's loss. If you assume that there's only so much space on the Netflix homepage, on the YouTube homepage, certain content has to be downgraded. And these tech companies, whatever criticisms you may wish to level at them, of which many have come from me, they are pretty attuned to their viewers as businesses.

00:22:18.060 They've invested millions of dollars in fine-tuning the algorithms and what people want and what they're going to respond to.

00:22:24.940 And this bill, by design, is a manipulation of that.

00:22:28.680 And I can't remember, I think it was Pablo Rodriguez a while back when he was still, the minister was saying that, you know, this isn't going to manipulate any algorithms.

00:22:36.600 No, but it's government forcing these companies to manipulate their algorithms. 0.98

00:22:40.320 Yeah, Ian Scott, the past chair of the CRTC, said that exactly.

00:22:45.340 senator pamela wallen asked him said sort of said well you're not exactly regulating but you're

00:22:50.460 you're re-regulating through the platforms right and he said yep that's exactly right we're not

00:22:58.300 we're not going to tell you what to do with your algorithm we're just going to tell you the outcome

00:23:01.740 we want and then we'll talk about how you do that in terms of your licensing so that's exactly what

00:23:06.940 happened the sad part about that too is that because because you know youtube and these other

00:23:12.780 products or sort of are global products if you if you monkey with those algorithms here and people

00:23:19.980 don't get the sort of visibility they they they want within canada that has an impact on their

00:23:26.060 opportunity to have visibility in global markets and the the best way for canadian producers of

00:23:32.460 any kind to make money like serious money is to have access to global markets i mean there's

00:23:38.380 There's 120 million Anglophones in India, right?

00:23:44.420 I mean, there's 350 million of them just next door.

00:23:49.620 Like you can get an audience of 30 million people in Canada,

00:23:53.340 or you can expand and have access to an audience of 350 million next door,

00:23:59.020 you know, speaking English.

00:24:00.920 And, you know, and we're choosing to build a wall between that

00:24:05.160 to make it more difficult.

00:24:07.020 I mean, I get the idea that you want to promote Canadian content, but there's ways to do that without hurting Canadian content and its global opportunities as an outcome.

00:24:17.100 Well, I was chatting about this a little yesterday with Chris Sims. I mean, the amusing part of this, I mean, it's not really amusing, I guess, if you think about it, is that the government would, I think, vehemently reject other countries blocking off the import of Canadian content.

00:24:33.460 Because I think, you know, the Canadian government would love nothing more than for more Canadian cultural exports, more shits creeks of the world that will achieve popularity overseas.

00:24:42.440 but if other countries were to do what canada has done that would never happen and you basically

00:24:47.700 become uh very siloed where denmark will have danish content predominantly and canada will

00:24:53.640 have canadian content predominantly and that really is the very opposite of what the internet

00:24:58.340 has ushered in that is good it is it is exactly the opposite i mean and that that's the big

00:25:04.160 difference that doesn't seem to have sunk in with the department of heritage at all on it

00:25:07.420 i really worry that they don't seem to understand the internet and the opportunity of it right

00:25:12.420 It's like with the Online Streaming Act, I get that there might have been concerns in, you know, in Quebec about francophone funding and that sort of stuff in the long run.

00:25:21.480 OK, but if they need more money, just give them more money.

00:25:24.760 But, you know, the Canadian film and television industry, its last 10 years have been has been it's been just flourishing.

00:25:32.560 They've had great years.

00:25:34.300 They've had the best years in their history.

00:25:35.960 And even the production of Canadian content is at record high levels.

00:25:40.040 but they still wanted to bring in this regulation because they were worried about

00:25:44.620 Canadian content. The problem is mystical at this stage, right? And you are now risking

00:25:53.420 bringing to an end this decade of incredible prosperity, all because of some political

00:26:01.560 manipulation. Like I said, I think the core issue was probably, you know, Francophone content,

00:26:07.200 that they weren't getting as much funding

00:26:09.660 as was coming through the private sector to Anglophone.

00:26:13.300 I get that.

00:26:14.320 But if they need a leg up

00:26:15.440 and the government wants to help them,

00:26:16.800 just give them more money, right?

00:26:18.620 You don't need to redo the whole internet

00:26:20.880 and create all these problems

00:26:24.800 and all this regulation to fix that problem.

00:26:27.880 We've seen with Bill C-18, the Online News Act,

00:26:30.920 what happens when these big tech companies decide

00:26:33.180 it's not worth their while to comply with legislation.

00:26:36.360 As a result, True North and countless other media outlets in Canada cannot share their content on Facebook.

00:26:42.240 We've heard this week that Google and the government have not really been able to reach any resolution on this.

00:26:48.000 So I don't know whether we're going to see a response like that from any of the players when it comes to streaming.

00:26:54.560 I'm curious if you think any will respond that way.

00:26:57.900 I mean, surely for a Netflix, there's enough of a Canadian market that it's worth complying in some way with this,

00:27:03.920 especially if it doesn't really cost them anything.

00:27:05.720 but do you see some c18 style response from any of the big players yeah i think that's certainly

00:27:11.720 possible um not so much necessarily from the big players although it is possible from say at disney

00:27:17.400 plus um and you know for reasons in addition to this this legislation in terms of how they're

00:27:24.200 positioning themselves but at a certain point you know this is interesting for the crtc because in

00:27:30.440 all of its hearings in the past it's everybody in the room pretty much everybody in the room

00:27:35.400 has a CRTC license or wants a CRTC license. They're all dependent on the CRTC. So all that

00:27:42.500 really is happening in the room is you're negotiating the terms of that relationship,

00:27:45.900 but the relationship is locked in. You are married to the CRTC. When it comes to now with

00:27:53.620 this next hearing, there's going to be a whole bunch of people in the room who have the option

00:27:58.100 just to leave. And that creates an entirely new dynamic. And I'm really, really curious to see

00:28:04.380 how the crtc is going to like respond to that because there will be people there who can say

00:28:10.120 well sure if you do that well then we'll have to you'll have to look at it from a business point

00:28:14.900 of view and some of the smaller streamers particularly could look at it and say you know

00:28:19.760 you know what i mean all this regulation and all this sort of stuff and if we have to make a

00:28:23.820 contribution into this fund and that sort of stuff you know there's a there's a anglophone

00:28:29.260 market of just over 30 million people it's not that big it's just not worth it right and they'll

00:28:34.940 just leave and they'll take their most popular shows and they will sell them most likely to crave

00:28:40.020 so this will work very well for bell if if that works because then they'll become an aggregator

00:28:46.520 of all these smaller channels britbox like i mentioned is is is one so i'm not saying nobody

00:28:54.160 can say what will happen because you don't know but it's certainly possible and they'll just do

00:28:58.120 a business analysis on it and say, okay, we'll just sell some stuff into Canada, but we don't

00:29:03.220 need to stream in Canada. And so Canadians will have us be living in a smaller world. 0.82

00:29:09.140 Well, it's an interesting dilemma you bring up. I mean, one that I've been trying to

00:29:12.840 sort of goad into this debate is Daily Wire in the US, which operates its own streaming service

00:29:19.620 for content behind a paywall. They've got Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. It's a more conservative

00:29:24.940 of a line network, obviously. So I don't think it's particularly keen to do Justin Trudeau's

00:29:30.080 bidding. But beyond that, it's an outlet that would have very little interest in the Canadian

00:29:35.920 market. And it's probably not worth their time to focus on compliance with Canadian regulations.

00:29:41.060 So you take the Daily Wire as one example, and there are probably others that you could point

00:29:45.140 to in Australia or the UK or Europe that just do not invest in Canadian government relations or

00:29:51.940 compliance because it's so minuscule to them. And I'm wondering what will happen because a lot of

00:29:56.360 these organizations may not even think to register. And if they do, they may think that it's not worth

00:30:01.480 their while. Does the CRTC even have the capacity right now to start going after any outlet around

00:30:09.280 the world that doesn't register that under the letter of what they're doing operates in Canada

00:30:14.220 by virtue of being accessible here? Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out because I was

00:30:18.760 I was asking a couple of colleagues this morning

00:30:20.700 in anticipation of being asked that question,

00:30:23.960 how can they find out who makes $10 million in Canada

00:30:27.040 and who doesn't, right?

00:30:29.120 So like, I mean-

00:30:30.740 And does it have to be 10 million from Canada

00:30:32.920 or can it be just 10 million?

00:30:34.200 Because the way I read it,

00:30:35.240 it just said if they have revenues exceeding 10 million,

00:30:37.660 I wasn't even sure if it was geographically limited.

00:30:40.600 I think that maybe stands to be clarified as well.

00:30:44.200 But I mean-

00:30:45.860 But even so, how do they know?

00:30:47.520 how are you going to tell if i mean let's let's just assume that it's 10 million dollars in

00:30:51.280 revenue that you draw from canada that you are because it it sort of says you are active in

00:30:55.360 canada and you have revenues so it it probably needs to be clarified but let's let's assume

00:31:00.640 it's 10 million dollars and how do you find out right like um and and who wants to find out who

00:31:06.880 wants to sort of when you don't register does that mean everybody knows how much money you're not

00:31:11.920 making um you know you know that sort of stuff so i think the 10 million was a real mistake i think

00:31:19.040 they should have had a much bigger number in part to make life easier for everybody at least starting

00:31:24.480 down this path of internet regulation but secondly the whole purpose of this act was sold to

00:31:29.920 everybody is this is just about my getting money from web giants so go get my coat so what now you

00:31:35.120 make 11 million bucks that makes you a web giant like i don't i don't i don't get that at all so

00:31:41.120 Anyway, I don't know yet how they would find out, like if you don't register, how they would find out about you.

00:31:47.960 If they do find out, they have fairly limited powers at this point, but they would have to go to federal court and get a court order forcing your compliance.

00:32:01.520 They've done that in the past with other groups that are supposed to register that have refused to register, but they don't have a big hammer they can bring down on you.

00:32:10.340 So this could, you know, that gets immediate action.

00:32:13.640 So this is something that could drag on for years.

00:32:16.460 Well, and also, I mean, if we are talking about a player that's completely non-compliant

00:32:21.300 for whatever reason, you know, inevitably you have one tool in the toolkit, which is

00:32:26.760 block Canadians from accessing this.

00:32:29.200 You know, the government would have to.

00:32:30.400 And that's a road that I would hope no government wants to go down.

00:32:35.120 Yeah, you'd have to, you'd end up going to court to get a federal court to issue a

00:32:40.100 blocking order to isps yeah that says that you you may no longer show andrew lawton's show uh

00:32:47.140 you have to don't give them any ideas peter you have to get my 10 million i promise you

00:32:52.820 no you have to you have to block that right because they are non-compliant and that sort

00:32:56.660 of stuff and that gets you know that is really really draconian when you when you have to get

00:33:02.180 into that right so i think people's willingness to register i mean there will be a number of people

00:33:08.100 who will do so very nervously um and everybody says well right now you're just being asked to

00:33:13.700 register and that sort of stuff but no you're not you're being asked you're being asked to walk

00:33:19.620 through a door and you don't really know what's on the other side and that makes people nervous

00:33:24.980 and it'll it'll have a negative impact on investment it'll have a negative impact on

00:33:29.540 growth just as it has just as the facebook ban has had uh on news has uh you know had people

00:33:35.860 put expansion plans and growth plans on hold because everybody's right now it's two months

00:33:42.140 we're two months in and everybody's trying to get in the calculator out and trying to figure out

00:33:46.220 how much this has cost them so far and you know where are we at where you know how does this

00:33:50.500 impact our budget for this year do we have to where do we have to cut back do we have to cut

00:33:54.660 back can we make it up someplace else you know that's what you create when you do this and it

00:33:59.480 can go on for years and it does real harm especially at a time when we need a lot of

00:34:04.000 creativity. We need a lot of investment. We need to adapt to a new world. Yeah, very, very well

00:34:10.380 said. Peter Menzies, always a pleasure. Keep up the fantastic work on this. Really appreciate your

00:34:14.720 time. Thanks very much for your interest. Always happy to help. Take care. All right. Thank you

00:34:18.780 very much. Hopefully, again, you can still access this podcast. We haven't been taken offline just

00:34:23.320 yet. But I think the point that I made in my monologue is the enduring one of this show,

00:34:28.000 which is that if you're regulating the services people need to access podcasts, and I'm talking

00:34:33.360 about podcasts, but it's all content, all shows, you are regulating the shows themselves because

00:34:38.280 you are regulating which are worthy of being seen and which are not. And again, if we follow this

00:34:43.720 through to its natural conclusion, government has to be prepared to go and fight for a kill switch

00:34:49.000 to block access to certain sites, whether it's the Disney Plus or the Daily Wire or the Britbox or

00:34:55.600 whatever the case is, which is incredibly, incredibly authoritarian in nature. And I'm

00:35:02.760 not saying that Canada is on par with North Korea. I'm not making that claim, but I'm saying

00:35:07.060 that it is a government control of content, a government control of what people can say and

00:35:12.240 see online, which is absolutely egregious. We are going to move on from this for now. As I said,

00:35:18.100 we'll continue following this story. I'm especially keen to see if there is any movement, if any of

00:35:23.280 the free speech crusaders, people like the rumbles of the world will step up and speak out against

00:35:29.160 this. I think a lot of them are probably trying to look at what is actually expected of them,

00:35:34.220 what is actually required of them. But I do want to turn our attention to this. Now,

00:35:39.300 I mentioned just in passing at the beginning of yesterday's show that it was on the weekend,

00:35:43.540 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Trudeau, I don't believe, went surfing in Tofino,

00:35:50.020 so he's learned his lesson after that first year. Conservative leader Pierre Polyev,

00:35:54.120 like a lot of MPs, decided to take the day to meet with some Indigenous leaders. He

00:35:59.000 posted this photo, which was him having a very somber moment with a woman by the name of Manitoc

00:36:05.860 Thompson. She is an elder who is Inuit, and she was at this event with Algonquin elders. Now,

00:36:14.640 at first, people looked at this tweet and decided it was worthy of dunking because, 1.00

00:36:19.460 oh, Pierre Polyev's an idiot. He's meeting with Algonquin elders, he says in the tweet, 1.00

00:36:23.940 but she's Inuit, and she's well-known, and you're such a moron. One of the people saying this 1.00

00:36:28.920 was Mark Miller, who is the Minister of Crown Indigenous Affairs for the Liberal government,

00:36:34.720 who decided to poke a little bit of fun at Polly Eve's expense here. He says in tweets of his own

00:36:41.320 that, oh, well, it's an opportunity for learning and growth. And for example, you might want to

00:36:46.540 know that this is not actually an Algonquin woman and so on. This was picked up in an article

00:36:52.660 written by the Canadian press that was not framed around anything other than trying to take this

00:36:58.900 weird Twitter dunk and convert it into real news. The Canadian Press story,

00:37:05.220 Polyev called out for tweet caption on Truth and Reconciliation Day photos with Inuk Elder.

00:37:11.840 Now, you may know Pierre Polyev from time to time likes to scrap with the media. This morning,

00:37:17.160 a reporter from the Canadian Press asked Pierre Polyev about, she asked him about the notwithstanding

00:37:22.800 clause in Saskatchewan, which is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, but he was more

00:37:27.360 interested in getting his shot fired at CP. Before I go any further, I think, you know,

00:37:33.620 CP is here today. CP conducted itself with great unprofessionalism over the weekend in

00:37:40.720 regurgitating a false tweet from a Liberal minister to politicize Truth and Reconciliation Day.

00:37:49.680 Really unfortunate that CP would allow itself to be used in this way. You know, it was really,

00:37:55.260 I want to say it was a beautiful, touching ceremony that I was able to participate in with Algonquin leaders.

00:38:01.700 The reason we didn't put the pictures of that ceremony is because based on their traditional custom,

00:38:08.100 photography is not allowed.

00:38:10.280 And so out of respect for them, we did not photograph that ceremony.

00:38:14.580 Instead, we photographed other Inuit leaders and an Inuit knowledge keeper in particular

00:38:19.880 who was present and who also participated in the Algonquin ceremony and we did so with great

00:38:27.480 respect and this knowledge keeper has now taken issue with both CP's story and Mark Miller's

00:38:33.140 appalling politicization of the truth and reconciliation day. I think CP should stop

00:38:38.060 acting as the communications arm of the PMO. That was the claim. I don't even think he

00:38:43.960 eventually got around answering the question. He just sort of moved on from there and I should say

00:38:47.560 the reporter in question who asked him that question is a very, very good reporter. And I

00:38:54.380 think in her case was probably a little frustrated because I was actually curious about his take on

00:38:58.700 the notwithstanding clause in general, but he was displeased with CP's coverage by a different

00:39:05.140 reporter on that photo. Now you may wonder, okay, well, let's put the Indigenous woman at the center

00:39:09.840 of this. We're told we should make space for Indigenous voices. Well, she was none too pleased

00:39:15.440 with Mark Miller's attempt to hijack the narrative here. Manitok Thompson, a rather well-known Inuit

00:39:22.100 elder who tweeted out in response to Mark Miller, at least I'm not a Nazi. Yeah, you go girl. And

00:39:30.960 she also tweeted later on about how she had tried to stand as a liberal and the liberals didn't want

00:39:37.020 her as a candidate. And she said, yeah, you know, where were all the liberals here? I would have

00:39:40.660 loved to have seen them, but it was the conservatives that showed up. So talk about a little attempt at

00:39:45.380 a dunk backfiring there, Minister Miller. That does it for us for today. We'll be back tomorrow

00:39:51.540 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show. Big red couch. I was going to say big red comfy

00:39:56.980 couch, but I can assure you after sitting on this for 40 minutes, it is not comfy. So maybe I'll

00:40:01.100 like find a different spot in the room tomorrow from which I do the show. But I wanted to like

00:40:05.920 give you like, I can see the Supreme Court out the window, but then you just have, I'd be in

00:40:09.380 silhouette, which come to think of it, I'd probably look better in silhouette than I do with the light

00:40:13.900 head on. So I'll figure that out for tomorrow, but we'll talk to you then. Thank you. God bless

00:40:18.280 and have a wonderful day. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:40:23.300 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:40:43.900 We'll be right back.

00:41:13.900 We'll be right back.

Juno News - October 03, 2023

Yes, the CRTC is regulating online content

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