Bill C-11 is a bill that would give the Canadian government more power over what you can see, hear, and share online. What does this mean for Canadian content? And what does it mean for the future of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other major players in the entertainment industry?
00:02:39.340I mean, is it CanCon if it was produced, you know, here in the country and shot here, but it's actually, you know, the set is an American one.
00:02:47.420So it doesn't look Canadian, or does it have to have Canadian elements in it, or does it have to employ a certain degree of Canadian people?
00:02:54.180Like, it's a very nebulous world when you start talking about what may or may not qualify as CanCon.
00:03:01.020And one thing that I mentioned in the report, for example, is that there is a biopic on Donald Trump called Gotta Love Trump.
00:03:08.760According to the CRTC, that counts as Canadian content because of some of the people who worked on that film.
00:03:14.720Whereas The Handmaid's Tale, which is based on Margaret Atwood's famous book, you know, a very famous Canadian author,
00:03:21.920it's not considered Canadian content because it was, it doesn't have producers that are from Canada, they're from elsewhere.
00:03:27.320So it shows you already that the CRTC is very bad at trying to figure out what Canadian content is and what it isn't.
00:03:34.360And if they're already bad at this now, why are we going to give them 10 times the amount of power to be bad at this at a much bigger scale?
00:03:44.040Well, and I imagine that the CRTC, the people who are going to be managing that, running that, I mean, they're people who are appointed by the federal government.
00:03:50.520So the ability for those people to be politicized can be high.
00:03:54.280It's not to say they necessarily are right now, but you never know.
00:03:59.240So you are giving these bureaucrats at the CRTC, literally, the power to decide what we see in our news feeds and in our streaming feeds online.
00:04:08.380They say it's just going to be for Canadian content.
00:04:11.440And, you know, for example, say we're going to take them at their word.
00:04:14.100That's what they're planning to do right now.
00:04:15.740Well, a year or two from now, they might decide, you know, we've heard Minister Mendicino, who's been under fire for various reasons.
00:04:23.800He's suggested, for example, that in the future, the government might have to look into how to promote social cohesion, is his words.
00:04:30.960If the government's going to try to go after social cohesion a couple of years from now, well, is that going to be another reason or rationale to instruct the CRTC to filter what we see because of that?
00:04:41.880So that's the big concern is down the road.
00:04:45.140This could be used for literally any purpose the government wants.
00:04:48.640These bureaucrats are appointed directly by the government and the government gives them instructions about what to do.
00:04:54.860And the final thing that I'll add is that the minister actually hasn't even told us what the instructions are that he's going to give to the CRTC.
00:05:02.640He says he wants Parliament to pass the bill.
00:05:05.720The governor general decided into law and then he's going to figure out exactly what he wants them to do.
00:05:11.060You know, that's like signing on to buy a used car before he even did the test drive.
00:05:16.020So he wants to give them all of the powers, but he won't tell us exactly what the mandate and what those powers will entail.
00:05:23.420There is no articulation of the mandate.
00:05:25.560And Dr. Geis has pointed this out as well.
00:05:27.380It's a very slippery slope when you give bureaucrats all of this power and literally don't even outline what you want to have done with all these powers.
00:05:37.040And, yeah, these things have a chilling effect.
00:05:41.520I mean, again, it's hard on independent media, things like that.
00:05:44.780Our organization, we know we're opinionated and loud most.
00:05:49.080We're not going to back off on the government, but we could pay a terrible price.
00:05:51.700And suddenly they could find an excuse.
00:05:52.980Oh, you guys have infringed on this or that.
00:05:55.500And we're going to pressure providers to de-platform you because you didn't fall within the CRTC regulations.
00:06:05.160And a lot of independent outlets might think, you know what, we're just going to not shake the tree too much so we can avoid that happening.
00:06:12.420And the problem is that you have right now the government and the CRTC able to define what they believe Canadian content is.
00:06:20.600And as we said before, their definition of what's Canadian content is very flawed.
00:06:25.160But one of the questions that will come up, of course, is what counts as un-Canadian content?
00:06:30.020If you are advocating for Western separatism or Quebec separatism, does that count as Canadian content?
00:06:37.540If it's somehow un-Canadian to suggest that, you know, you don't want to see the country stay together, is that going to fall under content that we shouldn't be promoting?
00:06:46.240So it's a very slippery slope between Canadian content for the sake of what's actually in it and Canadian content for the sake of what government bureaucrats think should count as Canadian content.
00:07:00.020Yeah, and they use buzzwords that get disturbing or loaded words like social cohesion.
00:07:04.440I mean, there's a lot of things you could say too.
00:07:06.620Well, you know, Corey rants too much at the start of his show and he angers people and he's shot at Quebec a couple of times.
00:07:11.920That's interfering with Canada's social cohesion.
00:07:14.860Thus, his show should have the plug pulled.
00:07:18.220Yeah, I mean, social cohesion is like a very broad and dangerous word, a couple words.
00:07:23.500That's something you expect to hear in communist China.
00:07:26.160I mean, that's not something you expect to hear in Canada, a minister saying we might have to figure out some government regulations to promote social cohesion.
00:07:34.340That's literally what they're saying in countries like China and North Korea.
00:07:37.740And I should add that Twitter, when they were consulted on some of the government's planned bills, when they testified, they suggested that some of the government's plans are akin to what they're doing in China and North Korea.
00:07:50.280And to regulate user-generated content, which they're proposing to do and we can talk about, through broadcast regulations, they've said, Dr. Geist says it's unprecedented.
00:08:02.520It's not done in any other democratic country.
00:08:05.780And also, this is something that is done in non-democratic countries like China and North Korea.