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Aimée Belmore
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Aimée Belmore
2021-06-11 13:18
The question is this: Shall the ruling of the chair be sustained?
If you vote yea, you agree with the chair and the ruling will be sustained. The amendment would be, I believe, outside the scope or inadmissible. It would sustain the chair's ruling.
If you vote nay, then you'll be able to vote on this amendment.
Philippe Méla
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Philippe Méla
2021-06-11 13:40
Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr. Genuis.
I think there are two things to consider. There is the five-hour mark, before and after. What the chair did at the arrival of the five-hour mark was basically to interpret what the motion of the House was saying in terms of how to consider the amendments present in the package, where they were either deemed moved or were just in the package, staying there, and what to do with them.
Since the motion of the House is silent on these amendments, the chair made two rulings. The first one was on the amendments from the Green Party. Those ones are, generally speaking, deemed moved. They were considered by the chair and there was no overturning of that ruling.
Then the chair made a second ruling considering the rest of the amendments. He proposed that they would be not proposed by the committee, and the committee overturned that decision. That's why we are now voting on all the rest of the amendments, plus the Green Party amendments.
Now, to your question on adding subamendments at the present time, that is clearly specified in the motion of the House. In the last part of the paragraph, it says:
...and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.
There is before the five-hour mark, and after. Clearly, we are past the five-hour mark. Therefore, no other amendment can be proposed—or subamendment, for that matter.
In this case, I would simply suggest that you bring it to the floor of the House, because basically you can't appeal an order of the House.
Danielle Widmer
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Danielle Widmer
2021-06-11 14:08
If a member agrees with the ruling, the vote should be yes. If a member disagrees with the ruling, the vote should be no.
(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 8; yeas 3)
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-10 15:58
Thank you for the question, Mr. Champoux.
I would say that the proposed amendment will put a heavier burden on the CRTC, because for every decision, every order and every regulation, the CRTC will have to seek an outside legal opinion and then publish it on its website and in the Canada Gazette. I believe that's what is proposed.
Again, it's not a question of whether or not the CRTC is subject to the Charter; obviously it is. Obviously, too, recourse is available should anyone wish to challenge a decision made by the CRTC.
If this amendment carries, it will surely increase the burden on the CRTC, because it will require it to seek a legal opinion for each of its decisions and then publish it in theCanada Gazette.
Philippe Méla
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Philippe Méla
2021-06-10 17:03
Mr. Aitchison, the motion of the House is silent as to what to take into consideration. We have the package that's here, and the motion says, “every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.”
Basically, the interpretation that's being given by the chair is that there are the amendments from the Parti vert that are deemed moved, according to the motion that was passed by the committee, so those are going to be voted upon. The others—that's the interpretation of the motion by the chair of the committee—will not, because there is no motion adopted by the committee that designates them as deemed moved.
Since this is an interpretation by the chair of the motion by the House, it is up to the committee to decide if the committee agrees with this interpretation or not. We have had a few examples of that happening in the past.
It's an interpretation that the chair is giving on the motion by the House, and after that, it's up to the committee to decide if it agrees or disagrees with the ruling of the chair.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-10 11:21
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Shields, for the question.
There would be a few things I would underline with respect to the amendment that has been tabled.
The first thing is to highlight a point that came out in the committee's discussion with respect to the charter and freedom of expression, and to remind the committee that, of course, the CRTC is bound by the charter. Its decisions are already subject and will be subject in the future to review for charter consistency through things like judicial review of its decisions, etc.
Second, perhaps this may not be well known to the committee, but the CRTC is actually already served by independent legal counsel. In other words, its lawyers are not Department of Justice lawyers. In that respect, the CRTC already avails itself of independent legal advice.
The third thing I would note is that the amendment that is on the table would be quite exceptional in the sense that we're not aware of any other regulatory body that is in the practice of publishing its legal opinions. My understanding of the amendment is that the requirement would actually be quite significant in the sense that it would apply to each regulation or order or condition imposed on online undertakings. We expect that those would be quite numerous.
At the end of the day, Mr. Shields, the impact on this would be that any time the CRTC made a regulation or an order it would have to go and get a charter analysis done with respect to that, and then publish that and make it available. Again, from what we have seen, that would be fairly exceptional in the current regulatory landscape.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-10 11:28
I don't have the legal budget at the tip of my fingers. What I can say to you is that CRTC decisions are subject to judicial review on a regular basis in the sense that there are applicants who choose to have decisions reviewed by a court. Some of those are fairly high-level, high-profile proceedings, and others are less so. Again, just to reiterate, that's why there are mechanisms in place. There's judicial review, and there is actually another provision in the Broadcasting Act as well. If a party to a proceeding feels like the CRTC has made an error in law or something along those lines, there is also a mechanism by which it can have that decision reviewed by the federal court system as well.
One thing that I would note or remind the committee—and perhaps it speaks a little bit to Mr. Shields' earlier question as well—is that proceedings are subject to a public process in the sense that anybody who wants to make a submission and put something on the record has the opportunity to do that. Again, when the CRTC is making a new regulation or an order, there would be an opportunity for organizations or individuals to make submissions, and if they have concerns about the impact on charter rights, for example, they could make sure that those are part of the public record. Then, of course, the CRTC will have to consider those in its decision-making.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-10 12:49
Thank you, Mr. Waugh.
I might make a couple of introductory points and then suggest that my colleague Mr. Olsen jump in, who is very well versed in CRTC processes.
Bill C-10 certainly envisions a transparent process when it comes to questions of regulations or orders. The intention is certainly that anybody who wants to participate in those proceedings would have an opportunity to do so.
Mr. Chair, if you'll permit me, perhaps Mr. Olsen can just quickly jump in and explain how this would work in a typical CRTC process, the kinds of things that would be naturally published on the CRTC's website and the materials that would be made available.
Drew Olsen
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Drew Olsen
2021-06-10 12:50
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When the CRTC initiates a public proceeding, it publishes a notice of that proceeding on its website and, in most cases, in the Canada Gazette. Then it calls for comments. It has rules of procedure around the time periods and the process by which it gets those comments. Sometimes there's even a reply period, during which the commission would give intervenors a chance to reply to other comments. Sometimes there isn't, but that's governed in the CRTC's rules of procedure.
The CRTC then takes all of those submissions and considers only that information that's on the public record—of course, subject to any information that was filed in confidence. Then it makes its decision. For anything that's filed in confidence, the rules say that there must be an abridged version without the confidential information filed. It's usually just financial information. It's usually just numbers that get blanked out. All of that information is available to all the parties, other than the actual numbers. Then the commission takes all of that and makes its decision.
The decision is always published on its website, and the decision is almost always published in the Canada Gazette as well. The CRTC takes transparency very seriously in that regard. It is an administrative tribunal, so if it has failed to follow any kind of due process, then that would be subject to judicial review.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-09 18:00
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the question, Mr. Shields.
The point I was trying to make during our last meeting was that Bill C-10, as tabled, does not have thresholds in the legislation, in terms of determining whether an online undertaking should be regulated by the CRTC and should be required to contribute. The test, as articulated in the bill as it was tabled, was a determination of the CRTC's part with regard to whether that online undertaking is well positioned to make a material contribution to the policy objectives.
One reason it was done in that way was to recognize that there is a very wide diversity of online business models out there. It is difficult to be categorical with where that material contribution threshold kicks in. The reason I referenced CBC/Radio-Canada was to give an example of how, as the committee knows, CBC's conventional services are licensed and overseen by the CRTC right now, just like TVA or CTV. The expectation is certainly that the CRTC would have jurisdiction over its online undertakings of TOU.TV and CBC Gem, just as the CRTC will have jurisdiction over Bell Canada's equivalent Crave TV service, Club illico, and those types of services.
The point I was trying to make was that based on the data we have, the threshold that's being put forward in this amendment may be so high as to exclude CBC/Radio-Canada's online undertakings, for example. The position of the government would be that CBC/Radio-Canada is very well positioned to make a contribution to achieving the policy objectives of the act. That was the point I was trying to make, Mr. Shields.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-09 20:15
As the committee is aware, Bill C-10 as tabled includes a definition of “programming control”. That term is used in a few places in Bill C-10. You will see a couple of references to it throughout the policy objectives section. With respect to regulatory powers, you will see it referenced in one place, in proposed paragraph 10(1)(c), with a discussion of programming standards.
The definition was included in Bill C-10 to recognize the fact that there are different business models out there. For some of those business models you have the distribution of content, but the entity distributing that content isn't exercising any control over the selection of those programs. Perhaps one of the most simple examples to understand is that in a conventional system, you have cable and satellite companies that transmit the TV channels of others. The TV channel exercises control over the programming that's included on their channel, but Rogers Cable or Bell or Vidéotron do not. This definition was included to make the distinction, again, between those business models where a company does and does not have control. This was intended to be a determination in fact that would be made about any given situation.
The amendment proposed by Mr. Rayes would essentially have the committee clarifying or making it “deemed”—I think that's the word used in Mr. Rayes' amendment—that in terms of content that is uploaded to social media services by unaffiliated users, that social media service is deemed not to have programming control over it.
With respect to the regulatory powers of the CRTC, it would only be a question of whether or not proposed paragraph 10(1)(c) would apply to social media companies. I know we haven't gotten there yet, but to my recollection from a few committee meetings ago, government members did indicate that the intention is to limit those powers as well and their application to social media services. That would be the point at which this amendment would come into play. It's not really directly relevant to proposed subsection 2(2.1).
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-09 20:32
The committee has had an opportunity to discuss this issue before. It is most relevant with respect to discoverability measures or powers that are being given to the CRTC, because I think there's an appreciation on this committee that recommendation engines that are used on services like Spotify or Netflix or social media services like YouTube or others employ algorithms that underpin those recommendation engines.
I've indicated before that, when it comes to the discoverability of creators on social media platforms, it would be premature to judge what the outcome of regulatory proceedings are and how the CRTC may choose to move forward on this issue, given the example of it requiring the profiling of artists or creators on landing pages. That would be one way to increase the profile of artists or creators. Yes, it could also extend to requiring Canadian creators or artists to potentially be surfaced in search results.
The answer to the question is that algorithms are relevant, but I think we also acknowledge that the algorithm is a mathematical formulation that most of us wouldn't even begin to understand, so the emphasis is on the outcome of that. The emphasis is on the profiling of the creator or the artist or the surfacing of those creators or artists. Algorithms are relevant to the extent that they're an important part of the way that recommendation engines work on a variety of different online platforms.
Aimée Belmore
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Aimée Belmore
2021-06-09 20:49
Just to confirm, voting yes would adjourn the meeting and voting no would continue the meeting.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0)
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-07 12:16
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the question, Ms. Dabrusin.
Based on what I understand the amendment to be, the starting point in the bill currently is that the CRTC should only regulate online undertakings if it's of the opinion that they will contribute in a material manner to the fulfillment of the policy objectives of the Broadcasting Act.
The bill, as it was tabled, recognized that if the CRTC came to the conclusion that if a service did not have sufficient subscribers or viewers in Canada, or it wasn't making sufficient revenue, the CRTC's starting point is that they should not regulate those services.
If I understand the amendment correctly, what's being proposed to the committee is that in addition to that, as it currently stands, Parliament would essentially make an exclusion of services—online undertakings is the term used in the amendment—with a specific subscriber base and revenue base. If I understood correctly, it's 500,000 subscribers or less than $80 million per year in a variety of different kinds of revenues. If either one of those was triggered—because the amendment uses the word “or”—the CRTC would not be able to impose regulatory contributions on those services.
In essence, Ms. Dabrusin, it would be Parliament making a call off the top, so to speak, that services that don't meet these thresholds should not be subject to contributing to the cultural policy objectives of the act.
Thomas Owen Ripley
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Thomas Owen Ripley
2021-06-04 13:30
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the question, Mr. Shields. I would point out a couple of things. The first one is with respect to the reintroduction of language along the lines of proposed section 4.1.
The challenge for the committee is that this language is in a certain degree of tension with amendments that the committee has now passed. One of the challenges, as the committee may now recall, is that it has passed some language in proposed section 9.1 that speaks specifically about programs that are uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service. Implicitly, there is acknowledgement that the jurisdiction of the CRTC extends to that programming. With the reintroduction of proposed section 4.1, you can see that there's a certain amount of tension now with that language that the committee previously endorsed.
The legal situation of how that would play out is extremely unclear. A court or the CRTC would presumably try to reconcile those two things and find a way for both of those provisions to stand. That could be done by reading down certain provisions of the act or trying to find a way to make sense of those two things. I think the committee should be aware that it may be creating a situation of a degree of legal uncertainty.
With respect to the question of how it would work in practice, if a social media creator wanted to opt out of that, again, it's unclear how that would be operationalized by the CRTC at this juncture. On the one hand, the committee has endorsed language that gives the CRTC certain powers to promote the discoverability of those creators, and then, on the other hand, if this language is passed, there is a suggestion that they could potentially opt out of that. Again, the legal situation of how those two things would work together is quite unclear.
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