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Results: 91 - 105 of 920
Pierre Trudel
View Pierre Trudel Profile
Pierre Trudel
2021-05-17 15:13
I believe that Bill C-10, which seeks to amend the Broadcasting Act, will ensure that the resulting legislation will better protect the rights of Canadian citizens and consumers. As for the possibility of allowing the CRTC to take a look at algorithmic processes, it's always important to remember that it's not a body that censors content behind closed doors. It's a body that regulates certain activities through a public process to which everyone is invited.
During these processes, the CRTC could invite the major platforms to explain how the algorithms and other processes they use to administer the flow of various content work. It could ask them to explain how these are compatible with Canadian values and how they are not likely to be subservient to undeclared commercial interests. It could also ask them to explain how consistent they are with Canadian values, which are different from American values. I"m thinking of equality and diversity, among other things. Most importantly, it could ask them to explain to what extent algorithms provide real proposals to Canadians and how they can be organized in such a way that they reflect the values found in the Broadcasting Act.
For example, they could give visibility to cultural productions from minority groups, as well as the rich production of Canada's indigenous peoples or racialized people. In short, with an amendment to the Broadcasting Act, such as the one proposed here, the act would promote freedom of expression rather than censorship. In a sense, it would encourage companies to promote Canadian creativity, while leaving consumers free to consume what they want.
Online, no one thinks for a second that you can force someone to watch what they don't want to watch. This issue has long been settled. However, what is often hard to find on platforms is cultural products that reflect Canadian creativity or the productions of creators from Canada's linguistic or cultural minorities. That is what is currently missing on the platforms. That's why Canada has managed to set up an audiovisual or media system that is very open to the world and that has never practised censorship, as some seem to claim.
On the contrary, not only do we have access to everything in the world, but we also have access to the productions of our creators. That's the difference. That's why I think it's an act that increases our fundamental rights—
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Thank you. That's wonderful.
One concern that's come up as we talk about Bill C-10, of course, is the need for freedom of expression to be protected. Of course, this is something for which, as you will know, the NDP has pushed for a very long time. I think artists probably more than any other group of people would defend freedom of expression. It's at the heart of their reason for being.
Could you tell us more about the economic reality for artists in your industry and why they want web giants to pay their fair share while fully, of course, respecting the freedom of expression and the ability of people to publish content of their choice on the Internet?
Andrew Cash
View Andrew Cash Profile
Andrew Cash
2021-05-17 15:25
Right now, the way the Internet sector is working for music is that few companies, few artists, have any leverage in negotiating with YouTube. The music's generally up already. The choice is between licensing and getting a lousy return on that licensing or getting no money at all. That is really a stark choice for entrepreneurs, absolutely, but for the artists themselves, it presents a huge problem.
I'm not going to say that it's all terrible news for artists. As I said right off the top, these platforms represent enormous opportunity, but we have to get it right. Part of getting it right is bringing these massive companies, the biggest companies in the history of time, under some kind of regulatory system whereby they can be accountable to the people of Canada.
View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. This is a very interesting debate on a very important bill. I've worked in the broadcasting industry in multiple different ways. I was a professional musician as well, so this is very near and dear to me.
To start, I want to ask Mr. Trudel if he approved of the removal of proposed section 4.1.
Then I would like to ask you, Mr. Trudel, about net neutrality and how the algorithms affect the concept of net neutrality in terms of the Canadian law on net neutrality. I understand the concepts of throttling, but how do the algorithms affect the law on net neutrality?
Pierre Trudel
View Pierre Trudel Profile
Pierre Trudel
2021-05-17 15:28
I am among those who believe that section 4.1 was unnecessary. It was confusing because the act already provides all the necessary safeguards to ensure that the regulation of the broadcasting system in Canada is done in full respect of freedom of expression. In addition, the CRTC is obliged to limit its action to those undertakings whose activities and actions have a discernible impact on the achievement of Canadian broadcasting policy. Therefore, section 4.1 was rightly removed as unnecessary, in my view. In fact, I wrote about it in an article in Le Devoir.
The algorithm is interesting. Algorithms, currently, regardless of how they work, determine which types of content will be more visible than others.
Whether it's traditional broadcasting or online broadcasting, a fundamental feature of broadcast media regulation in all countries is that there are laws that necessarily balance the commercial interests of companies with other interests that must be accommodated. In traditional broadcasting, this has taken the form of rules limiting the commercial activity of radio or television stations, limiting advertising time, for example. In the case of online broadcasting networks or undertakings, it is foreseeable that the CRTC will develop new ways of ensuring that balance between commercial imperatives and other objectives that broadcasting legislation has always sought to uphold throughout Canadian broadcasting history.
What sets Canada apart from many other countries in the world is that we have a radio and communications system that is more than just a conduit for the delivery of material based on strictly commercial or business logic. So it's this type of—
View Scott Aitchison Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you very much. That is what I intend to do.
I want to focus very specifically on comments that you made, Ms. Yale and Dr. Geist. What I'm struggling with understanding is how, if you regulate the online platforms—the media and the forums by which individual Canadians create content and share them with the world—you are not indirectly regulating the content creators themselves. You made the point that you're regulating the platforms and not the content creators, but you are indirectly regulating the content creators, are you not?
I'd like Dr. Geist and Ms. Yale to speak to that, please.
Janet Yale
View Janet Yale Profile
Janet Yale
2021-05-17 15:59
All right.
What I've tried to do is draw that distinction. Maybe I haven't done it clearly. The later amendments make it clear that the only thing that will be regulated with respect to platforms.... Let's keep the streaming services aside, because I think the controversy now seems to be more about the social media platforms than the streaming services.
Streaming services, as curators, purchase and create the content that they then package and make available to you. If a producer creates a show that is then offered on Netflix, it's generated by a creator, but I don't think we're talking about that in the same way as what we think of on YouTube as user-generated content where people make things—podcasts, songs, dances, whatever—and then post them to a platform. They're user-generated. They're not contracted directly by a streaming service. The platforms are available to people to put things on at their discretion.
That discretion doesn't change. People can post whatever they want on social media platforms. There's no regulation. The more recent amendments that Minister Guilbeault spoke to said that there would only be three things that could be done vis-à-vis those platforms—only three. There's been a real contraction of the regulation-making power of the CRTC vis-à-vis those platforms.
The three things are that, first, they have to provide information about their revenues, whether advertising or subscriptions. Two, those revenues are used to calculate what their levy will be, or their spending requirement, as the case may be. It's just how much you are making in Canada and what the appropriate amount is to make as a contribution. The third piece is what we've been calling discoverability, which is how to make the Canadian creative content visible.
That's it. I have a hard time seeing how that's regulation of the content. It just isn't.
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:01
Thanks for that.
It absolutely is, and I think you get it exactly right. What we effectively have is now an outsourcing of that regulation to the tech platforms, which actually provides Canadians with even less protection. It's government doing indirectly what it would think would be difficult to do directly, which is regulate the discoverability of that content.
Let's even leave aside the notion of how we would even figure that out. If I do a video with my siblings who live in the United States and in other countries, is that Canadian content? Is that not Canadian content? We have a hard time figuring out what constitutes Canadian content for certified productions. Suddenly now we're going to ask the CRTC to decide which cat video constitutes Canadian content and which one doesn't. When you ask the government to decide what gets prioritized and what does not, that is absolutely regulation. Deputizing tech platforms to enforce those government edicts in many respects is even worse, because they aren't subject to some of the same kinds of restrictions.
View Tim Louis Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses. I appreciate you all being here for this wonderful discussion.
I will start with Ms. Yale, because I believe there was a bit of confusion.
We talked about concerns for freedom of speech. You mentioned previously that there's nothing in this bill that threatens freedom of speech. You talk about users putting content online. Even if they are podcasts, they're still called programs. That's fine, but they're still carried on those platforms, and the platforms are the online undertakings that will be regulated. I believe there's a bit of confusion between Canadian artists and Canadian content regarding discoverability.
Can you expand on that and maybe clear this up, being the expert that you are?
Janet Yale
View Janet Yale Profile
Janet Yale
2021-05-17 16:04
I think you've really well characterized the distinction I've been drawing between programs and undertakings. I think the issue of discoverability is not a new one; it's just that the context of being online and the context of being on social media platforms is a new one in the sense of what it means to promote and create visibility for Canadian content on these platforms.
The way in which we've done it in traditional media is different than the way we're going to do it, I would posit, in the context of social media. It may be as simple as making sure that among.... If you think of Spotify, there could be Canadian playlists. When it comes to social media platforms, how we ensure that there are Canadian choices among the vast array of choices that you have in front of you is, I think, the appropriate one for a regulator to make over time.
You can't crystalize those sorts of things in legislation, because we couldn't have contemplated the Internet when the Broadcasting Act was put in place, and we couldn't imagine the evolution of the business models for streaming services and social media platforms either. It is the very job of the regulator to figure out what is appropriate at a particular point in time, because as circumstances and business models change, so too would the need for regulatory adaptation. I think flexibility is key in such a rapidly changing environment.
View Martin Shields Profile
CPC (AB)
View Martin Shields Profile
2021-05-17 16:10
Thank you. I appreciate that.
I'm going to Mr. Geist. You just heard that Ms. Yale backs all 97 of the recommendations, including one that I find to be divisive: that members of the CRTC would be recommended to live in the national capital region, which I find problematic.
Going beyond that, The Social Dilemma is a documentary out there that many have seen, including my granddaughter. She's very sharp—of course, all our grandkids are smart—and we discussed this particular bill. She is very savvy in technology. She understands how algorithms work and how they direct her from her past listening and what she does. What she objects to is the government's involvement in doing this; she very much does. This is a very sharp young person who objects to the government playing this role. She understands the private sector and their algorithms and how it affects her.
Mr. Geist, you talked about the dollars. We've had members saying that this is an emergency. You've described how we can get dollars, too. I think that's the house-burning idea. How do we get dollars out?
With regard to the dollar item and what other people have said about the Australian model, would you like to respond to that? How do we get there? How is Australia doing it?
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:11
Certainly I highlight some of that on the newspaper issues that Australia has moved forward on, but to focus specifically on the issue you raised about the algorithms, which I think is important, I will say that there's no question that there are concerns. Anyone who's seen some of the movies around social media comes away, I think, rightly concerned about some of these algorithms.
However, this bill is not a bill that addresses that issue. In fact, it substitutes, in some ways, the government's choices for the companies' choices. What we need instead is more algorithmic transparency on that issue.
This notion that somehow one of the problems we have to solve is discoverability.... You know, we've heard it several times. I must say two things.
First, Ms. Yale talked, as we heard, cross-country with a lot of people. They weren't able to come up with any evidence—zero—that there is a discoverability issue with user-generated content. There were no studies that cited that this is a problem. I'm sometimes left in this discussion wondering if people actually use these services. If you want to find Canadian content on Netflix, type in “Canada” or “Canadian”. If you don't think that there are Canadian playlists on Spotify, then perhaps you haven't used Spotify, with all due respect. There are numerous choices for precisely this kind of content.
That's not to suggest that we can't do better. However, to somehow think that what we need to do is take all the user-generated content, find some mechanism to categorize it as Canadian, and then have the government make choices about what gets prioritized or not is foolhardy. That's precisely the reason there is no one else on the planet who does it.
View Martin Shields Profile
CPC (AB)
View Martin Shields Profile
2021-05-17 16:13
You say “no one else on the planet”, and you've repeated that a number of times, and we've heard it before. Do you hear anybody else even talking about or reacting to the idea of what Canada is attempting to do?
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:13
I think there are significant risks with what we're proceeding towards. What this bill will do, when you get foreign services looking at Canada.... Obviously some of the big players already here aren't going to go anywhere, but some of the other services that are outside of the jurisdiction may look at some of these regulations and at the costs and say that we are going to block Canadian users from the marketplace.
Think of a service such as Molotov, a French-language service that is serving a whole series of French-language African countries. It's not available in Canada right now. Are they going to come into Canada if they face these kinds of regulations? There are India-based services that are the same, Korea-based services that are the same. This is going to hit our multicultural communities particularly hard, as services that might otherwise make themselves available within Canada will look at the costs, look at what we've already heard are clear obligations that they will face under these rules, and say that they're simply not going to operate in the Canadian market.
View Martin Shields Profile
CPC (AB)
View Martin Shields Profile
2021-05-17 16:14
You refer to a simple tax to support our cultural industries, and you would like to see it done. As a mechanism, could we do it quickly?
Results: 91 - 105 of 920 | Page: 7 of 62

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