Bill C-11 passed the Senate with amendments. What could it mean for Canadian creators?
The Online Streaming Act aims to promote Cancon in the online streaming era, proponents say
As a bill aimed at promoting Canadian content on digital platforms reappears before the House of Commons, some worry about how it could affect digital content creation.
"It is potentially regulating people's individual expression if we don't very carefully safeguard it to make sure that doesn't happen," said Matt Hatfield, campaigns director for internet advocacy group OpenMedia.
The legislation, also known as Bill C-11, proposes an amendment to the Broadcasting Act — which saw its last major reform in 1991.
It aims to regulate digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, YouTube and Spotify in the same way as broadcasters by requiring them to create a certain percentage of Canadian content and make it accessible to Canadian users.
It was introduced by then-heritage minister Steven Guilbeault in 2020, but it failed to pass the Senate before Parliament was dissolved for the 2021 federal election. It was reintroduced with amendments in February 2022.
The Senate recently passed the bill with dozens of amendments to its text, including an amendment to its language around user-generated content. The House of Commons hasn't reviewed the changes.
"The Online Streaming Act will help make sure that our cultural sector works for Canadians and supports the next generation of artists and creators in this country," Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a February 2022 news release.
Brad Danks, CEO of LGBTQ-focused TV service OutTV, says having these regulations in place is critical for Canadian content creators, as producers are now selling programs beyond traditional television distributors.
"We no longer control distribution in our marketplace like we did," he told The Current's Matt Galloway. "Our new distributors will be online platforms, none of which are controlled by Canadians."
Producers and consumers
From a producers' perspective, Danks said there are several threats that foreign-owned streaming platforms pose to Canadian showrunners, which Bill C-11 could solve.
"The first one is, will Canadian services even be carried on a lot of these new [streaming] services?" he said. "You have to pitch them and get on them now. There's no sort of requirement that they carry you."
"Number two is if you are carried, are you carried properly in a way that you can be competitive? In other words, are you going to get paid properly?"
That's especially concerning when considering that most large platforms will usually preference their own productions over content made by others, according to Danks.
"This move is timely because, of course, most people are moving … from linear, traditional cable television to online streaming," he said.
But while making it easy for producers to make Canadian content is important, there are concerns. Hatfield believes the voice of the consumers is being lost in the discussion.
"People don't necessarily want to have their online experience forced back into their curated garden," he told Galloway. "I think people, when we do a search online, we want to find the content that best matches our search."
We need to make it very clear that the CRTC should not be regulating people's individual content and that this is not a censorship bill.-Matt Hatfield, campaigns director for OpenMedia
The bottom line
Another significant concern some Canadian creators have with Bill C-11 is the effect it will have on their content being seen.
In a May 2022 meeting at the House of Commons, Oorbee Roy, also known as @AuntySkates on TikTok, told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that because it's unclear if she qualifies as Cancon, she'll have to compete with other small creators for fewer views.
She told the committee that large production companies will dominate the Cancon-designated space, leaving small digital creators like her fighting for visibility. This can have a significant impact on her bottom line, she said.
Hatfield said it's difficult to determine if Bill C-11 will create a two-tiered system for creators due to the lack of a concrete definition of Cancon.
"There is a point-based system that leads to being Cancon verified," he said. "But a lot of online creators wouldn't currently qualify under that system, and we don't know how they're going to qualify in the future under the new version of it."
Ian Scott, chair of the CRTC, says Bill C-11 will not result in the policing of user-generated content or the mandating of a specific algorithm.
"The CRTC's objective is to ensure that Canadians are made aware of Canadian content and that they can find it. It is not about manipulating algorithms," he told a Senate committee in November 2022.
While Danks agrees that both the Senate and the House of Commons need to prevent some content from being preferred over other content, he says the response from many digital creators is "really exaggerated."
"The Canadian content we're talking about is professional content in that it's expensive to qualify," he said.
"Those shows cannot be monetized on the YouTubes and TikTok … If you went to our YouTube page right now, you wouldn't see our best shows."
Clear language
The Senate made 26 amendments to the bill before passing it on Feb. 2.
One such amendment, made by Senators Paula Simons and Julie Miville-Dechêne, curbs the CRTC's discretionary power and limits the bill's application to professional music content.
"This amendment also recognizes the fact that the world of cultural creation has changed," said Miville-Dechêne during a reading on Jan. 31.
"Individual creators have flooded social media with special content. They aren't subsidized. They don't have money. They manage on their own and they use their own business model. Our amendment helps to better maintain their autonomy."
Rodriguez has said that while some amendments will be accepted, others that fundamentally change the intent of the bill will not.
Hatfield said the Senate did "a decent job" of putting a few safeguards in place. And while he doesn't believe the bill's "worst possible outcomes" are the government's intention, he says clearer language needs to be used.
"We need to make it very clear that the CRTC should not be regulating people's individual content and that this is not a censorship bill," he said. "They need to support that amendment to ensure that's clear, and I hope the House will when they finally vote."
With files from CBC News and the Canadian Press. Produced by Samantha Lui and Samira Mohyidden.
