As promised from the outset, the Liberal government specifies by order in council that it is excluding from its reform of the Broadcasting Act podcasts, video games, and any other social media content that is not in traditional media.
“Only programs which have been broadcast, in whole or in substantial part, by a broadcasting undertaking which is required to operate under a license […] and does not provide a social media service, [sont] subject to the Act”, specifies a notice which will be published on Saturday in the Canada Gazettebut shared to reporters on Thursday.
This decree launches public consultations for 45 days, and constitutes instructions that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will have to respect when regulating, within two years, online broadcasting companies.
This power was given to him by the passage of Bill C-11 in April, after two and a half years of debate and controversy. Its main critics criticized the text of the law for not being clear enough about the exclusion of social media content. The Senate even proposed an amendment to make this clarification, but it was rejected by elected officials.
In other words, those who make a living creating videos or other content on the web shouldn’t be bothered by federal law, if their business model is designed for social media first. . The Minister of Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, had repeatedly promised that it would be so.
“I think the decree that is proposed demonstrates that the intention is to ensure that creators of social media and content are excluded,” commented a government official who worked closely on the drafting of this decree and who responded to questions from journalists on Thursday.
Details on how it works
Major platforms such as YouTube were also against the new obligation of “discoverability” of Canadian content, that is to say its development for Internet users. They argued that their algorithm, kept secret, would demote an artist from its charts if it were to be promoted to an unreceptive Canadian audience.
The government now orders the CRTC to play as little as possible in the mechanics of platform algorithms when it imposes “discoverability and enhancement requirements” on them. The public body also has no power to look under the hood of social media to audit their code.
Rather, the regulator must “foster a results-based approach that reduces the need for broadcasters to change their computer algorithms that have an effect on how programs are presented. »
A final version of the decree is to be published this fall, following public consultations. The CRTC is conducting its own consultations in parallel. Ottawa expects this law to generate further “important debates” during these stages, but this time at a “more technical level”.
In recent years, the Conservative Party of Canada had campaigned against this law, which was seen as an attack on freedom of expression. On Wednesday, while he multiplied the speeches to oppose the law on the budget of 2023, the leader Pierre Poilievre again accused the government of “silence Canadians by censoring the Internet”.
The new Online Streaming Act must also force platforms like Netflix or Disney+ to contribute financially to Canadian productions. This is only one of the three missions entrusted to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, to oversee the Internet.
Bill C-18 on the financing of the news media by the Internet giants has been passed by the House of Commons, and is currently undergoing its examination before the Senate. Another bill, this time on “online security”, must also be unveiled by the fall.