IN-DEPTH: Who Are the 9 Cabinet-Appointed CRTC Commissioners Responsible for Implementing Bill C-11?

The social media page of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on a cellphone in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez will soon issue a policy directive to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) informing its commissioners how to go about drafting regulations to implement the new legislative framework outlined in the federal government’s recently passed Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act.

Bill C-11 will bring digital streaming giants like Netflix and YouTube under the CRTC’s regulating authority. The new legislation dictates that these streaming platforms must contribute to new Canadian content standards or face steep penalties.

The specifics of this new framework will be outlined in regulations drafted by the CRTC, which will be informed by Rodriguez’s policy directive. The CRTC will also hold online consultations with the Canadian public before finalizing the new regulations.

The CRTC is responsible for supervising and regulating all aspects of Canada’s broadcasting system, along with the country’s telecommunications service providers and common carriers that come under federal jurisdiction.

The federal government describes the CRTC as an “administrative tribunal” under Heritage Canada’s portfolio that “operates at arm’s length from the federal government.”

Meanwhile, official Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called the commission a “small group of privileged insiders close to the prime minister.”

The CRTC’s eight current commissioners, appointed by the governor-in-council—the governor general acting on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet between 2018 and this year—will be responsible for drafting and implementing the new online-streaming regulations in line with Bill C-11.

CRTC Chair and Vice-Chairs

There are currently nine CRTC commissioner member positions, which include one member serving as chairperson and two serving as vice-chairpersons, with the other members representing different regions of the country.

Members are appointed usually for five-year terms.

Alongside the chair and vice-chairs, one member represents the “Atlantic/Nunavut” region, one Quebec, one Ontario, one Manitoba and Saskatchewan, one Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and one represents British Columbia and Yukon.

The position representing Quebec is currently vacant. Eight full-time appointees hold all the other seats.

Chairperson Vicky Eatrides was appointed in December 2022.

Eatrides began her career practising federal regulatory law in 2000. She joined the federal public service in 2005, where she held a number of increasingly senior executive positions at the Competition Bureau of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED). She was assistant deputy minister at ISED for over three years, from October 2019 to January 2023.

At one point during her 12-year tenure at the Competition Bureau, Eatrides served as its senior deputy commissioner and was “in charge of enforcing criminal and civil provisions of the Competition Act.”

After being appointed as the new CRTC chair, Rodriguez said Eatrides will lead the commission into “an evolving and ever-more-important function, and ... see to its continued modernization to being more open, transparent, efficient, and effective.”

“The need for a new approach is underpinned by the dramatic changes that are occurring in our country’s communications ecosystem,” he wrote on Feb. 6.

Cabinet also appointed Alicia Barin and Adam Scott in December 2022 as the CRTC’s vice-chairs for five-year terms, which took effect in February and January respectively.

Barin, vice-chair of broadcasting, had been an interim CRTC vice-chair since August 2022, while Scott, vice-chair of telecommunications, had been a telecom and spectrum-policy adviser to the federal government for over 20 years.

Scott had worked at ISED since 2001, primarily in the spectrum and telecommunications policy fields.

Barin was appointed as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Quebec in 2019, but didn’t serve a five-year term. She also previously worked in the private broadcasting industry at Astral Media.

“Ms. Barin has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by the various parties the CRTC regulates and the concerns of the Canadian stakeholders they impact,” wrote Heritage Canada in a December 2022 release.

Regional Commissioners

The CRTC’s current regional commissioners are Ellen Desmond, Bram Abramson, Joanne Levy, Nirmala Naidoo, and Claire Anderson. Three are lawyers and two were previously journalists.

Desmond, appointed as regional commissioner for the Atlantic provinces and Nunavut on a five-year term starting in 2020, was previously director of the legal and administration department for the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board for about 14 years.

Abramson, Ontario’s commissioner, also practised law and was previously a trustee of the American Registry for Internet Numbers and also director of the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services.

He is also a graduate of the Women in Film and Television’s Media Leadership Program.

Levy and Naidoo—commissioners for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and Alberta and the Northwest Territories respectively—were both journalists.

Levy previously worked for CBC before becoming director of programming for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, while Naidoo worked for CTV, NBC, Global News, and CBC.

The CRTC describes Naidoo as a “strong advocate for human rights and equality of power.”

Anderson, commissioner for British Columbia and Yukon, is a lawyer and a citizen of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. The commission describes her as the first indigenous woman to be appointed a CRTC commissioner.

Policy Directive

Although Rodriguez has not yet given the CRTC its policy directive for the new Bill C-11 regulations, his department said a draft directive will be published soon in the Canada Gazette.

A public consultation on the matter will follow, after which the final policy directive will also be published in the Canada Gazette.

The main source of debate surrounding Bill C-11 was a clause saying that user-generated content would be included under the CRTC’s regulating authority rather than large streaming platforms only.

Rodriguez has said on several occasions that the government does not intend to regulate individual content creators, but cabinet still rejected a Senate-proposed amendment aimed at removing the clause that would include user-generated content under the CRTC’s purview.

The Senate said upon passing the bill into law on April 27 that it takes note of Ottawa’s “public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user-generated digital content.”

Eatrides said in a statement on the same day that the CRTC “has no intention to regulate creators of user-generated content and their content.”

However, she added that the CRTC will adapt its approach “in light of any future policy direction.”

Rodriguez said in an interview with CTV News on April 30 that he will “be even more clear” in his upcoming policy directive to the CRTC that user-generated content is not to be regulated.

“It’s definitely not the intent of the bill. It’s not the impact of the bill, either,” he told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos. “I’m sending a policy direction soon to the CRTC. It’s going to be even more clear on that policy.”

Rodriguez added that regulating user-generated content would be “impossible” because of the volume of such content across many digital platforms.

“Who could check that?” he said. “First, we’re not interested, but even if we were, who could do that? It’s impossible.”