CRTC Won’t Regulate Content Creators, Chair Says, Days After Launching Podcast Registration Process

A person navigates to the online social media pages of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on a cell phone in Ottawa on May 17, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

The head of the CRTC says that individual users and content creators will not be regulated by Bill C-11, seemingly contradicting recent news that streamers and podcasters making more than $10 million will have to register with the administrative tribunal.

“The first consultation looked at which online streaming services need to register and which will be exempted,” explained Vicky Eatrides, chairperson and CEO at the CRTC in a speech before the C.D. Howe Institute on Oct. 3.

“In other words, which foreign services need to provide basic information to us so that we can account for them in the broadcasting system, and which ones do not. And to be clear, we will not be regulating individual users and content creators.”

Bill C-11, known as the Online Streaming Act, amends the Broadcasting Act to give the CRTC authority to require online platforms like Netflix and Spotify to contribute to Canadian content rules or face steep penalties.

The CRTC has said the bill will give it the “proper tools to put in place a modern and flexible regulatory framework for broadcasting,” including the ability to “make rules, gather information, and assign penalties for non-compliance.”

On Sept. 6, the CRTC announced that online streaming and podcasting services in Canada with $10 million or more revenue would have to register before Nov. 28. The registration process involved providing the legal name of a company, its address, its telephone number and email, and what type of services it offers, which the CRTC called a “very light” burden.

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Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, said while the decision likely surprised many Canadians, it was “entirely expected given that the bill adopts an approach in which all audio and video content anywhere in the world is subject to Canada’s Broadcasting Act.”

Mr. Geist said many Canadians likely missed the regulatory process that led the CRTC to establish the $10 million threshold, as it “intentionally limited public participation and rejected efforts to extend the timeline for submissions,” claiming that the issue was “industry-focused and relatively narrow in scope.”

According to Mr. Geist, the CRTC intentionally limited public participation in the consultation process by giving “exceptionally short timelines for public participation” for the first three consultation phases.

“This is admittedly arcane CRTC administrative process to which few people pay attention. Yet as Canadians wake up to the implications of Bill C-11 and new requirements for some podcasts, news sites, and adult sites to register with the government, they should not overlook the reality that the CRTC chose to design it this way,” he said.

Consultations Underway

During her address to the C.D. Howe Institute, Ms. Eatrides said Parliament had given the CRTC an “enormous mandate” with the passage of the bill, and called the changes needed to implement it “substantial and complex.” She added that the CRTC had received over 600 submissions during the consultation process, “many of them long and detailed, and all of them showing that people are highly engaged.”

On May 12, the CRTC launched its first public consultations. After more than 200 interventions, the CRTC  issued its first two decisions in a news release on Sept. 29.

Ms. Eatrides said the first stage of the CRTC’s consultation on Bill C-11 examined which streaming services would need to register, and which would be exempt.

Second, the CRTC set conditions for certain online streaming services to operate in Canada, effective immediately. These services are to provide the commission with information related to their content and subscribership.

“The decision also requires those services to make content available in a way that is not tied to a specific mobile or Internet service,” it said.

The second consultation looks at the “basic conditions of service” that might be imposed on certain streaming services.

A third consultation is ongoing. It considers contributions “traditional broadcasters and online streaming services will need to make to support Canadian and Indigenous content.” The CRTC will hold a three-week public proceeding starting on Nov. 20,  and will hear from 129 intervenors representing a broad range of interests.

The fourth consultation will examine the contributions that streaming services would need to make to support Canada’s broadcasting system. Ms. Eatrides said that while the current model requires that traditional broadcasters spend certain percentages on Canadian content and contribute to production funds, the CRTC is “examining whether this structure works once we include streaming platforms, and asking questions about whether we should look at contributions, as a concept, in new ways.”

Online News Act

Ms. Eatreides said the same “quick and consultative approach” is being taken when it comes to Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act. She noted that in August the CRTC shared its plan for establishing the bargaining framework for “fair negotiations” between Canadian news outlets and large social media platforms.

“We will launch a public consultation in the coming weeks to gather views. I encourage everyone who is interested to check out the CRTC’s plan and to participate in the upcoming consultation,” she said.

The Online News Act mandates that major tech companies pay Canadian media outlets for news content linked to their platforms. The legislation also gives the CRTC the power to require media organizations to follow a “code of ethics” in order to be eligible for news-sharing negotiations with digital platforms.

Meta ended news availability in Canada on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, calling the bill “fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers.”

Google also said it would respond to the new law by removing links to Canadian news from its Search, News, and Discover products.

The Department of Heritage has estimated that, despite the tech companies’ reaction to the legislation, it could raise $172 million per year from Google and $60 million from Facebook.