CRTC wants public input on controversial online streaming bill, says new chair

Article content

The CRTC will consider Canadians’ views on how it should implement the Liberal government’s contentious online streaming legislation, according to the broadcast and telecom regulator’s new chairperson.

Article content

“What I would say is, we want to hear from you,” Vicky Eatrides said.

Article content

She told the National Post in an interview Friday a “broad consultation” will take place. “That is without a doubt.”

The online streaming legislation, Bill C-11, sets up the CRTC to regulate online platforms like Netflix and YouTube. The Liberal government’s attempts to pass the legislation have drawn controversy for the past two years, centred around how much authority the CRTC will have over user-generated content, such as YouTube videos and TikToks posted by digital creators and everyday Canadians.

Specifically, digital creators and others have sounded the alarm over “discoverability” provisions in the bill that would allow the CRTC to force platforms to promote content created by Canadians and which critics say would backfire.

Article content

But what oversight and responsibility the CRTC might ultimately have over user content is still up in the air. An amendment passed by a Senate committee in December removed social media content from the scope of the bill, but it remains to be seen whether that change stays in the final version of the legislation.

“If these powers and these new authorities come our way, then then we will consult and hear from everybody and take all of those views into account through public proceedings,” Eatrides said.

The government will also provide more specifics on how it expects the CRTC to implement the bill in a policy direction to be released after the bill becomes law.

Article content

Asked whether the CRTC would go ahead with regulating user-generated content if that’s in the legislation or policy direction, but those participating in the public consultation are opposed, Eatrides said she didn’t want to speculate.

“I don’t know what’s coming to us. I don’t know what the policy direction will say. So I think we just need to stay tuned on that one,” she said.

Eatrides has been in the top job at the CRTC for only two weeks but already faces a potentially explosive file that landed Thursday—an application from a small internet provider that could possibly kill the Rogers-Shaw mega-merger.

The application from TekSavvy claims the $26-billion merger is predicated on Rogers giving Videotron preferential wholesale rates that TekSavvy argues violate the Telecom Act. That gives the CRTC an opportunity to delay or even kill the merger, depending on whether it chooses to accept the application and launch a proceeding, and on how it ultimately rules.

Article content

Eatrides said it was too early to say whether the CRTC will go ahead with a proceeding.

“Obviously we’re aware of it… our team here at the CRTC is reviewing it,” she said. “Too early to say what’s going to happen with that.”

In her new job, Eatrides, whose background is as a competition lawyer, has oversight over frameworks that deal with both internet and wireless competition. The CRTC’s handling of these files in recent years has drawn criticism from consumer and internet advocates and small players.

That includes the fact that over the past six months, Canada’s largest telecoms have bought up smaller internet providers; in September critics said Bell’s acquisition of Distributel, one of Canada’s major independent internet service providers, was a death knell for competition.

Article content

Eatrides said the current framework governing wholesale internet service — under which smaller competitors rent space on the big telecoms’ networks — isn’t working.

Canadians are concerned about wireless prices, about internet prices, and I share that concern

Vicky Eatrides

“Canadians are concerned about wireless prices, about internet prices, and I share that concern,” she said.

“On the internet side, I think that there is acknowledgement here that the current framework is not producing the results for Canadians that we want. So we need to come up with a better model.”

She said the CRTC would have more on that issue in the coming months.

On top of traditional broadcast and telecom regulation, Eatrides will have to deal with a whole range of new internet-regulation-related responsibilities for the CRTC, not only under Bill C-11, but also under a separate online news bill.

Article content

The CRTC has done “a lot of work” internally to prepare for its new role administering Bill C-18, Eatrides said. The bill would force Google and Facebook parent company Meta to share revenues with news publishers by reaching commercial deals.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has said the CRTC will have to “modernize” to be able to regulate large online platforms.

Eatrides agreed Friday that “there are things that we need to do to modernize.”

“I think we just always need to be sort of looking around the corner to see what’s coming our way and what we what we need, what tools we need to get there,” she said.

Eatrides has five years to go in her term at the CRTC.

Noting the objective has to be balanced with investments by companies, Eastrides said overall, if by the end of her term, “we can get wireless prices down and internet prices down, that would be a huge success.”