Canada panel recommends increasing oversight over foreign streaming services

By Emmanuel Legrand

The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel has submitted to the Canadian government its final Report with recommendations on modernising the legislation governing Canada's communications sector.  

  The 235-page report makes no less that 97 recommendations for the government's consideration, such as giving telecom regulator Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) new powers and responsibilities, including oversight of foreign streaming services, which would also be required to invest in Canadian content.

  The Report follows an 18-month review of Canada's communications laws including the Broadcasting Act, the Telecommunications Act, and the Radiocommunication Act. "This is the first time that the three statutes are reviewed together in a comprehensive and integrated fashion," noted Janet Yale, Chair of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel.

 Provide regulatory tools

  "We believe that our recommendations will provide policymakers and regulators with the legislative framework and regulatory tools necessary to realise the promise of communications technologies," wrote Yale in a letter to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains and the Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault.  

  One of the most controversial recommendation relates to requirements that could be imposed on audio and video streaming platforms. The panel recommended that the CRTC should oversee DSPs such as Netflix, starting with a new mandatory registration system.

  "Under this approach, any media content undertaking with significant Canadian revenues and delivering media content by means of the internet would be required to register [with the CRTC]," according to the report. Once registered online streaming services operating in Canada would be required to invest in programming that will "attract and appeal to Canadians."

Contribute to the system

  "Right now, it's easy for them to be in Canada because they have no obligations. And we're saying ... if you benefit from operating in a Canadian system, you should contribute," said Yale at a press conference.

  For Yale, "the single most important message to convey on behalf of Canadians is one of urgency. I encourage your government to move promptly to consider this Report and engage with Canadians to implement the necessary changes to ensure that Canada is positioned for success."

  In their joint response to the panel, Bains and Guilbeault neither said which recommendations they'd support, nor if they would deal with the matter with "urgency." They said: "Reforms are needed to level the playing field on which conventional broadcasters and digital media companies compete. We recognise that, for Canada's culture to keep flourishing and for our economy to keep growing, we need to ensure that Canada's telecommunications and broadcasting landscape is properly aligned with today's digital age."

Major positive impact

  ADISQ, the organisation that represents music companies from French-speaking Quebec said the report "could have a major positive impact for the music sector." In particular, ADISQ welcomed the proposal to impose obligations on programming to online services that generate a minimum income in Canada.

  "The music industry has long asked for online music services, such as Spotify or Apple Music, to contribute to our broadcasting system, as do Canadian companies," said ADISQ president Philippe Archambault. "We are very pleased to read that the committee recommends spending and discoverability requirements for Canadian content to all businesses, domestic and foreign, offering audio or audiovisual content to Canadians."

  However, ADISQ regretted that the committee did not recommend that telecommunications service providers contribute to the funding of content, since "a large part of their attractiveness rests on the consumption by Canadians of cultural content online."

Worse than imagined

  Lenore Gibson, the Chair of the board of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), which regroups commercial broadcasters, said the panel's recommendations "deserve careful study," especially the recommendations on digital media content providers.
 
  Not everyone applauded the panel's recommendations. Copyleft scholar Michael Geist described on Twitter the reports' content as “even worse than imagined with an astonishing series of recommendations to create the most regulated Internet in the OECD.”