It seems that the Canadian government is looking to suppress what remains of independent journalism in the country by further regulating content on the Internet. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — which is melded with the CBC in some mysterious fashion — has submitted its recommendations to the government for changes to legislation governing telecommunications and media in Canada.
Ezra Levant thinks they will use it to shut Rebel Media down:
A brief snip from the MobileSyrup report may be found atPuget Sound Radio:
CRTC wants legislation to optimize competition, encourage CanCon, enable affordable access
Canada’s telecom watchdog has filed a preliminary submission to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel
By Sameer Chhabra, MobileSyrup.com
January 10, 2019The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has formally filed a preliminary submission to the panel responsible for reviewing the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications laws.
The CRTC’s January 10th, 2019 filing comes one day before the January 11th deadline, and urges that any new telecom legislation proposed by the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel should focus on “outcomes that will benefit Canadians in an era of hyper-connectivity by optimizing competition, enabling affordable and innovative services and extending these services and the facilities necessary to access them across the country.”
The Commission’s use of the phrase “optimizing” is explained by its belief that “varying degrees of competition” have already been introduced to Canada’s telecom market.
The submission filed by Canada’s telecom watchdog also outlined recommendations for changes to Canada’s broadcasting framework, referencing points raised in the Commission’s May 2018 programming distribution report.
According to the CRTC, new broadcasting legislation should encourage the production and consumption of Canadian content (CanCon), while also ensuring that all participants in the country’s broadcasting industry should “participate in appropriate and equitable—though not necessarily identical—ways to benefit Canadians and Canada.”
A lengthier report was published by The Star. Some excerpts are below:
‘Smarter’ rules would ensure all digital players pay for CanCon, panel told
By Terry Pedwell
The Canadian Press
Friday, January 11, 2019OTTAWA — Federal lawmakers need to make foreign content providers, such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime, pay their fair share into producing Canadian content, Canada’s broadcast regulator and its public broadcaster argued this week.
What that share looks like, however, remains uncertain as the federal government moves to tear down and rebuild the country’s broadcast and telecom regulations.
In written submissions to a seven-member panel, both the CRTC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also called on Ottawa to create new rules that encourage news content distributors to deliver accurate and trustworthy information to Canadians.
The submissions, which were due Friday, are part of a wide-scale review of Canada’s Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act and Radiocommunication Act that was started last June by a panel of experts chaired by former Telus Corp. executive Janet Yale.
[…]
“What we’re asking for are new and different powers to regulate in a different way,” Scott said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “It doesn’t mean more regulation. It means smarter, better, flexible regulation. A new toolbox.”
The CRTC has asked for explicit statutory authority and flexible mechanisms to regulate audio and video services, both foreign and domestic, including online.
That would help the regulator ensure that any service provider making money from Canadian viewers and listeners also somehow pays toward the creation and distribution of Canadian content, as domestic broadcast companies do now.
Currently, traditional broadcasters in Canada contribute millions of dollars to bodies including the Canada Media Fund and directly pay for original Canadian productions.
But a shift by Canadians to viewing content online has eaten away at funding models that rely on subscriptions and advertising revenue.
Scott said regulators need the authority to reach agreements with new digital platforms to ensure they contribute “equitably” to the creation of that content.
[…]
The CBC’s submission Friday was nearly identical in tone, saying the government needs to ensure that digital companies profiting from the Canadian cultural marketplace also help pay for the creation of Canadian programming.
It also called for mechanisms to ensure Canadians have access to “trusted news and information” through entities including Google and Facebook.
I tracked down the PDF of the “CBC/Radio-Canada submission to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel” at the CBC website. It’s a monster at 46 pages and 29MB; however, most of that space is taken up by lavish color graphics, so it’s not quite as long as it seems. There’s also a lot of repetition; nevertheless, the core material consists of dense PC/MC bureaucratic bumf that demands a lot of determination and caffeine to slog through.
I’ve only made a preliminary survey of the contents, and will simply present some of the highlights here. First, the Executive Summary:
Yellow Vest demonstrators took to the streets again today in Paris and other French cities. Police fired tear gas during clashes with the protesters. Thousands of British Yellow Vests also protested, and the Yellow Vest leader James Goddard was arrested by police.
