Earlier, the CRTC launched a consultation on the definitions of Canadian content. Freezenet has issued a response.
Back in November, the CRTC launched a consultation on the definitions of Canadian content (AKA “Cancon”). This was one of the bigger consultations worth checking out as it is one of the areas in which the Online Streaming Act (formerly Bill C-11) builds its foundations on.
The submission I wrote and submitted can be found here (PDF). While I did spend 6 pages largely focusing on a simple idea, I felt it necessary to walk all readers through the simple logical steps so that it’s easy to see why I was making the conclusions and recommendations that I was.
Put simply, the current definitions hives off specific kinds of productions made by Canadians so as to exclude a larger subset of content made by Canadian’s. Unfortunately, since it is being pushed into the digital environment (ala YouTube), it is where numerous problems, including legal, arises. The Online Streaming Act mandates that platforms push specific kinds of content so that Canadian certified “Cancon” will reach the top of the recommendations. As a result, other Canadian made productions (including mine) would get pushed down the priority list of platform recommendations.
Legally speaking, this is problematic because by the government suppressing that speech, it leaves the system highly vulnerable to a Charter challenge. This is because one can very easily argue that because the government is suppressing their speech, in a bid to promote other forms of speech, their content is getting suppressed by the government. This completely flies in the face of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guards against such efforts to either remove or suppress the speech of Canadians.
In order to stave off this legal vulnerability, my submission recommends that anyone protected by the Canadian Charter should be permitted to make it through the Cancon certification process. That way, if there is no Canadian speech being suppressed, then no legal challenge could be made. What’s more, I emphasized that this should be voluntary to reflect the wide variety of needs for different creators. It may make sense for creator “A” to have that certification, but creator “B” may point out that it makes absolutely no sense at all to go through such a certification process.
Simply put, this is a common sense approach that should be obvious. Unfortunately, it’s this kind of common sense that has routinely been ignored, or even outright attacked, throughout the legislative process of Bill C-11. As such, I strongly suspect that my common sense approach will likely be ignored just like others trying to insert basic common sense into this debate as well. After all, there is a reason why the Canadian government/CRTC has already been sued at least three times over this set of laws. It’s not that big of a stretch to think that more litigation is going to hit sooner or later.
Still, I believe it is better to have said something and been ignored than to have never said anything at all. In fact, I kind of like the idea of having prophetic words written by me officially on the record, accurately predicting the future (yet again). To put it simply, “can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
While I don’t honestly believe my submission will really make any difference, I’m still happy to have done it anyway because I know I did my part to defending the interests of Canadian’s. This despite the extremely limited resources that have been afforded to me in the first place.
Note: For others wondering, the deadline for submissions is January 20, 2025. So, not a lot of time left to make such a submission.
