OTTAWA—The federal Conservatives are spreading “misinformation” about the government’s online streaming bill, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez charged Monday, following a flurry of heated committee meetings studying the overhaul of Canada’s outdated Broadcasting Act.
Taking questions from Parliament’s heritage committee for the first time since February, Rodriguez was asked by NDP MP Peter Julian what the minister considered to be the most “far-fetched” criticism of the bill thus far.
“What concerns me is the amount of misinformation that is shared by some members — not all — but some Conservative members around this bill. They take up this bill and they create a parallel debate about things that don’t exist in the bill. That is what worries me,” Rodriguez said.
The minister’s comments came after MPs spent much of last week plowing through seven committee meetings on Bill C-11, which seeks to bring streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube under the same regulations applied to traditional television and radio broadcasters.
If passed, the legislation would impose rules on streaming services such as increasing the representation of marginalized communities in their content, changing how Canadian content is produced and discovered, and subjecting platforms to ends for violations of the act.
Rodriguez was not questioned on the bill by committee members last week, while MPs instead sparred over when to set a deadline for submitting amendments to the legislation. Members also spent hours locking horns over whether content individual users casually post on YouTube and TikTok would be subject to the same regulations imposed on the platforms themselves — a concern a number of online creators have expressed.
In his comments Monday, Rodriguez referred to Conservative committee member Rachael Thomas’s comments in the House of Commons that the bill presented a “direct attack on the advancement of arts and culture in Canada.”
“The bill needs to die 1,000 deaths,” said Thomas, who has also promoted a petition to “Kill Bill C-11,” arguing that the Liberals and NDP are “trying to control what you see and say online.”
“Conservatives have been asking incredibly pertinent questions regarding the reach of Bill C-11 on user-generated content. Countless experts, including the CRTC’s chair, have brought up serious concerns,” Tory heritage critic John Nater told the Star in a statement.
“Rather than address these concerns in open and honest discourse, the minister continues to unabashedly label as ‘misinformation’ anything he disagrees with, attempting to discredit legitimate questions.”
Rodriguez said the government has been “extremely clear” that it does not intend to regulate what Canadians post online, adding that he was “open to improving” the bill to underline that commitment.
Under the bill’s former iteration, Bill C-10, the Heritage Department projected the legislation would compel streaming services to send up to $830 million annually to Canadian creators by 2023.
On Monday, the department revised that figure, estimating C-11 could force online platforms to contribute as much as $1 billion a year to the creation of Canadian content due to the growth of streaming services in Canada over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic .
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