After many twists and turns, and more than two and a half years of review, the Canadian government passed a new law requiring tech giants like YouTube and TikTok to support Canadian cultural content.
The law, called C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, just as they do with radio and television.
The government says it is necessary to promote local artists and prevent streaming giants from having carte blanche to broadcast their content.
While it’s unclear what the final regulations will look like, the law has drawn the ire of everyone from tiktokers to popular author Margaret Atwood.
YouTube ran ads in the Toronto subway to denounce the law, which it believes will take power away from viewers and put creators in the hands of bureaucrats.
Atwood, always forceful with her opinions, compared it to Soviet censorship. Some Canadian influencers even threatened to move to the United States.
What is the new C-11 law and why is it so controversial?
Content culture wars
With a global cultural giant just south of the border, Canadians have long grappled with the question of how to ensure that local content, such as music and television, is not drowned out by the glitz and glamour of its U.S. competition.
Since the 1970s, the CRTC has been in charge of regulating broadcasters, including setting quotas for the minimum amount of Canadian content a radio or television station must play, as well as requiring broadcasters to spend at least 30% of their revenues on producing Canadian content.
Dubbed “CanCon,” the complex system helped fuel some of the country’s biggest cultural exports, including artists such as Celine Dion and Drake, and the comedy show Kids in the Hall.
In the 21st century, however, Canadians let the algorithms of Spotify, YouTube and TikTok choose for them. These Silicon Valley companies didn’t have to comply with the same Canadian content rules, a loophole the government says is closed by Bill C-11.
“Online streaming has changed the way we create, discover and consume our culture, and it’s time we updated our system to reflect that,” the government said in a statement.
Changing the algorithm
From the outset, major tech platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, strongly opposed the law and lobbied the government.
In a statement to the BBC, YouTube said it was “disappointed” with the legislation. However, it assured that it “will continue to support our creators and users in the next steps of this process.”
The problem with Bill C-11 is a clause that would require broadcasters, including social networks such as YouTube and TikTok, to “clearly promote and recommend Canadian programming in both official and Indigenous languages.”
Experts say it could create a system where Canadian youtubers have to prove they are Canadian enough to be seen.
Such a system, called “MAPL,” already exists for musicians. It assigns points to a song based on the nationality of its singer, producer, lyricist and other factors. The intricacies of who is Canadian so annoyed the famous Canadian singer Bryan Adams that in 1992 he lamented, “You’d never hear Elton John declared un-British.”
The advent of algorithms has only made the problem more complicated. Every time users consume something, that tells the algorithm more about what they like. The more people like something, the more viewership the product gets.
But to promote Canadian content, platforms would have to change the algorithms.
On the surface it might seem that this model would give Canadian influencers an advantage. But some say they fear getting bogged down in red tape and that changes to the algorithm could hurt rather than help.
“If they artificially put [content] in front of people who don’t want it, we’re going into the abyss,” said Scott Benzie, executive director of Digital First Canada, an organization representing Canadian content creators, who opposed the bill and received funding from YouTube.
The problem lies, he said, in what happens when content is recommended to someone based on location rather than interest.
Nathan Kennedy, a tiktoker who often posts about investment advice to his 520,000 followers, has become one of many influencers who opposes the bill.
“I understand the premise of trying to protect Canadian culture, I think the way they’re approaching it is a little bit more traditional media based,” he said. “It’s like fitting a square into a circle.”
Where to draw the line
One of the biggest concerns about the law is how broad its scope will be. The government rejected amendments aimed at exempting individual user content from regulation.
For now, no one knows what those regulations will look like: they will be decided in the coming months, after the CRTC holds public consultations on how the law should be implemented.
Some, including the conservative opposition, claim that the bill legalizes censorship.
Michael Geist, a scholar of privacy and Internet law and a leading critic of the bill, says the problem is not that it prevents people from speaking their minds, but that it puts the government in charge of deciding who can hear those thoughts.
He said the bill leaves the door wide open for overreach by the CRTC.
“The commission can propose whatever regulations it wants,” he told the BBC.
Others have praised the law, including the Screenwriters Guild of Canada, for getting streamers to invest in Canadian productions.
“The time is long overdue for the major streaming services that benefit from the Canadian market to contribute to it,” Neal McDougall, the organization’s deputy executive director, said in a statement.
A borderless world, for now
Canada is not the only country contemplating regulating online content.
Australia introduced a new cultural policy, which is expected to come into effect in May, and would include quotas for local content on streaming platforms.
The UK has also considered regulations for streaming services that would protect “distinctly British” content.
Morghan Fortier, who produces videos aimed at preschoolers on YouTube, says he worries that if Canada sets the standard by prioritizing local content, other countries will follow suit, which will mean smaller audiences overall.
Bill C-11 was not the only bill introduced by the Canadian government to try to regulate the Internet.
Bill C-18, currently before the Senate, would make technology companies like Google compensate Canadian news organizations whose content appears on their platforms. The law is similar to one passed in Australia in 2021.
The government says the law is necessary and accuses tech giants of profiting from news while the organizations themselves lose advertising revenue.
However, Silicon Valley strongly opposed the measure. And in protest, Google went so far as to temporarily block news content to 4% of Canadian users.
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