Transcription, Audience du 3 juillet 2025

Les participants et l'endroit

Tenue à :

Centre de Conférence
Portage IV
140, Promenade du Portage
Gatineau (Québec)

Participants :

• Président de l’audience : Nathalie Théberge
• Membres : Adam Scott, Vice président, Télécommunications
  Bram Abramson, Conseiller, Ontario
  Joanne Levy, Conseillère, Manitoba et Saskatchewan
  Stéphanie Paquette, Conseillère, Québec
• Conseillers juridiques : James Wilson, Imene Benaissa, Kathleen O’Toole
• Secrétaire de l’audience : Sonia Gravelle
• Gérantes de l’audience : Sylvie Julien, Jacquilynne Schlesier

Table des matières

Présentations

7124 Amazon Canada

7383 Screen Composers Guild of Canada

7478 LITS

7500 CHEK Media Group

7515 Channel Zero Inc.

7721 RNC MEDIA INC. and Télé Inter-Rives ltée

7882 Unifor

7952 Documentary Organization of Canada

8031 International Center for Law & Economics

8144 On Screen Manitoba

Transcription

Gatineau (Québec)
3 juillet 2025
Ouverture de l'audience à 9 h 00

Gatineau (Québec)

‑‑‑ L'audience débute le jeudi 3 juillet 2025 à 9 h 00

7119 THE SECRETARY: Good morning. For the record, I would like to announce that the Commission has been advised that the intervenor Canadian Independent Screen Fund for BPOC Creators, listed as number 58 on the agenda, will not be appearing today.

7120 We will start with the presentation of Amazon Canada. For the participant appearing remotely, can you please confirm that you can hear us correctly?

7121 MS. LANGLEY: Yes, I can. Thank you.

7122 THE SECRETARY: Perfect, thank you.

7123 So please introduce yourselves, and you may begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

7124 MS. GRACE: Good morning, Vice Chairs, Commissioners, staff, and counsel. My name is Magda Grace, and I am the head of Prime Video for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And with me today are my colleagues John Murphy, who is head of Amazon Music Canada, and Mark Shopiro, who is the head of Prime Video Canada. We are also joined by Jon Cohen from Amazon Music Legal, and Erin Langley from Prime Video Legal is joining us on the phone.

7125 I will speak briefly to Prime Video's business, and then Mr. Murphy will speak to Amazon Music before I conclude our opening remarks.

7126 At Amazon, we believe that value, selection, and convenience are enduring customer experiences that will stand the test of time.

7127 Chez Prime Video, notre objectif est d’offrir à nos clients tant au Canada qu’ailleurs dans le monde le contenu qu’ils souhaitent regarder. Nos services contribuent grandement au système de radiodiffusion canadien en étant abordables et en offrant une liberté de choix aux Canadiens et Canadiennes.

7128 In a competitive industry, where Canadians have access to hundreds of different traditional and digital offerings, it's our responsibility to continuously earn our customers' loyalty. We do this by offering personalized experiences and investing in quality programming to serve a diverse customer base.

7129 This includes investments in Canadian programming. Last December, we premiered The Sticky, a premium drama series inspired by the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist and filmed largely in St‑Eustache, Quebec. The series was dubbed in French Canadian using the Quebec talent themselves and other Quebecois voice actors, a customer‑centric approach that we apply to all our priority programs. For global exportability, the series was subtitled in 29 languages and dubbed in 12 languages. And since its launch on Prime Video, 1.5 million Canadian households have watched The Sticky, and on a global basis, that number is 5x.

7130 It is in our business interest to make our programming discoverable to give it the best chance to succeed. On our service, we have carousels featuring Canadian categories such as Canadian TV and film, Quebec TV and film, Indigenous stories, and Prime in French. The programming also shows up in banners throughout our app, populates across storefront carousels, and is discoverable in search. In offer service, we also promote content in emails to our customer base, push notifications to mobile devices, and across our social handles.

7131 Our investment in Canadian production doesn't stop in English Canada. We've produced more French language series in Quebec than any international streamer. And in the last six months alone, we have filmed three large‑scale productions, including two at Quebecor's Mel Studios and in locations across Montreal like Place des Arts and the former headquarters of the National Film Board. We have also released the third season of fan favourite Quebecois TV series LOL: Qui rira le dernier starring Patrick Huard.

7132 Our series have been viewed by millions of Canadian Prime members, and Canadian talent are choosing to work with us every day, given our commitment to supporting their creative vision and our investment in making their programs a success.

7133 In line with our mission to provide our customers value, selection, and convenience, within our service customers can also subscribe to add‑on subscriptions of competitor services such as Crave and Apple TV+. Since the launch of this model in 2019, we now offer 39 subscriptions, including 15 subscriptions from Canadian services such as independent Canadian undertakings like OUTtv, Hollywood Suite, Blue Ant, to name a few, and many Canadian broadcasters like Bell, Rogers, and Corus.

7134 These add‑on subscriptions are another example of us offering Canadians content that they love. Consumers get access to all their favourite subscriptions in one place, and broadcasters gain access to incremental streaming audiences. These broadcasters have many options to get their content to customers, and they also choose to work with Prime Video.

7135 We invest significantly in maintaining these strong partnerships. One of our first partners was Corus Media, who worked closely with us to launch their streaming service STACKTV, a package of their VOD content and supporting linear offerings. Working with Prime Video helped Corus to bring a product that they programmed, packaged, and controlled quickly to market, serving as a proof of concept to propel Corus into the streaming space. And since then, Corus expanded this STACKTV offering to Rogers Xfinity and Bell FibeTV, among others.

7136 Another Canadian success story is OUTtv. OUTtv first launched their streaming service on Prime Video to complement their direct‑to‑consumer offerings that are made available across the Web and across various devices. And through our partnership, we have helped facilitate their expansion on Prime Video to other countries like Germany and Australia, providing them instant access to a large segment of customers on day one.

7137 Now, we understand that there are some parties in the hearing that have suggested that these services makes us similar to a BDU. We are not. BDUs have closed‑network system, whereas we offer access through open Internet networks. BDUs determine bundles available for subscription, and customers must subscribe to BDU services to access programming. In contrast, we simply resell subscription services determined by others. We also don't get the benefits of BDUs such as free retransmission of signals.

7138 Our add‑on subscription business helps drive revenue to Canadian broadcasters and supports them in diversifying their businesses. It improves competition in the system, because creators have more options for customers to access their content, and Canadians have more ways to access content that they love. These are exactly the type of technology‑enabled partnerships and outcomes that provide real solutions for today's broadcasting system participants.

7139 Another example of us offering Canadians the content that they love is our offering in sports. Last year, we signed a two‑year agreement for one national night of hockey per week, with a season featuring all Canadian teams. And with hockey on Prime, more Canadians have access to Monday night hockey than ever before. We were able to bring in audiences younger than traditional TV and invest in new innovations around hockey, including pre‑game ice coverage, high definition frequency audio and video resolution, and innovation‑based features like rapid recap, which allow viewers to catch up on the live broadcast in real time. We employed a live broadcast team of Canadian producers, analysts, and hosts and took them to arenas across Canada to film, furthering local investment.

7140 To summarize, the regulatory tools identified in this consultation were created to address the market dynamics at play for highly concentrated and vertically integrated traditional broadcasting undertakings. They don't reflect dynamics in the streaming industry. Our contribution to ensure audiences have access to Canadian programming is extensive and ultimately benefits Canadian talent, consumers, distributors, and broadcasters alike.

7141 I will now pass to my colleague John Murphy to speak about the music business.

7142 MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Magda, and good morning, Vice‑Chairs and Commissioners. My name's John Murphy, head of Amazon Music in Canada.

7143 Amazon Music is a global music service making Canadian music available worldwide. Our customers can access vast libraries of music instantly for an affordable fee. This has created new opportunities for larger numbers of artists than ever before and has turned the music industry around from a prolonged period of decline to a prolonged period of growth.

7144 Streaming services like Amazon Music revitalized the music industry by providing legal, accessible alternatives to piracy. While Canadian recorded music revenue was previously in a period of decline, we have seen it nearly double since 2013, with streaming accounting for approximately 75 per cent of those revenues.

7145 Two out of three Canadians use a music streaming service, and 86 per cent are satisfied with the service they use most often. Approximately 70 per cent of our revenue goes to music rights holders, far more than commercial radio's eight per cent.

7146 We export and promote Canadian music globally. According to a recent Luminate report, Canada is the third largest exporter of music to the world. We help export new Canadian music and the next generation of Canadian superstars like Canadian‑Punjabi artists such as AP Dhillon, Karan Aujla, and Jonita Gandhi. This music is coming from across the country, from Surrey, British Columbia, through to Brampton, Ontario, and streamers like Amazon Music are helping it find audiences and build fans around the world.

7147 Our Canada team is dedicated to discovering, working with, and promoting Canadian and Indigenous artists and helping them grow their fanbases both at home and abroad. We have over 500 curated playlists featuring Canadian and Indigenous artists, and we work with Canadian and Indigenous artists to develop Amazon Music Original songs. We've also collaborated with a wide range of established and rising Canadian artists such as The Beaches, The Recklaws, and Josh Ross; French‑language artists such as Corneille, Coer De Pirate, and Fredz. We've also worked with Indigenous artists such as Aysanabee, Tia Wood, and Sebastian Gaskin.

7148 Regardless of listening habits, a Canadian customer's Amazon Music homepage will feature Canadian artists and playlists. Amazon Music is proud to be a leader in investing in, promoting, and supporting Canadian and Indigenous artists.

7149 And I will now turn it back over to my colleague, Magda.

7150 MS. GRACE: Prime Video and Amazon Music operate in an industry that's open and highly competitive and benefits those that offer the best content, surface it effectively to customers, and reach the broadest audiences at attractive pricing. We believe in a fair and competitive system, a sustainable and scalable approach that puts the customer first.

7151 Thank you for listening, and we are now happy to answer your questions.

7152 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Amazon, and thank you to all of you for being here with us this morning. We were all looking forward to your presentation. And we're getting another guy from the UK today. Seems to be that (laughs) ‑‑

7153 So welcome. And I'll pass the floor to my colleague, la conseillère Paquette, who will lead the question period.

7154 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Good morning. Thank you for your participation. We appreciate getting your point of view.

7155 You mentioned in your presentation that the regulatory tools identified in this consultation were created to address the market dynamic of the traditional broadcasting ecosystem and that they do not reflect the dynamic of the streaming industry. And I think you also stated in your written intervention that you see no market failure to justify regulating the online services.

7156 So I would like to push the discussion a little further on this notion of market failure, and I would like to do it for both the audio and video services. But I'd like to start with the audio, Amazon Music. Maybe a question for you, Mr. Murphy.

7157 If, as an example, we look at the online music services, we see that according to some data published in the Province of Quebec that only eight per cent of the music listened to is in French, and this proportion drops to five per cent if we consider the French music from Quebec, made in Quebec. So could that, from your point of view, correspond to a market failure?

7158 MR. MURPHY: Thank you for the question, Commissioner, and just for the record, I live in Canada. I'm based in Toronto, running the Amazon Music team, and I work with a team of Canadians who cover the whole country.

7159 To sort of answer your question, for us, market failure was piracy and customers illegally downloading music and not listening to the artists that they love in a legal way that was not paying revenues through to recorded music rights holders. So we think since the evolution and growth of streaming, and since customer behaviours have changed, that that's healthy, that's been driven by competition within the market segment and is good for the industry. And ultimately, it's more money flowing through to the industry in Canada, not just the Canadian rights holders in Canada, but also from global revenue streams as well.

7160 In terms of the question specifically about the data points for Quebec, without having seen the data, it's difficult for us to comment on and something, you know, we would like to look into further to understand.

7161 One of the things that I would call out is that within the metadata delivered to us by rights holders when music comes through, the origin of an artist isn't something that's part of that as we get the information through from rights holders. So whether an artist is from Quebec isn't something that is identifiable within the music catalogue. And we're getting 100,000 songs delivered a day. This is happening at speed. It's happening at scale. So that's a gap in data to be able to kind of speak back to your point and your question.

7162 I think, more broadly, I think the thing that we're excited about and have kind of seen globally is the adoption of non‑English‑language music by native English speakers. I think that creates huge opportunities for artists who aren't first‑language English. And I think you can see this not only from around the world through music coming from whether it's South Korea or Latin America, but even at home in Canada, the growth of the Punjabi wave, like we've mentioned. I think that streaming has enabled music from different languages to find success and find global fan bases, and I think that's a great opportunity that streaming has brought in the last decade.

7163 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So are you saying that you don't have any data at all on, as an example, French or Indigenous music being listened to on your platform?

7164 MR. MURPHY: Thank you for the follow‑up. So our local team in Canada, we work to identify French‑language artists, artists from Quebec, Indigenous artists. And that's where the local team on the ground, the knowledge, the expertise, the local relationships can help identify and then find ways to support those artists. And they're included in our break‑through programs which are really to help develop and grow the next generation of Canadian talent.

7165 Coming back to the sort of outputs of that and customer listening and customer engagement, at scale, the gap in the metadata is an issue there and something that, you know, we would love to work with the industry on and be part of any discussions on how we can bridge that gap to have data that can maybe answer the question in a more concrete way.

7166 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, but at the moment you don't have this kind of data?

7167 MR. MURPHY: That's correct.

7168 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, okay. And you say that consumer choice is very important for you, and we heard that from all the streamers. But what would be problematic about increasing the weight of, as an example, French or Indigenous or even Canadian music in the search and recommendation functionalities of the platform?

7169 MR. MURPHY: Thank you for the question. So, this is where our team and our sort of mission to help Canadian artists find fans not just at home and abroad comes in. And we know our product; we know our app; we know the right places to put Canadian and Indigenous content and French‑language Canadian content in front of customers.

7170 And that's one of the main reasons that we carve out space on our home page to ensure that Canadian playlists and then playlists that feature Canadian artists are discoverable. And that experience is also different for English‑language customers and also French‑language customers. So that sort of push to drive discoverability is really important to us and something that we have tools to enable to do that.

7171 I think, to come back to your question about search and discoverability, it's also important to recognize that we're an on‑demand streaming service. We take signals from customers. There's expectation from customers who are paying and using streaming services that, you know, you open your app. It feels like it knows your taste. You can pick up listening to what you previously listened to and it feels familiar. And there's a balance of that and then also discovering new music.

7172 I think when we get into search and specifically kind of interfering with what customers are intending to look for and listen to and then touching the algorithm, we think that's something that's not healthy for the customer experience nor for the output that we're seeking to find. And the tools that we have to find and help Canadian artists be discovered are kind of working well and something we're always continuing to look at and see how we can optimize.

7173 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: But you have a control on the recommendations. It's not only random. I believe you must in a certain way control what recommendations are made to the customers when they listen to music.

7174 MR. MURPHY: So the things that our team controls in Canada are placements within the app that include ‑‑ it's something called Featured This Week, which is guaranteed to be seen regardless of your listening tastes and habits. For our local team in Canada, we're not overriding algorithms that customers would be, you know, receiving recommendations from after they've searched and after they've listened.

7175 And this can also, by the way, be good for Canadian artists. So when customers are coming in, they're clicking on Featured This Week, they're listening to Canadian artists and playlists. Those listening behaviours are going to get taken into consideration, not just in Canada, but also around the world. So Canadian artists, whether that's English language, French language, or other, are going to be part of those search results and recommendations based on the intent and based on the listening behaviour of the user.

7176 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: And you're telling me that there's no ‑‑ you have no control on the search results and the recommendation functionalities that are generated on the platform?

7177 MR. MURPHY: Yeah, that's correct. We have a global service and an algorithm and really with that intent of working backwards from what the customer is looking for, that's how those search results and algorithms are optimized.

7178 The business teams and the local teams on the ground in Canada are there to help push Canadian content to the front, music from Indigenous artists, French‑language artists, so that then there's more discoverability; there's more opportunities for Canadian customers to come in and feel like they're using a Canadian service. That's something that's really important to us. If you open the app in Germany, you will see a similar thing with the German team. Likewise, we want our Canadian product to feel like a Canadian product and you know that you're listening within Canada.

7179 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, thank you.

7180 MR. MURPHY: Thank you.

7181 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So now I will switch to the audio‑visual side and come back to this notion of the market failure. We see the audience moving away from the traditional system toward the online streamers with the consequence that broadcasters and BDUs are losing revenues to the point that they need to reduce their investment in the Canadian broadcasting ecosystem.

7182 Given the global strength of the international streaming services like Prime Video, how should the Commission address the concerns that online streaming could replace the traditional market concentration and that the result could be less visibility for the Canadian content and programming?

7183 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the question, Commissioner Paquette. You know, I think in terms of going back to your question regarding market failure, like as of now, we see for Canadians a wide availability of content that customers can easily access at affordable pricing. And we think that is a good thing for the broadcasting industry and a good thing for consumers overall. So I think in terms of where we're heading, I think we're seeing positive outcomes pretty much across the board for consumers in the market segment.

7184 With respect to, you know, how to make up for less investment in Canadian programming, I don't think that's the case, as far as what we're seeing. We're investing significantly in Canadian programming on our services. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we have made more French‑Canadian programs in Quebec than any international streamer, and customers are finding content that they love across a variety of services.

7185 You know, I think that we're seeing a change in how customers like to access content, how they want to consume content and the types of content that they're watching. And that's not necessarily a bad thing; that's just an evolution of a broadcasting system of the future. But, you know, we have been very active participants in the system and in supporting Canadian production and in supporting and responding to our Canadian consumer needs.

7186 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. The Canadian players are telling us that they have difficulty to compete considering, you know, the current imbalance in the regulatory burden between a line to the traditional system compared to the online system. Could this, you think, imbalance correspond to if not a market failure maybe a market imbalance? And what should be done to apply fair and equitable rules in the Canadian industry while achieving the objectives of the Broadcasting Act?

7187 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the follow‑up. We don't believe that there's evidence of a problem or imbalance that requires regulatory intervention in particular. You know, we are operating in an open environment where customers have an ability to get their content from pretty much anywhere, whether it's, you know, traditional BDUs or it's digital. There's more content offerings available than there have been ever before. So we don't see a need for regulatory intervention at this moment.

7188 And I really can't speak to kind of regulatory burden in the system as it is today. That's not something I can address specifically.

7189 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And we also have the many independent broadcasters who appeared in front of us this week who mentioned not having access to online platforms such as Prime Video.

7190 You mentioned that you now offer 39 subscription services on Prime Video. Can you explain how the selection of the services works on your platform, how you choose them, what are the criteria?

7191 MS. GRACE: Absolutely. So, we work and listen to customers and what they want and look at a variety of services in terms of their demands. Within Canada, whether it be looking at third party data sources to, you know, even broadcasting data itself, and in both ways sometimes reach out to high demand services that we know our customers are looking for. Or otherwise, we have services come to us and say hey, we would love to be able to work with you. What does that look like?

7192 Those are two ways, very effective ways, that we’ve been able to work with Canadian services and broadcasters.

7193 We offer a significant number of independent programming services in Canada. As I mentioned in the opening statement, Super Channel, Blue Ant, OUTtv, Hollywood Suite, WildBrain. There are a significant number of them, and we’ve had very positive engagements with them and for the most part we come to the table on mutually agreeable terms and find a path forward. And we do this because we know this is content that customers want to purchase on Prime Video, that they are interested in accessing. So, it’s mutually beneficial for us, for the broadcasters or distributors themselves, and the consumer audiences.

7194 We are ultimately continually listening to what customers’ interests are, needs, and look to serve those, whether it be independent or large‑scale broadcasters alike.

7195 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: And to your recollection, did you refuse some services in the past?

7196 MS. GRACE: So you know, we offer many independent programming services, but ultimately working with these independent services, it’s a business decision. The things that we look at in making a decision on whether to move forward ‑‑ and that, quite frankly, is not unilateral. We have a lot of services who don’t want to work with us as well. This is an agreement that needs to come on both sides, and there are a lot of considerations.

7197 But from our perspective, we look at them and understand: is there a demand for the content? Do we think, based on the data that we have, usually third party data or data that’s been provided to us, that there will be demand for these services, and then make an evaluation of whether or not we think that we can have a successful business together with them on Prime Video.

7198 In some cases, that’s not the case. And the reason for that is that we have costs in operating this business. We have partner managers who are managing these businesses, supporting them every day, managing the accounts. We have costs to serve, including hosting costs, carriage costs, all of these elements that we need to take into account when we are weighing the business decision of, you know, is there a significant demand for this versus the price? That’s something that we need to weigh.

7199 But ultimately, we’ve been very successful in offering a lot of independent programming services. We are in negotiations with multiple other services, some 9.1(1)(h) services as well. If customers want the content, we will work as hard as we can to get the content onboard.

7200 And if that doesn’t work out, well, those programming services decide that they can offer content elsewhere. They can offer it through their own direct to consumer services, they can offer it through BDUs. There are lots of options. We are in an open market segment now. We are not the only place to make this content available.

7201 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And we heard that the greatest barriers that Canadian services are facing regarding access and discoverability are likely to result from the entities prioritizing their own services.

7202 So can you explain to us how you operate and what is your approach to content promotion on Prime Video, and more particularly, how you promote the 39 channels that you distribute?

7203 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question. And good morning.

7204 As my colleague Magda mentioned in her opening remarks, my name is Mark Shopiro. I am the Head of the Prime Video business here in Canada. I would be pleased to speak to this further.

7205 As we mentioned in some of our opening remarks, we pride ourselves on being a customer obsessed company, and the way that that manifests itself within Prime Video or our service to customers is we want to create as personalized a service for customers as possible. Said another way, we want to remove friction from customers from being able to find content that they want to watch.

7206 Prime Video is a service. Prime is a membership, and there’s obviously content included with Prime as part of a broader Prime program here in Canada. But as Magda mentioned, we also have 39 add‑on subscriptions, and we believe that this is content that our customers like and are interested in, and it’s in our interests for that to succeed.

7207 So the answer, without getting into too, too much detail, is largely we are agnostic to how we serve the customer. Depending on the signals that we have from the customer and what their interests are, our aim is to serve them the content that will be most relevant to them. We believe that that’s how customers will get the most value out of using our service.

7208 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So you say you are agnostic, but would it be fair to say that the Prime Video original content is the priority in your promotion?

7209 MR. SHOPIRO: It depends on the customer and the person that’s using the service for the types of content that they would see. Many of our customers that use Prime Video are Prime members, but there’s also possibility that a customer is not a Prime member and subscribing to add‑on services. The signal that that would send is that that customer is more likely to engage with add‑on services, and we believe that’s important to serve to that customer.

7210 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. You don't need to be a Prime Video subscriber to have access to the TV services that are offered in addition on the platform?

7211 MR. SHOPIRO: By and large ‑‑ just one moment, please.

7212 By and large, the answer is no, but some have requested to not have ‑‑ to be a Prime member to subscribe to a channel.

7213 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Some channels have requested this? Okay.

7214 MR. SHOPIRO: Some add‑on subscriptions, yes.

7215 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: And do you monetize the content visibility on either Prime or on Amazon Music?

7216 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the follow‑up. I can speak to the Prime Video business, and then I will let my colleague, John, speak to the music side of the business.

7217 Going back to the principle of serving customers what they are most likely to engage with, what we see is customers engage more with content that they are subscribed to. We view that as a signal of that content is of interest to them, and we should focus on serving that customer with that content.

7218 There is, at the discretion of some our three ‑‑ at the discretion of our three key providers, opportunities where they can engage in paid placement on our service. The reason for that is, as I just mentioned, the majority of shelf space that we allocate is towards content that is available to customers included with the services that are subscribed to.

7219 We believe that by offering the service to our 3P add‑on services, it’s also a way to democratize their ability to reach customers within our app. And we think that that’s also good for customers and our 3P providers because it also allows them to gain new subscribers.

7220 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Just a question. What do you mean by 3P?

7221 MR. SHOPIRO: Sorry, the 39 add‑on services. Excuse me.

7222 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Thank you.

7223 MR. SHOPIRO: Of course.

7224 MR. MURPHY: Thanks, Mark. Just to jump in for music, that’s not something that is part of our offering. So if the rights‑holder, whether that’s a music label or publisher comes to us saying hey, we’ve got X amount of money, can you put us to the top of the search results on the home page of the Amazon music app, that’s not something that we do.

7225 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: It's not something you do?

7226 We heard this week that some streamers ‑‑ and it may not be the case for Amazon ‑‑ are giving more visibility if the artist or the producer would reduce their share in royalties.

7227 Is that a practice that you do on your platform?

7228 MR. MURPHY: That's not part of our business, no.

7229 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. You describe the undue preference rules as a legacy tool intended for distributors. How would Amazon respond to concerns that platform‑driven visibility, content promotion, algorithm prioritization could result in undue advantage for smaller independent services?

7230 MS. GRACE: I'm sorry, Commissioner Paquette, I don’t fully understand that question.

7231 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So you say that undue preference doesn’t apply to the online services, that it’s a concept that does not exist in your world. But we heard some concerns about the fact that visibility given on the platform or content promotion or the algorithmic prioritization could open the door to undue preference.

7232 Can you comment on this? Do you have any view on this?

7233 MS. GRACE: I understand, and thank you for clarifying the question.

7234 My understanding of the question is whether or not we believe that there could be undue preference related to how we promote the content on the service by virtue of us managing the service.

7235 I’m going to pass it over to my colleague, Mark, to speak a little bit about how discoverability works and how that is not something that we specifically determine or leverage.

7236 But I can say that we operate in good faith relations with our content providers. We are mutually incentivized to come to good outcomes in offering their content. It’s a mutually beneficial business relationship. And as I mentioned a little bit earlier, we engage with them because we think that customers will want to watch their content. There wouldn’t be a reason for us to have some level of undue preference in that respect.

7237 Again, I will pass it to my colleague, Mark, to speak a little bit about how I think discoverability is fairly democratized and not within Prime Video’s hands but really in the hands of the consumer.

7238 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you, Magda.

7239 Within our app ‑‑ and again depending on the customer or the person that’s using it ‑‑ each person will have a different experience, and that again will be dependent on what services they are subscribed to on our service.

7240 So when you open up our application, you will see banners that scroll east‑west, and as you scroll north‑south, you will see also carousels that are themed by content categories. We also help with several other parts of navigation and discoverability within our app.

7241 That’s just within our service.

7242 We also help customers discover services and content that they are subscribed to through other means as well. Those could be things like emails to customer base, push notifications to mobile phones for some of our Prime content presence on our social handles.

7243 But again, if somebody is subscribed to a particular add‑on service and there’s content that we believe the customer is interested in watching, we will help the customer discover that content.

7244 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, thank you.

7245 Now I would like to discuss about connected devices with you.

7246 Canadian online services told us during this hearing that they don’t have the leverage or the scale to obtain prominent visibility on connected devices. And we see, in fact, that Prime Video, Netflix, Disney and Apple TV are in general position first in the connected devices interface. They are very often pre‑installed on the devices. They have dedicated rows in the connected devices’ content interface, and they benefit from sustained visibility.

7247 Are these, in general, the basic conditions that you are looking for when you are negotiating the integration of Prime Video on connected devices?

7248 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question. I am happy to speak to this at more length.

7249 Our goal for our app is to be widely available to customers so they are able to access where they want to watch what they want to watch on an Internet connection. And that applies to the connected device space, given that’s where customers spend a lot of their time consuming content.

7250 We do engage in commercial negotiations with connected device partners, where we are trying to make our app and service more discoverable for our customers to be able to find them.

7251 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. So, these are the kinds of matters that are being discussed at the time of the discussion for the integration of your app on the connected devices.

7252 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the follow‑up.

7253 Our goal is to make our app as discoverable as we can for our customers to be able to find.

7254 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And does Amazon monetize ‑‑ I asked you the question about monetization of the visibility on Prime Video. On the Amazon Fire TV, is visibility also monetized?

7255 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the follow‑up question.

7256 My role in oversight at Amazon, I work on the Prime Video business. There is a separate business team and business unit that runs the Fire TV business. So, unfortunately, I can’t speak to that line of device.

7257 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So we might come back in an RFI with questions in this regard, because I also have a question about how Amazon decides which services are pre‑installed on the Amazon TV devices. So, we will probably come back with a question on this.

7258 My last question on this. Some intervenors mentioned that in addition to suffering limited promotion and visibility on the platforms, they had to hand over a significant portion of advertising inventory to their online distributors.

7259 Is advertising inventory share a practice either on Amazon Prime Video or on Amazon Fire TV? You might not have the answer for Amazon Fire, but maybe the answer for Prime Video.

7260 MS. GRACE: Thank you, Commissioner Paquette. Like Mark, I only oversee the Prime Video business, so I can’t speak to Fire TV. It’s a separate business unit.

7261 I can speak, though, to how we work with content providers, making content available on Prime Video. We have a lot of different business models in how we work with providers who are looking to monetize and make available their content to consumers.

7262 I would say the largest method to do this is through revenue share for subscription revenue, and that’s because all of our add‑on services have a subscription component this time. So, that is the significant bulk of how we negotiate those deals and what they would see.

7263 We do offer some services with advertising within it, and in those cases we negotiate, in addition, inventory share. But I would say it’s inaccurate within the Prime Video space to say that we retain a large amount of that inventory share, as it’s actually quite small.

7264 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. So my last line of questions, before letting my colleagues also have some time to ask questions, is regarding data.

7265 You support limiting data collection. This is the position you took in your intervention. But you also recognize the importance of tracking Canadian francophone and Indigenous content.

7266 So what type of data does Amazon currently share or would be willing to share with content providers to support these goals?

7267 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the question, Commissioner Paquette.

7268 We look at a wide range of data on our service to be able to evaluate our content investments, and we also offer a significant amount of data to our third‑party services, the add‑on subscription services. But ultimately, that viewership data is commercially sensitive and confidential, and it can also be subject to an NDA or can have, you know, privacy considerations. So, it really depends on what the scope of the data is and whether or not we would be able to look at that data and share it in what manner.

7269 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: And do you share some data with either the broadcasters or the content producers? Do you currently share data, or not at all?

7270 MS. GRACE: In our add‑on subscription business, we share data for them to be able to understand how their services are performing, for them to look at the programming, you know, what’s being successful, how the consumers are interacting with their services. So, yes, we do share data both on our regular basis where we have online portals, dashboards and reports that can be pulled and also on an ad hoc basis as can be helpful for them.

7271 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: And we heard the producers yesterday, the CMPA, saying that they don’t receive anything from the online platform.

7272 Is that accurate? Is that the situation?

7273 MS. GRACE: For the content that we're producing or acquiring for Prime Video within our own catalogue specifically, we haven’t had that specific requirement in our commercial deals.

7274 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And my last question is: Do you have any suggestion on how the CRTC can get an oversight to monitor and ensure that the platform really meets our cultural policy goal in terms of data that could be gathered and provided?

7275 MS. GRACE: We're happy to work with the Commission to support the objectives within the mandate. We want to see a scalable sustainable system. We think that if we can be here to support that objective in a way that we can facilitate, we would be happy to do that. And if there are specific data points that you would be looking for or even say hey, I would love to be able to answer this question, what could I look at, that’s the type of thing that we could say hey, like maybe this is the right kind of framework or view for looking and solving that specific challenge.

7276 We would be happy to work with you and understand what your specific requests were.

7277 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, thank you very much.

7278 I have no more questions.

7279 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, conseillère Paquette.

7280 And thank you for your answer with respect to data. I think we are certainly looking forward to getting some concrete proposals from the various intervenors. So if you have any specific ideas on how we should move forward and how you see the role of the CRTC with respect to filling the data gap that Mr. Murphy alluded to ‑‑ I think it’s widely recognized that there is a gap. The question is how do you fill it and who is responsible for it.

7281 So perhaps in your final submission, it would be interesting to seek your views and suggestions, if you have any, on that particular topic.

7282 I will just ask a question before turning to my colleagues, if I may.

7283 You have stated in your presentation that Prime Video and Amazon Music promote Canadian content, including French content and content from Indigenous, OLMC and equity‑seeking communities. You also refer in your presentation to The Sticky, a production filmed in Quebec, at St‑Eustache, if I remember correctly, using French‑speaking actors, but shot in English.

7284 So it was a bit surprising, I have to say, especially since you say that the series was dubbed in 12 languages.

7285 We heard from many intervenors from Quebec, from French Canada and from Indigenous communities that their audience, they like to find, see and consume content in their own language and which reflect the reality. And we also have some specific public policy objectives, as you know, in the Broadcasting Act, with respect to cultural and linguistic diversity.

7286 So what is your strategy with respect to acquiring or broadcasting or supporting content that speaks to local audiences, including in local languages? And more broadly, how do you decide and based on which criteria to promote content on your platforms? Is there a relationship between that decision and the size of the audience, for instance, its financial sustainability, etc.?

7287 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the question, Vice Chair Théberge.

7288 I can speak a little bit to our high‑level strategy on Indigenous and French, and then I will pass over to my colleague, Mark, to speak about how discoverability works for different languages.

7289 French content on Prime Video is an absolute priority. We’ve ‑‑ as I mentioned in the opening statement, we produced three large‑scale productions, premium drama series, scripted series, two formats using French Canadian talent. We understand that that is a market that likes to be served in their own language, and we understand that there are different needs and different interests, and for a lot of those consumers than there is in the rest of Canada, but there is also an interest in global content from these consumers, and so this is why we’ve made French Canadian dubbing such a priority for us. We see a benefit in being able to offer original language French content and we are doing that and we will continue to do that, and that’s an absolute priority both for our first‑party content in addition to our add‑on subscriptions, but even for those global series, to be able to dub that in French Canadian. In fact, this year alone, we are going to dub 76 TV series and films in French Canadian, using sub‑ ‑‑ oh, sorry?

7290 THE CHAIRPERSON: But that's international content you’re dubbing in French Canadian; right? I’m more interested in the French Canadian content being dubbed for the global market. That’s where I’m more interested. I mean, we do have a lot of international content being brought to Canada, whether in English or French. I’d like to see the other side of your equation, sorry.

7291 MS. GRACE: Yes, absolutely. I was just referring to it because we are using local actors and talent and studio services in Quebec, so supporting that industry and those artists.

7292 We, as of now, are investing half of our local originals production budget in French Canada. That’s a significant amount, where we’re, as a Canadian team, investing. And that content, where we have the rights, is being made available everywhere ‑‑ and through discoverability, leveraging personalization, you know, people in other countries are accessing this content. They are watching it, and that’s one of the benefits of having a service that operates on a global basis and has discoverability tools that work at a global scale. So, absolutely customers are watching this content globally. They’re watching it in Quebec. We are making these shows and we are exporting them globally.

7293 THE CHAIRPERSON: Can I just ask for clarification before giving the floor to my colleague? You just said that you’re investing 50 percent of your content production budget in Canada in French language? Is that what you said?

7294 MS. GRACE: Our local production budget for Canada is ‑‑ as of today, roughly about 50 percent of it is in French Canadian production, Quebecois productions.

7295 THE CHAIRPERSON: So that's independent production? Requiring ‑‑

7296 MS. GRACE: I'm sorry, ‑‑

7297 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ content, or you’re investing in new content being developed in French?

7298 MS. GRACE: These are either ‑‑

7299 THE CHAIRPERSON: I just want to ‑‑

7300 MS. GRACE: These are ‑‑

7301 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ understand the numbers.

7302 MS. GRACE:  ‑‑ either series that we are wholly owned ‑‑ so, for example, LOL Quebec ‑‑ LOL: qui rira le dernier? ‑‑ we wholly own. So, that is a production that we are making that would be included in that in addition to programs that were licensed but have been basically effectively commissioned as licences, so involved from day one with the production companies that we’re working with. So, both. But I’m not speaking about library content; I’m not speaking about content that’s been exposed elsewhere. This is, you know, content specifically made for Prime Video.

7303 THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay, thank you. Thank you for the clarification.

7304 MS. GRACE: Yes.

7305 THE CHAIRPERSON: I'll give the floor to my colleague, Vice‑Chair Scott.

7306 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Thanks very much.

7307 Thank you for being here. Just a couple of follow‑ups on some themes that Commissioner Paquette explored with you. Can we assume that you have very robust data about how prominent display of a service or a program drives consumer engagement?

7308 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question.

7309 It is a complicated question in that, depending on how data is classified, that might impact how we’re able to track that piece of content on our service.

7310 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: But, for example, if you're selling a spot on the carousel, you would have pretty good data to talk to the person who is buying that window, about what they can expect in terms of eyeballs it’s going to drive, subscriptions it’s going to generate ‑‑ that type of ‑‑ that’s the type of data I’m talking about.

7311 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question and clarification.

7312 We are able to provide broad forecasts on how placements might render within the advertising space. The exact performance of those placements are ultimately very difficult for us to track and predict.

7313 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: So, predict I can totally buy, but track, I would think, would be fairly easy. No?

7314 MR. SHOPIRO: Specifically on paid placements ‑‑ and again, this is run by the advertising side of our business ‑‑ they are able to understand, for example, what a placement delivered.

7315 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Okay, and would you have similar ‑‑ just in terms of ‑‑ like, if I’m looking at your homepage and there’s one category ‑‑ you know, “Top TV Shows” is listed first ‑‑ do you have data about where they are ranked on the homepage and how that generates more or less audience viewership?

7316 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question.

7317 I don’t have the answer to that offhand. What you’re referring to ‑‑ the carousels are dynamically ranked, so depending on what customers log in, they may see different things. So, it’s quite a complicated answer for the whole service ‑‑ something I would like to take away for our final submission, if we can clarify that then.

7318 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Sure, that would be great, and we may have some specific RFIs for you as well. Really what I’m trying to dig into is, can we figure out what toward be the impact of ‑‑ because we’ve had a number of proposals for a regulated requirement for prominent display of Canadian content ‑‑ I’m trying to figure out, first and foremost, would that be effective? So, any data you have that would inform the potential effectiveness of that would be hugely helpful.

7319 And then, my next question was really going to be, can you calculate the cost of such a measure, whether that’s direct cost of creating a CanCon category, forgone revenue of displacing some other form of content with that, or any quantifiable impact on consumer experience that might arise?

7320 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the follow‑up, and understood.

7321 With this, our position largely is that personalization should be the cornerstone of our service, and we should be aiming to serve customers based on their viewing preferences. As it relates to Canadian content ‑‑ and understood this has come in, in different interventions as well ‑‑ we would be happy, and view it as a step forward, to understand how to track Canadian certified content, and would view that as a step forward, because right now that is a limited ability of ours.

7322 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: That's great, and I do recognize that a lot of this could be commercially sensitive, so I think whatever you can include in your final reply ‑‑ and I expect that we’ll probably have some RFIs as well, but thanks very much.

7323 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very, Vice‑Chair Scott.

7324 I will turn to Commissioner Abramson.

7325 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thank you, Madam Chair.

7326 Hello to all. Good to see you here today, and thanks for emphasizing in your presentation some of the positive efforts that you’re taking to promote Canadian content, which of course are in line with our job as directed to us by the Broadcasting Act.

7327 I just have a few follow‑ups from some of the exchanges that I heard earlier. The first is about language, and you mentioned metadata around tracking CanCon certified productions, and so on. But I want to ask about language, which is a bit of a different data field. Do you track language? Or, I guess, do you have a way of knowing in what language different productions are audio‑visually, and then likewise tracks musically?

7328 MR. SHOPIRO: Thank you for the question.

7329 I will answer on the Prime Video side and then pass to my colleague for music. We can understand what languages are available on pieces of content that we ingest into our service.

7330 MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mark.

7331 So, just to speak to music, language is a field within the metadata. In terms of the accuracy and reliability of that across, you know, a hundred thousand songs being delivered a day, I think there would be some concerns as to how accurate and how frequently it’s delivered. And then also, in the way that artists are making music these days, if you have an artist who is singing in Punjabi with an artist who is singing in English, you know, there can be some challenges around that when you’ve got artists from different cultures and languages, and how that would be defined with the outcomes that you are seeking.

7332 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: I don't want to dive too deep into this, or dwell on it, ‑‑

7333 MR. MURPHY: Yeah.

7334 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON:  ‑‑ but can a track have more than one language code? Or is it a one‑to‑one correspondence?

7335 MR. MURPHY: Yeah, a track can have multiple languages in terms of the specific metadata we receive. Happy to take that as a follow‑up and provide some examples of what’s brought to us by rightsholders.

7336 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Sure. And I assume that that field is one of the signals that you use in serving up music and so on. In other words, it may be less than perfectly accurate, but you must have some faith in its general accuracy, and I assume you rely on it for something. Fair enough?

7337 MR. MURPHY: Yeah, I think in terms of serving content up, you know, I think customers are looking for music by genre, they’re looking for music from artists similar to musical artists they’ve been listening to already, so breaking out within our home screen of our app music by genre hasn’t been something that we’ve seen a customer need for, based on the way that customers are using our service on demand.

7338 And I think that, again, the way that people consume music, they’re not necessarily tied to listening to music in their own native language, and you can see this from artists touring across Canada. You know, you’ve got Blackpink; they’re playing a stadium in Toronto and, you know, is an English‑speaking audience going to understand all of the sort of songs in Korean? You know, probably not. So, I think that customer behaviour and the way that people listen to music has definitely changed and isn't something we’ve seen a signal for.

7339 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Sure, and in the same way, we’ve seen, I suppose, the overwhelming popularity of English language music on your service and on similar services, at least from what we’re being told, in French language territories.

7340 So, fair to say that, if we were to ask you for the percentage of French language views or spins within the Canadian territory, that’s something, unlike perhaps CanCon certified views and spins, you would be able to provide us?

7341 MR. MURPHY: Thanks. So, there was a report by Luminate at the end of last year that actually showed in Canada as well that English language music was declining as a share of total consumption in Canada. So, we’re actually seeing different trends in customers leaning towards music from other languages.

7342 In terms of the request, I think that would be something we’d need to look at the accuracy of the data we’ve got. Again, this is something that’s delivered to us at scale, and it’s made by rightsholders, and if there’s fields that are missing or fields that are incorrect, I’d have concerns about how accurate that would be to help answer your question.

7343 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Accuracy is never perfect, sir. Thank you.

7344 My colleague talked with you a little bit about valuing carousel placement and so on based on feature rotator and sponsored channels, and other advertising features that you have on the Prime Video service. Is there anything similar on the music service ‑‑ something perhaps analogue to Spotify’s Discovery Mode or some other means that artists or others have for buying more prominence?

7345 MR. MURPHY: No, there isn’t.

7346 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Okay, good. No, I just wanted to mop that up. So, there is no equivalent to a feature rotator type service where someone can be more prominent in the interface or in the user experience, for instance?

7347 MR. MURPHY: Not based on payment to the service. The prominence and discoverability of content in those placements will come from customer intent and demand for the music that they’ve been listening to, and again, that’s going to be alongside music that we’re curating and carving out specifically for Canadian and Indigenous music.

7348 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thank you for that. No, that’s helpful.

7349 Let me ask you about ‑‑ and we’ve been dancing around it a little bit today, I suppose ‑‑ but let me ask you about the question of so‑called virtual BDUs or what is similar to a distribution undertaking, I suppose. As you know, the revisions to the Broadcasting Act give us specific jurisdiction around mandatory distribution orders in relation to online undertakings that provide programming services and so on in a manner that is similar to a distribution undertaking.

7350 And of course, you have argued that you are not similar to a distribution undertaking, and I must say that Amazon Prime Video has come up, from a number of other intervenors when asked for example of what would fall under this paragraph ‑‑ yes, I think it’s a paragraph ‑‑ in the Act. And so, I suppose I wanted to ask you for your views on how we ought to interpret that paragraph of the Broadcasting Act.

7351 In other words, Parliament directed to us in respect of services that are similar in some way. We are meant to exercise our discretion as to what that means, and I suppose I am looking to Amazon to give us your view on how you think we ought to exercise that discretion in a principled way.

7352 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the question, Commissioner Abramson.

7353 It’s a difficult question to answer ‑‑ “What is a similar to BDU?”, and I don’t personally know what Parliament had in mind when they came up with this. And presumably there could be a world where there is a service that’s offering a comprehensive bundle of linear channels on a subscription basis and on an exclusive basis over the internet. That is possible.

7354 We don’t feel that our service looks anything like that, for a variety of reasons. The first one ‑‑ and I think most significantly ‑‑ that we’re simply a reseller of other services. We resell services that programmers package, program themselves, and make available to our consumer base on our service. They are offered à la carte for the most part, and customers can get access without any incremental payment. The subscriptions are offered over the open internet. You can access them on any device where Prime Video is available, which is thousands of devices. You can get access to internet from anywhere, and so, completely open network.

7355 None of the services that we have, we require to be exclusive to us. Most of these services indeed offer their own offerings direct‑to‑consumer through the web, work with BDUs as mentioned in some of the comments earlier on STACKTV and OUTtv ‑‑ a great example of that ‑‑ and then of course, we don’t have any of the regulatory benefits that the BDUs have, such as getting over‑the‑air signals for free.

7356 So, you know, I think, to summarize, I don’t think we look like a BDU. We don’t have the qualities of a BDU, for a variety of reasons both in how we make content available and how we work with content providers. And also, you know, I really couldn’t tell you about how to think further through the vBDU definition and what could come under there.

7357 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Okay, thank you. Fair enough. We’ll exercise the discretion one way or another, but I wanted to see if Amazon had views that would persuade us one way or another. Thank you for your answer.

7358 Madam Chair, those are my questions.

7359 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commission Abramson.

7360 I will turn to Commissioner Levy.

7361 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Good morning. We've talked a lot about the placement of online distribution in our country, similar to many others. Online distribution is very quickly overtaking BDUs. The cord‑cutting and cord‑shaving for traditional BDUs is very well known. It does not look as though it’s going to dissipate any time soon. So, it’s quite clear that, at some stage, there will likely be a world where all television and music and so forth will come via online distribution.

7362 How long do you think this transition will take, from your crystal ball?

7363 MS. GRACE: Thanks for the question, Commissioner Levy.

7364 That would be amazing ‑‑ if I had a crystal ball to answer that, that would be very interesting. You know, I think, based on what we’re seeing, Canada consumers are still accessing traditional BDUs. You know, there has been a decline in this space of course, just based on the data we’re seeing, but it’s still, from my understanding, a very healthy market, and I don’t think that we’ve seen this evolution in other developed markets either to an extent where this is, you know ‑‑ I would say maybe not for a very long time, if ever.

7365 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. What do you see as the future for the traditional BDUs? Like, for you, when you look at the value proposition that you bring to the market, what do you think is so significant, so unique about what they bring that will hold consumers who, by all evidence, have taken up your kinds of offerings with great enthusiasm? Where do the BDUs fit into the picture?

7366 MS. GRACE: I really can't speak to BDUs in particular, except to say that, you know, increasingly, BDUs are operating in the internet environment, and I think that that’s been ‑‑ you know, helped them diversify their offering.

7367 We’re also seeing BDUs or broadcasters specifically increasingly able to access, you know, customers in the internet space, like we’re seeing with STACKTV, you know, diversifying their offering, making a package of content available to consumers in a different way, you know, help them to reach audiences in the digital space. Crave, Bell Media is doing that as well. They announced that they are adding CTV to Crave a few weeks ago and so, you know, all these things are showing great, like, leadership, I think from broadcasters in Canada say, like, “We want to go where the customers are, and we’re going to invest in doing that,” and I think that the services that are investing and thinking about how to reach those customers are ultimately seeing success in doing that.

7368 COMMISSIONER LEVY: And of course a number of them are making deals with the online streamers to include their services as part of their offering. So, have you ‑‑ I don’t recall whether ‑‑ I know Netflix is very active in that space, getting added on to BDU offerings. Is Prime Video negotiating with BDUs to be added to their offerings?

7369 MS. GRACE: AS Mark mentioned earlier, we do ‑‑ I mean, our goal is to be available wherever consumers want to find us, and that includes being made available on set‑top boxes and device partnerships like with BDUs. So, yes, you can find us on Canadian BDUs as well.

7370 COMMISSIONER LEVY: And maybe one ‑‑ just one or two more. And that is, we cannot be the only jurisdiction in the world where you’ve had to have these kinds of conversations about how we meet our public policy responsibilities as a regulator in a new space with a new player that has increasing dominance in the market.

7371 So, how have you seen this issue addressed in other jurisdictions? And how have you dealt with that?

7372 MS. GRACE: Thank you for the question, Commissioner Levy.

7373 I am going to ‑‑ since I only oversee the Canada and Australia businesses, given the breadth of the question on international regulation, I am going to pass that on to my colleague, Erin Langley, on the phone.

7374 MS. LANGLEY: Hi, and thank you for the question, Commissioner.

7375 In other jurisdictions, we’ve been having active conversations, as you allude to in your question, around these same topics. Many other regulators are grappling with the same questions. Canada would be the first outside of Europe that has passed legislation along the lines of your amendment to the Broadcasting Act, and so you are leading the charge in that regard.

7376 In Europe we have also been actively engaged with regulators on this topic, and it’s slightly different because we have the EU, and so we have a country of origin which requires us to comply with a country where we’re based, as compared to multiple regulatory regimes around Europe, but it’s similar to what Canada’s grappling with now.

7377 COMMISSIONER LEVY: I think I will leave it at that. Madam Chair, over to you. Thank you very much.

7378 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Commissioner Levy, and thank you to Amazon and all of you for being here today, it was much appreciated. Very interesting, enriched conversation, and we will probably have a series of follow‑up questions via RFI.

7379 But thank you very much and have a very good day.

7380 Madame la secrétaire.

7381 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. I now invite Screen Composers Guild of Canada to come to the presentation table.

7382 When you’re ready, please introduce yourself, and you may begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

7383 MR. ROWLEY: Madam Chair, Vice‑Chair, Commissioners, Commission Staff, thank you for having me this morning. My name is John Rowley and I’m pleased to appear before you today in my capacity as President of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada, or SCGC.

7384 SCGC is the national association certified under the Status of the Artist Act representing professional anglophone composers and music producers for audio‑visual media productions in Canada with more than 500 members across the country.

7385 During my 20‑plus year career I’ve worked as a composer and music supervisor on many Canadian productions including Pretty Hard Cases, Mary Kills People, Rookie Blue and Letterkenny. I’m currently the music supervisor on Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. Prior to entering the entertainment industry, I studied law, receiving my call to the Ontario bar in 2001.

7386 SCGC supports the Commission’s goal of fostering a fair and equitable commercial environment in which composers and other creators contribute to the policy goals and objectives of the Broadcasting Act. We submit that Canada’s anglophone screen composers face unique challenges in the Canadian broadcasting system. Before I describe those challenges, and offer some potential solutions, I should first explain why screen composers are themselves rather unique.

7387 To begin with, screen composers are co‑authors of the audio‑visual works for which they compose original music. We’re consequently first owners, co‑owners of those audio‑visual works under Canadian law.

7388 We’re also the authors, makers, and first owners of two separate and standalone suites of intellectual property, these being: i) the compositions; and, ii) the sound recordings comprising the original score for a program. These intellectual properties are separate and unique from the IP in the audio‑visual work and can generate significant royalties and other revenues on their own.

7389 To provide an example, SOCAN reported performance royalty distributions of over half a billion dollars in 2024, with roughly half of that amount earned by compositions used in audio‑visual productions.

7390 Screen composers have another distinguishing quality which is unique from other points‑earning key creators. As the producers of original AV soundtracks, we are independent producers within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act.

7391 As such, special considerations apply to the Commission’s regulation of screen composers, both in our capacity as musical copyright owners and as independent producers.

7392 Firstly, under section 10(1.1)(a), the Commission is directed to regulate in a manner which considers whether Canadians, including independent producers, have a right or interest in relation to a program, including copyright, that allows them to control and benefit in a significant and equitable manner from the exploitation of the program.

7393 And, secondly, under section 10(1.1)(d), the Commission is directed to consider the extent to which persons carrying on online undertakings or programming undertakings collaborate with independent Canadian producers, or with any other person involved in the Canadian program production industry, including Canadian owners of copyright in musical works or in sound recordings.

7394 In SCGC’s view, these provisions are key to the Commission’s consideration of the market dynamics affecting screen composers. Especially because it is all too common that Canadian screen composers find the significant revenues generated by their works accruing to the accounts of other stakeholders, especially the producers who engage them.

7395 This is because, unlike other points‑earning key creatives in the Canadian system, anglophone screen composers have no agreement with Canada’s audio‑visual producers. This is not for lack of asking. In fact, SCGC has been asking Canadian producers to negotiate a fair deal for over a decade.

7396 SCGC believes that screen composers deserve the protections of an independent production agreement, something which our fellow key creators long enjoyed. We believe the fact that we have been denied equal treatment for so long is a stain on the Canadian audio‑visual industry, and it’s time to fix this.

7397 On a positive note, CMPA has recently agreed to come to the negotiating table with SCGC. However, for now, a potential independent agreement stemming from these discussions remains a distant future possibility, and an agreement is by no means guaranteed.

7398 In the absence of an independent production agreement, the commissioning environment for screen composers remains a wild west where our members frequently face unfair, coercive, or predatory dynamics.

7399 SCGC’s 2023 Member Survey, which has been submitted to the public record in this proceeding, outlines several areas of concern.

7400 In particular: 70 per cent of respondents reported that they had been required to give up ownership of their music on Canadian audio‑visual productions; 26 per cent of respondents had been required to accept a full buyout of all future revenues as a condition of engagement by an independent Canadian producer; 44 per cent had been asked to work without any upfront fee; 24 per cent had been asked to share their writer’s share royalties with a non‑writing party; and, 74 per cent of those who were asked to do so believed that they would lose the work engagement if they refused to agree.

7401 SCGC is also concerned by producers’ frequent attempts to undermine our intellectual property rights by including US‑style “work made for hire” or Canadian “work made in the course of employment language” in our composer agreements.

7402 We’re similarly concerned that our members are frequently denied the right to collect reproduction rights royalties under their agreements. Preventing composers from participating in significant revenues, which are routinely collected in many territories, is unreasonable.

7403 Finally, SCGC is concerned that some of our members have been asked to renounce their membership in collective management societies such as SOCAN in order to secure an engagement.

7404 Many of the questions in the Notice of Consultation focus on the challenging dynamics between broadcasters, BDUs and streamers. But this begins the analysis halfway up the value chain. To ensure a sound and sustainable Canadian broadcasting system, the Commission must require fair dynamics from the ground up, rather than from the midpoint. Our Canadian industry is built on underlying intellectual property, and this is where equitable market dynamics must begin.

7405 The Commission should therefore consider the relationships between the authors who create the IP and the media producers who engage them. This is the foundational relationship within the regulated marketplace because the chain of title for audio‑visual IP begins with authors and creators.

7406 For Canada’s anglophone screen composers, the relationship is currently flawed due to a significant imbalance of bargaining power. SCGC submits that regulatory support is needed to ensure that the disposition of the legal property of composers and related revenues is equitable and consistent with Canadian law. SCGC believes there are several ways in which the Commission could effectively do so.

7407 First, SCGC proposes that the Commission should consider adding a requirement under the certification framework that all key creative point‑earners must be engaged via independent production agreements.

7408 The Commission should also consider imposing conditions on regulated audio‑visual production funds requiring that ownership of the intellectual property in funded productions, including ownership of the original score, be retained by Canadians.

7409 SCGC also supports the imposition of requirements on production funds that, as a condition of eligibility, applicants must be in good standing with relevant guilds and unions. We note that the Canada Media Fund has already implemented such a requirement under section 3.1(c) of its Linear Content Programs, Core Development and Predevelopment Guidelines for 2024‑2025.

7410 The guidelines provide that applicants must be in good standing with all applicable talent and industry associations and guilds in order to be eligible to receive funding. We submit the Commission should require all funds receiving mandated contributions to implement similar eligibility requirements.

7411 SCGC also supports CMPA’s call for a code of practice. SCGC believes a code of practice is necessary to protect the rights and revenue participations of Canadian audio‑visual producers and screen composers alike. This code of practice should recognize screen composers both as independent producers and as first co‑owners of the audio‑visual works they score. The code should protect composers from forced assignment of their legal property as a condition of engagement.

7412 It follows that the code of practice should require audio‑visual producers to negotiate and conclude independent production agreements with the guilds and unions representing key creatives, including screen composers. It should also require that these agreements are actually used when contracting key creatives for Canadian productions.

7413 Finally, it should include measures protecting creators from the imposition of foreign laws in their agreements, particularly where foreign doctrines are antithetical to the legal property and moral rights provided to authors and makers under Canadian law.

7414 SCGC thanks the Commission for the opportunity to share its views in this important proceeding, and I look forward to your questions.

7415 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Rowley. Good morning to you, it’s nice to see you again. Thank you for your presentation. You do raise in your presentation a series of issues which, in some respects, may overlap with what is being discussed in other proceedings held by the Commission, including the one on CanCon.

7416 You do emphasize heavily the issue of copyright which is also, as you know, guided by a related, although distinct, legal framework. And so my questions will not specifically touch on our rights framework. That’s for another discussion that will probably not involve me.

7417 So I’ll take a step back and maybe pivot to, you know, the broader issues we’re trying to address in this particular proceeding, which focus on the dynamics between the smaller and the larger player in the broadcasting system, among other issues. And I’ll have a couple of questions on data as well later on.

7418 So you say in your submission that the fact that there’s a whole bunch of new players in the Canadian broadcasting system has created some power imbalances that affect the participation of independent producers, creators, certainly screen composers, and various artists.

7419 What do you think is the number one priority that the Commission should address in order to rebalance those relationships?

7420 MR. ROWLEY: Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. It seems to me that the focus of the Notice of Consultation across its many questions is on questions of undue preference and unreasonable commercial arrangements.

7421 So whether it’s looking at the very big fish and their relationships with the medium‑size fish or the medium‑size fish and their relationships with the smaller fish, such as the suppliers, the key creatives, concepts that exist already in the wholesale code and the broadcast distribution regulations speak to those issues of the Commission’s distaste for unreasonable commercial arrangements and notions of, you know, underpayment for rights, et cetera, and also undue preferences or disadvantages being imposed on players.

7422 So, you know, I think in the context of all of the phases of this implementation of the new Broadcasting Act and the disruption brought about by the new players in the system, Canada’s independent producers are working for Canadian broadcasters and BDUs, but they’re also now working for the online streamers who have come from other countries.

7423 So part of our concern is that unfavourable, unreasonable terms may be imposed via independent Canadian producers at the request of online streamers. So we know anecdotally and from our own members that, you know, there may be requirements or strong suggestion in the negotiation that a composer must agree to work for hire, for example.

7424 Now, a composer I suppose has the right to say no and walk away from the project, but that may mean that they are off the list for that particular streamer, and that the streamers may prefer, give preference to producers who assure them that the rights that they deliver on the music front will be work made for hire and therefore there is no author, the author is the engager.

7425 So, in that way, we see the imposition, potential imposition, of foreign doctrines which are really antithetical to Canadian legal rights and property law, avoiding the copyright. But really, when we’re talking about copyright we’re talking about legal property, this legal property that our law assures to creators.

7426 If undue preference and disadvantage leads to the exclusion of composers and other creators who say, yes, I would like to have the rights that my country’s law provides to me, if they are disadvantaged or excluded going forward or, indeed if we look at the previous phase well, you know, there are many routes to certification without using post‑production personnel and those pesky composers always saying they would like to retain ownership of their property. But then we just won’t ‑‑ we won’t use them, because we don’t need to.

7427 So that, we feel, would be a regulatory failure if it turns out five years from now, under the new system, post‑production is all going back to the country of origin and we’re effectively just a foreign service production industry under the Canadian, the new Canadian certification rules. That seems to us that that would not be an ideal result and wouldn’t achieve the policy goals set out in the Act.

7428 THE CHAIRPERSON: So you're asking that the CRTC steps in and, in a sense, dictates the commercial negotiation that takes place between, for instance, the producers and the content owners, whether they’re screen ‑‑ in your case it’s screen composers, and so there will be a two‑layer set of requirements; one placed on the producers, but then on the online platforms when they acquire content from the producers? Is that what you’re proposing?

7429 MR. ROWLEY: I think there are various options available to the Commission, one is the code of practice. And I think, you know, I watched CMPA’s presentation yesterday. I think they’re not asking the Commission to negotiate that for them. I think they would like the suggestion of certain guardrails and principles.

7430 I think they’ve set out a number of them in their intervention. They’ve urged the CRTC to extend undue preference and dispute resolution rules to online services. A code of practice should cover ensuring rights retention, defining licence terms, mandate revenue sharing, require disclosure of key performance data.

7431 But, in their response yesterday, I think they were suggesting rather the Commission should put the parties to that task of negotiating with some certain guiding principles. I think that’s one potential route. And, yes, we do see ourselves as part of that conversation because we do co‑own the audio‑visual works, the legal rights and those audio‑visual works.

7432 But some of the other potential solutions that I’ve outlined in my oral remarks today are things that I think the Commission could do that are more discreet and, in many ways, could be just as effective.

7433 If the Commission were to impose certain requirements on the funding bodies receiving mandated funds, such as, okay, so you’re going to fund a production. Well, it seems only fair that nine out of the 10 current points earners are engaged via independent production agreements. Let’s make it so that all of them have to.

7434 CMF, the Canada Media Fund, as I reference, does have a requirement that applicants must be in good standing with all relevant guilds and unions in order to be eligible. While in SCGC’s view, it’s hard to say that anybody, any of the producers at the moment, are in good standing with us given their intransigence over the last decade in coming to the table. We’re grateful that they’re coming to the table now, we’re very hopeful that we’ll come to an agreement.

7435 But in the meantime, highly valuable intellectual property will continue to be taken simply because it can be. As CMPA said yesterday, they’re concerned about rights grabs. Well, we’re concerned about rights grabs too. This is highly valuable property. And so that kind of imposition across all of the funding bodies receiving mandated funds we think would be highly useful.

7436 Our intention is to negotiate in good faith and get to an agreement, and we’re not going to press the issue, for now, of whether anybody’s in good standing with us because, you know, we’re acting in good faith and we want to do what’s best for our members, and we don’t want to hurt the industry at large. There’s no benefit to anybody in that.

7437 So I think those kinds of measures could be very useful and certainly more discreet, and certainly less onerous on the Commission to take some of those steps.

7438 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you for this. I’ll have one last question, and I believe that a colleague of mine has a question as well.

7439 On data, could you talk to us a little bit about, you know, the challenges you face in acquiring data that allows you to get a sense of where your own audiences are? Is this an issue? Have you been in conversations with either the BDUs or the online platform in acquiring certain types of data? Have you been successful?

7440 Just to get a sense of, you know, where that ‑‑ I think it’s an important issue, it certainly has been one that’s been raised numerous times since the beginning of this hearing. Trying to get a sense as to whether this is an issue for you, and what should we be thinking about in trying to fill the apparent data gap that’s been brought to our attention by many?

7441 MR. ROWLEY: Thank you very much. So in Phase 2, we did outline certain data points that we would like to see, really mostly to the tracking of which key creatives are used.

7442 In the context of this hearing, composers are entrepreneurs and business people, and we have a number of private services that we use to track our performances around the world because it’s in our best interest to do so. We act as our own publishers for the most part, even when we’ve had to give up those certain rights because we are participating as writers as well in those royalty streams.

7443 So I use a tracking service which shows all terrestrial performances which are logged around the world.

7444 Tracking digital performances are much trickier; we rely on our collective management organizations, and the data that they receive from the streaming services, particularly audio‑visual in the context of screen composers. And, you know, we trust that it’s reliable, but there’s an opaqueness to it.

7445 So when you are a member of SOCAN you get very detailed data on your performances on say Netflix or on Amazon, Prime Video or Disney, for the Canadian performances.

7446 What we don't have as much clarity on is when that Canadian show plays on a foreign streaming service. Detailed data is provided to the foreign CMO. It's then aggregated, and it comes back to SOCAN, but it doesn't have the same level of detail that we would have received. So if you have some publisher, if you are a large distribution undertaking that has taken ownership, they would have several publishers in all those regions, and they would have very detailed accounts of the number of clicks et cetera that shows are getting.

7447 We don't really have that level of detail. When my show that I composed plays in France, et cetera, I just get a monetary amount and the period that it's being paid for. I don't know ‑‑ there's no way to measure the accuracy of those clicks. We just have to rely on data that has gone through a number of bodies before it gets to us.

7448 THE CHAIRPERSON: Which is different than the data you're getting from SOCAN.

7449 MR. ROWLEY: It is. The data we get from SOCAN is extremely detailed. It shows us the date of the performance, you know, how many times it was performed, et cetera.

7450 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

7451 I'll turn things over to my colleague Commissioner Abramson, who has a question. Thank you.

7452 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thank you. Thanks for being here today.

7453 Yesterday, CMPA appeared before us, and you saw me emphasize the importance of ensuring that the issues raised in this proceeding are distinct to this proceeding and not those that are already before the Commission in another proceeding. Which of the issues you've raised here are already before us in another proceeding?

7454 MR. ROWLEY: Thank you, Commissioner Abramson. Our submission in the previous phase was primarily focused on the ‑‑

7455 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Sorry, when you say “the previous phase,” do you mean the previous phase of this proceeding?

7456 MR. ROWLEY: Sorry, of 2024‑288.

7457 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: So that is not a previous phase. That is a different proceeding.

7458 MR. ROWLEY: Okay. So do you mean in a previous proceeding?

7459 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: I'd like to know what unique issues are before us in this proceeding from you.

7460 MR. ROWLEY: The unique issues in this proceeding are focused on the Code of Practice and on steps that the Commission could take to protect rights for our IP via conditions on the funding bodies.

7461 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Okay, thank you. So I'll focus on that a little bit. Why do we have jurisdiction to use a Code of Practice or to apply undue preference to step into the relations between producers and screen composers? Isn't that a copyright issue?

7462 MR. ROWLEY: Well, I refer back to sections of the Broadcasting Act that I note ‑‑

7463 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: So you cited in your presentation paragraphs 10(1.1)(a) and (d) as being key to our consideration of market dynamics. But those paragraphs are very specific. They relate only to regulations we make defining a Canadian program. That's why they're in the Act. They don't relate to other activities like the topic of this proceeding.

7464 MR. ROWLEY: Yes, absolutely. I think the reason that we feel it's important to respond to in particular question 5 in this Notice of Consultation is to share our perspective on how the market dynamics between the larger players, broadcasters, streamers, and the medium players has a trickle‑down effect to the key creatives. And those are the points that we've been trying to make.

7465 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Is there anything you would like us to do that we have the power to do?

7466 MR. ROWLEY: It's my understanding that the Commission does have the ability to impose certain requirements that go along with the mandated funding that goes to the funding bodies.

7467 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Okay, it sounds like something that's for another proceeding. Those are my questions, Madam Chair.

7468 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Commissioner Abramson.

7469 And thank you, Mr. Rowley, for being with us today. It was a great presentation, and we appreciate your participation. Thank you so much.

7470 MR. ROWLEY: Thank you so much.

7471 THE CHAIRPERSON: Madame la secrétaire?

7472 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

7473 We will take a break and resume at 10:50. Thank you.

‑‑‑ Suspension à 10 h 41

‑‑‑ Reprise à 10 h 52

7474 THE SECRETARY: Welcome back. During the hearing, a message will be made through our audio system here in the building which will last about five minutes. If it starts during the discussion, we will wait for the announcement to be over to continue.

7475 Please note that Documentary Organization of Canada, scheduled to present next per the agenda, will be appearing as the eighth intervenor of the day.

7476 And now we will hear the presentations of the next three intervenors on the agenda, who will be appearing as a panel. We will hear each presentation, which will then be followed by questions by the Panel to all participants. We will start with the presentation of LITS, then CHEK Media Group, and finally Channel Zero Inc.

7477 When you are ready, please introduce your respective panel members, and you may begin your presentations. Thank you.

Présentation

7478 MR. MILLAR: Madam Chair, Vice‑Chair, Commissioners, staff, good morning. Thank you for inviting such a strong contingent of the Local Independent Television Stations, or LITS, to appear before you in this proceeding and for giving us the honour ‑‑ at least I think it's an honour ‑‑ of appearing on one of the last days of the proceeding.

7479 My name is Cal Millar. My day job is president and COO of Channel Zero, proud owner and operator of CHCH Hamilton. Today, however, I appear before you as chair of LITS, and I leave my colleagues on my far left, who you will meet later on, to speak for Channel Zero. With me, also representing LITS, is Robert Ranger, président et chef de la direction of RNC Media, and Peter Miller counsel for LITS.

7480 On the far right are Rob Germain, CEO of CHEK Media, who will introduce the members of his team a little bit later. The next panel, which Robert is also on, will feature each of our francophone members, Télé Inter‑Rives and RNC Media. All the independent station groups appear here both in their own right and collectively as members of LITS.

7481 I want to say at the outset that LITS have always sought to work together in a spirit of compromise for the common good. We operate in very different markets ‑‑ English, French; large, small ‑‑ we share the same passion for serving our communities.

7482 M. RANGER : Malheureusement, au cours des derniers mois, la fermeture de trois stations a mis en évidence les défis majeurs auxquels sont confrontées les petites stations indépendantes. Ces fermetures sont révélatrices et préoccupantes pour nous tous.

7483 Et ce, malgré le soutien du Fonds pour les nouvelles locales indépendantes (FNLI) et la perspective d’un financement accru ou élargi. Le maintien en opération de ces stations était devenu économiquement intenable. Le déclin des revenus publicitaires était tout simplement insurmontable. Pour être francs, il nous a fallu trop de temps pour en arriver là, là à ce moment où il devient impératif d’exiger des plateformes étrangères, qui captent désormais une part importante des revenus canadiens, qu’elles contribuent elles aussi, en particulier à soutenir les fournisseurs de nouvelles locales qu’elles ont considérablement fragilisés.

7484 Cette vulnérabilité a été aggravée par votre récente décision dans le cadre du réexamen du FNLI. Nous avons accueilli favorablement votre décision antérieure d’obliger les entreprises audiovisuelles en ligne à consacrer 1.5 pour cent de leur contribution de base au FNLI. Et nous appuyons également votre décision subséquente de permettre aux stations de Corus d’avoir accès au FNLI, à la lumière de ces nouvelles contributions. Cependant, cette décision pourrait être interprétée comme autorisant Corus à recevoir des versements du FNLI avant même que les contributions des plateformes ne commencent à être versées.

7485 Déclarer Corus admissible uniquement à compter du moment où les contributions des plateformes commenceront à affluer permettrait de préserver le statu quo pendant les quatre à six prochains mois, et garantirait que l’entrée de Corus ne nuise pas aux bénéficiaires actuels du FNLI.

7486 En revanche, si Corus devient admissible dès la date de votre décision, les plus grandes STLI verront leurs versements du FNLI diminuer d’environ 25 pour cent, tandis que les plus petites, comme RNC MEDIA, Télé Inter‑Rives, Miracle Channel, verront leurs contributions coupées de 50 pour cent et plus, jusqu’à ce que les contributions des plateformes commencent à être versées.

7487 Il faut également rappeler que l’horizon de quatre à six mois pourrait s’avérer trop optimiste.

7488 Tout cela s’ajoute au fait que, en dollars constants, les STLI ont subi une réduction de financement de plus de 30 pour cent depuis la création de ce fonds.

7489 Bien que vous puissiez croire qu’un financement réduit pendant quatre à six mois est surmontable, je suis ici pour vous dire que, pour un grand nombre d’entre nous, ce n’est tout simplement pas le cas. Cette décision entraînera des réductions de personnel et aura fort probablement un impact négatif sur les heures de production de nouvelles dans nos différents marchés, et ce, dès cet automne.

7490 Je vais céder la parole à Cal, qui abordera les enjeux clés pour les STLI dans le cadre de cette instance.

7491 Merci.

7492 MR. MILLAR: While some of the streamers argue that supporting broadcasters is looking to the past, I can tell you unequivocally that we are focused on the future. Whether traditional television is in transition to an all‑online environment, or whether we are close to a more stable BDU‑online hybrid, all LITS are striving to be there for our audiences however they choose to consume content. Local news is pivotal to that strategy.

7493 It is in this light that we want to comment on two proposals we have put forth to provide ongoing support for local broadcasters in general and LITS in particular. First, our proposal that BDU‑like online undertakings have obligations to provide priority carriage of news‑producing local conventional TV stations. And while this proposal has received support from many Canadian stakeholders, foreign streamers have variously argued that it is unnecessary, unworkable, or “unsuited” to online undertakings. We fundamentally disagree.

7494 So, if I may, I'd like to take us on a bit of a short road trip. Some of you might remember an advertisement from the 1980s ‑‑ some of you may not ‑‑ but it talked about ABC detergent soap versus the national brands. And the point was I can't see a difference, can you see the difference?

7495 So up on the screen, I show you the Rogers Xfinity TV guide, the Bell Satellite TV guide, the Shaw Direct TV guide, the Cogeco TV guide, the Roku TV guide, the Samsung TV guide, the Fire TV TV guide, the LG TV guide. I can't see the difference. Can you see the difference?

7496 So let me find my spot, now. You see how they all look essentially the same, in fact, basically identical. The online versions are clearly undertakings that are “similar” to BDUs, the test under 9.1(1)(i) of the Act.

7497 The second proposal we wish to elaborate on is our proposal that the Commission designate LITS as of exceptional importance pursuant to subsection 11.1(1)(b.1) of the Act. We are pleased that Friends of Canadian Media and Unifor have supported this proposal. We all know that local news is a public policy priority, it is at risk, and that independent television providers of local news are among the most at risk.

7498 Deeming LITS of exceptional importance would be an acknowledgement of this reality, open the door to potential new online undertaking contributions, and also incent the implementation of discoverability measures to reduce otherwise higher mandatory financial contributions.

7499 Thank you again, and over to Rob Germain at CHEK.

Présentation

7500 MR. GERMAIN: Thank you, Cal.

7501 Good morning Vice‑Chairs, Commissioners, and Commission staff. My name is Rob Germain, general manager of CHEK Media Group. With me today are Joe Perkins, our News director, and Rita Cugini, our regulatory advisor. We're proud to represent CHEK, Canada's only independent, employee‑owned television station, serving Vancouver Island for nearly 70 years.

7502 Commissioner Levy noted that this is a once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity, and we agree. The decisions made at this proceeding will shape the future of Canadian broadcasting and Canadian cultural sovereignty for decades to come.

7503 CHEK strongly supports the LITS intervention and its call to recognize licensed independent stations as services of exceptional importance. The amended Broadcasting Act makes it clear: independent broadcasters must continue to play a vital role in the system.

7504 When CHEK became independent 16 years ago, we knew we had a challenge going up against vertically integrated network affiliates in our market. Now we must also directly compete against global streaming giants for both audience attention and advertising dollars. These services command resources, control algorithms and increasingly dictate discoverability as Canadians cut the cord.

7505 MR. PERKINS: So what has been our response? Our response has been to innovate. CHEK has worked to build a strong multi‑media presence by expanding our digital newsroom ‑‑ from one employee a few years ago, we have five today. We've launched podcasts and we're building a very strong social following.

7506 CHEK's YouTube and TikTok pages get millions of views every month. Until Meta cut off all Canadian news outlets, CHEK had the highest Facebook following on Vancouver Island. And to reach cord cutters and young people who don't subscribe to cable, we launched a free streaming service called CHEK+. And instead of me telling you about CHEK+, we thought that we would show you with a short video.

‑‑‑ Présentation vidéo

7507 So that gives you a taste of CHEK+. We're quite proud of it. On Vancouver Island, when people ask about it, I say it's, you know, our version of Netflix but it's all local and it's all free, and that usually gets their attention.

7508 The reality is, though, despite all the work and the money that we put into CHEK+, CHEK+ averages 12,000 users a day, and that is still only a fraction of the reach of our traditional TV audience. CHEK reaches 200,000 viewers per day for our suppertime newscast alone on television.

7509 That gap speaks to the fundamental issue of discoverability. Without regulatory action to ensure prominence on digital platforms, Canadian content and journalism risk being buried, while foreign programming dominates the digital shelf space.

7510 This isn't just about market share. It's about national identity and public trust. In an era where disinformation spreads easily online, trusted local journalism is more important than ever. Canadians need access to local, reliable news, especially in times of crisis. CHEK delivers that every day, from wildfire coverage to election nights to health briefings ‑‑ news by and for our community.

7511 MR. GERMAIN: We urge the Commission to extend priority carriage obligations to virtual BDUs. Canadian services like CHEK+ must be clearly visible on connected devices, not hidden behind paywalls or algorithmic bias.

7512 Looking forward, we also call for a made‑in‑Canada digital solution: a unified platform built to include public, private, and independent broadcasters; a free basic service with tiers for premium content, including foreign streaming options; a smart guide that surfaces Canadian voices and local, regional, and national events of importance; transparent metrics; equal access to ad tech; and potentially ATSC 3.0 technology to deliver 4K HDR over‑the‑air content and local licensed services.

7513 Canada has the talent, the infrastructure, and the regulatory foundation to lead. Let's seize this once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity, not just to preserve what we've built, but to shape a future where Canadian content thrives, Canadian voices are heard, and Canadian communities come together.

7514 Thank you, and we welcome your questions, but first, I'll pass it on to Greg O'Brien at Channel Zero.

Présentation

7515 MR. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Rob.

7516 Madam Chair, Vice‑Chairs, Commissioners, and staff, good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. My name is Greg O'Brien, and I am the head of news for Channel Zero's Hamilton‑based independent TV station, CHCH. With me today is Amanda Oye, who is part of our business affairs team, and, as you already know, Channel Zero's president, Cal Millar, here in his capacity as chair of LITS.

7517 Channel Zero's linear station provides irrefutable proof of the power and importance of local broadcasting, and in particular of local television news. We bought the station from CanWest in 2009. It was nearing extinction then, but we saw there was potential to revive it by emphasizing local news and public affairs programming.

7518 We have built CHCH up to be the number‑one‑rated news station for viewers in Hamilton, Halton, Niagara, Brant, and Six Nations. To accomplish this, we give local news pride of place on our schedule, while simultaneously adapting to the rapid pace of change in our industry. This included relaunching our website, CHCH.com, which we have been continually improving and making more accessible; offering a live stream on YouTube and on our website; producing newsletters, podcasts, including Newsmakers, Trending Now, Sportsline, and Morning Live; and building a strong social media presence.

7519 CHCH had the most watched local federal election show on linear television in our region by far this past April, with a 51,000 average minute audience, and we were the third most watched across Numeris' Toronto/Hamilton market with an average minute audience of 108,000. This nearly six‑hour live production was also streamed online. Our online audience watched in excess of 30,000 hours on election night alone. We had over 100,000 users visit our website, including over 32,500 who viewed our interactive election map.

7520 We believe our local news driven by our strong local team is more important now than ever before. While other sources of news have cut back, we have been able to increase both the quality and the quantity of our coverage. Residents of Hamilton, Halton, Niagara, Brant, and Six Nations find us exceptionally important and increasingly turn to us to know what is happening in their community and to understand current events.

7521 The scope and strength of our local news coverage has been made possible by the ILNF and our willingness to embrace change and innovate.

7522 In February of this year, we launched an OTT platform called Parrot TV, which prioritizes live, local programming. While our initial launch has focused on CHCH's service area, we are working on turning Parrot TV into the online home for local channels across the country. We hope to have an opportunity to tell you more about that later.

7523 MS. OYE: We are excited about the opportunities that the Internet provides, but the reality is the challenges that we face as a small independent Canadian broadcaster are significant. We remain fully prepared to play our role in meeting the Canadian programming objectives of the Act. But we do need an updated regulatory framework, one that better balances regulatory burden and support for Canadian broadcasters, introduces better safeguards against anti‑competitive behaviour, and places equitable obligations on foreign online undertakings.

7524 To this end, Channel Zero supports the LITS proposal to deem LITS, like CHCH‑TV, as services of exceptional importance, thereby increasing options for support, and to introduce priority carriage obligations for local conventional TV stations on BDU‑like online undertakings. Without priority carriage, local broadcasters will continue to lose access to audiences and revenues as viewing habits continue to change.

7525 Additionally, we want to stress the importance of clearly defining good‑faith negotiations, as advocated for by IBG and LITS. Gaining carriage on online platforms is a huge obstacle; negotiating fair terms as an independent broadcaster with no leverage is even harder. As such, we need the Commission to clearly define what would constitute good faith in negotiations between LITS and online undertakings. Such a definition should support the policy objectives set out in the Broadcasting Act and should, among other things, prohibit online undertakings from charging access fees and requiring advertising revenue shares from LITS.

7526 Along similar lines, we also need the Commission to update the undue preference framework, both to reflect the new test of “unreasonable” and apply it to the online distribution environment, as proposed by both LITS and IBG.

7527 Such measures would provide essential checks and balances against anti‑competitive behaviour and go a long way to supporting the sustainability of independent broadcasters and the policy objectives of the Act.

7528 Thank you. We look forward to any questions you might have.

7529 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much and good morning to you all. Very happy to have all of you in front of us this morning. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and I'm going to be leading the questions this morning. But I'm going to start with questions about the situation you are in right now, and then I'll turn to what you would like to see happening moving forward.

7530 One of the things we're trying to understand through this particular hearing is the type of challenges that you currently face, the dynamics, of course, between smaller and bigger players.

7531 So what we’ve heard some intervenors say in the past few weeks is that the fair partnership between the smaller players and with BDUs is broken. Is that your experience, and what could be done by the Commission to bring fairness back into that particular relationship?

7532 I know you’ve alluded to some specific things in regard to, you know, undue preference and the Wholesale Code, but just I wanted to take a step back and get a broader diagnostic from all of you on how things are going with BDUs.

7533 MR. MILLAR: Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. I’ll lead it and because we’re working together, I’ll try to pass it along.

7534 Channel Zero has had ‑‑ we’re celebrating our 25th year in operation this year, and so to encapsulate that, the relationships with BDUs have gone up and down over the years as regimes change, as people come and go from BDUs, and it’s entirely an individualized situation in our case.

7535 The ‑‑ I would say that the larger the entities are, generally the harder they are to get their attention for a small player, and that’s just a given, and that’s amplified in the online space.

7536 More recently, with the assistance of the Wholesale Code, the provisions around the number of independent services that have to be carried, it has given us an element of leverage in the negotiations. Maybe not ‑‑ certainly not a club, but a feather with which to tickle our partners to coerce them towards a deal. And that has been better.

7537 But you know, in evolving the system, we would be looking to you to not take away those very things that have been in place now for a few years that have helped to level the playing field a little bit.

7538 So that’s it for Channel Zero. Rob, did you want to ‑‑ and Robert.

7539 MR. GERMAIN: One thing that was in our intervention was the loss of four plus one compensation, which was significant for us, and we buy rights to programming for British Columbia. Those programs are served earlier in the day on BDUs from Detroit and back east signals without any blackouts or anything like that, and so it’s a significant issue. We’ve raised it with the Commission before, but so far we’ve not been able to resolve it at all.

7540 MR. RANGER: We have the same issue with the four plus one. On a la même problématique avec le quatre plus un. Nous, c’est un petit peu différent parce que les BDU, c’est aussi nos affiliées, c’est aussi nos têtes de réseau. Alors, on doit être très prudents dans nos commentaires et négociations.

7541 LE PRÉSIDENT : Je comprends. Merci beaucoup.

7542 And have you engaged in negotiations with online BDUs? Is it different? Are you facing the same type of challenges?

7543 MR. MILLAR: I'll take this again, or lead off.

7544 The outcomes may be similar, but the approaches are different. We heard Amazon today speak about the fact that, you know, they don’t see themselves as a BDU even though they acknowledge carrying 39 third‑party services and redistributing them. But we ‑‑ they talked about not having the right to carry over‑the‑air channels for free.

7545 In our discussions with most of the online BDUs or online streaming services that look like BDUs, there’s an automatic discussion about fees to get on the service. There’s an automatic expectation that we’re going to be sharing revenue.

7546 Of course, these things are completely precluded in the existing BDU regulations. So while we deliver the over‑the‑air signals to existing BDUs for free, we get mandatory carriage, we get prominence, we get no fees, we get no deductions from our advertising. And so those are the major hurdles that we come up against when dealing with the online services.

7547 Often they’re also asking us to create a bundle of our own and, again, for a stand‑alone local station we also, as you know, have specialty services that specialize in movies. There’s not a lot of synergy, so a bundle created by Channel Zero has very little utility for a consumer and so, again, just challenges.

7548 And like Robert, I’m careful to not names at this time if it’s all right because we’re already in active conversations with them, but we’re hoping that the ‑‑ as a result of this hearing, we will be given maybe a feather to use with the online BDUs.

7549 THE CHAIRPERSON: I don't want to put you in an awkward position, but it would be useful for us to get a sense of what a conversation around prominence with an online BDU looks like because we’ve been ‑‑ you know, we’ve been having some intervenors say that it’s all a matter of consumer choice. So without naming anybody, it would be useful for us to get a sense of, you know, how it’s being approached, what are the sticking points, are we talking about a real negotiation, is there some, you know, monetary trade‑offs that take place when you’re discussing both discoverability and prominence.

7550 MR. MILLER: So if I can start from a general matter, as between BDUs and online distributors, it is a world of different from a LITS perspective. Obviously, we have priority carriage on BDUs. There are negotiations ‑‑ there are no negotiations necessary from a perspective of distribution.

7551 While we’ve lost the old channel 2 to 13 prominence, local stations are grouped together. Relatively speaking, they’re relatively easy to find on the TV guide.

7552 Go to the online environment, let’s talk about the intervenor that appeared this morning, Amazon Prime. We didn’t have a slide of them, but you’ll see they also have a live TV service where they have multiple global and city TV stations.

7553 I think from a LITS perspective, the evidence is in the pudding, if I can give you a malapropism, in that no LITS are carried by Amazon. Because we’re small entities, for them they would be complicated individual negotiations, so while they have deals with the major broadcasters, there’s been no approaches that I’m aware of in talking to all of our group and no deals signed.

7554 Now, that could certainly change going forward, but when you go from a position of having a mandated priority carriage to a position of nothing, you can appreciate that these stations have minimal leverage and, as I said, no one is carried by Amazon as an example. In fact, no one is carried by any of those, if you will ‑‑ if I can draw a distinction, no one’s carried by any of the online BDU‑like services. Obviously, there are apps that are available on certain devices from certain players, including, of course, CHEK+, but in terms of carriage of entire signals, to the best of my knowledge, no one in the LITS group has any such arrangement.

7555 THE CHAIRPERSON: Maybe that's a segue to my next question on connected devices.

7556 I would be interested to know a little bit of your experience with CHEK+. You know, what has been the conversation that led to CHEK+ being on some devices and what were the sticking points and ‑‑ again, I understand you may be ‑‑ you may want to be careful, but just to give us a sense of what’s going on in that dynamic.

7557 MR. GERMAIN: We realize that we need to be where the audiences are, and so many of our audiences are no longer on cable, and so we’ve created CHEK+ to reach them. Of course, we have to have ‑‑ pay for apps to be on each platform. That’s very expensive. The bandwidth is expensive, the technology is, itself, just costly. It’s not making money for us, but it is expanding our reach and, hopefully, future‑proofing us as younger people become aware of our brand. It ‑‑

7558 THE CHAIRPERSON: So has prominence and discoverability of your app been an item for discussion and ‑‑

7559 MR. GERMAIN: Discoverability is a challenge. Discoverability is certainly a challenge. The only ‑‑ you know, it’s up to market it and we don’t have large dollars to market it, so we’re marketing mostly on our own channels and our website and our social platforms and our television station. But we’re really preaching to the converted there. They’re already watching CHEK.

7560 And the only way to get our app on the home page on these platforms is to pay for it to be there, and we don’t have the resources to do that.

7561 MR. PERKINS: And if you’re on Fire TV or Roku and you don’t have CHEK+, I don’t think ‑‑ and you didn’t know about CHEK+, you’d never know about CHEK+. It’s not going to pop up and show you, hey, you could get this. So it’s really on us.

7562 And we’re doing everything we can to try to get people, cord cutters, to download and watch CHEK+ but, as I said earlier, it’s really ‑‑ it’s a struggle. You know, 12,000 daily users right now, it’s not much. We’re trying to get that number up, but it’s really hard.

7563 And the one other thing that should be brought up is the fees that we pay, the monthly fees, to be on all the different platforms like Roku and Apple TV and Fire TV, it’s a significant cost, a monthly cost. Not directly to them, but to our third‑party companies that help us do this work that we don’t really know how to do internally. We have to hire someone to help us do it. But that’s a significant cost and almost to the point where we actually eliminated a couple of the areas or platforms that weren’t getting much traction just because we didn’t want to continue paying the monthly fees to keep that going.

7564 THE CHAIRPERSON: But the fee that you're paying, how is that value established; do you know? It’s based on what? When you get the bill, do you know what it’s based on, and how do you measure success? How do you see that value, whether, you know, either diminishing, augmenting, how do you react as a business to what is being presented to you as a fee to be able to get on those devices on the home page, at least?

7565 MR. PERKINS: Rob, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a developer fee. Like to get on, you know, Apple TV, there’s a developer fee. But the largest fee is the monthly fees to the third parties that actually maintain the apps and keep them going.

7566 In terms of whether we ‑‑ you know, the strength and how we, you know, identify what’s working and what’s not, I mean, we do ‑‑ there are some analytics that we get from the third parties and, you know, that led to our decision of which apps to keep and which ones to eliminate because we knew there were more people using CHEK+ on, say, Roku than on LG, for example.

7567 To date, CHEK+ is mostly used just online going to CHEK+.ca. You know, that’s about nine to 10 thousand people there, and then the rest, couple thousand, are with Apple, Roku and the rest.

7568 So it’s ‑‑ you know, we do have some more work to do. We try really hard to promote it and tell people. You know, almost every night in our newscast, we tell people you can watch for free on CHEK+ and still, every day, we have conversations and people don’t know about it. Maybe that’s ‑‑ maybe we need to be working harder, but I also think it speaks to just the marketplace and people are on so many other devices and platforms that it’s really hard to break through.

7569 THE CHAIRPERSON: I don't know if you wanted to add anything with respect to your own experiences in dealing or not with connecting devices.

7570 MR. MILLAR: No, I would. Thank you, Madam Chair.

7571 If I could distinguish a little bit between discretionary services and local television stations, the ‑‑ certainly with discoverability and the requirements that the online BDUs have raised with us have typically centred on their interest in getting specialty channels. And to try to go back to your very first question, which was round discoverability, we’ve been told essentially ‑‑ I’m trying to modify my terminology or it’ll give away the party that ‑‑ we were told unequivocally that, you know, you ‑‑ there will be a one‑time fee and there is a monthly fee and then ‑‑ and that gets us nothing in terms of discoverability.

7572 We also have to conform to a 35 percent revenue share of our advertising that we sell and they sell, if they sell it for us. There are various models. And then there’s a pay‑to‑play for promotion.

7573 And to be honest with you, I can’ tell you how much that is because the conversation was going nowhere at the first and second levels of costs to be put an on individual service.

7574 THE CHAIRPERSON: Do you know how that fee is established?

7575 MR. MILLAR: I would say that you’ve got a great degree of market dominance by all of the foreign players and the fee is set. It does seem to vary across ‑‑ apart from them, but no market information and it is just a “here’s the price, take it or leave it”. Very much like the contracts.

7576 You know, typically with the BDUs who know they want to have to or have an imperative to carry Canadian services, negotiations can go on for quite a while, as you’re well aware, but there’s give and take on both sides and, eventually, we both arrive at an agreement perhaps we both dislike equally, but we can live with or we both like.

7577 That’s just not the case with online undertakings. They are very much ‑‑ sorry to pick on Amazon, but they were just here and I made notes this morning. They talked about this being an open market. They talked about it being an open market now and I would say that’s really the problem, is it’s open for them. It’s not really open to us. There’s such an imbalance in the negotiating portion. And calling it an open market, it’s not. It’s a regulated cultural market. That’s why we’re here. You’re a regulator and we’re looking for a little bit of balance.

7578 THE CHAIRPERSON: And what do you get for that fee? You know, when ‑‑ in the negotiation when they’re telling you you need to pay this, does that get you, you know, visibility for a week on the home page or ‑‑ I guess it varies from one undertaking to ‑‑

7579 MR. MILLAR: It does, but that’s ‑‑

7580 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ another, but typically, what would you get?

7581 MR. MILLAR: You could get ‑‑ you can buy prominence on the home page when you land and, again, we didn’t get into any more details than that. I don’t know if others ‑‑ Peter?

7582 MR. MILLER: Sorry. It's worth disaggregating a little bit.

7583 So the fees for access are technologically based. The trouble is, the standards are not universal and some players use proprietary platforms, so you’re not paying a cost, you’re paying a licence fee, which can be whatever the supplier deems it to be.

7584 One of the most egregious examples of that is Rogers’ deal with Comcast and what Rogers has to pay to carry services in Xfinity because there’s a fee set by Comcast that Rogers pays. And so that’s a huge barrier for smaller services to get on there. And all of the platforms have similar kinds of issues.

7585 So what we would recommend is our obligation as a programmer should be to supply something, a signal, in a standard format and whatever happens after that, they pay for that. You know, they’ve chosen a particular proprietary standard, whatever. We go with an obvious standard and they take it from there. So that’s one cost.

7586 Again, we don’t have any experience at LITS with discoverability costs, charges because none of us are there. So we’re not aware of how that happens.

7587 Cal referred to, however, the huge cost, which is a revenue share. And so for us, that takes what, in the BDU world, we get 100 percent of and they take 40 or 50 percent. And that’s, by the way, for the larger, better platforms.

7588 I’d like Cal and others to talk about what they end up from YouTube because it gets cut so fine. Over to you.

7589 MR. MILLAR: I feel like I bring this story up every time I appear before you, but just for the sake of doing it, I will again.

7590 You know, again, in the old world where we’ve taken on obligations around Canadian content and news, we are able to keep all of the advertising that we sell. Online world, you know, a 50 percent rev share is fairly standard.

7591 With YouTube, it’s even worse, and they are by far the dominant television platform in the world today. Not just the short videos, but the actual large plays on large screens. I’m sure you guys stay as current as we try to do.

7592 What we get from Google is, no matter what our numbers are, they can rise and fall, we get a cheque each month, and that’s it. We get no reporting, we get no sense. So we’ve tried to reverse engineer that cheque and it is our belief, if they are selling at relatively current market cost per thousands in the ad marketplace, which I expect they are because they’re a dominant player, that they’re getting ‑‑ sorry. They’d be getting market rates and, recognizing the number of views we get because we do get that from Google Analytics and through Google Ad Manager, our estimation is that we get a five percent revenue share. They keep 95 percent of the advertising.

7593 And again, you know, they send the cheque and say, “There you go. Say thank”. And we say, “Well, thank you”. But it’s not ‑‑ there’s no balance in that relationship. There’s no ability ‑‑ when we went to Google to ask them to give us reporting, give us more information, give us a right o talk about how much thy keep of this advertising, they said, “No, we’re a global company. This is our agreement. Sign it or don’t. We don’t really care”.

7594 THE CHAIRPERSON: And so ‑‑ because you're also asking for mandatory carriage. Would that fix the problem? Unless there are specific requirements in terms of discoverability and prominence, wouldn’t we just be adding channels to thousands that nobody gets to discover?

7595 MR. MILLAR: Good question, and a couple of layers to it.

7596 There’s no discoverability without access. We need to be there to be discovered. So that’s step one, and ‑‑ I think in regards to asking for prominence and a prominence of Canadian services and of local services. And that would mean these BDU‑like services could come with their proposal themselves. That’s the flexibility that has been discussed in the hearing so far today, or this last couple of weeks, looking for some flexibility.

7597 Well, let them propose how best to deliver on that discoverability because they are ‑‑ there are nuances. They’re not exactly the same. But we absolutely need access and we absolutely need the Commission mandate that carriage so that the negotiation doesn’t start with, “We’ll take all the revenue; take it or leave it”.

7598 And Peter, you might want to touch on some of the nuance to that.

7599 MR. MILLER: Yeah, our proposal is that you mandate the equivalent of mandatory carriage of local news‑producing stations and that would include carriage for free. And as I said, we would accept a requirement to deliver the signal, but it would have to be a standard that then each service provider, if they needed to change it, that would be at their cost.

7600 But ‑‑ no, that’s it.

7601 THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay. Let's ‑‑ I think we could talk about discoverability and prominence for the rest of the day, but let’s move to what you would like to see happening beyond what we just discussed. And you are asking the Commission to recognize LITS station as services of exceptional important. So what specific criteria would you support being used in defining services of exceptional importance and do you think this designation is key to your long‑term sustainability?

7602 And finally ‑‑ I know it’s threefold. Sorry about that.

7603 Do you have views on the proposal made by certain intervenors that we actually create a fund for services of exceptional importance fund supported in part by or entirely by the online undertakings?

7604 MR. MILLAR: So I'm going to act as the quarterback and I’m going to ‑‑ I know Peter’s ready for this and maybe Robert and Rob want to comment.

7605 So if that’s okay, Peter, to you.

7606 MR. MILLER: I'm going to try and get all your parts.

7607 THE CHAIRPERSON: I can repeat. No worries.

7608 So criterias first.

7609 MR. MILLER: Let's start from what “services of exceptional importance” means in the Act. It’s a new provision in the Act and it’s ‑‑ and when you, in your own ‑‑ at your own discretion, if you will, designate a service of exceptional importance, that triggers potential manager requirements, so that’s what it is in the Act. And as a lawyer, I think one of the things that’s confusing is the Commission also used that term for years as it referred to 9(1)(h) services, but we’ve now got a different term.

7610 So it’s not that we throw out the old, but I think we have to look at it ab initio. And our thesis, as you alluded to, is that local news is of exceptional importance. Certainly local news in the smallest of communities, those that are around this table and our colleagues, provide. So in a sense, our view is if you didn’t call them services of exceptional importance, what are they, I mean.

7611 So first it starts, in our view, is a recognition of fact. If that’s a provision you have in the Act and you’re looking at it from a new beginning, we are, we believe, of exceptional importance. And where you draw the line, whether you do all local services, whether you do larger markets and smaller markets, we don’t have strong views, but we do have strong views that we would fit into that category.

7612 So what does it trigger? Well, it does a couple of things.

7613 First of all, as others have suggested, it allows the creation of a fund that can then go to services that are eligible. We agree with those that suggest any such fund would be funded by online undertakings. Let’s keep the old system the way it is.

7614 And again, when you compare, for us, what BDUs do for us versus what online undertakings do, you can say, well, hang on a second, there is a disparity there. If they won’t do everything that BDUs do, then at least they can pay into a fund of which these members would be eligible.

7615 And the only other thing I’d say on that is, remember 9(1)(h) services, which probably should be considered under the new provisions of the Act, services of exceptional importance, they access funding for certain genres of their programming. They access the CMF, they access other genres, other funds for their programming, just as we access the ILNF for news, the SCF is a fund to support the services themselves. So, it’s got a slightly different objective.

7616 But certainly if the demise of subscription fees for 9.1(1)(h) services warrants their inclusion in a new fund, we would say the demise of services that never had subscription fees, the demise of the advertising on those services also warrants it.

7617 M. RANGER : Juste pour rajouter aux points de Peter, je pense qu’au fil des années, le CRTC a reconnu l’importance des STLI. Le CRTC a reconnu aussi l’importance du travail qu’on faisait pour les nouvelles locales puis l’impact qu’on avait dans les communautés.

7618 Si on n’était pas là, ceux qui sont alentour de la table ici et le panel francophone après, je pense qu’il n’y aurait presque plus de nouvelles dans certains marchés. On est en Abitibi‑Témiscamingue. On est à peu près la seule compagnie qui fait encore des nouvelles de qualité. Et on a des journalistes, on a des monteurs, on a des caméramans et on est dans la communauté.

7619 Alors, je pense qu’un service d’importance, c’est ça, c’est un service qui est essentiel. On parle souvent que, les nouvelles, c’est essentiel dans les petits marchés. C’est vrai dans les grands marchés. Mais, dans les grands marchés, il y a une offre beaucoup plus présente. Puis il y a beaucoup de sources de nouvelles. Dans les petits marchés, c’est à peu près nous qui faisons les nouvelles. Et les autres joueurs qui sont dans les marchés copient souvent nos nouvelles, jusqu’à nos fautes d’orthographe quand on en fait.

7620 Alors, je pense que c’est ça qui devrait guider notre inclusion dans les services de première importance. Puis, au niveau des BDU, je pense, en ligne et traditionnelles, je pense qu’il y a une question d’équité. Il n’y a pas d’équité en ce moment. Et je pense que, l’équité, c’est un des buts que vous recherchez dans l’implantation de la nouvelle réglementation. Alors, je pense qu’on devrait être traités de la même façon par tous les styles de BDU, qu’elles soient en ligne ou qu’elles soient traditionnelles.

7621 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Et, sur la proposition de créer un nouveau fonds pour appuyer spécifiquement les services qui seraient reconnus comme étant d’importance nationale et, le cas échéant, comment est‑ce qu’on arrime avec le Fonds des nouvelles indépendantes pour qu’on évite une situation – vous me permettre l’anglicisme – de double dipping? Comment est‑ce que ces deux fonds pourraient éventuellement travailler en complémentarité?

7622 M. RANGER : Bien, je pense que, si les dollars sont… s’il y a assez de dollars dans un fonds, que ce soit un fonds ou l’autre, je pense que, l’objectif, ce serait de permettre aux nouvelles locales de survivre puis de permettre à la qualité puis au nombre d’heures d’information qu’on donne dans nos marchés, qu’on puisse continuer à les donner et même les augmenter.

7623 En ce moment, on fait des nouvelles cinq jours par semaine, des fois six jours par semaine. S’il y avait un fonds qui était assez bien garni, on pourrait à ce moment‑là continuer à offrir le service. Moi, que ce soit dans le FNLI, que ce soit dans un autre fonds, je pense qu’on a prouvé au fil des années que l’argent que le CRTC a alloué via le FNLI ou le FAPL aux nouvelles locales, tous les membres des LITS l’ont utilisé avec sagesse et l’ont utilisé pour monter autant le nombre d’effectifs qui est attaché aux nouvelles que le nombre de minutes de nouvelles qu’on produit.

7624 Alors, quand on demande dans nos marchés si c’est important, le service qu’on fournit, les gens nous répondent toujours que : « Si vous n’étiez pas là, on aurait des nouvelles de Montréal ou on aurait des nouvelles nationales. » Alors…

7625 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Merci. Je vais… Je suis consciente du temps qui file. Alors, je vais passer la parole à mon collègue, le conseiller Abramson.

7626 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Merci beaucoup, Madame la Présidente. And thank you to this large panel for being here with us today.

7627 Let me start with a very general question.

7628 Is there a way that we can ensure a fair relationship between independent programming services and BDUs, which is one of the thrusts of all of your goals, and also give BDUs more regulatory flexibility?

7629 I will be honest. Those are some of the asks that we’ve hearD at this proceeding, and one of the challenges is how do we ask where are some of the circles that are before us.

7630 MR. MILLER: Just to be clear, Commissioner, you are talking about existing BDUs, not the online environment.

7631 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Yes, I'm talking about the traditional environment right now.

7632 MR. MILLER: So let's have a specific perspective on that, because as we’ve discussed, we have party carriage obligations. You will note that none of the BDUs have suggested that priority carriage obligations on BDUs should change.

7633 So in terms of our specific relationship, as Rob alluded to, there is a particular issue in respect of distant signals that we haven’t been able to resolve that we mentioned in our intervention. But other than that, we have no particular challenges and no particular issues in that regard.

7634 MR. MILLAR: And if I could just add, I think in defence of the existing BDUs, they do value local news across the country, because often they operate certainly in a terrestrial world where a cable company has presence in a part of the country, they value the local news services.

7635 So I think that is not a big issue for us. The BDUs both value us and treat the local over‑the‑air stations quite well.

7636 MR. MILLER: I'm sorry, and by converse, we’re not a big issue for them. They are not chafing because of their obligations for priority carriage.

7637 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Fair enough, thank you.

7638 Let me then turn a little bit to online undertakings. You are asking for mandatory carriage, and I want to turn to that more broadly in a second.

7639 What would that look like in terms of what I will call sub‑national territories? In other words, you are local and regional stations. Is the proposal that you would want us to oblige online undertakings to carry local and regional stations nationally, or would it be acceptable, for instance, under your proposals that we find a way that you be carried in the relevant region within Canada?

7640 MR. MILLAR: Thank you for the question, Commissioner Abramson.

7641 You are exactly right. What we are looking for is mandatory carriage in our licensed areas. The matter of broader carriage and accessibility could be a matter of negotiation, because once we’re there, we can always talk about other things. But it’s really about the licensed areas we serve.

7642 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: And is that something you have had discussions with online undertakings about, in terms of feasibility? Is that a challenging approach?

7643 MR. MILLAR: Sorry to dominate, guys.

7644 Let me answer it a little differently, because I think we alluded to the fact that Channel Zero built and launched an online BDU called Parrott TV, and we carry other channels. So, I can speak from direct knowledge that it is, I’m going to just say, very easy to identify where our users are. We know their IP address. There are some masking issues, and so on, but in 99 percent of the time we know where they are, and we can restrict signals.

7645 So, we do it now on Parrot. Some providers tell us they are only licensed for a given region, and we restrict them. Some tell us it’s a sub‑provincial area, so we use FSA, forward sorting addresses, a postal code to sort them. So, it’s very doable.

7646 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thanks, that's helpful.

7647 Let me then ask you the broader question, and I’ve been asking a number of intervenors about this. The Act gives us jurisdiction to make mandatory distribution orders against undertakings that ‑‑ and I will spare the language for now, but that are similar to distribution undertakings in certain ways.

7648 I have been asking folks what reasonable approach they think we ought to take to interpreting what is similar in order to help us think this through.

7649 Do you have a view on that that you think would be a reasonable set of criteria that we ought to apply?

7650 MR. MILLER: So, I can approach it from a legal perspective to start.

7651 I think obviously the first test is: Are these online undertakings? And you’ve heard various submissions. You heard them this morning that they are not. In our view, none of those positions survive scrutiny.

7652 I mean, the fact that some say because we’re on the Internet, it can’t apply. Well, the whole point of the Act, the revised Act, is to bring the Internet clearly under the jurisdiction of the Commission in terms of programming and broadcasting that’s provided there.

7653 So we believe ‑‑ and I won’t take up much time ‑‑ you can clearly dismiss those arguments that they are not online undertakings.

7654 Then you go, as to your point, your test similar. Well, similar means what similar means. The word gives you, I would submit, enormous discretion to make a determination.

7655 The point of the slides that Cal showed was that’s an example of similar. But that’s not the only example of similar. We’re not saying that you have to have a BDU‑style TV guide to be designated under that provision of the Act, because as you know, it deals with programming services. Linear conventional services are an example of a programming service, but they are not the only programming service. So, you could envisage having different styles that are on demand and not live.

7656 Obviously, our interest as LITS is with live channels, and given what we’ve shown you, we think it’s the easiest, if you will, of any comparison you can make: is if they are carrying live channels of different suppliers, then they are falling under that provision of the Act.

7657 MR. MILLAR: I would just add, as well, that similar means ‑‑ we interpret similar to be across the full gamut. And BDUs make a 5 percent cash contribution to funds, and they make another contribution ‑‑ it probably varies by BDU ‑‑ but very substantial in their wholesale fees.

7658 So recognition of that, and I think they’ve asked for that. Again, by and large, the situation is quite reverse with the online BDUs. They don’t have an outbound cost. They have an inbound revenue source.

7659 So I think the ability for you to understand, not getting into terms and conditions, but mandating carriage gets us to a certain element of accessibility.

7660 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thanks. And as you do your final reply, I think it may be something worth thinking about. In general, we have to think about how we will apply that. And the more reasoned, I suppose, our approach and the better informed by different views of intervenors, the stronger our position will be to really think that through.

7661 Final question from me.

7662 I have been asking intervenors, as well, about making guide and inventory data available sort of in an open format to facilitate an information guide and tool ecosystem.

7663 Is that something from both sides that would be helpful to you, and that a service like Parrot TV as well as your linear services would be able to participate in?

7664 MR. MILLAR: I'm a little bit not up to speed on this particular part, Commissioner.

7665 As a general comment, some of you will remember a decade ago we struck a working group to get data for independent services and others from set‑top boxes. And, unfortunately, that has never materialized or has been some movement through Numeris.

7666 The Internet and Internet protocol technology allows a whole new level of information than data to be shared. And I certainly think that the more that is provided to programs, the better programming we can provide.

7667 And we haven’t had a chance to say it yet, but I think we said in our written document that Parrot would absolutely attorn to those rules. We consider ourselves a small online undertaking, broadcast undertaking, just BDU, broadcast distribution undertaking, and would attorn to those rules. So the more data, the better.

7668 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thanks very much.

7669 Madam Chair, those are my questions.

7670 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Abramson.

7671 Turning quickly to Commissioner Levy.

7672 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Thank you very much for coming.

7673 I'm very interested in the notion of Parrot TV, so I may ask a little bit more about that, but also I believe the people from CHEK have come forward with the notion of a made‑in‑Canada digital solution, a unified platform to include public‑private independent broadcasters, free basic service, Smart guide, transparent metrics, fair access.

7674 This sounds like nirvana.

7675 How would that work and who would pay for it?

7676 MR. GERMAIN: Good questions. I have to admit it is a bit of a wish list, but probably a wish list that the consumers have as well. We hear a lot from consumers about how they almost wish for the old days. You know, they have to pay for multiple platforms. They don’t know where things are and how to access them, which programs are on which service. They are paying more than ever, and they are still not satisfied.

7677 I fear that ‑‑ we know that whoever controls the algorithm controls what people see, and we’re supposed to be a Canadian‑owned and operated broadcasting system. And with the foreign entities controlling those algorithms, even if they are giving priority to Canadian channels, we’re always going to be at a disadvantage.

7678 So yes, this is a maybe nirvana wish list. But maybe this is the moment. Maybe with our cultural sovereignty being threatened, this is where can come together, and maybe there’s incentives that can be provided by the Commission.

7679 I think it is something that the consumers would like, and I think it’s probably what is necessary.

7680 COMMISSIONER LEVY: It raises questions about cannibalizing the system as it currently exists. So, I think there are some really big issues there.

7681 Moving on to the notion of Parrot TV, you said that there will be more coming. So, that’s intriguing. Exactly how does it work, and how do you accumulate the traffic to it, and how does it get pushed out so that consumers can find it and watch it in their ‑‑ you know, to get their own local news, so to speak?

7682 MS. OYE: Thank you for the question.

7683 I'll do a quick description of Parrot TV and how it works, because it’s still in its early stages, but it is quite expansive. We offer a wide variety of content.

7684 We prioritize live, local, free content, first and foremost. That’s a really important aspect of Parrot TV to keep in mind.

7685 We did our initial launch in the CHCH’s service area. So all of our promotional activity is kind of concentrated in getting that launch done in the area where we are already operating. But we have big goals of expanding across the country.

7686 And again, when we expand across the country, we will prioritize live and local. So that will always be at the core of what Parrot TV does.

7687 In addition to that, we do have some subscription‑based services that are available. We do some on‑demand stuff. So it is quite varied.

7688 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Okay. Well, I look forward to learning more about it.

7689 It looks like Mr. Millar wants to weigh in.

7690 MR. MILLAR: If I could, Commissioner Levy, thank you. Thanks, Amanda.

7691 I would point out a couple of additional details. Amanda did a great job of describing the service.

7692 NTV, who is one of our LITS members, is currently on their LITS TV+ ‑‑ NTV, sorry – NTV+ services directly connected. We’ve had obvious conversations with CHEK.

7693 Some of our members have a slightly different business model, so it may not be possible to take a live linear feed because of network affiliations.

7694 But one of the things we are experimenting with right now ‑‑ I will share it; it’s well down the way ‑‑ is Thunder Bay Electronics Dougall Media. The news they create in Thunder Bay is going to be their on‑demand only but looks like a bit of a television channel. So, there is a lot of flexibility there.

7695 We’ve currently got about 40 channels. I would think the prominence are Canadian. I think it’s more like 65 percent or so that are Canadian channels. That include some of the specialties. Super Channel is on there as a subscription service.

7696 As Rob said, we use our own resources first. We have been able to do some third‑party advertising, and we look forward to growing it and following whatever rules you set for an online BDU.

7697 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Well, that's very interesting. Thank you very much. I’m sure there are other questions that could be asked, but I think I had better leave time for others.

7698 Thank you, Madame.

7699 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Levy.

7700 I’m worried about the alarm, but maybe just one final question around good faith.

7701 How would you define good faith negotiations? And should we go there? Should we come up with a very rigid precise definition or rely on principles or jurisprudence?

7702 MR. MILLAR: I'm going to let Peter talk generally ‑‑ sorry, maybe more specifically for the larger group.

7703 But I do think good faith is important. I think it’s also an element of an outcomes‑based framework as opposed to a prescriptive step‑by‑step.

7704 The use of the word good faith ‑‑ and I recognize some of our programming colleagues don’t have always the same reality when they are dealing with the existing BDUs.

7705 But I believe that the use of good faith and the Wholesale Code have actually improved the relationships that were getting to be a bit rocky during a period where there was a real power imbalance. So I would encourage you, from a Channel Zero perspective, to think about that word, because I think that it means something to people. There may need to be, you know, the stick underneath it, but I think actually the concept has power in and of itself.

7706 Peter?

7707 MR. MILLER: As you know, Madam Chair, the good faith provision is your only specific power that relates to your ability to require access. So it’s the only specific thing you have. Its importance in ensuring that any access is provided in a good faith basis is crucial.

7708 We are not expecting rigid guidelines. The Commission often gives examples or interpretations or guidance, if you will, but ultimately you are going to have to make determinations because if someone doesn’t think they’ve been treated in good faith, they are going to be coming to you.

7709 So, what is good faith?

7710 Well, from my perspective, there’s process good faith and there’s substantive good faith. So process good faith is responding, showing up for meetings, all that stuff. And that’s important. But that’s not all that should be part of good faith. You need a substantive element. And that’s where some of the concepts and the Wholesale Code come in, and that’s where we agree with others that it has to be interpreted within the context of the Broadcasting Act. Good faith is not a commercial term. It’s a term within the context of the Broadcasting Act and can only be interpreted in response or in reflection of the priorities of the Broadcasting Act.

7711 So, what would be substantive examples? Would there be, for example, for LITS that if a service carries the VI local stations, then they should be expected to carry LITS, because there’s your perfect example of market power differential. It’s easier for them to go with the big guys. So, there’s a potential good faith rule.

7712 The packaging with like services, obviously that’s kind of a discoverability prominence measure, but that can also be something that you could deem as part of good faith.

7713 We did have some examples in our intervention. We are going to look at it again, once we’ve had a chance to comb through other things people have said, and maybe we will be able to come up with a bit more for you on that.

7714 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. That's much appreciated.

7715 I think that concludes our question period. Thank you so much to everyone for being here with us today. We know how all this has a cost to organizations, including the ones you represent. So, we appreciate deeply your participation and your input.

7716 We wish you a very good Thursday. Thank you very much.

7717 Merci beaucoup, monsieur Ranger.

7718 Madame la secrétaire.

7719 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. We will break for lunch and resume at 12:45

‑‑‑ Suspension à 11 h 58

‑‑‑ Reprise à 12 h 46

7720 LA SECRÉTAIRE : Bon retour. Nous entendrons maintenant la présentation de RNC Média inc. et Télé Inter‑Rives limitée. Veuillez vous introduire et vous pouvez débuter votre présentation. Merci.

Présentation

7721 M^me SIMARD : Merci beaucoup. Madame la Présidente, chers membres du Conseil, bonjour. Merci de cette opportunité de nous offrir cela.

7722 Mon nom est Cindy Simard. Je suis la vice‑présidente information pour Télé Inter‑Rives limitée. Je vous présente mes trois collègues qui m’accompagnent pour cette présentation. Tout d’abord, à mon extrême droite, Robert Ranger, président et chef de la direction de RNC Média. À ma droite, Sébastien Côté, directeur général et de l’information de RNC Média pour la région de Gatineau‑Ottawa. Et, ici à ma gauche, monsieur Pierre Harvey, directeur général de la station CHAU‑TVA à Carleton‑sur‑Mer.

7723 RNC Média et Télé Inter‑Rives sont les deux dernières entreprises de radiodiffusion indépendantes au Québec qui exploitent des stations de télévision locale.

7724 Ensemble, nos stations de télévision desservent plus d’un million de personnes dans de vastes régions comprenant des centaines de petites municipalités.

7725 RNC Média exploite quatre stations de télévision affiliées aux réseaux privés TVA et Noovo dans les marchés de Gatineau‑Ottawa et de l’Abitibi‑Témiscamingue, ainsi que cinq stations de radio dans les marchés de Montréal, Québec et Gatineau‑Ottawa.

7726 Télé Inter‑Rives opère trois stations de télévision locale, deux à TVA et une à Noovo, qui desservent l’Est‑du‑Québec, dont le Bas‑Saint‑Laurent, la Gaspésie–Îles‑de‑la‑Madeleine, Charlevoix, la Côte‑Nord ainsi que la province du Nouveau‑Brunswick.

7727 Des francophones de l’Ontario et du Nouveau‑Brunswick, qui font partie des communautés de langues officielles en situation minoritaire, les CLOSM, représentent une partie importante de notre auditoire.

7728 Les stations de télévision locale de RNC Média et Télé Inter‑Rives représentent des acteurs majeurs de l’information locale dans nos régions et dépassent chaque année leurs conditions de licence avec un total de près de 45 heures par semaine.

7729 Ces nouvelles locales sont produites par près de 60 professionnels de l’information, composés de 36 journalistes et 21 techniciens, soit des caméramans, des monteurs, des réalisateurs.

7730 Juste avant d’aborder tout d’abord les sujets dont nous souhaitons discuter aujourd’hui, je veux juste mentionner qu’on appuie la présentation des LITS qui a eu lieu juste avant le dîner.

7731 Alors, voilà nos points. Les deux réseaux de télévision privée francophone, TVA et Noovo, font face à des défis financiers majeurs. Nous exhortons le Conseil à trouver des solutions pour aider ces deux grands réseaux de télévision francophone sans lesquels nos stations de télévision locale ne pourront pas survivre. La contribution de TVA et Noovo à la diversité des voix, un élément fondamental de notre système de radiodiffusion, est inestimable.

7732 Tel que réclamé depuis plusieurs années par le secteur de la télévision privée, la Société Radio‑Canada, déjà subventionnée à 100 pour cent, doit être interdite de vendre toute publicité à la télévision.

7733 Les règles de substitution simultanée qui protègent la télévision locale dans son territoire de radiodiffusion devraient être appliquées non seulement dans le secteur traditionnel, mais aussi dans l’ensemble de l’univers numérique.

7734 Par exemple, des entreprises numériques offrant des forfaits de télévision IP ne distribuent pas nos stations locales. Par ailleurs, les émissions intégrales des grands réseaux de télévision TVA et Noovo, auxquels nous sommes affiliés, sont disponibles en streaming dans nos régions via leurs propres plateformes numériques et peuvent être écoutées facilement par les publics que nous desservons.

7735 Enfin, il est essentiel pour nos stations de télévision locale indépendante d’obtenir l’assurance de bénéficier de soutien financier stable et prévisible à long terme, comme le FNLI, afin de leur permettre de continuer à remplir leurs engagements en matière de nouvelles locales et d’offrir un service de nouvelles professionnel et crédible.

7736 Nous le rappelons au Conseil, avec tous les bouleversements des dernières années, il aurait été impossible de maintenir nos opérations et nos services de nouvelles locales sans le support du FNLI.

7737 M. CÔTÉ : Et justement, le 9 juin dernier, nous avons pris connaissance de la décision CRTC 2025‑133 qui confirme l’adhésion des stations de Corus dans le FNLI. On souhaite profiter du passage devant vous aujourd’hui pour vous sensibiliser à la situation de précarité dans laquelle cette décision nous place. Selon nos prévisions, nous allons subir dès le mois prochain des diminutions du financement du FNLI de l’ordre de 50 pour cent.

7738 Comme vous le savez, les entreprises étrangères numériques refusent de verser les contributions au FNLI, établies par le CRTC il y a un an dans sa décision 2024‑121. Cette décision fait l’objet de contestations devant les tribunaux. Mais, pendant ce temps, ce sont nos entreprises qui en paient le prix.

7739 RNC Média et Télé Inter‑Rives considèrent que le gouvernement du Canada devrait s’engager à combler immédiatement un éventuel déficit du financement prévu du FNLI. Une proposition qu’on juge raisonnable dans le contexte où le gouvernement fédéral s’est engagé récemment à augmenter le financement de Radio‑Canada à hauteur de 150 millions de dollars par année au nom de la protection du français et de la promotion de la culture canadienne. Et c’est ce qui nous amène la question suivante. En quoi nos productions locales ne contribuent‑elles pas à ce même objectif?

7740 L’absence d’actions concrètes et rapides face à cet enjeu aura des impacts désastreux et bien réels sur la quantité et la qualité de nos bulletins de nouvelles. Des pertes d’emplois et une baisse de la production sont à prévoir aussi rapidement que cet été.

7741 En surplus au financement prévu du FNLI, nos stations demandent d’intégrer le Fonds pour les services d’importance exceptionnelle pour soutenir leur rôle essentiel dans la couverture de l’actualité locale en français. Ce fonds, créé par le CRTC, vise à appuyer des services jugés indispensables au système de radiodiffusion, mais dont la viabilité économique est menacée. Et, à notre connaissance, nos stations de télévision locale ainsi que celles des STLI répondent toutes aux critères du fonds.

7742 Donc, en conclusion, RNC Média et Télé Inter‑Rives souhaitent que les réseaux TVA et Noovo retrouvent une meilleure santé financière afin d’assurer la continuité d’une programmation canadienne diversifiée et de qualité, qui assure des services de nouvelles locales aux régions du Québec via les stations indépendantes affiliées ou leurs propres stations de télévision locale.

7743 Le système canadien de radiodiffusion a toujours reposé sur un équilibre entre les grands centres et les régions, entre les entreprises de toutes les tailles et l’intégration des nouvelles technologies.

7744 Le Conseil lui‑même reconnaissait dans l’Avis public de radiodiffusion 2007‑53, qui portait sur des aspects importants du cadre de réglementation de la télévision en direct, que, et je cite :

« Les télédiffuseurs indépendants jouent un rôle important en offrant les émissions locales à l’extérieur des grands marchés. Pour être en mesure d’offrir des émissions locales de haute qualité, ils doivent obtenir les ressources financières provenant d’ententes d’affiliation et de soutiens financiers raisonnables. »

7745 Alors, cette déclaration possède encore tout son sens aujourd’hui. Il est temps de rétablir cet équilibre dans le monde numérique.

7746 Nous aimerions respectueusement vous rappeler que, tel que nous vous l’avions exprimé lors de notre dernière comparution, il y a urgence d’agir. C’était en novembre 2023 pour l’élaboration d’un cadre réglementaire modernisé des contributions pour soutenir le contenu canadien et autochtone.

7747 Et, depuis cette comparution, nous estimons qu’environ 1 300 emplois ont été supprimés dans le secteur de la télévision au pays. Et la politique réglementaire 2024‑121 qui en a découlé n’a encore généré aucune retombée concrète pour nos stations. Encore pire, comme nous vous l’avons expliqué, le financement du FNLI sur lequel nous espérions pouvoir compter est menacé d’être coupé de moitié.

7748 Sans la contribution rapide des joueurs numériques dans l’écosystème de radiodiffusion canadien, la pérennité des joueurs indépendants, dont RNC Média et Télé Inter‑Rives, est menacée à court terme.

7749 Il faut renforcer les règles de substitution sur toutes les plateformes afin de protéger la télévision locale, pour maintenir son attrait auprès de l’auditoire local et son efficacité publicitaire auprès des entreprises de nos régions.

7750 En terminant, nous vous référons à notre mémoire et à ses annexes où nous répondons en détail à l’ensemble des préoccupations du Conseil, notamment : l’accès au système de radiodiffusion, la découvrabilité du contenu, les appareils connectés, les outils réglementaires, la collecte et le partage de données, ainsi que les mécanismes de médiation et d’arbitrage.

7751 Alors, merci pour votre écoute et votre engagement à protéger la voix de nos communautés. Et nous sommes maintenant disponibles pour répondre à vos questions.

7752 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Je vous remercie beaucoup pour votre présentation. Bienvenue à vous quatre. Rebienvenue à monsieur Ranger, qui était avec nous un peu plus tôt aujourd’hui. Comme vous le savez, nous n’allons pas… ou comme vous pouvez le deviner, nous n’avons pas l’intention de commenter la décision sur le FNLI puisque c’est à l’extérieur du propos qui nous rassemble aujourd’hui. Cela étant, nous partageons certainement l’urgence d’agir. Je pense que c’est quelque chose qui a été communiqué par plusieurs intervenants et dont nous sommes pleinement conscients.

7753 Alors, encore une fois, merci beaucoup pour votre présentation. Je vais passer la parole au commissaire Abramson, qui va diriger la période des questions.

7754 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci, Madame la Présidente. Et bienvenue à RNC, à Inter‑Rives. Merci d’être avec nous et merci aussi de souligner les efforts que vous faites quant à la programmation régionale qui est un défi que nous reconnaissons.

7755 La plupart de mes questions vont porter sur vos propos plus généraux de vos interventions, et cætera, mais je commencerai peut‑être avec quelques questions ponctuelles reliées à ce que vous avez mentionné aujourd’hui.

7756 La substitution simultanée en ligne. J’aimerais peut‑être mieux comprendre le défi. Normalement, la substitution simultanée, évidemment, ça a rapport à des droits exclusifs en territoire canadien et en territoires régionaux sur la plateforme télévisuelle. Les droits en ligne, évidemment, sont d’habitude… sont souvent négociés séparément. Et il ne va pas de soi que les droits que quelqu’un possède sur une plateforme télévisuelle et les droits en ligne soient identiques.

7757 Avec cela comme contexte un peu, qu’est‑ce qu’on doit comprendre du défi auquel vous faites face en ligne et est‑ce une question d’avoir les bons droits ou est‑ce une question de faire respecter les droits que vous avez?

7758 M. HARVEY : En fait, les droits que nous obtenons, que nous obtenons de TVA… Il y a deux réseaux avec lesquels on est affiliés, il y a TVA et Noovo, on possède les droits terrestres, les droits hertziens dans notre zone de rayonnement. Ensuite, il y a deux facteurs qu’on souligne à l’intérieur. Il y a le facteur des distributeurs en ligne qui offre des forfaits de télévision par Internet. C’est des petites entreprises, puis qui sont assujetties à la Loi sur la radiodiffusion, ces entreprises de distribution qui offrent des forfaits de télévision. Donc, elles sont obligées de diffuser la station locale dans le territoire actuellement, dans la réglementation actuelle.

7759 Alors, ça, il y a des petites entreprises de ce genre‑là qui offrent leurs services dans nos régions et on ne le sait même pas. On l’apprend à un moment donné par un téléphone d’un de nos auditeurs de la région qui nous appelle puis qui dit : « Bon, écoutez, là, je viens de m’abonner à une entreprise X, Y, Z. Puis je reçois pas ma station locale. Est‑ce que c’est normal? »

7760 Alors, à ce moment‑là, bien, ce qu’on fait, c’est qu’on se met en communication avec cette entreprise‑là, quand on réussit à la trouver, parce que ce n’est pas tout le temps évident. Puis ils ne nous répondent pas tout le temps. Et, à ce moment‑là, on leur fait remarquer que notre station locale sur les services de télévision qu’ils offrent dans notre territoire.

7761 L’autre point qu’on aborde au niveau de notre mémoire, c’est la disponibilité du signal intégral de TVA et de Noovo dans notre territoire via l’Internet. Je vous donne un exemple. J’ai une petite nièce qui s’est acheté une maison il y a trois semaines dans la région. Je m’en vais visiter la maison avec mon épouse puis je constate qu’elle a une belle grosse télévision après le mur.

7762 Puis je lui demande : « À quel service tu es câblée? » Elle me répond : « Bien, je n’ai pas de câble. Je n’ai pas d’oreilles de lapin non plus. Ce que je fais, là, je m’en vais sur l’Internet. Je me branche sur le site de TVA Montréal puis j’écoute les émissions que je préfère à TVA. »

7763 Alors, ça, évidemment, dans le contexte actuel dans nos régions, les gens qui se débranchent pour des raisons économiques savent aussi ce facteur‑là. Donc, ça nous enlève de l’auditoire. Nos clients voient ça. Ça brise la confiance pour nos revenus publicitaires.

7764 Évidemment, les clients qui voient ça disent : « Bien, là, écoutez, le signal de TVA, vous n'êtes plus en exclusivité, là, au niveau de votre territoire. Donc, ça risque de nuire à ma prochaine campagne publicitaire », et cætera, et cætera. Alors, ça engendre des problèmes importants et on prévoit, comme vous le savez, on prévoit que cette tendance‑là va augmenter au cours des prochaines années.

7765 Donc, il faudrait fondamentalement que nos stations bénéficient de la réglementation portant sur la substitution sur l'ensemble des signaux dont elle a les droits de diffusion au niveau de leur territoire.

7766 Évidemment, vous allez nous dire : « Bien, il faudrait le négocier avec les têtes de réseau. » Puis c'est vrai, il faudrait qu'on négocie cette entente‑là. Mais, le but recherché, c'est d'avoir le consentement du CRTC ou le support du CRTC pour, justement, nous aider dans cette démarche‑là avec les différents réseaux.

7767 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Bien compris. Donc… Excusez‑moi, voulez‑vous ajouter quelque chose?

7768 M. RANGER : Oui, peut‑être juste ajouter aussi que, comme les habitudes de consommation changent, ce que ça va faire pour nous si on n'a pas aussi les droits numériques sur notre territoire terrestre, ça veut dire que notre clientèle va baisser puis la clientèle va disparaître.

7769 Et de faire après ça des ententes avec des BDU numériques, quand tu as juste un produit de nouvelles à offrir, tu n’as pas une programmation 24‑7, c'est beaucoup plus difficile, voire impossible, de faire une entente avec eux juste pour la portion des nouvelles.

7770 Donc, ce qu'on demandait finalement, c'est comme dans l'évolution, il y a eu le satellite. Dans le satellite, on a eu une protection. Mais à ce moment‑là, dans le numérique, on demanderait le même genre d'appui du CRTC pour qu'on puisse continuer à desservir la clientèle locale. On ne demande pas d'avoir un reach national, on demande vraiment la clientèle de nos patrons de diffusion terrestre pour qu'on puisse avoir cette exclusivité‑là de fournir le produit.

7771 Pour moi, que je l'achète pour ma programmation terrestre ou qu'on la mette sur le satellite ou qu'on la mette sur le numérique, j'ai acheté un droit de diffusion sur un territoire physique. Alors, c'est là où le CRTC pourrait nous aider parce qu'on comprend qu'il y a un rapport de force aussi inégal entre les têtes de réseau et les joueurs indépendants. Alors, c'est dans cette optique‑là qu'on a fait ces commentaires‑là.

7772 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci de nous expliquer un peu mieux, un peu plus cet enjeu. Effectivement, je comprends qu'il s'agit de deux problèmes un peu distincts peut‑être ou deux défis en tout cas distincts. Dans le premier, ce sont, si je comprends bien, des petits EDR qui sont nouveaux au marché, qui livrent leur signal par l'IPTV. J'imagine qu'ils sont associés avec des plus petits fournisseurs d'Internet et qu’ils n'ont pas tous les services qu'ils devraient avoir.

7773 Et, dans le deuxième cas, il s'agit de... Bien, en fait, ce n'est pas si différent de la… ou peut‑être que ça fait même partie de la discussion qu'on est en train d'avoir sur l'obligation de distribuer justement les services régionaux.

7774 Donc, relativement à cette question, selon vous, on devrait donc émettre une ordonnance de distribution des signaux régionaux aux entreprises en ligne? Et peut‑être pour s'adresser à ce problème‑là que vous identifiez, quels autres types de... Ce sont toujours, j’imagine, des entreprises en ligne. Mais ce ne sont pas les Amazon, Google, et cætera que vous avez en tête, j'imagine.

7775 M. CÔTÉ : Non.

7776 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Comment est‑ce qu'on définirait cet univers‑là d'entreprise?

7777 M. CÔTÉ : Nous, ce qu'on demande, c'est une distribution prioritaire dans nos marchés avec substitution en utilisant la géolocalisation. C'est la façon la plus simple d'expliquer notre demande aujourd'hui.

7778 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Sur les plateformes de quelles entreprises?

7779 M. CÔTÉ : Toutes plateformes numériques auxquelles notre population a actuellement accès. Et, t’sais, ce n'est pas un précédent. Le CRTC est intervenu au début des années 2000. Le satellite a déjà eu un taux, disons, de 44 pour cent d'accès dans les foyers. Internet, c'est 90 pour cent des gens qui sont branchés aujourd'hui.

7780 M. HARVEY : Si je peux me permettre, j'ajouterais aux deux cas que vous mentionnez. L'ordonnance dont vous faites état, ça, ça existe déjà dans la réglementation actuelle. C'est juste une question que ces petites entreprises‑là l'ignorent.

7781 Ou encore, il y a de la confusion. Souvent, le signal de TVA qu'ils vont mettre sur leur système, c'est TVA Est‑du‑Québec, c'est TVA Rimouski. Alors, nous, nos stations, évidemment, ce n'est pas TVA Rimouski. Ça appartient à Québecor directement. Donc, les marchés de Rivière‑du‑Loup et Carleton, ce sont des marchés distincts. Donc, il y a un peu de confusion sur le choix du TVA.

7782 Et aussi, ce qu'on attend du CRTC concernant ce dossier‑là, c'est une surveillance plus étroite. Peut‑être que, juste ça, ce serait assez pour régler ce problème‑là.

7783 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Effectivement, je crois qu'on est en train de parler, oui, de notre réglementation et plus de l'application de notre réglementation. Dans ce sens‑là, vous parlez de plus de surveillance. Est‑ce qu'il y a d'autres démarches qu'on pourrait prendre relativement simplement qui pourraient aider à pallier ce problème‑là?

7784 M. HARVEY : Et j'ajouterais, en fait, concernant les petits distributeurs, il n'y a peut‑être pas d'autres démarches. Je pense que ce serait suffisant pour le moment. Mais pour les réseaux, là, à ce moment‑là, ça, c'est une autre paire de manches. Évidemment, il va falloir qu'on ait une discussion sérieuse avec eux sur ce propos‑là.

7785 Et c'est surtout un support moral du Conseil qu'on attend là‑dessus puis une bonne compréhension qui fait en sorte qu'une station de télévision locale ne peut pas survivre sans avoir l'ensemble de ces éléments de diffusion dans le monde d'aujourd'hui. Parce que, je veux dire, on s'en va…

7786 Le satellite, comme disait Sébastien, moi, je l'ai très bien vécu. On a fait des interventions au CRTC dans le temps. À ce moment‑là, le Conseil avait jugé bon de ne pas imposer aux différentes entreprises par satellite la distribution des stations locales à cause du problème de transpondeur qu'il y avait à ce moment‑là. Puis il disait : « C'est une nouvelle technologie puis on verra avec le temps. »

7787 Puis on a été obligés de faire des interventions durant plusieurs années avant qu'il y ait un revirement de situation là‑dessus. Et déjà, on commençait à sentir la tendance. Les taux de pénétration dans les foyers étaient très, très, très importants.

7788 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci

7789 M. RANGER : Je pense que Pierre voulait dire aussi un appui réglementaire. Un appui moral serait important, mais je pense qu'un appui réglementaire serait apprécié, plus efficace peut‑être.

7790 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : C'était bien compris de son intervention. Merci. Je passerais peut‑être brièvement… Vous avez parlé de l'importance de la diversité des voix. Comme vous le savez, on a une politique sur la diversité des voix. Est‑ce qu'on devrait comprendre de par votre manière de parler de l'importance de la diversité, avez‑vous une position sur l'état actuel de notre politique dans ce domaine?

7791 M. HARVEY : Bon, je dois avouer que je ne l'ai pas lue récemment. Mais je peux vous dire que la perception que j'en ai, la diversité, c'est plus qu'un. Dans le domaine de la télévision locale au Québec, il y a trois joueurs importants au niveau de l'information locale. Il y a Radio‑Canada, il y a TVA et il y a Noovo. Et je pense qu'on a une belle diversité au Québec.

7792 Là, on pense à l'information, mais je pense aussi en termes d'émissions. Les artistes qui reflètent nos styles de vie, notre culture, et cætera, et cætera. Il se fait de la très bonne télévision au Québec.

7793 Et comme on le disait au début de nos interventions, on est inquiets avec la santé financière de nos grands réseaux privés, actuellement Noovo et TVA. Il y a une forte inquiétude dans nos stations actuellement parce que, si on perd ces réseaux‑là, c'est la fin pour nos opérations, nous autres aussi.

7794 Donc, ce sont des joyaux qu'il faut absolument préserver pour la culture québécoise. Et cette diversité‑là, qui fait partie de la Loi sur la radiodiffusion, qui est un objectif important, donc, ce sont des joueurs dont la valeur est inestimable pour cette diversité‑là.

7795 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci. Monsieur Ranger, je ne sais pas si vous avez une réaction aussi ou... La première fois. Bon, merci.

7796 Un fonds pour les services d'importance exceptionnel, vous en avez parlé. Vous souhaiteriez faire partie d'un tel fonds. Quels critères est‑ce qu'on devrait appliquer pour trouver que les télédiffuseurs régionaux devraient en faire partie?

7797 M. RANGER : Je pourrais vous donner la même réponse que ce matin, mais je pense que les nouvelles locales dans nos marchés, c'est vraiment un service essentiel. Et je pense que, si on n'était pas là dans nos marchés, avec la passion, puis avec le nombre de ressources qu'on a, puis avec les heures de nouvelles qu'on fait, je pense que les populations locales seraient mal desservies.

7798 On a vu par le passé des grands joueurs qui ont délaissé les marchés locaux, ou des grands joueurs qui ont montréalisé l'information, ou ils ont mis l'information plus à un niveau national. Et, après ça, ils mettaient quelques nouvelles locales.

7799 On a subi des vérifications dernièrement de la part du CRTC et on peut avec fierté vous dire que 100 pour cent de nos nouvelles se sont qualifiées locales, produites localement et livrées par des gens localement.

7800 Alors, je pense que ces critères‑là, qui sont aussi le… que les LITS aussi respectent, ces critères‑là devraient nous permettre, là, de...

7801 Et aussi, on a une fragilité financière, compte tenu qu'on a un fonds qui est en décroissance depuis sept ans, et même qui est en décroissance depuis le FAPL. Il y avait un fonds au début qui était un fonds pour les LITS, et qui servait les LITS.

7802 Et je pense que, pour peut‑être renchérir sur votre question de ce matin, je pense qu'il pourrait y avoir un fonds pour les nouvelles. Je pense qu'il pourrait y avoir un fonds pour les services que l'on donne en région. Donc, ça pourrait provenir de deux fonds. Ou il pourrait y avoir la renaissance d'un fonds pour les LITS. Je pense que ce fonds‑là existait pour vraiment bien servir autant les communautés francophones qu'anglophones dans les plus petits marchés.

7803 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci. Monsieur Harvey, un ajout là‑dessus ou…?

7804 M. HARVEY : Je vais rajouter juste un élément. Les décisions éditoriales de nos nouvelles se prennent localement. Alors, ça, c'est très, très, très important dans nos opérations.

7805 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Donc, selon vous, ça, c'est un critère qu'on devrait avoir en tête lorsqu'on réfléchit à cette problématique?

7806 M. HARVEY : Oui

7807 M. CÔTÉ : Et si je peux me permettre aussi, c'est facile, dire qu'on fait de l'information locale, mais il y a une grosse différence entre faire de l'information locale et faire du terrain. Nos équipes, souvent dans les régions qu'on dessert, sont les seules qui font du terrain, du vrai travail, d'aller rencontrer les gens, d'aller mener des enquêtes et tout ça.

7808 Il y a d'autres médiums avec qui c'est plus facile de faire ça à distance, au téléphone, centraliser tout ça et donner l'impression que c'est local. Nous, quand on vous dit qu'on fait des nouvelles locales, ce sont de vraies nouvelles locales. Et ça se passe sur le terrain.

7809 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci. Je passerais peut‑être maintenant à la question de la découvrabilité. Donc, vous avez souligné l'importance de garantir la découvrabilité et la distribution des stations locales sur les plateformes en ligne. D'abord, est‑ce que ça s'applique aussi aux services audio?

7810 M. RANGER : J'aurais tendance à dire oui, parce que tout ce qui est produit localement devrait avoir un avantage de découvrabilité. Je ne parle pas nécessairement peut‑être des émissions réseau dans l'audio, par exemple. Peut‑être que, ça, il n'y aurait pas une obligation de découvrabilité, mais tout ce qui amène une information, une couleur, une saveur locale, devrait avoir un avantage de découvrabilité sur les plateformes numériques.

7811 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : La semaine passée, je crois, on a eu l'intervention de l'Ontario Association of Broadcasters, qui a parlé des appareils connectés en voiture. Est‑ce un enjeu auquel vous avez fait face, que vous avez remarqué jusque‑là dans vos démarches?

7812 M. RANGER : Je pense qu'en audio, c'est plus vrai, parce que la consommation d'audio en voiture est plus grande. En vidéo, ce n'est pas recommandé de consommer en voiture. Ça fait que je ne pense pas que, pour nous, ce soit une problématique du côté de la télévision. Mais, du côté de l'audio, je pense que c'est une problématique.

7813 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Et ces appareils‑là connectés à Internet, ça commence à être un facteur dans le marché, selon vous?

7814 M. RANGER : Pour la télévision, je pense que oui, parce qu'on perd de l'écoute sur d'autres plateformes à des gens qui vont chercher le signal de TVA Montréal ou de Noovo Montréal.

7815 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Et en voiture aussi ou…?

7816 M. RANGER : Non, en voiture… CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : O.K.

7817 M. RANGER : …comme je l'ai dit, en télévision, je ne pense pas que ça soit…

7818 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Pour la radio, évidemment, je parle.

7819 M. RANGER : Pour la radio, je pense que oui, parce qu'aujourd'hui, la radio permet d'écouter tout et de découvrir une station locale. Sur les applications, c'est très difficile. C'est très, très difficile, parce que c'est Spotify qui est offert, c'est Apple Music qui est offert. Puis…

7820 Je sais que les Français ont sorti une application où il y a 350 radios indépendantes qui s'appellent « les branchées », qui ont fait leur propre application. Puis, là, ils font des pressions auprès des constructeurs automobiles pour se faire inclure dans les voitures.

7821 Mais je vois mal comment des joueurs indépendants comme nous pourraient aller faire une obligation à Ford, ou à Lexus, ou à Toyota de rajouter ça dans les voitures, là.

7822 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Bien, en tout cas, on a eu des interventions à ce sujet. Donc, si vous avez intérêt à en parler davantage dans votre réplique finale, à vous adresser à ce qui a été dit là‑dessus, ce serait bienvenu.

7823 Donc, en matière de découvrabilité, on a parlé évidemment de… bien, on a mentionné votre proposition d'ordonnance de distribution d'abord. Mais, quant à la découvrabilité, avez‑vous des suggestions, des propositions pour nous sur comment est‑ce qu'on devrait réaliser ça, surtout étant donné la diversité des modèles d'affaires des différentes entreprises en ligne?

7824 M. CÔTÉ : Notre priorité est sur la diffusion des signaux en direct, de retrouver essentiellement ce qu'on a sur un câblodistributeur conventionnel, c'est‑à‑dire une accessibilité simple et rapide, où on peut facilement être retrouvé.

7825 M. HARVEY : Moi, je voudrais juste ajouter que… je ne sais pas si c'est mon âge, mais j'ai beaucoup de problèmes à me faire une tête sur le projet de la découvrabilité pour combler tous les besoins du Canada actuellement. Ça va être tout un défi puis une paire de manches à réaliser, je peux vous dire ça.

7826 Mais, comme dit Sébastien, est‑ce qu'il n'y a pas des moyens simples? Une application qui serait disponible pour l'ensemble des médias d'une même catégorie, d'une même région francophone, d'un même réseau. En ouvrant l'application tout de suite, ça se géolocaliserait avec la région d'appartenance, et cætera, et cætera. Puis ça donnerait la station.

7827 Je pense que c'est la méthode la plus simple qui va l'emporter. Les téléviseurs connectés, bien, là, c'est ça, on a différentes options, mais est‑ce qu'il n'y a pas moyen aussi de peut‑être regrouper ça avec une seule action ou deux actions maximum? Alors, je pense que, ce qu'il faut retenir, c'est la simplicité de l'application.

7828 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci. Avez‑vous justement de l'expérience de négociation avec ces plateformes‑là en ligne? Avez‑vous tenté, peut‑être fait du progrès avec différentes plateformes en ligne sur justement la mise en disponibilité de vos services?

7829 M. RANGER : Je vais me permettre de répondre. Comme vous savez, on n'a pas la propriété de notre programmation complète. Alors, c'est très difficile pour nous d'aller négocier le bulletin de nouvelles de 6 h ou le bulletin de nouvelles de 12 h.

7830 Je n'ai pas de produit à part mes nouvelles. Puis c'est un excellent produit, mais, en même temps, de l'autre côté, la dame d'Amazon ce matin mentionnait que c'est une question d'affaires, c'est une question de rentabilité. Ils étudient chaque demande pour voir si ça va leur rapporter des bénéfices. Je pense qu'il y a plusieurs autres joueurs qui pourraient passer avant nous en termes de bénéfices, là, à apporter à ces plateformes numériques là.

7831 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci. Je passerais peut‑être maintenant à la question de la collecte et partage de données, ce qui a été l'un de nos sujets de prédilection dans cette instance. Vous avez suggéré dans votre intervention que le Conseil publie des données financières globales et consolidées par région ou marché, comme c'est le cas en radio commerciale, donc, pour la télévision.

7832 Comment cette approche pourrait‑elle être transposée aux services en ligne? Et quel type de données spécifiques devrait être publié à ce niveau‑là régionalement?

7833 M. RANGER : Bien, je pense que les données financières, c'est la base. C'est la base qui est nécessaire absolument, que tous les participants au système de radiodiffusion canadienne partagent leurs données financières. Je pense que, par le passé, on a partagé toujours, même si on est une compagnie privée ou deux compagnies privées, on a toujours partagé nos données.

7834 Et le CRTC a toujours porté une attention particulière à ne pas divulguer ces données‑là. Donc, je pense que vous avez la crédibilité de ne pas le faire pour les compagnies numériques qui voudraient transférer ça. Puis l'autre aspect où on a énormément de misère à avoir de la transparence, c'est au niveau de la consommation des produits sur l'Internet via ces plateformes‑là.

7835 Cal, ce matin, parlait de Google. On est dans la même situation du côté audio. On a des partages de revenus de YouTube et on reçoit un chèque et aucune donnée.

7836 Et on est obligés d'aller chercher les données par an en arrière, mais on n'a aucun moyen de savoir c'est quoi le pourcentage de redevances qu'ils retiennent. Cal a dit 5 pour cent ce matin et je pense qu'il ne doit pas être loin de la vérité quand on regarde les chiffres de revenus qu'on reçoit.

7837 Donc, je pense qu'il y aurait aussi une notion de découvrabilité ou une notion de combien de fois cette chanson‑là a été écoutée. T’sais, ce matin, j'écoutais Amazon. Je pense que c'est presque impossible qu'il n'y ait pas les données de combien de fois cette chanson‑là francophone a joué.

7838 Ça fait que je pense que ça prend de la transparence, comme vous nous l'avez toujours demandé puis comme on l'a toujours fait. Je pense que, plus il va y avoir de transparence dans le transfert des données et plus il va y avoir d'équité dans ce système‑là ou, pour vous, de façon de réglementer et de bien déterminer c'est quoi la quote‑part de chacun dans la participation du système canadien.

7839 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Donc, si je comprends bien, vous parlez un peu de l'équivalent des journaux de bord, mais pour les entreprises en ligne; et ça aussi au niveau régional, j'imagine, dans votre proposition ou…?

7840 M. RANGER : Le problème qu'on a en ce moment, c'est qu'il y a très peu de données régionales. Que ce soit du côté de Numeris, que… Du côté de l'Internet c'est plus facile, mais, dans les systèmes traditionnels de collecte de données, tous les marchés régionaux ont été abandonnés. Ça fait que, pour nous, on doit se fier sur des estimés qui sont basés sur des estimés qui sont basés sur d'autres estimés.

7841 Ça fait qu’à la fin de la journée, on sait qu'on est populaires parce que les gens nous en parlent puis les gens nous arrêtent dans la rue, mais on n'a pas de données exactes pour savoir la consommation de nos médias.

7842 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Et quelles sont les conséquences commerciales et autres de ce manque de données?

7843 M. RANGER : Bien, les conséquences, c'est qu'on peut moins bien monnayer nos publicités parce que les gens nous questionnent toujours. Le Web, quand il y a une publicité sur le Web, c'est facile. Il y a eu 5 000 vues, ça vaut 5 dollars le 1 000 puis ça fait 25 dollars.

7844 Chez nous, on n'a pas de données réelles de l'écoute. Alors on doit extrapoler et on doit se fier aussi au succès des campagnes. Nos clients nous disent que leurs campagnes sont « successful ». Alors ça nous dit que notre médium est bien considéré par les annonceurs aussi, là.

7845 CONSEILLER ABRAMSON : Merci beaucoup et merci de vos réponses. Madame la Présidente, ce sont mes questions.

7846 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Merci beaucoup, Commissaire Abrahamson. Je passe la parole à la conseillère Paquette.

7847 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Bonjour, je suis contente de vous rencontrer. Je pense que c'est la première fois qu'on se rencontre. Donc, bien heureuse que vous soyez avec nous ici aujourd'hui.

7848 Je voudrais continuer sur la question de l'accès dont vous avez discuté avec mon collègue et dont il a été question juste avant avec le LITS et les autres diffuseurs indépendants.

7849 Il y a premièrement la question de l'accès qui a été discutée dans le panel précédent, mais j'ai l'impression que vous rajoutez une couche en disant : « Ce n'est pas seulement l'accès, mais ça prend une forme d'exclusivité pour notre signal dans notre région. » Donc, est‑ce que c'est correct? Est‑ce que j'interprète bien ce que vous demandez?

7850 M. RANGER : Oui, parce que notre modèle d'affaires est différent des joueurs qui ont été sur le panel anglophone. Eux, 100 pour cent de leur programmation leur appartient. Donc, ils ont un produit à offrir qui répond, qui remplit la grille au complet. Alors, négocier avec ça, c'est beaucoup plus facile que d'aller négocier sans exclusivité numérique.

7851 Donc, eux autres l'ont, l'exclusivité, parce que soit qu'ils créent eux‑mêmes leur programmation ou soit qu'ils négocient un droit avec des compagnies tierces pour un territoire donné.

7852 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Puis, ce que vous demandez, c'est aux grands réseaux, donc, de géolocaliser leur signal par région pour toutes les régions presque du pays, de manière à n'offrir qu'un signal par région. C'est ça?

7853 M. RANGER : Oui.

7854 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : OK. Comment vous comparez ça? Parce que, de prime abord, ça pourrait être complexe. Peut‑être que ce ne l'est pas, mais ça pourrait être complexe. Comment vous comparez ça, par exemple, aux satellites où est‑ce que les signaux sont souvent disponibles en de multiples versions? Est‑ce que ce serait un scénario acceptable pour vous?

7855 M. RANGER : Bien, le scénario idéal, ça serait une exclusivité au même titre qu'une BDU terrestre, où j'envoie le signal à la BDU de ma programmation incluant la programmation totale et la BDU la retransmet.

7856 Ça serait un petit peu le même principe pour le numérique, mais avec la géolocalisation, pour que, si quelqu'un essayait d'avoir le signal de TVA Montréal dans le territoire terrestre de TVA Abitibi‑Témiscamingue, le signal soit redirigé vers notre signal.

7857 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Ça, c'est le scénario idéal.

7858 M. RANGER : Oui

7859 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Mais est‑ce que le scénario… est‑ce qu'il y aurait un accès pour votre signal, un accès obligatoire pour votre signal, par exemple, sur les télés connectées? Est‑ce que ce serait acceptable, même si les signaux du même réseau sont disponibles?

7860 M. RANGER : La réponse raisonnable, c'est oui, parce que c'est mieux d'avoir une partie que rien du tout. Alors la réponse raisonnable, c'est oui.

7861 M. CÔTÉ : Mais c'est là où la découvrabilité est importante.

7862 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Oui, oui, effectivement. Une question que j'avais, vous, en ce moment, vous êtes des over the air, là, des… Vous ne percevez pas de redevances de la part des distributeurs. Advenant qu'il y ait une ordonnance qui vous donne accès aux Smart TVs, aux objets connectés, est‑ce que, dans votre tête, c'est selon le même modèle?

7863 Donc, étant donné que vous êtes over the air, pas de redevances, donc, pas de redevances non plus, accessibles gratuitement, mais sans toucher de redevances? Est‑ce que c'est le modèle que vous aviez en tête?

7864 M. RANGER : Je pense que les modèles évoluent avec l'environnement. Je pense que, au début, ça pourrait être un modèle. Mais, à la longue, je pense qu'un modèle avec des redevances est peut‑être un modèle plus viable, parce qu'on a qu'une grande loyauté au niveau de notre auditoire local.

7865 En ce moment, on a un problème de découvrabilité ou on a un problème d'aller chercher 100 pour cent de notre auditoire local parce qu'ils vont le chercher ailleurs, sur des plateformes auxquelles on n'a pas accès puis qu'on ne peut pas monnayer. Alors, si on pouvait monnayer cet auditoire‑là, les redevances ne sont peut‑être pas nécessaires.

7866 Si on n'est pas capables de les monnayer… Parce que, comme vous savez, le prix sur le numérique a baissé et continue de baisser parce que l'offre est tellement grande. Le prix est contrôlé à 90 pour cent par deux compagnies. Donc, c'est plus difficile.

7867 CHEK TV le disaient ce matin. Ils ont développé des plateformes Web, des applications. Puis, à la fin de la journée, ils ne font pas d'argent. Ils ont 12 000 auditeurs puis ils ne sont pas capables de les monnayer.

7868 Donc, je pense qu'il faudrait que le modèle puisse s'adapter à l'évolution aussi des gens.

7869 M. HARVEY : J'ajouterais, madame Paquette, juste un point. Le Conseil a déjà fait une proposition en ce sens‑là, que les stations locales bénéficient de redevances il y a quelques années. Puis je ne sais pas si vous êtes au courant, mais la Cour suprême… En fait, l'approche avait été contestée par la câblodistribution. Puis la Cour suprême avait jugé que, selon la Loi des droits d'auteur, si je me souviens bien, on ne pouvait pas en bénéficier.

7870 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Oui, je me souviens, effectivement. Ma dernière question, vous êtes des affiliés de Noovo et de TVA. Est‑ce que vos contenus se retrouvent sur les... Parce que ce sont quand même des grands réseaux qui ont des apps, qui sont disponibles sur les télés connectées. Est‑ce que vos contenus se retrouvent sur leurs plateformes?

7871 M. HARVEY : Non.

7872 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Même pas vos nouvelles?

7873 M. HARVEY : Non plus.

7874 M. RANGER : Ils vont prendre des reportages qui vont passer à Montréal ou qui vont passer dans les grands marchés, mais notre contenu ne se retrouve pas sur leurs plateformes numériques.

7875 CONSEILLÈRE PAQUETTE : Donc, ils prennent vos nouvelles, mais pas les émissions d'affaires publiques ou de fond? O.K. Je comprends. Très bien. Merci beaucoup. C’est tout.

7876 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Merci beaucoup. Merci beaucoup à la conseillère Paquette et merci à vous quatre pour votre présentation et cette conversation particulièrement éclairante sur les défis auxquels votre secteur fait face. Je vous remercie beaucoup pour vos réponses et je vous souhaite une excellente fin de journée. Merci beaucoup.

7877 M. CÔTÉ : Merci

7878 LA PRÉSIDENTE : Madame la secrétaire?

7879 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

7880 I now invite Unifor to come to the presentation table.

‑‑‑ Pause

7881 THE SECRETARY: When you are ready, please introduce yourselves, and you may begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

7882 MR. KITT: Thank you, Commissioners, for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Randy Kitt and I’m the Director of Media at Unifor, and this is my colleague, Marc Hollin, who is Unifor’s media researcher.

7883 We are in an economic, political, and cultural conflict with our neighbours to the south, and our industries are struggling to survive. The Canadian media landscape is in crisis –‑ largely due to regulatory inaction –‑ and now we have a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity to right past mistakes and to set the future of Canadian media on an equitable and sustainable path.

7884 Listening to the foreign streamers, you would think that a duck is not a duck. They are completely different, so they say. They create content, they distribute that content. They also distribute content of other third‑party content creators. They charge subscription fees or provide on‑demand services for a fee, and allow customers to choose what they want to watch when they want to watch it.

7885 This, Commissioners, sounds exactly like what a vertically integrated BDU does. The technical advances that allow streaming over the internet rather than TV signals over the air or via cable is a difference without distinction. We must not be fooled when they ruffle their feathers and quack and claim they’re not a duck.

7886 We are also hearing from our domestic BDUs that they already support the Canadian system, so we can decrease their regulation. We reject that notion. The Path Forward process is meant to bring foreign digital giants under meaningful regulation, and to create a regulatory system that treats all broadcasters fairly. We at Unifor believe this means the Commission must create equitable conditions, with strong regulations and sustainable supports. And, respectfully, what the Commission should not do is lower the bar and erode the standards of the Canadian broadcasting system.

7887 Unifor has argued that the best way to bring equality to the system is to require the foreign BDUs to make contributions or a CPE of 25 percent on top of their base contributions, in order to bring them into parity with the Canadian broadcasters. Mandatory carriage, discoverability, and promotion are metrics that could be used as credit towards their 25 percent CPE.

7888 The Commission should use its powers to ensure that Canadian programming is predominant. 9(1)(h) services and new services of exceptional importance should get mandatory carriage, including prominent placement and promotion. The rest could go to funds that support the industry, including news and especially local news.

7889 Canadian news programming, and especially local news, must be defined as services of exceptional importance. Extra supports for news must be created to ensure that there are maximum incentives for carriage, and maximum discoverability on all BDUs, including mandatory carriage and priority placement. It is also time to ensure that current news funds are expanded, or a new news fund created, to ensure proper funding for the whole industry ‑‑ including the VI news creators.

7890 When the Local Programing Improvement Fund was in force, before the great decline in the Canadian television system that has led to these proceedings, the LPIF was bringing in 107 million dollars a year. Accounting for inflation, that number would currently be between 145 and 150 million annually. This is the target Unifor proposes for the Commission aim for as a starting point. Of course, this money should support “boots on the ground” news reporting, with the goal of reversing the proliferation of news deserts that have emerged over the past decade or more.

7891 Also, given that one of our core activities at Unifor is collective bargaining, we are in a good position to talk about good faith negotiations. In our initial submission on this matter, we noted the power imbalance between the foreign BDUs and our domestic players. For example, Disney’s market cap is roughly ten times that of BCE, and Apple’s market cap is 172 times that of BCE. I was just looking at the market cap of CHEK TV, which is 4 million; that’s 831 times that of Apple [sic]. The difference in financial scale is truly staggering.

7892 The Commission must ensure fair play and good faith negotiations between sometimes very small Canadian players and these behemoths. And given the reluctance of the foreign players to participate in these proceedings, the Commission must put the onus on the foreign BDUs to ensure good faith negotiations when dealing with these domestic broadcasters.

7893 Unifor also supports the Commission’s proposal of events of cultural significance, and instituting anti‑syphoning laws to ensure that all Canadians have access to significant Canadian moments like elections, natural disasters, breaking news, and Canadian sporting events. The Tragically Hip’s last concert is another example of a production that we believe could have been a significant cultural event.

7894 We are currently standing on the edge, and we need the Commission to think big and to think long term. Respectfully, please do not underestimate the importance of the decisions you make here during these proceedings.

7895 Unifor urges the Commission to move forward, to ensure that the foreign broadcasters and foreign BDUs finally contribute to the Canadian broadcasting system in a meaningful way. Let’s not be fooled by the nonsensical arguments that these foreign players are completely different, and let’s not be distracted by arguing about red herrings like set‑top boxes.

7896 The foreign digital giants purchase and create content, and they distribute their own and third‑party content. That’s a VI broadcaster and BDU, and these platforms must contribute to the Canadian system. These contributions must be additive, because we know that deregulating the Canadian broadcasting system won’t achieve the foundations of the Broadcasting Act.

7897 We’ve also heard from both domestic and foreign players that they are already doing so much for Canadian programming and the Canadian system. So, let’s codify it, let’s add to it, let’s measure it, and let’s get it done.

7898 Thank you.

7899 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I see a T‑shirt in the making with that particular slogan.

‑‑‑ Rires

7900 MR. KITT: Would be right up my alley.

7901 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you to both of you for being here this afternoon. We appreciate having Unifor. So, welcome back to the CRTC hearing ‑‑ at least this hearing.

7902 I will turn to Vice‑Chair Scott, who will lead the questions.

7903 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thanks to you. It is good to see you again, as always.

7904 So, over the last few weeks, we’ve heard everything from, “The BDUs have lots of money and will be around indefinitely,” to, “They’re facing an existential crisis.” Your members are often directly affected by the financial downturns in the industry. What’s your take on BDUs’ current financial status and their positioning, going forward?

7905 MR. KITT: Well, I think it's going to depend a lot on what happens at these hearings, and so, there is a great analogy I heard about being on the dock and we have one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat, and you are the anchor. So, help us out.

7906 You know, the technological change is not new. Right? We’ve heard from the last intervenors, like, when as the technological advancements move forward, the CRTC stepped in, regulating satellite ‑‑ you know, satellite was completely different. You know, they beam the signal right up into space, (laughs) and you regulated it. Right? And so, here we are, and I know we’re going to do the right thing and move forward. We’re going to make the system Canadian, and I think that there’s a spot for all the players.

7907 And, you know, one of our big ideas in our initial submission was a new skinny basic, and I think ‑‑ you know, CHEK raised a similar ‑‑ a slightly different but similar proposal, where we bring in all the players into one system and we create a new skinny basic that includes all of the 9(1)(h) services that we currently have, services of exceptional importance that we’re going to create, and we can bring in the streamers as well ‑‑ and that would put everybody into one system.

7908 But these are the types of things that we’re proposing. Some of them are more realistic than others, but the sustainability of the system is largely going to depend, I believe, on what happens here ‑‑ and for news especially, getting the supports we need are crucial.

7909 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Thanks. That was a great analogy. I liked it right up until we were referred to as the anchor.

‑‑‑ Rires

7910 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: You also mentioned ducks, and I had an old boss who used to say that, “You have to hunt where the ducks are.” So, if market power and leverage in the system are migrating more into the online space where the big global giants are playing, shouldn’t the focus of the regulatory system also be shifting away from the traditional, and more onto the new players? Isn't there some kind of logic in lightening the burden where market power is lessening, and shifting the focus ‑‑ as opposed to being strictly additive, which is I think what you are proposing?

7911 MR. KITT: Right. No, I think there is a place for all the players in the system, and I think these hearings were to bring the foreign players into our system, and I don’t think deregulating the current system is going to help. I mean, you already heard from many of the broadcasters, one of which I used to work for, who said they are already doing hundreds of millions of dollars more above their obligations. So, why would we lessen those obligations if they’re already doing more than that? We hear from the streamers that they’re already doing so much for Canadian content. Well, let’s make a baseline and let’s get some regulations to codify it.

7912 I fear that, if we lessen the regulations at these hearings before seeing what we’re doing, we make too many changes too quick, that if the system changes or it could slip and fall, and more jobs will be lost, more of the system will slip away, and we won’t have a Canadian system at all. We’ll have an American‑owned system in Canada, and that’s I don’t think what we want.

7913 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Thanks. That segues nicely into my next question, because parts of your submission ‑‑ I think you refer to it as “idea one” in your written submission ‑‑ really do echo the same model that we heard from Friends of Canadian Media, ‑‑

7914 MR. KITT: Right

7915 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT:  ‑‑ which is the notion ‑‑ and you spoke to it today as well ‑‑ about setting the CPE requirement but then giving some flexibility to have other means of contributing that would kind of either whittle down or kind of contribute to the achievement of that target.

7916 So, I’m wondering, are there any differences between what you’re putting forward and what Friends is putting forward, or should we treat those the same? And then I’ve got a follow‑up as well.

7917 MR. KITT: Yeah, I think it's a very similar proposal. I like the Friends’ proposal. Peter Miller talked about the cap on discoverability. I think it’s a measured approach. It’s very reasonable and, you know, we talked ‑‑ there was some analysis done at friends, and I believe Bell and the other Canadian broadcasters were talking about the CPE ‑‑ their cur expenditure were probably 30 to 40 percent. So, I think that number hits in around where it should be and where their obligation should be.

7918 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Do you have any thoughts or guidance you could give us on how to figure out the valuations on things? So, in one scenario we might be stuck with trying to figure out whether a dollar spent on promotion is of the same value to the system as a dollar spent commissioning new programming ‑‑ or, in another scenario, we might be trying to figure out what’s the monetary value of having a CanCon category on the homepage of an online streamer. How do we figure out what these things are worth, and what their relative worth is to one another?

7919 MR. KITT: Yeah, that's a tough question, and that’s one we were pondering last night about promotion and Bell’s idea about cross‑promotion with different platforms and different programming. I’m not an expert on what things are worth, but I believe there is probably market value to some of these things. I think it would be important though for you to set some guidelines or baselines based on industry standard.

7920 I find it ‑‑ you know, I’m not privy to a lot of these numbers; they’re in confidence, they’re secretive industry deals that are made, and rightfully so, but it’s important that ‑‑ I think one of the discussions we were having ‑‑ that if we’re talking about promotion or discoverability and what it’s worth, that if you’re forced to bid on it, and that increases the cost, then is that devaluing the 25 percent?

7921 And so, I think it’s important for the Commission to step in on the 5 percent cap for discoverability, for instance, or counting towards the CPE, but also on some of those values because, you know, Unifor is not in a position to understand necessarily what things cost at that scale.

7922 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: That's helpful, thank you.

7923 And then, I did want to ask too about you mentioned your skinny basic proposal. I read it in your written remarks and you mentioned it today, but I want to make sure I really understand it. Can you just walk me through the machinery in terms of who would have to offer it; what services would be included; and how the money flows to the various parties, both those carrying and those being carried?

7924 MR. KITT: Well, where the money flows is probably the hardest one. I’m not sure how money flows, but I know how it flows out of my pocket, so I would flow 35 dollars a month to a BDU ‑‑ a Canadian BDU ‑‑ and they would provide me with a skinny basic package similar to what they do right now for 25 dollars, and then I could get my Netflix, an Apple TV, and an Amazon, and service ‑‑ all of the basic services, right, with their FAST or Ad‑supported services.

7925 And then, I would ‑‑ as our last intervenor said ‑‑ or two intervenors ago ‑‑ you know, folks are having a hard time wondering where you watch that show. Right? My mom’s like, “I don’t know what that’s on,” like, “How do I find that out?” So, this would bring folks back into the Canadian system. They go to their BDU; it gives them a one‑stop shop, and if they don’t want to watch ads on Netflix or on an American streamer, then they can move to a second tier and a premium subscription if they so want, but then they have access while they’re there in the Canadian system to all the great Canadian services that are provided, and the essential news services ‑‑ and it would bring people back.

7926 Where the money flows from there, I’m not a hundred percent sure how that would work.

7927 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Okay, but in your model then, out of the 35 dollars, the Canadian BDU would have to find a way of compensating the streaming services that are being pulled in?

7928 MR. KITT: Correct.

7929 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Okay, and do you envision kind of any regulatory intervention with regards to the pricing?

7930 MR. KITT: Correct.

7931 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Okay. I think I’ve got it, then. Thank you.

7932 MR. KITT: Yeah, thank you.

7933 VICE‑CHAIRPERSON SCOTT: Madam Chair, I will stop there.

7934 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Vice‑Chair Scott.

7935 I will turn to Commissioner Levy for her questions.

7936 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Hi. I just wanted to follow up for clarity on your presentation today. You say it’s time to ensure that current news funds are expanded ‑‑ or a new news fund created to ensure proper funding of the whole industry, including the vertically integrated news creators. I think this is the first time that I’ve heard the notion of including the VI news creators because typically, under the ILNF, they are not included.

7937 So, can you explain why you think we should make that change?

7938 MR. KITT: Right. Well, I think I phrased it the way I phrased it so it provides you the maximum flexibility to support news. We have the ILNF, and we said in the past, at the ILNF hearings, that it needed to be expanded for Corus, except that we also said that we wanted to ensure that the current ILNF recipients weren’t impacted negatively because of that inclusion.

7939 So, you know, we heard today that ‑‑ I think there was a lot of nervousness in the room, and as, you know, a pending court case ‑‑ so, we know that there needs to be a certain amount of money for news. Right? And we don’t want the independents, who are currently receiving the ILNF, to be disadvantaged. We need to include Corus into the system, and I believe ‑‑ and there are others that believe ‑‑ I believe there’s a line in the Friends’ brief that talks about including VIs in necessary markets ‑‑ in money‑losing markets ‑‑ that the VIs shouldn’t have to lose money on making news. Like, these are publicly traded companies, and if it’s money‑losing ‑‑ and it is money‑losing in a lot of places, that we just can’t expect them to keep funding it.

7940 And so, we need to ensure that the supports are there, that it’s a viable, sustainable business. And that’s why we need to include them ‑‑ the stations ‑‑ even stations receiving the ILNF are shutting down. Like, we need to support news. We need to support it now. We need to make sure that the players there are financially stable and can provide the quality news that is necessary in their regions, and local news provided, where editorial decisions, as we heard from the last intervenor, are made in the market.

7941 And so, whether it’s an add‑on to the ILNF, whether it’s the recreation of the local programming improvement fund, whether it’s through the services of exceptional importance ‑‑ like, there’s a lot of triggers and a lot of ways you can make this happen. And so, we leave that to you, and that’s why I was sort of vague. Expand the fund, create a new fund ‑‑ however you want to do that, the money I think right now is about 150 million that we need, and let’s peg that to inflation and make sure news is supported and sustainable in this country, going forward.

7942 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Thank you very much. That’s all I have, thank you.

7943 MR. KITT: Thank you.

7944 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Levy, and thank you to both of you for being with us this afternoon. This concludes our question period. Again, thank you for your contribution, and have a very good afternoon.

7945 MR. KITT: Thank you so much.

7946 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

7947 Madame la secrétaire.

7948 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

7949 We will take a short break and resume at 2:00 p.m. Thank you.

‑‑‑ Suspension à 13 h 51

‑‑‑ Reprise à 14 h 00

7950 THE SECRETARY: Welcome back. We will now hear the presentation of documentary Organization of Canada.

7951 Please introduce yourself, and you may begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

7952 MR. CARRINGTON: Good afternoon, Madam Vice‑Chair, Panel Members and Commission Staff.

7953 My name is Julian Carrington and I’m the Executive Director of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC).

7954 DOC is the collective voice of Canada’s independent documentary creators. Founded over 40 years ago, DOC has grown to over 1,400 members across six chapters from coast to coast to coast. DOC’s mandate is to advocate for an equitable and sustainable environment for documentary production and to strengthen the sector within the broader cultural ecosystem.

7955 Today, my remarks will focus on two priorities: first, specific support for the production and distribution of documentary programming is essential to the Commission’s goal of ensuring the diversity of the Canadian and Indigenous broadcasting system; second, existing regulatory tools must be adapted for online undertakings and supplemented by new mechanisms to support the discoverability of Canadian content, including targeted funds to support the discoverability of long‑form documentaries.

7956 As one of its key goals in this proceeding, the Commission has set out to develop a sustainable model for the delivery and discoverability of diverse Canadian and Indigenous content. We submit that documentaries constitute an essential component of this diversity.

7957 Relative to popular entertainment programming, the non‑fiction and primarily informative nature of documentaries provides an inherent diversity of form. But documentaries are themselves also highly diverse in content and point of view, reflecting the unique experiences of Canadians of varying socioeconomic, cultural, regional, linguistic and racial backgrounds, and often foregrounding histories and perspectives that are overlooked in mainstream media.

7958 Furthermore, documentaries are frequently a gateway into the sector for creators from historically excluded communities, including Indigenous, Black and racialized communities.

7959 Despite this diversity, and despite documentary’s broader value as a driver of civic engagement and as a means to preserve collective memory and reflect Canadian identity, the Commission has recognized that long‑form documentaries constitute at‑risk content in that they are unlikely to be adequately supported by market imperatives alone. As such, to foster a diverse broadcasting system, the Commission must pay special attention to ensuring that documentaries by and about Canadians continue to be readily accessible to Canadian viewers.

7960 As Canadians increasingly consume programming via on‑demand online platforms, dedicated measures are required to support the discoverability of Canadian long‑form documentaries. In general, documentaries face special challenges with respect to marketing and promotion in comparison to popular narrative content. Some of the very factors that make documentaries such apt vehicles to advance the aims of the Broadcasting Act can also place them at a disadvantage in terms of discoverability.

7961 For instance, documentary participants are often ordinary Canadians, meaning documentaries are typically unable to rely on star names to attract potential audiences. And while documentaries commonly tackle topics of significant civic and cultural importance, they are also often non‑commercial in nature, with the result that they are seldom allocated the kinds of marketing resources associated with higher profile drama content.

7962 These challenges are exacerbated in an on‑demand distribution environment, where viewers are presented with vast libraries of programs featuring world‑renowned actors and based on popular media franchises.

7963 To ensure that Canadian documentaries remain discoverable, the Commission must maintain its existing regulatory mechanisms to support independent broadcasters, which are the primary distributors of Canadian long‑form documentaries. The Commission must also replicate or adapt these mechanisms to the online environment and introduce new forms of regulatory support via funding contributions.

7964 We concur with the Independent Broadcast Group (IBG) that connected devices are online undertakings that must be subject to CRTC mechanisms to ensure the availability, discoverability, and prominence of Canadian programming. We urge the Commission to follow the precedents of Australia, the United Kingdom, and EU territories in mandating availability and prominence measures for these devices, including the pre‑loading of services by independent broadcasters.

7965 We submit that connected devices must include and prominently feature public‑interest services by entities like the CBC, APTN, and provincial educational services such as Knowledge Network, TVO, and Télé‑Québec.

7966 In addition, we submit that connected devices should be mandated to pre‑load and prominently feature the National Film Board’s streaming app, which features over 6,000 films, including a precious archive of documentaries by Canadian and Indigenous creators that too few Canadians realize is freely available to them.

7967 Along with connected devices, prominence requirements should be applied to storefronts and program interfaces to facilitate the discoverability of under‑represented genres, including Canadian documentaries. We concur with the IBG that the Commission should set out key principles via this proceeding and then require online distributors to detail how they will meet these principles when the Commission considers conditions of service.

7968 We have also proposed that the Commission should introduce new mandates for monetary contributions by programming and broadcasting undertakings to support the marketing and promotion of Canadian programs.

7969 We submit that these contributions should be directed via two mechanisms: a) entities subject to Canadian programming expenditure requirements should be mandated to contribute additional spending specifically to support the marketing and visibility of Canadian programming; and b) the Commission should establish a discoverability fund to support Canadian documentary producers in making targeted marketing, outreach, and audience engagement efforts.

7970 During our recent cross‑country consultations with independent documentary creators, producers underscored of a chronic lack of resources devoted to the promotion of Canadian and Indigenous documentaries by broadcasters and streamers. The funding mechanisms we have proposed seek to ameliorate this deficit.

7971 While documentaries may face disadvantages in attracting mainstream mindshare, thanks to their engagement with pressing issues and their tendency to amplify underrepresented voices, they often resonate especially deeply for the audiences who do succeed in seeking them out. The proposed discoverability fund, in particular, would empower documentary producers to pursue the kinds of innovative, community‑focused outreach efforts that capitalize on documentary’s unique capacity to reflect real lives.

7972 To conclude, we appreciate the Commission’s commitment to facilitating a diversity of Canadian and Indigenous programming in the broadcasting system and believe that ensuring the discoverability of documentaries is critical to this aim.

7973 I thank you for the opportunity to contribute these comments and I look forward to your questions.

7974 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Carrington. I have to say that we do appreciate when an intervenor comes forward with some very concrete proposals. So thank you very much, it’s very helpful.

7975 I will turn the mic to my colleague, Commissioner Levy, who will lead the question period.

7976 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Well, good afternoon, Mr. Carrington. This is one of your first outings, is it not, as the new Executive Director for DOC?

7977 MR. CARRINGTON: That's right. I was previously before you, in May, in my prior role with the Racial Equity Media Collective. So I am about four weeks into this new role.

7978 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Well, welcome and thank you very much for braving the trip again.

7979 I want to start with some of the things that you raised in your presentation. You talk, in particular, about a new fund, a discoverability fund. You know, where do you think the money would come from, how would it be used, who would administer it?

7980 MR. CARRINGTON: Yes, thank you for that question. So while I will speak to this generally today, I would very much appreciate the opportunity to follow‑up with an RFI on this because, again, to be candid, I am new to this role, I was not involved in the initial conceptualization, but I’m aware that there are some innovative, I think really constructive aspects of this proposal, and I would appreciate the opportunity to submit a detailed written response on this point.

7981 But, today, I can speak to the ideas behind this proposal, and they reflect essentially that existing approaches to the marketing and promotion of documentary at the moment are not fit for purpose.

7982 So in our cross‑country consultations filmmakers repeatedly spoke of a marketing funding gap, while they may be able to access production and development support, there are far fewer resources available for marketing and promotion. This was raised again and again.

7983 Filmmakers are grateful to be able to fund their stories, but they lamented that it was very difficult to then connect those stories with audiences without dedicated marketing resources.

7984 And where those funds from marketing promotion are currently available, their eligibility criteria often make them better suited to narrative features. There may be criteria like requiring a distribution deal with a minimum guarantee, and that is increasingly rare for all but the most high‑profile documentaries.

7985 Again, many docs are distributed on non‑commercial broadcasters who have very limited resources for marketing and promotion, and where they are distributed by commercial broadcasters they are often not prioritized for marketing spend because these broadcasters are focused on programs with the widest audience potential.

7986 At the same time, we have seen that DOC members will often move ‑‑ DOC members, and I should say doc makers more broadly, will often move heaven and earth to maximize what limited resources are at their disposal, because these filmmakers are often deeply committed to the communities that their films reflect.

7987 When a filmmaker spends five or, in some cases, 10 years of their lives making a documentary, they often become deeply immersed in the issues and the communities that those films are exploring.

7988 So a filmmaker who’s making a documentary about harm reduction or police accountability or animal rights, for examples, those filmmakers are likely to build affinity groups concerning those issues, and we see that those kinds of groups become natural champions for the film when it’s completed.

7989 Increasingly, best practice marketing strategies for documentaries involve direct community engagement; working with the community members and the advocates who are deeply invested in amplifying the story.

7990 Over roughly the last decade, we have seen the advent of impact producing, which is a sort of specialist position that involves maximizing the social impact of documentaries by crafting campaigns where the films become tools to shift public attitudes or even change laws. Often these campaigns involve screening tours in nontraditional community settings and they can be hugely innovative in how they target audiences.

7991 But these kinds of strategies and the related expenditures usually fall outside of the eligibility criteria of what limited public marketing support is currently available.

7992 Even without the resources to mount these kinds of campaigns, we are increasingly seeing documentary filmmakers successfully engage in direct audience outreach via social media, via newsletters. These strategies are inexpensive monetarily, but they can be hugely demanding in terms of the bandwidth that they demand of a filmmaker when they have to undertake them on their own.

7993 I’m reminded of remarks by Max Rumney yesterday, who spoke during CMPA’s presentation, about the principle that it is best to allocate rights to the party who is most incentivized to exploit them.

7994 So our proposal for a discoverability fund for filmmakers really stems from an analogous outlook. In documentary, the filmmakers themselves often have far greater incentive to promote a work than a platform or a distribution partner, because often the documentary filmmakers are working from a place of deep personal conviction.

7995 We believe that relatively modest sums made available directly to filmmakers would yield outsized discoverability impacts, especially in connecting documentaries to their core audiences.

7996 So all of those details as to who would contribute, how that would be administered and so forth, all very important to convey, and I would be happy to do so in detail in an RFI.

7997 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Thank you very much. That was very thorough.

7998 You know, when the online undertakings arrived there was a feeling that this would open up so many more opportunities for Canadian creators. And I wonder whether your ‑‑ am I straying too far into the other one? Okay. I am mindful of staying within the guardrails of this particular proceeding, and not going elsewhere.

7999 But I am interested in the kinds of negotiations that your members have had approaching online undertakings, vis à vis conventional programming services, and I guess the larger question, not so much the personal interactions, but what you’re seeing as the shape of how the different entities approach something as vast as try to deal with documentary as a genre?

8000 MR. CARRINGTON: I would love to be able to speak to that, but I think, unfortunately, it’s still a relative rarity for Canadian independent documentary filmmakers to succeed in having their films acquired or commissioned by these large international streamers.

8001 So I was looking at Netflix just earlier today, looking at their Canadian documentaries list, and it was something like 10 titles, the most prominent of which were acquisitions like Yintah, which was originally a CBC docs original that had distribution across Canada, but premiered at Sundance last year, was highly acclaimed, and so Netflix ended up acquiring it for North American distribution.

8002 To Kill a Tiger is another title, an NFB project, Oscar nominated. You know, there are a small small number of these kinds of titles, and they’re often titles that are premiering at very prominent film festivals or winning major awards or being nominated for major awards.

8003 So for more sort of, you know, perhaps more humble Canadian titles that are nonetheless very important that are reflecting the lives of real Canadians, these are still a relative rarity on these large international players to the extent that I can’t really speak to what those bargaining relationships look like because we just don’t have a lot of experience to draw upon.

8004 COMMISSIONER LEVY: You've talked about how we would, you know, build up, promote documentaries, but you’ve also said that in many cases there is a niche audience for them, so it’s not a huge audience.

8005 So how would we be able to measure success if an overall audience is still quite small?

8006 MR. CARRINGTON: I think certainly we need to consider metrics beyond pure viewing numbers. But this is actually a field where there’s been significant innovation in recent years. Again, the entire field of impact producing is an effort to ensure that the impact, the social impact, the potential, even legislative impact of documentaries is maximized.

8007 So while I wouldn’t want to off the top of my head propose specific metrics in this regard, again this is something that I’m happy to follow‑up on in my final reply, because we see case study reports that are able to measure shifts in attitude or events that are held in non‑traditional screenings maybe that aren’t monetized in the way that distribution typically is.

8008 But there are certainly measures that have been applied to quantify the kinds of impact that documentaries have, and I’m happy to speak to that in my final reply.

8009 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Just to follow‑up. There has also been talk of a fund for services of exceptional importance, and that would be obviously separate from the discoverability fund that you’re proposing.

8010 But are there services of exceptional importance that are specifically geared to the documentary genre that would be particularly important to include in consideration for such a fund?

8011 MR. CARRINGTON: For the services of exceptional importance fund? Well, my understanding is that that fund would support entities like independent broadcasters and independent educational broadcasters, and certainly those are very crucial entities to support because, again, those are the platforms that are primarily supporting the independent documentary community.

8012 But a key distinction with that proposal and our discoverability fund is that we are seeking to provide resources directly to the producers of the documentaries themselves. Because, again, we find that they are the people who are uniquely invested in maximizing the potential of the films.

8013 Whereas once the resources are going to a service, even if that service is, you know, known to carry documentaries, there just isn’t that direct grassroots relationship that often exists with the communities. And we find, again, that doc makers are uniquely well‑positioned to do whatever it might take to really maximize that engagement.

8014 So that’s why we feel like a pathway to provide them with direct resourcing where, again, a little can go a very long way. Some of the figures that, you know, we read about in this hearing in the context of, you know, market capitalization of these massive players and so forth, we imagine that even an amount in the hundreds of thousands of dollars could go a very very long way if there was a mechanism to provide it directly to documentary producers to essentially allow them to continue the work that they are already doing, in many cases uncompensated, but this would basically allow them to bring in support to make it more sustainable.

8015 COMMISSIONER LEVY: And, finally, you've talked about carriage requirements for independent broadcasters and the notion of imposing carriage rules on online undertakings.

8016 But there’s a difference in the Commission’s powers with respect to online undertakings as opposed to more conventional broadcast undertakings. So how are you suggesting the Commission could impose such carriage requirements on online undertakings?

8017 MR. CARRINGTON: Well, to whatever extent there might be jurisdictional particularities, I don’t propose to speak to those in detail, but it strikes me that for the Online Streaming Act to have come into force, and were the Commission not in a position to follow the example of Australia and the UK in mandating that, for instance, their public service broadcasters be carried by online undertakings, that would be a really unfortunate lacuna in the Commission’s power.

8018 So I would hope, you know, echoing the IBG, that these are entities for all intents and purposes that are acting as distribution undertakings.

8019 So to whatever extent is within your power, certainly we hope that those services that, again, provide, frankly, taxpayer‑funded programming to make that, again, readily accessible to Canadians, we really urge the Commission to do everything that it's able.

8020 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Those are all my questions. Thank you very much for your very forthright answers, even at only four weeks in on the new job. That is a big task. Thank you very, very, much.

8021 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Levy. And I second that. You're doing fine.

8022 Maybe just one last question. So I'm a big consumer of documentaries. I like documentaries, and I've never consumed as many documentaries since I've had a subscription to Netflix or Crave or whatever. I mean, they're easy to access. Very often, they're in my face. But I take that they're not always Canadian documentaries. But there certainly is potential there for a broad audience using those online platforms. So you said in your presentation that you support applying discoverability mechanisms on BDUs but also on online platforms. What would that look like?

8023 MR. CARRINGTON: I mean, I think it already does exist, to a certain extant. Apple ‑‑ yesterday, was it? ‑‑ spoke about their sort of Canadian content folders, the way that they make certain forms of programming more prominent at various times of year. So whether that's placement on, you know, programming rails or what the sort of term of choice in the industry is, those sort of frankly straightforward prominence mechanisms, just ensuring that labelled folders, for instance, of content ‑‑ Canadian documentaries ‑‑ that those are easily navigable, that they come up in search results, that they are not buried, you know, in deep within an interface.

8024 Just I think often with documentary, viewers don't necessarily know what they're looking for. Again, this goes back to the point of they don't always have prominent cast. Even the directors, you know, are not household names. So visual placement, just reminders that, you know, this is content, again, in many cases that Canadians have paid for, that this is available to you. I think that that can go a long way, frankly.

8025 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Thank you for your answers. Thank you for your participation. And we wish you a very good afternoon. Thank you.

8026 Madame la secrétaire?

8027 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. We will now connect to Zoom to hear the next presentation from International Center for Law & Economics.

8028 Can you hear us correctly?

8029 MR. STOUT: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

8030 THE SECRETARY: Perfect. Thank you so much. So you can introduce yourself and begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

8031 MR. STOUT: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My name is Kristian Stout. I bring a dual perspective to these proceedings as both the director of Innovation Policy at the International Center for Law & Economics and as a musician who earns royalties from every major streaming platform. This combination allows me to approach questions from both an economic policy standpoint and from the experience of an artist navigating today's digital music landscape.

8032 I have five brief points I will make, and then I'm happy to take questions.

8033 Let me start with a fundamental point about audio streaming economics that's often misunderstood. Audio streaming operates through complex multi‑layered revenue‑sharing systems that defy simple taxation. Platforms don't pay fixed per‑stream rates to artists. Instead, royalty payments flow through intricate systems involving platform revenue, rights‑holder agreements, and artist contracts with labels or distributors.

8034 The result is that artists typical earn fractions of cents per stream, something between three tenths of a cent and eight tenths of a cent USD. It's a little higher on different services, a little lower on others. And that's after multiple intermediaries have to take their cuts from that revenue source.

8035 Imposing something like a blanket levy on this already complex value chain risks serious unintended consequences. Audio platforms operate in commoditized markets where subscription prices have remained relatively stable for over a decade while facing extreme consumer price sensitivity. Research shows that about one third of listeners won't pay anything for streaming at all, and two thirds cap their willingness to pay at just $10 per month.

8036 Video streaming faces similar challenges, but with different dynamics, where traditional broadcasters enjoy a protected spectrum, today's streamers face unprecedented competition. Over 200 available platforms abound, offering half a million unique video titles to Canadian viewers.

8037 My second point is that Canadian content is already an impressive global success. A striking fact that should inform your deliberations is that, despite comprising less than half a per cent of the world's population, Canadian music captures well over 10 per cent of global streams. Canadian video enjoys similar international success. By these metrics, Canadian creators already outperform peers in Australia and the UK, countries with comparable cultural ambitions.

8038 The evidence suggests that Canadian creators are thriving where audiences actually are, on digital platforms. The proposed regulatory changes can risk hindering rather than helping that remarkable success.

8039 Third, there's quite a large amount of differentiation between media business models and even among different providers in the same media. But current regulatory approaches treat vastly different business models identically, and this can create real problems. Consider the one‑to‑one rule, which treats all independent services equally when they have vastly different audience needs and economic models. This can create inefficiencies where consumers pay higher prices for popular service to cross‑subsidize carriage of content regardless of actual demand or optimal business models.

8040 Audio and video services operate under fundamentally different constraints. Audio services shoulder these perpetual royalty obligations for every single play that I mentioned earlier while video streamers are able to amortize expensive originals across large libraries. Music services essentially sell the same 100‑million‑track catalogue, competing primarily on user experience. Video platforms differentiate through exclusive content, also on user experience, but also with bundling options, often very different types of service offerings.

8041 Consumer behaviour differs dramatically between these media. Average video search time has increased to 10 and a half minutes from seven and a half minutes in 2019 due to content abundance. Meanwhile, something like 120,000 new audio tracks hit services daily. This means that discoverability, not funding, of content is really the central challenge of our current age.

8042 Fourth, current Canadian content definitions emphasize IP ownership over cultural impact. This forces producers to choose between maintaining domestic qualification and accessing international distribution networks that could maximize their global reach.

8043 Global studios are the second‑largest source of financing for Canadian content production. Rigid ownership requirements discourage international investment and create barriers to the very partnerships that could expand Canada's content global footprint.

8044 Finally, AI‑powered discovery mechanisms are already surpassing traditional programming in matching content with interested audiences. Services like Spotify's AI DJ create personalized streams while introducing Canadian content through receptive international listeners. This represents a leap beyond what traditional quota systems could ever achieve.

8045 Rather than prescriptive mandates, the Commission should focus on measurable outcomes. Incentivize data‑driven promotion of Canadian content to receptive audiences, recognize in‑kind investments in algorithm creation and artist analytic tools, and foster experimentation with periodic reporting on Canada's global content share.

8046 In conclusion, Canadian creators are succeeding globally because digital platforms amplify their reach. I think the numbers prove this unequivocally. I also believe a flexible evidence‑led regime grounded in discoverability metrics rather than rigid contribution frameworks would achieve your cultural objectives while keeping Canada competitive in the global marketplace. Fixed levies and inflexible ownership rules risk reducing, not increasing, the global prominence of Canadian artists and producers that they've earned through innovation and talent. The streaming revolution has been extraordinarily good for Canadian content. Let's not regulate away that success.

8047 Thank you, and I'm happy to take questions now.

8048 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for being with us on this late afternoon ‑‑ although it's not too late. It's 2:30. Thank you ‑‑

8049 MR. STOUT: It's fine.

8050 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ very much nonetheless.

8051 I will turn things to Conseillère Paquette, who will lead the questions.

8052 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Good afternoon, Mr. Stout.

8053 MR. STOUT: Good afternoon.

8054 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So I read your intervention very attentively, and I have of course a few questions. But maybe a prior question. I see that you, as well as the two other authors of your study, are from the USA.

8055 MR. STOUT: Yes.

8056 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: You're from New Jersey and Mr. Fruits and Mr. Manne are from Oregon. Is that correct?

8057 MR. STOUT: That's correct.

8058 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. So I was wondering what was your motivation in making this study on Canadian regulation and appearing in front of us? Is it something you do in other jurisdictions as well?

8059 MR. STOUT: Yeah, so my organization is a policy research organization with an international focus. So what we do is apply what's called the law and economics methodology to questions of law and public policy. So we look for areas where economic analysis would do really well to help inform regulators and policy makers.

8060 So we frequently across a wide variety of topic areas will appear before courts, appear before regulators, both in the United States and abroad. I personally tend to do a lot of work that focuses on Europe, Canada, United States, and looking at how these jurisdictions interact. And I have worked on this topic, for instance, in the European context in the AVSMD, the Audiovisual Services Media Directive, which is not the same thing, but is a very similar topic area. And then in the United States, I study video regulation changes and how we're looking at basically the same problems but coming at them from different areas.

8061 And my motivation for looking at these other jurisdictions is, notwithstanding recent news where there's, you know, some bad feelings, I think we're all friends, and that our regulatory systems do inform each other and that our long‑term interests are all mutually interdependent.

8062 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay, but I understand you're not doing this only for Canada, but in other jurisdictions as well.

8063 MR. STOUT: Yes, that's correct.

8064 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So your expertise on the Canadian market, how would you qualify it? Is it good or ‑‑

8065 MR. STOUT: I would say that my expertise is primarily on economic analysis of video markets generally. I have much more content knowledge of the United States market in terms of the regulatory interactions. My interest in the Canadian market and in the European market is really to try to make sure that some of the lessons we've learned here and some of the lessons of economics are at least included in the regulatory deliberations.

8066 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And you warn us of unintended consequences with regulating ‑‑

8067 MR. STOUT: Yeah.

8068 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE:  ‑‑ the audio‑visual or the music sector. You say, among other things ‑‑ and I'm going to try to summarize quickly ‑‑ but you say first that making the distribution of independent services mandatory could have the impact of these independent services having less incentive to invest in marketing, production, audience analytics, which, you say, factors are critical to organic growth. You also say that basing the definition of Canadian content on the ownership of copyright misaligns incentives in the content production and distribution, and that mandated discoverability regulation risks creating inefficiencies by overriding consumer preferences. So this is things that I read in the document that you submitted.

8069 But I guess my question is our broadcasting ecosystem has been built on very similar principles, like mandatory redistribution of certain services, Canadian ownership, music quotas. So from your point of view, have there been any unintended consequences to this approach that we had for the last I would say 50 years?

8070 MR. STOUT: Well, so the unintended consequences ‑‑ I don't know if they're specific to Canada. But we have similar views in the United States as well that I could speak to a little bit more by analogy. The unintended consequences is that you will mire existing legacy providers under regulatory regimes that are based on presumptions that held, say, in the middle of the 20th century and in the later 20th century and that increasingly are no longer the case.

8071 One of the problems that legacy providers all around the world are facing is that the regulations developed almost identically in a lot of these jurisdictions based on the idiosyncrasies of the technology at the time. We heard one of the earlier interventions say that we've seen technological change before; we're used to that. I absolutely agree.

8072 The problem with the regulations around the world that we see frequently is that they are premised from starting positions where you assume something like market dominance because of a very new technology at the time, so like broadcasting, presuming that there's a scarcity spectrum, locking regulations and locking business models into this assumption that there's a scarce spectrum that is a public good and therefore all programming needs to be regulated to make sure that public good is being used correctly.

8073 You see similar things with satellite cable TV, especially as it developed in the United States, had a similar kind of constrained business model where you could literally only run that cable through rights of way that you had to negotiate with municipalities. Frequently, you would just get a monopoly provider in these local markets.

8074 That's not the world we live in anymore. So what you actually face in local video markets is that consumers have a tremendous amount of demand or a tremendous amount of power in their command of these services and that subscriber churn ‑‑ if you look at the digital platform side, subscriber churn is a major headache for all these providers. They are having trouble actually turning profits on a lot of their platforms.

8075 And what that means in terms of unintended consequences is that a lot of legacy providers will struggle under these previous regulations that were well‑intentioned and based on perhaps market power assumptions that are no longer the case.

8076 The world we live in today is that there are really no video providers that actually have market power, if you're considering the power of consumers to shape the decisions and the business models of these different providers.

8077 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: So some could say that these rules have delivered a well‑balanced ecosystem which gave results for decades, and that the reason why this ecosystem is presently imbalanced is because the regulatory requirements are not applied in a fair and equitable manner to the online services. Can you comment on this?

8078 MR. STOUT: I mean, that is one way to look at it. I may not look at it that way. The way I would look at it instead is that I believe that all of the regulations that were written were well‑intentioned at the time and they were based on the limitations of the technology, the limitations of audience reach and audience power at the time.

8079 The world we live in now is a much more dynamic one, where a lot of these companies do not know how to actually turn a profit. And trying to apply legacy regulations written for presumptions of market power that just don't exist anymore to new providers who still are not figuring out how to make money I think would be problematic.

8080 There was one of the interventions earlier mentioned something about the market cap of Apple and I think maybe Amazon as well. But that's actually very misleading to look at it from that way. The video and audio segments of those providers are a very small part of the overall market cap.

8081 And these providers are not going to look at money losers as an infinitely, you know, suppliable good. At some point, they have to actually make decisions. And you see this with the way the different streaming providers now are trying to figure out how to rebundle content. In the United States, one of the big conversations that's ongoing is how do we provide sports content to users in local markets. It's a very similar analogue to the Canadian local content problem. And no one's quite sure how to do it, even without those regulatory overlays.

8082 So now, if you actually apply regulatory overlays, presuming some sort of market dominance that doesn't exist, you're only going to make it harder for these industries to provide value to users.

8083 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. And you recommend the market‑driven approach, very clearly, supported by regulatory intervention only once a market failure has been detected. Can you explain how this proposed approach would support the policy objective of the Broadcasting Act such as ensuring diversity of programming and that the broadcasting system should reflect all Canadians?

8084 MR. STOUT: Yeah, so I could say two things to that. One, I thought the previous intervention where we were thinking ‑‑ he was suggesting that there was perhaps some funding that could be available for discoverability, those sort of interventions ‑‑ although I may not, if you asked me in my perfect world to make a list of my favourite things to do, that might not make it immediately. But very frequently, when you're doing an economic analysis of regulations, you want to try to find the sort of least harmful interventions. And I will generally prefer to look at regulations that do something like a direct subsidy to concerned areas versus trying to put vast obligations on a whole network of companies and try to figure out how to tweak the market that way.

8085 So in that case ‑‑ and that feeds into my second point. I think, yes, it would be fair to say that I tend to prefer market‑driven approaches that look for actual market failures and then correct them. I think the way that can feed into the mission of the CRTC and in the Act is look at where discoverability is not working. Like we know that there is a tremendous amount of content both Canadian and non‑Canadian on all of these services.

8086 The problem we have is not ‑‑ in this world that we live in ‑‑ I can say this as a musician who tries to figure out how to get people to listen to his music ‑‑ the problem is not that there's not enough music and there's not enough video in the world. I think that's true even for Canadian content. There's a lot of really great Canadian content. The problem is how the users who actually want to view it can get access to that. So and that's not just Canadian audiences as well.

8087 Like, you know, an anecdote, my sister‑in‑law is obsessed with Finnish and German television. All she talks about is Finnish and German television. She seeks it out on these streaming services. And then the algorithms find a way to feed that to her.

8088 I think the market failure that you would want to look at that would further the mission of your Act is where are those users who are desiring the particular Canadian content not able to get that? And I think the way you get that is not by levies and mandates, but by working with the different providers to get data to figure out where there are actually failures in the system as you see it that maybe the streaming providers, they have a blind spot to. And when you identify that, then maybe there are regulatory interventions that need to happen. There might be direct funding that needs to happen. There might be other things. But until you actually identify those failures, you're sort of regulating in a void.

8089 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. So you mentioned data. What kind of data would be necessary in your mind? And what kind of data could be provided by the streamers and the platforms to help us understand where the market failures are?

8090 MR. STOUT: So, I don't know what data the providers have, personally. I don't work for any of the providers, and I don't have access to their data. I assume, just knowing how sophisticated a lot of these providers are from studying how they operate in other areas, like artificial intelligence and digital platform regulations, I assume they have a lot of data on user sentiment, on where users are spending time that, at a first glance, they probably could provide you with reports where they see user interest being.

8091 At a broader level, maybe it makes sense ‑‑ I don't know if the Commission has this authority or funding for this ‑‑ but it might make sense to do something like survey type of research with actual Canadian consumers of these services and actually ask them, like, what is it that you would like to see on these services that you're not seeing?

8092 And if you actually see that, like so for instance, I think the documentary intervention was really interesting to listen to. There definitely might be some particularly interesting topics in Canadian documentaries that Canadians might want to see. It's not going to be every documentary. We know that.

8093 You know, and this was my point when I was talking about the potential unintended consequences of something like the one‑to‑one rule. If you throw a bunch of money at all documentaries, you are going to be oversupplying the market when there's not enough demand for it. But we know that there are people that really want to watch Canadian documentaries.

8094 So if the Commission could actually use its powers and its funding to reach out to consumers and figure out where they're not being served, I think that gives you a really great starting point for future regulations.

8095 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: Okay. So this question of data is quite central in this hearing. We're trying to figure, you know, what would be the best measure to measure the performance of our ecosystem. So if you have any suggestion or any idea, don't hesitate to share them in your final submission.

8096 MR. STOUT: I'd be happy to.

8097 COMMISSIONER PAQUETTE: I have no more questions. Thank you very much.

8098 MR. STOUT: Thank you.

8099 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you so much, Conseillère Paquette.

8100 I will turn things over to Commissioner Abramson.

8101 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8102 Thank you for being here ‑‑

8103 MR. STOUT: Thank you.

8104 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON:  ‑‑ with all of your musical instruments. It's quite impressive.

8105 MR. STOUT: It's a problem.

8106 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: So as you know, we're not a competition regulator. Competition is an important tool for achieving the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. Ultimately, it is the presence of absence of the attainment of those objectives that defines what you might call market failure for us.

8107 MR. STOUT: Yeah.

8108 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: But competition is an important tool. I take it when you talk about the presence or absence of market failure that competition among intermediaries is a big part of what we're talking about. Is that fair?

8109 MR. STOUT: I think that's fair. It's competition on that level, but then you also have to be careful when you're doing a competition analysis to look at the product market and the actual geographic market. So it can be confusing or misleading sometimes, is a better word, to look at saying like, Well, there's like three really large streamers that, you know, maybe there's like 10 more streamers we might bring in. But then if you actually look at particular areas where consumers are looking at this content, the product markets might look different.

8110 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Yeah, that seems reasonable.

8111 MR. STOUT: Yeah.

8112 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Are barriers to entry an important part of looking at the competition between intermediaries in a given product market? In other words, is that something that we should be worried about? And can barriers to entry be more or less important in different markets depending on, you know, what the market is meant to output, I supposed, as a policy goal?

8113 MR. STOUT: A hundred per cent. Barriers to entry, depending on the market, as you know, will operate differently. So like, for instance, in the provision of broadband services, which is not the topic here, you typically see very high barriers to entry because of the amount of investment that has to go into building out an actual network. In the 20^th century, you would have seen the same thing, say, in your remit on the cable services, where you needed to build out a functional network before people wanted to subscribe to it.

8114 Barriers to entry in the video markets have been changing. Say ten years ago, I believe they were relatively higher than they are now. At this point, we have a relatively mature ecosystem. That’s not to say that they are completely low. Obviously, you need investment funds in order to do it. But we have a number of competing cloud providers that are able to do the hosting for the video content in their services. There’s a plethora of access to different kinds of talent for developing these services.

8115 A lot of times where the hang‑up comes in the barriers would be in access to the content itself, which requires sophistication and having a good legal department that can do licensing negotiations in order to get the catalogue, or having the ability to go out and work with creators and either figure out how to do revenue sharing or actually produce the content and own it for the platforms themselves.

8116 So I would put the barriers to entry, it’s not high but I wouldn’t call them low for video entry.

8117 For producers, for actual producers of content, I would characterize them as much lower than they have ever been.

8118 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: And I apologize. I don’t want to cut you off, but I do want to focus on the intermediary role. That’s really where my interest lies.

8119 MR. STOUT: Okay, that's fine.

8120 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: I want to try and connect that to the discussion you have been having around data. It seems to me that we ought to be well apprised of what barriers to entry exist into the market for curation or intermediary services in the different product markets you talked about.

8121 What sort of data do you think we ought to be looking at in order to maintain an active watch on that?

8122 MR. STOUT: What data for barriers to entry? That’s your question?

8123 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Yes, data on sort of maintaining a watch over what barriers to entry exist that would harm competition in the markets for curation and intermediary services in the different streaming and music markets.

8124 MR. STOUT: Right. That's an interesting question. I hadn’t thought about that.

8125 Okay, so it’s different between the music and the video markets, pretty different, in my opinion.

8126 As I mentioned in my remarks, the audio streaming market is essentially a commodity market for all intents and purposes. Obviously, there’s some differentiation between the catalogues, depending on which artist is mad at which streaming platform. But by and large, there is access to the same catalogue across the major providers.

8127 So the barriers to entry in that case is being able to create the initial negotiations in order to access the content from the rights holders, which is a complicated undertaking.

8128 The other side of that would be looking at what the technology costs are, I guess, at any given time for running that. I don’t think that you would see a barrier to entry on the audio streaming side that would as interesting apart from those two areas. And I don’t think the technology side is going to be getting much worse, because we didn’t see a lot of those themselves becoming commodity prices.

8129 So, it’s really on the access to the licensed material.

8130 On what you might want to call a barrier to entry, which I would push back on, though, would be user loyalty to the platforms. That user loyalty is really based on how well the platform service the consumer needs and how low the prices are, because again, these are very commodified services. Any of these services that breaks ranks and really raises prices too high, it’s very easy for users to switch over to a new service.

8131 And these are loyalties frequently based on liking the way playlists work or, you know, liking the particular AI discovery services, things like that.

8132 On the video side, that one is a much more complicated topic to analyze. As I mentioned during my comments in response to one of the other questions, the video markets, a lot of those providers when you actually see their numbers, they are not making money yet, which means that we don’t have a stable ecosystem in which we can really assess what does it look like to even approach market dominance? Until we actually start to see reduction in churn and increase in profit, we don’t know what they’re trying to capture. So, we don’t really know what would be a barrier yet, because they are all trying to discover that.

8133 So the kind of data that I would want to collect is actually looking at where different experiments, particularly in bundling as they are trying to experiment with, are successful or not successful, look at where different platforms have the ability to reduce churn rate and see if those are a function of offering features that users like or if it's some other market manipulation that maybe is being undertaken that they discover.

8134 That’s the data I would look for.

8135 I think right now, it would be very difficult to find those markers.

8136 COMMISSIONER ABRAMSON: Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you for your answers.

8137 Madam Chair, those are my questions.

8138 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Commissioner Abramson.

8139 And thanks to you for being with us this afternoon. We appreciate your contribution and your in‑depth analysis of the world we live in. Have a very good afternoon, and thank you again.

8140 MR. STOUT: Thank you very much.

8141 THE CHAIRPERSON: Madame la secrétaire.

8142 THE SECRETARY: Thank you. I now invite On Screen Manitoba to come to the presentation table.

8143 When you are ready, please introduce yourself, and you may begin your presentation. Thank you.

Présentation

8144 MR. IRVING: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Commissioners and CRTC staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

8145 My name is Kyle Irving, a Board Member of On Screen Manitoba, OSM, Manitoba’s provincial media production industry association. I am also an Executive Producer and co‑owner of Winnipeg‑ based Eagle Vision, one of Canada’s larger production companies currently celebrating 25 years of making Canadian content.

8146 I am here to share OSM’s perspective and to contribute to building a modern Canadian broadcasting system for today’s global marketplace.

8147 OSM members work in English, French and Indigenous language markets. They include Indigenous industry professionals and those from equity deserving communities. Our membership of over 2,000 uniquely encompasses members from all industry sectors: producers, writers, directors, film makers, technicians, performers, production companies, labour organizations, service suppliers, training organizations and film festivals with a united voice.

8148 While you’ve heard from many national industry organizations, today I want to highlight the critical value of regionally based independent Canadian production.

8149 We are all well aware of Canada’s geographic vastness and the unique perspective of Canada’s regional storytellers is essential in representing the wholesome Canadian experience through our broadcasting system. Regional storytellers have historically struggled to have their perspectives reflected in the Canadian broadcasting industry as most of the market is controlled by a few key players in Toronto. This centralization creates power imbalances in accessing broadcasters, streamers and funding organizations for independent regional producers. It is reflected in the overwhelmingly inequitable volume of productions produced by companies headquartered in the GTA compared to the unfairly limited number of independent regional Canadian and Indigenous productions.

8150 Strengthening support and access to the system for regional independent Canadian and Indigenous production companies across Canada will help ensure that the programs available in the Canadian broadcasting system include, reflect and indeed are owned and authentically developed by Canadians from all regions.

8151 I’m also here to reinforce our concerns about structural constraints that reduce independent Canadian producers’ creative and financial control of the content they produce. IP ownership and control are fundamental to ensuring that Canadian stories are told authentically while ensuring an equitable economic return from the exploitation of that content for the Canadians who develop and make the content.

8152 While we understand and value the opportunity that exists through broader ownership models, ultimately any flexibility should include Canadian ownership and control. Currently, revenue sharing models favour large media companies over independent content creators. These broadcasters and streamers use their leverage, control and access to the system and distribution to license or buy content with deals that are overwhelmingly unfavourable to independent producers.

8153 Section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act clearly states that the Canadian broadcasting system is comprised of public, private and community elements, and that the programming provided should include a significant contribution from the independent production sector. Independent producers are, by law, an essential part of the industry and should be treated fairly and equitably.

8154 In order to ensure that independent Canadian and Indigenous producers working in the English, French and Indigenous language markets have a level playing field, they require a meaningful and enforceable Codes of Practice that establish fair terms between the independent producers and all distribution platforms, whether Canadian or foreign owned.

8155 Codes of Practice for Canadian independent producers would help ensure equitable negotiation, including revenue sharing and control and ownership of IP. To be effective, Codes of Practice should require transparent disclosure of revenue data, equitable revenue sharing and enforceable terms that include a timely dispute resolution mechanism.

8156 Ensuring audiences in Canada and worldwide can find our content is equally important. OSM urges the Commission to act boldly in developing must carry and prominence regulations to ensure the discoverability of Canadian programming is readily available and accessible to audiences in Canada.

8157 Market imbalances will further be exacerbated without regulatory mechanisms supporting increased investment in the production and promotion of Canadian content. This requires increased strategic positioning of Canadian programming within the many emerging app packs foreign streaming services offer. We live in a world where search engines and algorithms drive what we see online and through these exhibition services, without requirements for Canadian programming to be discoverable, promoted and readily accessible, audiences will continue to struggle to find Canadian stories.

8158 As we previously noted at the hearing on the definition of Canadian content, there is a critical need for precise, publicly available data related to content distribution and exhibition. Without accurate and detailed data being shared by our distribution and exhibition partners across all platforms, it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of policies and regulations designed to support investment in Canadian content and its discoverability.

8159 We urge the Commission to implement regulatory requirements for broadcasters and streaming services to publicly report Canadian content viewership data using a standardized form that includes breakdowns for regional, Indigenous, and French‑language OLMC productions. Not only will sharing this data help us understand the effectiveness of relevant policy and regulation, but it will also inform independent producers to better create and modify their content creation to suit the needs of Canadian audiences.

8160 In conclusion, On Screen Manitoba urges the Commission to take decisive action in addressing the market imbalances to ensure fair development, production, and distribution practices so that independent Canadian producers can continue to provide diverse Canadian stories from across the country. Addressing market imbalances also means ensuring that Canadian content is accessible and prominently visible; and it includes a requirement for transparent audience data.

8161 We are confident such measures will strengthen the Independent Canadian production sector and help ensure a sustainable and competitive broadcasting system where all content creators have an equitable opportunity to contribute.

8162 Thank you for the opportunity to present today. And I welcome your questions.

8163 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Irving. And thank you to OSM for being with us this afternoon.

8164 I will turn things over to Commissioner Levy, who will lead the questions.

8165 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Welcome, all the way from Winnipeg.

8166 MR. IRVING: M’hmm.

8167 COMMISSIONER LEVY: I hope this isn't the only stop on your thousand dollar coffee tour.

8168 A lot of what you have discussed today is of course relevant to the Canadian content hearing that was held previously, so I am going to try to ensure that I stay within the guardrails of this particular proceeding, which is certainly relevant to your comments, not to discourage you.

8169 Let’s start a little bit with your discussion of app‑based programming packages that are now prominent on digital platforms, and which you feel are reshaping content distribution at the expense of Canadian content. So, not to make any assumptions about what’s being discussed, can you clarify what you mean by app‑based programming packages?

8170 MR. IRVING: The consolidation of access to content by the various distributors ‑‑ the global streaming giants ‑‑ more and more control is being taken over what we have access to and how we access it. And so, there has to be regulatory rules around the content that Canadian creators make being accessible to Canadian audiences, and we can’t rely upon the consolidators of the content to do that for us and to do that in a reasonable way that will properly reflect the content created by Canadians for Canadian audiences.

8171 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Given the scope of the Commission's powers under what we discuss as 9.1(1)(i), which relates to carriage of services on online undertakings, can you describe how you would envision the Commission imposing carriage requirements on online undertakings?

8172 MR. IRVING: I'm not sure that I understand the question. Carriage requirements for Canadian content ‑‑ or the discoverability of Canadian content?

8173 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Well, carriage first, which of course is key to discoverability.

8174 MR. IRVING: M’hmm. Because I'm representing a group of 2,000 people with different perspectives on some of these topics, I would probably want to come back with an answer on that after consulting with the group.

8175 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Well, let's move to discoverability, because that’s an issue that has come up several times and which is much more of a general nature, so you don’t have to be regulatory affairs lawyer to understand what that’s about. You have discussed, and you’ve touched on the issues of discoverability in your presentation.

8176 Can you expand a little bit on what you think we as a regulator can do to address issues of discoverability of Canadian content?

8177 MR. IRVING: I would start by saying that clicking a hundred times to find the Canadian content library on an app, a carousel that’s 30 pages down the front page of the app isn't discoverability of Canadian content. We need to ensure that there are regulations put forward that are tied to Canadian content certification that ensure that these streamers and broadcasters are placing that Canadian content on their services in a way that’s discoverable by Canadians.

8178 It should take on the same priority as any other content. It shouldn’t be blocked in any way, and it also shouldn’t be limited by ‑‑ for example, if we produce Indigenous content, the content shouldn’t only be discoverable by Indigenous users of the algorithm; it should be discoverable by all Canadians. So, it really is something that has to be tied to regulation and the certification of Canadian content.

8179 COMMISSIONER LEVY: So, you want us to move quite far down a path. DOC suggested a discoverability fund particularly for those genres of programming such as documentary that have particular challenges when it comes to issues of discoverability.

8180 What do you think of that proposition?

8181 MR. IRVING: I think it's a very interesting idea because we do need to think about discoverability beyond simply the interface that you’re accessing the content through. I mean, really what discoverability comes down to is marketability, and you need to break through the noise for anyone to know that you exist when it comes to content.

8182 And so, the idea of a discoverability fund that producers can access in order to market their content is a very interesting idea, and it’s very much, you know, the way the American market runs. Often, productions will have a discoverability budget that’s the same as the production budget in order to break through the noise and get their content out into the world and have people be aware of it. So, this idea of a discoverability fund is very interesting.

8183 COMMISSIONER LEVY: What about, you talked as well about data and more generally about making sure that data is available on programming, and that data be made available to producers of programming in particular. What is it about that structurally that we could do to address that issue? In the structural sense rather than a content sense?

8184 MR. IRVING: M’hmm. Well, I think if you look at all of the interventions and the comments around data, no one is asking to mine that deep into the information. We’re looking for basic numbers that help us understand the audiences ‑‑ and how to access them. And I really do struggle with the idea that somehow that’s not worth sharing with the creators of the content that you’re serving on your platform.

8185 It seems to make a lot of sense to share that data so that not only do we as content creators understand where the market is, where their interests are, but the more data we get, the more we can refine what we make to serve not only those audiences but the market and the fiscal side of things when it comes to the platforms. So, sharing data, it seems to me, will help everyone. I really struggle with the idea that this is, you know, not something that’s being shared. It’s puzzled us all for a very long time.

8186 COMMISSIONER LEVY: It's not an issue that has arisen only with the advent of the online undertakings. So, it’s been going on for a long time.

8187 I think that in your submission, you’re one of the intervenors that has leaned in most heavily to the discussion of diversity of programming, especially with regard to French‑language productions outside Quebec and Indigenous‑language productions.

8188 So, should tools to promote the diversity of available programming and editorial voices for Canadians such as the issue of cross‑media ownership ‑‑ should that be revised or replaced? Is that an issue when it comes to diversity, or are there other things that we should be doing to better incent or mandate more exposure for diverse programming?

8189 MR. IRVING: I think we're on a path currently that is going to lead us to a destination that is an equitable reflection of Canada through the media we consume. That has improved significantly over the last decade. We need to continue to improve it because it’s not there yet, and that is reflected through content that is produced by English speakers, French speakers, Indigenous language speakers, other languages in this country, but just as importantly through people who live in different regions of this country.

8190 And, you know, as is spelled out quite clearly in my intervention ‑‑ our intervention, regional representation has never achieved the level of equity that it deserves in this country, and it continues to be a problem. It ebbs and flows sometimes. Sometimes, a fund will open up that will allow a little bit more production in the region, and then, all of a sudden it swings back the other way ‑‑ the fund runs out of money or it doesn’t exist anymore, and then the more centralized content creation occurs again and the regions are left in the dark.

8191 There needs to be more money available in the system to not only the regions, but also to equity‑deserving groups that are creating content for the Canadian marketplace.

8192 COMMISSIONER LEVY: When it comes to that kind of diversity, what seems to work best ‑‑ incentives or mandates?

8193 MR. IRVING: That's a good question. It seems that whenever there is a mandate, there always seems to be an effort to work around the mandate. With incentives, in this moment in time, when there is so much momentum behind equity‑deserving groups and underrepresented group having a voice, developing talent bases, and growing those voices and that storytelling community, incentives seem to be the way to go, because a mandate makes it like it’s a bad thing. It’s something you have to do.

8194 If it’s incentivized, and those storytellers create content that’s terrific, everybody wins. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing. The more support that we give to equity‑deserving groups, to those whose voices aren’t being heard, the more we discover new storytellers and new stories that are terrific and really do a great job of entertaining Canadian audiences and reflecting the truth of this country back to them.

8195 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Just one last question, and it’s an area that comes to mind but has not really been discussed very much. In the whole issue of regional representation and discoverability and diversity and all of the rest of it ‑‑ and this may come from total left field to everybody here, but the whole issue seems to be curation in many respects. I mean, we don’t have a very good system, it seems, of letting people know what’s out there that might be interesting to them, whether they are Canadian or anything else.

8196 If we are reliant on the carousel on an online undertaking to tantalize us with what’s coming, or the face page of a connected device, a connected television for informing us about the latest Canadian movie or whatever, we are going to wait a long time for that to really have an impact.

8197 So, over and above some of the other methods for discoverability, isn't there a business out there for someone who wants to take on the challenges of real curation for Canadian content?

8198 MR. IRVING: Well, you know, you look back in the past, there used to be representatives of broadcasters in the regions. There used to be programming people in Winnipeg. There used to be programming people in Edmonton. There used to be programming people across the country. Now, it’s all centralized to Toronto.

8199 And so, without having programmers in the regions, without having an understanding of those stories you’re talking about that are unique and interesting and that Canadians would probably find to be unique and interesting if they had access to them, how do they ever find their way?

8200 So, you know, you opened up the conversation with the thousand dollar cup of coffee. I mean, that’s what we call a meeting with broadcasters when you’re from the regions. You have to spend a thousand dollars to go see them. So, I do very much miss the days when there were regional broadcast representatives and programmers. I think that the Canadian content system much better reflected Canada when that existed, and I would love to see it be a requirement that the broadcasters have regional representation. I mean, that would be terrific. Please do that.

8201 COMMISSIONER LEVY: What about the online undertakings, because they are fast becoming the distribution services of choice?

8202 MR. IRVING: Well, they have little interest in making themselves very accessible to producers in general anyway, let alone having representatives in the regions. They are challenging to work with. They are challenging to access. And I’m not sure how much they care about regional stories, so I don’t have a lot of hope that that’s going to happen.

8203 However, you see breakthrough content. You know, every once in a while, one of us gets one of our shows on the air and it’s a big hit. And again, it’s one of these things that I struggle to understand how they don’t see the potential value in exploring unexplored markets.

8204 So, as long as regional producers can find a thousand bucks for their cup of coffee, I guess we’ll still be in the game, but it sure would be a lot easier and a lot better if they came to see us once in a while.

8205 COMMISSIONER LEVY: Those are all of my questions, Madam. Thank you very much.

8206 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Levy. I think you’ve covered a lot through your questions, and I appreciate that.

8207 Maybe just one last. As you were discussing discoverability with my colleague, you mentioned the importance of making sure Canadians have access to Canadian content ‑‑ or that Canadian content is sent back to Canadians for them to enjoy.

8208 And this made me think about discoverability also on global markets, and I suppose when you are a small Canadian content producers, yes, you would like to have your content be available to your neighbours and your fellow Canadians, but I’m sure there’s a lot of content producers out there who also want to have access to foreign markets. And in some particular genres, it may actually be essential to their sustainability and growth.

8209 So, is this something that the Commission should consider as well ‑‑ this making sure that the content be made available to Canadians by online platforms and BDUs, but also be made available ‑‑ and I understand that there is a rights issue there, but still is this something that we should keep in mind as we think about discoverability?

8210 MR. IRVING: I think it is something you should keep in mind, and I’m not sure what you can do about it beyond the decisions you make around Canadian IP ownership and control ‑‑ and codes of practice. Because it’s about negotiating. It’s about getting a fair deal, and it’s about getting an equitable return on what you’re selling to the market. And so, if one of the streamers wants to take our content globally, the price paid and the terms around how it’s released and exhibited and marketed should be negotiated. And it should be done in a way that’s fair and equitable.

8211 THE CHAIRPERSON: And do you feel that the current regulatory framework allows you to aspire to fair negotiations ‑‑

8212 MR. IRVING: No.

8213 THE CHAIRPERSON:  ‑‑ with ‑‑ no? And if not, do you have any specific proposals as to how we could make this regulatory framework more conducive to fair discussions, fair negotiations between people like yourselves and the online platforms, for instance?

8214 MR. IRVING: Well, we would be supportive of the CMPA’s position on this, and I believe in their intervention they proposed the beginning of a structure that could work. I also believe that, philosophically, if there is a mandate that codes of practice must be put in place between independent producers and the streamers and broadcasters, that we will come to a deal. I don’t think it will require intervention beyond the mandate of the CRTC for it to occur. I don’t think ‑‑ I don’t think we’ll have to come back to you to help with that. I think we’ll be able to figure it out on our own.

8215 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right, thank you very much. Thank you for your answers. Thank you for taking the time to come to Gatineau to present in person. We appreciate your participation and your presence, and we wish you a safe trip back to Winnipeg, whenever you go back.

8216 MR. IRVING: Thank you, and we’ll follow up on the regulatory question when we confer with our members.

8217 THE CHAIRPERSON: Sure. In your final submissions would probably be the best way. Thank you very much.

8218 MR. IRVING: Thanks very much.

8219 THE CHAIRPERSON: Madame la secrétaire.

8220 THE SECRETARY: Thank you.

8221 We are adjourned for the day and will resume tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Thank you.

‑‑‑ L'audience est ajournée à 15 h 23 pour reprendre le vendredi 4 juillet 2025 à 9 h 00

Sténographes
Ada DeGeer-Simpson
Monique Mahoney
Lynda Johansson
Tania Mahoney
Brian Denton