Your voice DELIVERED: OpenMedia community members take the fight to fix C-11 to the CRTC

On July 11th, we submitted YOUR input directly to the CRTC on the first stage of their implementation of Bill C-11.

Today, your OpenMedia team submitted a detailed regulatory intervention with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to their first consultation on the implementation of Bill C-11. In case you missed it, this CRTC consultation is a BIG one – set to decide which platforms and services should be regulated or not, how much revenue to take from them, and how that revenue should be spent. There will be more key questions down the line that matter a lot – questions like what even IS Canadian content, and how we should decide who is making it  — and we’ll keep you informed on how you can continue participating as the process moves forward. You can read our submission here. 

We couldn’t have done this without YOUR help! Thanks to YOU, we submitted the written comment input of over 6,000 ordinary people directly to the CRTC. Your input through our tool provided key evidence in our submission demonstrating to the CRTC YOUR fierce commitment to freeing your content and feeds from undue governmental manipulation.  On top of the passionate and detailed comments you shared, your survey responses will help the Commission decide which platforms C-11 should apply to, and how they should handle promoting CanCon. Check out what the OpenMedia community said below:

• An overwhelming 79.28% of all survey respondents believe that no streaming services should be regulated as broadcasting; 

• When asked about which methods to promote Canadian content they would support, 71.19% of all survey respondents would support an option to turn Canadian recommendations on and off; 

• Only 5.28% would be comfortable with the CRTC automatically modifying their personalized feed and playlist recommendations; 

• 58.87% of respondents believe that foreign services shouldn’t contribute revenue in the same way as services that currently benefit from the Canadian Media Fund. 

How did we get to this point?

• The Online Streaming Act was first proposed in 2020 as Bill C-10, and re-proposed as Bill C-11 in the new Parliament that followed the election in 2021.

• Since 2021, OpenMedia community members have sent more than 100,000 messages to our representatives on Bill C-11, asking the government to respect the online expression and choices of people in Canada by setting appropriate limits on the scope of this legislation. Despite strong opposition, the government passed Bill C-11 in April 2022 without any real changes to the bill that would protect your online experience. 

• But the fight to address C-11’s shortcomings hasn’t ended there. Soon after Bill C-11 passed, the CRTC announced 3 phases of consultations to lay out the groundwork for Bill C-11 before it comes into effect. 

• The government has also issued a draft policy direction that partially addresses our concerns around user content and choice with the legislation as passed.

• While we would have preferred seeing changes in more durable law, finalizing the policy direction and the CRTC’s ongoing processes are opportunities for Canadians to directly shape how this bill affects them and for the CRTC to make meaningful changes to protect users and our content. 

Coming up next…

• This consultation is one out of three phases the CRTC will be holding on the implementation of Bill C-11. There will be more opportunities to continue participating and engaging in the CRTC process in the months to come — so stay tuned!

• In the meantime, we have a way for you to make a BIG impact in a different campaign. The government recently released their draft policy direction to the CRTC on the implementation of Bill C-11, OpenMedia will very soon launch an action for you to take part in shaping the policy direction - check back in the next few days or stay tuned to your mailbox!