Tell the Senate: Keep the CRTC away from your posts!

The Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11, just passed the House of Commons without the CRUCIAL amendment that would protect your posts from being regulated by the CRTC as ‘broadcasting.’ 

Very soon the CRTC could have sweeping new powers to regulate your videos, podcasts, and pictures on online platforms.1,2

The Senate’s final vote is our last chance to protect our content. Email the Senate to stand firm on behalf of Canadians and reject the House's decision.

Our MPs just undid all the hard work fixing C-11 our Senators have accomplished. Last November, Senators Paula Simons and Julie Miville-Dechêne  proposed and passed Senate amendment 3, which would have significantly improved the bill by narrowing C-11 to target on professional audio content, excluding the majority of our user-generated content from CRTC regulation as ‘broadcasting’. 3,4,5 It was a slam-dunk amendment that would have achieved the primary goal of Bill C-11 – revenue for traditional media ecosystem Canadian creators – while explicitly carving out everyone else’s user-generated content. If the government had no intention of regulating our user posts, why not pass the amendment? 

Without the Simons-Dechêne amendment, Bill C-11 is a deep risk to the future of Canada’s Internet. Our government is telling us to trust their intent, and that limits on the CRTC will be applied later by a policy direction from the Minister.6 But a policy direction is not legal protection, and can be changed at any time: we need strong protections in law that will safeguard our posts and our ability to freely view the content we want. 

Our message is clear: our posts are not broadcasting and shouldn’t be treated as such. Without the Simons-Dechene amendment, Bill C-11 MUST NOT PASS. 

We sent over 100K messages to the Senate demanding they fix Bill C-11 to respect our feeds and our choices – and they listened.7 Now we need you to help stiffen their spine and stand up to the House to keep protecting our rights. 

Email the Senate demanding they say NO to any version of Bill C-11 that regulates user content as broadcasting!

Sources

  1. What’s wrong with Bill C-11? An FAQ - OpenMedia
  2. UPDATE: Senate passed Bill C-11– what happens now? - OpenMedia
  3. Your voice, DELIVERED: 103,000+ petition signers urge Senate to fix Bill C-11! - OpenMedia
  4. See 2
  5. Report of the Committee - Senate of Canada
  6. Keeping the Bill C-11 Implementation Secret, Regulating User Content, and Citing Non-Existent Benefits: Some Reflections on the House of Commons Online Streaming Act Debate - Michael Geist
  7. See 3

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Press: Matt Hatfield | Phone: +1 (888) 441-2640 ext. 0  | [email protected]