JUST HOURS LEFT: Stop Bill C-10

UPDATE: Bill C-10 is currently in front of the Senate, having cleared the House of Commons. With Parliament on summer recess since June 23rd, the Senate won’t continue its examination of C-10 until Parliament resumes in September. But should a federal election take place before then, Bill C-10 will “die”, meaning it loses its progress in the stages of becoming a law — but will likely be reintroduced from the beginning in the new session of Parliament.

Our government just used a gag order to shut down further debate of Bill C-10. In a shocking move not seen since the 1990s, they’ve cut off review of the Bill, and are rushing it to a Parliament vote as soon as they can.¹

Make no mistake: Bill C-10 gives the CRTC huge power over every app and platform you use on the Internet. Under C-10, the CRTC will set rules to promote or bury every video, meme, and podcast we upload to the Internet, filling our feeds with their outdated 20th-century vision of what counts as “Canadian” content — whether we want it there or not.

There’s just hours left to stop this. Parliament will decide NEXT WEEK whether to vote through Bill C-10. Tell your MP NOW that this is not how we want to see our culture promoted — they MUST vote no on Bill C-10!

First Name

Last Name

Your Email

Postal Code

Or...

Uncheck this box to unsubscribe from all updates.

Receive campaigns in English

Start writing your email to your MP!

*Note: Elements between brackets {} will be automatically filled-in with your MP’s information.*

We've included some text to help get you started. Feel free to edit the letter using the white text box below:

To: MP {contact_data~firstName} {contact_data~lastName}

As your constituent, I am writing to demand you vote no to Bill C-10, An Act to Amend the Broadcast Act. Despite recent amendments to C-10 to address some of the concerns that have been raised around the Bill, C-10 continues to grant utterly inappropriate power to the CRTC to influence which user speech we see on the Internet and which we do not.

Supporting the production and distribution of Canadian cultural content on the Internet is a worthy objective. But the government’s decision to skip a full public consultation on how best to do that has made C-10 a poorly drafted disaster from the start, as problems and loopholes unforeseen by the government have cropped up again and again, and continue to do so.

While Bill C-10 is far from fixed, our government has abruptly ended parliamentary debate using a tool that has been used just three times in all of Canadian history. Many important amendments to improve the bill from every party will now never be considered, let alone voted on.

This is not what good governance looks like, and not a process I expect you as my elected representative to support.

Please vote NO on Bill C-10. The drafting process of this Bill has been deeply tainted from the start. I call on you to support a new conversation, this time with wide public input, on how best to support the flourishing of Canadian culture and creators online.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}
{user_data~Zip}

This campaign is hosted by OpenMedia. We will protect your privacy, and keep you informed about this campaign and others. Find OpenMedia's privacy policy here.

When Bill C-10 was first announced, we called it a bad Bill and spoke out against it. By awkwardly applying 20th-century broadcasting regulation to the Internet, it threatened to drive major online platforms out of Canada, while doing nothing to reform our broken system for determining and supporting official Canadian content, or support the homegrown Canadian creators already flourishing on the social web.²

Then our government made C-10 much, much worse. In a surprise move, they pulled section 4.1 from the Bill, a crucial exemption for user-generated content. Now all our audio-visual content on platforms — all the memes, Youtube and Tiktok videos, podcasts we make and love — are subject to full broadcasting regulation by the CRTC.

Don’t get confused - the CRTC is STILL getting this power under C-10. While recent amendments have somewhat narrowed the scope of the CRTC’s power, Heritage policy staff confirmed on June 9th that the Bill will still give the CRTC the power to instruct platforms to modify their algorithms to guarantee that a set percentage of our feeds and search results show officially recognized Canadian content, not the material from our friends and follows most relevant to our search.³

The government has lied to us again and again about this Bill. They told us that user content would never be regulated — but it is. They told us that removing section 4.1 didn’t matter, as we’d be exempt as legal individuals from CRTC regulation — but our speech as users, the most important part of the Internet, very clearly was and is regulated. Now that they’ve seen they aren’t going to get the wide support they want for their disastrous Bill, they’re cutting off ALL further debate — including considering their own amendments that could strengthen the Bill!

This is not how you make good legislation, and not how democracy should work. We need to send our leaders a strong message that we demand better policy and better process from them.⁴

If you haven’t already, tell your MP to vote NO on Bill C-10, and demand Broadcasting reform that is actually about supporting Canadian arts and culture – not taking control of the Internet.

Sources

Liberals, Bloc vote to end Bill C-10 study amid social media free speech concerns - Global News
What’s wrong with Bill C-10? An FAQ - OpenMedia
CHPC Committee Meeting, June 9 - House of Commons
Rock Bottom: Bill C-10 Gag Order and No-Notice Meetings Means the End of Committee Review is Near - Michael Geist

If you haven't taken action yet click here

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