New party, fresh faces on Heritage could shake up Parliament

As politicians file back into Parliament Hill’s Centre Block for the start of the fall sitting Monday, some new faces will be working on files affecting Canadian media and telecom, as long-awaited legislative reviews that could have seismic effects on those sectors get into gear. Since the House of Commons went on summer break, there’s been a shakeup on the Heritage portfolio, with a new heritage minister in Pablo Rodriguez. He’ll be supported by newly-appointed parliamentary secretaries, MPs Gary Anandasangaree and Andy Fillmore, and will face a new Opposition heritage critic in Quebec MP Steven Blaney. One thing they’ll have to watch that wasn’t on the radar in the spring is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations, where cultural protection has emerged as a surprise sticking point. Any movement or change on the cultural exemption would have a massive effect on Canada’s cultural industries, experts have told The Wire Report, though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended the exemptions and said they would need to be included in any new agreement. The innovation file has a new addition, too, with B.C. MP Dan Albas taking on the role of the Conservative critic on for innovation. Hill-watchers will have to wait to find out what issues the new shadow critics will choose to attack the government on -- both the NDP and Conservative critics either declined or didn’t respond to interview requests. The Conservatives have been quiet on media and telecom issues since the last election -- aside from instances like former innovation critic Maxime Bernier wading in on net neutrality, which saw him at odds with two members of his caucus. Bernier also promises to be the fall sitting’s wild card. Last month he left the Conservative Party to launch a political party of his own, since dubbed the People’s Party of Canada, taking the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) analyst Martin Masse with him. Both have pro-free-market positions on the regulatory state of the telecom industry, with Bernier calling for the CRTC to be phased out as a telecom regulator. The new party’s platform is still being finalized, but its website says it will be “mostly based on the same policies” as those proposed during Bernier’s unsuccessful run for the Conservative leadership two years ago. “Canada has a strong and mature telecommunications sector, and it doesn’t need to be coddled by government bureaucracy making fake competition,” the website says. “This is unacceptable. The CRTC needs to get out of the telecom industry, and foreign competition needs to be allowed.” All of that has the potential to shake up the conversation that’s been happening on the Hill on media and telecom issues in the past few years, during which most of the pushback has come from the opposite side of the political spectrum. That includes NDP heritage critic Pierre Nantel as one of former Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s most vociferous critics, who lambasted her for holding a series of consultations instead of any action on issues like new regulations for foreign digital platforms. That’s set to continue, with the NDP promising to pressure the government to stop allowing foreign internet companies to skirt domestic taxes. "The preferential treatment received by these foreign platforms threaten our small and medium-sized businesses, our artists, our culture and our French language, our media and the financing of our social services,” NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in a late-August press release. “As it stands, the Liberals are simply out of step, other industrialized countries are willing to tax these web giants.” The consultations initiated by Joly are set to continue this month, with reviews of the broadcasting, telecommunications, and radiocommunications acts. An expert panel will not only have to “find solutions” to the question of how to make foreign online platforms pay their fair share without raising prices, as Joly has said, but it must also deal with modernizing pieces of legislation that date from a quarter century ago. The panel has until 2020 to figure out how to update laws that were made in a completely different time in communications history -– before the emergence of the internet. At the same time, the Senate’s transport and communication committee will be holding its own study on modernizing Canada’s communication legislation. That won’t be the only committee study to watch, as the House industry committee continues its review of the Copyright Act. Prior to the summer break, it heard from a variety of music industry stakeholders, but in September that scope will expand, with appearances from broadcasters and internet service providers (ISPs). Meanwhile, the House ethics committee will continue considering how the government should respond to revelations that data from Facebook Inc.’s social media platform was being used without consent to influence political outcomes around the world. The committee issued preliminary recommendations in June and is working on a final report. That controversy also led the government to launch a consultation on big data and privacy, which is scheduled to issue a report in the fall of 2018 that will serve as a guide for any legislative or policy changes the government may make. The Cambridge Analytica controversy also contributed to a motion the NDP put in front of the House this spring, aiming to push all Canadian departments and agencies to prioritize digital data and privacy rights in their activities. The motion hasn’t yet made it to the order paper. Other legislation put on pause when the House rose for the summer includes election bill C-76, which will require federal political parties to have and make public privacy policies covering the collection and use of electoral information. It was criticized by privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien for lacking enforcement measures. It passed second reading in May and is currently in front of the procedure and house affairs committee. The Child Health Protection Act, or Bill S-228, has been the subject of lobbying by broadcasters who say it could have an adverse effect on them by limiting advertising of junk food to children. It’s now in third reading in the House of Commons. Currently in first reading in the House of Commons is Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s private members’ bill, which aims to give the privacy commissioner greater enforcement powers. But as MPs get to work, they will also be casting their gaze a bit further ahead -- to 2019, when the next federal election will take place. That means the issues and controversies that come up in the next months could offer a good indication of any telecom and media issues that might play a role in the 2019 campaign. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca

New party, fresh faces on Heritage could shake up Parliament

News | 09/14/2018 5:16 pm EDT

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