CRTC must hold public hearings for interim exemption orders in Online News Act

The House of Commons Heritage committee passed an amendment to the Government's Online News Act Tuesday that would limit the CRTC's ability to grant interim exemption orders to digital news intermediaries (DNIs) to a single year, as well as requiring the regulator to hold public hearings into the exemption orders. Under section 12 of the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, the CRTC may issue interim orders for tech companies like Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to shield them from entering into the mandated collective bargaining with Canadian news organizations envisioned by the bill. The amendment was brought forward by the NDP's Peter Julian, who told MPs that the amendment would close a loophole for foreign owned tech giants, and the public hearings would increase transparency in the law. The committee also passed a second amendment brought by Julian, which establishes a timeline for negotiations between the DNIs and the news organizations. Under the amendment, DNIs and news organizations will have 90 days for bargaining, and if no agreement is reached, they will have 120 days for mediation. If no agreement is reached after mediation, the parties will have 45 days of final offer arbitration under the CRTC. Under a sub-amendment from Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux, the CRTC can extend these timelines at the request of both parties. Another NDP amendment that would have ringfenced payments from tech companies to news organizations for editorial expenses failed to win approval from the committee over concerns that the provision could be seen as a tax, and could run afoul of certain trade agreements. And yet a fourth NDP amendment added campus and community-based radio stations to the list of news outlets that qualify for bargaining under the act. Julian said the Community Radio Fund of Canada supported the addition of the amendment. A failed Conservative amendment would have removed section 24 of the bill – which reads that "limitations and exceptions to copyright under the Copyright Act do not limit the scope of the bargaining process" – over concerns that the provision would have led to challenges to the bill on legal ground because of interference with the Copyright Act and particularly its provisions over the right to quotation. Section 24, according to Canadian Heritage associate assistant deputy minister for cultural affairs Thomas Owen Ripley, is meant to operate alongside the protections afforded to digital news intermediaries under the Copyright Act, rather than override those protections. The section is meant to anticipate and prohibit the fair dealing defense being used by large tech platforms to avoid bargaining with news outlets. -Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

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CRTC must hold public hearings for interim exemption orders in Online News Act

News | November 29, 2022

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