1 Revisions to Bill C-11 The Online Streaming Act Brief Submitted by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) and the Fédération des télévisions autonomes du Québec to the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications August 16th, 2022

2 Executive

Summary The community element is critical to the Canadian broadcasting system. The need for a robust community broadcasting sector has never been greater. Newsrooms are being gutted by commercial broadcasters as their business models struggle to adapt to digital competition. Communities outside of the major centres are being left in the dust. Study after study has concluded that lack of local representation is undermining our democracy, in addition to the proleration of “fake news” on the Internet.

Community broadcasters are local-not-for-profits set up by residents for the express purpose of ensuring that the community as a whole as well as minorities within have a platform for expression. They are part of the infrastructure of the community: there for the long haul, collaborating with and providing visibility to local businesses, community service organizations, sporting and artistic organizations, educational institutions and local government. Through these collaborations, their cost structure is low.

They are sustainable with a minimum of funding to keep their doors open and to ensure basic staffing to co-ordinate local collaborators. They are answerable to local boards of directors and viewers that live in the community that would spot fake news before it could ever air.

Not only do community broadcasters respond to the need for local programing in the Canadian mediasphere, they are our ace in hole to ensure that the broadcasting system is inclusive, and can serve the needs of Indigenous people, the disabled, and all minorities, by providing them with the know-how and infrastructure to tell their own stories on credible CRTC-licensed platforms.. These are our mandates. To fulfill our potential however, we needed more recognition and specificity regarding our role than was provided in the 1991 Broadcasting Act, in the initial draft of C-10, and in the initial draft of C-11.

We worked with MPs from all political parties—particularly those on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage— throughout the revision processes for both C-10 and C-11 to ensue that the new Broadcasting Act would have the specificity required to ensure that the community element can fulfill its role within the Canadian broadcasting system moving forward. All the amendments we proposed were passed unanimously by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

We therefore ask that the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications ensure that none of the language introduced as a result of this process be changed or removed. Our sector has the tools it needs to flourish and serve the needs of communities to express themselves in the digital environment from coast to coast to coast. We note that during this process, our organizations worked closely with our counterparts in the community radio sector to ensure that our amendments were harmonized.

For the benefit of members of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications, we provide a rationale in this document for the changes we requested, and background about our sector and the challenges we faced working within the environment created by the 1991 Broadcasting Act, which these amendments were designed to redress.

3 Identification The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) and the and the Fédération des télévisions autonomes du Québec advocate on behalf of individual Canadians and community organizations for access to digital skills training, production support, and distribution platforms so that individuals—especially minority and alternative voices—and communities have the tools they need to be heard and express themselves in the digital environment. Our vision has evolved from our roots in community television to include multimedia and multiplatform access.

CACTUS and the Fédération were formed in the early 2000s by citizens (many of them former cable community TV station employees) who were alarmed by widespread closures of former cable access productions studios and a shift in production methodology at the remaining cable studios away from citizen-oriented content to corporate and cable staff-driven content. CACTUS and Fédération members include: ● not-for-profit over-the-air community TV and radio license holders, whose content is also distributed on cable, satellite, and the Internet.

Our membership is not limited to television - one member trains the public in the creation of interactive content (web and video games) and three also distribute radio. ● unlicensed not-for-profit community TV and media corporations, which stream their content on the Internet and provide it to Broadcast Distribution Undertakings (BDUs, which includes cable and satellite companies) for playback on BDU community channels ● not-for-profit community organizations that want coverage and visibility, or which support the free speech and community development mandate of community media ● individual Canadians and media researchers concerned about the availability of local content, and their capacity to leverage technologies to get messages out.

What and Who Belong to “The Community Element”? CACTUS and the Fédération are two of five professional associations that represent the community element in the broadcasting system. The other three represent community radio: ● The National Community Radio Association (the NCRA);

4 ● L'Association des radios communautaires du Canada (l'ARQ du Canada) and ● L'Association des radios communautaires du Québec (l'ARQ du Québec) The community element also includes at least 60 Indigenous community broadcasters, some of whom are members of these associations Together, the community element includes over 300 not-for-profit sources of local TV and radio, which facilitate production by over 10,000 community organizations, individual Canadians, small businesses, Indigenous bands and other groups within Canadian society.

Community media organizations frequently provide local reflection in the absence of other local media. The Role of the Community Element The community element in broadcasting is understood by practitioners here in Canada and in at least 50 other nations that recognize it as providing: ● a voice for smaller communities and minority voices― This role is ever more important in the wake of private media consolidation and lay-offs, such as Bell’s 2021 cuts and the CAB’s estimate that 200 stations will close this year.

Because of our collaboration with local players and organizations, we serve our communities for the long haul, producing content for 1/10 th the cost of the public and private sectors. In many places, community media are the only option; for example, in most Indigenous communities, which may have only a few 100 or 1000 members. ● a platform for democratic discourse at the local level; for example through the dissemination of municipal council meetings, town halls, and other public fora, as well as through programming that community members create themselves.

The unregulated Internet cannot provide this forum and in fact spread misinformation; community media are answerable to the CRTC and other regulatory authorities. Community media rebuild trust in local institutions. ● media literacy― In the digital era, this role is ever more crucial, to ensure that individuals, community organizations and small businesses have the know-how to leverage evolving digital platforms.

For example, we offer training not only in traditional media production, but also in virtual reality, augmented reality, and video game production. ● incubators for Canadian talent――Next to the massive US market, we must compete by enabling our community media network of 'farm teams' that recruit and develop talent. Community media are the “Creative Hubs” envisaged in the Creative Canada Policy Framework, where interdisciplinary media rub shoulders, learn new skills, and

5 develop ideas in low-risk environments. They're the “Google-campuses” of our hinterland. Despite the increasingly important role of the community element in the Canadian broadcasting system, it was mentioned only once in the 1991 Act, and only once in the initial draft of Bill C-10 at clause 3.1b: (

b) the Canadian broadcasting system, operating primarily in the English and French languages and comprising public, private and community elements, makes use of radio frequencies that are public property and provides, through its programming, a public service essential to the maintenance and enhancement of national identity and cultural sovereignty; There was no definition for any of the elements, nor discussion of the role of the community element, despite an extensive

section that deals with the public-sector (the CBC), and the fact that the rest of the document refers implicitly to private media. The act (1991, and the drafts of bills C-10 and C-11) states at

section 3.1 e): (

e) each element of the Canadian broadcasting system shall contribute in an appropriate manner to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming; ... but there was no description of what is an “appropriate manner” and how the sectors should complement one another. The impact of this absence has been the near total loss of community TV service to Canadians since the 1991 Act came into effect, and the destruction of 40 years of audio-visual archives for over 200 communities that have no other audio-visual record of the period.

Under CRTC policies of the 1970s through to the present-day, community radio stations were implemented as licensed not-for-profit corporations owned and operated by community-elected boards, while community TV stations were implemented as departments with cable company offices, bundled with the license for the cable system.

As a result, community radio stations have flourished, developing over the intervening decades as integral parts of community infrastructure, but cable community TV stations have been shuttered as the ownership, technical structure, competitive environment and priorities of the cable industry have changed.

The community TV sector has been hindered from fulfilling its potential to provide local coverage, to support democratic discourse, to bolster the voices and languages of minorities and Indigenous communities and to support media literacy just at that point in our history when we need them the most, as the private sector falters, and as we finally acknowledge as a society that we must make the broadcasting system more inclusive. Therefore, we asked MPs and the Department of Canadian Heritage for additional specificity

6 regarding the community element in the new broadcasting act: 1) A clear definition for the community element 2) A description of the role of the community element 3) Elaboration to other clauses in the act to clarify the community element's complementary role with respect to the public and private elements. More Specificity is Long Overdue Community media was not a new “element” in Canada’s media landscape when the 1991 Act was written and the community element was formally mentioned for the first time.

There have been community-owned newspapers since the 1800s and campus- and community- owned and -operated radio stations since 1922, when CFRC-FM of Queens University began broadcasting as the first radio station in Canada. There have been cable community TV stations since the late 1960s. Community TV's roots were established by the National Film Board of Canada and its groundbreaking “Challenge for Change” stream of film-making, which was funded by federal government ministries interested in poverty reduction.

The government discovered that positive social change results from direct citizen participation in media. Since cable television was being introduced to Canada, and the CRTC was concerned that the influx of dozens of US stations would dilute viewership to Canadian TV content the regulator asked cable operators to set aside local channels for community self-expression and to train the public in media production. Throughout the 1970s, this implementation of community TV—under the stewardship of th e cable industry—was an experiment.

Meanwhile, community TV and radio as implemented in every other country that formally recognized a third sector in broadcasting defined the sector by community ownership. When the 1986 Report on the Task Force on Broadcasting was written, which preceded the re-writing of the 1991 Broadcasting Act , the former patchwork network of over 200 small mom-and-pop-owned cable companies had already begun to be consolidated into the large ownership groups we know today, eroding their hyper-local base and capacity to play host to community TV .

The 1986 report therefore recommended what we are asking for 30 years later: greater clarity regarding the role the community element, and to support the development of not-for-profit community TV . Had these recommendations been implemented at the time, community TV would not have suffered this decline over the last two decades. It would be at least as robust as community radio.

7 CRTC Failure to Develop Community TV This lack of guidance to policymakers—we believe— is why the CRTC has floundered over the last 30 years with respect to community TV . So much change has occurred in the transition to digital technologies, that there have always been bigger more financially charged issues occupying the CRTC's attention, leaving community media as a sidebar 1.

The CRTC’s regulatory neglect culminated in the CRTC's 2016 Local and Community TV policy review, in which the CRTC gave cable and satellite companies the green light to redirect most of Canada's considerable $150 million budget for community TV to prop up their no-longer-profitable private news properties. 2 We see the futility of this approach today, as the private sector continues to announce more lay-offs. Throwing money ear-marked for the community element into the black hole of legacy private broadcasting cannot redirect the tide of the marketplace.

That resource, appropriately invested in community-owned media could, however restore local journalism to Canada’s hinterland. We see what difference a small investment can make—1.6 million annually—via the Local Journalism Initiative, which has placed over 30 journalists across Canada at community TV and radio stations, each catalyzing teams of local residents to provide the civic and democratic coverage that the public and private sectors cannot offer 3.

Presciently, the CRTC’s 2011 report Shaping Regulatory Approaches for the Future, recognized that efforts to regulate the private sector to offer Cancon might soon reduce their ability to compete with OTT services from beyond our borders, and that it would make more sense to invest in the two elements with a public-service mandate to generate the public-service minded content envisaged under the Broadcasting Act: “Long-term approaches to ensuring the prominence and quality of Canadian production may increase the importance of public and community broadcasters as instruments of public policy.

Local and regional programming will also be important, and community broadcasters may play a key role.” 4 1Please see our full submission to the Broadcasting Review panel at https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/110.nsf/vwapj/1325_CACTUS_2b-5b-11_EN_CA.pdf/$FILE/1325_CACTUS_2b- 5b-11_EN_CA.pdf for a discussin of the succession of CRTC decisions that have undermined community TV since 1997. 2 See the CRTC’s Local and Community TV Policy (CRTC 2016-224) at https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2016/2016- 224.htm 3 See ComMediaPortal.ca and Canada-Info.ca to see journalism produced at community TV and radio stations under the Local Journalism Initiative. 4 See http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/rp110324.htm for the full report.

8 Invisibility of Community Element in Recent Policy Documents Aside from the lack of guidance regarding the community element in the 1991 act, there has been a failure to recognize the importance of community media for Canada in seminal reports that have led to the current review of the broadcasting act: The Creative Canada Policy Framework―Despite the fact that all five organizations representing the community element submitted reports and participated in meetings leading up to the publication of the 235-page Creative Canada Policy Framework, it makes only glancing reference to the sector, despite sounding the alarm about several challenges that the community element is peculiarly well positioned to address, including: ● the failing business model for the private sector to create local content ● the lack of civic reporting at the local level ● the need for “Creative Hubs” to develop Canadian talent.

While the framework acknowledged that the line between amateur and professional media-makers has become blurred in the digital environment, it failed to recognize that community media organizations are the places in our community where amateurs learn media skills, professional cross-train, and new ideas can be tested. Our biggest names, from Mike Myers to Dan Aykroyd to Guy Maddin started their careers on community TV . The Shattered Mirror―by the Public Policy Forum barely mentioned the community element and its role in providing civic news and local information to smaller communities.

TheYale Report―The twelve-member Broadcasting Review panel included no representatives of the community element. The Yale report makes almost no mention of the community element, other than to recommend redirecting even more of the nation's community TV budget toward BDUs' private news stations. How could the panel be expected to write a balanced report about the future of broadcasting, without such representation? How could it leverage the considerable potential of the community sector with no innate knowledge of it.

Change and Churning in the Media Landscape, written by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, acknowledged the importance of community broadcasting, and flagged the need for more support for it. MPs know the value of having access to their electorate on credible local media.

Like the public broadcaster, the CBC, we must have direct support from Parliament and from Parliamentarians (including members of the Senate) to ensure that the health of the community sector is not victim to changing priorities of the private sector: We ask you to call us as witnesses in this important study, to ensure that the community

9 element is included in each stage of deliberation regarding bill C-11. Amendments to Bill C-11 to Clarify and Strenthen the Role of the Community Element Passed by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage 1) Define Community Media The single most important modification needed to the Online Digital Streaming Act to support a robust community “element” and to meet the government's inclusivity, diversity, and accountability mandates was to define “community element”. We proposed the following definition, based on CRTC policy for community radio: “Community Element: The community element in the broadcasting system is defined :

i) by not-for-profit community ownership and ii) by the participation of members of the community in content production, day-to-day operations, and administration, via a community-elected board.“ “Community Program: An audio-visual production created at a not-for-profit community media organization” The two key ideas in this definition were adopted by the Heritage Committee (recognition of not-for- profit broadcasters and of the participation members of the public), although the wording is different: “community element includes the element of the Canadian broadcasting system as part of which members of a community participate in the production of programs that are in a language used in the community including a not-for-profit broadcasting undertaking that is managed by a board of directors elected by the community;” We were initially uncertain whether the term “broadcasting undertaking” would include community TV and radio stations that distribute their content only online, but we have been assured by staff at Canadian Heritage and our own legal counsel that our online-only members will be captured by this definition and recognized as part of the regulated broadcasting system.

10 2) Describe the Role of Community Media. Beyond a bare-bones definition, the sector needs a description of its role, equivalent to that provided for the public sector (the CBC). We proposed as low-hanging fruit basing such a definition on the description for “alternative programming services“ in

section 3.1(

r) of the 1991 Act, which closely describes the role of the community element. Very few such services exist in the private sector, and the

section was never used in policymaking. Therefore, we proposed that this

section instead define the role of “community element”, with a few modifications (underlined): “the programming provided by the community element should (

i) be innovative and complementary to the programming provided for mass audiences, (ii) cater to tastes and interests not adequately provided for by the programming provided for mass audiences and include programs devoted to culture, politics, his tory, health and public safety, local news and current events, local economy and the arts, (iii) reflect Canada’s communities, regions, Indigenous and multicultural nature, including through third - language programming, (iv) support new and emerging Canadian creative talent, as a cost -effective venue for learning new skills, taking risks and exchanging ideas, (

v) through community participation, strengthen the democratic process and support countering disinformation, and (vi) be available throughout Canada s o that all Canadians can engage in dialogue on matters of public concern;” MPs from all parties on the Heritage Committee voted unanimously to include this description of the role of the community element as

section 3 (1) (s). 3) Integrate Community Media into Other Sections of the Act To provide direction for policy-makers not familiar with community media, community media's complementary role vis-a-vis the public and private sectors must be clear. We offered the 4 most important examples of this complementarity below. The clarifications we proposed are underlined. 3-1

i) the programming provided by the Canadian broadcasting system should (

i) be varied and comprehensive, providing a balance of information, enlightenment and entertainment for people of all ages, interests and tastes. At the local level, community

11 broadcasters are in the unique position—through collaboration with local organizations and community members—of being able to provide this variety and to serve the needs of niche groups.

This amendment passed. iv) provide a reasonable opportunity for the public to be exposed to the expression of differing views on matters of public concern, and to directly participate in public dialogue on such matters via the community element” We proposed this addition because the phrase “to be exposed to” assumes a private- or public-sector model of production, in which Canadians are a passive audience to content created by a privileged class of journalists and producers.

Language is required that reflects the community element's role in enabling the direct participation of members of the public on matters of public concern. This amendment was also passed by the Heritage Committee. 3-1 (

o) programming that reflects the Indigenous cultures of Canada and programming that is in Indigenous languages should be provided within the Canadian broadcasting system, including by programming undertakings that are carried on by Indigenous persons; including Indigenous community media, which are uniquely positioned to serve smaller and remote communities.” This amendment was passed by the Heritage Committee (although with slightly different wording). 3.1 (p) “programming that is accessible without barriers to persons with disabilities should be provided within the Canadian broadcasting system, as well as the resources and opportunity to develop their own content and voices on community media;” This amendment was also passed by the Heritage Committee (although with slightly different wording).

Like Indigenous persons, disabled persons are natural clientele for community media, because they can adapt the technology (and obtain technical support to do so) to meet their needs. A robust community element can enable all Canadians to generate their own media and to make the adaptations they need to be heard. One additional amendment was passed by the Heritage Committee describing the community element's role in supporting minority languages. Our associations did not propose it, but we support it:

12 3 (iii) 4: support community broadcasting that reflects both the diversity of the communities being served, including with respect to the languages in use within those communities and to their ethnocultural and Indigenous composition, and the high engagement and involvement in community broadcasting by members of those communities, including with respect to matters of public concern, 4) Ensure Community-Owned and -Operated Media are Adequately Resourced to Fulfill Their Role: In the wake of cutbacks to Canadian and local content in the private sector, the public and community elements will need to step into the gaps.

To addess those gaps, these elements will need resources. We therefore proposed the following amendment to

section 3.1 (e): 3.1 (

e) each element of the Canadian broadcasting system shall contribute in an appropriate manner to the creation and presentationof Canadian programming. Those fulfilling a public service function will be adequately resourced to do so” This was ruled outside the scope of the act and not adopted by the Heritage Committee, which we understand. But we thought it important to raise, since the goal of better defining the community element is ultimately that its worth underpinning Canadian democracy, inclusivity, and diversity lead to the sector being recognized as a worthy recipient of a portion the additional funding that will flow to the Canadian broadcasting system from the new act.

13 CONCLUSION There has never been a more critical time to support the role community broadcasters play in Canadian society. We were extremely gratified by the support and recognition given to the community element by the Heritage Committee, and look forward to discussing these amendments with the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications should you have questions. (Annex B Dropped)