CBC Lobbies for Less Canadian Content

With large streaming services evading Canadian-content quotas, the public broadcaster is asking Ottawa for permission to put less Canadian content over its airwaves, reports the Winnipeg Free Press.

That has the media advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting calling on Ottawa to impose onto streaming giants the requirements conventional broadcasters already face.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. recently asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to drop its quota of primetime TV content from nine hours of Canadian content to seven.

The CBC wants to lower the quota of local content from 14 to 12 hours a week, with similar reductions for its French-language service, Radio-Canada.

CBC officials argued this accounts for the uptick in Canadian content it streams online.

"The manner in which the corporation provides its services is changing to meet the needs and interests of Canadians and in response to the evolution in how that content is being consumed," reads the network's November proposal to the CRTC.

Like all large broadcasters, CBC already files regular, detailed accounts to the CRTC of what content it airs on TV and radio, and how much it pays for original productions.

Yet the broadcaster doesn’t provide detailed information on its online offerings to the regulator.

That’s because of a 1999 order that counts online transmission of video and sound as separate from radio and television.

The CRTC’s 1999 order also exempts streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney from quotas for broadcasting Canadian content and funding its creation.

After years of coaxing web giants into voluntarily funding Canadian content, the Liberals say they now plan to beef up the rules for streaming services and social media.

However, the government is waiting for an international report to be finalized this summer on how countries can levy taxes on global Internet giants.

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault promised last month his government will "quickly modernize pre-Internet laws so that web giants can offer more Canadian content, contribute to its creation, promote it and make it easier to find," though he did not say how.

The government is also set to receive a massive report on overhauling the Broadcasting Act and telecommunications rules.