Regulating social media posts could threaten our privacy, experts say

OTTAWA – The Liberal government has proposed new limits on how CRTC can regulate social media posts under Bill C-10, which would still give the broadcast regulator some oversight what content Canadians see on digital platforms.

The amendment proposed at the Heritage committee meeting Thursday evening would allow the CRTC to issue orders relating to discoverability – the ability to force social media platforms to show a certain amount of Canadian content to users.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist said the amendment doesn’t address concerns about the bill infringing on free expression that have emerged in recent weeks. “This speaks to the CRTC imposing conditions on what gets prioritized or promoted in user feeds. I believe that clearly involves speech regulation,” he said.

The controversy over the bill updating the Broadcasting Act began when the committee voted to remove a section that exempted user-generated online content. Experts said that move meant Canadians’ social media posts, like the videos they post to Tiktok or Youtube, would fall under the regulatory authority of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Critics say that amounts to an attack on free expression.

With the amendment proposed by Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin, user-generated content is still considered a “program” that the CRTC has the authority to regulate, Geist said in an email.

He said that while “they’ve narrowed the regulatory scope slightly,” the amendment “doesn’t come close” to the promise Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault made Monday, to make it clear that the content Canadians upload to social media isn’t considered “programming” under the Broadcasting Act and won’t be regulated by the CRTC.

“That is still in place. Despite nearly two weeks of public concern, the government still seems committed to regulating user generated content,” Geist said. “This remains an unworkable, dangerous bill driven by lobbyists demands rather than the interests of Canadians.”

A department official from Heritage Canada, Thomas Owen Ripley, told MPS on the committee that the bill “would give the CRTC the ability to make orders with respect to discoverability of Canadian creators of programs.” The CRTC could also force social media platforms to make financial expenditures on Canadian content, and force platforms to provide information to the regulator. Those are the only three types of orders the CRTC could issue to social media platforms, Ripley said.

At the end of Thursday’s meeting, the MPS didn’t make any further progress on what appeared to be a partial consensus the various parties reached earlier in the week on a charter review. On Monday, the opposition parties agreed at the committee the amended bill should be sent to the justice minister for further review of how it affects charter rights.

The government agreed to that new review, but Liberal MPS maintained it should wait until the committee had finished its work amending the bill clause-by-clause. More than 100 amendments have been put forward by the various parties.

But then during Thursday’s at-times confusing meeting, the MPS stopped debate on that issue, seemingly by mistake. After Dabrusin withdrew her proposal to leave the charter review to the end of the clause-by-clause process, Conservative MP Rachael Harder spoke in favour of her initial motion for a charter review for an hour.

A Liberal MP then proposed to adjourn debate – meaning the discussion on both Harder and Dabrusin’s motions would stop immediately and a vote could not take place – and the committee voted in favour. But then some opposition MPS indicated they had voted mistakenly, and said they hadn’t realized they were stopping debate on the charter review in general.

The Liberal government says C-10 isn’t intended to censor Canadians’ online posts, but to bring the Broadcasting Act, which was last overhauled in 1991, into today’s online world by allowing the CRTC to regulate companies like Netflix the same way as it does traditional broadcasters.

The bill’s supporters, which include sectors like TV and film production and the music industry, say it’s necessary to ensure Canadian cultural creators are adequately supported, such as through rules requiring platforms like Netflix or Spotify to make financial contributions to Canadian content.