Jeff,

Good news! Our voices were heard: The Senate just REFUSED to rubber stamp Bill C-10 before their summer recess. Instead of rushing through the controversial bill as Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has demanded, the Senate decided to refer it to committee for further study.¹ 

Already, the quality of debate at the Senate has been a step up on what we saw in the House. Lawmakers are finally talking honestly about the real impact of C-10 — not its intentions, not what might happen in a best case scenario, but what it actually does, as written, today. 

Senators are not very happy with what they see. Senator Paula Simons has called C-10 a backwards-facing “Maginot Line” that inappropriately fights yesterday’s broadcasting battles through the Internet.² Senator Leo Housakos observed that the Bill seems designed to benefit “media production companies with the lobbyists and lawyers to work it to their advantage” — not independent Canadian performers already popular on Canada’s Internet.³ Multiple senators are also raising concerns around the remaining ‘discoverability’ requirements in C-10, which even after amendments, would let the CRTC force some designated “Canadian” content into your feed, replacing other content. 

In brief, every question about C-10’s risks, errors and omissions the House of Commons ignored while ramming this Bill through is now being raised by the senators the OpenMedia community has shared our voices with. 

I’ll say it again: Senators heard YOUR demand for more careful study of C-10, and they are acting on it. Thank you!

So what happens next? The Senate Committee on Transport and Communications will now launch its own inquiry into concerns and unanswered questions around Bill C-10. They’ll have the opportunity to call further experts, debate amongst themselves, and propose further amendments — though how detailed their inquiry will be remains to be seen. Best case scenario, they may remove CRTC power to manipulate our feeds from C-10, and ensure financial support clearly supports small online creators of diverse Canadian backgrounds, not just legacy media companies. They could also let this Bill die, and ask Heritage to start fresh on figuring out how to support Canadian storytelling online — with a bit more attention to the details this time!

We’ll keep following this every step of the way. We’ll be lobbying to present to the Senate Committee directly once their inquiry is in motion, do our best to inform them of what our community’s concerns are, and keep you informed at each stage. The fight is far from over, and the Senate may still let us down; but in getting this far we’ve proven that the voice of ordinary people still matters, and can force our representatives to slow down and listen to us.

I’m so proud of what we do together. Thank you for getting involved, and joining us on this key fight to make sure our rights to expression and information continue to be respected.

Matt Hatfield, Campaigns Director at OpenMedia

P.S. All of our work is only possible due to your support, and C-10 is just the first government proposal this year that threatens our freedom of expression. Major new legislation around ‘online harms’ is planned for this fall, and if it is poorly designed, it could have a much greater impact on our rights than Bill C-10. If you’re able to give today to support our work, you’ll be ensuring we’re ready to assess this legislation and fight to fix or defeat it if we need to.