Months before the Liberal government removed a section of Bill C-10 in a controversial amendment, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault was told by officials within his own department that it was an “important limitation” on regulatory powers.
A briefing note prepared for Guilbeault in December 2020, and obtained through access to information, outlined which online services would be covered by Bill C-10. It pointed to section 2.1, which excludes individual users from regulation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and remains in the bill, and to section 4.1, which excluded their content. Section 4.1 was removed by the government in late April, a move critics said was an attack on free expression.
Guilbeault told MPs on the Heritage committee Friday that the government removed the exemption for user-generated content because it couldn’t justify imposing obligations on companies like Spotify and Apple music but not YouTube, which is currently the most popular service used by Canadians to listen to music.
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