The debate over Bill C-11 – the Online Streaming Act – seems likely to come to an end this week, at least in the House of Commons. Last week, the government introduced a motion to put an end to committee debate and set tight timelines for any further review or discussion. Before it becomes forgotten, this week’s Law Bytes podcast is devoted to the House committee hearings on the bill with clips from a wide range of digital creators, interest groups, and independent experts on the potential Bill ...
Jun 13, 2022•27 min
In the two months since the Online News Act was introduced it has received limited coverage and sparked little debate. Last week, Bill C-18 began to attract attention as over 125 small and medium sized Canadian publishers began to sound the alarm, calling on the government to fix the bill by addressing concerns around fairness and transparency. Jeff Elgie of Village Media are two of Canada’s most successful and innovative local digital publishers, operating in dozens of communities across Canada...
Jun 06, 2022•57 min
Last week, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage started its hearings on the Online Streaming Act with the first of four day-long sessions it has planned for witnesses. Morghan Fortier, the co-founder and CEO of Skyship Entertainment, stole the show that day with insights that demand to be heard. Her company may not be a household name, but it’s Canada’s leading Youtube streaming service with millions of subscribers worldwide and billions of views. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk a...
May 30, 2022•48 min
Last week, the government took another step toward copyright term extension in Canada, inserting extension provisions within Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Budget Implementation Act bill . Despite recommendations from its own copyright review, students, teachers, librarians, and copyright experts to include a registration requirement for the additional 20 years of protection, the government chose to extend term without including protection to mitigate against the harms. Lucie Guibault is a...
May 02, 2022•27 min
This week’s Law Bytes podcast departs from the typical approach as this past week was anything but typical. As readers of this blog will know , last week I obtained access to hundreds of previously secret submissions to the government’s online harms consultation. Those submissions cast the process in a new light. This week’s Law Bytes podcast explains why the online harms consultation was a transparency and policy failure, walking through what has happened, what we know now, and how this fits wi...
Apr 25, 2022•17 min
Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18 – the Online News Act – the second of three planned Internet regulation bills. There is much to unpack about the provisions in the bill including the enormous power granted to the CRTC, the extensive scope of the bill that could cover tweets or LinkedIn posts, the provision that encourages the Internet platforms to dictate how Canadian media organizations spend the money at issue, and the principle that news organizations...
Apr 11, 2022•55 min
The CLOUD Act , which allows US law enforcement to use a warrant or subpoena to compel U.S.-based technology companies to provide data stored on servers regardless of where the data is located, was first introduced in the United States in 2018. Canada and the US recently announced plans to negotiate a Cloud Act agreement which would ease cross-border disclosures of data between the two countries. David Fraser is a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Halifax and one of Canada’s leading privacy experts ...
Apr 04, 2022•32 min
Since the introduction of Bill C-11, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has insisted that he heard the concerns about regulating user generated content and he “fixed it.” Yet the reality is that anyone that takes the time to the read the bill knows that simply isn’t the case . The concerns with the government’s approach have started to attract the attention of Canadian digital-first creators, who fear the plans could lead to lost revenues and reduced promotion worldwide of what has becom...
Mar 28, 2022•26 min
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked international condemnation and a race to levy sanctions and undo longstanding connections to the country. Responses have included demands that Russia Today, a television network backed by the Russian government, be removed from cable and satellite systems. Companies such as Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw have dropped the service, but the desire for a longer-term regulatory solution has brought the issue to the CRTC. Working with a strict two week deadlin...
Mar 21, 2022•46 min
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics spent much of February conducting a study on the collection and use of mobility data by the Government of Canada . The study stems from reports that the Public Health Agency of Canada worked with Telus and BlueDot, an AI firm, to identify COVID-19 trends based on mobility data with questions about whether there was appropriate disclosures, transparency and consent from the millions of Canadians whose data may ha...
Mar 14, 2022•41 min
The proposed Rogers – Shaw merger has placed Canada’s competition law and policy back into the spotlight as consumers frustrated by high wireless prices and a market that many believe already suffers from insufficient competition face the prospect of even less competition should the deal be approved. Last week, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology agreed, issuing a recommendation that “the Committee believes the merger should not proceed” and identifying the need fo...
Mar 07, 2022•44 min
After several weeks of protests, occupation, and border crossing blocking, the Canadian government took the unprecedented step last week of invoking the Emergencies Act . The situation is rapidly evolving and still being debated in the House of Commons. Dr. Leah West is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and one of Canada’s leading experts on national security law. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to discus...
Feb 21, 2022•37 min
The interest in regulation and Web 3.0, the umbrella term for all matters crypto, continues to grow in countries around the world. In Canada, a new private member’s bill encourages the government to establish a regulatory framework to support innovation even as concerns mount over the use of cryptocurrency to by-pass conventional payments regulations. In the United States, there have been multiple Congressional hearings and proposals for legislative action. Fight for the Future was one of many l...
Feb 14, 2022•31 min
The government’s Internet regulation plans were back on the agenda last week as a “what we heard report” was released on online harms and Bill C-11 – the sequel to last year’s controversial Bill C-10 – was introduced by Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez . The Law Bytes podcast will devote several episodes to the bill in the coming months. For this week, however, rather than inviting a guest to discuss a bill that people are still assessing, I appear solo and walk through the bill’s prov...
Feb 07, 2022•36 min
There has been mounting concern over the past few years over whether some of the world’s largest companies – primarily big tech – pay their fair share of taxes. This issue has arisen in countries around the world leading to new digital services taxes that primarily target the U.S. tech giants and which in turn often leads to the U.S. threatening to retaliate in response. Canada now finds itself embroiled in these battles as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has proposed a retroactive digital se...
Jan 31, 2022•25 min
The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto , led by Professor Ron Deibert , has a well-earned reputation for uncovering surveillance technologies and security vulnerabilities with research and reports that attract immediate attention worldwide. Professor Deibert has won an incredible array of awards and accolades for his remarkable work, including the Order of Ontario and the EFF’s Pioneer Award. In 2020, he delivered the Massey Lectures, based on his book for the lectures, Reset: Reclaiming t...
Jan 24, 2022•35 min
The right to repair, whether consumer electronics, farm machinery or even health and medical equipment, is an issue that affects everyone. Given the implications for consumer and property rights, the sustainability of the agricultural sector, and protecting the environment, ensuring a right to repair would seem like an obvious political winner. Yet the issue has lagged, not the least of which because of restrictive copyright laws that can limit the ability to repair personal property. Aaron Perz...
Dec 13, 2021•41 min
Privacy breaches have become increasingly commonplace as businesses of all sizes grapple with how to keep customer information secure and what to do when things go wrong. The issue is particularly challenging for small and medium sized business, who are forced to navigate a regulatory framework that isn’t easy and can be extremely expensive. Enter JusTech , a project launched by Ritesh Kotak , Ayushi Dave , and Ryan Mosoff , three University of Ottawa law students who leveraged legal innovation ...
Dec 06, 2021•26 min
Canada’s strategy to ensure that everyone from coast to coast to coast has access to affordable high speed Internet services is widely viewed as a failure and the source of ongoing frustration for many, particularly those in rural, remote and indigenous communities. Those communities often face the prospect of no broadband access or at best expensive, unreliable services. The Council of Canadian Academies recently convened an expert panel on High-Throughput Networks for Rural and Remote Communit...
Nov 29, 2021•41 min
The Canadian Parliament is set to resume this week and it’s a safe bet that Internet regulation will be part of the legislative agenda in the coming months. One of the toughest policy issues involve misinformation, which can be difficult to define and potentially to regulate. The Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression was established in spring 2020 with a three-year mandate to better understand, anticipate, and respond to the effects of new digital technologies on public life and Canadian ...
Nov 22, 2021•33 min
Scott Simms, a Liberal MP from Newfoundland for 17 years, was long recognized as a leading voice on Parliament Hill on cultural and digital policy. Simms recently served as the chair of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which conducted the review of Bill C-10 and which placed him at the heart of one of the year’s more controversial pieces of proposed legislation. Simms was not re-elected this past fall and is now well positioned to reflect on policy making in Canada and the issues tha...
Nov 16, 2021•47 min
From Bitcoin to NFTs, interest in crypto and the blockchain has never been greater. Millions of people around the world invest in various crypto currencies, exchanges seem to pop-up daily, and for better or worse the pace of innovation and new services is reminiscent of the early of the days of the Internet. As the industry races ahead, where does the law fit in? Can the law fit in? Addison Cameron-Huff is a Toronto-based blockchain and cryptocurrency lawyer. A former president of Decentral, a l...
Nov 16, 2021•41 min
The Canadian digital first creator economy isn’t something that politicians or policy makers seem to know much about, but they are quick to propose legislative reforms that directly implicate it, most recently in the form of Bill C-10. Yet the sector is thriving, with Canadian stars earning millions of dollars and attracting global audiences that often exceed Canada’s conventional film and television sector. Scott Benzie , the CEO of Buffer Festival, started in traditional media but now advocate...
Nov 16, 2021•35 min
NDP MP Charlie Angus has been a consistent – and persistent – voice on digital policies since his election to the House of Commons in 2004. He was one of the first MPs to seriously consider user rights within Canadian copyright law, a vocal supporter of net neutrality and more affordable wireless services, and a leading advocate for privacy protection and social media regulation. Last week, Angus called a press conference to unveil his 6 point plan for digital policy, which emphasized accountabi...
Oct 29, 2021•31 min
Facebook has once again found itself in the political spotlight as Frances Haugen, a former data scientist and product manager with the company turned whistleblower, provided the source documents for an explosive investigative series in the Wall Street Journal followed by an appearance before a U.S. Senate committee. The Facebook Files series comes just as Canada is moving toward its own legislative response to Internet concerns, with an online harms consultation that provides a roadmap for futu...
Oct 28, 2021•35 min
With yesterday’s Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting with experts on Bill C-10 and its implications for freedom of expression, this is a special Law Bytes episode featuring my opening statement and engagement with Members of Parliament. The discussion canvassed a wide range of issues including how regulating user generated content makes Canada an outlier worldwide, the impact on net neutrality, and why discoverability requirements constitute speech regulation. There is a second post ...
Oct 28, 2021•34 min
When the proposed Rogers – Shaw merger was announced last month, it immediately became a flashpoint for Canada’s ongoing debate over wireless competition and pricing. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology moved quickly to put the proposed merger under the microscope with hearings that have included Rogers and Shaw along with academics, competitors, and regulators. I was invited to appear before the committee and provide my take on the implications of the merger. This week’s ...
Oct 28, 2021•22 min
The Canadian technology community has a long history of working together with government and regulators to counter online harms such botnets, spam, and malicious hacking. It therefore came as a surprise when the CRTC launched a consultation on addressing botnets that raised the possibility of the regulator stepping in with new blocking mandates. The consultation just completed its first round of comments and in addition to industry experts, there were others that opportunistically looked at the ...
Oct 28, 2021•36 min
As countries around the globe work to get their citizen vaccinated against COVID-19, a battle over intellectual property rules has emerged at the World Trade Organization. Last year, Canada passed legislation designed to ensure that patents would not pose a barrier to securing supplies of a vaccine or treatment. A year later, developing countries around the world have looked to the WTO to develop similar standards through a waiver process that would speed up access to, and production of, vaccine...
Oct 28, 2021•23 min
A Canadian coalition of consumer advocates, civil society and social justice groups, policy experts, activists and independent ISPs will come together in a national Day of Action on Tuesday to demand the immediate implementation of federal measures to deliver affordable internet and wireless services in Canada and to put an end to constantly increasing bills. This week’s Law Bytes podcast brings together three people that bring unique perspectives to the issue: Madeleine Redfern , the former may...
Oct 28, 2021•40 min
