September 21, 2023
The CRTC has tabled an application by Égale Canada to boot Fox News off of Canadian cable for allegedly violating television regulations prohibiting misinformation and abusive comment directed at transgendered people. Instead, the Commission announced its intention to review its overall policy of granting cable access to foreign television channels for unlicensed carriage at the request of Canadian cable companies.
The application arose out of comments by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in April 2023, described by Egale as follows:
During the segment, Carlson made the inflammatory and false claim that trans people are “targeting” Christians. To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer. The segment also contained a range of other malicious misinformation about 2STNBGN people, including that trans people are given preferential treatment in employment and other opportunities. This is clearly an attempt to stoke resentment against 2STNBGN people
Section 8 of the Distribution Regulation (applying to Canadian cable companies) says this:
- 8(1) No licensee shall distribute a programming service that the licensee originates and that contains
- (a) anything that contravenes any law;
- (b) any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability;
- (c) any obscene or profane language or pictorial representation; or
- (d) any false or misleading news.
The first impression of the CRTC apparently burying Égale’s application is that the Commission is either dodging a hot potato or is so overwhelmed by other telco and broadcasting files that it is content to park this one at the end of a very long queue.
A thoughtful review of the abusive comment regulation is overdue nonetheless. Over a year ago in the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Commission expelled Russia Today from Canadian cable in hasty obeisance to the Heritage Minister’s demand.
The Canadian abusive comment regulation is important and worth defending. Media junkies may recall that in 1987 the Reagan administration in the United States scrapped the “fairness policy” binding FCC-regulated local broadcasters (but not unregulated national cable news operations) that checked the more partisan instincts of some American broadcasters.
Irrespective of the specifics of Carlson’s ugly comments about transsexuals and the fact that he is no longer employed by Fox, the right-wing network spread and legitimized falsehoods and libels about the 2020 US election. That kind of thing might qualify as “false or misleading news” in Canada.
The Commission would be well advised in today’s political environment to think carefully about how to draw the line between political speech and disinformation as well as a measured approach to punishment other than a permanent ban. An instructive example is the CRTC’s 2004 decision to deny a licence renewal to Québec City’s CHOI-FM after its radio hosts defiantly carried on making racist and misogynistic comments.
As anyone might observe, Fox News is free to spread their editorial views, including frequently extreme opinions, over the Internet. But access to Canadian cable, reaching up to 60% of Canadian households, is an economic opportunity and a regulatory privilege, not a right.
Update: A reader reminded me that the “abusive comment” regulations for broadcasters and cable distributors don’t apply directly to non-licensed foreign channels such as Russia Today or Fox News. However the Commission has said in the Russia Today ruling they apply indirectly: “The Commission’s general approach to the addition of English- and French-language non-Canadian services to the List was set out in Public Notice 2000-173 and revised in Broadcasting Public Notice 2008-100. In regard to non-Canadian news services, the Commission determined that an open-entry approach would be consistent with the importance it places on a diversity of editorial points of view. Accordingly, the Commission stated that, “absent clear evidence, as determined by the Commission, that a non-Canadian news service would violate Canadian regulations, such as those regarding abusive comment, the Commission will be predisposed to authorize non-Canadian news services for distribution in Canada.”
***
Still on the free speech theme, former Heritage Minister (and current Environment Minister) Steven Guilbeault avoided his day in court by consenting to remove his Twitter block of the attention-starved provocateur Ezra Levant.
Guilbeault’s block was a response to Levant’s dogged Twitter insults and arguably libellous injury to reputation. The Minister had opted for blocking instead of muting which would have allowed Canadians following Guilbeault’s Twitter handle to continue seeing Levant’s disparagements.
Trolling the Twitter accounts of others is the digital equivalent of grabbing their microphone to speak to an audience the troll hasn’t earned, but federal Ministers will just have to grin and bear it.
***
The National Post has updated the ongoing story of Canada’s Digital Services Tax, set to come into force at the end of the year.
The story hasn’t changed: Canada is one of the few countries that has refused to extend the December 31st deadline for a further twelve months in hopes that the United States Congress will confirm the global tax deal negotiated by the Biden administration. The Biden deal would replace a series of Digital Services Taxes legislated by several countries with a comprehensive international agreement combatting corporate tax avoidance.
The National Post story adds the recent news that both Republicans and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have published a letter decrying Canada sticking to the deadline. The letter repeats unsubstantiated claims that various national DSTs (including those already implemented by Britain and France) violate trade rules and that the US may retaliate against Canada for following the process negotiated by their President. Canada’s reputation is smeared by associating us with the few holdouts against Biden’s request to extend the agreed deadline, those holdouts being Belarus, Pakistan, Russia and Sri Lanka.
Nobody expects Congress will actually pass Biden’s tax deal and the Post story quotes an expert expressing doubt the US Congress will comply. In fact, a cursory glance at the Ways and Means Committee website (curated by majority House Republicans) makes it clear that extending the deadline until the end of 2024 is pointless: in a recent news release targeted at European countries that have already acquiesced to Biden’s deadline extension, the Republicans describe the Biden deal as “a global tax surrender.”
In view of the Republicans’ position, it’s unclear why 138 countries agreed to Biden’s deadline extension. Our federal government is keeping its strategic considerations close to the vest.
***
Today’s recommended read is a video. The Wall Street Journal has an eight-minute explainer of US Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan’s aggressive approach to anti-trust enforcement.
***
If you would like regular notifications of future posts from MediaPolicy.ca you can follow this site by signing up under the Follow button in the bottom right corner of the home page;
or e-mail howard.law@bell.net to be added to the weekly update;
or follow @howardalaw on Twitter.
MediaPolicy.ca 
Good going to get this very timely piece out! Congrats,
Sent from my iPhone
<
div dir=”ltr”>
<
blockquote type=”cite”>
LikeLike