Pressure mounts on Heritage Minister over French-language music streaming

November 11, 2023

Pressure is mounting on Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge to amend the federal government’s Policy Direction to the CRTC to require music streamers to push French-language songs on their platforms. It’s expected that the Minister will finalize the Policy Direction prior to the CRTC’s public consultation on the implementation of Bill C-11, commencing November 20th.

This past week Québec’s National Assembly passed an unanimous motion asking the major music platforms to “adapt their algorithms in order to promote the discoverability of Quebec music.” 

The motion was in response to the dramatic underconsumption and lack of promotion of French language music on Spotify and other global streaming platforms in Québec, especially by younger Québécois. The statistic frequently cited is that French language songs constitute only eight per cent of streamed music in Québec. This is attributed to a lack of promotion, algorithmic or otherwise, by the streamers.

The problem was raised in the Parliamentary process for the Online Streaming Act, as early as March 2021 when it was debated as Bill C-10, by the leading advocates for the French language music community, ASDIQ and APEM (although it ought to be noted that their English Canadian counterpart, CIMA, opposes regulatory intervention into algorithm recommendations).

In response, Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux won support of the NDP and the Conservatives to amend C-10 to provide that streamers “must clearly promote and recommend Canadian programming, in both official languages as well as Indigenous languages, and ensure that any means of control of the programming generates results allowing its discovery.” 

The emphasized legal text leaves no doubt that the streamers “must” push French language music by “any means of control” —an allusion to algorithmic-driven “recommendations”— to attain “results.” As Champoux told his fellow MPs at the time, “c’est l’intention derrière cet amendement. Je veux que Spotify et Apple Music envoient des recommandations de contenu de nos artistes canadiens et québécois.”

But two years later when then-Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez unveiled his C-11 Policy Direction to the CRTC in June 2023, the mandate spelled out in Champoux’s amendment was conspicuous by its absence. The word “recommendation” did not appear and, to the contrary, the CRTC was directed to minimize interventions with streamer algorithms. Rodriguez’s view was already anticipated by the Commission in its Notice of Public Consultation which signalled its deference to the streamers’ well known opposition to algorithmic changes.

Not every “must” in the Broadcasting Act gets implemented by the CRTC, but Rodriguez’s Policy Direction and the Commission’s Notice of Consultation look very much like flouting Parliament’s specific instructions.

All of this fits into the broader context of Québec’s cultural politics in response to Bill C-11. After the legislation passed the Senate in February 2023, Québec’s CAQ government suddenly demanded a special right of consultation in federal broadcasting matters affecting Québec.

The substance of the demand was not a surprise. Québec has never relinquished its constitutional claim to jurisdiction over broadcasting (despite a Supreme Court ruling against it) and a special ‘right of consultation’ for official language minority communities (OLMCs) had been inserted into Bill C-10 by the Liberals.

What was surprising was the timing of the CAQ demand: eighteen months had elapsed since the Liberals’ amendment favouring OLMCs and the Bill was almost in the Governor General’s hands for Royal Assent.

CAQ is now saying it’s ready to make a political fight of it. Citing the lack of a special consultation right or federal action on music streaming recommendations, the Legault government is promising a yet to be defined provincial foray into broadcasting in 2024. Perhaps cognizant of the constitutional hurdle of federal jurisdiction over broadcasting, Québec’s language Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said the province “will go as far as the areas of jurisdiction, laws and taxation allow it to do.”

For good measure, the federal Bloc Québécois has introduced a one paragraph private-member’s Bill in the House of Commons that would deal with the consultation issue.

This puts the Minister in a prickly situation. St.-Onge became an MP in the 2021 election, winning her Brome-Missisquoi riding by a margin of 196 votes over the Bloc.

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