Québec moving on more regulation of digital media

May 28, 2024

Yesterday Québec Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe announced the next step in his plan to introduce, in one form or another, legal standards for the prominence of French language media available on global streaming platforms operating in the province.

The CAQ government will kick off a public consultation and then report back “what we heard” in January 2025. That report will probably be followed by a provincial bill, possibly in coordination with a federal government that has exclusive jurisdiction over broadcasting.

If Lacombe’s bill does emerge in 2025, it might arrive during a Fall 2025 federal election campaign. Federal parties might be expected to take a position on it, setting up an uncomfortable test of Pierre Poilievre’s anti-regulation position and his electoral prospects in Québec. The Conservatives have been there before, notably in 2008.

The majority CAQ government does not face election until the Fall of 2026.

Lacombe made the announcement of the public consultation at a conference convened by the Coalition for Diversity of Cultural Expression, in Québec City. He was joined by his cabinet colleague Martine Biron, the Minister responsible for women’s issues and relationships with the global francophonie.

Biron was the more quoteworthy, perhaps understating that there is a “sense of emergency” in Québec regarding the survival of French language culture in the global digital environment. Her Boomer generation, she said, bears the responsibility of preserving the availability of French language culture for a younger generation immersed in English-language digital offerings.

Biron said that the alarm in Québec is not just about the English language domination of TikTok and YouTube content. An even larger concern is that the next technological wave of AI-driven media content will be (American) English-dominated and far more intrusive into language and culture than the current digital giants.

In fact, most of the CDCE conference focussed on the development of AI, especially the ingestion of linguistic and cultural data that will set the parameters for user tools as AI takes a hold in daily lives.

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