When I was a child and we were taught geography, Canada was huge when featured on a map. This was purely an illusion based on Mercator projection and when you take into account the fact that the north of Canada is much smaller than it appears, you have a country that is actually about the same size as the US rather than larger. In terms of population, Canada is about 1/10th the size or about the size of California. Our green house gas emissions are about 1.6% of the world’s emissions and about 1/10th of the emissions from the US. We are about 40 million people on a world of 6 billion.
For Canada for be a leader in anything is therefore a significant accomplishment. For Canada to post of being a leader in many areas is self evidently, delusional. In politics however things are always as big as you can make them appear.
The latest conceit is bill C11 by the federal government which sets a goal to regulate the internet content through the CRTC. In an era of direct transmission through radio frequency transmission and relayed programming through cable, the CRTC’s function was reasonable to control since most Canadians were further from US antennas than most receivers could detect. From south west Ontario, I could get Detroit TV on a good day. One winter day in Flin Flon Manitoba, I picked up Smoking Joe in Minnesota on AM radio. For decades, the CRTC has ensured that US content does not overrun Canadian media.
The internet is different however. It is based on point to point connections which transcend political boundaries. If you want to see what is happening on Russian television, you only have to query it. If you want to know how the Saudis think, Al Jazeera is only a click away. A lot of journalism today can be compared to microbreweries. You can get opinions that are refreshing and non-main stream with a few clicks. The CRTC is a poor fit as a regulator however when 99% of the content is beyond our borders and mostly, freely available. That makes the CRTC as a media content controller, a leaking boat. The CMPA ( Canadian Media Producers Association ) is upset of course because content is leaking into Canada which can replace theirs and does not necessarily comply with the CRTC. They therefore support the legislation. Small media producers are upset as they can run afoul of the CRTC. Large foreign internet providers will be slightly irritated. The consumer will, for the most part, be oblivious.
The core beneficiaries therefore appear to be the CMPA which will be protectionist, the CRTC which is doing a rear guard action to keep themselves relevant, and implicitly the CBC. How will the CRTC know to take action? Likely by complaints from the media elite based on unfair competition. It might be possible to weaponize it politically based on accusations of misinformation. In any case, if the defendant is foreign it is unlikely that the CRTC will find a way to enforce their penalties without a great deal of difficulty.
Which brings us to the real problem of the internet. Anonymity. On either end of an internet communication is a legal entity which may be known but possibly not. It may be a fishing scam, a bot, a spammer. The original concept of the internet did not include recording of the legal entity or the country the communications are coming from. With respect to a legal system however this has a high level of relevance. You cannot sue a person or corporation you cannot locate and having a legal entity in a foreign country is problematic. The Internet is a fantastic vehicle for world wide communications but there are limits on what we can say from a legal context ie. it cannot be libellous or breaching a bunch of other regional or national laws.
China and other countries have put restrictions on their internet to restrict content to state approved content but in the west that would violate the principals of freedom of speech. It is not unreasonable however that we be warned about the country of origin for any communications or that the individual or corporation on the other end may not be who they say they are. When I first got a Gmail account more than as decade ago no one asked me if I was a Russian agent. No one asked me for id when I got a Facebook account either.
When the CRTC has this problem solved maybe we can deal with the Canadian content issue.