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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
FOR THE CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND
TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
TRANSCRIPTION DES AUDIENCES DU
CONSEIL DE LA RADIODIFFUSION
ET DES TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS CANADIENNES
SUBJECT / SUJET:
PUBLIC HEARING EXAMINING NEW MEDIA /
AUDIENCE PUBLIQUE SUR LES NOUVEAUX MÉDIAS
HELD AT: TENUE À:
Place du Portage Place du Portage
Conference Centre Centre de conférences
Outaouais Room Salle Outaouais
Hull, Quebec Hull (Québec)
December 7, 1998 Le 7 décembre 1998
Volume 11
tel: 613-521-0703 StenoTran fax: 613-521-7668
Transcripts
Transcription
Afin de rencontrer les exigences de la Loi sur les langues
officielles, les procès-verbaux pour le Conseil seront
bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des
membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience
publique ainsi que la table des matières.
Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu
textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée
et transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues
officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le
participant à l'audience publique.
tel: 613-521-0703 StenoTran fax: 613-521-7668
Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission
Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des
télécommunications canadiennes
Transcript / Transcription
Public Hearing / Audience publique
New Media / Nouveaux médias
BEFORE / DEVANT:
David Colville Chairperson / Président
Vice-Chairperson,
Telecommunications /
Vice-président,
Télécommunications
Françoise Bertrand Chairperson of the
Commission / Présidente du
Conseil
Martha Wilson Commissioner / Conseillère
Cindy Grauer Commissioner / Conseillère
Joan Pennefather Commissioner / Conseillère
David McKendry Commissioner / Conseiller
ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTS:
Carolyn Pinsky / Commission Counsel /
Karen Moore Avocates du Conseil
Ted Woodhead Hearing Manager / Gérant de
l'audience
Daphne Fry Manager of Convergence
Policy / Responsable de la
politique sur la
convergence
Diane Santerre / Secretaries / Secrétaires
Carol Bénard
HELD AT: TENUE À:
Place du Portage Place du Portage
Conference Centre Centre de conférences
Outaouais Room Salle Outaouais
Hull, Quebec Hull (Québec)
December 7, 1998 Le 7 décembre 1998
Volume 11
tel: 613-521-0703 StenoTran fax: 613-521-7668
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES
PAGE
Presentation by / Présentation par:
Canadian Chamber of Commerce 2852
Telecommunities Canada 2873
Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere 2902
Cultural Human Resources Council / 2924
Le Conseil des resources humaines du
secteur culturel
Greg Pillon 2959
tel: 613-521-0703 StenoTran fax: 613-521-7668
2851
1 Hull, Quebec / Hull (Québec)
2 --- Upon resuming on Monday, December 7, 1998
3 at 0910 / L'audience reprend le lundi
4 7 décembre 1998, à 0910
5 12400 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning,
6 ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to our proceeding.
7 12401 As I think most of you know, we will
8 finish today, probably fairly early. We will see where
9 we are as we get close to the lunch break, and we will
10 decide then whether we take a break for lunch or not.
11 12402 For those of you who have been
12 following the proceedings, you will notice that the
13 Panel is somewhat reduced here today. Chair Françoise
14 Bertrand and Commissioner Joan Pennefather are in
15 Montreal right now, as we speak, with a hearing
16 respecting new French-language specialty channels for
17 delivery on cable.
18 12403 When we had originally scheduled this
19 proceeding, we didn't think it was going to run quite
20 this long, and we had already scheduled the other
21 proceeding.
22 12404 But as I noted at the outset of this
23 proceeding, all of the Commissioners will be involved
24 with the ultimate policy decision with respect to this
25 issue and will be briefed on all of the issues. Of
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1 course, the transcript will be available to them as
2 well.
3 12405 With that, we will turn to our
4 proceeding, Madam Secretary, and call the first party.
5 12406 MS BÉNARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
6 12407 The first presentation will be made
7 by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Robert Keyes.
8 PRESENTATION /PRÉSENTATION
9 12408 MR. KEYES: My name is Robert Keyes.
10 I am the Senior Vice-President, International, for the
11 Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
12 12409 If you are not familiar with the
13 Canadian Chamber, we are the largest and most
14 representative business organization in Canada. Our
15 membership, either directly or through our affiliates,
16 and through more than 500 local Chambers of Commerce
17 across the country and 170,000 businesses, covers all
18 sectors of the Canadian business scene.
19 12410 These hearings which you are holding
20 on the scope of new media are very timely. Your focus
21 in these hearings is primarily to look at the Internet
22 from a broadcasting perspective, but the explosion in
23 the way Canadians are using the Internet for so many
24 purposes, be it communication, commerce, information,
25 entertainment, raises many issues and questions.
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1 12411 Your look at the Internet and new
2 media is but one of its many applications.
3 12412 We don't feel that your focus can be
4 dealt with in isolation from other initiatives and
5 actions being taken elsewhere in the government. The
6 broadcast implications for Internet use must clearly be
7 kept in mind as you examine this rapidly changing
8 scenario. The goal has to be one of balance,
9 encouraging the growth and use of the Internet while
10 addressing areas of legitimate concern.
11 12413 Mr. Chair, we are not experts on the
12 Internet, its technologies or specific applications.
13 So while we leave the technical material to others, our
14 central message is that we have to get the overall
15 framework and principles right. The primary concern of
16 our submission and for our appearance here today is the
17 business impact and the policy implications for
18 Canada's community of rules, regulations and
19 procedures.
20 12414 The Canadian Chamber has been
21 involved in formulation of policy on the growth of
22 electronic commerce. Through our strategic alliance
23 with the Canadian Council for International Business,
24 we were deeply involved with various international
25 organizations in preparation for the recent OECD
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1 meetings on electronic commerce held in Ottawa last
2 October. For many of our members, the promise held by
3 electronic commerce is challenging but exciting.
4 12415 A number of our corporate members
5 from across the country have either written to the CRTC
6 or asked to appear before this Panel. For many
7 companies integration of Internet applications and
8 capabilities are becoming a key part of their strategic
9 business plans.
10 12416 Clearly the Canadian business
11 community has concerns about how the outcome of these
12 hearings will fit into the more general framework of
13 Canada's approach to maximizing our Internet advantage.
14 12417 The Internet does not fit neatly
15 within current Canadian regulatory regimes. Moreover,
16 the Internet is a truly international phenomena that
17 does not fit neatly within the borders of any
18 international jurisdiction. This is why international
19 cooperation on the various aspects of Internet use for
20 electronic commerce has taken on international
21 dimensions and why the recent OECD Ministerial on
22 electronic commerce was so important.
23 12418 At that time, international
24 representatives in attendance and the media commented
25 that there were conflicting messages from the
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1 Government of Canada. While Industry Canada chaired
2 the OECD meeting and set out a far-sighted agenda to
3 enhance the use of electronic commerce within Canada
4 and across international borders, Canadians were also
5 preparing responses to your call for comments on
6 potential Internet regulation of the new media.
7 12419 Every passing day illustrates that
8 the Internet is a multi-dimensional creature and one
9 where new applications are being created constantly.
10 The Internet is much more than just assessing content
11 on the web, however. As a means to link computing
12 devices, the Internet is a critical business tool,
13 essential for our competitiveness, productivity and
14 growth.
15 12420 The background paper makes it clear
16 that the CRTC is aware of the argument, that approaches
17 which have proven successful in the past with respect
18 to convectional broadcasting may not be directly
19 applicable to the Internet.
20 12421 In our view, the Broadcasting Act and
21 the Telecommunications Act should not be used to
22 regulate the Internet, because the Internet is not
23 primarily a broadcasting tool, even though certain
24 websites may offer material which some may characterize
25 like broadcasting.
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1 12422 We understand that one approach
2 before you is to bring the Internet under the current
3 broadcast or telecommunications regulatory framework by
4 creating a broad definition of new media. If this
5 approach is used, the definition used will be critical.
6 It could encompass content on all networks, including
7 Intranets and corporate LANS, and clearly this would be
8 inappropriate.
9 12423 We appreciate the concerns you are
10 trying to address through these hearings. For example,
11 questions raised by the transmission of audio signals
12 over the Internet on such sites is virtually Canadian,
13 because users can tune in to signals posted on this
14 site.
15 12424 How does this differ from traditional
16 broadcasting?
17 12425 We don't have any quick answer to
18 these concerns; but we do say that if there are
19 concerns, let the solutions be narrow and specific, not
20 broad and general. We have to guard against using
21 blunt instruments to achieve narrow purposes and
22 creating possibly unintended consequences.
23 12426 Let me address one specific concern
24 which has given rise to comment from the business
25 community.
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1 12427 If the Internet is considered to be a
2 "broadcast medium", who is the broadcaster? Is it the
3 Internet service provider, or is it the particular
4 website?
5 12428 Under the Broadcasting Act, one
6 interpretation is that ISPs could be obliged to pay up
7 to a 5 percent levy on gross revenues to fund Canadian
8 content, not unlike television broadcasters. Such
9 levies would only diminish Canada's attractiveness as
10 the premier country in which to locate electronic
11 services and to conduct electronic commerce. Moreover,
12 it might just do nothing more than drive ISPs outside
13 the country.
14 12429 This would not help to provide the
15 environment of encouragement and support, which is a
16 key message which the Federal Government has been
17 trying to establish in other fora.
18 12430 Government and business must work
19 together to ensure that the Internet is secure and
20 efficient, but we must refrain from reacting too
21 quickly with the application of old rules and concepts
22 to the new technology. The business community is
23 showing that it has viable solutions to the many
24 challenges presented by electronic commerce.
25 12431 The recent OECD Ministerial
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1 demonstrated industry created solutions to issues like
2 privacy, security and other measures to improve
3 consumer confidence. It also underlined the need to
4 ensure that governments do not create an uncoordinated
5 patchwork of regulatory structures.
6 12432 In a borderless world of the
7 Internet, global industry self-regulation and
8 international cooperation across governments on
9 appropriate legal frameworks will help to maximize the
10 benefits of this technology to everyone.
11 12433 And at the end of the day, maximizing
12 the benefits is the goal.
13 12434 On electronic commerce, the current
14 approach is for governments to work hand-in-hand with
15 industry and with other interested parties to develop
16 solutions to identified problems and challenges, be it
17 in the form of self-regulation or legislation. These
18 are encouraging signals to which the private sector
19 will respond, and maybe the same approach is
20 appropriate on the specific issues which you are trying
21 to address.
22 12435 We support a cooperative environment
23 to create a proactive environment where private sector
24 solutions can be implemented.
25 12436 The issue of Canadian content has
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1 also been raised in these hearings. There are some who
2 think that Canadians must be shielded from outside
3 forces or who think that Canadian content must be given
4 special treatment or financial assistance.
5 12437 Given its worldwide nature, the
6 Internet and the web should be vehicles through which
7 we can tell and show the world our best. Moreover,
8 Canadians are putting significant amounts of Canadian
9 content on the Internet of their own accord, and ISPs
10 are supporting this desire because it makes good
11 business sense to give customers what they want.
12 12438 I would draw your attention to one
13 final item which was not in our submission.
14 12439 At the Canadian Chamber's annual
15 meeting in September, delegates passed a resolution
16 submitted by the Perth Chamber of Commerce which
17 supported the need for Canadians in rural and remote
18 areas to have affordable and equitable access to high
19 bandwidth services. This resolution, and the
20 discussion which it prompted at our AGM, was a clear
21 statement that the Internet is seen as an important
22 competitive tool for all Canadians.
23 12440 Development of the next generation of
24 Internet infrastructure, for example, CANET-3 is
25 exciting. However, it will be important that it is
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1 accessible to all Canadians regardless of where they
2 live.
3 12441 Mr. Chairman and Panel, let me
4 conclude with five thoughts which underscore our
5 central message.
6 12442 One: The Internet is a vital tool
7 allowing Canadian business to work around the world, to
8 be productive and to be competitive. Let's not create
9 cost or administrative hurdles which encumber our
10 opportunities or abilities.
11 12443 Two: If specific problems or
12 legitimate issues require attention, deal with the
13 specifics. Broad-based blunt instruments may have
14 unintended negative impacts.
15 12444 Three: The government has expressed
16 a desire to brand Canada as a leading edge and premier
17 place for information technology in electronic
18 commerce. To do so requires a supportive and
19 encouraging environment. Canadians have a presence on
20 the Internet that far outstrips our population. We
21 should focus on maximizing our strengths and
22 advantages.
23 12445 Four: Other parts of the Canadian
24 government are taking a light-handed flexible and
25 cooperative approach to helping Canadians and Canadian
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1 business maximize Internet opportunities. The private
2 sector wants to work closely with governments and other
3 stakeholders to provide solutions to concerns. We
4 encourage the CRTC to adopt a consistent stance.
5 12446 Five: If Internet use and
6 opportunities are to be maximized, and if Canada is to
7 be at the leading edge, we need certainty about the
8 legal and regulatory framework. Uncertainty about how
9 Canadian authorities might intervene will only drive
10 rapidly developing opportunities offshore.
11 12447 Mr. Chair and Panel, I hope these
12 comments have been helpful. Thank you.
13 12448 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
14 Keyes.
15 12449 To discuss your views, I will turn
16 the microphone over to Commissioner McKendry.
17 12450 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you,
18 Mr. Chair.
19 12451 Good morning, Mr. Keyes, and thank
20 you for your comments this morning.
21 12452 Just help me understand a little bit
22 about the Chamber.
23 12453 I notice here the Canadian Chamber of
24 Commerce. I assume there are Chambers in other
25 countries as well, particularly the United States?
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1 12454 MR. KEYES: Yes, there are.
2 12455 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Do the
3 Chambers coordinate at all with respect to this
4 Internet and electronic commerce issue?
5 12456 MR. KEYES: We do. We have been
6 involved with a variety of international business
7 organizations in the electronic area, the international
8 organizations under the United Nations, under the OECD,
9 as well as the business groups in other countries,
10 which are often either within a specific country or
11 organized internationally.
12 12457 We have worked very closely, for
13 example, on the OECD meetings with the U.S. Council for
14 International Business. That is a parallel
15 organization to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it
16 directly relates to the OECD and its mandate through
17 another group called the Business Industry Advisory
18 Council to the OECD, which was the primary forum for
19 input into the group.
20 12458 There is a very complicated web of
21 international organizations. The bottom line is we are
22 well plugged into them.
23 12459 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: On an
24 international level, and maybe in particular in the
25 North American context, what are the key things you are
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2863
1 hearing with respect to electronic commerce in terms of
2 problems that need to be addressed on an international
3 or global basis?
4 12460 MR. KEYES: The four major themes
5 that were on the OECD agenda were: taxation
6 encryption, digital signature, privacy and security
7 concerns. They are the major ones that we hear about.
8 12461 The issue of convergence was not on
9 the OECD agenda, although it was raised from the floor
10 at times in the discussions, and is recognized as
11 something coming down the pipe that we have to deal
12 with.
13 12462 The approach to these -- I think the
14 business community internationally recognizes that
15 there are legitimate issues and concerns that have to
16 be addressed. At the same time, the approach which has
17 been encouraged is very much one of governments and
18 business and consumers and other groups who are
19 interested in these issues to work hand in glove on
20 solutions that transcend international boundaries.
21 12463 In large measure this will depend on
22 industry self-regulation, and the OECD conference was a
23 chance for many of the companies involved in this
24 technology to demonstrate the solutions that they have.
25 12464 The OECD conference was also a first
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1 in the sense that it involved non-government
2 organizations in a major way. There were strong
3 expressions of views by consumer groups, by labour
4 groups, of some of the issues that they are dealing
5 with as the global digital revolution continues.
6 12465 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Of the four
7 items you mentioned, I wasn't sure whether privacy was
8 one of them. We have heard in this proceeding that
9 privacy is an issue with respect to the Internet and
10 particularly with respect to electronic commerce.
11 12466 MR. KEYES: Yes.
12 12467 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: As I am sure
13 you are aware, the European unions put in place certain
14 restrictions with respect to the export of personal
15 data to jurisdictions that don't have adequate privacy
16 protection.
17 12468 I am wondering if the business
18 community has any thoughts about that as it relates to
19 Canada.
20 12469 MR. KEYES: I can't talk specifically
21 about what the EU may have. Business recognizes that
22 people have to have trust in the medium and that if
23 they are going to be successful and use it, you have to
24 be sure that the information that you are putting out
25 there is going to be used in a proper way; or, to take
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1 it the other way, is not going to be misused.
2 12470 At a meeting I was at in Kingston two
3 weekends ago, somebody mentioned that there had been a
4 survey done. And when people were asked "what do you
5 trust the most in terms of getting payment and
6 information", the cheque in the mail was number one,
7 which seemed rather strange; and credit cards were
8 number two.
9 12471 If information is misused, the
10 marketplace, first of all, will make a judgment and you
11 will not get the business. But governments, too, will
12 intervene.
13 12472 I think that the private sector wants
14 to demonstrate that there is security there; that
15 information will be protected.
16 12473 I think everybody recognizes in the
17 business community that this is a number one issue.
18 12474 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you.
19 12475 In your oral comments you mentioned
20 high-speed broadband access to remote areas, and that
21 at your Annual Meeting they passed a resolution to
22 encourage that to happen.
23 12476 Do your organization have any
24 suggestions with respect to initiatives that the CRTC
25 or other government bodies could be taking to
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2866
1 facilitate the roll-out of high-speed access?
2 12477 MR. KEYES: I don't have any specific
3 solutions. I might just repeat that the concern -- and
4 I will be happy to give you a copy of that resolution.
5 12478 The issue was not only the physical
6 infrastructure, but it was also the cost. The feeling
7 by some of the rural Canadians who were involved in
8 putting some of these ideas forward was that they were,
9 in a sense, in second place to urban areas in terms of
10 access. But even if they have the access, the costs
11 that they faced were considerably higher.
12 12479 Where you have a large number of
13 emerging small and medium-sized enterprises who are not
14 necessarily located in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver,
15 the major urban centres, if the Canadian private sector
16 and some of these smaller companies are going to
17 capitalize on the opportunities that are there and that
18 they perceive, both in Canada and beyond Canada's
19 borders, they have to have what they call universal
20 access.
21 12480 They saw this as highly important to
22 their future.
23 12481 This resolution was sponsored by the
24 Perth Chamber, but it had its origins in a group out in
25 Lanark County, in some small communities in the far-
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1 flung parts of Lanark County who were having real
2 problems with dependability of service. They had
3 business opportunities that were being constrained by
4 their lack of access.
5 12482 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Perth is the
6 municipality that is close to Ottawa. It is about 50
7 miles away.
8 12483 MR. KEYES: Yes.
9 12484 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: I am a bit
10 surprised that they don't have access that they
11 consider adequate.
12 12485 MR. KEYES: This was their view.
13 12486 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Perth must be
14 doing something right. This is the second time that
15 Perth has come up in this proceeding. The other time
16 it was in the context of their Humane Society, though.
17 12487 We have heard in the proceeding that
18 Canada lags behind the U.S. in terms of electronic
19 commerce. I am wondering, first, if that is your view,
20 if you agree with that view; and secondly, if you do,
21 what you think the reasons for that might be.
22 12488 MR. KEYES: I think Canadian business
23 is --
24 12489 What measure you use to measure lag,
25 I am not sure.
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1 12490 It is a comment that has been often
2 voiced of Canadian business generally, that we are not
3 as adventuresome; we are not as driven to try various
4 solutions.
5 12491 In my business life in various
6 incarnations, this is something which has come up over
7 and over; that Canadian businesses are not always there
8 on the leading edge.
9 12492 I think in the electronic commerce
10 area there are a lot of Canadian firms who are very
11 much on that edge and doing inventive things.
12 12493 I guess there is also an issue as to
13 what electronic commerce is. I think there are two
14 components. There is the business-to-business part and
15 then there is business-to-consumers. Some of the
16 issues and questions involved in those are quite
17 different.
18 12494 Canada has a very rapidly growing
19 service sector. The service sector should be ideally
20 suited to offer services over the Internet, where you
21 are not dependent on the physical movement of goods
22 across borders; where you can send things down the
23 line.
24 12495 We are not very good at measuring the
25 service sector in Canada or anywhere. I think perhaps
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1 we don't have a good enough appreciation as to just how
2 rapidly this is growing.
3 12496 I think the U.S. is always trotted
4 out because of the very large presence that a number of
5 large firms have as always being there, the flag-
6 bearing and leading the charge. Canadian firms may be
7 smaller and less obtrusive, but that does not
8 necessarily mean they are less successful or inventive.
9 12497 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In your oral
10 comments, I think you referred to the fact that there
11 was uncertainty about whether or not some, or all, of
12 the activities on the Internet may or may not fall
13 under the legislation that the Commission administers,
14 and that that situation was creating uncertainty.
15 12498 Do you have any examples for us of
16 where the uncertainty created by this has led to, for
17 example, a reduction in investments that might have
18 been made otherwise?
19 12499 Can you give us any examples to
20 support the view that there is uncertainty out there
21 that might be detrimental to e-commerce or related
22 activities in Canada?
23 12500 MR. KEYES: I haven't got a specific
24 example to say that because of A, the causal effect of
25 B happened; but there is concern.
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1 12501 Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown
2 and the uncertainty that we have a very rapidly
3 changing technological environment with opportunities
4 which appear and disappear very quickly, and
5 uncertainty as to where you may come out at the end of
6 these hearings, and the kinds of things that you may
7 recommend. Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown.
8 12502 On the other hand, business wants
9 certainty. You have to know what the rules of the game
10 are going to be.
11 12503 It can be very difficult to say that
12 an investment or a particular thing did not happen in
13 Canada. I an not close enough to the specifics of that
14 business. I can only repeat what I have heard from
15 people sitting around our board table, and others who
16 say that we want to know what the rules are; we want to
17 know what they are soon so that we can make our
18 business decisions and get on with life.
19 12504 In a previous position, I was in the
20 mining industry and we were dealing for many years with
21 a lot of regulatory uncertainties and things changing
22 very quickly. It was that fear of uncertainty and not
23 knowing where things were going to come out at the end
24 of the day that was as dampening to business
25 opportunities, and people looked elsewhere.
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1 12505 That was a physical operation. Here,
2 where you have a virtual operation, and it is so easy
3 to establish things somewhere else, it is very hard to
4 know and see -- in part, perhaps, because there have
5 not been rules.
6 12506 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Let me finish
7 up by asking you about the conclusion that was in your
8 oral comments in the first round, where you urged us to
9 focus on Canada's strengths.
10 12507 I wonder if you could set out for us,
11 from the perspective of the Chamber and your members,
12 what Canada's strengths are in this area that we should
13 make sure we are aware of.
14 12508 MR. KEYES: One of the key things is
15 that if you look at numbers that are cited by a variety
16 of people specializing in this business, our presence
17 on the Internet far outstrips the size of our
18 population. Canada has established that presence, and
19 let's make sure that we maintain that.
20 12509 We are establishing an electronic
21 infrastructure through our high-speed lines, through
22 the companies, through their inventive capability, that
23 Canadians are a force on the world scene.
24 12510 I have just come back from Asia, and
25 certainly Canadians there and Canadian companies are
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2872
1 seen as people to look to for solutions and
2 applications. I think we have those recognized
3 strengths.
4 12511 The companies that we have in the
5 telecommunications business which are the basis for
6 this industry have been growing by leaps and bounds.
7 Let's make sure that that continues to happen.
8 12512 Finally, there are the people who are
9 in the service business. And as I say, it can be
10 difficult to measure that contribution. There are a
11 lot of Canadians in this field.
12 12513 They are here, in part, because of
13 the very supportive environment and encouragement which
14 they have been getting from our government. We don't
15 want to compromise that. We have a good thing going,
16 and let's make sure that we don't put things in the way
17 that are going to block that.
18 12514 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you
19 very much for answering my questions.
20 12515 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you,
21 Commissioner McKendry.
22 12516 Thank you very much, Mr. Keyes. We
23 appreciate your presentation here today.
24 12517 MR. KEYES: Thank you.
25 12518 THE CHAIRPERSON: Madam Secretary,
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2873
1 please.
2 12519 MS BÉNARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
3 12520 The next presentation will be by
4 Telecommunities Canada.
5 12521 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning.
6 Please proceed when you are ready.
7 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
8 12522 MR. GRAHAM: Good morning. My name
9 is Garth Graham. Beside me is Marita Moll and Chris
10 Cope. All three of us are elected members of the Board
11 of Directors of Telecommunities Canada, which is a
12 national voice for community-based efforts to apply the
13 Internet to community development.
14 12523 Marita is also Head of Research and
15 Technology for the Canadian Teachers Federation, and
16 she has been an active moderator of online dialogue
17 about universal access issues and communications
18 policy.
19 12524 I know some of you in the CRTC are
20 familiar with her in that capacity.
21 12525 Chris Cope is the Executive Director
22 of National Capital Freenet, a more than fulltime job.
23 I would like to announce that it was recently written
24 up in the international edition of Newsweek's Online
25 Manifestation as an example worldwide of who is doing
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1 it right in community networking.
2 12526 I have been actively involved in the
3 community network movement. I would call it that since
4 it emerged in 1991, and I am a consultant in electronic
5 community networking.
6 12527 So we are experts in the Internet in
7 a particular way.
8 12528 I, too, would like to make reference
9 to a quote that emerged from a CRTC Commissioner, Mr.
10 Colville, when you referred to new media as "this
11 stuff", and to talk about really what distinguishes
12 "this stuff" from broadcasting and telecommunications.
13 12529 I would like to note right from the
14 beginning that when you begin thinking about this as a
15 problem of "stuff", you are already into conceptual
16 difficulties. And it will become clearer where I am
17 headed with that notion as I get further and further
18 into my own difficulties.
19 12530 Not the least of the problem with
20 defining it as "stuff", or with that definition, is
21 that it forces you to the conclusion that you are only
22 talking about a new media industry, about some sort of
23 delivery system for new commodities. Whereas, from our
24 experience, the impact of digital communication
25 networks on socio-economic and political processes is
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1 far, far broader than that.
2 12531 I want to present a few ideas this
3 morning, saying our formal written presentation in kind
4 of a different way, to broaden the definition, to begin
5 to see the problem in a different way.
6 12532 I am going to describe a simple model
7 of how a network or knowledge society actually works,
8 based on the experience of community networks. I am
9 going to talk about the implications of that model for
10 a natural strategy and universal access.
11 12533 In that context, I would like to
12 mention that Telecommunities Canada has been an active
13 participant in the sorts of universal access strategy
14 development exercise that Andrew Clement, of the
15 University of Toronto, presented to you. We fully
16 support the directions that he took and the things that
17 he said.
18 12534 Then I am going to present a
19 definition of community network, also in the context of
20 that model, and then draw a couple of conclusions from
21 it.
22 12535 Just to give you some idea of a
23 summary conclusion, we see the gap between the old
24 models and definitions and the new models and
25 definitions is very large and in many respects, in our
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1 experience, has been so difficult as to be almost
2 impossible to bridge.
3 12536 Doing the stuff in community
4 networking is very exciting. Talking about it is often
5 not. However, I shall continue to talk.
6 12537 Chris is going to help me with three
7 slides that I am going to use. They will show up, I am
8 told, on the monitor.
9 12538 These are three key factors that we
10 see as driving a knowledge society. "Technology, the
11 way we do things" is a quote from Dr. Ursula Franklin.
12 12539 It is important from our point of
13 view to put technology in its proper context, because
14 we are not interested in a technological imperative.
15 We don't see that the change is driven by the
16 technology or that you can understand the technology,
17 except in the context of its use.
18 12540 This definition of technology is a
19 very practical one, because it does not say that
20 technology is about things; it does not say that it is
21 about objects. It says it is a process, a way of
22 seeing, a way of doing.
23 12541 The second statement again comes out
24 of that wish that we be in charge of what emerges. It
25 is the community that is the network, not the
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1 technology.
2 12542 The purpose of using the Internet at
3 the community level, at the local level, in terms of
4 issue of social inclusion, in terms of the economic
5 development of the community, is a community matter.
6 It is people in the community that are involved in
7 that. Networks are always social networks, even though
8 the process of connection within them may in fact be
9 mediated in many respects by communications technology.
10 12543 However, the third factor, then,
11 completes the model and drives it. Now we "make our
12 networks and our networks make us".
13 12544 This, in fact, is a quote from a
14 Professor of Architecture at MIT, who was expressing
15 how virtual spaces begin to affect our sense of who we
16 are and where we are, and redefine us. But I think it
17 is broadly useful and reiterates what Dr. Franklin was
18 saying about technology being the way that we do
19 things.
20 12545 There is, of course, an inter-
21 relationship between technological change and how we
22 see the world around us. In this case, our social
23 networks are connectivity with each other, our
24 relationships, are being mediated, moderated, connected
25 by communications technology, and that affects the way
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1 in which we see things.
2 12546 So, we become different in that
3 process.
4 12547 One of the conclusions that comes out
5 of this model of a knowledge society is in fact that
6 the technology, then, is not the cause of the change.
7 The technology is a symptom of a change that has
8 already occurred.
9 12548 We have managed to imagine a
10 different way of relating to each other in our social
11 networks, because we began to see things differently.
12 That expressed itself through technology, which we then
13 applied to ourselves, which then affects our view.
14 12549 That is the model.
15 12550 Chris, the next one.
16 12551 We have been participants in national
17 discussions of universal access on many, many levels.
18 What we found when we were addressing that question is
19 something that looks like the difference between the
20 square and the circle.
21 12552 The Canadian Federal Government
22 approache to universal access begins with the idea of
23 an Information Highway -- although that vocabulary is
24 changing. Then they have imagined the small electronic
25 public space that would occur within the framework of
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1 that if in fact the market failed. If all this was,
2 was industry or services, or electronic goods and
3 services, or if all that mattered was the price at a
4 certain point, then perhaps the price would be a
5 barrier to access for certain types of people.
6 12553 The example you had previously was
7 rural Canada or people who were disadvantaged, perhaps.
8 So the government's role, then, in the development of
9 policy for universal access is to keep an eye on price
10 and, if the market fails, to intervene.
11 12554 Canadian business and industry has
12 said that the take-up rate of the Internet has been
13 more rapid than anything else we have ever seen, so
14 obviously there is no price problem; so obviously there
15 is no need for intervention; so obviously there is no
16 government role.
17 12555 Our position in these discussions has
18 always been that we are looking at something that is so
19 broadly based in the way in which we relate to each
20 other that it affects all aspects of life. It affects
21 our politics, it affects our social connections. It is
22 the community that is the network, not the technology.
23 12556 We make our networks and our networks
24 make us. Therefore, we are applying a social policy
25 model to discussions of universal access. And what
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1 access really becomes in that sense is your ability to
2 be a participant in that society in all aspects of that
3 society, and that is a far broader question.
4 12557 Obviously within that social network
5 model part of the daily transactions of life are
6 commercial, so there is an Information Highway. But it
7 is a section of electronic public space and not all of
8 it.
9 12558 I would like to say that we have made
10 progress with stating the problem in this way, but the
11 reality is that we have not. We still see that the
12 market model dominates perceptions of what universal
13 access is all about.
14 12559 Chris, the third slide, please.
15 12560 Just to sort of round out this
16 picture of a knowledge society and community
17 networking's role in it, this is in fact the way in
18 which for several years now we have been defining
19 community networking.
20 12561 Community networks turn the
21 experience of being social and economic in electronic
22 public space -- which, as I have indicated, is
23 virtually most aspects of our daily living, or will
24 become so -- into practices that serve community needs.
25 12562 This goes back and reiterates Ursula
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1 Franklin's comment that technology is the way we do
2 things. This is not a definition of community networks
3 as a service, something about the delivery of
4 electronic goods and services for marginalized people,
5 for example. This defines community networks as a
6 community's capacity to learn from what is happening to
7 itself as it faces these changes.
8 12563 Typically, when you use the phrase
9 "new media", you are thinking about the delivery of
10 something. That is why when we define community
11 networking in this way, we are conscious of avoiding
12 that as a kind of a trap because it is not about the
13 delivery of something. It is about exchange in the
14 broadest sense of the word.
15 12564 There are two conclusions I would
16 like to note in rounding this picture of what is
17 different about "the stuff" from broadcast and
18 telecommunications.
19 12565 The first conclusion comes out of our
20 experience of participating in national universal
21 access policy discussions on a whole bunch of different
22 levels, particularly through Andrew Clement's national
23 workshops on this over many months. The question arose
24 of how we would structure some sort of advisory council
25 if in fact the Federal Government advanced a national
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1 strategy for universal access.
2 12566 The Federal Government has decided
3 not to do that in umbrella fashion but to do that,
4 piecemeal, on a broad-based front.
5 12567 However, we rapidly came to the
6 conclusion that there was no point in structuring a
7 council to advise on the implementation of universal
8 access policies in Canada, because there was no place
9 to advise. There was in fact no focal point within the
10 Federal Government that could encompass the breadth of
11 issues that the Internet, that this definition of
12 community networking raises.
13 12568 There was an enormous range of
14 federal agencies intervening electronically and in
15 support of community access and many different uses of
16 the Internet, but all on their own and directly within
17 their own mandates. There is nothing horizontal at all
18 that acts as a focal point in the Federal Government
19 for dealing with these issues.
20 12569 This way of doing things affects all
21 aspects of governance, and the Government of Canada has
22 not yet figured out how to cope with that reality.
23 12570 The second conclusion that we have
24 reluctantly come to is the hands-on experience of
25 social change that thousands of Canadians are beginning
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1 to have because they are picking up the Internet and
2 using it for community-development processes. They are
3 self-organizing online communities. That rich
4 experience is in many ways being ignored by public
5 policy which is still driven by that market model and
6 which is still driven with so much of a top-down
7 approach.
8 12571 The Internet is not the opposite of a
9 top-down approach; it is not bottom-up. Yes, community
10 networks are grassroots organizations; but the Internet
11 is any-to-any or many-to-many. It is something
12 completely other than that.
13 12572 That experience of applying that
14 directly in daily life, which is occurring in the
15 context of community networking, is not yet being
16 reflected in public policy.
17 12573 In effect, what people actually do
18 with new media, in understanding how they use it -- and
19 they are using it -- and how that affects them, the way
20 that they do things, is what we should be paying more
21 attention to.
22 12574 Just to finish my presentation -- and
23 Marita is going to say something about universal access
24 if I have not preempted that.
25 12575 Have I?
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1 12576 MS MOLL: No.
2 12577 MR. GRAHAM: I would like to refer to
3 our formal written submission, because Mr. Colville not
4 only talked about "the stuff", he also asked for
5 criteria that would govern action.
6 12578 At the conclusion of our formal
7 presentation, we had suggested several ways in which
8 the CRTC should act. I will briefly refer to them.
9 12579 Because of that total lack of focal
10 point within the Federal Government, we would like to
11 encourage you to continuously address issues of
12 convergence that do transcend the limitations of the
13 two acts. It is hard to find forums like this that can
14 deal with issues in a broad-based way.
15 12580 The Internet is an open system.
16 People organize their social networks within it, their
17 exchanges within it, through self-organization. We
18 would like you to ensure that there are no regulatory
19 interventions for narrowly-defined content purposes or
20 "stuff" purposes that strangle the nature of the
21 Internet as an open system.
22 12581 We believe very strongly that
23 Internet governance, if it is approached, must be
24 approached in a manner that asserts the public interest
25 in an electronic public space in that broad way in
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1 which we defined it. Public policy and public interest
2 has always acknowledged a role for government in the
3 regulation of what is public space. We say it is all
4 public space.
5 12582 Then we would like, of course, that
6 there be an acknowledgement of the role of community
7 networks in providing a means for community control of
8 community life online, the defence of citizen
9 participation in the design of electronic public space,
10 and community networks as essential components of
11 affordable access to the means of universal
12 participation in the knowledge society, in the entire
13 society.
14 12583 Thank you.
15 12584 Marita, I think, is going to be a bit
16 more specific about universal access issues.
17 12585 MS MOLL: Thank you, Garth.
18 12586 This morning I am just going to
19 emphasize a few points that Garth made, to the extent
20 that a winter cold will allow me to do that.
21 12587 I want to say, again, that we deeply
22 believe that electronic space or the electronic
23 commons, as it has been called, includes both public
24 and private space, but that it begins as public space.
25 12588 A mechanism for encouraging its use
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1 and determining the conditions of its private use, a
2 mechanism which relies heavily on public input, is long
3 overdue.
4 12589 Telecommunities Canada, as Garth has
5 said, has participated fully and supports fully the
6 public interest proposal presented to you by Andrew
7 Clement or National Access Strategy.
8 12590 The work of this National Access
9 Strategy project is very rich in new ideas for the
10 definition and the management of new media in the
11 public interest.
12 12591 We would like to draw your attention
13 particularly to the Access Rainbow, which I have shown
14 on this pamphlet here. I would like to leave you with
15 copies of these, if I may.
16 12592 We urge the Commissioners to study
17 carefully these proposals for the National Access
18 Strategy, the National Access Fund and the broadly
19 representative overseeing body, with particular
20 emphasis on representation from grassroots community-
21 based organizations.
22 12593 Our submissions to these hearings
23 points out that electronic community networking
24 associations act as a vital part of the community-based
25 component of universal access to new media serving,
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1 among others, the second level of access in the Access
2 Rainbow, the social participation level currently
3 absent from the federal Information Highway policy.
4 12594 Unfortunately, as Garth has noted,
5 their experience, the experience of thousands of
6 Canadians who have participated in community
7 networking, is consistently undervalued in federal
8 policymaking, although it has shown up in international
9 news reports.
10 12595 It is time, ladies and gentlemen, I
11 think, to close that communication gap and to bring
12 Canadians online in a way that reflects our national
13 values: diversity, inclusiveness, participation,
14 universality, equity and opportunity. It is time to
15 bring the federal government policies and programs
16 together with the experience of thousands of Canadians.
17 12596 Thank you.
18 12597 THE CHAIRPERSON: Does that conclude
19 your presentation?
20 12598 MR. GRAHAM: Yes.
21 12599 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much
22 for the stuff of your presentation.
23 12600 There is a line, with all due respect
24 to my engineering colleagues, that "I always wanted to
25 be an engineer and now I are one".
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1 12601 Well, "I are one". We may not be
2 well-known for the use of appropriate terms in the
3 English language. "Stuff" was what seemed best
4 appropriate to me, given the difficulty in defining a
5 lot of this stuff.
6 12602 I appreciate the humour in your
7 presentation at the outset in that respect.
8 12603 To discuss your views, I will turn
9 the questioning to Commissioner McKendry.
10 12604 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you,
11 Mr. Chair.
12 12605 Good morning. I want to start by
13 getting a better understanding of how you are using the
14 word "community".
15 12606 I am assuming you are not referring
16 to terrestrial communities; you are referring to
17 communities that exist in cyberspace and might be
18 global communities, in effect.
19 12607 Is that right?
20 12608 MR. GRAHAM: Yes, that is so. That
21 definition makes no reference to locality or
22 communities of interest or activity. If a social
23 network identifies itself as a community, it is.
24 12609 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Following
25 along that thought for a moment -- because it has come
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1 up in our proceeding -- in that kind of cyberspace
2 community how do you see the members of the community
3 in effect monitoring the community's behaviour?
4 12610 There have been suggestions that the
5 Commission and government should concern itself about
6 pornography and hate, and things like this that are
7 available on the Internet.
8 12611 In the concept of community and
9 cyberspace, what is your view about how the members of
10 the community should discipline themselves?
11 12612 MR. GRAHAM: In terms of formal
12 community networking associations, this is of course a
13 very serious issue. You have people engaging
14 voluntarily in public life and yet being challenged
15 with potential regulatory regimes or legal consequences
16 as an action of doing that.
17 12613 So at the level of the elected boards
18 of community networking associations, there is a great
19 deal of concern for the question that you raise.
20 12614 In our written presentation, there
21 are several paragraphs that address what occurs as a
22 consequence of that in community networking.
23 12615 When you yourselves when online with
24 discussion of the new media issue, you published an
25 acceptable use policy. There are no community networks
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1 without that. They all have acceptable use policies.
2 In fact, they then have far more than that.
3 12616 It is not like many ISPs, where you
4 simply sign a form that says I will abide by the rules.
5 Community networks have active mechanisms, committees,
6 and people involved in administering acceptable use
7 policies. As a consequence, they have a rich and deep
8 experience of how you deal with this in a specific and
9 practical way, on a daily basis.
10 12617 To the best of my knowledge, there
11 has never been any synthesis of that experience. We
12 have not been able to achieve that.
13 12618 I just asked Chris if he wanted to
14 comment on this. He lives this reality on a daily
15 basis in the administration of acceptable use, and so
16 can be highly specific and anecdotal about it.
17 12619 There are processes in place. There
18 is experience. I think it could benefit in being
19 tapped, because I think there are answers within it.
20 12620 But the summary comment that I would
21 make about those answers is that this is just folks
22 getting by. So a lot of what goes into the
23 administration of that acceptable use is confrontation,
24 because some tension has occurred as a consequence of
25 someone having viewed something as inappropriate use.
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1 12621 In the majority of cases, as we do
2 within a family, as we do within a community, that
3 resolves itself before it gets to the level of
4 statutory instruments.
5 12622 I guess what I am saying here is that
6 you don't need a sledgehammer, in 98 percent of the
7 circumstances where serious issues arise about
8 accessible use, to resolve them.
9 12623 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In your oral
10 comments I think you referred to the need for a focal
11 point. I was not quite sure what you mean by that.
12 12624 I think you meant a focal point
13 government.
14 12625 It struck me when you said it that
15 there might have been an assumption on your part that
16 government can manage this process; that it can
17 determine what goes on in the Internet, what is public
18 space, what is not public space, whether the
19 Information Highway will take precedence over public
20 space, and so on.
21 12626 My question to you is: Is that what
22 you meant by a focal point? A controlling body or
23 agency that would somehow shape the development of the
24 Internet into a dominant public space?
25 12627 MR. GRAHAM: I shudder with the same
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1 horror I sense in your question. I am glad you asked
2 that, because if I left that impression -- basically
3 no.
4 12628 I am observing that there is no focal
5 point for these issues. My own guess, as a knowledge
6 society or a network society evolves, is that the need
7 that we all have for these centralizing focal points
8 gets less and less and less; and that the net carries
9 the capacity for us to get together with each other
10 when we need to and not get together with each other
11 when we don't need to.
12 12629 I would view the emergence of a focal
13 point within the Federal Government, given the limited
14 sense of the socio-economic impact of the Internet that
15 is there now, as creating more difficulties than it
16 resolved.
17 12630 Having said there is no focal point
18 in the Federal Government and having said that there is
19 a rich experience, a hands-on experience among Canadian
20 citizens at the community level in what is going on
21 here, I would also observe that in the long run, the
22 way in which communities self-organize on the Internet
23 is growing in its strength and is involving itself in
24 people's daily lives willy-nilly, and that that won't
25 stop, regardless of whether the Federal Government
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1 regulates or does not regulate and regardless of
2 whether that experience is acknowledged or not
3 acknowledged.
4 12631 I have been frustrated in my ability
5 to express what I see as significant social change. I
6 remain completely optimistic in what I see as the
7 opportunity for community to emerge online and in the
8 power that I see for people getting on with their daily
9 lives as that occurs.
10 12632 I don't think that a network society
11 has any focal points, except when it has needs.
12 12633 MS MOLL: That is not to say, of
13 course -- and I am sure Garth does not mean there
14 doesn't need to be a focal point for a universal access
15 strategy and there doesn't need to be a focal point to
16 make sure that people will all be able to participate
17 in this in an equitable fashion.
18 12634 That is what the universal access
19 strategy tries to provide for.
20 12635 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In terms of
21 the access strategy, is that primarily a consideration
22 of cost, to make sure that access is affordable?
23 12636 MS MOLL: As we have shown here in
24 the Access Rainbow, there are seven different levels of
25 access, that range from carriage facilities to
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1 governance. They include literacy and social
2 facilitation and content services.
3 12637 This media differs from telephone in
4 that it is more than just wires strung across. There
5 are a lot more needs there. It is not just a question
6 of costs. It is a question of learning and using the
7 tool in a participatory fashion.
8 12638 We think a lot more needs to be done
9 in order to facilitate that for all Canadians.
10 12639 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In your
11 comments and in your paper I sense that you perceive a
12 tension, or even a conflict, between electronic
13 commerce and the community development social change
14 role of the Internet, and I sense that you are
15 concerned that electronic commerce will somehow sweep
16 over the ability of the Internet to be an instrument of
17 social change and community development.
18 12640 Have I interpreted correctly what you
19 are saying?
20 12641 MR. GRAHAM: In a sense, there is a
21 triangle here that is formed between the social sector,
22 the business sector and the government sector. I am
23 uncomfortable with all three of those terms, but it is
24 the simplest way of getting at it.
25 12642 I think that commerce and community
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1 are inextricably linked. I think that the focus on the
2 globalization of infrastructure that is occurring
3 misses something very powerful; and that is that in
4 this restructuring of the society or the world in which
5 we live that is going on, the role disintermediation
6 plays to take away the middle of things increases the
7 power of the local at exactly the same rate as it
8 increases the power of the global.
9 12643 I think the perception that as the
10 global becomes important and grows in power, the local
11 becomes important and grows in power is what is missing
12 from public policy.
13 12644 I have another slide in here. I have
14 a bunch of slides in here, which my colleagues were
15 hoping I would not refer to.
16 12645 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: This is the
17 good stuff, is it?
18 12646 MR. GRAHAM: Perhaps. If you take a
19 look at some of the initiatives that are occurring
20 between local governments and local businesses, that
21 comes under the heading of "smart" communities.
22 12647 And as I think some of you recognize,
23 that is one of the six pillars of the Connected Canada
24 initiative right now: some kind of an alliance with
25 "smart" communities that has yet to be expressed.
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1 12648 In Europe, that alliance between
2 local governments and business is often referred to as
3 telecities.
4 12649 There is a fundamental difference
5 between what we are talking about in terms of social
6 networks, community networks, social inclusion and the
7 issues of full participation in a knowledge society
8 that Marita has emphasized several times.
9 12650 The alliance of business and
10 government so far is talking about public
11 administration, and the agenda in a market sense or a
12 services sense is really about the outsourcing of
13 government services, primarily to the exclusion of
14 almost any other question.
15 12651 The governance questions, the social
16 contract questions that the Internet raises for us are
17 about participation and they are about open systems.
18 The governance issues that are debated at the "smart"
19 community level are still assuming that representative
20 democracy can be protected in some sense, although as
21 soon as you raise the issue of protection, you already
22 know you are in trouble.
23 12652 What we would see, on the other hand,
24 as a truly "smart" community looks a bit different from
25 that checklist on the left.
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1 12653 Chris, could you put the other slide
2 on?
3 12654 This is another way of defining that
4 capacity that a community might have to learn. A
5 community should be conscious of a need to defend
6 electronic public space.
7 12655 A universal access strategy, as
8 Marita has indicated, has to have some window or avenue
9 or mechanism where what is going on at the grassroots
10 level, what is going on at the community level, can be
11 expressed in some fashion. That is what she meant by a
12 focal point.
13 12656 Beyond access to goods and services,
14 there is inclusiveness and there is the right of me to
15 define who I am, which is a broad way of saying rights.
16 12657 We see that community networks that
17 are effective, such as the Lanark community network
18 that you just heard reference to a few minutes ago, are
19 beginning to say: "Just a minute. Because we know
20 what this is, we know that bandwidth costs are going
21 down. Why can't our bandwidth costs go down faster?"
22 12658 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Just let me
23 interrupt you for one second.
24 12659 Earlier I asked you how you used the
25 word "community". Are you using it here in the
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1 terrestrial sense, or are you using it in the
2 cyberspace sense of global community?
3 12660 MR. GRAHAM: I think that is a good
4 question. I recognize that when I did this slide for
5 another presentation, I was thinking of it in the
6 terrestrial sense.
7 12661 I am just asking myself: Does it
8 work for the broader definition? I think it does.
9 12662 Do you see where it does not?
10 12663 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: I don't see
11 one way or the other. I just want to make sure I
12 understood what you were referring to when you used the
13 word "community" here. You started to talk about
14 Lanark, which is a terrestrial community.
15 12664 MR. GRAHAM: Yes, I see what you
16 mean.
17 12665 I recognize that when I prepared that
18 slide -- as I say, I am pulling this out of my bag of
19 tricks -- I had assumed the terrestrial. I was talking
20 about the telecity smart communities initiatives, which
21 are locally based.
22 12666 But, no, I think this checklist
23 applies.
24 12667 The final thing about it -- I have
25 noticed that the appearance of government, whether
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1 provincial or local public administration of federal,
2 at the community level almost always advances the
3 electronic commerce agenda as, first of all, jobs; but
4 secondly, jobs whereby you sit in your community but
5 you take yourself outside of your community to make
6 money.
7 12668 I don't have a problem with that.
8 Certainly, you can do that.
9 12669 But the important factor for us in
10 this is that exchange that occurs within the community
11 about who we are, what we want to do, how we want to do
12 it, what we know and where we are going with this.
13 12670 MS MOLL: To go back to your original
14 question about do you sense a tension, yes, you do
15 sense a tension. I don't think there has to be a
16 tension.
17 12671 The tension is because the other half
18 of the equation does not appear to be being addressed.
19 There doesn't appear to be any route for us to get a
20 discussion of universal access and public policies into
21 that discussion.
22 12672 Electronic commerce is definitely
23 there. It is being dealt with. It is being addressed
24 on a large level.
25 12673 The other things are not being
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1 addressed, and that is where the tension is, in my
2 opinion.
3 12674 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: The other
4 thing, the social aspect of it, the public space aspect
5 of it, won't take care of itself, is what I think you
6 are saying. There needs to be a role for government.
7 12675 MS MOLL: You said yourselves in the
8 Convergence Hearings that there has to be a role.
9 12676 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In terms of
10 the proceeding that is under way here, do you have any
11 suggestions for the CRTC, taking into account our
12 mandate and our responsibilities as to what we could
13 do, in your view, to further the objectives that you
14 would like to see pursued?
15 12677 MR. GRAHAM: In fact, that is what I
16 had meant to address in referring to the final part of
17 our written submission. There were the five points.
18 12678 The first one was that in effect you
19 may feel some pain in this hearing in trying to reach
20 more broadly than the two Acts allow you; but we would
21 like to encourage you to continue to do that. We see
22 that as the emergence of a forum, potentially the
23 emergence of a forum, which allows the concept of
24 electronic public space as public space, and therefore
25 in the public interest to regulate in some fashion, as
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1 a necessary role.
2 12679 That might be an avenue where that
3 finally began to emerge.
4 12680 Our intention in both presentations
5 that we have made is to indicate that the Internet is a
6 symptom of a new way of seeing things that is broadly
7 influential of all aspects of our daily life, and that
8 a key characteristic of that is something that you have
9 referred to, as well, in your setting up of these
10 hearings; and that is, open systems.
11 12681 You meant that in a technical sense,
12 and we don't mean that in a technical sense. That is
13 part of the different way of seeing how we can relate
14 to each other that the Internet as a tool expresses.
15 12682 We want to make some progress in
16 broadening public policy beyond simple issues of a new
17 industry for new media products, electronic goods and
18 services, beyond a market definition of the role of
19 public policy.
20 12683 There have not been that many
21 national forums in which we could come to the table and
22 talk about what we see happening at the community level
23 in this manner. So, we appreciate the existence of
24 this one.
25 12684 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you
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1 very much for answering my questions.
2 12685 You mentioned that there was a recent
3 Newsweek article about the Ottawa freenet that you felt
4 was useful. If you wanted to file that article, we
5 would be happy to receive it.
6 12686 MS MOLL: I have brought some copies
7 with me.
8 12687 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you
9 very much for a very interesting presentation and a
10 very interesting paper.
11 12688 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you,
12 Commissioner McKendry.
13 12689 And thank you very much for being
14 here today.
15 12690 Perhaps you could file those with Ms
16 Bénard.
17 12691 We will call the next party, please.
18 12692 MS BÉNARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 12693 The next presentation will be by
20 Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere.
21 12694 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning,
22 gentlemen.
23 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
24 12695 MR. FISHER: Good morning, and thank
25 you for the opportunity to appear.
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2903
1 12696 My name is John Fisher. I am the
2 Executive Director of the group EGALE, which stands for
3 Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, Égalité pour
4 les gays et lesbiennes.
5 12697 I am pleased also to be joined by Mr.
6 Ron Chaplin, who is an active member of our political
7 action committee.
8 12698 EGALE, by way of background, is a
9 national organization which is committed to advancing
10 equality for lesbians, gays and bisexuals across the
11 country. We were founded in 1986, and in recent years
12 we have established a membership in every province and
13 territory of the country.
14 12699 We have testified a number of times
15 now before parliamentary committees on a broad range of
16 equality and human rights issues, as well as
17 intervening before the Supreme Court of Canada in some
18 of the key decisions affecting lesbian and gay rights
19 across Canada and also decisions under the Charter of
20 Rights.
21 12700 We were pleased recently to
22 participate in the CRTC hearings on Canadian
23 broadcasting policy.
24 12701 We indicated at that time also that
25 we had an interest in the areas under discussion before
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2904
1 you here, so that is the purpose of our being here.
2 12702 I will say at the outset that we
3 don't have specific answers to some of the complex
4 questions around the interaction between freedom of
5 expression and protection from harm. We know that a
6 concern of our members is where the line is drawn in
7 relation to regulation of such things as hate speech
8 and expression of pornography.
9 12703 Our purpose is to raise and offer
10 some of the feedback we have received from our members
11 on some of those issues, without necessarily purporting
12 to give you the answers in terms of what your role
13 should be or how those issues should ultimately be
14 resolved. We feel our perspective may be useful to you
15 as you address those questions.
16 12704 When we received an invitation to
17 participate in these hearings, I sent out a request to
18 our members to participate in an e-mail discussion
19 group that we maintain to advise of these hearings and
20 to ask what the general feedback was in terms of how
21 the balancing of those issues should be addressed.
22 12705 The response that I got from the
23 e-mail list was generally one of concern about the
24 prospect of further regulation of the Internet. I
25 think we found that for our members, lesbians and gays
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2905
1 have often found that they have been denied access to
2 information; that they found it hard to develop and
3 build resources which discuss in a frank and open way
4 lesbian and gay materials, and enable people to
5 participate in discussions of those matters.
6 12706 I think there was a concern that
7 where there has been restriction on publication of
8 materials in that way, it has often been applied in a
9 non-equal manner so that lesbian and gay materials have
10 throughout Canadian history been restricted, been
11 censored, in an unequal way when compared with
12 heterosexual based materials.
13 12707 I think people feel that the Internet
14 is a vehicle by which people can explore issues that
15 often have been denied to them, particularly in smaller
16 communities, more rural communities. Access to e-mail
17 and the Internet can serve as a vehicle for
18 communication where there are no local resources that
19 exist in the terrestrial community, if you like, and
20 where libraries, schools and others may -- in fact,
21 quite deliberately in some cases -- exclude or deny
22 access to some of the materials that are available to
23 people through the Internet.
24 12708 Equally, young people often find that
25 their questions are not answered or that they are not
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2906
1 able to obtain access to information through other
2 means.
3 12709 Those were some of the concerns that
4 our members had.
5 12710 In relation to things like hate
6 speech and hate crimes, obviously that is a concern for
7 members of our communities. But there was also a
8 feeling that there are general laws which are currently
9 applicable and which continue to be applicable
10 notwithstanding that there is a new vehicle for
11 communication through which those are now being
12 expressed.
13 12711 In particular, for example, clearly
14 defamation is still going to be defamation whether or
15 not it is expressed through the means of the Internet
16 or whether it is expressed through publication in a
17 newspaper or other more traditional means of
18 expression.
19 12712 There have been police investigations
20 and I believe prosecutions of the publication of
21 obscene material, and the fact that that can occur
22 through the Internet modernizes the means of
23 communication. But the substance or the content of the
24 law remains that in the Criminal Code.
25 12713 In relation to hate crimes and hate
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1 speech equally, I think our members would support the
2 existing laws and would not see the Internet provide an
3 absolute bar to investigation or regulation. But there
4 is a question about whether the general laws are
5 sufficient and whether there is a need for additional
6 regulation.
7 12714 There are some areas I will say where
8 the existing laws don't equally treat hate crimes
9 against gays and lesbians in the same manner as hate
10 crimes against other protected minority communities.
11 In particular, it is a crime to advocate genocide
12 against certain groups on the basis of religion or
13 race, whereas it remains legal to advocate genocide
14 against gays and lesbians.
15 12715 So there is a concern that there are
16 some gaps in protection under existing law. But that
17 is matched by a concern that perhaps the best means of
18 responding to that is to address the general laws and
19 ensure that the laws which apply to these kinds of
20 expression, regardless of the means of communication,
21 are modernized on a more equal basis.
22 12716 Similarly in relation to hate crimes,
23 we recognize that just as the Internet provides a
24 vehicle for people to have access to information about
25 lesbian and gay issues in a proactive sense, so too it
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1 provides a vehicle for those who would seek to promote
2 hate to have a much more powerful tool at their
3 disposal to do that.
4 12717 Again, there is a difficult question
5 around where on the spectrum of expression we draw the
6 line between simply the expression of unpopular views
7 or attitudes of intolerance and where that becomes a
8 sufficiently extreme manifestation of hatred that it is
9 the subject for legal intervention.
10 12718 I think clearly at one end of the
11 spectrum, if it is just about expressing unpopular
12 beliefs, clearly freedom of expression under the
13 Charter of Rights will apply. At the other end of the
14 spectrum, if that intolerance manifests itself in
15 advocating acts of violence or advocating people to go
16 out and commit acts of violence against unpopular
17 communities, then clearly we are into the realm of hate
18 crimes, which would fall squarely under the Criminal
19 Code.
20 12719 Where it becomes more problematic is
21 where within that spectrum there are grey areas and
22 where that line begins to be crossed.
23 12720 The impression I have had from my
24 members is that where there is doubt, the membership
25 would prefer that we err on the side of freedom of
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1 expression rather than on the side of regulation and
2 restriction. As I have said, we have often found that
3 restrictions tend to backfire and to apply unequally
4 against our communities.
5 12721 There is a sense that people like to
6 know who the enemy is, as it were, and to have some
7 understanding of what is out there; what are the
8 attitudes that are being promulgated against our
9 communities, so that we can better understand and
10 respond to the very serious problems that hate crimes
11 can pose.
12 12722 Ron, you have some examples of those
13 concerns. Do you want to speak to that?
14 12723 MR. CHAPLIN: Thank you, John.
15 12724 I am simply reiterating what John
16 said, talking a bit about a different area. Our
17 fundamental concern is about the right to freedom of
18 expression and to freely distribute information.
19 12725 I would cite the example simply of
20 the problems the gay and lesbian community has had over
21 the last 20 years with Canada's obscenity laws. I
22 seriously question whether the web cast by those
23 obscenity laws has been cast too wide.
24 12726 With John's permission, I will put on
25 another hat here. I am a former chair of the AIDS
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2910
1 Committee of Ottawa and the current Vice-Chair of the
2 Ottawa-Carleton Council on AIDS.
3 12727 One of the problems we have had in
4 our AIDS prevention program is the dissemination of
5 appropriately sexually-explicit material to help stem
6 the tide of new HIV infections. I will speak
7 specifically to testimony that was heard before the
8 Krever Commission of Inquiry into the tainted blood
9 scandal.
10 12728 The then Director of the Laboratory
11 Centres for Disease Control, Dr. Alistair Clayton,
12 testified that in the early years of the epidemic here
13 in Canada, that is the years 1982 through 1985, safer
14 sex information coming into this country from the
15 United States was routinely seized at the border and
16 destroyed. There was at that time, as well, no
17 Canadian federal funding for any Canadian written
18 messages.
19 12729 The reason this material was
20 destroyed is because of a clause in the Customs
21 regulations that defined as obscene any depiction or
22 any description of anal sex. That regulation was only
23 lifted from the books about five years ago.
24 12730 There is a little personal connection
25 in here too. That material was being routinely
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2911
1 destroyed and not being replaced with anything else
2 during those years, 1982 through 1985. I became
3 infected with HIV in 1984, and I would consider this
4 potentially life-saving information.
5 12731 As someone who is an activist in the
6 AIDS community these days, I know for young people in
7 particular access to sexually explicit AIDS-related
8 information over the Internet is one of the favoured
9 means of getting this information. It allows people to
10 do it in private, without being fearful of revealing
11 their personal identity. There is a virtual treasure-
12 house of information available through the Internet
13 because of the nature and the evolution of that medium
14 on AIDS and HIV.
15 12732 I just toss a red flag in front of
16 you, both in the terms of hate speech and in terms of
17 sexually-explicit material. I think we have a common
18 concern that we not be overly restrictive, recognizing
19 that for the gay and lesbian community, information
20 transmitted through the Internet is often one of the
21 most effective means of communicating among ourselves.
22 12733 Thank you.
23 12734 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.
24 Fisher, Mr. Chaplin.
25 12735 To discuss your views, I will turn to
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2912
1 Commissioner Wilson.
2 12736 COMMISSIONER WILSON: Good morning,
3 gentlemen. It is nice to see you again. I recall your
4 presentation from the TV Policy Hearing.
5 12737 I was interested in the e-mail that
6 you sent to us, as part of the Phase 2 comments, to see
7 the level of your activity in terms of expressing the
8 views of your members and making sure that those issues
9 are put before public bodies. It is good to have you
10 here as part of this exploration.
11 12738 Your e-mail was pretty short, and you
12 really did not elaborate on your views. I prepared
13 some questions generally based on the comments that you
14 made. In fact, you basically answered my first
15 question, which had to do with where on the spectrum,
16 in terms of freedom of expression, your members would
17 fall. You basically said that you would err on the
18 side of freedom of expression.
19 12739 We had a number of presenters who
20 appeared before us who talked about this whole notion
21 of the Internet being the ultimate democratic
22 instrument, in terms of everyone being able to be a
23 publisher.
24 12740 The Palestine Heritage appeared and
25 argued that even though there exists material that we
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2913
1 may find offensive, Canadians should have the
2 opportunity to decide for themselves. And the fact
3 that there is such a massive amount of information
4 available and that there is a very practical and real
5 opportunity to respond to that information in terms of
6 becoming a web publisher yourself, putting up a web
7 page to respond to that kind of stuff, is a very
8 important point and should not be interfered with.
9 12741 The B'Nai Brith appeared as well and
10 made the point that while they did not advocate heavy-
11 handed regulation of the Internet, the issue is not
12 freedom of expression above all else but freedom of
13 expression as one value which must be balanced amongst
14 others, which is the way that it is set out in the
15 Charter of Rights in this country.
16 12742 In the U.S., of course, freedom of
17 speech is interpreted very differently, not necessarily
18 as one value that has to be balanced against others.
19 Canada is a slightly different country in that way.
20 12743 They suggested a number of self-
21 regulating initiatives in terms of how to deal with
22 this whole issue of offensive content on the net.
23 12744 If I could ask you a question: While
24 you say that you err on the side of freedom of
25 expression, are you in favour of those kinds of self-
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2914
1 regulatory initiatives in terms of dealing with
2 offensive content and promotion of hate?
3 12745 MR. FISHER: I would say to a certain
4 extent, yes. We have not take the position that
5 freedom of expression is an absolute. We concur with
6 your view that it has to be matched within the
7 framework of the Charter of Rights.
8 12746 In the Keegstra case, the Supreme
9 Court has held that there is a reason for hate crimes
10 laws, and that those laws, while they do constitute a
11 restriction on freedom of expression, can be upheld and
12 justified under the Charter of Rights because of the
13 damage they do to vulnerable communities.
14 12747 Our concern is that in conducting
15 that balancing act, one does not want to go to
16 extremes. And the value of the Internet in enabling
17 access to information and enabling people to better
18 understand the needs of our own communities probably
19 encourages us not to seek the regulation of anything
20 but the most extreme expressions of hatred.
21 12748 And particularly where it extends
22 into the spectrum of violence and promotion of
23 violence, clearly that is an area for either regulation
24 or the reach of the criminal law.
25 12749 COMMISSIONER WILSON: The Criminal
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2915
1 Code.
2 12750 MR. FISHER: Yes.
3 12751 COMMISSIONER WILSON: I was curious
4 about the comments you made when you were talking to us
5 this morning. You said that generally your members
6 feel that they have been denied access to information,
7 and you talked about a restriction on publications and
8 those restrictions being applied in an unequal way.
9 12752 I am wondering if you could elaborate
10 a little bit more on that.
11 12753 I don't know if what you were
12 suggesting in those comments related to what Mr.
13 Chaplin elaborated on. Are there other examples of how
14 those restrictions get applied unequally?
15 12754 MR. FISHER: Yes. There is a
16 connection between what I was saying there and the
17 examples used by Mr. Chaplin, but there are other
18 examples as well.
19 12755 There is a recent case from British
20 Columbia called the Little Sisters case, in which a
21 lesbian and gay book store called Little Sisters has
22 had continuing difficulties with Canada Customs, where
23 shipments of books have been held up and in some cases
24 destroyed at the border solely because they are
25 destined for a lesbian and gay book store, when
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2916
1 equivalent materials are freely available in mainstream
2 book stores and sometimes in public libraries.
3 12756 Clearly, there has been a perception
4 that something is more likely to be obscene solely
5 because of its lesbian and gay content rather than
6 because of the actual substance of the material.
7 12757 There was a legal challenge presented
8 by Little Sisters, arguing both a violation of freedom
9 of expression and also a violation of the equality
10 rights under the Charter of Rights on the basis that
11 the laws were being applied unequally against the book
12 store because it was a lesbian and gay book store.
13 12758 The court upheld their claim. It
14 maintained that the laws were valid and would not be
15 struck down, but that the application of the laws was
16 taking place in a discriminatory fashion against
17 lesbian and gay book stores.
18 12759 My understanding is that there
19 continued to be problems that the book store has
20 experienced at the hands of Canada Customs. It is an
21 experience that has been found by other lesbian and gay
22 book stores as well. I believe there are other cases
23 involving another lesbian and gay book store in
24 Toronto.
25 12760 In relation to other prosecutions
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2917
1 under the Criminal Code for publishing and selling
2 obscene material, there have been a number of judgments
3 in which it has been found that material has been held
4 to be obscene because of its lesbian and gay content or
5 because it involves people of the same sex, where
6 equivalent material involving people of the opposite
7 sex would not be held obscene.
8 12761 Clearly that is inconsistent, I
9 think, with the values that we are now developing as a
10 society, where by all means if an expression extends
11 into violence or other means of exploiting sex in a way
12 that is contrary to the Criminal Code, then because of
13 its content it will be held obscene. But it should not
14 be held so solely because it is --
15 12762 COMMISSIONER WILSON: Simply on the
16 fact that it is same sex.
17 12763 MR. FISHER: Yes. I believe we are
18 seeing now a more tolerant attitude appear in some of
19 the decisions of courts dealing with obscene materials,
20 to the point where I believe that lesbian and gay
21 content, in and of itself, should not render material
22 obscene.
23 12764 The difficulty with the whole area is
24 that what constitutes obscenity is a very subjective
25 determination. It is difficult for those in the
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2918
1 position of making those determinations not to be
2 influenced by their own values in deciding if something
3 crosses that ephemeral line because of your own
4 perceptions rather than because of the broader values
5 underpinning the Charter of Rights.
6 12765 A final example I will give is that
7 in some of the blocking software that has been
8 developed to enable parents and others to block off
9 areas of the Internet on their home computers, there
10 are a number of those software packages that routinely
11 search for and block access to sites that deal with
12 homosexual, lesbian or gay material, regardless of
13 content. So even a site like EGALE's, which is
14 probably the least titillating site on the net, and
15 deals only with political and legal materials, could be
16 blocked because it contains key words like lesbian, gay
17 and homosexual.
18 12766 The concern that we have there is as
19 I mentioned earlier, for young people particularly in
20 more remote communities for whom the Internet may be
21 their only means of access to basic information about
22 questions they may have about their sexual identity.
23 That can go beyond unduly restrictive censorship and
24 can deny them access to, as Mr. Chaplin was saying,
25 potentially life-saving information.
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2919
1 12767 COMMISSIONER WILSON: That, actually,
2 was the next question that I wanted to ask you about.
3 12768 You have made the comment about the
4 software being available to parents and others. I
5 don't imagine that you are suggesting that the CRTC
6 interfere in any sense in the parental relationship.
7 12769 What do you mean by others? Or are
8 you suggesting that we interfere in the parental
9 relationship?
10 12770 MR. FISHER: No, we don't have
11 recommendations. We recognize that it is a difficult
12 thing to control at the best of times.
13 12771 We were raising it as much as an
14 example of the kinds of concerns we have about once
15 there is regulation, once there is a restriction on the
16 kinds of access that people can have to the Internet or
17 the kinds of things that can be put out there,
18 frequently systems designed for a valid purpose are
19 applied in an unequal way to restrict access to
20 information which falls outside of that purpose.
21 12772 For example, my understanding that
22 the main purpose of the software package is to block
23 access to materials that may be obscene or pornographic
24 and felt to be inappropriate for young people. But in
25 fact the net is often cast considerably broader than
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1 that.
2 12773 Our concern would be that in other
3 forms of restriction, similar difficulties might arise.
4 12774 When we talk about "and others", we
5 are aware also that Internet access is likely to become
6 something which is increasingly common in schools, for
7 example --
8 12775 COMMISSIONER WILSON: And libraries
9 and public spaces.
10 12776 MR. FISHER: Yes. And obviously
11 those public or semi-public bodies which maintain
12 access to the net are going to want to ensure that they
13 don't cross any legal lines. It is difficult to know
14 what considerations they may take into account in
15 seeking to restrict the access that people have through
16 their own systems.
17 12777 Another experience I could raise is
18 the Surrey School Board which recently passed a
19 resolution that there will be no lesbian and gay
20 materials available in the school for the benefit of
21 students, and which made a concrete decision to ban
22 certain books that dealt with lesbian and gay themes.
23 The books, again, were not sexually explicit books;
24 they were simply books which dealt with the diversity
25 of family forms which acknowledged that there was
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2921
1 diversity within Canadian society.
2 12778 And there were similar situations
3 where lesbian and gay materials had been banned in
4 Alberta. It is a fairly common experience.
5 12779 The concern we have is that with this
6 kind of blocking software and other kinds of regulatory
7 restrictions that might be considered, those are the
8 kinds of restrictions we are likely to see rather than
9 the kinds for which perhaps they were originally set
10 up.
11 12780 MR. CHAPLIN: Might I add a short
12 point here.
13 12781 COMMISSIONER WILSON: By all means.
14 12782 MR. CHAPLIN: It strikes me that the
15 point we are trying to make is that there should be the
16 least amount of censorship necessary on the Internet.
17 It is not clear yet to many of us just how existing law
18 applies.
19 12783 It is not clear, for instance, the
20 role of the servers. Are they treated under the law as
21 common carriers or are they treated somehow else?
22 12784 I just mention this in the context,
23 because in your previous comments you talked about
24 self-regulation. I think we would feel clearly that
25 the person putting forward the information on the
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2922
1 Internet is the person who should be legally
2 responsible for its content.
3 12785 There is some concern as well,
4 because of the experience of our community, about
5 servers establishing limits on what they will and will
6 not carry.
7 12786 COMMISSIONER WILSON: The ISPs.
8 12787 MR. CHAPLIN: Yes. That need not be
9 a problem as long as there is a very competitive market
10 among servers. But again, looking at a regulatory
11 concern, if you are trying to establish some sort of
12 regulatory environment to restrict this, we just toss
13 the red flag.
14 12788 We have had this experience too often
15 of being caught in this web for reasons that we think
16 clearly were not the intent of the legislature.
17 12789 COMMISSIONER WILSON: ISPs are not
18 considered common carriers. They are really much more
19 like resellers.
20 12790 They have, as a group, put forward
21 the notion that they are going to have codes of
22 conduct. They did not talk about the issue of sites
23 that offer information about gay and lesbian
24 lifestyles, but they talked about the propagation of
25 hate particularly.
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2923
1 12791 MR. CHAPLIN: There have been some
2 disputes over the lat couple of years regarding some
3 initiatives by American Online, for instance, and
4 regarding this sort of censorship by the server.
5 12792 COMMISSIONER WILSON: Or content
6 aggregators, portals, whatever they are called. There
7 are a lot of different terms flying around here,
8 ranging from "this stuff" to various other terms.
9 12793 The message that we have received
10 from most of the groups who have raised these issues
11 with us is that the most important thing is education
12 and awareness and literacy, and the act of involvement
13 of groups like your own in terms of ensuring that these
14 issues are before the public.
15 12794 I thank you for being here and
16 raising your red flags to us.
17 12795 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you,
18 Commissioner Wilson.
19 12796 Thank you very much, gentlemen.
20 12797 We will take our morning break at
21 this point and reconvene at ten after eleven.
22 --- Short recess at / Courte suspension à 1055
23 --- Upon resuming at / Reprise à 1115
24 12798 THE CHAIRPERSON: We will return to
25 our proceeding now.
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2924
1 12799 Madam Secretary, would you call the
2 next party, please.
3 12800 MS BÉNARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
4 12801 The next presentation will be by the
5 Cultural Human Resources Council, le Conseil des
6 resources humaines du secteur culturel.
7 12802 Mr. Jean-Philippe Tabet.
8 12803 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning, Mr.
9 Tabet.
10 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
11 12804 MR. TABET: Hello. Thank you for
12 hearing me today.
13 12805 I was supposed to come with one of
14 our board members who is a member of the new media
15 industry; but unfortunately, because we had to delay
16 that presentation, he was not available today.
17 12806 I will make my presentation.
18 12807 As you would imagine, the Cultural
19 Human Resources Council is an organization that does
20 not really focus in the one aspect of these hearings:
21 the broadcasting policy or anything that really focuses
22 on communication and new technology.
23 12808 What we are doing is really trying to
24 raise awareness on issues dealing with human resources
25 development. To that effect we did a research study,
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2925
1 called The Study of Human Resource Needs in the New
2 Media Industry. We took the opportunity to have that
3 study done in July 1998 to give the CRTC a tool by
4 which you may want to incorporate in the decision you
5 are going to take on this issue some of the findings we
6 have discovered.
7 12809 This study was done through an
8 extensive literature review and also on interviews with
9 40 companies across Canada. They deal primarily with
10 human resources, as I mentioned to you, but in a
11 context that is very practical.
12 12810 I think in any decision that the
13 Federal Government is taking, whether to regulate, not
14 regulate, deregulate, circumregulate, there might be
15 other ways of looking at bringing Canada to the
16 forefront of this new field.
17 12811 It is not so much the content, but
18 also the ability for us as a country to stay
19 competitive and to be able to produce the best services
20 and products that would be attractive at the
21 international level.
22 12812 This is what I am trying to talk to
23 you about today.
24 12813 First of all, I want to get a glimpse
25 of the new media sector and basically trying to
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2926
1 understand what it is we are talking about.
2 12814 The first thing is that the industry
3 is not well documented.
4 12815 Within StatsCanada, either at the
5 industry definition or classification of occupation
6 definition, there still needs to be a bit of work done
7 at that level. Because this industry is so new and it
8 affects really different groups, from audiovisual, film
9 video, television, to Internet providers, to
10 telecommunication broadcasters, telephone companies, it
11 sort of sets the stage for something that is quite new.
12 We don't have the tools to deal with it in terms of
13 statistical research.
14 12816 That is something we need to express
15 very clearly; the need for StatsCanada, for example, to
16 come together very quickly on that issue. And I am
17 sure they can do it.
18 12817 We discovered that there is probably
19 between 500 and 1,000 new media firms in Canada -- and
20 I am using "new media" in the broad definition of that.
21 As I mentioned earlier, there are some concerns about
22 the way this industry can be defined.
23 12818 I think the principal element of the
24 industry is the fact that it is moving very fast. And
25 to keep in touch with what this industry is all about
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2927
1 is like herding cats, in a way; trying to put them in
2 the same direction. But it doesn't work like that.
3 12819 It is estimated that more than half
4 of the new media firms in Canada have ten employees or
5 less, but at the same time it is true that there are a
6 small number of firms that have more than 100 or 200
7 employees.
8 12820 So there is a major difference in the
9 way this industry works.
10 12821 Major new media markets include the
11 corporate market, the consumer market, training and
12 other public institutions.
13 12822 The estimation of the contribution of
14 the industry to the gross domestic product was taken
15 from 1994-95, so I don't think it is very accurate
16 today. We suppose that the contribution is probably
17 $150 million.
18 12823 I am sure it is much higher today,
19 but I don't know how to measure it. If you can find
20 somebody that came to your hearings that would be
21 helpful in that regard, I would appreciate knowing.
22 This is something that I have not been able to tackle.
23 12824 What is true is that the new media
24 labour force grew much more than the general labour
25 force, and in my presentation I will try to let you
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2928
1 understand what occupations have grown out of this
2 industry.
3 12825 Production costs, again that is a
4 rough estimate; but probably it is $150,000 to $1
5 million. When we are talking about the Internet or
6 Internet production or development of websites,
7 basically it is growing and it is very difficult to
8 know the figures for production in that area.
9 12826 The new media field is growing into
10 edutainment, which is probably education and
11 entertainment; games; and there are many reference and
12 business applications.
13 12827 What is interesting with the Internet
14 is the role of games in the Internet as well as a
15 marketing tool. There has already been a transfer of
16 skills from the CD-ROM application to the Internet
17 application in terms of occupation.
18 12828 Again, I will conclude with what I
19 started with: This industry is not well documented.
20 12829 CHRC is a not-for-profit organization
21 whose aims are to initiate, promote and coordinate
22 research on human resources issues in the cultural
23 sector and to see, for example, the best practices that
24 are happening in Canada in that context.
25 12830 It is a non-governmental agency but
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2929
1 supported by Human Resources Development Canada, and it
2 has been created by the culture sector, which includes
3 the writing and publishing fields, the audiovisual and
4 life performing arts, the heritage sector, the visual
5 arts and crafts, and music and sound recording.
6 12831 CHRC has become aware of the new
7 media area and has developed a specific board-directed
8 committee on new media.
9 12832 I am sure when I speak to you today
10 about this you can already see that the new media is
11 really the sort of sector that goes beyond borders. In
12 the sound recording industry, in the visual arts and
13 crafts, in the audiovisual area, in the writing and
14 publishing, we are seeing new media components.
15 Workers from those traditional industries are brought
16 into the new media industry, especially if the
17 technology is much stronger.
18 12833 It is the issue of the ability of
19 having a better bandwidth, for example, so that some
20 products will be available through the Internet and
21 more accessible.
22 12834 What were the needs and priorities
23 that this study told us?
24 12835 First of all, there was the issue
25 that those new media firms have difficulty in accessing
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2930
1 funding and capital investment for product research and
2 development. That is something you want to take into
3 consideration when you are licensing some companies.
4 12836 There are issues about trying to
5 obtain from banks, for example, an investment to
6 develop our Canadian companies.
7 12837 There is also a lack of awareness by
8 consumers to understand how to use new media products
9 to their full advantage, and also the question of
10 making the consumer more aware about these products is
11 a concern.
12 12838 The question so much about editing
13 and distribution of those products has been assessed as
14 a need. By that, I mean that the technology is at the
15 moment limiting. We will see more distribution of
16 those products, but we must be aware that this does not
17 happen like that. We need to look at the human
18 resources challenge in that area.
19 12839 Basically, the world of work in this
20 industry has created something that we call a work
21 triumvirate, where the graphic artist, the programmer
22 and the producer work together to create and develop
23 the product of the services.
24 12840 That dialogue in the industry --
25 those people are multi-tasking, as well. The question
StenoTran
2931
1 is the growth of the industry will result in more
2 specialized occupations than there is at the moment.
3 12841 Finally, one of the characteristics
4 of that workforce is the fact that they are part of
5 what we call the evolving workforce, where there is a
6 lot of contract work, self-employment opportunities and
7 multiple job holdings.
8 12842 At the same time, this workforce does
9 not have the luxury of having access to the traditional
10 safety net that Canada created after the Second World
11 War, which is based on EI, unemployment insurance
12 contributions.
13 12843 Therefore, this is an industry where
14 young people -- because this is a young industry -- are
15 somehow entering without the preconception of the
16 traditional type of workers that we have seen before.
17 Therefore, there is a lack of awareness about issues
18 related to copyright, protecting your work. Basically,
19 they are go-getters and the are trying to make the best
20 of it.
21 12844 There is a concern within CHRC, the
22 Cultural Human Resources Council, with the issue of
23 protection of rights here. I am not so much talking
24 about Canadian content as protecting the right of the
25 workers who are putting their intellectual capital, if
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1 you want, into those industries.
2 12845 What is the nature of the shortages
3 that we see at the moment?
4 12846 The most important thing that we have
5 seen is that the need for generalist versus specialist
6 appears to be dependent upon firm size rather than
7 sectoral or regional differences. Again, this is an
8 issue that is not related directly to the industry per
9 se. I must say that that is probably because it is a
10 growing industry and a new industry; therefore, there
11 is an imbalance between generalist versus specialist.
12 12847 But basically, interactive designers,
13 artists, business skills and programmers are very much
14 in demand at the moment.
15 12848 Smaller firms are more likely to
16 require workers capable of performing a number of
17 tasks, while larger firms tend to hire specialists who
18 are multi-disciplined.
19 12849 The question in those skill shortages
20 is the issue of technical and creative and artistic
21 skills. What we have seen is that there are a lot of
22 people who have been trained at the technical level but
23 who are lacking the creative skills that are really
24 driving the success of a product or service. At the
25 same time, those creative and artistic elements of the
StenoTran
2933
1 workforce are not really well served in the colleges or
2 universities or private training education
3 institutions, because there is not a bridge between
4 those two types of skills.
5 12850 If Canada wants to remain competitive
6 here, we are humbly mentioning that the creative
7 artistic skills will be the way by which this industry
8 will be successful. We need to think about that when
9 we talk about human resources issues.
10 12851 There is a definite need for
11 apprenticeship and internship. Basically because this
12 industry is very young, it does not really have access
13 to the traditional way by which other industries have
14 developed.
15 12852 Fourth, there are some educational
16 challenges. How do you teach such skills in an
17 industry that is so new, where the curriculum is
18 regularly updated in the next six months? How do we
19 help training institutions to be more competitive in
20 that environment?
21 12853 Frankly, we have not found an answer
22 yet. Training, colleges, universities are not really
23 sure of how to handle the issue of a curriculum that is
24 moving so fast. The industry is at the same time in
25 need of skilled people immediately, and requires just
StenoTran
2934
1 in time training.
2 12854 So there is a gap here that we need
3 to address.
4 12855 With the growth of this industry, it
5 would be helpful to have some kind of standards in
6 product and services development. You mentioned today,
7 for example, that we don't have a lot of standards in
8 that area. Everything is possible. That is why some
9 people want regulation; some don't want anything.
10 There is a kind of free-for-all situation.
11 12856 I would not advocate one or the
12 other. I would advocate the fact that we should at
13 least help those who are developing those products and
14 services to have tools by which the products and
15 services they are developing are hitting the mark.
16 12857 That is why we are talking about
17 standards for development.
18 12858 Skills upgrading challenges is for
19 those who are already in the workforce and who have
20 been able to develop themselves in this industry for
21 the last ten years, but who have not had access to
22 government-sponsored training opportunity because they
23 are part of that evolving workforce.
24 12859 International competition is quite an
25 obvious challenge, because this new technology,
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2935
1 especially the Internet, does not know borders.
2 Basically, those who are able to put on the net the
3 best product are the ones who are going to be listened
4 to.
5 12860 Training challenges involve cost,
6 time, qualified trainers and relevancy of courses.
7 12861 I will not elaborate on that. I
8 think I have already covered that.
9 12862 What we are recommending to the CRTC
10 -- and it is really not our mandate to go into very
11 much detail about what the CRTC would do in terms of
12 licensing.
13 12863 But at a policy level, we are
14 thinking that questions should be raised around the
15 issue of the untrained youth through coop and
16 internship development. The industry, as well as the
17 education community, should find tools to make that
18 happen.
19 12864 For the new media workers, basically
20 the issue of business skills is quite important. I
21 have read in some submissions that the new technology
22 will not change the way we do business.
23 12865 I don't think so. I think the new
24 technology, especially the Internet, will change the
25 way that marketing is done, that commerce is done. At
StenoTran
2936
1 the same time, I don't think we have trained a lot of
2 people in that area.
3 12866 The issue of arts background: for
4 those workers who are from a fine arts background, they
5 do not have yet the technical skills they would need.
6 12867 And for the technical background, on
7 the other hand, it is those individuals who are trying
8 to develop an understanding of the artistic side of the
9 industry. Among our respondents during that study, it
10 was felt that interpersonal skills are greatly lacking
11 among those with technical skills.
12 12868 Again, the status of the industry and
13 how that industry could grow and could become much
14 stronger for Canada, would be to understand those human
15 resources aspects.
16 12869 As well, business and project
17 management skills training was also recommended. We
18 have seen a lot of small businesses that do not have or
19 are lacking those business skills, and that has an
20 impact on our industry.
21 12870 What we are recommending is, for
22 example, that a national website on new media, human
23 resources and training be developed; that partners
24 could include telephone and software companies; and
25 that the CRTC would develop some kind of a niche
StenoTran
2937
1 criteria for licensing in that area. That is a key
2 issue.
3 12871 I will conclude by saying that the
4 issue of regulating and deregulating in an area that is
5 so advancing is difficult to do. We feel that maybe we
6 should be more focused on preparing Canada and their
7 industry, and help them focus on human resources
8 development.
9 12872 I will end here.
10 12873 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you for your
11 presentation, Mr. Tabet, for your submission, including
12 the report that your organization has sponsored.
13 12874 Having read through the report and
14 your recommendations, what has happened with the report
15 and the issues that it raised since the time it was
16 completed and you have had it to take a look at and
17 decide what to do about those issues that have been
18 raised in it?
19 12875 MR. TABET: We have engaged with the
20 Department of Canadian Heritage, Industry Canada and
21 the Department of Human Resources Development Canada to
22 see what kind of recommendations we could implement.
23 12876 At the CHRC level we have focused on
24 a youth internship project on the issue of new media,
25 and we are developing on our website a showcase of best
StenoTran
2938
1 practices in that area.
2 12877 For a national forum between
3 colleges, universities and the training and education
4 system, we are trying to see if there would be an
5 interest in early 1999 to have a pan-Canadian forum
6 which would bring industry and the education community
7 together to see what kind of issues they would like to
8 discuss and what kinds of recommendations they may want
9 to implement.
10 12878 As a sector council, we feel that
11 this facilitation role is important.
12 12879 We have not developed some sort of
13 project targeted to investors in the area of new media.
14 Industry Canada is looking at it as well. Certainly
15 there is a lack of access to capital that needs to be
16 triggered.
17 12880 For young people, CRHC has developed
18 an awareness campaign based on the description of
19 occupations in that area to inform young people from
20 grades 10 to 12 across Canada about the reality of the
21 workplace in that new media field.
22 12881 THE CHAIRPERSON: We heard a lot
23 during the proceeding about the pace of change in this
24 industry and how it has been changing so rapidly. Even
25 a few months can make a dramatic difference to what is
StenoTran
2939
1 happening.
2 12882 There has been some reference to dog
3 years; that a year in normal life can be seven years.
4 12883 MR. TABET: Oh, I thought it was like
5 a dog's breakfast.
6 12884 THE CHAIRPERSON: Well, maybe that
7 too.
8 12885 That issue has been noted in the
9 report about the pace of change.
10 12886 MR. TABET: Yes.
11 12887 THE CHAIRPERSON: I noted, for
12 example, at page 30 of the report, near the middle of
13 the page where it is talking about skill shortages, the
14 comment is made:
15 "However, many respondents felt
16 that human resources issues will
17 have changed for the industry in
18 a few more years."
19 12888 It went on to say that:
20 "...both the number and quality
21 of new media graduates has
22 increased significantly compared
23 to even just two years ago."
24 12889 Given the pace of change and the fact
25 that a number of the reports that have been referenced
StenoTran
2940
1 in terms of the literature search that was done with
2 respect to this study were documents dating from 1995,
3 1996, 1997, I am wondering what your view is of the
4 situation today.
5 12890 Do you think the situation is about
6 the same as it was, or somewhat better or somewhat
7 worse?
8 12891 MR. TABET: In regard to youth, I
9 think the situation is evolving quite rapidly in the
10 sense that this industry is attracting more and more
11 young people.
12 12892 In terms of bridging the gap between
13 artistic skills and technical skills, I don't think it
14 has improved very much. This is one of the issues that
15 we have to face.
16 12893 In terms of skills upgrading of the
17 workers in that industry at the moment, I don't think
18 there has been a lot of initiative, as far as I know,
19 that has made that industry really grow. People are
20 more in the production mode rather than sitting back
21 and trying to assess where things are at.
22 12894 Where I see a change is the issue of
23 opportunities. I think there is job growth in that
24 area, and I think more and more people are recognizing
25 that there are many more industries than ever before,
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1 companies than ever before, and that there are new
2 opportunities that have been created.
3 12895 In other words -- and to conclude --
4 I think the pace has speeded up rather than slowed
5 down. That is why we are stressing the fact that the
6 human resources side of things has not really been
7 dealt with.
8 12896 THE CHAIRPERSON: When that comment
9 is made here that the issues will change in a few more
10 years and that the number of graduates is expected to
11 increase dramatically, is it your view that these
12 issues would resolve themselves in the marketplace? Or
13 is it going to need some specific government action to
14 deal with it, or industry reaction -- perhaps industry
15 is not the right term.
16 12897 The issue you raised in terms of
17 educational institutions perhaps working more closely,
18 as I think is mentioned in several places in this
19 report; the companies working directly with educational
20 institutions.
21 12898 Are we going to need more of that to
22 solve the problem?
23 12899 MR. TABET: Yes, I think we are, in
24 the sense that the number of graduates are going to be
25 entering in a working situation where there is not a
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2942
1 lot of models that are available at this time.
2 Certainly the fact that this industry works on very
3 much self-employment and contract work will not help
4 the fact that this industry may need a new type of
5 policy development at the government level.
6 12900 By that, I mean the way that the old
7 industrial model has worked for Canada in the fifties,
8 I don't think it is very well adapted to the growth of
9 this industry.
10 12901 So yes, definitely the sector, the
11 industry itself. And by saying that, it is not an easy
12 challenge, because we are talking about very different
13 sub-sectors here. We are talking about the
14 telecommunications industry. We are talking about the
15 audiovisual industry. We are talking about the graphic
16 arts industry. Those are very heterogeneous sub-
17 sectors.
18 12902 What we see is that people they need
19 to grow within in their industry are people that are
20 going to have those types of transferrable skills. I
21 don't think the industry nor the education community is
22 near to making a transition toward that yet.
23 12903 THE CHAIRPERSON: You mentioned this
24 morning -- and it is mentioned in a couple of places in
25 the report -- about this issue of access to capita.
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2943
1 12904 MR. TABET: Yes.
2 12905 THE CHAIRPERSON: We have heard a lot
3 about that in the last two weeks, and also in a number
4 of the written submissions. As I say, it is mentioned
5 throughout your report, but it is summarized in the
6 Executive Summary, at page viii.
7 12906 It is captured near the bottom of
8 that page. I will just read it.
9 12907 Relating to this issue, it says:
10 "- an inability to access
11 funding and capital investment
12 for product research and
13 development;"
14 12908 This was a response from the parties
15 who were surveyed.
16 12909 The second bullet is:
17 "- a lack of consumer
18 understanding of how to use new
19 media products to their full
20 advantage."
21 12910 And again, I think you mentioned that
22 in your presentation this morning.
23 12911 It went on to say that:
24 "...this lack of understanding
25 contributed to the difficulty in
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2944
1 securing funding..."
2 12912 So, in fact, the two issues seem to
3 be linked here, at least by some, if not a number, of
4 the parties.
5 12913 I am wondering what your view is on
6 that in terms of this greater consumer understanding in
7 terms of how to use new media products overcoming the
8 issue of access to funding and capital investment; and
9 whether, given the pace of change in the industry, that
10 problem either soon will be or perhaps in a little more
11 time will be overcome.
12 12914 MR. TABET: I think with the way this
13 industry is growing, probably this problem will be
14 overcome. And I agree with that.
15 12915 However, I must say that this
16 industry is so full of possibilities at the moment that
17 consumer awareness is an important issue here. I don't
18 think there is enough of that given by many producers
19 in that industry.
20 12916 I will just take the example of
21 education products.
22 12917 The way that so-called educations
23 products are produced at the moment -- and I don't know
24 if any one of you have had the experience of looking at
25 it and what it does. There is a lot of unawareness, I
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1 think, about this.
2 12918 So many products are not really
3 marketable, and there is a lot of, as some of our
4 members would say, bad product out there.
5 12919 I think the education of the
6 consumer, in terms of what they are paying for and what
7 they are getting, needs to be strengthened.
8 12920 The issue of capital -- it is a very
9 risky industry. We have seen lately the rise and fall
10 of the Internet stocks is almost a joke. I just read
11 in the Globe and Mail an interesting article that says
12 that investing in the Internet stock is like playing
13 fools. But at the same time, if you have seen how it
14 moves, it is like totally unpredictable and crazy.
15 12921 I think this is a very risk business
16 in a way. We should bring to the attention of those
17 who are in a situation of investing in that area that
18 we are taking seriously not only the financial
19 situation, but the human resources capital.
20 12922 I think this is what we should stress
21 when we are trying to make sure that investment is done
22 in that area.
23 12923 THE CHAIRPERSON: When you say there
24 are so many products that are not marketable,
25 particularly in the educational area, what do you mean
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2946
1 by that?
2 12924 MR. TABET: Some products that have
3 been done in a way that they would not be -- because
4 there are no standards in that area, no production
5 standards, they have been put together and they do not
6 have the ability to sustain the experience of time.
7 12925 If you look, for example, at the
8 Internet application that we see, there is still very
9 much research and there is still very much product or
10 services that would not meet some kind of good quality
11 criteria.
12 12926 That is what I was referring to.
13 12927 THE CHAIRPERSON: When you talk about
14 quality in that sense, are you meaning technical or
15 artistic quality? Or are you meaning in the sense of
16 educational standards?
17 12928 MR. TABET: I think I meant at that
18 time educational standards. Some products are very
19 well driven by artistic elements. Some are driven by
20 technical capabilities. But I was particularly
21 referring here to educational products, because it is a
22 big market out there.
23 12929 For example, learning through the
24 Internet has been a big issue; putting a course through
25 the Internet and trying to have access and to deliver a
StenoTran
2947
1 learning system through the Internet. This is where we
2 need research and some kind of a standard as to how we
3 are doing it; what works and what does not work. What
4 is the impact of the training and the delivery
5 mechanisms that we are putting in place?
6 12930 Those are the issues that I have
7 heard through the new media group at CHRC.
8 12931 THE CHAIRPERSON: Is that a question
9 of the content creators working more closely with
10 departments of education and perhaps the university
11 community to better understand pedagogical standards to
12 develop?
13 12932 MR. TABET: Or it is also the
14 education community being able to change their
15 paradigms about what education is all about.
16 Basically, this new technology is not only new
17 technology; it is a tool. But it is a tool that is
18 going at something very new; a relationship between
19 another world and yourself that is changing all
20 perspectives on education.
21 12933 The question is not so much how do
22 you help the industry to be more education-focused, but
23 sometimes how do we help the education community to be
24 in sync with technology that is changing their own
25 practices.
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2948
1 12934 THE CHAIRPERSON: Picking up on a
2 couple of other points that you raised here this
3 morning: When you mentioned that the industry is not
4 well documented, and we don't have the appropriate
5 measures to identify the industry -- and you mentioned
6 that this would be largely a role for Statistics Canada
7 -- do you have in mind certain measures that perhaps
8 Statistics Canada or others should be looking for?
9 12935 MR. TABET: The only thing that I can
10 speak of in confidence is the description of skills and
11 occupation in the new media industry. For example,
12 what is a communications specialist in that industry?
13 What is a sales representative in that industry? What
14 is a creator in that industry? What is an interactive
15 script writer? What is an outside content specialist?
16 And so forth.
17 12936 I am just reading the type of
18 occupation titles that have come up. Basically, there
19 is research to be done, either at the CRTC or with
20 StatsCanada -- certainly CHRC is interested in that --
21 in trying to analyze the occupational profiles and what
22 are the skills that are required to do the job in those
23 areas. So we will start to see how this industry is
24 moving and help the workforce to move from point A to B
25 to transfer their skills, and to be more adaptable.
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1 12937 In terms of policy, there might be an
2 issue regarding the status of the artist legislation.
3 12938 I don't know if the CRTC has an
4 interest in that. But the status of the artist
5 legislation at the federal level is very much unique
6 among other nations in the world and has been, I would
7 say, recognized and utilized; but I would say in the
8 area of new media it should be revised.
9 12939 There might be new occupations that
10 are part of the status of the artist legislation. Just
11 to give you an example, when a park, a national park, a
12 federally-regulated park, tries to set up a website or
13 to develop a website which would include, for example,
14 interactive heritage interpretation, the people who are
15 working in the development of that product may be self-
16 employed people. They may be graphic designers or
17 creators.
18 12940 Do they or could they use the status
19 of the artist legislation as a way to regulate the
20 labour issue in their business?
21 12941 Those have tremendous implications
22 that I would like to see. There might be an interest
23 between those two agencies to look at it.
24 12942 THE CHAIRPERSON: Is your
25 organization working with Statistics Canada to better
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2950
1 identify these particular job definitions in terms of
2 measuring what is happening out in the marketplace?
3 12943 MR. TABET: Yes, we have a working
4 group with Statistics Canada on that issue. We are
5 trying to work with Statistics Canada on two fronts.
6 One is the definition of occupation: who is working
7 there and what are they doing. And secondly, trying to
8 define the sector of that industry: whom does that
9 represent?
10 12944 And I talked about the various sub-
11 sectors.
12 12945 Could we look from there, aggregated
13 or consolidated account or picture about the economic
14 impact, for example, of this industry; the type of
15 sales, the type of export product or market shares they
16 are doing.
17 12946 At the moment, I don't see that there
18 is very much.
19 12947 THE CHAIRPERSON: You also mention,
20 particularly given the fact that a lot of the people
21 who are working in this business are quite young -- and
22 we have hard a lot about that in the past two weeks --
23 that many of them have a lack of awareness of copyright
24 issues, about ways to protect their intellectual
25 property.
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2951
1 12948 What is the role of your organization
2 in terms of informing those people about those issues,
3 I suppose from two points of view: one, informing them
4 of the issues; and on the other hand, perhaps
5 representing them in front of the Copyright Board, or
6 whoever might be the appropriate body to deal with
7 those issues?
8 12949 MR. TABET: First of all, I must say
9 that the problem stems from the fact that many artists
10 who are going to work in this industry still do not
11 receive the proper training or education at the
12 education level; for example, at college or university.
13 12950 They may be given technical skills or
14 artistic skills, but they are still lacking an
15 understanding of the reality of the workplace; when you
16 are an artist, for example, and copyright issues. The
17 education system may produce a lot of graduates that
18 have no idea what copyright laws are and do not have
19 the resources to hire a powerful attorney or lawyer to
20 help them in that regard.
21 12951 So we have done a campaign on this
22 issue. It is what we called our Career Self-Management
23 Skills Training, by which we are helping those young
24 graduates to understand the elementary basic business
25 skills that are required to thrive in this industry.
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1 This is not done anywhere else at the moment.
2 12952 Secondly, we are trying to represent
3 -- for example, I talked about the status of the artist
4 legislation, but also at the provincial level the
5 interest of the people who are working in this
6 industry, and also to the industry themselves.
7 12953 Companies may not be aware of this
8 issue. Therefore, we need to sensitize them as well
9 about the consequences of decisions they make take in
10 terms of putting product on the net or developing CD-
11 ROM applications that may have a copyright issue item
12 attached to it.
13 12954 I think this is too new. I don't
14 think there is a lot of clear understanding about this.
15 12955 At our last discussion forum in
16 September, there was a whole item on the agenda that
17 discussed the issue of copyright in cyberspace.
18 Although we have not found any solution, the more we
19 talk about it, the more we are able to really try to
20 orient the solution in the best interest of everybody
21 involved.
22 12956 THE CHAIRPERSON: Your last point
23 that you made in your presentation, in the last bullet
24 on the last slide, was with respect to the CRTC,
25 suggesting that we develop HR development, human
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2953
1 resource development, as a criteria for licensing.
2 12957 I was curious to know what it is you
3 had in mind that we would be licensing.
4 12958 MR. TABET: Well, I don't know if,
5 for example, telephone companies may come to the CRTC
6 to present you with an idea of organizing a particular
7 service through the net or if the cable companies may
8 come to you, as well, with an idea of trying to develop
9 through cable an Internet access.
10 12959 That is what I had in mind. When
11 such requests are coming to the CRTC, it might be
12 useful for the development of a stronger new media
13 sector in Canada to make sure that industry is very
14 well aware of HR issues in that area and is willing to
15 embrace some kind of new initiatives.
16 12960 Specifically, CHRC is trying to look
17 at a cultural human resources development fund, by
18 which we would be able, as an industry as a whole, to
19 meet our needs. We are trying to see if there might be
20 some way by which the industry in this field of new
21 media would be moving toward getting some kind of
22 professional development activities going on, for
23 example.
24 12961 THE CHAIRPERSON: A lot of people
25 have suggested that we should not license or regulate.
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2954
1 Assuming that we don't, how would you see this issue
2 being addressed?
3 12962 Do you think there is a recognition
4 among a number of the industry players, particularly
5 some of the larger ones, that this is a problem and
6 that they would support this kind of initiative through
7 an industry-led process?
8 12963 MR. TABET: I think your last word is
9 the one that I would agree with. It is a process of
10 discussion. The more we discuss about those issues,
11 the more we may be able to see some kind of solution.
12 12964 I don't think there is one particular
13 solution.
14 12965 What I am here really to talk about
15 is the issue of human resources growth and
16 strengthening. As I said at the beginning, I don't
17 think the issue so much of regulate, or deregulate, or
18 reregulate should focus the debate. The debate should
19 be, I think, also about how to strengthen the industry
20 as a whole. And human resources is part of that.
21 12966 THE CHAIRPERSON: My last question
22 goes to your covering brief. I would read one sentence
23 out of it.
24 12967 You said:
25 "We would like to invite you
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2955
1 (the CRTC) to join us in
2 endeavouring to find ways to
3 answer the challenges outlined
4 in the report's
5 recommendations."
6 12968 I guess recognizing that the report's
7 recommendations largely deal with education and
8 training issues, almost all of which is outside the
9 Commission's jurisdiction -- much of it is even outside
10 the Federal Government's jurisdiction -- I am wondering
11 what role you see for this organization, that being the
12 CRTC, in dealing with the issues that you have brought
13 before us today.
14 12969 MR. TABET: That is an interesting
15 one, but I am going to respond as much as I can on this
16 issue. And I don't think a lot of people can.
17 12970 As much as the new media industry is
18 growing, I think it is very clear for everybody that it
19 changes the frontiers. It sort of moves away from the
20 traditional paradigms that we have in our mind about
21 new technology and a new world is emerging. We have
22 said that over and over.
23 12971 The same thing is happening in the
24 world of work and the world of education. The
25 boundaries that were built between those two worlds are
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1 crumbling. If I may say so, the "Berlin Wall" has
2 already crumbled between those two fields. It is
3 particularly true in the new media industry, because
4 the education system is not really able to nurture the
5 development of the industry as it was in previous
6 years.
7 12972 The CRTC also has to deal with an
8 industry that is evolving and that may change its
9 mandate as well; or at least engaging to renewing or
10 reassessing its own mandate. This is why we came to
11 the CRTC.
12 12973 We know that in many ways there are
13 issues that are not part of your mandate, but in many
14 ways you are asked to take a position on issues and on
15 areas that require those institutions to change as
16 well. This is what we are exploring: how to see where
17 the future is going and trying to develop new ways to
18 deal with it.
19 12974 THE CHAIRPERSON: I guess we don't
20 create our own mandate. Our mandate is given to us by
21 Parliament through the legislation that we have to deal
22 with.
23 12975 I am just wondering, again, what you
24 see as our role in dealing with those issues, given
25 that our mandate is fairly well defined for us.
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1 12976 MR. TABET: Yes. But it does not --
2 because you are given a particular mandate, you may
3 want to also express the fact that the mandate that you
4 are given may not be totally adequate for the situation
5 that you are asking to assess and address.
6 12977 I guess that is the entire purpose of
7 the new media hearing. It is something that is totally
8 new to you in many ways -- and to everyone, by the way,
9 in many ways.
10 12978 I think it is an opportunity to keep
11 in touch with the evolving Canadian society in terms of
12 this particular field. And although we are not
13 appearing here today to indicate which direction you
14 should take -- in many ways there is no direction --
15 what we are saying is that there are ways of dealing
16 with industry requests. At CHRC we are at least
17 focusing on an issue, HR development, that is not a
18 concept that has been promoted very much before.
19 12979 THE CHAIRPERSON: Just a concluding
20 issue, then: You mentioned earlier that you had been
21 talking to Industry Canada, Heritage and --
22 12980 MR. TABET: Human Resources
23 Development Canada.
24 12981 THE CHAIRPERSON: It would seem that
25 they are the appropriate departments to be dealing
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2958
1 with, at least at the Federal level in dealing with
2 these issues, and that it may not require a change in
3 our mandate to deal with that.
4 12982 I am wondering what your comment
5 would be on that.
6 12983 MR. TABET: I think the issues are so
7 complex that it is not inappropriate to raise the
8 awareness of HR development at every level. After all,
9 as much as the new media industry dissolves the
10 frontiers between respective jurisdictions, it is
11 important that a dialogue be engaged in between federal
12 departments that are dealing with issues that are
13 parallel.
14 12984 This is why we are here today.
15 12985 It is not an answer to your question,
16 obviously, but it is the best that I can give at this
17 point.
18 12986 THE CHAIRPERSON: That is fine.
19 Thank you very much, Mr. Tabet. I appreciate the work
20 that you and your organization have done in helping us
21 understand these issues.
22 12987 MR. TABET: Merci beaucoup. And
23 thank you to the person who turned the pages.
24 12988 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Woodhead is
25 multi-talented.
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2959
1 12989 We will take a short five-minute
2 break before we hear from our next and last presenter.
3 --- Short recess at / Courte suspension à 1215
4 --- Upon resuming at / Reprise à 1220
5 12990 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please,
6 ladies and gentlemen.
7 12991 Madam Secretary.
8 12992 MS BÉNARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 The next presentation will be by Greg Pillon.
10 12993 THE CHAIRPERSON: Welcome, Mr.
11 Pillon. You have the distinction of being the last
12 party to present orally here at this stage of our
13 proceeding.
14 12994 MR. PILLON: That is quite a
15 distinction. I hope to be able to take us out with a
16 bang, not a whimper.
17 PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION
18 12995 MR. PILLON: Good afternoon, Mr.
19 Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the CRTC.
20 12996 I would like to preface my formal
21 presentation by saying that I have gained a new
22 appreciation for the challenge faced by this body in
23 managing the many diverging interests focused on this
24 debate. I wish that more members of my industry were
25 here to participate in this forum. Perhaps some of
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1 their concerns about this initiative might be allayed.
2 12997 I would ask you to take my
3 presentation, both in tone and in content, as
4 representative of those industry concerns.
5 12998 I am a web producer for Cyberplex
6 Interactive Media, which is the largest developer of
7 web-based business solutions in Canada. I would like
8 very much to thank you for the opportunity to present
9 this submission to this public hearing.
10 12999 I am here today because I believe
11 that the best way to ensure access by Canadians to
12 Canadian Internet content is to foster a healthy and
13 successful indigenous production industry.
14 13000 Ladies and gentlemen, as Canadians,
15 we are in a unique position to profit from the so-
16 called new media technologies. We have a tradition of
17 broad, inexpensive access to telecommunications. We
18 are creative, educated, computer literate,
19 sophisticated, business-like and aggressive. We speak
20 English and French.
21 13001 And, after all, Marshall McLuhan was
22 one of us.
23 13002 It should come as no surprise to you
24 that the Canadian new media production and development
25 industry controls virtually 100 percent of the Canadian
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1 market. My own firm, Cyberplex, this year announced
2 its first expansion into the United States, with a
3 sales and development office in Cary, North Carolina.
4 13003 Cyberplex also has further plans to
5 expand into other selected U.S. markets in the coming
6 year.
7 13004 The expansion by a Canadian web
8 solutions company into the U.S. market is significant
9 because of the data transparency of national borders
10 and the competitive advantage of the Canadian dollar.
11 American branches may sell solutions to American
12 customers, but actual web production can be based in
13 Canada.
14 13005 Production of e-commerce and other
15 professional web solutions is in many ways the ideal
16 manufactured export: no environmental impact; minimal
17 production overhead; no real worker safety issues --
18 besides carpal tunnel syndrome. The jobs created by
19 this industry are very skilled; they pay well; they
20 offer pleasant working conditions, opportunities for
21 professional growth; and they are very often fun.
22 13006 I would like to suggest to you that
23 this is an industry which does deserve your support.
24 13007 Over the previous days of these
25 hearings, I expect that you will have heard two
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2962
1 apparently contradictory propositions: one that the
2 Canadian Federal Government should not, or cannot,
3 apply the Broadcasting Act to regulate the web; and
4 second, that the Federal Government should establish
5 subsidies for the development of new media.
6 13008 Ladies and gentlemen, as you digest
7 the volume of these submissions in the days ahead, I
8 would ask you to consider the potential impact of your
9 recommendations on our industry. I would like you to
10 remember the example of Cyberplex.
11 13009 As I have said, Cyberplex Interactive
12 Media is the largest web-based business solutions
13 developer in Canada. Although it has extensive
14 experience in all types of web applications, we
15 specialize in large e-commerce and commercial marketing
16 sites.
17 13010 You may not have heard of us, because
18 we have not done a lot of marketing over the last few
19 years; we have been more focused on development. But
20 you have probably heard about our clients: The
21 Microsoft Network, Bell Mobility, Labatt, Nabisco,
22 Eatons, The Bank of Montreal, CBC, and most recently
23 the all-Canadian online bookseller ChaptersGlobe.com.
24 13011 Cyberplex is a publicly traded
25 company and is currently on the Alberta Stock Exchange
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1 under the symbol CX.
2 13012 You will be interested to know that
3 over 10 percent of equity is held by employees. We
4 have over 150 skilled personnel, including designers,
5 programmer, interface specialists, e-commerce
6 specialists, producers, account managers and sales
7 staff. They are in offices located in Toronto,
8 Waterloo, Halifax, Montreal and, as I mentioned, Cary,
9 North Carolina.
10 13013 Cyberplex's growth has been quite
11 remarkable. Although it is only four years old, it is
12 almost unique amongst new media companies in that it
13 has been profitable in every single year of operation.
14 13014 In 1996, which was our second year of
15 operation, it tripled revenue, to over $1 million. In
16 1997, it tripled again, to $3 million. In 1998,
17 Cyberplex has reported that for the first nine months
18 ending September 30th, revenues are up 190 percent over
19 the same period last year, and up 55 percent from the
20 previous quarter. Our net income for this period is up
21 over 400 percent compared to the same period last year.
22 13015 This is a young, profitable, rapidly
23 expanding world-class Canadian competitor. It achieved
24 this position of excellence without any government
25 subsidy, assistance or financial support of any kind.
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1 It grows and it continues to flourish because of the
2 skills and character of its Canadian employees and
3 because it is able to operate in its market free from
4 competitive disadvantages.
5 13016 In the process, Cyberplex has helped
6 bring exclusively Canadian Internet content and the
7 benefits of Canadian e-commerce to Canadians.
8 13017 If a Canadian Internet development
9 company can accomplish this in the absence of any
10 Federal regulatory initiatives or subsidies, we have to
11 ask: What constructive contribution can the Federal
12 Government make at this stage of the game?
13 13018 I would like you to please consider
14 for the moment the effects of Broadcasting Act style
15 obligation-based regulation on the Canadian Internet
16 development industry at this stage.
17 13019 Any regulation, regardless of its
18 intention, which increases the cost of web production
19 in Canada will harm us severely. I cannot stress
20 enough the speed of change in this industry.
21 13020 Please remember that the Canadian
22 border is transparent to the web. Just as Cyberplex
23 currently enjoys a competitive advantage in the U.S.
24 because of this transparency, higher Canadian
25 production costs would drive our customers south of the
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2965
1 border into the arms of American developers and ISPs.
2 Virtually all Canadian commercial websites could be
3 ported out of the country, beyond CRTC jurisdiction,
4 within a couple of days.
5 13021 Ladies and gentlemen, what do you
6 think would happen to my jobs and the jobs of my
7 colleagues in this scenario?
8 13022 Remember, the Internet development
9 industry has no capital equipment of any importance.
10 It has no fixed assets, no production capacity that
11 cannot be moved overnight. The only asset an Internet
12 developer has is its people. If our companies follow
13 their customers outside the country, we will have to go
14 with them.
15 13023 In any case, I can assure you that
16 the market for our skills is going to remain and grow
17 outside of this country. If the work goes south, for
18 the sake of our families, we must go also. Within six
19 months of a regulatory initiative that increases
20 production costs, virtually the entire web development
21 professional workforce could be employed by Americans
22 in higher paying jobs in places like San Francisco,
23 Boston and Seattle.
24 13024 Thus, paradoxically, a government
25 attempt to intervene in the market to increase Canadian
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2966
1 participation could have the effect of wiping out a
2 highly competitive, indigenous industry. With no
3 significant production capacity of our own, Canadians
4 will become nothing more than consumers of foreign
5 Internet content.
6 13025 You might be forgiven for thinking
7 that this doomsday prediction is overstated, and that
8 we can experiment with regulation and perhaps monitor
9 for a downside, and if there is a negative impact, we
10 can fix it. But this is a very, very dangerous
11 assumption.
12 13026 Once we lose our market share, it is
13 going to be virtually impossible for us to get it back.
14 And once the brain drain begins and the people have
15 been lost, our industry will be gutted and we are going
16 to be a wild west town after the ore has played out.
17 13027 I think the time has come for
18 Canadians to believe in their ability to compete on a
19 level playing field. We are already the world's best.
20 13028 The most constructive contribution
21 our Federal Government can make to a strong and
22 successful Canadian Internet development industry is,
23 first, to ensure the widest possible access by
24 Canadians to the Internet; and second, to prevent
25 regulation by any local, Provincial or Federal
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2967
1 government which would add to the cost of production in
2 Canada.
3 13029 And please, for my sake, for the sake
4 of my colleagues, and for the thousands of high-quality
5 jobs held by canadians in new media production, now and
6 in the future, we ask you to leave this seed alone and
7 watch it grow.
8 13030 Thank you.
9 13031 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you for your
10 presentation, Mr. Pillon.
11 13032 I will turn the questioning to
12 Commissioner McKendry.
13 13033 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Good
14 afternoon, and thank you for your presentation.
15 13034 Let me ask you a couple of questions
16 about your oral comments.
17 13035 When I first read them, I noticed in
18 the second paragraph you refer to the fact that the
19 best way to ensure access by Canadians to Canadian
20 Internet content is to foster a healthy and successful
21 indigenous production industry.
22 13036 The question that immediately came to
23 mind was: What are the barriers that we need to deal
24 with in order to make sure that that happens?
25 13037 I take it that your message is that
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1 in fact there are no barriers. We are a potential
2 barrier or the government is a potential barrier, and
3 your word of advice to us is: Don't create a barrier;
4 there is none there now.
5 13038 Is that right?
6 13039 MR. PILLON: I think that would be a
7 fair summary.
8 13040 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Is there any
9 role whatsoever for government in the Internet?
10 13041 MR. PILLON: There may be a role -- I
11 would say the question is maybe rather broadly stated.
12 13042 Obviously, my presentation is from an
13 industry or commercial perspective. The only kind of
14 work that we do is commercial in nature, e-commerce
15 sites and large sophisticated marketing sites.
16 13043 Obviously, there is a public
17 component. There is an educational component. There
18 are very broad opportunities with regard to the
19 Internet.
20 13044 Our concern is exclusively for the
21 commercial side; that we do not increase the costs of
22 production to our customers in any way; that by doing
23 so, we keep the already strong industry in our country
24 and thus provide a real indigenous alternative for our
25 Canadian customers. That is the best way to ensure
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1 that we make genuine Canadian content available to
2 Canadian consumers.
3 13045 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: For example,
4 with respect to the government's current initiative
5 with respect to privacy protection, there is
6 legislation in front of the House to facilitate
7 consumer confidence in e-commerce by ensuring that
8 people's privacy is protected, that would not concern
9 you.
10 13046 You would see that as a facilitating
11 intuitive that presumably would not raise the costs to
12 the industry that you are part of.
13 13047 MR. PILLON: I would agree with that.
14 I think probably we would be looking for anything that
15 would increase domestic access, that would strengthen
16 the existing infrastructure. Clearly, we have
17 bandwidth issues that are limiting us in terms of our
18 ability to deliver more diverse, more effective
19 content.
20 13048 These are large issues that cut
21 across many sectors. Clearly, there is a role for the
22 Federal Government here.
23 13049 Also, I think the previous gentleman
24 referred to a number of human resources concerns.
25 Certainly, we experienced these in our attempt to grow
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1 our business.
2 13050 I think educational initiatives would
3 be welcome. Clearly, there are not enough programs
4 which are focused on the skills that we find we need in
5 order to be effective in our marketplace.
6 13051 So, certainly investment in education
7 would be effective.
8 13052 I would like to mention that probably
9 the best example of a program that could be used as a
10 model in this regard is the Cyber Arts Program
11 currently running at Don Mills Secondary in Toronto.
12 13053 We are able to use senior students
13 from this secondary school program as interns in our
14 organization very effectively. So I would like to see
15 that program cloned, if you will, and in place in other
16 parts of the country.
17 13054 That, I think, is probably the
18 largest limiting factor in our industry at the moment;
19 access to appropriate skills.
20 13055 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In your oral
21 comments you said "I cannot stress enough the speed of
22 change in this industry".
23 13056 Can you help us get more insight into
24 the speed of change? Can you talk for a minute about
25 that?
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1 13057 MR. PILLON: One thought that struck
2 me, as I was listening to the previous presentation, is
3 that about a year ago, the model for our industry was a
4 small decentralized eight-to-ten person firm based on
5 freelancers and home workers. That probably was true
6 for 1994, 1995 and 1996, but it certainly is not true
7 today -- or at least we are moving rapidly away from
8 that model.
9 13058 There is an industry shake-out taking
10 place, as you would expect in any high growth
11 manufacturing sector where a lot of the smaller firms
12 are either going by the wayside or being absorbed into
13 larger companies such as our own.
14 13059 Actually, Cyperplex recently
15 completed an acquisition in 1998 which added a good 40
16 percent to our capacity. I think that pace of change
17 is perhaps not reflected in some of the public debate.
18 13060 The technologies -- from an
19 individual standpoint, we as workers in this business
20 have to upgrade our skills almost continually, because
21 every two months the technologies which we have
22 available to us, the tools that we have to work with,
23 are changing. The tools that we used even six months
24 ago are now obsolete.
25 13061 The growth of this market is -- we
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1 are a very rapidly growing company by any standards,
2 but the growth of the market outstrips our own growth
3 as a company. It is a tidal wave that is rising so
4 rapidly, I would venture to say -- this is a very seat-
5 of-the-pants estimate -- that within five years this
6 industry could become larger than the printing
7 industry; could be as large as the telecommunications
8 or as the broadcasting industry and motion picture
9 industry.
10 13062 If we experience a technological
11 breakthrough in network bandwidth, then the sky is the
12 limit. I don't think you could find anyone, even the
13 most sophisticated plugged-in individuals in our
14 industry, who would be able to predict what would
15 happen if we experienced a ten-fold increase in
16 bandwidth.
17 13063 About all I can say is that it is
18 growing faster than we can keep up, and we are a very
19 fast-moving company.
20 13064 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: That leads me
21 into the next question I wanted to ask you. It derived
22 from a statement you made in your written submission to
23 us, where you said that broadcasting will remain the
24 only feasible way to distribute entertainment
25 programming.
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1 13065 I wondered if you could talk about
2 that for a minute. Does that go to the bandwidth
3 situation you were discussing just a minute ago?
4 13066 MR. PILLON: There is a bandwidth
5 issue, but I think we are all sophisticated enough to
6 expect that in the near future those limitations -- for
7 example, delivery of real-time video over the Internet
8 -- will be erased. It is going to happen eventually.
9 13067 The question is a matter of
10 definition. If we are delivering prepackaged
11 entertainment, real-time linear entertainment such as
12 we are used to with television, then it seems to me
13 that the delivery system is not the issue.
14 13068 I think that the format of the
15 information is the issue, and this speaks to the
16 business of definitions that I think a number of people
17 have raised: What constitutes broadcasting? What
18 constitutes a program?
19 13069 An interactive website is -- I think
20 it is a real stretch to think of it as a program,
21 because it is interactive. It really more resembles a
22 magazine or a newspaper than it does a television
23 program.
24 13070 A television program is not an
25 interactive experience. It is a linear experience. It
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1 does not require any participation by the viewer.
2 Essentially, the relationship is a passive one.
3 13071 I would say that as we look at the
4 viability of a term like program or broadcasting to the
5 emerging technologies, we really need to look not at
6 the technology side of it, not necessarily even at the
7 content, but the relationship between the information
8 that is being communicated and the participants, the
9 viewers, the end-users.
10 13072 I think that is where we will be able
11 to draw reasonable distinctions.
12 13073 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Just to help
13 me understand a little better, you said -- and you have
14 elaborated on this -- that broadcasting will be the
15 only feasible way to distribute entertainment
16 programming. So as a web producer, you don't see the
17 day when entertainment programming will come to me over
18 the Internet -- entertainment programming in the sense
19 of linear programming that is available on conventional
20 TV today.
21 13074 Is that what you are saying?
22 13075 MR. PILLON: I don't think it would
23 be fair to say that. I think there will be a point in
24 the future where we will be able to use our Internet
25 connections in computers to view real time linear-type
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1 entertainment as characterized currently by broadcast
2 television. I think that is going to happen once the
3 bandwidth issues are eliminated.
4 13076 What I am suggesting is that there is
5 a big difference between that kind of material and an
6 e-commerce website, for example, or even a marketing
7 website. There is a big difference in terms of how the
8 viewer interacts with the material that is coming to
9 them.
10 13077 One of the things that drives the
11 design of a good e-commerce website, for example, is
12 simplicity. Studies have shown that end-users want
13 really as little in the way of embellishment as
14 possible. They come to the site with specific ideas
15 about what kinds of information they want, and they
16 want that information as quickly as possible.
17 13078 A lot of the stuff that you tended to
18 see on the Internet in the early days, the elaborate
19 animations and colourful backgrounds and complicated
20 page layouts and designs, have really gone by the
21 wayside. Viewers don't like that stuff. It gets in
22 the way. They come to the online store with a specific
23 idea of what they want, and they want to get it fast.
24 13079 That is an entirely different
25 experience from what we would have, sitting in front of
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1 the television set with the channel changer. I think
2 that is the kind of distinction that I am recommending
3 that we use in determining what could reasonably be
4 covered by the Broadcasting Act as opposed to what we
5 would consider to be strictly interactive content.
6 13080 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: As a web
7 producer, how have you seen the growth of audio and
8 video components of website design emerge and where do
9 you see that going over the next little while?
10 13081 MR. PILLON: Audio and video -- it is
11 difficult to see how they could be applied in a way
12 that adds value to the viewer's experience of the kind
13 of commercial website that we would build.
14 13082 Again, these things are more in the
15 nature of embellishments or entertainment and so tend
16 to get in the way of the objective of the end-user to
17 the experience of the website. We try to shy away from
18 bandwidth-intensive content, like full motion video or
19 audio.
20 13083 I think audio is important as a
21 sampler. Let's say we were shopping an audio CD online
22 store. In that case, I might want to be able to sample
23 the content of a particular CD. I might want to listen
24 to the music as a prelude to actually purchasing the
25 disc, much as you would if you walked in to HMV and put
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1 on the headphones to listen to a disc.
2 13084 That would make sense in that
3 business case, but only within that business case. I
4 would not burden a bookseller's website with video. I
5 wouldn't try and put audio, for the sake of audio or
6 video, on to a marketing site.
7 13085 We have to use these things very
8 sparingly, not so much out of bandwidth issues,
9 although those are definitely a concern; but mainly as
10 a way to maintain viewer interest.
11 13086 There has been a real movement in the
12 last six months -- again, speaking to the issue of the
13 change in the industry. In terms of sophistication of
14 our viewership, there has been a real movement away
15 from a lot of real-time material to a more essentialist
16 or more sparing presentation.
17 13087 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Let me ask
18 you a question about the definition of new media.
19 There has been a fair bit of discussion about that in
20 this proceeding.
21 13088 I take it that it is your position
22 that we don't really need to worry about a definition
23 of new media; and in fact if we do worry about it and
24 develop one, you say the consequences could be
25 disastrous, if I am not misinterpreting the point you
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1 make.
2 13089 Perhaps you could elaborate on that
3 thought for us.
4 13090 MR. PILLON: Thank you. I think that
5 is a very important point.
6 13091 The point that I made in my written
7 submission was that terms like new media or information
8 superhighway are journalistic conveniences. They are
9 blanket terms that don't really correspond to the
10 reality of the technologies.
11 13092 Multimedia, for example, was a big
12 deal, a very important word a couple of years ago. But
13 it really turned out to be a buzzword.
14 13093 We used to joke that multimedia was
15 the zero billion dollar a year industry, because as it
16 finally materialized, the idea of delivery of content
17 on CD-ROM never became commercially viable. And there
18 were a number of really good reasons for this.
19 13094 So to talk about the multimedia
20 industry, for example, is really to talk about
21 something that didn't exist. To talk about new media,
22 we would have to lump together a wide variety of
23 different initiatives.
24 13095 We would have to talk about CD-ROM
25 development in the same breath as the Internet, with
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1 two entirely difference business models. We would have
2 to talk about digital entertainment, for example, or
3 possibly even digital cell phones. It is really hard
4 to pin these things down to a specific business case
5 when you use a very broad definition.
6 13096 So I would suggest that the dangers
7 of using a term like that far outweigh any possible
8 advantages. I would rather the term "new media" just
9 went away and we talked about Internet development, we
10 talked about e-commerce, we talked about CD-ROM, we
11 talked about edutainment.
12 13097 The fact that these things are all
13 based on ones and zeros is really the least important
14 thing about them. The important thing is: What is the
15 business case? Who uses them? What is the production
16 methodology? What is the market for these things? And
17 where are they likely to evolve?
18 13098 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: It was
19 suggested to us that the approach you are recommending
20 we take misses the content dimension of new media,
21 because it is focused on the business case for a
22 particular technology; and from the point of view of
23 the CRTC, we have to keep content in mind, and that is
24 integral to the technologies that we are talking about.
25 13099 Do you have any thoughts about the
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1 weight we should give to content in thinking about new
2 media?
3 13100 MR. PILLON: We have to remember that
4 the way the people use the Internet -- and of course my
5 focus is particularly on web development because of my
6 background.
7 13101 The way that Canadians use the
8 Internet is very needs-driven. If you are on the
9 Internet, you are looking for something. You are
10 looking for something that is specific to your
11 profession, to your community, to your hobbies and
12 interests, to your personal situation, perhaps medical
13 issues. It is not generalized information; it is very
14 focused and very specific.
15 13102 By definition, the things that
16 Canadians want are going to be of Canadian interest and
17 Canadian relevance.
18 13103 I am not going to be interested, for
19 example, in the regulatory framework of the State of
20 Texas unless I actually operate in the State of Texas.
21 I, as a producer, am going to be interested in the
22 regulatory framework of the Province of Ontario and of
23 Canada as a whole.
24 13104 My interest is, by definition, going
25 to be Canadian content. Again, it is not
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1 entertainment.
2 13105 The thing to remember, too, as we
3 look at these new technologies, is that they really are
4 extremely accessible. There are no barriers to access
5 for Canadians. It is very inexpensive to produce a
6 website that deals with very specific Canadian issues.
7 The cost of mounting this type of content is very, very
8 low.
9 13106 So the kinds of limitations that we
10 see in the broadcasting world, where we have to worry
11 about a limited number of frequencies and very, very
12 high costs of production and high costs of
13 distribution, these things represent very definite
14 barriers to Canadian content. Whereas in the Internet,
15 there really are no barriers of any significance.
16 13107 It is hard to see what positive
17 contribution one could make, what regulatory initiative
18 one could take that would increase the amount of
19 Canadian content on the web.
20 13108 Having said that, obviously there are
21 organizations which do need support, organizations
22 which are not driven by commercial premise. Not-for-
23 profit organizations, community-based organizations,
24 cultural organizations certainly are going to benefit
25 from any assistance that they can find to remain
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1 relevant in an increasingly sophisticated web
2 environment.
3 13109 That is something to address. In
4 other words, it is going to be more expensive to
5 produce a website that people are actually going to
6 want to look at.
7 13110 We can build business models to
8 support commercial cases, but the not-for-profit
9 organizations and the cultural organizations may need
10 more assistance in this area. That is kind of outside
11 the scope of our interest.
12 13111 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: That is
13 helpful; thank you.
14 13112 I would like to come back to
15 electronic commerce for a moment, because I take it
16 that you in particular specialize in producing sites
17 that deal in the electronic commerce area.
18 13113 Where do you see electronic commerce
19 headed on the net? Will it be primarily business-to-
20 business as some have suggested? Will it be business-
21 to-consumer? Will it be both? Will one area grow
22 faster than the other?
23 13114 MR. PILLON: To answer your question,
24 I think there is going to be tremendous growth in both
25 areas. Business-to-business is the case that is
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1 perhaps a little newer to our industry. We are
2 starting to see those opportunities evolve.
3 13115 But the retail case is pretty well
4 established.
5 13116 ChaptersGlobe.com is an excellent
6 example. They are actually selling now more books
7 through the Internet site -- which has only been up,
8 live, for about a month -- than they are through the
9 whole bricks and mortar organization.
10 13117 So in a very short period of time,
11 the e-commerce solution has met and begun to exceed the
12 traditional storefront operation. I can't see that
13 slowing down. I can only see that increasing.
14 13118 The convenience of online shopping
15 for consumers, especially in a country that is as large
16 and diverse as ours, is very compelling.
17 13119 I can see this going beyond --
18 although, obviously, books are an easy business case to
19 make, we can see this going in the direction of
20 groceries, for example. Our Eatons site is actually
21 promoting the sale of clothing. There are plenty of
22 very viable solutions to this kind of trade.
23 13120 I think there is going to be a real
24 revolution in online retailing over the next two years.
25 13121 Having said that, there is another
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1 half of this whole business that is maybe not as
2 obvious. I think probably traditional e-commerce where
3 you are actually conducting an online transaction will
4 represent about 30 percent to 40 percent of the entire
5 e-commerce proposition.
6 13122 The remainder really has more to do
7 with -- we don't really have a term for this, but it
8 has become apparent recently that 70 percent of the
9 people who use the Internet and make major purchases,
10 such as automobiles, for example, will have done
11 sophisticated research online before making their
12 purchase.
13 13123 So there is a very important role for
14 commercial websites to play in driving offline
15 purchases. And that is growing.
16 13124 I guess that is what you would call a
17 commercial marketing site. It is part of a sales
18 process that extends outside of cyberspace. And I see
19 that as expanding as well.
20 13125 Really, the sky is the limit on this
21 stuff. I think it is a really good thing for this
22 country as a whole, because it will permit economic
23 access to a wider variety of goods and services by
24 Canadians in divergent geographical areas.
25 13126 I see this as a growth area.
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1 13127 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: In producing
2 websites in Canada, to what extent is it important to
3 take into account the French language in designing the
4 websites in Canada?
5 13128 Is the language of business in Canada
6 on the Internet English or French, or both?
7 13129 MR. PILLON: The language of the
8 Internet as a whole, I think, is English worldwide. It
9 is a very strange cultural phenomenon which I think we
10 are all watching very carefully. I think that trend is
11 only going to continue.
12 13130 Having said that, the Internet does
13 favour micromarkets and smaller communities. I think
14 that is one of the reasons that we have elected to
15 expand into the Montreal market and open an office in
16 Montreal recently, to take advantage of a very
17 sophisticated bilingual workforce in Montreal.
18 13131 We are increasingly seeing a
19 requirement for bilingual websites with our large
20 commercial customers, and I think that probably is only
21 going to increase.
22 13132 We have to keep in mind that the
23 current limitation is cost. We are not exactly
24 duplicating the effort to produce an English website by
25 producing it in both languages. But we are adding
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1 about 40 percent to 60 percent production cost to the
2 site when we do that.
3 13133 We are not actually re-creating the
4 pages but we do have to double the amount of content.
5 It is an issue for us, but I think we are able to
6 address this. Certainly, there is a large pool of
7 talent in the country to cover this requirement.
8 13134 COMMISSIONER McKENDRY: Thank you for
9 answering my questions.
10 13135 You have had, as Commissioner
11 Colville said, the last word in this phase of our
12 proceedings. We appreciate very much your taking the
13 time to come and talk with us.
14 13136 MR. PILLON: Thank you very much for
15 the opportunity to speak.
16 13137 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you,
17 Commissioner McKendry.
18 13138 I will actually give you the
19 opportunity to have the last word in addition to
20 anything that you have discussed with Commissioner
21 McKendry, if you wish.
22 13139 Is there anything that you want to
23 leave us with?
24 13140 MR. PILLON: I would like to
25 reiterate that the Canadian Internet development
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1 industry is going through a period of very rapid
2 growth. I think Canadians are uniquely positioned to
3 take advantage of this opportunity.
4 13141 I think we will become one of the top
5 three players in the United States, for example. I
6 think we can benefit, as a nation, from this export
7 opportunity, if we play our cards carefully and support
8 the development of skills in this country.
9 13142 Thank you.
10 13143 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you again,
11 Mr. Pillon. We appreciate your coming here today and
12 your submission.
13 13144 I find this unusual that at almost
14 every hearing I have attended -- I think I have
15 indicated at one time or another during this proceeding
16 that I have been with the Commission for a little over
17 eight years now and sat in on a lot of hearings.
18 13145 And as usually happens, while this
19 room is full of people on Day One of the hearing, it is
20 virtually empty now. Those of you who may be watching
21 on CPAC may not appreciate that. But if the camera had
22 panned the room, you would see that almost all of the
23 chairs are empty with the exception of a few people who
24 are on the CRTC staff, Mr. Pillon here, and a
25 representative from Industry Canada who has been here
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1 faithfully almost every day for the two weeks of the
2 hearing, taking notes.
3 13146 We have the situation where most of
4 the parties who have been here are not here now.
5 13147 Nevertheless, we know that a lot of
6 people are watching this proceeding on CPAC and have
7 been following the proceedings. There is a transcript,
8 and I understand the transcript has been posted on our
9 website, when it is available.
10 13148 I know from hearing, either directly
11 or indirectly, from other parties that they have been
12 carefully following the proceeding.
13 13149 So notwithstanding the fact that the
14 room is almost deserted now, we know that a lot of
15 people have been following the hearing.
16 13150 I think it has been a particularly
17 interesting hearing in respect to the coverage that it
18 has had. Typically what happens at one of these
19 hearings is that the press are here the first day or
20 two and we will see a lot of coverage in the media,
21 depending on the particular issue, for the first day or
22 two.
23 13151 In this particular case, the press
24 people were here almost every day, certainly of the
25 first two weeks, and there has been a lot of media
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1 coverage about this issue and this particular
2 proceeding, which demonstrates that it is obviously an
3 issue to a lot of people, both industry players who are
4 involved in one aspect of the industry or another and
5 the general public.
6 13152 This whole issue is obviously one of
7 concern to many people in Canada.
8 13153 We have had over the past two weeks
9 now about 80 oral presentations and have had an
10 excellent discussion, I think, of all of the issues
11 that have come up with the parties who have come here.
12 I want to particularly thank all of those who have come
13 and expressed their views.
14 13154 I think it is probably fair to say
15 that I can speak for all of my colleagues, those who
16 are here now and who were here, that we have certainly
17 gained a much better understanding of the issues. We
18 have had an excellent discussion of the issues. It has
19 been very helpful to us.
20 13155 The Internet has been referred to as
21 a cloud by a number of people earlier in the
22 proceeding, and I think it has helped us -- there has
23 actually been a fog, for those of you who don't live in
24 Ottawa, for the last couple of days; actually
25 physically fog.
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1 13156 I think the hearing has been helpful
2 in clearing away some of the fog and to get a better
3 understanding of some of the issues, some of which are
4 directly related to the Commission's responsibilities
5 and some of which might be but, as many people have
6 suggested, should not be; and some that are outside of
7 the Commission's direct responsibilities.
8 13157 I want to particularly thank all of
9 those parties who have come before us over the past two
10 weeks and expressed their views.
11 13158 One of the things it is probably fair
12 to say that there has been an agreement on, as we just
13 discussed with the last presenter, is that we need to
14 deal with this issue in the context of how we can
15 facilitate its growth and a Canadian presence in terms
16 of developing both the infrastructure and the content
17 and to perhaps create a prominence for Canada and its
18 creators in this business.
19 13159 As we noted at the outset of the
20 proceeding, there were three basic themes that we
21 wanted to address with respect to the whole issue of
22 new media -- and I use that term somewhat loosely. It
23 has been suggested to us how we should or should not
24 define "new media"; and has already been referred to,
25 maybe I can refer to it as "the stuff" of this
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1 business, as we discussed earlier this morning.
2 13160 I believe those themes have been very
3 well explored and have been raised by almost all of the
4 parties who have come before us. I think we have had a
5 good exploration of those themes, to the point where,
6 as I indicated earlier, we certainly have a better
7 understanding of those issues and a better
8 understanding of the implications that new media holds
9 for broadcasting, programming undertakings, producers,
10 telecommunications carriers, access carriers and indeed
11 all Canadians, both as consumers and citizens.
12 13161 I would like to say that without in
13 any way intending to limit the scope of final comment
14 by any of the parties -- and this particular phase we
15 are ending here today is one stage in the process that
16 we are going through to look at these issues -- I would
17 like to note that it would be particularly helpful in
18 our deliberations if those commenting on some issues
19 that are within our jurisdiction could be fairly
20 specific when they address a number of issues that have
21 been raised during this proceeding.
22 13162 Perhaps I could give a few examples
23 of the kind of specificity that might be somewhat
24 helpful.
25 13163 For those parties who will be
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1 commenting on which types of new media services are
2 within and which are beyond the scope of what the
3 Broadcasting Act defines as programs or broadcasting,
4 it would be helpful if you could describe the
5 characteristics, such as interactivity or customization
6 that might define those types of services.
7 13164 Again, for those parties who have
8 recommended either the licensing or indeed exemption of
9 new media undertakings under the Broadcasting Act, it
10 would be helpful if you could define the specific
11 classes of undertakings that would be subject to such
12 licensing or exemption.
13 13165 In addition, such parties may wish to
14 specify the parameters of any such licensing or
15 exemption; for example, any conditions or terms that
16 you would propose. And in particular, parties
17 suggesting an exemption order might suggest whether
18 such an order ought to be time limited.
19 13166 For those parties commenting on the
20 appropriate classification of Internet service
21 providers as broadcasting undertakings,
22 telecommunications service providers or Canadian
23 carriers, what specific activities or characteristics
24 of an Internet service provider would qualify it as
25 either a broadcasting undertaking or a
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1 telecommunications service provider or carrier?
2 13167 Many parties have expressed support
3 or indeed opposition to the imposition of measures
4 requiring operators or portals, content aggregators and
5 others to provide visibility and prominence to new
6 Canadian content. Those parties may wish to address
7 whether such measures are needed, appropriate,
8 practically feasible and within the scope of the
9 Commission's statutory mandates.
10 13168 If in their view it is practically
11 feasible, those parties may wish to provide specific
12 examples of how this could be achieved.
13 13169 Many parties have also suggested that
14 the Commission monitor the status of new media. We
15 would request that those parties tell us what are the
16 appropriate indicators or benchmarks that should be
17 used to gauge both the growth of the industry and its
18 impact on traditional media undertakings.
19 13170 And finally, for those parties that
20 called for additional proceedings to consider issues
21 relating to access by Internet service providers to the
22 facilities of Canadian carriers, it would be helpful if
23 you would specify the nature and scope of the
24 proceeding required; for example, a public hearing, SIS
25 process or other type of proceeding.
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1 13171 It has been suggested that a number
2 of these issues may well be resolved by relying on the
3 marketplace to resolve those issues.
4 13172 Again, I use those by way of
5 examples. A number of parties who have appeared over
6 the last couple of weeks have suggested that these are
7 complex issues and in some respects difficult to deal
8 with. But as I say, where parties are making
9 recommendations with respect to certain issues, the
10 more specific you could be in providing comments to us
11 in the next round, it would be particularly helpful.
12 13173 I remind parties that requests to
13 appear at the oral final comment phase must be filed
14 with the Commission no later than January 18th of 1999.
15 13174 Written final comments may be filed
16 with the Commission by February 8th, 1999 and may be
17 orally presented during the week of February 8th to
18 12th.
19 13175 Finally, on behalf of my fellow
20 Commissioners and the Commission, I would like to thank
21 also all of those who have made written submissions to
22 the Commission. Your comments and submissions will be
23 carefully considered with respect to our deliberations
24 as well. We certainly appreciate the time and effort
25 of all the parties, whether they provided a written
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1 submission or appeared orally.
2 13176 As I said earlier, it has certainly
3 helped us to better understand the issues that are
4 raised with respect to new media and the Internet.
5 13177 I would like to thank my colleagues
6 on the Panel for their participation.
7 13178 Somebody made a comment at the outset
8 of the proceeding that they were a little bit nervous
9 in presenting. Some parties had not appeared in front
10 of the Commission before. As I indicated at the
11 outset, there always is a certain amount of nervous
12 tension on both sides of the table in dealing with
13 these issues -- including myself, who has been around
14 here longer than any of the other Commissioners.
15 13179 I would like to thank all the
16 Commissioners for their help and support in conducting
17 this proceeding.
18 13180 I would like to thank our staff:
19 Commission counsel, Karen Moore and Karen Pinsky; our
20 hearing manager, Ted Woodhead; and all of the staff who
21 have helped us gain a better understanding of the
22 issues.
23 13181 Thank you to our hearing secretaries,
24 Carole Bénard and Diane Santerre, who is not here right
25 now but helped us out certainly in the first part of
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1 the proceeding to conduct our proceeding in a very
2 efficient and effective manner.
3 13182 Thanks to our translators and our
4 court reporters for providing assistance.
5 13183 Also, thank you to CPAC for carrying
6 the proceeding. I understand that you have to be a bit
7 of a night owl if you want to watch it; but
8 nonetheless, it is available for viewers to watch what
9 is going on.
10 13184 With that, we will conclude the
11 proceeding. I invite you all to enjoy a happy holiday
12 season over the next while. We will see at least some
13 of you back here in February, when we will conclude the
14 final oral phase of the proceeding.
15 13185 At that point, the Commission will
16 deliberate on all of the material that we have and will
17 convey the outcome of the proceeding in some sort of
18 document, hopefully soon after the February phase of
19 the hearing.
20 13186 Thank you very much to all. This
21 phase of our hearing is adjourned.
22 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1300 /
23 L'audience est ajournée à 1300
24
25
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