The Liberal government’s controversial Bill C-10 is being put on hold as a committee of MPs seeks to determine if it could violate freedom of expression rights for social media users.
The Canadian Heritage committee, made up of Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Bloc Québécois MPs is currently studying the bill but decided to stop and ask for a new charter statement from the Department of Justice on Monda
'Those powers include giving the CRTC the ability to ask social media companies for information about revenue generated from Canadians, the power to require them to invest money in Canadian productions and also to make it easier for the discovery of Canadian content on platforms like YouTube.'
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But Laura Tribe, executive director of OpenMedia, a digital rights advocacy organization, said the bill would place user-generated
content under CRTC regulations, regardless of what the government says its intent is for the law.
For example, Tribe said, the bill would authorize social media platforms to enforce content rules, like discoverability of Canadian material. “It really takes power away from users,” said Tribe. “It’s going to take a lot, I think, for this bill to win back political favour, no matter how well intended it was in the first place, because of how poorly it’s been handled.”
