CRTC questions CBC oversight, transparency in licence review

Public broadcaster’s CEO says greater flexibility needed for online shift

OTTAWA— Oversight and transparency took centre stage on Day 1 of a nearly three-week review of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s broadcasting licences, as the rush to furnish digital content butts up against regulatory concerns.

The CBC is asking Canada’s telecommunications regulator to renew licences for its various

English- and French-language audio and audiovisual programming services.

CBC CEO Catherine Tait told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission board the public broadcaster needs greater “flexibility” to meet the shift toward online consumption.

Under the public broadcaster’s application, that digital dexterity would leave it free of financial reporting obligations around online content, such as the CBC Gem streaming platform and CBC Listen app.

“If we do not move with our audiences, we risk becoming dinosaurs on a melting ice cap,” Tait said at the virtual hearing Monday morning.

She is asking the CRTC to renew its licences for five years, absent the regulatory scrutiny on digital content that applies to radio and TV programs.

CRTC chair Ian Scott questioned the CBC’s move to avoid disclosing digital costs.

“I know you don’t like expenditure-based requirements,” he said. “But from the commission’s perspective, with greater regulatory flexibility there’s a greater requirement for accountability and transparency from the corporation.”

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is recommending the CBC go a few steps further by following its radio service to become ad-free on television and online.

“They have also been very, very dodgy when it comes to transparency,” Daniel Bernhard, the group’s executive director, said of CBC management. “It’s just an insane idea, that the Canadian public and our regulator have no business scrutinizing activities of the public broadcaster in the digital domain.”

Online content from the CBC — like Netflix, Spotify and Crave — is exempt from the Broadcasting Act, which sets minimum thresholds for Canadian content.

Proposed changes to the Broadcasting Act through Bill C-10, now before the House of Commons, aim to subject booming online streaming sites to the same rules as their legacy counterparts in Canada. The CBC is requesting the so-called digital media exemption order remain until the bill is passed.