The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has become a censorship tool of the federal government and no longer serves the public interest.The Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) became law in 2023 and gave the CRTC authority over the internet. The CRTC is now empowered to manipulate the algorithms of domestic and foreign streaming services and to compel streaming services to “make discoverable” what Ottawa regards as “Canadian” content. The Online Streaming Act does not empower the CRTC to remove content from the streaming services it regulates, so there is no direct censorship. However, the CRTC does have the power to direct Canadians’ attention to its preferred French-language, indigenous, sexual minorities, and other “diversity” content. The CRTC’s regulatory grip over Canada’s communications sector undermines the free marketplace of ideas. The CRTC picks winners and losers, rather than respecting net neutrality. As a consequence, the federal government now has longer levers to shape the national conversation in real time. It has turned the CRTC into a gatekeeper that decides which ideas, creators, and stories get amplified or quietly suppressed — not by banning them outright, but by making them harder to find. The CRTC (along with many politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa) does not trust Canadians to choose for ourselves what we watch and listen to.Created in 1968, the CRTC claims to “regulate” the Canadian communications sector “in the public interest.” Its 700-person bureaucracy supervises “over 2,000 broadcasters, including TV services, AM and FM radio stations, and companies that bring these services to Canadians” as well as “telecommunications service providers, including internet, cellphone, and telephone service providers.”.Within a few years of its creation, the CRTC began forcing radio and then television stations to broadcast Ottawa’s version of “Canadian” content.In 1997, the CRTC approved Playboy TV, The Golf Channel, and Game Show Network for television. That same year, the CRTC rejected the applications of three small religious networks and the much larger Eternal Word Television Network. The CRTC imposed stringent conditions on religious content: single-faith channels were permitted only on cable, and applicants had to demonstrate “balanced programming” that included multi-faith perspectives on matters of public concern. Needless to say, Playboy TV was not required to provide “balanced” programming by including messages from pornography opponents or from addiction counsellors. For the CRTC, golf and pornography are somehow more “Canadian” than religion (especially Christianity).This blatant CRTC bias exposes the absurdity of empowering a government body to grant or deny licences or manipulate internet algorithms based on what political appointees think is “Canadian.”The CRTC’s political bias is not a thing of the past. As explained by Jamie Sarkonak, the CRTC has ordered Netflix, Amazon, and other online streamers to collect diversity data about whether key creative personnel are “racialized people, people with disabilities, individuals who identify as 2SLGBTQI+ and women,” and to support programming created by and for non-white communities. When the government requires the gathering of data about what it calls “equity-deserving groups,” quotas are sure to follow. In 2022, the CRTC ordered the CBC to spend a minimum proportion of its production budgets on “diverse” shows and production teams..According to the CRTC in 1997, “Canadian” meant golf and pornography, to the exclusion of religion. For today’s CRTC, “Canadian” means woke neo-Marxist ideology with quotas for “equity-deserving” groups.The Online News Act (Bill C-18) became law in 2023 and gave the CRTC legal authority to regulate Google as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. While Google agreed to pay the CRTC $100 million per year to avoid non-compliance, Meta chose to ban the sharing of news links on Facebook and Instagram, fundamentally disrupting how Canadians access information. In 2023, 24% of Canadians were getting their news from social media, and 85% of Canadians aged 15-34 got their news from social media. The Online News Act prevented Canadians from sharing links to news articles, ending a golden era of access to information that had provided Canadians with news everywhere, all the time. The consequences of the Online News Act have been catastrophic for Canadian news outlets, which now have far fewer viewers. Fewer Canadians receiving and viewing Canadian news is an embarrassment to the CRTC’s mission to promote “Canadian” content.A government that controls the internet and disrespects net neutrality will invariably push the ideology favoured by the politicians and bureaucrats of the day. On a daily basis, the CRTC undermines “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” as protected by the Charter.It’s time to abolish the CRTC.John Carpay is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca), which has released Mission Creep, a report explaining why the CRTC should be abolished.
