YouTuber Explains Why Bill C-11 Puts Canadian Content Creators at Risk [VIDEO]

Vancouver-based YouTuber J.J. McCullough, who recently spoke at a Parliamentary hearing in opposition to Bill C-11, a law that will regulate online media from services like YouTube, has explained why the Online Streaming Act is bad news for Canadian creators, to Maclean’s.

Last week, the law passed through to the Senate, leaving YouTubers and other Canadian creators worried that it puts the way they earn a living at risk by diminishing their content visibility. The Bill was supported by the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Online Streaming Act or Bill C-11 aims to highlight and promote Canadian content by putting online content under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

According to McCullough, CRTC is going to have to come up with “some sort of criteria for what is good Canadian content,” and then YouTube is going to have to “live up to its legal obligations to promote and recommend that content.”

Overnight, creators are going to wake up and find the kind of content that has previously been successful in an unregulated YouTube is no longer successful in a regulated YouTube. As a result, they will either have to change the nature of content that they make in order to make it more overtly Canadian—whatever that means—or they could possibly be at a disadvantage.

With Bill C-11, McCullough said, “it’s crushing that so much hard work and passion could now disappear because of it.”

Should the federal government intervene and try to push Canadian content on viewers? Or let audiences decide what shows and movies they want to watch, regardless of origin? We can’t remember the last time someone said, “oh I wish there was more Canadian content for me on YouTube/Netflix/Disney/etc”…