OTTAWA -- Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has walked back comments he made in an interview on CTV's Question Period regarding the licensing of media, seeking to clarify that the federal Liberal government "has no intention to impose licensing requirements on news organizations, nor would we try to regulate news content."
The rookie minister charged with modernizing Canada’s broadcast and telecommunications law appeared on CTV’s Power Play Monday to expand upon his earlier remarks, saying that when it comes to what qualifies as a news organization, “the government is not in the business of deciding that.”
“We were having a conversation about some hypothetical situation,” he said of his comments in CTV’s Question Period. “I’m not talking hypothetical (now). What I’m saying is that there will be no licensing or registration required from news agencies.”
Guilbeault first clarified the remarks when speaking to reporters in the House of Commons foyer on Monday morning. Guilbeault said he recognizes there was confusion and he thought it was important to clarify that the government does not intend to license news outlets.
"We are committed to a free and independent press, which is essential to our democracy. Our focus will be and always has been to ensure that Canadians have access to a diversity of high-quality and credible news sources," he said.
This comes after stating in an interview, broadcast on CTV's Question Period on Sunday, that the government would look to make it so that media organizations would be licensed, but proportionally.
The recommendation for media licensing was made in a report presented to the government last week, by an expert panel that looked into potential media and content regulatory reforms.
Drafted by former telecommunications executive Janet Yale, the report suggested that all companies that deliver "audio, audiovisual, and alphanumeric news content" to Canadians should be regulated, through some form of a licence or registration.
On CTV's Question Period on Sunday, Guilbeault said that while the government was still considering all recommendations laid out in the report, should they apply the suggested licensing enforcement it likely wouldn't be done in the same way for small media groups as it would be for global tech giants.
"If you're a distributor of content in Canada and obviously if you’re a very small media organization the requirement probably wouldn't be the same if you’re Facebook, or Google. There would have to be some proportionality embedded into this," said Guilbeault in the Sunday interview with Evan Solomon. "But we would ask that they have a license, yes."
Monday morning Guilbeault stated that the report's licensing recommendation wouldn’t apply to news media outlets and that he was referring to outlets that produce and distribute content.
"'Media' can be confusing, I recognize that, because the report talks about media, but not necessarily in the sense necessarily of news agencies and maybe the confusion comes from there," he said.
When asked to define what the report means by “media content” during his appearance on Power Play, Guilbeault said “the important answer is not what my definition is, but in the report, they refer to media as anyone who produces content, and then they say that for news agencies, there will be no licensing required.”
He said the aim of a new bill resulting from the recommendations would be to look at potentially extending regulations regarding the promotion of Canadian-made cultural content, so that “web giants” making money within Canada might be subject to similar regulations as Canadian companies.
“What we’re interested in is how can we continue to have good Canadian cultural content, made in Canada, and made available -- the legislation is going to be on that,” he said.
He was unable to say how the bill would make the distinction between which organizations qualify as credible or trusted news sources.
“This (terminology) comes from the report,” Guilbeault said. “So you’d have to ask the people who did the report what they had in mind, but let me reassure people, we’re not going there.
“We’re in a democracy, we believe in free press.”
The Conservatives quickly pounced on the initial comments from the minister regarding the licensing of media organizations, and the clip of his remarks generated considerable social media backlash over the weekend.
The issue led off question period on Monday, with outgoing Conservative leader Andrew Scheer asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about his minister's comments.
"George Orwell's ‘1984’ was supposed to be a cautionary tale about the evils of big government, not an instruction manual for this prime minister," said Scheer.
Trudeau responded: "I want to be unequivocal. We will not impose licensing requirements on news organizations, nor will we regulate news content."
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who is her party's industry and economic development critic, said it was unacceptable that Guilbeault suggested he needed to clarify the government's position on account of public confusion.
She said that more concrete precision about the Liberal's stance is needed because his remarks in the initial interview were "deeply concerning."
"I think that the government has to be very clear about one thing: that the role of the state is to not interfere in people's right to free speech, or the freedom of the press," Rempel Garner said.
Rempel Garner later appeared on CTV’s Power Play and called Guilbeault’s interview on the same show “a trainwreck.”
“He couldn’t define what news meant in regards to new regulation,” she pointed out.
NDP MP Heather McPherson also expressed concerns on Power Play, saying Guilbeault’s clarification had been “opaque, at best.”
“All Canadians need to know that we have a free and independent press,” she said.
With files from CTV News' Sarah Turnbull
