With just over a year to go before the 2019 Canadian national election, the upcoming fall Parliamentary session will undoubtedly feature a renewed urgency to pass legislative proposals and craft new policies that will form the basis for future election platforms. Digital issues will surely feature prominently including the copyright review and Copyright Board reform, website blocking proposals, privacy safeguards, the broadcast and telecom review, a national data policy, and the implementation of the IP strategy. The same is true elsewhere with Europe to again consider copyright reform, the U.S. assessing privacy rules, and many other countries engaged in digital policy initiatives. However, just as the broader public is finding its voices on these issues with policy submissions, petitions, and efforts to ensure that a public interest perspective is a core part of the process, the traditional lobby groups that have long dominated the policy discourse are steadily working to undermine those efforts with cries of user voices being “mob-driven“, “hacking“, or “disinformation.”
Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
“This Really Isn’t Our Fight and It Will Cost Us”: Behind the Scenes of CBC Support for Bell’s Website Blocking Plan
Bell’s behind-the-scenes effort to drum up support for its site blocking proposal at the CRTC has been the subject of several posts over the past few months. Based primarily access-to-information requests, I’ve identified Bell pressure on universities and colleges such as Ryerson University, George Brown College, and Brock University, who all submitted support letters to the CRTC, though those letters were not always quite what they seemed (Brock University quickly distanced itself from the submission, the Dean behind the Ryerson letter advised Bell that he could not speak for the faculty). Earlier posts also highlighted Bell’s astroturfing campaign with its own employees and its undisclosed meetings with CRTC officials months before the proposal was made public.
One-Sided Story: Lobbyist Data Shows Music, Movie and Publisher Groups Account For 80 Per cent of Registered Copyright Meetings in Canada Since 2015 Election
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez travelled to Toronto last week, providing an opportunity for the newly-named minister to meet with cultural groups. With many of the biggest rights holder groups tweeting out the meet and greet (CMPA, Writers Guild, Access Copyright, ACTRA, ACP), the visit sent a signal that the new minister is readily available to hear creator community concerns. While Rodriguez should obviously take the time to meet with all stakeholders, an extensive review of lobbying records related to copyright since the 2015 election reveals that 80 per cent of registered copyright meetings for government officials, including policy makers, political staffers, Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, have been with rights holder groups. The behind-the-scenes imbalance runs counter to oft-heard claims regarding the influence of companies such as Google and suggests a diminished voice for education, innovative companies, and users on copyright policy.
Behind Ryerson’s Support for Site Blocking: Bell Reviewed Draft Submission, Was Warned It Did Not Represent Faculty View
Having examined how Brock University and George Brown College (part one and part two) came to support the Bell coalition website blocking plan, this post relies on Ryerson documents obtained under access to information laws to reveal how Charles Falzon, Ryerson’s Dean of Communications and Design, came to write in support of the site blocking plan. Much like the other two institutions, Falzon was approached by Mark Milliere, a Bell executive, asking for Ryerson’s support for the initiative.
“One of Our Key Hiring Companies”: The Missing Link in the George Brown College Support for Bell’s Site Blocking Plan
Earlier this year, I posted the results of an access to information request to George Brown College (GBC) that sought to explain how the college came to publicly support the FairPlay website blocking proposal at the CRTC. Much like similar documents from Brock University, the George Brown College documents showed a request from Mark Milliere, an executive at Bell-owned TSN, about a week before the deadline sparked the submission. The resulting letter, which came from GBC President Anne Sado, was cited by the Bell-led coalition in its reply letter to the CRTC.
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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 232: What Will Canadian Digital Policy Look Like Under the New Liberal Carney Government? 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 231: Sara Bannerman on How Canadian Political Parties Maximize Voter Data Collection and Minimize Privacy Safeguards 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 229: My Digital Access Day Keynote – Assessing the Canadian Digital Policy Record
