Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez will soon issue a policy directive to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) informing its commissioners how to go about drafting regulations to implement the new legislative framework outlined in the federal government’s recently passed Online Streaming Act.

Bill C-11 will bring digital streaming giants like Netflix and YouTube under the CRTC’s regulating authority. The new legislation dictates that these streaming platforms must contribute to new Canadian content standards or else face steep penalties.

However, the specifics of this new framework will be outlined in regulations drafted by the CRTC, which will be informed by Rodriguez’s policy directive. The CRTC will also hold online consultations with the Canadian public before finalizing the new regulations.

The CRTC is responsible for supervising and regulating all aspects of Canada’s broadcasting system, along with the country’s telecommunications service providers and common carriers that come under federal jurisdiction.

The federal government describes the commission as an “administrative tribunal” under Heritage Canada’s portfolio that “operates at arm’s length from the federal government.”

Meanwhile, official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has called the commission a “small group of privileged insiders close to the prime minister.”

The CRTC’s eight current commissioners—all of whom were previously appointed by Canada’s governor general under the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet between 2018 and this year—will be responsible for drafting and implementing the new online-streaming regulations in line with Bill C-11.

There are a total of nine CRTC commissioner and chair/vice-chair positions, with the commissioners representing various areas of the country.

Members are appointed by the governor in council usually for a term of five years.

Alongside the chair and vice-chairs of the commissioners, there is one member to represent the “Atlantic/Nunavut” region, one for Quebec, one for Ontario, one for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, one for Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and one representing British Columbia and the Yukon.

The position representing Quebec is currently vacant. Eight full-time appointees hold all the other seats.

The chairperson of the CRTC’s commissioners is Vicky Eatrides, whom cabinet appointed in December 2022.

After practicing federal regulatory law for five years, Eatrides joined the public service in 2005. She went on to hold a number of senior executive positions at the Competition Bureau of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and the Department of Innovation, where she was assistant deputy minister for four years.

At one point during her 12-year tenure at the competition bureau, Eatrides served as its senior deputy commissioner and was “in charge of enforcing criminal and civil provisions of the Competition Act.”

After being appointed as the new CRTC chair, Rodriguez said Eatrides will lead the commission in “an evolving and ever-more-important function, and to see to its continued modernization to being more open, transparent, efficient, and effective.”

“The need for a new approach is underpinned by the dramatic changes that are occurring in our country’s communications ecosystem,” he wrote on Feb. 6.

Cabinet also appointed Alicia Barin and Adam Scott in December 2022 as the CRTC’s vice-chairs for five-year terms, which took effect in February and January respectively.

Barin had been an interim CRTC vice-chair since August 2022, while Scott had been a telecom and spectrum-policy advisor to the federal government for over 20 years.

Scott had also held a senior position at the Department of Innovation and had been working within the department since 2001.

Barin was appointed as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Quebec in 2019, but did not serve a five-year term. She also previously worked in the private broadcasting industry at Astral Media.

“Barin has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by the various parties the CRTC regulates and the concerns of the Canadian stakeholders they impact,” wrote Heritage Canada in a December 2022 release.

The CRTC’s current regional commissioners are Ellen Desmond, Bram Abramson, Joanne Levy, Nirmala Naidoo, and Claire Anderson—three of whom are lawyers, and two were previously journalists.

Desmond, who was appointed as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for the Atlantic provinces and Nunavut on a five-year term starting in 2020, was previously the director of the legal and administration department for the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board for about 14 years.

Abramson, Ontario’s commissioner, also practiced law and was also previously a trustee of the American Registry for Internet Numbers and also director of the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services.

He is also a graduate of the Women in Film and Television’s Media Leadership Program.

Levy and Naidoo—commissioners for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and Alberta and the Northwest Territories respectively—were both journalists.

Levy previously worked for the CBC before becoming director of programming for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, while Naidoo worked for CTV, NBC, Global News, and CBC.

The CRTC describes Naidoo as a “strong advocate for human rights and equality of power.”

Anderson, the commissioner for British Columbia and Yukon, is a lawyer and a citizen of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. The commission also describes her as the first indigenous woman to ever be appointed as a CRTC commissioner.

Although Rodriguez has not yet given the CRTC its policy directive for the new Bill C-11 regulations, his department said that a draft of the directive will be published soon in the Canada Gazette.

A public consultation on the matter will follow, after which the final policy direction will also be published in the Canada Gazette.

The main source of debate surrounding Bill C-11 was a clause saying that user-generated content would also be included under the CRTC’s regulating authority instead of large streaming platforms only.

Rodriguez has said on several occasions that the government does not intend to regulate individual content creators, but cabinet still rejected a Senate-proposed amendment aimed at removing the clause that would include user-generated content under the CRTC’s purview.

The senate said upon passing the bill into law on April 27 that it takes note of Ottawa’s “public assurance that Bill C-11 will not apply to user-generated digital content.”

Eatrides said in a statement on the same day that the CRTC “has no intention to regulate creators of user-generated content and their content.”

However, she added that the CRTC will adapt its approach to the new legislation “in light of any future policy direction.”

Rodriguez said in an interview with CTV News on April 30 that he will “be even more clear” in his upcoming policy directive to the CRTC that user-generated content is not to be regulated.

“It’s definitely not the intent of the bill. It’s not the impact of the bill, either,” he told Question Period host Vassy Kapelos. “And I’ll be very clear: I’m sending a policy direction soon to the CRTC. It’s going to be even more clear in that policy.”

Rodriguez added that regulating user-generated content would be “impossible” because of its volume across a number of digital platforms.

“Who could check that?” he said. “First, we’re not interested but even if we were, who could do that? It’s impossible.”