OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Canadian law professor Dr. Michael Geist has warned that new powers granted to Canada’s broadcast regulator via Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, will not stop at “Web Giants” but will lead to the government going after “news sites” and other “online” video sites as well.

“Bill C-11 was never just about ‘web giants’ and the latest CRTC decision confirms that an extensive regulatory framework is in the works that is likely to cover podcasts, adult sites, news sites, and a host of other online video and audio services,” Geist observed in a recent blog posting concerning the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) new mandate.

“The takeaway from the decision is obvious: Registration is the first step toward regulation with the Commission already envisioning the prospect of regulating a wide range of services.”

Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa and has been critical of Bill C-11 and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s other internet regulatory bill, C-18,

Last Friday, the CRTC announced that it will now mandate certain online streaming services and podcasters “register” with the government by November 28, 2023.

This command was ridiculed online as outright “censorship” by a slew of prominent figures.

‘Dozens’ more rules still to come because of Bill C-11

As it stands now, any online streaming service that offers content in Canada, which includes podcasters, falls under the new rules. The rules stipulate that for now only streaming services and podcasters who earn more than $10 million or more in annual revenues “will need to complete a registration form by November 28, 2023.”

In practice, Bill C-11 now mandates that the CRTC oversee regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting content in accordance with a variety of its guidelines.

Geist warned on his blog that there will be at least “a dozen decisions” stemming from Bill C-11 that are still to come.

According to Geist, while the government insisted that C-11 in its original form was just about “web giants,” one could be “forgiven for assuming that the registration would be limited to those larger players.”

He noted, however, that “internally” officials in the government “knew that the bill applied to far more than just large Internet streamers.”

“As I posted back in May 2021, the government’s approach was to apply Canadian broadcast law to everyone: any audio or video service anywhere in the world, including news sites, podcasts, audiobooks, and adult sites. The only question was what limits the CRTC might establish through new rules on exemptions (the government could also do so through a policy direction, but that remains in draft form),” Geist wrote.

Geist criticized what he says is a “contradiction” concerning the very impetus of the CRTC’s recent mandate, which is asking podcasters and other online “undertakings” to submit basic registration details to the government.

“This honestly makes no sense to me. Is the CRTC saying that it unable to assess the state of podcasts, streaming thematic services or online news without a registry? Or that it can’t find contact information without a registry?” he observed.

“Does it (the CRTC) not have Internet access and the ability to conduct searches? Has it conducted no analysis over the past decade on any of these issues? The CRTC tries to have it both ways by downplaying the information required, but then framing that information as essential to conduct regulatory analysis.”

Geist said that the “crucial” issue with Bill C-11 was always whether “CRTC exemption from registration requirements, which it sets at $10M in Canadian revenue.”

“That isn’t trivial, but additional exemptions for podcasts, social media, adult sites, news services, thematic services were all rejected,” he noted.

Geist observed that the CRTC in its new rules is effectively saying that a “podcaster or news outlet that generates a certain threshold of revenue must register with the government.”

He said this is a position that “runs counter to freedom of expression rights without government interference.”