Steven Guilbeault, Canada's heritage minister. He is pictured on July 30, 2019 as Liberal candidates gathered in Ottawa for a two-day workshop on campaign tactics. (Bruce Campion-Smith/Toronto Star)

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault says the Liberal government has “no intention” of licensing news organizations after drawing criticism for remarks he made over the weekend on the recommendations of the Yale report.

“Our government has no intention to impose licensing requirements on news organizations, nor will we try to regulate news content,” he clarified to reporters on Parliament Hill Monday morning.

The minister was responding to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel’s report which was released last week. It’s been alternatively referred to as the Yale report after the name of the panel’s chair, Janet Yale.

On Sunday, Guilbeault said “we would ask that they would have licenses” while responding to a question about whether he agreed with the report’s recommendations on regulating websites on CTV’s Question Period.

The broadcasting and telecom panel’s highly-anticipated report was release after one-and-a-half-year long review of Canada’s telecommunication sector. One of the largest proposed changes was that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) mandate would be expanded to regulate three types of companies: curators like CTV and Netflix, which acquire and produce their own content; aggregators, which refers to cable companies and sites like Yahoo News; and sharing platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

READ MORE: Telecommunications review calls for big changes to CRTC, CBC

The panel recommended that the CRTC determine which news aggregators are trustworthy, and require links to those sites, with rules to ensure the links are prominently displayed.

The report recommended enforcing discoverability obligations to ensure users can easily find Canadian content.

Guilbeault said confusion arose because his initial comments were about outlets that produce cultural content and the issue of discoverability — “which doesn’t apply to news media outlets.” As well, he said the report can be confusing because it talks about media, but isn’t necessarily referring to news agencies, adding “maybe the confusion comes from there.”

He also said he’s always been clear that the report was from an independent panel and that the government would carefully examine all 97 recommendations before choosing which to adopt.

“These are very complex issues,” he said.

Conservative industry critic Michelle Rempel said Minister Guilbeault didn’t walk back his comments around licensing discoverability far enough.

“Why do we need to license anything at all,” she questioned.

Rempel acknowledged that Canadians are concerned about the spread of false information, but added that the government doesn’t need to determine the truth. Instead, she said the feds should be trying to find ways to empower Canadians to think about issues like fake news for themselves.

She said she “fundamentally rejects” recommendations in the report that would add layers of bureaucracy to Canada’s telecommunication industry.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist also raised concern over the proposals. In an interview with iPolitics last week, Geist said it was “extreme” for the panel to propose that a government broadcast regulator should determine which news agencies are trustworthy.

“The issue of having a government agency determine what is trustworthy or not is fraught with all kinds of complications and potential controversies,” he said at the time.

READ MORE: Telecommunications review includes ‘extreme’ recommendations, warns expert