Bill C-18 the Online News Act and related issues

by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU. CHISU, CD, PMSC, FEC, CET, P. Eng. Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East As we have become accustomed to some of the ill-conceived Liberal government legislation, Bill C-18, The Online News Act, should not come as a surprise; not even the negotiations with Google. Never mind that Meta, the other giant, refused to negotiate. Bill C-18 will be in force by December 19, 2023. However, the Liberal government has announced that it has reached an agreement with Google on a deal that will ensure that news links are not blocked on the search engine, and the company pays $100 million to support the news sector in Canada. The government was ultimately able to strike the deal largely by changing the law, albeit through yet-to-be released regulations. After claiming for months that it would not get involved in negotiations and specifying in considerable detail what any deals between platforms and media companies needed to look like, the government dropped all of that and simply desperately negotiated the best deal it could get on behalf of Canadian news outlets. To be clear, this is apparently good news for all, given that the alternative was bad for news outlets, the government, Canadians, and Google. However, if we look into the details, this is hardly an example of good government policy, even if it is a far better outcome than blocked news links. Indeed, the loss of Meta from the system not only dropped the estimated benefits of Bill C-18 by $50 million, but the lost links and deals means that the actual losses run into the tens of millions of dollars. It was only a few months ago that the government said it estimated Google’s contribution alone at $170 million. There was some sense that the extra $70 million was designed to offset the Meta losses, but that was something Google was unwilling to cover. The reality is that Bill C-18 is now barely at break-even. Google’s $100 million is not all-new money. The company was already paying millions in deals for its Google Showcase program with many Canadian news outlets. Those deals will now be cancelled with the single payment replacing the other contributions. There is obviously some new money – particularly for broadcasters – but it is not the full $100 million and it must be offset by the losses sustained by the exit of Meta. Therefore, thinking rationally, Google made a good deal and the Liberal government blew it, as usual, spending a lot of time on bad legislation, for nothing. In the deal, the broadcast sector will remain the big winner, though speculation of the possible removal of the CBC from the system would increase the distributions to the remaining companies. Of course, the question remains: why should the CBC even be considered, when it already receives yearly 1.3 billion from public money? "Given concerns about public broadcasters competing with the private sector for ad dollars, to have it also compete for [Big Tech] money makes matters worse," University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who opposed Bill C-18, told a Senate committee studying the bill in May. Regardless, allocating the majority of the money to broadcasters presumably helps explain why the government announced a $129 million bailout that expands the available money in the labour journalism tax credit, for which only print and digital publications (known as Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations) are eligible. The risks to the independence of the press are significant. The Canadian experience will likely serve as a cautionary tale for other countries. An example of how government and industry ignored the obvious risks of a legislative approach, ultimately leaving the government desperate for a deal to salvage something for a sector that is enormously important to a free and open democracy. Once again, the Liberal government has shown that they operate from an ivory tower and we, ordinary Canadians, have to pay for it. My question is this: When will this government start to serve Canadians, not only itself; pursuing inordinately costly, scientifically immature, Canadian environment inappropriate if not unsound, pie-in-the sky projects, like climate exchange/carbon-tax, electric vehicles (for our sub-zero temperatures and distances!!??) and attempting to syphon revenue off private businesses that are already shoring up government lackeys like the CBC? You be the judge.