Speech on Bill C-18 (March 7th, 2023)

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-18 with a genuine concern about what it means for the free exchange of ideas and open debate in this country.

The online news act, as proposed, will restrict access to and the amount of news we can read and consume in this country. The government not only wants to decide what we watch and read — as we saw in Bill C-11 — but will now force foreign companies, through Bill C-18, to fund some Canadian content, but not all. Again, limiting choice and sources.

Ottawa’s online reform crusade is, simply put, government regulation of content, which risks not only the independence of the media but also limits what you and I are able to read or hear about the events in our communities, country and around the world. For these reasons and as someone who believes in free speech and choice, I am fundamentally opposed to a bill that limits my right to inform myself.

The government argues this bill is intended to provide an adrenaline boost to a struggling legacy industry. But at what cost? In essence, the government is forcing companies to enter into contracts that will take money from large foreign platforms such as Google or Facebook and use that to fund broadcasters and publishers here in Canada — primarily the large legacy players. In response, Facebook and Google have threatened to simply pull all the news content off their sites, and that means preventing us from sharing content with others that we think is interesting or important. This bill ends up punishing us.

It’s actually even worse than that because by forcing companies to pay for links — the way we click through to a larger story — it will also be a disaster for smaller independent outlets who have grown and survived by sharing their work through those links on those platforms at no cost.

My local newspaper, as you heard me comment on earlier, has just gone under. Yes, technology has changed the game, but these small entrepreneurs want business — not subsidies — and they survive by sharing their content for free online.

This bill will limit the ability of these small struggling players to use the internet to attract subscribers. The irony of the government’s approach is that the big legacy newspapers and broadcasters, in whose interests they are supposedly doing this, need the platforms even more. They, too, need more eyes on their content as viewership and subscriptions continue to dwindle.

As for Ottawa, the self-interest is obvious. Force the platforms to pay so they don’t have to be seen to be handing out the cash, which, of course, risks the charge that they are buying favour from the media. Just to remind you, the government has been funding and backstopping ailing entities, including those that cover Ottawa politics.

The government says platforms like Facebook benefit financially from sharing news stories or links, so they should pay. The platforms counter with some numbers, pointing out that news accounts for a very small portion of their online activity, approximately 3% for Facebook, and express that they don’t even place ads on shared news because most users don’t want to see them. So it’s not a big revenue stream.

Regardless, what the government seems not to understand — or doesn’t want to — is that platforms are a free online space provided to everyone, including the media. People can share content, and that obviously benefits the content creators in this country.

Of course, many people these days want to consume their news online, and free platforms provide a nearly limitless source of information. Therefore, without these platforms, smaller operations will likely continue to cease to exist — like the Wadena News — and it would become increasingly difficult to break into the industry with some new online product and compete against the established and already well-subsidized players.

The larger media organizations already have an advantage. They can put up a paywall around their articles, so even if a link is shared on a platform, the article is still blocked to those without a subscription. With Bill C-18, they get to have their cake and eat it too: subscription fees from consumers and subsidies from big tech.

With Bill C-18, Ottawa is playing a bit of a risky game of chicken. Here is why: Big tech companies such as Google and Facebook have faced this kind of legislation in other countries. Canada is such a small market that walking away from doing business here hurts us far more than them.

We are also risking trade retaliation from allies and partners, namely, the United States. Bill C-11 was deemed protectionist and possibly in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and Bill C-18 will be no different. We are forcing companies to negotiate contracts that will take money from foreign sources to fund Canadian broadcasters and publishers. This is, of course, nothing short of a backdoor subsidy without the government’s fingerprints on the money.

The very idea that we would demand money from American corporations to prop up our national broadcaster, among others, is shocking. Could you imagine our reaction in this country if the U.S. passed a law forcing Canadian companies to shell out millions of dollars to support ailing American media companies simply because they needed more money? This is embarrassing.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that this will cost big tech hundreds of millions of dollars because the bill puts no real cap on potential costs, and the list of those eligible for funding has grown, including hundreds of local campus and Indigenous broadcasters.

As we know, when one country imposes this kind of taxation, it is an inconvenience, but if many countries want to buttress legacy media with money they haven’t earned, it becomes a costly precedent. It is no wonder that the big players such as Facebook or Twitter have threatened to block news sharing.

You can see why the cost-benefit analysis of keeping the news on these platforms if this bill passes will not be worth it. It will just be easier for these companies to shut it down. The platforms’ losses would be negligible, but the damage to the news-sharing process would be devastating and the Canadian consumer would be the real collateral damage. As my colleague Senator Simons says, it is as if those who wrote this bill had never used the internet.

If it weren’t obvious already, government should not be interfering with what and how we all consume information. As an old comedian, Tommy Smothers, once said, “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.”

The natural marketplace of ideas allows creators to offer their wares and allows consumers to choose. We subscribe to publications we like, we watch channels we enjoy and when we don’t, we shut them off or cancel our subscriptions.

Let’s keep government out of this process, let’s try to keep the media more independent and let’s keep Canadians informed about their world.

Thank you.