Liberals cave to big-tech giants
By Martin Shields Member of Parliament Bow River Riding
A few months ago, during deliberations on Bill C-18 at Heritage committee, the Liberal and NDP members could not make an intervention without accusing Conservatives of “standing with big tech.” Besides being entirely false, this accusation falls flat on its face when accounting for the millions those two parties dump into online Facebook advertising, as well as the pages they run on these platforms.
So, when Facebook and Google did exactly what they said they would do, that is, remove partially or entirely Canadian news from their platforms due to the Liberals’ Bill C-18, the government went up in arms! Well, just last week, the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced that the government struck a deal with Google that would see Canadian news remain on the search engine, in exchange for an annual sum of $100 million.
Except that this deal was, again, exactly what Google had suggested they do in the first place. See, Google was always willing to work with the government in keeping Canadian news available to Canadians on their search. What they didn’t want, just like Facebook, was to have the terms dictated to them by the government about how much they would have to pay CBC for example, to host their links.
Bill C-18, or the Online News Act really is a backwards piece of legislation. It’s like approaching a store to display your product on their shelf, and having the store pay you for it.
Facebook didn’t budge, and now many small local news outlets that used Facebook as a means of connecting their publication to their community have been frozen out thanks to this government’s= complete lack of transparency and foresight with this bill.
What’s worse is that Bill C-18 would have seen an overwhelming majority of the revenue distributed to big broadcasting companies like CBC, Rogers, and Bell. Despite what the former Minister of Heritage would like you to believe, C-18 was not about “leveling the playing field” because the small local weekly newspapers like many in the Bow River riding would have received pennies once the big corporations took their share.
So this brings us to the announcement. What was it? After months of negotiations and the government trying to play hardball … the government exempted Google from C-18, and allowed them to negotiate with what is being called a “media collective” to display news on Google. Which media will be in this collective? Well, state-approved media of course. If an outlet doesn’t qualify, no Google money for you.
Read more about the Bill from Dr. Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Law Professor: Skillful Negotiation or Legislative Fail? Taking Stock of the Bill C-18 Deal With Google.
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