The Liberals need an end-game strategy to deal with Big Tech.

June 30, 2023

Let’s begin this post about US Big Tech setting a deadline to blackout Canadian news with an analogy.

It’s common at the beginning of a labour strike for both sides to dig in and dedicate themselves to showing resolve. No negotiations. No flinching. No weakness. The other side may cave next week. We aren’t at the end game yet.

You can see where I am going with this. The war of words over Bill C-18 between the federal government and the Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook remains just that for now, words. The end game with real consequences appears to be some months away as we get closer to the implementation date of the legislation.

It’s getting real sooner than that for the six dailies in the CN2i group in Québec: Facebook says its not renewing their news compensation agreements when they expire later this month. Google just gave notice of non-renewal to The National Observer.

For the rest of Canadian news outlets, it’s living on nerves for the next few months. Almost all, even the financially secure Globe and Mail, have to figure out a Plan B for how a significant slice of their audience that accesses their news through Facebook is going to make the conscious effort to go to their news websites.

Maybe we should cave. After all, let’s consider Big Tech’s objectives in this impasse with our elected federal government, in order of how they would prefer to be governed:

1. Not governed at all. No more national precedents for government regulation.

2. If they must submit, an ‘opt-out’ of regulation on the condition they pay enough compensation to enough news organizations, of their choosing. There shall be no recourse for the news outlets not chosen by them. In Australia, they worked out the details in a closed door meeting with the Finance Minister.

3. Other than compensation, no other regulatory obligations: certainly not any obligation to treat news outlets equally or respect non-discrimination rules for the distribution of news content.

4. Limited liability, meaning the right price and a fixed price of compensation to news outlets, preferably very low. Unless they decide later not to renew those agreements.

Seem reasonable?

Now there are Canadian voices who didn’t like Bill C-18 in the first place and say we brought this on ourselves.

I say ‘we,’ not the Liberals, because just as a note-to-self the Liberals and the Conservatives campaigned on Bill C-18 less than two years ago. And it is supported by the Bloc and the NDP.

Now that the heat is on Canada, here’s Pierre Poilievre’s take:

The Liberals won’t stop until the only media you have access to is their propaganda arm in the CBC.

Meta and Google have now both announced Canadians will no longer have access to news on their platforms.

This is Trudeau’s Canada.

The Liberals are trying to pass a law that would funnel money into their preferred media outlets.

The result?

Media blackout.

Bill C-18 subsidizes big corporate media outlets while shoving new, innovative, and grassroots journalism by the wayside.

If Meta and Google won’t do it, the Liberals have said they’re just going to tack on more money to the big media outlets’ already massive subsidies.

Enough.

Pierre Poilievre and the Common Sense Conservatives will reject the woke agenda of the NDP-Liberal coalition, end the news blackout, and restore the promise of our great country.

We will put the Canadian people first.

Let’s Bring Home freedom of the press.

The final invocation is inspiring, coming from a political party that wants to, um, blackout the nation’s number one news site, CBC News.

I may be topping it the nob —-one of my favourite old fashioned expressions—- but now that everyone has clearly expressed their opinion on C-18 it may be time to back our elected government if only to support the principle that powerful foreign corporations don’t get to tell the Canadian electorate how to run our own country.

And while I am offering free advice, here’s the summer homework for the Liberals.

Come up with a Plan A for the end-game. The announcement this week of more government media subsidies, other than as a triage measure, is not an ideal solution. It’s time to move forward with the Digital Services Tax on the largest Big Tech companies, already on the books and ready to go.

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