It being the time of the year, retrospective lists abound.
The MediaPolicy 2024 wrapped list includes posts that are worth reading (again or for the first time) because they cover public policy that Pierre Poilievre has sworn to repeal or at least do something else that looks like he has wiped the Liberal policy slate clean.
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Defunding or defending the CBC
The Poilievre banner campaign to defund the CBC is the right-wing answer to cancel culture. I don’t like you, I silence you.
A Sparks poll in January 2024 suggested overwhelming public support for the CBC, although a big slice of that is soft. Hence the importance of a public discussion of how to improve or re-engineer the public broadcaster.
MediaPolicy posted two interviews and a guest column from media commentators who know what they are talking about when it comes to the CBC: Chris Waddell, Richard Stursberg and Peter Menzies. I have a fourth instalment in this series on the way.
Online Harms
The Liberals’ Bill C-63 obliges social media platforms to come up with content moderation codes. It also empowers the government to order take-downs of revenge porn and content harmful to children. The Justice Minister has split off the more controversial portions of C-63 into a second bill: harsher criminal sanctions for Internet hate and access to human rights tribunals for victims.
The Conservatives are opposed to all of it (they have a more modest proposal) and none of it will pass before the next federal election.
In 2019 the Liberals passed the so-called “$600 million bailout” for Canadian news organizations (except for licensed broadcasters). The $600 million was the over-budgeted amount for five years: the actual spending was less than half of that.
MediaPolicy posted about the alleged relationship between that federal program and declining trust in news organizations. Also I looked at some policy prescriptions that might carry over into a Poilievre government despite his pledge to abolish the program.
News licensing payments
You say “link tax,” I say “compulsory news licensing payments.”
The Online News Act Bill C-18 blew up on the Liberals when Google and Meta decided to play hardball with enough gusto that US legislators would think twice about following Canada, Australia and Europe in making Big Tech platforms share their advertising revenue generated by news links.
I tried to get past the noise on this bill and pinpoint what I believe are the deeper truths about the legislation. The post is now a year old, but still helpful.
Poilievre says he will repeal this bill and, it would seem, refund Google its $100M in annual news licensing payments.
The Netflix Bill C-11
It took them forever, but the Liberals passed the bill that compels foreign streaming giants to share the responsibility with Canadian broadcasters to finance and distribute Canadian audio and video content.
Poilievre has been clear: he will “kill Bill C-11.”
Digital Services Tax
The DST is a stand-in for recouping $900 million in corporate tax avoidance by Big Tech in Canada. That doesn’t always come through clearly in news reports. Unfortunately, leading Canadian critics have displayed an obsequiousness (to Big Tech) or fear mongering (of US retaliation) that is unbecoming.
MediaPolicy posted what I will call a context piece on the DST that I hope is informative.
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A note to readers, MediaPolicy posts will now be available on Substack. The MediaPolicy website on the WordPress platform will continue with its archive of previous postings and resource links.
If you are already an e-mail subscriber, you will continue to receive MediaPolicy posts and will not get a duplicate from Substack (unless you sign up for it).
Substack is a fascinating creature in the news ecosystem. Founded in 2017, it’s a platform for 17,000 writers, including journalists. You can find leading independent Canadian journalists: folks like Paul Wells (30,000 paid and unpaid subscribers); Jen Gerson of The Line (26k), Justin Ling (12k), Terry Glavin (12k), Ken Whyte (7k) and Patrick White (2k). On Subtstack, both writers and readers can pepper the blogosphere with rhetorical outbursts, à la Twitter/X. But for journalists and news junkies, the site’s real draw is full-length opinion and analysis.
A year ago, Substack had about 50 million unique visitors in the month of January. It boasts two million paying subscribers and over 20 million registered readers (after you have opened an account or surrendered your e-mail address to one of your favourite writers). The writer posts are usually partially paywalled, but not always (mine is not).
The most popular Substacker is Heather Cox Richardson (1.8 million), American historian and author of the non-paywalled Letters to an American. Popular Substackers, who usually charge a $5 monthly subscription fee, can make a decent living.
The question arises at to whether Substack is a candidate for stealing yet another big chunk of mainstream media’s franchise by peeling off well known staff journalists who are currently thankful for a regular paycheque.
Having lost classified ads, much of its display advertising, and a range of editorial products to the Internet leviathan, online newspapers have stayed in business by cutting news and news gatherers. To replace the lost news content, we have a great deal more opinion columns. Opinion is popular and, for the news proprietors, cheap. The key has been to concede more of the news hole to the best and well known opinionators.
What if Substack took those marquée writers and their audiences too?
If you mark off 45 minutes of your time, an engaging Canadaland podcast hosted by Jesse Brown and starring Paul Wells, Jen Gerson, and Chris Best (Substack’s Canadian co-founder) talks about the possibility of mainstream media losing its stars to Substack.
Gerson has a trenchant observation: the Canadian journalists enjoying success on Substack are generally those who made their bones and their reputations after years of service in mainstream media newsrooms. That career path, she suggests, doesn’t exist anymore.
Then there’s Substack’s Nazi problem. With that teaser, I recommend the podcast, here.
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On today the shortest day of the year it seems that nature is in pathos with the times: what a dark time and chaotic mess we are in.
I refer to the obvious, obviously. Our national politics are in turmoil. An economic terrorist to the south mocks our elected Prime Minister, our country and half-seriously threatens to annex us at economic gunpoint.
But this too shall pass, just as the days will get longer. Besides, it’s the weekend.
The more troubling thing that is not going to pass is the tectonic change in news media, particularly the frayed success of serious news outlets reaching the mass audience.
What I have in mind is how the November election in the United States illustrated a tipping point in the movement of the audience from doting on mainstream news outlets that mostly reside on traditional media to the massive but fragmented universe of YouTubers, Rumble channels, podcasters, Substackers, influencers and video shock jocks who can monetize outrage in echo-chamber audiences with relative ease.
Those media actors are —-prematurely—— crowing victory over mainstream media, captured by Elon Musk’s chortle “You are the Media now.“
Whether this perception of chaos in news journalism is just some kind of passing zeitgeist, well let’s check in again this time next year.
On that note, I was pleased to see that CBC is pleased to see that its YouTube pivot is bringing in the numbers hoped for.
CBC’s audience development guy Paul McGrath posted on LinkedIn that the CBC YouTube channel hit a billion views in 2024 (it’s unclear if he means all CBC digital or just English-language news):
I’m proud of this one. Together, we got 1 billion views on our YouTube channels this year. It’s the first time we’ve ever surpassed a billion views in a single calendar year. A new all-time record.
It actually happened on Nov. 11, but no one noticed because we don’t usually track views. We tend to focus on watch time and other metrics. Our goal is reaching and engaging new audiences and growing our channels. We’re getting better at that, and along the way we picked up a billion views.
What’s driving this?
YouTube Shorts is a big part of it, obviously. But it’s also because we made a big strategic bet on YouTube, we all got behind it and it’s paying off. YouTube is the biggest video viewing platform on the planet, and we’re prioritizing reaching and engaging new audiences there.
So far this year we’ve published over 30,000 videos, including over 500 full episodes of full season shows (we’ve taken a similar approach to the ITV deal that was announced this week).
So yeah, we focused on growing our channels and reaching and engaging new audiences. We got tactical about the nuts and bolts. And along the way we picked up a billion views.
Fishing where the fish are, or at least the younger fish that don’t watch CBC television, it’s a matter of survival for the CBC to attract the younger audience before the older audience ages out (McGrath has another post on this).
And YouTube is a good place to do it. By contrast, TikTok’s short-video format and slavish devotion to engagement metrics is more suitable for breaking news and partisan rants, not reflective commentary or explainers.
Here’s some insight into the opportunities for news journalism succeeding on YouTube. This chart from Press Gazette (unfortunately the data is a year old, before CBC made its big push) tells me two things: CBC ain’t doing bad when you look at the US and UK news organizations ahead of it and the Canadian news outlets behind it. And secondly, look at who is hitting it out of the park:
The chart-toppingVoxdoes not do breaking news. Arguably, this is what should be a lower priority for CBC in a world in which there are plenty of Canadian and global media companies happy to compete for that audience.
Instead, Vox excels at explainers and reflective journalism on issues that don’t break so much as they emerge and cook.
Sounds like public broadcasting to me.
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I hope that you caught the MediaPolicy post last week of an interview with Peter Menzies on the state of the CBC.
As I describe in the introduction to the interview, Menzies is neither defunder nor defender of the CBC and his criticism is blunt. It’s something both defunders and defenders need to hear, agree or not.
His comments elicited a Letter to the Editor response from Chris Waddell, who also contributed to this MediaPolicy series of posts on the CBC.
I’m working on one more interview to complete the series.
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Last week the Labor government in Australia announced it would pass legislation taxing Big Tech platforms to pay for news, even if they block news on their platforms.
The voluntary licensing agreements reached in 2021 between Meta and Google and Australian news outlets were reputedly worth about $190M annually. The value of the new tax, which will cover all large tech platforms, has not been set.
This week the government followed up with an announcementof direct government funding for news outlets worth $33M annually. That number is proportional (based on national population) to Canada’s QCJO subsidy to journalist salaries.
Detailed reporting on the Australian program has been sparse, so stay tuned.
A national election in Australia is expected in May 2025.
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The futures of premium video – Graphic from Doug Shapiro
Let me shift gears and look at entertainment television programming.
Doug Shapiro’s chained-tweet narrative that I have been reposting on X might be summed up as this: the long term growth in video entertainment is being captured by YouTubers, TikTokers and the rest of the “creator economy.”
Faced with this trend, Hollywood’s gold-plated business of long-form premium video is in a torpor that it hasn’t shaken off, and we’ll all be watching closely to see if it does (hint: the go-to salvation for big media companies is typically mergers and corporate consolidation).
That raises the question of the impact of industry trends on the Canadian ecosystem of independent television producers who make Canadian content and, as a profitable side-gig, make shows for Hollywood.
The Canadian Media Producers Association just released its annual Profile report for 2023/24 that includes all sorts of metrics of industry health. The data runs up to March 31, 2024 and therefore captures the expected downturn after an atypical spike in the 22/23 report.
The way I look at the new 23/24 numbers, unfortunately the long-term flat-lining in Canadian content production has been restored (once inflation is taken into account).
This is relevant to the debate over the Online Streaming Act C-11 where opponents such as Michael Geist have suggested that things have never been better for Canadian producers and the production of Canadian content and therefore it is unnecessary to compel Netflix and the foreign streamers to contribute to Canadian content.
The other way of looking at it (available in my gift-friendly book about C-11, Canada v California) is that the post-2017 downturn in Canadian broadcasting revenues has shrunk the media funds and licensing fees available to finance Canadian programs, hence the stagnation.
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I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukah. It’s so cool they fall on the same day this year. We’ll be honouring tradition by going out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
And thinking about the hostages.
Chag Urim Sameach.
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I enjoyed reading Peter Menzies’ comments (A Very Different CBC, December 16) – thanks for adding them to your continuing valiant efforts to generate a debate about the CBC’s future.
While I agree with much of what he suggests for the CBC (although I do believe it makes a difference if the international news Canadians read, see and listen to comes from US, British or French wire services rather than Canadian journalists) I do take issue on three specific grounds with his comments about journalism programs and his suggestion that journalists do not need university degrees.
First, the demographics of students in journalism schools has changed dramatically over the last 15 years so the student body is representative of today’s Canadian society with a strong presence of Asian, Muslim, Black and students of a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds than decades ago. To a significant degree these are the children of immigrants who came to Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s and in many cases are the first in their families to attend university, just like those like in many other university degree programs in 2024. It is far from a preserve of those from upper middle class suburbs.
That means their socioeconomic backgrounds, interests and expectations are very different than journalism students of 25 years ago. As they have graduated in recent years and populated newsrooms, they have brought with them to their employers their different perspectives on issues such as what is a story, how to cover it etc. Some of that has led to newsroom philosophical turmoil of recent years, valuably questioning and in some cases leading to long overdue changes in trdaitional newsroom practices and perspectives.
Second, a significant component of journalism education today involves technical training – recording and editing audio, recording and editing video, shooting photos, knowing how to post material on websites etc. Journalism employers are simply unwilling to pay for that training for their employees. They expect those they hire to walk into newsrooms with all these skills including an ability to present information in audio form, in front of a camera and in a multimedia environment as well as writing. If you don’t have these skills, when you apply you won’t get a job and your employer won’t pay the training costs to give them to you. Today’s journalism doesn’t use typewriters any more, and many more teenagers than one might think are not very tech-savvy.
Third, many of the issues journalists are expected to cover these days are complicated, complex and not easy to understand whether it is climate change, health care, the needs of an aging population, defence procurement, business, the economy, social or justice policy. A university journalism education is part journalism but also includes studies in elective fields that can enhance a student’s general and specific knowledge of the world around them. If they are interested in journalism employment after graduation, many are smart enough to take courses related to the type of journalism they want to practice. That makes them smarter and more aware of the issues in the subjects they want to cover resulting in better journalism. This is particularly true when there seems a viable future for specialized journalism but much less promising opportunities in news organizations that are still trying to cover everything for everyone. Subject matter education obtained as part of a journalism degree enhances a graduate’s job prospects significantly.
In the end I find it hard to imagine how someone could produce better journalism with less education.
Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University
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He is in fact prolific. And a great deal of his analysis and opinion work is in Canadian media policy. That befits a life spent in news journalism but also a lengthy stint serving on the CRTC (rising to Vice-Chair for Telecommunications). He writes a weekly Substack column.
I discovered his writing because over the last several years of Liberal government in Ottawa I noticed that he and I disagreed on seemingly everything. But I also noted that his was usually the perspective I had to grapple with in order to formulate my own.
As for the CBC and its future, Menzies is neither defender nor defunder. He is a critic and he is blunt in his criticism.
One thing that he and I agree upon is that the CBC must be the centrepiece of any cogent public policy for Canadian news journalism. That comes across in an essay he wrote with former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein in 2023, And Now the News (to which Ivor Shapiro and I responded, here).
Here, Menzies answered my questions about the CBC:
Q. Let’s get right to the point. If something needs fixing at the CBC, what is it?
Too many Canadians, often for ideological but also for regional/cultural reasons simply don’t see their realties reflected in the broadcasts or in the online copy. That needs to be addressed and I’m not sure that’s possible at this stage. Its biggest problem is not that – at least for the English part – so many Conservatives want to kill it, it’s that a large number of people just don’t care if it lives or dies.
And we are moving into a post-Woke, post cancel culture time in which people have tired of reading and watching what they interpret as sermons disguised as news copy. There’s a growing backlash against moral instruction and a deep desire on the part of consumers to have news delivered to them in a fashion that trusts the reader to draw conclusions. There’s work to be done across the industry on that.
Q. It seems to me that the CBC is mired in the classic Canadian paradigm of metropolis and hinterland. Outside of central Canada, it’s viewed as a central Canadian institution with a central Canadian institutional culture. It seems to drive the politics about the CBC. How do you get at changing that?
You probably have to physically relocate. I remember, for instance, when CBC News Network started the day being anchored in Halifax, then moved with the sun to Toronto, then West to an anchor in Calgary and finally in Vancouver. If I had my way – just kidding, sort of – I’d put their head office in Baker Lake, which is the community closest to the nation’s geographical centre but Winnipeg would do.
It needs to have multiple homes spread across the country. The physical infrastructure is there; the mentality is not. Nothing against Toronto but its culture and interests are very unique.
Q. You’ve been writing frequently about a different CBC for several years now, and one constant message has been getting the CBC out of the advertising market in television and digital. You frame it as part of a holistic Canadian media policy, because it would be good for private media too.
Yes, Richard Stursberg said once at a CRTC hearing that the CBC is not a public broadcaster – it is a publicly-funded commercial broadcaster and that has stuck in my mind ever since. Corporately, it shape-shifts so that when it needs government money, it can play the public broadcaster violin but when it sees a commercial advantage, like online news advertising, it can put on its CNN of the North cape and play private sector media. This sort of dualistic life is eating its soul because advertisers want strong GTA numbers which over time impacts how people in a Toronto office measure success and works against the CBC fulfilling its mandate as a truly national institution.
It also undermines efforts by legacy private sector media to transition to digital only by competing there for advertising, which lowers rates and opportunities.
Q. But what about the audience benefits in going ad-free for CBC programming?
CBC Radio One is a leader in almost every major radio market in the country because it is ad free. Private radio broadcasters are generally okay with that because they don’t have to compete with them for advertising revenue.
It’s also popular locally because it’s locally produced and informs people about what’s going on in their community and is important to people. It’s less political – big P and little p – less preachy and people can relate to local on-air personalities. But then it switches to day time programming out of Toronto and, with apologies to folks there, the world according to Toronto doesn’t sell all that well in Antigonish, Thomson or Grande Prairie.
Q. Back to the holistic policy for Canadian journalism: you’ve endorsed the idea of CBC providing its news content to other news outlets for free, like a no-fee syndication service. A creative commons. How would you implement that?
Yes. CBC should be a sister or brother to other media within the national media ecosystem, not a competitor. So long as the content is produced through subsidy, it should be of benefit to everyone – domestically – through something similar to a creative commons license. This could be of significant assistance in so-called news deserts and would need to have reasonable limits but I really think that if we are going to have a publicly-funded broadcaster, the benefits that come from that need to flow through to private media as well. That’s much preferred to the direct subsidies we’ve got going now that destroy trust in media.
Q. To create a real CBC creative commons of local news, CBC might have to invest more in local?
They should do that anyway. Only what is local is real to most people. All media know that but these days almost all of them just offer lip service and centralize everything. CTV and Global used to have General Managers in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, St. John’s, etc. Now their breakfast and other shows get produced out of Toronto. Headlines in the Star Phoenix are written in Hamilton. It’s suicidal short termisim but it helps executives meet their numbers and get their bonuses. Bit of a rant there but the CBC mandate demands local. But they’ve wandered from that. Their mandate and their CRTC licence conditions are all a charade if no one ever has their performance measured against them.
Q. In an article you wrote for The Line in 2020 —with some hilarious commentary I might add— you suggested the CBC is obsessed with US current events and should stop. Care to elaborate?
Because they are centred in Montreal and Toronto, there is a gravitational pull within the CBC culture that influences their news curation and programming decisions and as I earlier mentioned the advertising incentive exaggerates that. They seem to want to compete with CNN, MSNBC, etc. rather than just serving Canadians. So every Monday morning the national news on radio tends to lead with USA USA USA because Toronto is very USA facing. Of course USA news is important but the entire reason the CBC exists – frig, the entire reason the Broadcasting Act exists – is to ensure that Canada doesn’t just become the 51st state, if not geographically then culturally. I just want them to do their job.
Q. As a follow up to that, some experts on the CBC like Waddell and Stursberg have endorsed a news curation strategy that involves reinvesting in global reporting as a way of “explaining the world to Canadians.” What do you think of that as a programming priority?
Sure, in an ideal world that might be nice but I wouldn’t do it at the risk of local. In an online world, there are multiple sources of international news that aren’t American that people can go to so I don’t see the same imperative there as I do for who’s covering school boards in Moncton because right now no one is doing that although I’m sure someone in Moncton will correct me. But you get the drift.
Q. Back to news curation, what do you think of CBC’s overall editorial performance?
Journalism in Canada these days is occasionally brilliant, too often disappointing and regularly just bad. There is a general malaise that has come from somewhere – I’m assuming the j-schools are teaching it – that abandons the aspiration to produce news as objectively as possible – the way consumers want it delivered.
I think it is absolutely killing the business. Plus, you now have to have a degree to get a job. Why? It’s not a profession, it’s a trade and a noble one at that. Whatever happened to the blue collar men and women holding the powerful to account? Now you have to have tens of thousands of dollars to go to university for four, five or six years which means chances are your reporters are from upper middle class suburban backgrounds. And why? The basics can be taught in four or five courses over eight or nine months followed by an apprenticeship. If you can’t get the basics down in six months, you won’t get them in six years. Which is a long-winded way of saying the CBC should stop – right now – insisting on university degrees. They misunderstand the business.
And because of that, they misunderstand Canadians.
Q. One thing you hear whenever the topic of reinvigorating the CBC comes up is a recommendation that it pick some priorities and make some hard decisions about programming and services, whether that’s to cut costs or redirect budgets. Do you have any thoughts about how to do that?
I think it’s worth asking whether we need CBC TV daytime programming at all or more than one radio network in each language and what the heck did we do turning Radio Canada International into a domestic multicultural broadcaster? Like, either do the job or don’t but don’t run that scam.
I think it has way too much water in its wine, tries to do too many things and take up too much space in the ecosphere. So I’d be fine with – in English anyway – trimming it down to a single 24-hour news channel with maybe four to six hours of prime time, 100% Canadian, entertainment content. In other words, merge CBC News Network – with mandated stories from coast to coast – and CBC.
Do the same with radio. A single English language radio network with local morning and afternoon drive shows, national programming evening only and move the music into the daytime slots – for instance and dump the national day time programs. I’m not saying this definitively but provocatively to prompt some “why not” thinking to clear out dead wood not only in programming but administratively and bureaucratically. Right now. Because if they don’t, someone’s going to do it for them.
Q. If Pierre Poilievre gets elected sometime in 2025, CBC English services might be walking the plank. In January there will be a new CEO with a new mandate. What would you do if you were in her shoes?
Well the new mandate already is a few weeks behind when we were expecting it but I’m sure Madam Bouchard has a pretty good idea where it’s going. She doesn’t have much time. She needs to move quickly and decisively, unrolling an action – not an aspirational – plan within 60 days and begin implementing it within 30 more days. It’s that simple.
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The closer we get to a federal election, the more the debate about the CBC heats up.
It’s televised too. Check out the Parliamentary video channels ParlVu and SenVu. Both the Commons Heritage committee (CHPC) and the Senate Transportation and Communications committee (TRCM) are conducting ongoing hearings where Parliamentarians question invited witnesses.
Unfortunately the CHPC is often a gong show as MPs posture for the cameras, so the policy content is low. On the other hand, the unelected Senators on TRCM continuously engage in a serious investigation. Geraldo or the Dick Cavett Show, your choice.
This week the Senate invited former CBC journalist (and union president) Kim Trynacity as well as Richard Stursberg, the former CBC Vice President who recently provided a guest column for MediaPolicy. Both witnesses emphasized that CBC television’s best bet to recover its audience ratings is to double down on local and regional news.
Trynacity made the point that we just can’t wish it so: funding shortfalls were taken out of local television years ago, money would have to be put back.
Stursberg suggested there are unexplored synergies between CBC radio news coverage and cbcnews.ca and that perhaps there are localities where resources from the inherently expensive television news operations could be diverted to sister platforms.
That’s a pragmatic idea if the gap between ratings and funding can’t be narrowed, but maybe not so enticing to audiences wedded to local news on that medium.
That’s just a taste of an illuminating policy dialogue.
On another policy topic I’ve video clipped three minutes of Stursberg’s time on the witness stand where he commented on accusations of journalistic “bias” against the CBC, the rallying cry that fuels Conservative fund raising to “defund the CBC.”
Stursberg reminded Senators of an external study on CBC editorial performance that he commissioned in 2010. The well publicized results suggested that CBC was being unfairly criticized for partisan bias.
The advice Stursberg gives now is that the CBC ought to subject itself to this kind of public accountability every year.
The review would be even more persuasive if expanded beyond partisan reporting (fair or not to political parties) to the hot button issues that routinely feed the culture war of impugning mainstream media.
On that point, check out this 3-minute video recorded in 2015 by former CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge who vehemently denies partisan motivations lurking within the CBC. But he posits a “Toronto-centric” mindset of the Front Street journalist corps leaking into its journalist culture and news coverage.
While we are talking about bias and the CBC, this is the opportunity to revisit Pollara’s survey results from last July that I posted about at the time.
First, here’s the headline number on how much Canadians trust CBC News in comparison to other outlets:
Then there’s the question of “nobody’s watching the CBC:”
The latter chart is obviously a polling of audiences on all platforms, not just television.
Now here’s a clue to some of the CBC-bashing:
These trust gaps are clearly driven by party allegiance, a proxy for a diversity of world view and perhaps a visceral cynicism about media (only 25% of Conservative supporters trust the National Post).
Regardless, the exaggerated trust gap for the CBC is a concern, no matter how you look at it.
On the other hand, if the concern is that polarized opinion on CBC “bias” is dividing the country regionally, consider this outtake from the 2024 Sparks poll that compares opinions in Alberta to those in Québec:
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The Liberals’ Online Harms bill has been plucked out of the Parliamentary wilderness. “Pre-study” hearings at the Commons Justice committee resume Monday.
Given the election calendar, don’t expect much progress. Also expect the Conservatives to filibuster in committee. The CPC has its own harms bill it wants to advance: ironically, it’s a crime bill (although directed only at harms against children).
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Ontario Premier Doug Ford annoys me so much that I often wish I could vote twice, once for a different Premier and once for a different mayor (oops, he’s not really Mayor of Toronto, he just governs as if he was).
But today I thank my Premier for zipping it to Donald Trump after la grande orangequipped about Canada becoming the 51st American state. I suppose we shouldn’t take offence: after all Trump only wants to annex us, not insult us.
Globe editorialist Tony Keller has the story of Doug’s retort here, with a bucket of Canadian trash talk for Trump.
AI-generated photo of Donald Trump viewing the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps
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Let me recommend a gripping start-to-finish episode of Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast —-only 80 minutes long!— acknowledging that it may be of more interest to my fellow progressives.
Klein interviews Faiz Shakir, a senior staffer from the Bernie Sanders camp, on whether Democrats are overdue to embrace “Bernieism.”
Shakir believes Democrats can win with economic populism, a brand and policy platform that is based on what he describes as the majoritarian sentiment in the United States that capitalism is rigged and an authentic politician with bulldozer appeal can deliver change “for you.”
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The devil makes work for idle hands and lately MPs from the filibuster-becalmed House of Commons amuse themselves by summoning CBC Presidents before the Heritage Committee. Once in the dock, prosecutorial MPs flay the witness and then video clip for their social media posts.
Some MPs had trouble with their facts. Not without justification, MP Kevin Waugh cited the public broadcaster for raking in $400 million in advertising revenue that could otherwise be available to private media. The true dollar figure is $270 million; Google and Facebook have the rest.
MP Jamil Javani claimed that CBC English language television has a 2.1% share of viewing audience. The CBC’s percentage for prime time viewing in television, excluding its all-news and documentary channels, is more than twice that at 5.2 %. By comparison, Canadian private broadcasters collectively take 26%, a wide array of specialty channels are at 53% and US networks are at 13%.
Conservative MPs dwelled upon the bonus payout for senior CBC executives. Bouchard defused the situation by agreeing to review the payments, make her review transparent, and gently reminded MPs that the correct term is “variable pay” (the at-risk performance pay that is part of every senior manager’s compensation package in the modern world).
MP Niki Ashton from northern Manitoba assailed the CBC for its retreat from local television news. She’s not imagining that: in response to the deep Liberal budget cuts during the 1990s, the public broadcaster closed stations and reduced coverage across Canada. The coverage-killing budget cuts didn’t stop there: between 2013 and 2023, the CBC responded to Parliament’s austerity by reducing its spending on television programming in English Canada by 40% in real dollars as it shifted resources to online news.
Bouchard’s reply to MPs was noteworthy: local news will be a “big focus” as the incoming CEO. Last month the CBC announced it was spending its $7 million of “Google money” on hiring 25 journalists in underserved markets.
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In a previous post I did the CRTC an injustice by accusing Commission staff of “twiddling around” in its investigation of whether Meta is offside by selectively waving some news items through its block of Canadian news content.
I said that because the Commission appeared to be too patient in allowing Meta lawyers to rag the puck in response to the CRTC’s demand for the details on the porous news block, details which the regulator intends to make public in the course of its inquiry.
Last Monday the Commission fired off another letter to Meta and, if you read for nuance, you will conclude that the CRTC has lost patience with Mr. Zuckerberg’s demands to keep his explanation a secret and is ready to post Meta’s unredacted explanation of its news block.
Meta has until tomorrow to play ball or else. Else what, we shall see. Once Meta’s statement of defence is public, the next step will be a decision from the CRTC on whether to investigate further.
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There may never have been a busier week for Big Tech lawyers responding to legislation and lawsuits around the world.
Here’s a quick run down:
Australia passed a law banning kids under 16 years old from having their own social media accounts (WhatsApp and YouTube excepted). The ban takes effect a year from now —-an eternity in political time—- as the thorny issue of age verification gets sorted out. The debate over the legislation was the occasion for Elon Musk to tweet accusations of censorship, a rebuke from the CEO of the Australian public broadcaster Kim Williams and then Musk responding by unleashing a troll storm against Williams.
The Australian government dropped its version of our Bill C-63, the Online Safety Act. Its “misinformation bill” was destined to fail in the Australian upper chamber where the government does not enjoy a majority.
The Canadian Competition Bureau has filed suit against Google for allegedly abusing its market power in digital advertising. Having cleared Google of this very charge in 2013, it seems likely the Bureau has more evidence in hand as a result of the ongoing anti-trust trial against Google in the US.
Canadian news outlets have filed a copyright lawsuit against the Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its ChatGPT app —-in the wake of a similar lawsuit by the New York Times—- for ingesting millions of the outlets’ online news articles. There’s already an AI-ingestion lawsuit proceeding in Canada between two smaller players as recounted by the University of Calgary’s Hugh Stephens in a blog post.
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The Globe and Mail’s Cathal Kelly is a born-with-the-muse columnist who just happens to write about sports.
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A letter to MediaPolicy from the CEO of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network responds to remarks made by Richard Stursberg in his recent MediaPolicy post, “Welcome Mme.Bouchard, here’s some advice.“
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I am writing on behalf of APTN in response to Richard Stursberg’s recent column, “CBC: Welcome Mme. Bouchard, here’s some advice.” While we agree with several of Mr. Stursberg’s suggestions, we strongly disagree with his suggestion that CBC/Radio Canada should helm a documentary series on the Indigenous People’s History of Canada – similar to its successful Canada: A People’s History series.
For 25 years, APTN has been at the forefront of Indigenous media in Canada, dedicated to sharing our Peoples’ stories our way. As the first national Indigenous broadcaster in the world, APTN was created specifically to provide a platform for Indigenous voices, perspectives and languages —something no other network can claim as its primary mandate. Over the years, we have produced and aired countless groundbreaking series, documentaries and programs that authentically reflect the diversity and richness of Indigenous cultures, histories and contemporary realities.
The network’s involvement in series like 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus, Treaty Road, Secret History, Future History, Red Earth Uncovered, Wild Archaeology and First Contact/Premier Contact – among many other titles, showcases APTN’s ability to handle complex and sensitive topics with the nuance and respect they deserve.
We have also co-commissioned some of the most important Indigenous cultural/historical documentaries, including Singing Back the Buffalo, Wilfred Buck, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, Beautiful Scars of Tom Wilson and Coming Home. Such documentaries have been instrumental in educating the public and preserving Indigenous heritage.
The suggestion that only CBC can undertake this kind of storytelling undermines the work APTN has been doing with expertise and dedication for decades. It dismisses the contributions of Indigenous journalists, producers and creators who bring unmatched cultural understanding, lived experience and nuanced perspectives to the stories they tell. Furthermore, it perpetuates a harmful narrative that Indigenous voices require validation or mediation by non-Indigenous institutions to be heard or understood.
While no doubt well-intentioned, Mr. Stursberg’s recommendation overlooks APTN’s existence and its role in fostering and broadcasting Indigenous stories, and the need for strong and unwavering support of that role.
This week MediaPolicy published a report of the CRTC’s announcement on November 15th laying the groundwork for how Netflix and the other foreign video streamers will contribute to Canadian content under the Online Streaming Act.
Released on a Friday, the announcement flew quietly under the radar of the daily news cycle, possibly because there is no immediate price tag attached to Netflix’s future obligations to make or license Canadian shows.
Last June the CRTC imposed on the foreign streamers $140 million worth of annual contributions to Canadian television subsidy funds for news, drama and kid’s programming: last week’s much anticipated announcement might end up being worth five times as much in streamers’ programming budgets for Canadian content.
There are times when the impact of American public policy initiatives on Canadian media policy dwarves anything we might do north of the 49th.
As you may recall, the trial judge in an anti-trust suit begun by the Trump White House and several states against Google resulted in a legal ruling declaring Google an illegal monopoly in Search and search related advertising.
Following up, the collective of Attorneys Generals spearheaded by the federal DOJ have now tabled remedial requests to the trial judge.
Just for starters, they are requesting that Google divest its Chrome web browser and its Android mobile operating system. And there are important requests focussing directly on bootstrapping would-be competitors to Google in the Search market by giving them “catch-up” access to Google’s treasure trove of consumer data. Radical stuff for radical times.
There is a useful news summary from the New York Times. But if you can afford the time for a ten-minute read, I recommend Matt Stoller’s excellent explainer.
As I read Stoller’s piece, it easily came to mind how unlikely it is that Canadian news publishers would have successfully pursued the news licensing payments in the Online News Act if instead of Google’s monopoly on search referrals there was robust competition in the Search Engine market.
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More than a few times MediaPolicy has raised the question of how Meta is getting away with its selective ban on Canadians news content, its response to our Online News Act.
The Heritage Minister raised the same question publicly but she is constrained by the fact that it’s the CRTC’s jurisdiction to investigate it.
It’s possible that federal cabinet considered but dismissed the idea of sending the CRTC a policy directive asking the Commission to look into why Meta permits the sharing of some news items, but not others, and why it has flat-out restored news posting privileges to outlets such as Narcity.
The Commission is twiddling around on this one. In early October it asked Meta to explain the rhyme and reason for allowing some news content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms while banning the vast majority of news organizations.
Meta filed a letter in response and, according to a Canadian Press story, it appears that Menlo Park submitted something, but it’s not clear what. And beyond whatever details of its selective ban it provided, Meta has claimed confidentiality and opposes the public release of its answers to the Commission.
This minor legal drama will play out in the fifth dimension of regulatory time.
Meanwhile the public is still in the dark as to whether the Commission thinks there is a basis for playing hardball with Meta by, for instance, officially designating its platforms under the Online News Act so that banned news organizations can file an “undue preference” complaint and get equal treatment to Meta’s favoured news outlets.
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I’m pleased that so many followers of this blog liked Richard Stursberg’s guest column on the CBC, his advice for the incoming CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard. It’s now the most popular post in MediaPolicy’s short history.
Now there’s an interesting column from The Hub’s Managing Editor Harrison Lowman in which he identifies the “defund the CBC” problem as the public broadcaster’s news curation and journalism culture. His bottom line: fix it, don’t destroy an important Canadian institution and a vital provider of news journalism.
Lowman’s piece —-clearly not toeing the Conservative Party line—- was immediately disputed by The Hub’s Editor-At-Large and former Harper policy chief Sean Speer.
Speer’s says his support of defunding the CBC is not founded on an allegation of biased news reporting. Gosh no. It’s about the CBC’s declining audience share (him citing poor television viewership numbers, but ignoring strong digital and radio numbers). His colleague Lowman is just being “nostalgic” about the CBC.
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Until Parliament passed the Online Streaming Act in 2023, Canada did not have a Netflix Plan. Instead, Netflix had a Canada plan (note the witty meme, above). You could write a book about it.
Last Friday the CRTC announced a fresh round of hearings to implement the regulatory framework for foreign video streamers and Canadian television broadcasters.
While the Commission previously ordered Netflix and the Californian streamers to pay $140 million in annual contributions to Canadian media funds, this newest regulatory file is the most consequential thing that the CRTC will do for Canadian television and video streaming.
The hearing notice for March 31, 2025 tips the CRTC’s hat in terms of the regulatory changes it wants to make, although it’s not final and is subject to debate. The changes will become law in the summer or fall of 2025 unless interrupted by a federal election campaign (which seems more likely than not).
The “too long, don’t read” summary (and this is a long post) is this:
The headline is some minor tweaking of the definition of a “Canadian program,” the first step before assigning the foreign streamers a programming budget for Canadian shows.
A far more important proposal concerns who should own the long term copyright and commercial opportunities for a Canadian program that is made by a Canadian producer and then licensed and distributed by Netflix or the other US streamers.
A bold and controversial move by the Commission is a proposal to abolish programming minimums for Canadian television drama (“Programs of National Interest” in CRTC-lingo) which have been centrepiece of the Commission’s regulatory remit for decades.
The Commission wants to do something significant to support television news, presumably through subsidies, but unlike the other issues in its announcement it doesn’t appear to have any idea of how to do it.
What is Canadian?
The argument over what ought to be considered a Canadian program will never stop. It’s like criticism of the CBC: impeaching the cultural status quo is a Canadian parlour game.
We’ve always used the headcount method to define Canadian programs, allocating up to 10 points to a program that stars Canadians and puts Canadians in the key creative jobs of producer, director, writer and a few other talent slots that are deemed to contribute to the look, feel and vibe of a show.
The governing principle is that we can count upon Canadian artists to make Canadian art. Or as the Commission puts it with so little rhetorical flair, “having Canadians responsible for key creative decisions will enhance Canadian stories.”
Netflix and the other streamers aren’t crazy about the headcount test. If they are going to be required by the CRTC to make Canadiana, they want to use their own people. Their people are Hollywood actors, directors, writers and showrunners; the hand picks whom the streamers believe they can count upon to make hit shows with global appeal.
Some Canadians think that instead of the headcount method we should be qualifying programs as Canadian with a “cultural theme” appraisal of the plot, story, location, and —to use the CRTC’s language— cultural signifiers and symbols. The British do it that way in the UK. They use a panel of television executives to vet programs as British enough for subsidies.
In last week’s announcement, the Commission rejected the cultural theme test as too subjective. In a technical briefing provided to the media, Commission spokesperson Scott Shortliffe said that the cultural test was too difficult to administer because of irreconcilable views on “unifying” Canadian symbols and signifiers. (IMO the latter argument is unconvincing: Canadian culture is a mix of national symbols and diverse, locally authentic signifiers. Canadiana does not require classic cultural totems like Vimy Ridge or the Canadian Pacific Railway to call itself Canadian).
In its announcement, the Commission focussed on tweaking the headcount formula in a number of ways, introducing points for “showrunners” of Canadian TV series; giving credit for employment of Canadian costume designers and make-up leads as well as visual and special effects wizards. The Commission also relaxed the rule that all personnel sharing a point-eligible role (for example multiple writers of an episode) have to be Canadian: now one in five can be non-Canadian.
This is all nibbling around the edges of the current point system. In an incremental way it might allow Hollywood streamers to use more Hollywood talent on a Canadian show, but it’s no game changer.
Whose money is it anyway?
When Netflix was asked by Parliamentarians in 2022 what amendment to Bill C-11 it wanted the most, the one-word response was “copyright.” The amendment didn’t fly.
“Copyright” was short-hand for Netflix saying that if the Online Streaming Act compelled foreign streamers to sink millions into distinctly Canadian shows, it expected to own those programs lock, stock and barrel. “Copyright” meant not just the possession of first release in Canada and all global markets, but also ownership for the streamers’ permanent libraries of shows as well as the intellectual property of series spin-offs, branding, merchandise and any other long term commercial opportunities.
Unfortunately the streamers’ expectation that they own a show, rather than license it from Canadians, runs smack into Canadian regulatory rules that favour copyright and intellectual property residing with the independent Canadian television producers who make Canadian dramas and license them to broadcasters home and abroad.
The CRTC backs this up by requiring Canadian broadcasters to spend a fixed tranche of their programming budgets on “Programs of National Interest” (Canadian dramas and documentaries) and buying at least 75% of shows from independent Canadian producers.
Those Canadian producers retain the copyright and intellectual property in those shows because the governmentand media fund subsidies that finance these Canadian shows are conditional upon the producers retaining the commercial control and exploitation of their shows for 25 years. For producers, it’s seen as the difference between being an entrepreneur and a gig worker on their own shows.
The foreign streamers hate these rules, but they are operating in Canada and they are going to have to get used to them.
From the Canadian point of view, these are the regulatory rules that allowed us over decades to build a thriving film and television sector across multiple production clusters in Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal and increasingly in other provinces. It’s the reason why the Liberals amended Bill C-11 to make pro-Canadian copyright rules explicit. The amendment wasn’t airtight but reflected the reality that the financing of Canadian shows is a mix of Hollywood money, Canadian investment and public dollars.
But this is the real world and the streamers know they can make trouble for Canada by appealing to US Congress and the White House to take on their fight.
The CRTC is not oblivious to this realpolitik, so it is looking for a compromise solution. In the announcement, it invited proposals on how copyright and intellectual property might be shared between Canadian producers, broadcasters and foreign streamers. While the Commission did not elaborate on how, these sharing models could be targeted to specific genres of shows, markets or the size of their programming budgets. After all, the streamers are potentially bringing the big budgets that Canadian television producers might not otherwise obtain and are expanding access to global audiences beyond the usual foreign partners in cable television distribution.
The Commission also mooted the possibility that Netflix could “buy” outright copyright by maxing out on the use of key Canadian talent, a proposal that might drive a wedge between Canadian producers and Canadian production guilds. The Canadian wing of the set workers’ union IATSE, based in Hollywood, has been explicit about this already.
This is going to be regulatory dog fight, you heard it here first.
Watering down rules on television drama
Canadian television regulation has always given special treatment to financing and promoting Canadian drama since at least 1979, when the CRTC orderedthe CanCon-laggard CTV to produce 39 hours of original shows per year.
Because of the market dynamic of a small domestic audience for Canadian content in both Québec and the rest of Canada, television drama is —as the CRTC reminds us in its last announcement— “risky to produce and difficult to monetize.”
A fulsome production and subsidy ecosystem is built around government and industry subsidies plumping up programming budgets for Canadian dramas and documentaries made by independent Canadian television producers. The programs are dubbed with some grandiosity by the CRTC as “programs of national interest (PNI).”
Further regulations require major broadcasters to dedicate a large slice of their programming budgets to the PNI genre (ranging from 5% to 15% of revenues).
Yet another regulation completes the ecosystem by requiring those broadcasters to buy 75% of their PNI-qualifying programs from the aforementioned independent producers (and in practice broadcasters do almost no in-house production of dramas and buy 100% from these producers).
The broadcasters don’t mind buying from the independent producers; they do mind filling a quota of PNI spending. They have been seeking reductions in PNI for years.
They appear to have got their wish.
The Commission is now proposing to eliminate the broadcasters’ PNI programming obligations.
It’s reasoning seems to be:
The foreign streamers are in the business of television drama, so if they have to make Canadian content there will be more “PNI” dramas without having to specifically require it.
The Commission’s proposed changes to the definition of Canadian content will encourage the production of dramas (IMO, this is a stretch).
Canadian broadcasters want to make less risky and more profitable content (the elephant in the room is the debt-laden Corus Entertainment, which has sought to satisfy their CanCon obligations with more reality and lifestyle television and fewer dramas).
Without a PNI spending quota, the production of Canadian dramas can still be encouraged by giving streamers and broadcasters extra credit for making dramas (i.e. a reduced overall budget for Canadian entertainment content in proportion to spending on drama).
The Commission should reserve its most stringent regulatory efforts for encouraging news production.
Canadian broadcasters have a legitimate list of woes. Cable subscriptions are steadily declining. The television advertising market is going out with the digital tide. Access to popular US programming for retailing to Canadian cable customers is getting more expensive and less available.
All of that jeopardizes their ability to produce local news, a money loser for 12 years running.
The Commission’s most recent announcement sends strong signals of its desire to save television news from further erosion.
If the Commission has anything in mind other than homilies about the value of local news, it’s keeping its cards close to the vest. Instead, industry participants have been invited to make proposals.
“Level the Playing Field”
The Commission’s announcement answers some of the questions about how foreign streamers will contribute “equitably,” measured against the efforts of Canadian broadcasters to finance and promote Canadian content.
The Commission has linked its expectations of streamer spending on Canadian programs to the “Canadian Programming Expenditure” (CPE) requirements for major broadcasters, pegged at 30% of Canadian revenues. This CPE is less than it could have been if the streamer obligations had been benchmarked to Canadian “specialty” broadcasters whose “CPE” minimum averages at about 29% of revenues but in practiceis 48% of revenues.
The streamers’ CPE will be at least 30%, but probably much less in the end, for these reasons:
The streamers’ 30% will be reduced, perhaps more than dollar for dollar, by the 5% cash contributions the Commission already ordered streamers to make to Canadian media fund.
The Commission has already signalled in last week’s announcement that it might reduce overall CPE in proportion to money spent by streamers and broadcasters on making “risky and difficult to monetize” Canadian dramas; and
The Commission could end up pushing the 30% benchmark lower by granting the pleas of major broadcasters to reduce their CPE to 20% or 25%.
Notably, the Commission has folded the broadcasters’ regulatory relief requests into the file for the upcoming hearings.
Discoverability rediscovered
Ever since the Online Streaming Act received Royal Assent in May 2023, the Commission has been squirming in discomfort over how to implement the new statute’s “discoverability” mandate that streamers must recommend Canadian content on their platforms “by any means of control.” The Commission has repeatedly disavowed “regulating algorithms” to achieve discoverability outcomes, overstating the statutory prohibition that the Commission may not prescribe a “specific” algorithmic method.
In a briefing for media on last week’s announcement, the Commission stated that its approach to discoverability would be integrated into each regulatory proceeding rather than scheduling a special hearing on the topic. Its spokesperson made a point of mentioning the importance of discovering French language content on foreign streaming platforms, a hot issue in Québec.
Until we hear a more concrete proposal from the Commission, it may be safe to assume that the lip service to discoverability will continue.
Getting under the election wire
In the media briefing, the Commission suggested it wanted to conclude hearings and issue rulings on the regulatory actions raised in its announcement by summer or fall of 2025. (In case you are wondering, a year agothe federal cabinet allowed this much time by setting December 2025 as the deadline for the Commission to implement the “regulatory framework” for the Online Streaming Act).
However if the writ is dropped for a federal election (likely no later than August 2025) the Commission would observe political custom and put a hold on release of its rulings.
Barring a political miracle, the Poilievre Conservatives will form a majority government before the end of 2025 and they have repeatedly promised to “Kill Bill C-11.”
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This week MediaPolicy hosted a guest column on the future of the CBC from Richard Stursberg, the author of The Tangled Garden: A Canadian Cultural Manifesto and the 2012 Tower of Babble, a memoir of running English language services at the CBC. The column welcomes the new President of CBC, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, with some advice.
You see exposed now, my naked agenda: more talk about how to reinvent the CBC and present an alternative to Pierre Poilievre’s promise to defund it. I hope to keep this going with more discussion on this platform.
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Here’s one piece of my mind I offer about the CBC.
Pierre Poilievre has many political goals to be achieved by defunding the CBC, not the least of which is repaying donors so he can convince them his audacity is genuine.
The other purpose of “defund the CBC” is to effect a seismic shift in the media reporting universe. Silencing the CBC through defunding is the right-wing version of cancel-culture, something you might have heard is a bad thing. The reputed CBC “news bias” will be eliminated along with the work of 3000 unwanted journalists.
For a thought provoking video clip, here is CBC news host David Cochrane putting forth a plausible hypothetical in a Canada purged of the CBC:
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On November 15 the CRTC announced that it is commencing hearings on March 31, 2025 that will dive into the meatiest of remaining regulatory issues for video streamers under the Online Streaming Act Bill C-11. MediaPolicy will have more to say about that in mid-week.
Even though the federal cabinet gave the Commission until December 2025 to complete the regulatory “framework” for the bill, the Commission’s laborious pace is awkward given the Conservative election promise to repeal it.
On Friday the Commission made it clear that the best case scenario for completing its work including the specific requirements for online and traditional broadcasters is in 2026 and, as expected, it will pause this work the moment that the election writ is dropped.
That means voters in the a federal election to be held no later than October 2025 will be relying a great deal on what political parties say the legislation is about, rather than how it is actually implemented. We deserve better.
The campaign against C-11 continues uninterrupted.
As covered by MediaPolicy in these twoposts, the coalition representing Spotify and the Big Tech music streamers recently launched the public campaign “Scrap The Streaming Tax,” a reference to the CRTC’s CanCon levy authorized by C-11. The Washington D.C.-based Digital Media Association (DiMA) behind the campaign was fortunate to land Canadian rocker Bryan Adams as an ally and supporter of the campaign.
Now DiMA has sponsored —-paid for—- an opinion column from The Hub’s Sean Speer in which Stephen Harper’s former policy chief proposes the repeal of Bill C-11.
The column, illustrated with art from DiMA’s “Scrap the Tax” campaign, signs off “this article was made possible by the Digital Media Association and the generosity of readers like you.”
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The Parliamentary Heritage Committee has issued its final reporton hearings convened in reaction to the political campaigns and news throttles conducted in Canada by Meta and Google in 2022 and 2023. The modest title of the proceedings was: “Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.”
Alas, the committee’s majority report (the Conservative MPs dissented) is anti-climatic. When the hearings commenced, MPs demanded that Meta and Google cough up e-mails that might reveal “astroturfing” alliances between the Big Tech giants and grassroots Canadian organizations opposing Internet legislation.
In the end, there is nothing in the report about those e-mails. It’s just as well. The Big Tech funding patrons and campaign alliances were openly acknowledged by those Canadian organizations.
The Committee made five recommendations for regulating Big Tech’s activities in Canada, four of which are addressed by the Liberals’ Online Safety Act C-63 that currently languishes in Parliament.
The fifth recommendation is a reprise of the Heritage Committee’s 2017 proposal to “Close the Loophole” in section 19.1 of the Income Tax Act that exempts online advertising from the tax presumption against placing Canadian advertisements in foreign media operating in Canada. The policy idea is to encourage Canadian advertisers to reach online Canadian audiences through Canadian media.
A footnote: the Conservative Party’s dissenting statement declares its intention (or that of its committee MPs) to repeal the Online News Act, C-18. While the Party and its leader have repeatedly opposed and criticized the Bill that delivers $100 million annually to Canadian news organizations, this is the first time I have seen them commit to repealing it.
The ability of Canadian governments to regulate Big Tech operations is always limited by the reality that we are a small country and the US is a big one that uses trade power to defend the interests of its corporations. Anything we want to do differently from the US in respect to Big Tech is difficult; anything the US Congress does on its own accord would be easier to mirror in Canada.
So the impact of the Trump and Republican victories in the recent election upon Big Tech is all important. The Washington Post published a summary of the live Tech regulatory issues in 2025 such as AI, child safety, and Elon Musk (he’s his own issue).
The Post speculated that the selection of the new majority leader of the Republican Senate might be crucial to tech issues and indeed the job was captured by South Dakota’s John Thune, despite Musk’s vigorous opposition to his appointment. Thune is sometimes identified as a traditional Republican and more likely to work constructively across the aisle with Democrats.
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