C-18 is necessary and fair, CAB tells Senate panel

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) told the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications that the Online News Act, Bill C-18, is needed and should be passed as soon as possible. “The Canadian Association of Broadcasters supports Bill C-18 for two essential reasons: the legislation is necessary and it is fair,” president Kevin Desjardins told the Senators Wednesday night. All of the witnesses who appeared before the panel urged passage of the legislation. This was in contrast to the day before when one publisher was heartily opposed to the bill. Desjardins warned the parliamentarians that the current approach is not financially sustainable. “Foreign digital platforms take more than two-thirds of those ad revenues out of Canada’s economy,” he stated. “In a very short time we have effectively developed a trade deficit in Canada’s advertising market.” The lobbyist could not say how many of his members currently have deals with Alphabet Inc.’s Google or Meta Platform Inc.’s Facebook. That data would be private as currently handled. He was critical of the companies’ threats to withdraw from posting Canadian news content if C-18 passes. “If they are bringing their ‘our way of the highway’ approach to this legislative process, just imagine how they use their dominance in negotiations now when they are not even required to come to the table,” Desjardins said. He said he was not surprised that the tech giants wanted to exempt audio and video content from the purview of the bill. It would cost them less, he explained. News deserts, places where traditional media are disappearing, are popping up around the country and in many of these markets radio is picking up the slack. Broadcasting was also on the mind of the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) which represents smaller players in the radio and television market. Executive director Catherine Edwards worried that many of her members would not qualify for subsidies under the Online News Act because they do not have two journalists working for them. Many community stations have one to three people at them, who handle a variety of roles. “So the threshold of two employed journalists is designed more for public and private sector news organizations,” she noted. She urged the bill to be amended to take into account the straitened resources of community broadcasters. Her colleague Amélie Hinse told the committee it is difficult to hold talks with the big platforms. “When we negotiated with the web giants, they’ve already been put at a disadvantage and a number of witnesses testified that they attempted to contact Google and Facebook on a number of occasions without being able to enter into an agreement, without even being able to speak to them,” Hinse explained according to a translation. Edwards said when the negotiations do open if the legislation passes, CACTUS would likely hold talks as a group rather than leave it up to individual members to reach consensus with the tech companies. That same approach was endorsed by the Canadian University Press (CUP), the umbrella organization for campus newspapers. Vice president Amy St. Amand said it was the best method of ensuring that funding reaches the college press. While campus radio stations are currently mentioned in C-18, campus papers are excluded. This strikes St. Amand as unfair. “Our students are the future of journalism and they have been forgotten,” she maintained. Not all students associations fund campus papers, leading to dire financial circumstances for them. She pointed to the Gateway, the paper at the University of Alberta. It receives no money from its association and is currently relying on savings. Those funds should be exhausted in two years, she stated. CUP’s director of operations had a stark warning about money for campus papers. “We recognize that the threats that are coming for our publications can be coming from inside the house,” Hannah Theodore told the panel. “Our student associations are not always on our side.” The second hour of the evening’s session heard from Hebdos Québec, which represents weekly newspapers in the province and from Carleton University professor Dwayne Winseck. The CEO of the weeklies association called for quick passage of the bill. “The press is a precious bulwark of democracy and its duty to inform the public with the utmost journalistic rigor must not be subjugated by the hegemony of a few web giants who not only line their pockets with the content that produce at great cost but also disseminate a lot of fake news devoid of true journalistic practices and ethics, unverified and inaccurate content,” Benoit Chartier exclaimed in French. Winseck found fault on both sides of the debate. “The Online News Act in my view has been mauled and mangled by its advocates and critics in equal measure,” the professor opined. “On the one side the bill has been driven by specious claims that Google and Meta steal the news and caused the crisis of journalism. On the other side critics claim that regulating Google and Meta is an assault on the free press and the open internet and these criticisms are ill-informed.” He said Meta and Google realized revenues of $11 billion in Canada in 2021 and received 80 per cent of the online advertising revenue of $12.3 billion. He added that 60 per cent of all spending on advertising goes to the two firms. He promised committee vice chair Julie Miville-Dechêne that he would make his research available to the panel to verify his numbers. The bill does nothing to break up the monopoly power of Meta and Google, he asserted. He said he cannot imagine the companies leaving a valuable marketplace like Canada quietly. He reminded critics of the legislation that distinctions are drawn between what broad categories will fall under the regulations. “Things like a cat video will be carried under different terms than a CAT scan,” Winseck quipped. Chartier rejected claims from some dissenters that the proposed law is propping up dinosaurs in the legacy media. “We’re not dinosaurs when it comes to disseminating the news by any stretch of the imagination,” the Quebec publisher said according to a translation. “But the fact of the matter is we don’t benefit from the advertising revenue that they are basically stealing from us, from our clients.” He added Google and Facebook are taking content without compensation. He estimated that the traffic on the internet favours the tech giants by a 80 to 20 ratio. Earlier on Wednesday CACTUS celebrated the passage of the Online Streaming Act, bill C-11. But the group had questions about where it fits into the equation. “If capturing the streaming giants with the new act just means they will be required to spend a certain amount of money on scripted drama, how will that address communities’ needs for local reflection?” CACTUS president Patrick Watt said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to working with all stakeholders on the next piece of the puzzle.” During Wednesday's Question Period, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his legislation and took a swipe at Facebook and at opposition critics of the bill. “Facebook's tactics failed in Australia, and they will fail in Canada. The saddest part is seeing the Conservative members continue to rally around the web giants, regurgitate their arguments and rush to help American billionaires attack local news,” he told fellow Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia. “While the Conservative leader stands alongside big tech, we will keep standing alongside francophone and rural communities, who consider access to the news as something essential.” –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

C-18 is necessary and fair, CAB tells Senate panel

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C-18 is necessary and fair, CAB tells Senate panel

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