Hon. Donna Dasko: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-18, the online news act, at third reading.

The news media business in Canada is in trouble, and Bill C-18 is designed to be part of the solution.

Many news organizations, particularly newspapers, are in dire straits. A 2021 Statistics Canada report surveying newspaper publishers in Canada revealed that operating revenue of Canadian newspaper publishers declined to $2.1 billion in 2020, down 22% from just two years earlier, in 2018.

Declines in revenues have led to closures and job losses; over 469 news outlets have closed from 2008 to 2022, including over 300 community newspapers, and one third of journalism jobs have disappeared since 2010.

Just yesterday, Bell Media announced the elimination of 1,300 jobs, mostly affecting their news operations, including nine radio stations and foreign bureaus.

The other side of this picture is that the internet has increased its share of advertising revenue as that of newspapers and other media has declined. Government background documents estimate that Google’s and Facebook’s revenues from digital advertising were $9.7 billion in Canada in 2021, which was 80% of the total digital ad revenue of about $12 billion.

Bill C-18 aims to fix the balance. The rationale behind the bill is that news organizations are not getting fair compensation for the news they produce from the digital platforms that distribute this news to the public.

Bill C-18 requires that major digital platforms make deals with news businesses to pay these businesses for information that is shared on their platforms.

Bill C-18 lays out the framework behind these deals. If voluntary deals are made between digital platforms and eligible news media within certain timelines that meet certain criteria, digital platforms would be exempted from the required portion of the act, which is to enter into a formal negotiation process that could lead to final offer arbitration. The CRTC will take the role in developing a code of conduct to guide the bargaining process and determine if agreements reached meet the conditions for exemption, among other roles it will take on.

Bill C-18 is a complex bill, and it needed fulsome study. We had a good process at committee, but I feel we needed to do more.

Bill C-18 came to this chamber at first reading on February 2. We heard the sponsor’s speech on February 7 but did not hear the first witnesses at our Transport and Communications Committee until April 25. From February 7 to April 25 is a very long time at second reading during sitting weeks, which, in my view, should have been spent studying the bill at committee. Our 10 meetings might easily have expanded to 13, 15 or even more meetings. Let’s compare our 10 meetings to the 31 meetings we had on Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, and I’m not saying we should go there, but that bill was a similarly complex communications bill. I feel we needed more time on Bill C-18.

I want to focus on some of what we learned at committee and where I see issues going forward that we were not able to examine.

Our nine meetings with witnesses — of course, we had one meeting for clause-by-clause consideration — focused primarily on the views of stakeholders. From our 60 witnesses, we learned that Bill C-18 has widespread support, particularly across the newspaper sector, including large and small organizations, as represented, for example, by News Media Canada, but it also has significant support among broadcasters such as the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. It has strong support among online publishers and multicultural media.

However, the two digital platforms, Google and Facebook, which would now qualify as the operators responsible for making deals with news organizations under the act, are aggressively opposed. During the period of parliamentary review of the bill, both companies launched “market studies” which involved blocking access to news on their platforms to some of their users and subscribers. While market studies are legitimate, and I can say this from 30 years in this industry, the timing of these studies was provocative, to say the least, and is rightly seen as a shot across the bow at the government and at the news industry in this country. Minister Rodriguez described these actions as threats, and even the Prime Minister weighed in, accusing the companies of using bullying tactics and saying that the federal government would not back down.

When both tech giants appeared as witnesses at committee on May 3 and were asked how they would respond if the bill were to pass in its current form, Google Vice President of News, Richard Gingras, did not want to speculate. He replied:

We’ve been clear on the considerations we have, which is to do with whether we need to assess how we use links or whether we need to assess whether it is logical for us to continue to provide a service like Google News . . . . I have no certainty right now as to what we might do.

Facebook, however, was categorical. Rachel Curran, Head of Public Policy for Meta in Canada, stated:

Because the legislation ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of people who use them and the value we provide news publishers, we have no choice but to comply with it by ending the availability of news content in Canada if Bill C-18 is passed as drafted.

We have two very large, very powerful, very angry foreign‑owned tech giants required by law to negotiate with way smaller Canadian firms. What could possibly go wrong?

Some have debated whether the company’s threats to leave are real or, in fact, a bluff. But if they are real, there is reason to be concerned. That is because we also learned at committee about how many news publishers rely on these platforms for their own business operations and successes.

Jeff Elgie of Village Media told us:

. . . we benefit greatly from the traffic back to our sites that we, in turn, are able to monetize and form new audiences, subscribers and followers that we would otherwise be challenged to reach. . . . Google and Facebook combined generate almost 50% of our traffic on an ongoing basis. . . . You will find similar numbers across our entire industry, legacy or new.

If that traffic were to be lost, the business would be over.

This sentiment was echoed by journalist and commentator Jen Gerson, who stated at committee that independent media, start-up media and media trying to build its brand in the marketplace are reliant on social media to build a brand, develop an audience and get a network across. The loss of Facebook, she believed, would be serious.

The policy framework behind Bill C-18 emphasizes that news organizations are not getting fair compensation from the platforms, but how will these realities figure in the negotiation process?

If we had those extra committee meetings I mentioned earlier, we could have invited more experts to dig deeper into the policy framework to understand how it works and its possible contradictions, and we might have been able to offer solutions. For example, how does the need for commercial deals, which must be negotiated privately, square with the regulatory requirements such as the transparency demands? We know that those transparency demands will increase. It seems pretty clear to me. What will be the impact of this policy on the internet, and what will be the impact on innovation? Does the long list of requirements that must be met for exemption, which go beyond fair compensation, create an undue burden on the commercial negotiation process as claimed by witness Philip Palmer of the Internet Society?

There were some other concerns: Our committee didn’t look at advertising or consumer behaviour even though the movement of advertising and consumers onto platforms, social media and search engines is central to these developments. How will news consumers be impacted by this policy? These are all important issues going forward.

As I said earlier, our committee did excellent work in the time we had, passing nine substantive amendments in one meeting. These have already been described by Senators Harder and Housakos, so I will not attempt to go through them.

I am pleased the amendment I proposed, which would remove the ability of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, to designate news businesses as eligible, was accepted. The news businesses should decide for themselves if they wish to apply and be part of this framework.

Colleagues, I love the news media, and it is painful to see what’s happening to the news today. I deplore the threats of the tech giants. I feel that despite its flaws, Bill C-18 is our only hope at this particular moment in time to help this industry, which is vital to our democracy. If all the pieces fit together and if all the players do their part, it could be a wonderful thing. It could be a wonderful assistance to this industry. That is why I intend to support it today.

Thank you.