Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you, honourable senators, and Senator Gold, thank you for reordering the Order Paper because I stepped out there briefly, on C-18, but if I knew that all it took for me to delay Bill C-18 was to step out, I wouldn’t have come back. You will all have to bear with me for a few more minutes as I speak on behalf of the opposition on Bill C-18.

Senator Gold — and Senator Harder has said this before — Bill C-18 is not a silver bullet or a magic bullet, but I am afraid that Bill C-18 must be the last bullet that goes into the heart of journalism, which is already in the ICU in this country.

Of course, I am fine with the objectives of Bill C-18. We all understand that journalism is going through a major transformative period, as all industries are in our country because of digital platforms. It is not unique to journalism. The retail industry is going through it. The taxi industry is going through it. Transportation, the way we communicate as politicians with citizens — there has been a major transformation because of these new digital platforms.

Some in the journalism world have transformed very well and are doing very well, and some are not. At the end of the day — as I have said over and over again in previous speeches — there’s The Globe and Mail, there’s Village Media, there’s Western Standard, and the list goes on and on of successful news outlets that have adapted and are using these new highways. And I repeat that digital platforms are not broadcasters and they are not journalists; they are nothing more than the highway that provides the unique opportunity for all these industries to, in a transformative way, reach out to bigger markets.

These platforms have given opportunities to Canadians to expand and sell Canada to the world and also give Canadians a view of the world that was difficult to get before these platforms.

As much as all of us believe in democracy and understand that we need vibrant journalism for democracy to flourish, I also believe the government has no business in the newsrooms of the nation. I don’t care if the government is Conservative or Liberal. We need to have not just robust media, but independent media, without any direct or indirect influence from civil servants, regulators or government officials.

That’s where I part company with the government’s public intention of what they say and what I’m afraid this bill can actually do. I believe, at the end of the day, when this bill is implemented with its regulations and gives complete authority to the CRTC and Canadian Heritage, it will do more damage to media and to newsprint particularly that, like I said, is already in the ICU.

Print media has been suffering now for well over a decade, and the government has waited towards the end of their mandate in government to do anything about it, which in itself raises questions.

I also question the authenticity of this government that has a tradition of standing and supporting the oligarchs and supporting the oligopolies of the broadcasting industry. Minister Rodriguez, the Prime Minister and their government have said time and time again that the Conservative opposition is standing up for giant tech companies and big corporations, and that is not that case. We are standing up for those Canadian citizens that want choice and competitiveness in news and communications. It is the government that is actually standing up for these corporate giants. It is the government that is standing up for these oligopolies and monopolies that the regulators, to whom we are giving the keys to news media, have established in this country. I am not making this up. We know who Bell Media, Rogers and Quebecor are; they have become huge, successful giants in the country because of government regulation. The people who have, in exchange, not gotten competitiveness and better prices in all aspects of telecom in the last 30 years are Canadian citizens, and that’s a fact.

Another thing I question with this government’s hypocrisy is they say, on the one hand, they want more diversified news, to help local and regional media, to help ethnic media, to help Indigenous media and so on and so forth, so they are putting Bill C-18 out to help all these dying news outlets. Well, why don’t you start with cleaning up your own house? Why don’t we start with government media buying? We know the government is one of the biggest media-buying agents in the country. I used to be in the business of communications. If you want to help these diversified news outlets across the country, take the pie that’s already there — there’s at least $150 million of direct media buying that the government has that we can see easily, not to mention some of the indirect media buying that the various departments exercise. If you see what percentage of that goes to small, local print media or ethnic media or Indigenous media across the country, you’ll be mesmerized. It is not more than 2.5% or 3% in total of that budget. When you see what percentage of that goes to the big broadcasters — the large media outlets — it is the vast majority.

It is typical of this government. The oligopolies keep becoming smaller, but their pockets keep becoming bigger. Bill C-18 is also supposed to help journalism. On the eve of passing this bill, Bell Media thought it was wise to let go of 1,300 journalists. We have seen, again, over the last decade that journalists are the ones who have been paying the price in radio and print media. We’ve seen the debauchery that has gone on in Postmedia across the country for many years now — and now we see Bell Media. What are they doing? They gave a pink slip on the eve of passing this legislation that’s supposed to help save journalism in Canada, but 1,300 journalists were sent home.

Who is going to benefit from all of this additional revenue that the government is giving these oligopolies and gatekeepers? I guarantee you it will be the executives at the CBC, Bell Media, Rogers and Quebecor; I know I’m not very popular with them, and I know they are not going to give me the front page regarding my speech. But this has to be said because, at the end of the day, I’m not here to please these oligopolies. I’m here to speak on behalf of Canadian consumers.

If the government wants to gain my confidence, and put to rest my suspicions, why don’t they start — for example — by not taking a media outlet to court and bypassing their paywall? If we listen to the government and the minister, the whole idea behind Bill C-18 is to stop the content of journalists from being stolen and disseminated. Colleagues, we have copyright laws in this country that protect journalists, as well as protect copyright and intellectual property. If those copyright laws are not solid enough, let’s strengthen them — that’s our job.

The truth of the matter is that when the government takes the work of Blacklock’s Reporter, which is a successful media outlet — it is a modern day way of media outlets operating, and you see it now with La Presse in Montreal and, like I said, The Globe and Mail. These are just small examples of paywall print media that have transformed the way they are doing business in a successful way. If you are not respecting those paywalls, that is stealing intellectual content. When our Canadian government is before the courts right now — basically because they don’t want to pay for the content of a particular news outlet — it raises suspicion about the intention behind what the government is trying to do.

Another problem I have with this bill — and I have articulated this many times — is that we are suddenly supposed to trust the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC. The CRTC is the agent that has created these oligopolies in Canada, and created these huge broadcasters — because that’s what they are: regulatory broadcasting agencies. That’s their job; they were mandated by successive governments — Conservative and Liberal. Let’s see the end result in broadcasting in Canada. They have created these giants that offer less service for more money. If you look at what Canadians pay for all of the services these oligopolies offer, you realize that we are all paying significantly more than any other nation on earth.

Now I’m supposed to trust that same regulator — the CRTC — who has no experience in dealing with news, and no experience in dealing with print media. However, they have experience in creating oligopolies. Am I going to trust them with the objective of saving print media and diverse media in this country? They are the ones who have a track record. Are they going to be able to do this successfully?

I have deep reservations that this is the only thing we are attempting to do here: a shakedown of a business model that has given Canadians unique opportunities to, like I said, promote their products. We’ve seen it as politicians, and the news media have seen it as politicians. We are trying to, essentially, take the traditional way of doing things — that no longer applies to the modern world — to create parallels because we have a government that likes to choose winners and losers. We like to determine who receives the bigger piece of the pie despite the fact that, perhaps, their business model doesn’t work. If somebody else’s business model does work and is successful, we are going to take a little bit out of their pocket, and put it into somebody else’s pocket to see what comes. We have seen, time and time again around the world, that this doesn’t work. You need to allow the free market and consumers to choose.

Last but not least, over the last couple of days, we’ve had discussions about the role of this institution — actually, we’ve had these discussions for years. Here is an opportunity where we can, once again, exercise our constitutional right to the government, and send this message: There was no obstruction and no malicious intent — from the opposition — with this bill that came to us. We’ve passed it, as Senator Harder knows, in a relatively quick fashion through the Senate because we do want to achieve what the government is ultimately trying to achieve. But, at some point in time, when we see a bill that has received that many amendments from government-appointed senators, and that much concern from government-appointed senators — as did Bill C-11 — it’s an indication that the government is not doing something right. They’re clearly not consulting sufficiently with stakeholders. They’re clearly not even consulting sufficiently with their own parliamentarians before they bring legislation to this chamber.

Once upon a time, colleagues — and I’ve spoken about this in the past — the Westminster model required parliamentarians to be part and parcel of the political process, and engaged in the process of building legislation. Many of you who are concerned with communications and telecommunications legislation — including Senator Miville-Dechêne, Senator Simons and Senator Dasko, as well as so many of you who I have had the pleasure of working with on the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications — would have been valuable to this government in their national caucus, providing valuable information at the embryonic stage of building legislation. That’s what used to happen — once upon a time — in the bad old Senate, and there was no need for senators, who were government appointed, to tear their shirts in indignation throughout discourse on a bill because they would have done that where it had to be done.

Over the last couple of days, I have heard Senator Gold mention how the Government Representative here lobbies vigorously on your behalf regarding amendments in this chamber. Once upon a time, we didn’t need the government leader to lobby on our behalf because every Wednesday morning, we would have the Prime Minister and the ministers of the Crown before us, and we would be able to make our case ourselves. All of you, as parliamentarians, deserve to have that right and privilege. It has been taken away from you, and it has been taken away from the institution at the detriment of building better legislation.

I insist that this is an opportunity, Senator Miville-Dechêne, to send a message to the government that we are not a rubber stamp, and we are tired of working under time guidelines. An emergency on their part essentially means poor management of the legislative agenda, and it always constitutes an emergency on the part of this institution. That doesn’t help build good legislation either, colleagues. In the last couple of days, we have heard from a colleague who said, “We have to be very careful that this institution doesn’t become a de facto opposition to the government.” Well, I encourage you all to look at the voting patterns over the last five or six years in this chamber. Let me tell you, there is no risk of this institution becoming a de facto opposition to the government. I hope this will remain the case: That same enthusiastic spirit of independence in support of government legislation will occur when there is a new government in a short period of time. You never know; somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that might not be the case.

I have said all I have to say on Bill C-18. Again, I wish this bill luck. I wish the industry luck. However, I hope, at some point in time, the government understands that you can’t force things on the marketplace. Consumers are the people who should have the final say of what choices they make, what they watch, what they read, what they post and what they invest in — in terms of news or anything else.

I will insist that we send this bill back to the House. In the House of Commons, they always threaten us by saying that they have risen, and they can’t come back — and that if we do this, the legislation will die. You have heard it all before: — We’re going to delay it. Getting controlled by government in this place has been going on for 156 years. Now they have passed hybrid sittings over there. They can work as legislators from their bedrooms and kitchens. Some of the legislation that they send over here indicates they spend a lot of time building legislation from their bedrooms and kitchens.

Thank you.

Hon. Leo Housakos: I appreciate that — I’m glad you find it such. It’s a simple question.

The government says that they are so committed to helping print media, as well as diverse local and regional media. Can you explain to me why the government spends about $140 million a year in media buy-in for all of their government agencies, and why do they spend a maximum of about 2% to 2.5% on ethnic and local media, while the rest of the budget goes toward the giant broadcasters in Canada?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable colleagues, initially, I thought I might actually support this bill, believe it or not, despite the report I gave earlier. The Coles Notes version that journalists should be fairly compensated for their work sounded noble enough, and, colleagues, we all recognize — as the reflex is — we want to protect and ensure a thriving free and independent press. It’s crucial to our democracy. It’s crucial to our society.

I remember as a young man in my university days that newspapers were teaching tools. All of us relied on them for more than just information. It all sounds good that we’re trying to save, in a noble way, struggling journalism today, but you need only scratch the surface of Bill C-18 to understand that that’s not what it seems to be really doing.

Yes, traditional news media in this country is struggling. I say “traditional” because the truth is the industry as a whole isn’t struggling. It is just evolving, changing. It’s not just in journalism. We see it in every walk of life. We see it the way the restaurant industry works, the food industry and the transportation industry. The digital world has made significant changes. The whole world and everything we do is moving online. It’s progress. That’s why you see even the traditional broadcasters slowly abandoning their business model and their old way of doing things because the world, eyeballs and consumers are going in a different direction.

Is that concerning given the lack of regulation and the rise of misinformation and disinformation available on the internet? Sure, but that doesn’t mean, as Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner claimed, that online news is fake news, for example.

Somehow that we come to the conclusion that what’s going on in online news is misinformation and somehow traditional news broadcasters are more accurate or that they have more rigid standards, I think, is exaggerated. The news industry has been self-regulated for years. They’ve been setting their own standards.

Shame on MP Hepfner for maligning decent, hard-working Canadians who are making their living in this country delivering solid online news. The fact is online delivery is the future of news, and traditional media know it to be true. They have to adapt their business model or they will be left behind.

Many have adopted their models. In the meantime, there are massive job cuts and have been for several years. Bill C-18 isn’t going to fix that. I would support the bill if I were convinced that it would.

Certainly, it will give more revenue to large news outlets. It will make the big even bigger and the strong even stronger. The objective of trying to help diversify local news in the country will not be achieved with this bill. I believe quite the contrary. It will give more revenue to Bell Media, Rogers, Quebecor and tonnes more revenue to CBC, the government’s favourite place to put taxpayers’ money.

I want to also extend my concern, colleagues — and we all should — to the 1,300 employees who were fired yesterday by Bell Media. It is ironic. A lot of people are arguing that Bill C-18 is going to save media and journalists.

Well, we are on the cusp of passing this extremely important bill that is maybe not a magic bullet. I agree with Senator Harder that it is not a magic bullet, but why wouldn’t they wait and see the outcome? We’re rushing this bill through. Despite my reservations that this bill will not save and diversify journalism in this country, we are still giving it a shot. As you can see, we are not distracting from the objective of the government trying to put this bill forward.

I believe journalism is changing. It is inevitable. The reality of the digital world is changing, and journalists have to change with it.

Colleagues, once we pass Bill C-18, I suspect the 1,300 employees at Bell Media and all these journalists who lost their jobs in the next six months will be hired back, right? All the fat cats at Bell Media and CTV — I say fat cats because I guarantee the cuts we’ve seen in journalism over the years are not equivalent to the cuts we see in upper management of these corporations. I invite you all to go to the annual reports of Bell Media, Rogers and Quebecor and see what the executive salaries are. People think there are fat cats in the Senate and the gatekeepers here. Go check out the salaries of some of these executive vice-presidents. You’ll find it staggering. These same people who are so concerned about journalism and our democracy, go see how much they get paid compared to some of the hard-working journalists in this country.

It’s stunning to me that government talks a good game on following the science and embracing technology, but are doing the very opposite when it comes to digital internet media. The truth is companies like Bell have to adjust to the reality of the internet.

The other reality is that not one of these people who were let go yesterday will get rehired once this bill passes. I’m ready to bet on that and have that discussion when we review the outcome in a few months or even in a couple of years.

Contrary to what they said in their statement that things would have been different had Bill C-18 been passed sooner — the problem is we didn’t move quickly enough; it’s our fault — not one of those people who were let go yesterday would have held their jobs had Bill C-18 been passed one, two or six months earlier. I do want to point out how cynical Bell Media’s move is, both the timing and the blaming of it on regulatory burden and the slow passage of Bill C-18. I noticed that unlike in the case of Facebook and Google and their responses in regard to the implications of Bill C-18, Minister Rodriguez didn’t question Bell and their timing or accuse them of scare tactics and say he won’t be bullied or intimidated.

Colleagues, Meta and YouTube have been hiring Canadians across the country for years. I invite you to go to any region of the country where Google and Meta and Facebook have operations and visit their facilities. They’re hiring young Canadians at a record pace — these fat digital cats that need to be reeled in by the Canadian government because these are just terrible international corporations that are doing harm to our basic way of life. Go see all the thousands of young Canadians coming out of IT schools — the engineers and programmers — and see what kind of jobs they have and what kind of environment.

I went to visit a couple of the offices of Google last year, and, boy, let me tell you that I wish I was 25 or 30 again. That generation of kids, they know how to work, they know how to be innovative and they know how to create work-life balance. I was very impressed, and the future is bright. But we have to embrace them and give them an opportunity to grow, flourish and continue to be innovative.

Also, he can and should sympathize — I’m talking about my good friend Minister Rodriguez — with the people who lost their jobs yesterday, but I notice he didn’t say anything about the people who made the decision or call them out about their timing, as I said. That’s because it’s very easy to demonize big tech.

I have issues with them as well. I don’t think Meta and Alphabet are perfect. No corporation needs to be free to run wild, but I’m also not defending management at Bell Media or Rogers Communications or Shaw Communications, and I’m not picking sides. My sense is that when you look at this legislation, the government has a propensity to continue to defend traditional broadcasting, which we all know — we had this debate with Bill C-11 — is dead and done with, and they continue to side with big corporations: Bell Media, Rogers and Quebecor. They’re giants in this country, and they’re not giants because they offer the best service at the lowest price. Most of us in here are old enough to pay cable bills every month. Take a look at that bill. Call your friends down south in the United States or in Europe or anywhere else around the world and compare some of those cable bills.

Senator MacDonald: Our phone bills.

Hon. Leo Housakos moved the adoption of the report.

He said: Honourable senators, I rise to speak to the sixth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. This report summarizes our committee’s study of and amendments to Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada, or in short, the online news act.

This bill was referred to committee for study on April 18, 2023. We held nine meetings in total, heard from 58 witnesses, including departmental officials who were on hand during our clause-by-clause consideration. There were also 27 written briefs submitted.

During clause by clause, which was completed in one meeting this past Tuesday, June 13, 2023, there were 18 amendments proposed by Senators Carignan, Clement, Cormier, Dasko, Miville-Dechêne, Simons, Wallin and the government itself. Of those proposed, 12 amendments were adopted. I have to say, like its predecessor Bill C-11, perhaps what I found most interesting about the bill was that even its most ardent supporters came to committee drawing attention to flaws in the legislation and seeking amendment.

While I do believe that some small changes of improvement have been made to the bill through some of the amendments we adopted at committee, I believe others run the risk of further complicating an already convoluted bill and making it even more unworkable.

While other reasonable amendments that were proposed and defeated were missed opportunities to vastly improve this flawed legislation, perhaps the most egregious of those missed opportunities was an amendment put forward by Senator Carignan that would have safeguarded against forcing platforms to pay for hyperlinks, including links that the news outlets themselves proactively post on those platforms.

This isn’t a practice where a news item is reproduced. The item appears on Facebook, for example, as a link that goes directly to the website of the news outlet. Facebook is actually providing the news outlet the vehicle with which to drive more traffic to their own sites. That’s why it’s the news outlets themselves who post these links on these platforms and encourage others to do so as well. Had this amendment been adopted, it would have removed perhaps one of the main criticisms of this legislation. A failure to fix this not only cripples the legislation, but may very well result in platforms not allowing that practice and thus crippling the very industry this bill is supposed to protect.

Another opportunity gravely missed was one that would have removed the eligibility of CBC to take part in the scheme. As Senator Carignan pointed out in moving this amendment — and I wholeheartedly concur in my comments — the CBC can hardly be described as a struggling news outlet. Yet this whole bill is predicated supposedly on the government’s desire to throw a lifeline to struggling media.

Smaller, independent and ethnic media outlets in this country already have to compete against the behemoth that is the publicly funded CBC for ad dollars. That’s already an unfair advantage to CBC. Now they are getting a significantly larger piece of the pie from this funding scheme. It boggles the mind that they would be included, and even more so that Senator Carignan’s amendment was defeated.

As for the 12 amendments that were adopted at committee, they include amending language in clause 2 that will expand the definition to specifically include official language minority community news outlets; amending clause 2 to limit the definition of Indigenous news outlets to one whose primary purpose is to produce news content. This was an amendment by Senator Simons that I would be surprised if it is supported by Indigenous media, and certainly seems to be at odds with the emphasis typically placed, in theory, by the Trudeau-appointed senators on listening and taking into consideration Indigenous input.

There were several others from Senators Clement, Cormier and Miville-Dechêne that were adopted, including, as previously mentioned, some that further complicate an already convoluted bill.

One of the most meaningful amendments, as far as improving this deeply flawed bill, came from Senator Dasko in clause 27, page 11, thus limiting the CRTC’s discretionary power as it relates to designating an eligible news business. This will leave it to news outlets themselves to determine if they wish to apply to be part of this program rather than having it forced on them.

Another important amendment came from the government, and it struck me that the bill made it as far as it did without this much-needed correction. That correction was in clause 36, page 15, line 11, which was amended to address a major gap to properly protect confidential information from being exposed during arbitration. This amendment adds further requirements and sanctions related to the improper disclosure of information by the arbitration panel or each individual arbitrator.

In fact, I was surprised that the government supported as many of the committee’s amendments as they did. Despite all time they had to draft this bill and all the months it has been in the House of Commons, it’s like they realized that it is really a bad bill, but they made promises to certain stakeholders to have this done so here it is.

Here we are, both chambers, in quite the spot at the end of the session, with only days left on the calendar. We will be rushing through third reading, with limited debate, in order to send an amended bill back to the other place so they have time to reply and we have time to accept their message before we all go home for the summer.

This is not the way Parliament should be conducting itself, but has become a hallmark of how it has been conducting itself. They make grand promises and either fail to deliver them altogether or throw together a piece of legislation at the last minute, resulting in poor drafting. Then it’s up to Parliament to fix it, but doing so in a rush to meet the government’s self-imposed deadline.

So now, despite all of the concerns raised by witnesses, committee members and many senators, the government wishes to move this bill into law as quickly as possible with the content of the bill itself becoming almost secondary.

That brings us to the last amendment adopted by our committee in clause 93, page 39, after line 26, that changes the coming-into-force provision. It now requires that the entire bill come into force within six months of receiving Royal Assent, which I have no doubt will happen in the next few days. When it does, the government will then have to show exactly how it will support small businesses, possibly without the involvement of large platforms and possibly in the face of significant trade implications.

With all of that said, I would like to thank all witnesses and senators, including Mr. Owen Ripley who has been a steadfast presence in our deliberations for a number of months. I would also like to thank Marc-André Roy and David Groves from our Law Clerk office for their diligent work; Jed Chong and Khamla Heminthavong from the Library of Parliament; our committee’s administrative assistant, Natassia Ephrem; and our unflappable committee clerk, who did tremendous work both on Bill C-11 and now on Bill C-18, Mr. Vincent Labrosse.

Finally, I would like to thank all my colleagues on the committee and our excellent staff who work to support us and provide the wonderful results that we see in the work we do. Thank you very much, colleagues.

Senator Housakos: We have cell bills and internet bills or connectivity bills, right? See what those giants are charging Canadians compared to other nations around the world.

By the way, they’ve become as big as they are because they gouge consumers and taxpayers and because of the regulatory protection we have afforded them for decades through the CRTC and through governments — successive governments, by the way — Liberal, Conservative and other ones. At some particular point, we’ve got to stand up for the consumer and for Canadians and say, “Enough is enough; some competition is good.” And let’s stop saying every time we have a business model that is failing because somebody is more innovative, more cost-effective and is garnering more customer service that we’re going to step in and we’re going to make it an equal playing field. We’re going to help those with the bad ideas and bad fiscal results and we’re going to prop them up with taxpayers’ money. Let’s call this what it is: a shakedown in an effort to protect the status quo.

Big tech isn’t stealing content. They aren’t taking the work of journalists and profiting off it without journalists being fairly compensated. The passage of Bill C-18 won’t result in one journalist in this country getting a raise. More importantly, let’s also keep in mind that a lot of the content that we are talking about that’s being stolen by tech companies is being downloaded and placed there by journalists themselves.

As I have said many times before, these platforms are actually providing a service to news outlets to drive traffic to their products and to their content. We aren’t talking about the reproduction of content without fair attribution or compensation. We’re not talking about links taking consumers to the actual Global News or CTV News websites.

I consider Facebook to be the Uber or even the cab driver, and Global News is the restaurant. Would we expect the cabbie to give the restaurant a percentage of the fare that was collected? Of course not. Just because someone, in this case, has figured out a way to monetize someone else’s product, it does not mean they are stealing that product. It doesn’t mean the manufacturer of that product is being any less fairly compensated. As long as the copyright laws are being respected — and they are here — nothing is being stolen.

None of us are forced to post our work. Senators, local restaurants, every single business in the country, artists of all sorts — they’re posting their stuff. We’re all posting our stuff on these websites, and we’re posting it because we’re getting more reach. We’re getting more of our constituents in our home provinces to see the work we do here in the Senate, advocating on their behalf.

Journalists add their links to their stories on Facebook because it accentuates their work; it drives more people to their website. So if you’re writing articles for La Presse in Montreal and you post it on your Facebook account, it’s because that journalist is benefiting from people that are being driven to La Presse‘s website, and, of course, that’s a paywall. If more people are driven to the site because of a journalist promoting their product, that paywall grows, and that business grows.

By the way, back to my earlier point, there is a lot of print media in the country that is flourishing because of digital platforms. There are a lot of them that have to be lauded because they were ahead of their time and they realized they needed to adjust. The Globe and Mail adjusted. The Globe and Mail is as effective today as they were when I was a kid. They have great coverage. They still have a great product, and they are still making money, but they were also one of the first to sit down and make a deal with these platforms, and the platforms understood that this was a good product for them to make a good deal with.

And there are many more. Village Media was cited by one of the colleagues who spoke earlier. They’re a huge success story, as is Western Standard News Media Corp. There are so many out there, and, really, I don’t want to miss any, but Blacklock’s Reporter is another one. They’re an online subscription digital paper. They’re doing as well as ever.

The only one trying to steal their content, colleagues, is the government. They are in court right now because the Trudeau government that wants to protect independent journalistic organizations has been taking their product and spreading it around ministries without giving them their due. But Bill C-18 is going to save the industry? Why don’t we start with having our government departments respect paywalls of journalists and respect their content before we start passing legislation to protect certain giants?

Traditional media and some journalists themselves are struggling to adapt to the digital world and what that means for delivery and consumption of news. Shaking down big tech and driving them to the point where platforms like Meta and Alphabet will stop promoting your content is not the win this government and a lot of people in media think it is. I fear this legislation will have the opposite of the desired effect.

We have seen how serious Meta is about stopping the dissemination of news information. The people that will be hurt when that happens — and I believe it will happen. I think there is no reason why a business model that’s designed to be free to give consumer choice and to drive traffic is going to continue to drive traffic for the media and the journalists in this world if they have to pay for that service. Their whole business model will be disrupted, and the loser will be Canadian consumers. The loss will be the taxpayers’ because I think there will be a detrimental growth. We had witnesses who came before our committee, including print associations that represent journalists in this country, who say that thanks to Meta, their traffic is up as much as 31%, 32% or 33%.

We all know that the only way you make money — I don’t care if you’re a journalist or if you’re selling hotdogs or if you’re a local gas station — is you need traffic and you need people to be attracted to your product. The only people who don’t need to attract consumers are government agencies or government Crown corporations, because they have taxpayers’ money to compensate, so they don’t have to be that agile and they don’t have to be that good. That’s the truth.

Facebook and Google are at a point right now where, like any business, when you have a government that wants to come in and regulate you and tell you what to do with your business enterprise — and I don’t care who it is — at some point, you’re going to say, “You know what, I’m going to shut down and go elsewhere; there’s no future here.” Again, the loser will be our country because we live —

[Translation]

Senator Housakos: Can I ask for five more minutes to wrap up?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which deals with Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.

(For text of report, see today’s Journals of the Senate, p. 1831.)

Senator Housakos: It would be my pleasure.

Senator Housakos: I’m getting to the question; examples are useful sometimes. How can we have a government that says they care about this little guy when we are actually taking steps not to allow for competition to fester and grow in the marketplace like, for example, Rogers buying Shaw?

Senator Housakos: Thank you, colleagues, and I look forward to studying this bill at committee.

Senator Housakos: My question is a follow-up to Senator Cardozo’s questions.

Senator Manning, as you know, Senator Cardozo makes the parallel between us senators and government officials. We’re not government officials — we’re parliamentarians, for starters. Our role is to keep government officials to account — like the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, and the government.

Your speech touched a lot on fairness and small players, as did the question from Senator Cormier. When we look at the Canada Media Fund, we look at the money they sent to the CBC. In addition to the $1.4 billion, we allow that big player to take — I won’t say steal — advertising money away from competition in the marketplace. Now we have the government who also claims it wants to create a fair, equitable system and help the small operator. The CRTC — these gatekeepers — have approved Rogers buying up Shaw — one giant buying up another giant. How does that sound —

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-18, the online news act.

A few weeks ago, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Harder, said he hoped that we could all agree that action is needed to address the challenges faced by the Canadian news sector at this time.

I do agree that legacy news media in this country are facing challenges, as they struggle to compete with online news outlets and platforms for eyeballs and for advertising revenue. Some are struggling more than others, and I think that’s something that should be included in any study of this legislation.

Why are some succeeding where others are failing? That’s partly where I take issue with this legislation — that it establishes, as its baseline, that journalism as a whole is in peril in this country. Where I take further issue is that it is a problem that warrants government intervention. I have difficulty wrapping my head around the notion that government sticking its nose in will somehow ensure a free and independent news media — the two don’t really go together.

There is no denying that bricks and mortar newsrooms in Canada are being decimated — in particular, newspaper publishers and small, independent outlets. Canadians, like everyone else in the world, are consuming news differently. More and more, they are turning to online platforms for content, and advertisers are following them. As a result, legacy media are now forced to compete for advertising revenue over which they used to enjoy a monopoly. But, colleagues, if they’re unable to successfully do so, that’s a problem with their business model, not with journalism at large.

Let’s be honest about the intent of this legislation: It’s not about preserving a free and independent press that, yes, I agree, is so vital to a healthy democracy. It’s about preserving a system of journalism with which we are familiar and comfortable — and, in the case of the current government, has also served them well.

For a government that proclaims to embrace innovation and technology unlike any other government before them, they keep drafting legislation that punishes and disincentivizes innovation. The simple fact is that government has no business in the news business within a robust and healthy democracy.

When a government steps in to dictate what qualifies as “quality” or “professional” news, and starts handing out financial supports on that basis, that is no longer a free and independent news media.

Colleagues, it’s human nature to distrust someone whose very survival is dependent on another person or entity. It’s why we have conflict of interest laws and codes. Even the appearance of a possible conflict is to be avoided. That is especially true when it comes to news media.

I am very disappointed to see the government, including the sponsor of this bill here in the Senate, use the prospect of fighting disinformation and misinformation as justification for this legislation, as if only the government, or its proxies, can be the arbiter of what information is worthy of consuming.

It’s very dangerous, colleagues. Yet, it keeps coming up, even after a member in the House of Commons was forced to apologize.

Liberal member of Parliament, and a former journalist herself, Lisa Hepfner claimed in committee during study of Bill C-18 that:

. . . we’ll see the argument that a couple hundred other online news organizations have popped up in that time, what we don’t see is that they’re not news.

They’re not gathering news. They’re publishing opinion only.

In an apology that she was forced to issue over that comment, MP Hepfner couldn’t help herself and, again, denigrated online news by implying that most of them are not trusted sources of news but, rather, sources of fake news.

Colleagues, you scoff at our suggestions that all of these pieces of legislation — this bill and its predecessor, Bill C-11 — are attempts by the Trudeau government to control what Canadians see online, but the truth is the call is coming from inside the House — literally.

While we’re on the topic of misinformation and disinformation, let’s talk about the complete misrepresentation of how news is being shared on Facebook and Google, and what this legislation will supposedly do.

Liberal MP Hepfner, again, described it in the following way in a tweet after Bill C-18’s passage in the House of Commons. She tweeted that Bill C-18:

. . . makes it harder for big digital platforms like Facebook and Google to steal local journalists’ articles and repost them without credit . . . .

That is such an appalling distortion of facts and reality from a member of a government that talks ad nauseam about combatting misinformation and disinformation online, and then they go ahead and perpetuate it.

These platforms don’t “steal” content. If anything, they’re actually showcasing the work of journalists, and driving traffic to legacy media’s own websites — just like they showcase our work when we post our own content as politicians.

Ms. Hepfner makes it sound as though Facebook and Google are out there copying and pasting content and trying to pass it off as their own. Colleagues, that’s ludicrous.

In the case of Facebook, its users — people like you and all of us — are providing links to news items that take you to their originating website, whether it be CTV News or CBC or the Western Standard or any one of these outlets.

It’s the same with Google, whether you’re looking at Google News, which is an aggregator that clearly identifies the source of the story and links directly to that site, or when you’re using Google as a search engine, where it again brings you directly to the originating source site of the journalist’s story.

There’s no stealing of content nor failure to properly credit anyone or any outlet for their work. Accusing the platforms of theft would be like a restaurant accusing a cab driver of stealing their customers when they drop them off at the door. It’s ludicrous.

Yes, these online platforms have found a way to financially benefit from the work of others; and, in turn, with only so much ad revenue to go around, it cuts into the profits of the media outlets. Of that there is no doubt.

But let’s stick with the analogy of the cab driver and the restaurant. A couple is dining out and they know they want to have a few drinks at dinner and don’t want to drive, so they take a cab to and from the restaurant. They only have so much budgeted for their evening out, so they know that they have to deduct the cab fare from the amount they had set aside at the restaurant. That’s logical.

Is the restaurant owner now going to say to the cab driver, “Okay, you owe me a portion of the fare”? No, he or she is thankful for the business; especially in today’s world where food delivery services are draining a lot of business from in-house dining.

Those same restaurants, by the way, have had to adapt, as a result of those food delivery services, to new technology and how we order from restaurants. It is the same way that the news media will have to adapt to the digital world — and some have adapted.

By the way, nobody is forcing news media to make their content available online to be shared on platforms like Facebook or Google. They choose to post the content themselves and encourage others to share by putting those little icons for sharing available on every item. They know the benefit they derive from having their content shared — it’s magnified. In the case of Google, media outlets proactively make their content available to show up in a Google search by enabling their RSS feed. They could simply not enable that feed, and, in the case of sharing on other platforms, they could put their content behind a paywall. A digital subscription is no different from a paid subscription. It’s difficult to accuse someone of stealing something that’s on offer for free.

Recently, Google carried out what they called a test in Canada in which they stopped providing links to Canadian news for what they say was less than 4% of the population in Canada. Government officials went off accusing them of “stealing” content and of “blocking” content.

I’ll return to my restaurant analogy. It would be like the cab driver saying, “Okay, I don’t want to be accused of stealing your customers, so I won’t bring people to your restaurant anymore.” And then the restaurant manager accuses him of stopping customers from going to the restaurant.

Colleagues, do we not see the ridiculousness of it all?

Furthermore, it’s just not true. During Google’s test, not one Canadian was prevented from accessing whatever news site they wanted to access — not one. That’s not how the internet works.

It’s not about defending big tech, as I’m sure I will be accused of doing. It’s about being factual and speaking plainly about the reality of the situation.

We have a government engaging in the very misinformation they claim to want to combat, just as they are engaging in the very bullying and intimidation that they’re accusing Alphabet and Meta of, the parent companies of Google and Facebook.

That was the reaction of the Trudeau government to Google’s recent test and to Meta making it clear that if they are forced to pay every time one of its members shares a link to a news article in Canada, they will halt the practice altogether. They will simply say, “Don’t use our platform. Use another search engine.” Nobody forces a journalist to use Google or any other platform. It is free. It is called freedom. You have a choice.

These two companies are engaging in a good old-fashioned game of chicken. They are calling the government’s bluff, and it’s no surprise that the government is reacting negatively to it.

However, that does not justify what the government did in retribution. For those who may not be aware, Google was called on the carpet to explain their decision to carry out their recent test. Not only was the witness from Google intimidated by MP Chris Bittle — he seems to be turning that into an art form — he went so far as to state that perhaps they would have to consult with the law clerk to determine what further could be done because Mr. Bittle simply wasn’t satisfied with the responses he received.

The government used that parliamentary committee to compel the production of third-party correspondence from these two companies, as it relates to a bill that is no longer in that chamber for consideration.

We are talking about correspondence between these entities and private citizens voicing opposition to this government’s legislation, and this government is demanding that it be turned over.

Talk about witch hunts. Talk about inadvertently browbeating and arm-twisting witnesses. To what end? What purpose does this serve? Never mind how rich it is for this government to demand a level of transparency from others that it has gone to great lengths to avoid providing itself.

This is the kind of strong-arming we’d expect from Beijing or Tehran or Havana, or even from the mob. It is not supposed to be how we conduct ourselves in a free and democratic society.

It’s the kind of witness intimidation we saw from the same member of government during their and our study of Bill C-11.

I know it’s easy to demonize online platforms, in particular Alphabet and Meta, who are the parent companies of Google and Facebook. There has certainly been a lot of it in this chamber and committee over the past several months, but this is beyond the pale.

Colleagues, I understand the reflex to help struggling newsrooms, especially the smaller, independent and local ones. The government has certainly played on that sentiment.

But the truth is that this bill will not breathe new life into struggling newspapers or upstart or ethnic venture newspapers. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the money collected through this scheme will actually go to big broadcasters, including none other than my beloved funded CBC.

That’s not me saying that; it’s the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an independent officer of Parliament. According to an analysis carried out by the PBO, newspapers and online news outlet media would get less than a quarter of the funding collected from Facebook and Google.

It is CBC, Bell, Shaw and Rogers, our beloved telecommunications giants, who would stand to make $248 million from this scheme, while newspapers and smaller, independent and ethnic online outlets would be left scrapping it out for the remaining $81 million. It’s not me saying it; it is the PBO.

Why is CBC even eligible for this funding? They already have an advantage over all others by allowing them to compete for ad revenue, while also receiving government funding to the tune of $1.4 billion per year. Are we now going to give them another leg up by allowing them to cut into this funding?

If we want to help the smaller, independent outlets, stop making them compete against CBC. If this legislation is passed, CBC should not be eligible for funding it generates, or every dollar they do receive should be deducted from their government funding.

In closing, I want to go back to something Senator Harder said about the newsrooms that do the heavy lifting and how their work must be supported and that they must be fairly compensated.

Few outlets, if any, in this town have done more heavy lifting in exposing the waste and ethical corruption of the current government than the online outlet Blacklock’s. They are one of the outlets I spoke about earlier that employs a business model of putting their content behind a paywall and charging a subscription fee.

Yet, this Trudeau government has been embroiled in a years‑long legal battle with Blacklock’s because government departments and offices keep sharing their content without paying the subscription fee. That’s why they’ve been before the court for years.

Think about that: This government is out there telling you that we must support free and open journalism and that these journalists must be fairly compensated for their work — noble. All the while, they’re openly circumventing Blacklock’s paywall and outright infringing on their copyright. That is actually stealing content — and that is parliamentary language. If somebody takes something that doesn’t belong to them, free and unwarranted, it is called stealing.

So the government’s talking points on this legislation are beyond rich. No doubt, they justify it by telling themselves that Blacklock’s isn’t what they consider a “professional” outlet providing “quality” news. That’s because they criticize. So anybody who criticizes is not professional — they’re fake and they’re not quality. Do you see the parallels here? They would say that about any outlet, I think, that’s highly critical of them. Even The Globe and Mail — sometimes they’re legitimate, sometimes they’re not, depending on the news story.

And that, colleagues, is precisely why the government and politicians have absolutely no business in the business of news.

Senator Plett: Hear, hear.

Senator Housakos: My speech, as you know, Senator Lankin, is a critique of this bill. It’s not incumbent on me to find all the solutions. But I do believe vehemently — and that’s why I oppose this piece of legislation — that the objective is honourable. We are trying to help failing — and particularly print — news platforms across this country. We all grew up with them. They are learning tools. They are so fundamental to our democracy. You are absolutely right — some are more left, some are more right, and that’s normal. I don’t have any issue with that. I encourage that as part of the democratic process.

But even in today’s digital world, some of them are very successful. They might not like it, but I’ll use The Globe and Mail as an example. They have adapted quickly to the new realities of the digital world. The digital world has offered a unique opportunity. It’s a megaphone to promote our work, and it has offered it to journalists, artists and politicians. It is something I believe we should embrace and learn how to use it effectively. The Globe and Mail has a subscription-type system that they have been using now for a number of years. They are as successful today as they have ever been in the past.

Another outlet, the National Post — and again, they might not like this — has not adapted to the digital reality as quickly, and we have seen their newsrooms across the country suffering. I’m not picking one or the other, but they are two prime examples of important national newspapers. One is really thriving in the digital world, and the other one isn’t.

It’s the same with local weekly newspapers. In my neighbourhood, once upon a time, there were six. Now there are three that are suffering, two are doing really well and one, unfortunately, went bust.

We have seen now with this government’s noble attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to prop them up — to suspend them — that it hasn’t worked. The ones that are doing well are still doing well because they’ve adapted. For the ones that are not, all the money in the world won’t help them.

From my 20 years of business experience, I have learned something. If your business model is not adaptable to the economic realities of the time, the government can give you all the money in the world and you won’t succeed.

I don’t have the solution at my fingertips. I hope we have that robust, intense discussion at our committees — thank God, in Senate committees we do have those types of robust discussions — and, hopefully, we can come up with some decent, thoughtful amendments that would help this industry that we all agree and recognize has to flourish.

Unfortunately, for me, this is a shakedown of certain digital platforms that are not content providers. They are just platforms for content to be exported. We are shaking them down in order to help an industry that hasn’t adapted to that particular reality. There have been winners and losers. I think the marketplace should let them work it out.

By the way, Google has been negotiating with news outlets now for years. They have made arrangements with newspapers and different organizations. The Globe and Mail is an example, right? They have made a deal.

All I am simply saying, again, is let the marketplace figure it out amongst themselves in a conducive fashion.

[Translation]

Senator Housakos: If I understand correctly, senator, you’re essentially saying that journalists need these platforms in order to magnify their work and have more reach. By the same token, they would like to quantify how much monetization is out there in order for them to get their share. That’s the problem.

This is where I’m not quite sure if this bill achieves that goal, and I’m not quite sure how you actually put a number on it.

To go back to copyright, my understanding — I’m not a copyright expert — is the moment the journalist puts out — into the public sphere — their article, for example, then they’ve made it public. It’s being disseminated on all these platforms with their consent because, to your point, they want to magnify their article.

In both those cases, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You either jump into that milieu or you don’t — where I come from.

[Translation]

Senator Housakos: Thank you. I’ll try to cobble my three questions together as we have discussed them. The jury is still out for me on this particular bill. I appreciate the objective that the government has. I think we all understand how important free and democratic journalism is to our democracy.

My three questions are the following: First, what would you say to the critics who say journalists have a choice to post their products online and on the web or not to post them?

Second, we already have copyright laws in this country, of course, that protect content creators if somebody steals their material.

The third question is an analogy that Senator Harder didn’t like, but maybe I’ll get a better answer from you. I feel this bill is the equivalent of somebody jumping in an Uber, going to a particular restaurant for a meal, and then the restaurant saying, “I want a percentage of the fare of the Uber, as well, that brought you here, because if I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be in business.”

Can I have your thoughts on all three of those perspectives, which, of course, are views from critics on the bill?

[Translation]

Senator Housakos: And what about copyright protection?

[Translation]

Hon. Leo Housakos: Would Senator Miville-Dechêne take a question?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Thank you for your speech, Senator Harder.

I was very skeptical about Bill C-11 in terms of the government having an objective to predetermine winners and losers. In the case of Bill C-18, I understand the objective, and I think it’s about fairness and respecting copyright and content. But I still have some concerns and I’m skeptical if it actually does achieve that.

What would you say to critics who will argue that the web actually just magnifies and amplifies the work of those content producers? When a journalist at Quebecor or CBC posts to Twitter or Facebook, they do it because they want to amplify and get as much reach as possible for their work. Without those platforms, they wouldn’t be getting that reach.

What happens now when we jump into an Uber to go to dinner tonight and, once we get to the restaurant, the Uber driver says, “I also want a percentage of the bill tonight that you spend at that restaurant, because if it wasn’t for my platform, you wouldn’t be having this exchange?” Or, regarding this wonderful speech you just gave, when you post it on Twitter or when the Senate puts it on Facebook, are we entitled to ask for royalties from all those platforms when we’re actually using those platforms in order to propel our work?

Senator Harder: Thank you for your question, senator.

If I can take your analogy, the Uber driver who will take us to dinner would be worthy of a portion of that expense if he were providing the dinner. He’s not.