The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Michael Geist: Why the Online News Act is a policy disaster

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Amid years of decline in news ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This controversial piece of legislation requires Google and Meta - the company behind Facebook and Instagram – to pay Canadian news outlets for linking their content to these social media sites. Meta responded by blocking all Canadian news content from Facebook and Instagram, while Google has recently agreed to pay $100 million to Canadian publishers, indexed for inflation. Our guest on this Munk Dialogue is Michael Geist, one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. Michael is an expert in Canadian technology law and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, and argues that far from helping Canadian news outlets, media organizations – unable to drive users from social media – will not only suffer from a loss of revenue, but they will become more reliant on government subsidies to stay afloat and thus become less objective in their reporting. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, access to our Friday Focus podcast, a free Munk Debates book, and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarchy. And though I am, of course, in Anglo, I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Hello, Monk listeners, Roger Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the Monk Dialogues.

These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each Monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues that are driving the public conversation and shaping our collective future. Amid years of decline in news ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape, the Canadian government introduced Bill CAT, the Online News Act. This controversial piece of legislation required Google and Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, to pay Canadian news outlets for linking their content to and on these social media sites.

Meta ultimately responded by blocking all Canadian news content on Facebook and Instagram, a ban that remains in place as of today. Google, instead, in the end, and agreed to pay approximately $100 million annually index to inflation to be exempted from the act. So what are these big decisions that we've seen in the last few weeks mean for the future of news in Canada? Let's find out by talking to our monk dialogue guest Michael Geist. He's been a close student of the legislation and one of its fiercest critics. He's also a leading expert in technology law.

He holds the research chair in Internet and e-commerce at the University of Ottawa. Michael, as you'll hear, is concerned that news organizations have, in effect, entered into a Faustian bargain with the government. You could see them over the coming years ending up more reliant on government subsidies to stay afloat. And this, in turn, could cause real damage to their credibility with the public. Let's find out more by speaking with Michael Geist right now. Michael, welcome to the month dialogues. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Well, this conversation was originally supposed to be a debate, Michael,

a debate about a piece of legislation here in Canada called C-18, the Online News Act. We wanted to have a debate for our listening audience on the merits and demerits of governments trying to figure out ways to have industry, in this case, big tech, pay for and subsidize. news creation and journalism in Canada. This is a hot issue, not just in this country, but in other jurisdictions around the world that are grappling with the decline of free and available news for citizens to make decisions about their democracy. We care about that here at the

Monk debates. Unfortunately, Michael, we weren't able to pull off a debate. People didn't want to take the other side. So why don't we begin this conversation with how you position yourself in this debate. What's your POV? Are you pro or con? The approach that the Canadian government at least has taken towards trying to get big tech industry to pay for

news creation. Thanks for that. I think that's a good place to start. And I guess I've been a pretty fierce critic of the legislation, really from day one and remain so. And I think that a lot of the concerns that I raised and that frankly many other people were raising have been borne out.

That is not to say that myself and many others don't recognize that there are real issues within the media space, both in Canada and elsewhere, and that there may well be a role for government or government policy to play in providing support, and there may well be a role for private companies, some of the large tech companies, to play there as well. But the approach that the government took created some significant risks, and I think that those risks have in many ways borne out, leaving the government basically trying to save the furniture in a sense almost as much as they could towards the very end. They're not at the absolute worst case scenario, but it's still a piece of

legislation that doesn't come close to offering the promise that the government and those that lobbied for it. We're hoping for, indeed, I think it still brings some significant harms, some on the financial side, and some, as we see this unfolding sort of framework that we've got, with respect to the independence of the media and Canada more broadly. And those are consequences that may play out for some time. Yeah, let's unpack this for our listening audience by starting with that last comment of yours about, in a sense, the debate as to whether subsidies themselves are harmful or not for the media.

In the Canadian context, to what degree has that been part of the conversation? because I think we have a lot of American listeners. I know in the United States, well, the exception to California, but generally in the United States, there is not a lot of debate about government finding different ways, either directly or indirectly, to pay for news creation. It's not a big part of, you know, the political issues that Americans at least care about.

So talk to us about why you think in Canada this has become such a kind of fixation for policymakers. arguably this piece of legislation dominated a lot of our conversations about this government, about its legislative agenda over the last six months. It did, I think part of that maybe, because the media likes to talk about the media. And so we did see a lot of coverage of it. But I think you're right that the question of the appropriate role for government in this context is one that in some places would basically ensure that this kind of legislation is a bit of a non-starter.

and yet in Canada, we've seen a gradual evolution of how the government has perceived this issue. I think in the early days of the current government, there was some skepticism or some concern about having the government become directly involved or even indirectly, in a sense, involved in supporting the media, recognizing the risks that it posed to, at a minimum, the perception of independence. as the situation worsened amongst certain entities. And I think governments, or at least politicians, began to see the potential consequence of losing some of what they saw as mechanisms to communicate with constituents, with would-be supporters.

I think they began to become concerned. And so we started off with just some funding through what's known as the Local Journalism Initiative. That was at least a little bit arm's length, or it was funding actual journalism rather than entities. that then expanded into a much larger program into the hundreds of millions of dollars with the labor journalism tax credit, providing at the time about 25% of the costs of journalists for what's known as qualified Canadian journalism organization. So it was largely in the print and some digital but not for broadcasters.

It was worth a little under $14,000 per journalist. And once you did that, it was pretty clear government was pretty directly involved. And then we moved on to C18 with this notion that big tech could be made. to pay for the news as well, largely because they were linking to the news. It wasn't on the basis of making full-text copies or anything like that. It was simply linking to them in the case of Medell, Facebook or Instagram, their users, often the publishers posting links to the articles that would drive traffic back to the original publisher. And the argument was that somehow those platforms ought to be paying for that in the case of Google.

As part of search results or the Google News Service, again, links that would drive traffic. and they ought to pay there. And so we find ourselves sort of knee-deep in a world where the Canadian government, either directly or indirectly, envisioned paying, frankly, the majority of the costs of news amongst at least certain entities. I mean, the vision was up to 35% of costs coming from tech companies and now with changes to the labor journalism tax credit,

35% of the costs of those journalists, more than doubling, actually, the amount available per journal. almost $30,000 per journalist. Now, they're not quite getting all of that in the context of C-18, but there's simply no question that government policy is responsible for a lot of the costs of many journalist outlets and or news outlets. And then that begs the question. Let's say we have an election in a year or two, which we will. And let's say you have a party that finds itself against this issue,

against this kind of funding, arguing for whatever reason that they don't think government should be funding in this way, will there be fair coverage amongst the media outlets who say, well, half our costs are basically at risk or more than half our costs are been put at risk if this party gets elected. And will they cover it straight or will this influence the kind of coverage they get? And I think you'd have to be pretty naive to think that at least on the editorial side, not day-to-day journalists per se, but on the editorial side, of course it will have influence on the kind of coverage that this issue and perhaps the election itself can. it's you've thought a lot and worked a lot around how government you know funds culture in Canada do you think part of the reason for this michael is because of a history and a certain type of approach that we've used in the past to support you know film and television and and in a sense journalists you know first for a government policymaker of a certain type with a certain

an ideological set of preferences might simply be seen as, you know, another form of content producer. Um, so therefore, you know, potentially worthy to be subject to the beneficence of the state to support, you know, activities that like film and television, the government has generally said are public goods and therefore need to be furnished in, to some extent, by public subsidies. Well, you're absolutely right that, that kind of cross-subsidity model. is pretty common. We see it absolutely in the film and television production space,

and we just expanded it now with another bill that got a lot of attention, Bill C-11, which ensures that the internet streamers will provide some funding as well. In fact, the internet streamers will be looked to provide funding for news. It's not just going to be film and TV production. I appeared before the CRTC recently as part of their hearings on this bill. And it's clear that as part of those hearings, one of the core, objectives of the broadcasters is that the Netflix's and Amazon's of the world help fund their newsroom. I mean, there's obviously no correlation between news and those services, their entertainment

services, but there's a comfort level with saying that it's part, you're funding broadcast, this is part of broadcast, and so you ought to be funding that as well. So I think there is that kind of comfort level. I also think that there is wrongly, this view that, you know, that news is a public good, which is not the part that's wrong. I think there is a public element to it, and so we need to think about potential solutions. But I think there are those in government that say,

well, of course we wouldn't seek to ensure that we get certain kinds of coverage. We're just there to ensure that these entities can survive. But yet it's just so obvious that we saw in the lead up to the legislation, the coverage, the editorial coverage was skewed during the legislation itself. We know multiple instances where op-eds critical of the legislation are critical government were spiked by some of the entities that were actively lobbying for this. And I think that if you took someone outside of this kind of policy bubble, they would say, well, of course, this is going to have an effect.

And yet, for whatever reason within this world, there's this notion, certainly on the policy side, that, well, we think that we can do this. And we would never try to exert our power over the kind of coverage that it gets, although they, I think, do exert power over the coverage they get in a number of different ways, perhaps not financial. But of course, at the end of the day, if you're an entity who said your very survival depends on these policies, I don't think it can help but influence the kind of coverage that you give it. Yeah. Yeah, it's remarkable to think.

I mean, if you add up potentially, not for all outlets, but some digital news outlets, the existing direct government subsidies plus now the Google subsidies, it could equal half of all costs related to news production on a per employee basis. So that doesn't include, I presume, you know, accountants and lawyers and executives. But it's still for these large companies, so for our American listeners, there's a large company called PostMedia that's really kind of struggled financially now for years. This is potentially a public subsidy to a private corporation in, I don't know, the millions of dollars per year. it just seems, Michael, a strange way to go about also thinking about an industry that is in change. What are your thoughts about how this approach that the government has taken could end up benefiting incumbents, possibly hindering innovation, which supposedly what so much government policy is interested in fostering in the first place? Yeah, no, that's a really important question. And I want to, and I'll come to it, but I want to quickly note that this idea that it wouldn't fund necessarily executives or others that are kind of a bit more tangential within those organizations.

Based on the government's regulations, I'm not even so sure that that's the case. The government's regulations that they've just put out attempt to, I think, benefit the large legacy players at the expense of some of the smaller innovative players by expanding the definition of journalists to include any, involved in the production of news. And so we're not just talking about journalists here. We're talking about many of the other roles and staff that play roles within news organizations who might be said to be part of that world as well. And I think it's pretty clear that the expanded definition is really designed to provide support for some of our larger players who frankly often had deals already in place with Google and meta. In the case of beta, those deals have disappeared. In the case of Google, they are rolled into this new money, the $100 million

that Google is committed to providing. And so they were likely to lose money out of this deal. And so the government began tinkering at the regulatory level to try to find ways to ensure that they got a larger piece of that overall pie. I should note that that runs directly counter to what the government said they would do. Government from day one said they were not going to get involved in negotiations. They were not going to get involved in the allocation. And they've actually done both. They negotiated directly the amount. Now they've got into the question of how it gets allocated, stating a certain percentage for broadcasters, a certain percentage for the CBC, both of which are effectively capped. The rest go to the traditional print and digital. And even within that world,

they've created certain rags that are likely to favor the larger players over some of the smaller and innovative players, and actually even some of the smaller players who ironically were a big part of the conversation while this bill was making it through the legislative process. How do you ensure some of these small players get money? Some of them don't have an online presence. They simply function offline within the community. They're shut out completely because the new regulations now require that the news be produced for the purposes of making it available online. So you've got news outlets who thought they'd get something who get nothing. You get smaller players who get a smaller portion of the pie based on on some of the definitions.

And so this just feels like the government getting in, not just in creating the system, but having a very clear hand in how the money ultimately gets allocated to the benefit of some of the larger players who have, of course, been the most vocal lobbyists all along. Again, to our American listeners who are following on here, it might come as somewhat jarring to think that there is an adjudication process? Would that be the way to put it, to identify who is a journalist? I mean, how does a government practically reach that decision, both in the context of the existing direct subsidies,

but also now this new legislation, will Google get to choose who is a journalist? I mean, what is a journalist? I mean, how do you point in something and say, that is news, that isn't news? It seems like a fraud exercise. It's going to get extremely messy. And so you're right.

There have been attempts to define what a qualified Canadian journalism organization is, and that's for the purposes of the tax credit system that we were talking about earlier. For these purposes, it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out over the coming months. But essentially, Google knows what their obligation is. They've got to pay the $100 million. And basically, that's it. You know, the minister has talked about some of the other kind of non-monmonmonmonial. monetary type compensation, but the regs make it clear that that is not strictly required.

The way it works is that in order to be exempted from final offer arbitration, which was kind of the hammer that existed within the legislation, legislation quite literally now adds within the regulation a provision that says, if you just happen to be the largest search engine with the most amount of advertising in Canada, if you pay $100 million, the CRTC will exempt you. It's literally to that level of specificity. It's a one company regulation. And Google will pay that money. The fight will in many ways exist amongst the various entities to determine how all this gets stalled out.

And we know that there'll be about $5 to $6 million at a minimum that's taken off the top for administrative costs. So it's not really the full $100 million. We know, of course, as well that the about $20 million that META was paying is gone. Most believe that Google was paying at least double that in the $40 to $50 million. and that kind of gets rolled into the 100 million. So we're not actually talking about that much new money relative to the size of the entire Canadian news sphere. And with that 100 million, we know 7% for the CBC,

or up to 7% for the CBC, up to 30% for the broadcasters. They will fight that out. And the rest going to print and digital. And they will internally, one would think, fight it out to determine how broad is that definition. And they will, and I think most entities will take as aggressive an approach as they can to say that here's all the staff that we have. Now, of course, it's a finite pot. And so the more people you have within that pot, the less you get per person. And the incentive

for each entity will be to count as many people along the way and saying they're all part of the production of news so that they get a larger piece of that pie. Google will basically be, listen, here's the check, you go figure it out. And they'll negotiate some of these issues. And Google will still, of course, be subject to some of the other rules within the legislation. But it will get, I think, quite messy. And there will even be a fight over who gets to do the negotiate. Because the way the regulations are set up is that Google has to negotiate a deal. But it doesn't say with who, it doesn't say who's going to actually form this sense of collective or fund. And one could well imagine a fight for, if there's five or six million or perhaps even more on the administrative

cost side, one could well imagine the news side, the broadcast side, perhaps some other entities, all vying to become the entity that ultimately represents the sector in these negotiations. But who's to say, Michael, let's say the Canadian Restaurant Association publishes an online newsletter for its thousands of members. It must have tens of thousands of members across Canada. Who's to say that's not news? I guess what I'm trying to understand is how do you adjudicate this? How, as you say, doesn't that pie just become sliced into oblivion by everyone and everything, that is publishing online, self-declaring, self-identifying as journalists and as news organizations in order to get at the subsidy.

Right. Well, the regulations actually do exclude some certain news products, so they would exclude that, for example. So it does speak to general news, so it can't be some of this industry-specific stuff that isn't intended for that broader audience. Even those questions, though, can, I think, be challenging at times. And we've seen some of that play out in the past. It played out as part of the definitions

for a qualified Canadian journalism organization. So you had some entities, one that comes to mind. It's a lot of people like this publication. It's called The Logic, which focuses on the innovation space. It's a pretty innovative entity itself. We've been generally quite vocal in support of this legislation. Whether or not it's truly general interest news or it's more targeted news is, I think, a worthwhile debate.

They were able to get the designated. and so have been beneficiaries of that. So that tells us that it isn't just general, general in the way that one might think of it. There can be some specialty there. But if it is so narrowly industry focused, it's likely to fall outside of that. But you're right.

There is going to be a bit of a free-for-all as entities seek to ensure that they get something here. And, of course, the more that are eligible for this, the less money that is available, you know, on a per-journalist base, and certainly for entities themselves, all in an environment where it's a little under 60 million, let's say, when you factor in the administrative costs, but that's what's being shared amongst all of these various entities.

And the deals that existed before were probably in that range already, maybe a little bit less, but probably not all that far off. And they were going to a smaller number of entities, which, of course, you don't have to be an expert in math to recognize that means there are many, many entities that will end up with less under this system than they were getting before. And that's before we even calculate the harm that this legislation has created in terms of the lost links on meta. So all the value of those news links are gone, the lost investment in the space, because there have been many that have said, why would I invest in news in Canada when there is this kind of regulatory uncertainty? So I think at

the end of the day, it becomes a tremendous own goal, certainly on that new side. And the same, I think, in many respects, is true for, let's say the CBC, who I never quite understood why they would want to be eligible for this. I thought this was a great opportunity for the public broadcaster to distinguish itself, to make a case that it provided value in a world moving towards paywalls that all Canadians would have non-paywalled access to credible news. And instead, it decided to lump itself in with the commercial space, give up that opportunity to differentiate and make a case for itself for $7 million,

less, once you include the administrative stuff. I mean, honestly, there's been a lot of concerns about the leadership within the CBC. That strikes me as a fireable offense to basically have sold your integrity and your reputation on this issue for less than $7 million. Less than 1% of your budget.

It's interesting to mention paywalls because I was just trying to just listening to you now. I was trying to think, so we're going to subsidize with public funds, newspapers, which I think to their credit are funding themselves through subscriptions. But by virtue of subscriptions, I as the taxpayer who's providing this public subsidy

will not have access to the content that I'm subsidizing. That seems a little counterproductive. If you're stated policy objective, to provide citizens, I guess, at some lofty level with the information and facts that they need to make, you know, informed decisions about, you know, the issues that they face in their communities or as a people's, as a nation. You know, it's an interesting observation. That was the view, I would say, very early in the government's approach to this sector. And so we mentioned earlier on the local journalism initiative of the LJI.

And that was much more explicitly about funding journalism and ensuring that it was as widely and broadly accessible as possible. So in fact, one of the conditions that's associated with journalism that's created through that program, through the LGI, is that it's available under a Creative Commons license, which is an open license, that would allow other entities to make use of that same material, essentially saying the public's paid for it. Let's make this as broadly and openly available as possible. I personally think that the CBC should be adopting exactly the same model and proving its value by making its content as openly and as freely available as possible, including for reuse by others, although, of course, current leadership has seen as taken a different position. But you're right that for the rest, and certainly in terms of the government's approach more recently with the labor journalism tax credit, in terms of the content that is now going to be funded or the organizations that will be funded by some of that. Google money. There is no guarantee that the public has access. In fact, in many instances, is quite clear the public does not have access unless they pay for it. And that, to me, was one of the deep flaws in this legislation. It was at the end of the day an attempt to, and the government

even described this way. They were value in the links to the information. And so the notion was, you need to pay for those links. There are people that object to the term of calling this a link tax. sometimes they say it's not a tax so that it doesn't qualify. But it's pretty clear that the way that they roped in the companies was based on the fact that they were linking to this content. And to me, that was always a bit of a problem in the sense that even with a link wasn't necessarily providing you with access to the content at all. It might be providing you simply to a paywall page and that content was not available. In fact, those were decisions that the publisher could make. The idea that that was actual value, that somehow there was value of sending someone to a paywalled page and informing them that they could take out a subscription struck me as bizarre.

Now, in the regulations, there is an attempt to backtrack a little bit from that, and both on the issue of linking and on the issue of copyright, which is also something that should not have been included in the legislation. There's a statement that says, Google's $100 million is not about facilitating access to news nor about copyright. So as a cent to say, we're basically shaking them down for this money and we're not linking it anymore to links or copyright. Though that may help Google a little bit in saying, listen, we didn't really pay for links. Of course, the fact that meta finds itself complying with the law by not linking to content gives us, I think, the truer reality of the legislation. And that is one way of complying is not to be what's known as a digital news intermediary. and you're only a digital news intermediary if we're facilitating access to that news,

i.e. linking to it, which is why we've seen meta-stop linking to news altogether. Did you know that you could give the gift to the monk debates this holiday season? That's right. We are offering both our curator and supporter memberships as charitable gifting opportunities. You can do that right now at our website,

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Michael, it's been a busy year. It hasn't just been the online news act. There's been Bill C-11, other legislation postponed related to online harms. What do you think is going on here in terms of just the seeming chaos of so much of this, for lack of a better expression, unfortunately sausage making by government, is it simply because these are really tough problems? Would it be fair to say that the government has tried to take on really tough things and therefore it has been messy? Or do you think, Michael, there's some, I don't know, either philosophical problem in the approach or maybe government itself no longer has the requisite expertise or the depth of knowledge and

understanding to effectively legislate these areas? Because I think any objective observer stepping back and looking at the last 12 to 18 months in Canada would say that this has not been a positive experience for the government, for the bureaucracy, for consumers, for corporations, it all kind of looks like a cautionary tale. for any country nation legislature that's thinking about taking on, you know, digital regulation. I think it is a cautionary tale, especially the news legislation in particular is a cautionary tale. And some have speculated whether or not Canada will be a model. And I think notwithstanding the fact that there's some money coming from Google,

many countries will look at this experience, see the block news links, see the opportunity cost and the consequences and look at Canada as an example. example of what not to do rather than what to do. I think that it's not quite all of the above in terms of the different kinds of potential reasons that you cite for why we've seen some of the problems, but I think we can we can certainly look to a number of those issues. Part of it, I think, is that the policies have been driven more by politics than policy. And so I think the government in particular was driven by a worldview that tech companies are bad and there are real problems with those tech companies. And I think just about everybody would

agree that there are real problems. with tech companies that are in need of regulation, whether we're talking about competition or privacy and now AI. So there definitely are some real issues. And so I think that it failed to think through the consequences of this legislation simply by saying, as long as we take on these companies, we're going to get support, and these companies will ultimately cave, which I think was also in part of misreading of the businesses and those business models of those companies. You know, For example, in the case of, say, Facebook, there was this view that they could basically have their cake and eat it too. You could force the companies to pay.

You couldn't necessarily force them to carry the links, but the idea was that they would have no real choice. Of course, they would want to have those links. So you can basically get the money and you knew that they would continue to link. And I think that misread both where the company was at. It was degrading or downgrading, I suppose, the amount of news on people's feeds, finding that it wasn't the kind of thing people generally were looking for. they were happier looking at pictures of friends or memes or whatever, what have you. And in fact, in a world where for a social media company, the business model essentially get people on your platform, keep them there as long as possible, and hoover up as much data as you can about them. That's basically what you want to do.

It's not a model that a lot of people like, but that's the model. News in that context is about the worst possible content you could think of. It actually sends people away from your platform. form. It doesn't keep them there. It's literally a link to go somewhere else. And so presented with content that users were quite happy substituting with other sort of content and was driving them away, I don't think Facebook had to think that hard about the prospect of stopping the news links. Now, if the government had been open to listening or open to thinking a bit more about what the market looked like and the business drivers here, it might have been able to better

anticipate that. Same is true, I think, with respect to Bill C-11. the streaming bill, where the government again started thinking that this was almost like a policy ATM, where you could just do unlimited withdrawals. There's just lots of cash there available with no consequence, as if companies that consider different markets to enter into for their streaming services would take a look at potentially millions or tens of millions in additional costs and sort of just shrugged their shoulders and say, well, sure, I'll just pay that. When, of course, many companies will either pass that along to consumers resulting in higher prices or simply avoid the Canadian market altogether. So there are real consequences here. And I think there's been a real failure to better to properly

understand what that market is like. And I think lastly, there's been a failure to prioritize the core issues. These are tough issues. When you start getting into content related issues, these are challenging issues. And it seems to me that we would have been far better off prioritizing competition, better off prioritizing privacy and data governance as the top issues. And once you start dealing with that, then you can say, okay, what remaining problems do we have with some of these other issues? Instead, it's in certain respects, they sought to profit off of the use of our information, right? It was, it wasn't a matter of stopping the misuse of how our data gets used. It was, okay, they're going to misuse our data and make a lot of money doing that.

let's see if we can capture some of that money back, whether through a digital services tax or through mandated payments in C-11 and C-18. I think we'd be a lot better off, especially with the two bills, that the government stopped some of the problematic conduct with real regulation and then sort out what does it mean to have a fair contribution in the country. So if we try to take something away from all this, what do you think that lesson should be? I mean, it seems like we've committed ourselves, at least as far as news and journalism goes, to release for the foreseeable future, to have a significant role for direct and indirect government subsidies, either coming right from the public purse or indirectly through, as you say, a kind of shakedown,

at least of Google so far, maybe others, Netflix, you name it, soon in the sites of the government. And I guess what I'm trying to understand, Michael, is how do we resolve this tension between, you know, the complexities of these technologies and the global nature of these industries and the fact that we as Canadians, you know, probably can and should have a theory of the case. We have an idea of the public good. We want to hopefully articulate that public good through regulation, through legislation. I guess what worries me, Michael, I'm wanting to see if you can help me not feel despondent here is that by kind of botching some of these legislative attempts to address, I think, legitimate issues of public concern. Like, what is the future of news in a society where there's simply less news, less coverage going around? Where does that leave us? Can we shape our futures in this digital world?

Or is it, or are we just relentlessly going to be shaped by this technology and by these large global companies? I think that one of the things that we can take out of this is that legislation is needed for tech, but not all legislative proposals are good proposals. And what we need is good legislation and well-thought-out legislation. You know, it to me was striking to learn that, you know, we're going to have this one-on-one conversation, not have it as a debate because it was so difficult to find people to defend this legislation. And I think in many instances, there were people that felt something needed to be done. And there were those that got behind this legislation just because something was happening.

And I think that's exactly the wrong approach. I think that we need to do smart regulation here. I think we need to look at what other jurisdictions in many instances are doing. Of course, we did that in Australia. And I think didn't draw some of the right responses or the right lessons from a market that's pretty different, that's dominated by Rupert Murdoch, that is likely to see Facebook or exit the market fairly soon as they decrease the amount of news more broadly on their platform. So I think we drew some of the wrong lessons there.

On some of the other issues, though, Europe does provide some examples. You know, we had this large fight over regulating user content when Europe spent almost 10 years debating how to deal with these large streaming services and specifically excluded regulating user content. It was to me inexplicable that the government kept doubling down on something that had been studied in far greater detail elsewhere and for whatever reason decided, no, we were going to just continue to march ahead. So I think it would be unfortunate and I think it would be dangerous, quite frankly, if the lesson we took out of this is that the government ought to stay out of the role of regulating digital companies altogether. Clearly, there is a need to do so.

I think we have better examples elsewhere. I think we need to do a better job of prioritizing, which issues we're going to focus on. I think we need to do a far better job of assessing the consequences. And I think, frankly, when I look back at sort of the political dynamics that took place around this legislation, and I was fortunate, I had a chance to appear multiple times for House and Senate committees on both of these bills, yet always came away with a view that nobody was really listening, that you had, you know, the government basically seeking to line up witnesses who would speak in support of the legislation. interestingly enough, I suppose consistent with the challenge of finding people to debate this legislation, they had a hard time finding many Canadians to appear on that bill as well. It was oftentimes they found

people from Europe or the U.S. or Australia, but not that many Canadians actually who were willing to speak in favor of the legislation other than the sort of the clear lobby groups themselves. And so you had the government not really listening, not wanting to hear from even smaller entities that were critical of the legislation, that were raising concerns. And then, of course, you have others that were looking to jab the government a little bit. But at the end of the day, it became so politicized, and that's true for both of these bills, that the prospect of turning in something better was lost. And, you know, in some ways, there's no better illustration of that, I think, than what happened with C-11, where the Senate conducted what I thought were far better

hearings on the bill. You had independent senators come up with a real compromise to address the issue. Senator Simons and Maville Deshain led that. And it went back to the government and the government still said no. And that to me sent the signal that it didn't matter what people said. It didn't matter what the right policy was. They were so dug in from a political perspective that they were just going to kind of go to the end on this. And I would hope that as we look to future legislation, that we talk about online harms or online safety in the future, perhaps some new digital markets, competition legislation, as we continue on with Bill C-27,

which is legislation dealing with both AI and privacy, that we find some space that is a little bit depoliticized and that there is instead an effort to come out with the very best policy, which I think requires looking at those that offer constructive criticism in a favorable light, as opposed to looking at them as a possible to looking at them as a opponents of the legislation who should be ignored or diminished as much as possible. Great insights. As always, Michael and I urge listeners to check out Michael's podcast, Law Bites.

That's B-Y-T-E-S, not B-I-T-E-S, and also his blog, which is not subscriber only. It is free, available to everyone and anyone who wants thoughtful, informed, deep insights into the intersections of technology. legislation, copyright, Michael does it all, and we'll include links to that blog in our show notes, but it's Michaelgeist.ca. Again, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the program. I'm sorry this wasn't a debate, but I learned a lot, and that's what we try to do with the Monk Dialog, so we appreciate you playing along with us today. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

That a lot of fun. Well, that wraps up today's Monk Dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Michael Geist. certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK, DebateswithanS.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate and civil conversation, one dialogue at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are a project of the

the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.