Juno News - March 05, 2019


Justin Trudeau has rigged political advertising rules


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

173.50885

Word Count

703

Sentence Count

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The international multi-billion dollar corporation Google which has had to
00:00:06.240 navigate the laws and regulations of countries around the world has found
00:00:11.160 that it just can't deal with the burdens put on it by the federal government in
00:00:15.320 Canada so has decided it will not allow political advertisers to well advertise
00:00:21.000 in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election. Now this is a significant
00:00:26.100 decision. Google stands to lose a lot of money by its announcement made this week
00:00:30.040 that no political candidates or political parties will be allowed to
00:00:33.940 advertise once Bill C-76 goes into effect. This is a bill put forward by the
00:00:39.480 Liberals as a way to apparently safeguard Canada's elections but a lot of what's
00:00:44.320 in there has been a knee-jerk reaction to the whole Russia collusion boogeyman
00:00:48.700 discussion emanating from the United States. One of the major regulations put
00:00:53.580 on any advertisers under C-76 is that they must have a complete inventory of
00:00:58.860 pretty much every political ad imaginable and every political advertiser and this
00:01:03.720 must be made available and made transparent but with how much of Google's
00:01:07.560 process is automated the company said it just would not be able to comply with
00:01:11.680 this and as such it's needing to say farewell to a lot of ad money and when we
00:01:16.480 talk about how significant a player Google is in political advertising we have
00:01:20.820 to look at one study that was published in 2016 that found about 48% of all
00:01:25.980 advertising in Canada takes place with Google all online advertising takes place
00:01:31.780 with Google 48% so even Facebook and Twitter which so far have not made a
00:01:36.660 similar decision are significantly smaller players than Google is. Now Google
00:01:43.120 made a decision and the government has said it was a business decision but Google
00:01:47.160 for its part has said it's actually very disappointed you see Google warned the
00:01:51.660 government during the C-76 discussions that it would not be able to comply with
00:01:56.580 these regulations and the government did nothing about it the government didn't
00:02:00.540 heed these concerns and as much as Google may not be the most sympathetic player we
00:02:05.640 have to look at who this impacts the candidates and parties that would be
00:02:09.180 trying to advertise on Google and who is it that typically relies more on
00:02:13.440 political advertising opposition parties and candidates which means that the
00:02:18.680 Justin Trudeau Liberals have in many respects made it easier for themselves as
00:02:23.400 incumbents to campaign because governments are still allowed to advertise the
00:02:28.220 government can still advertise on Google the government can still advertise on
00:02:31.920 YouTube government MPs can still advertise if it's related to their role as
00:02:36.420 members of Parliament but political candidates and parties cannot advertise as
00:02:41.640 such so what's gonna happen here is we're going to see a lot more government
00:02:46.800 advertising ads saying the government of Canada is doing this for you MPs saying
00:02:51.180 hey my office is over here if you have any questions and the Conservatives the NDP
00:02:56.400 and the Green Party to some extent will have a harder time getting their
00:03:00.580 message in front of the eyes that need to see it for them to effectively
00:03:04.080 campaign but there's another dimension to this you see one of the things
00:03:08.440 Justin Trudeau has done to help buy himself reelection has been to put 595
00:03:13.680 million dollars into the mainstream media a payoff of the newspaper industry well
00:03:18.880 in the absence of Google as an advertising platform that means a lot more
00:03:23.320 people are going to have to start looking at traditional media which makes me
00:03:27.100 wonder if a part of this has been almost a deliberate sabotage so that even more
00:03:32.080 money will have to be funneled into mainstream media even if politicians and
00:03:36.460 political parties feel that that is not the best way to spend their ad dollars
00:03:40.660 well now there are just fewer options because of this so Justin Trudeau which
00:03:45.040 claims it's opening up Canada for business has managed to regulate one of
00:03:49.360 the largest companies out of one of the largest industries which is online
00:03:53.320 advertising and we're supposed to believe that he won't do that with other
00:03:56.680 sectors well color me surprised for true north I'm Andrew Lutton