Trudeau's internet policies are an assault on independent media
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Summary
In the midst of summer, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take our Friday show, which we often break the regular format on, and do something that people have been asking about: an all-in-one look at the Trudeau government's internet regulations, of which there are many, and still many yet to come.
Transcript
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Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Hello everyone and welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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It is Friday, July 28th. We're in the midst of summer, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to take our Friday show,
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which we often break the regular format on, and do something that a lot of people have been asking about,
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which is kind of an all-in-one look at the Trudeau government's internet regulations, of which there are many, and still many yet to come.
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Despite this cabinet shuffle, it doesn't sound like the liberals are taking their feet off the gas pedal
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that is driving the car right off the cliff into an abyss of internet regulation, censorship, and more costs to you and I as taxpayers,
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not to mention the burdens it will heap on you and I as people in the orbit of independent media,
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myself as a creator, yourselves in the audience as consumers, and perhaps creators yourself.
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So I'm going to talk about this from a few different angles today.
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We're going to talk about Bill C-11, which is the government-mandated algorithm rejigging bill.
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We're going to talk about C-18, which is the government subsidy bill.
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And we're also going to try to give you some tools and tactics that you can use to evade and elude these things as best as possible.
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Now, I should say with a caveat there, a lot of this stuff is only going to be short-lived.
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The idea of using a VPN may help in some ways, but really what has to happen is these bills have to go.
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And we're going to talk about exactly why they are so problematic.
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And I should say, first and foremost, a lot of you may have already seen little glimmers of this in your own lives.
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If you've tried to access some independent news website and you get a message that says,
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oh, this content's being blocked in Canada because of government regulations.
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This is already happening courtesy of Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram,
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because they were given a rather unpleasant choice.
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They were told you can either pay millions and millions of dollars to Canadian media outlets or you can block the content altogether.
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They took option B and then the federal government turned around and accused them of bullying
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because despite, you know, five minutes ago saying you are thieves for allowing this content in your platforms,
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So try to figure out how that's going to be squared.
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And I should say, you know, even so-called conservative or conservative-leaning media companies in Canada
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Post Media, which owns the National Post, has been going hat in hand to government demanding more and more money.
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And it was a bit curious this week when the Liberal Cabinet Shuffle came about
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to see this glowing, glowing profile of the new Heritage Minister, Pascal Saint-Ange,
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the former member and manager of a lesbian rock band,
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a woman who is as Heritage Minister up against big tech in the National Post,
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Former rocker sent into the fight for Canada's digital rights.
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It's a little bit like, as our friend Ezra Levant said,
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a grant application by Post Media rather than an instance of journalism.
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Not a single critical word to be said about this woman that now Post Media wants to be the doler of cash.
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So let's start off by talking about Bill C-18 here,
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because what the government has done in this bill is something very insidious.
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They've basically outsourced what they want to do themselves,
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But they've outsourced it so that it's not taxpayers.
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It's the big, evil, scary, big tech companies that are going to do it,
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Chris Sims with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation had a great piece that she published just last week.
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Journalists should not be paid by the government.
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So let's talk about that outsourcing aspect here,
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because obviously you and I were both critical of that $600 million media slush fund.
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We're very critical of the $1.3 billion that the federal government gives to CBC every year.
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As taxpayer advocates, you could say at the CTF,
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you know this is bad because taxpayer money is being siphoned towards these private interests.
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But what the government's done here is they've tried to basically neutralize that criticism.
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You know, the language they use, oh, these tech companies have to pay their fair share.
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But who knows where that big tech fight is going to go, right?
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Because the answer always from government is we're a government and we're here to help.
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So up until recently, Heritage Minister at the time, Pablo Rodriguez,
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was quick to jump on that and say, who knows where this fight with big tech is going to go?
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But we need to make sure that newsrooms stay open, we meaning government,
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and we need to make sure that they have the resources they need, meaning your money, meaning taxpayers' money.
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And so when you add it all up, the money is just atrocious.
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Over the last four years, if you add in what we've paid to the CBC
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and what we've handed out to corporate media in the form of bailouts,
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But aside from the money, Andrew, like you and I having worked in journalism all these years over our lives,
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we know that if you're counting on the government for your paycheck,
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it's pretty darn difficult to hold them accountable.
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We won't be able to hold government to account if the media is getting paid by them.
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No, and I mean, we can talk all the time about individual reporters that may have biases
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but what we've seen here is the media companies literally devote those precious column inches,
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as the old saying goes, to pieces literally lobbying the government to give them money.
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We've seen executives at these media companies testifying before Parliament, asking for money.
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And even the way they report on these bills, you can tell they're demanding money.
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They're not actually sharing the criticisms about these pieces of legislation that most Canadians are,
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because they're trying to get a chunk of it themselves.
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And it's been one of the most, I'd say, brazen examples of an orchestrated media campaign
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And it's, for those of us who've worked on Parliament Hill or worked in media,
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maybe it's more obvious for us, but I can't help it.
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When I was hearing Rodriguez being scrummed, I know most of those reporters,
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I'm not going to call them out because they're nice people,
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but even the tone was just like, yes, but aren't you to do something?
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Rather than, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that never would have been the case.
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Now, of course, a reporter or journalist has their own biases.
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But for the first time ever, there are a lot of journalism jobs
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that are dependent upon the government's funding.
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And to give you an example, right and left, the folks at Canada Land,
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arguably on more of the left side of the spectrum, who don't take government money,
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So imagine being that reporter, knowing that $13,000 of your paycheck
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is coming from that guy, from that minister, from this government.
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How then are you supposed to ask those hard questions?
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Even if they tried, it's the perception of bias that kills the trust, right?
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Yeah, and I would actually go beyond that because you have some instances.
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One of them is this program called the Local Journalism Initiative,
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which is a program that will finance the entirety or most of the entirety of a reporter's salary,
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And they're supposed to be covering local issues, municipal issues.
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But I've seen a lot of mission creep in these roles,
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where these reporters just become general assignment people.
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Or sometimes a local story that might have more of a national flavor.
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And in that case, how are you, when emblazoned under your byline,
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is the fact that you're a government-subsidized reporter,
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supposed to not say, well, you know, if this program goes away, my job might go away.
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And that's not at all an indictment of any of those individual people,
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because journalists themselves are being put in a pretty untenable situation here
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by raising these questions, by at least eliciting these questions from readers.
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And even if they think it's not influencing their reporting,
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everybody reading their stuff or listening to their stuff
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Our friend Sheila Gunn-Reed had pointed this out.
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I'm there for the hog prices and the garage sales.
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I'm not trying to listen to the latest on, you know,
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on climate change coming out of Ottawa for my local newspaper report.
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So it's changing the way that stories are being covered.
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apart from being Taxpayers' Federation and wanting government so small
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you could drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist said,
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I don't know if you saw, but there's this major study,
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And 61% of Canadians now think journalists are actively trying to mislead them
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with statements they know to be false or gross exaggerations.
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So that hit me because, you know, good journalists,
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if you mispronounce somebody's name or you accidentally get a date wrong,
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The idea that a huge majority, 61% of Canadians now think
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And I think, you know, we think that government funding the media
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is obviously a huge reason why that trust is eroding.
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And so I guess what I'm trying to get across is,
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to just kind of make peace with that and accept that they mustn't do so.
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Let me ask you about the mechanics of unwrapping
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Because a lot of the times it becomes easier to fight
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because of, you know, just the politics of it and path dependency.
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And once people have gotten accustomed to having a certain amount of money,
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to take it away from them is actually quite difficult politically.
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So let's say that, you know, we have a liberal government
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that goes until 2025 and there's some change in place.
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that's proposing to fight this stuff is Pierre Polyev.
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So suggest there's a conservative government in there in 2025.
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How easy is it going to be to take back the $600 million in tax credits,
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assuming that it stays somewhat static between now and then?
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And it's something that Mr. Polyev is going to have to deal with
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As far as we're concerned on this side of the aisle, so to speak,
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He has said repeatedly that he is going to defund the CBC.
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And he has said repeatedly that he is going to stop paying the media,
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But so the so-called bailout, which is about $595 million,
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and it's a cluster of tax credits and direct funding.
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And there's also actually a whole bunch of like emergency top-up things
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that corporate and private newsrooms got over the last few years
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So if he does that by deleting a line item in the budget before lunch,
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Because right now, Canadians can barely afford groceries.
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You know, the last thing we should be doing is paying media.
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And two, it completely hinders our ability to hold them to account.
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Once these things are entrenched, there's going to be a huge hue and cry.
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You know, I've been in some pretty yelly moments and scrums on Parliament Hill
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between the gallery and opposition members and ministers.
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But I haven't seen the leader of the opposition wheel on his heel
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and point and kind of go back and forth with individual journalists like that,
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And, you know, again, you can look at the government's role in this.
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And he'll scrap and do the one-on-one and they'll scrap back.
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Because I think the way you combat bias is you have to sort of challenge the premises
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Everyone remembers from, I think it was the 2019 election when Pierre Polyev,
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when Justin Trudeau hands the poutine to David Cochran at CBC and says,
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you know, the Liberal government will always look out for CBC.
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I mean, that actually was a tremendously unfair thing to do to David Cochran,
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But Trudeau himself has leaned into this whole,
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we're the friend of the press and they're the friend of us.
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And it's incumbent on journalists to push back when that happens and say,
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And the same is true when the government's throwing money at them.
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And just speaking from personal experience, I've witnessed.
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So remember a few years back too, at the Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner.
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So for normal people who have not worked in the terrarium of Ottawa,
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the Parliamentary Press Gallery is a club, basically, of journalists whose job it is to cover Parliament Hill.
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Fast forward, every year, they have this big, fancy kind of black tie event.
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And it used to be really funny to invite politicians there because they were off camera.
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And the politicians would get up there and roast the press.
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So they've had past prime ministers, current prime ministers, blah, blah.
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And one of the more recent ones, then and current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
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well, of course the media is doing our bidding.
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And you could see the discomfort coming from the gallery.
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You should be uncomfortable with the idea of the state covering your paycheck if you're a journalist.
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Again, it doesn't matter if you want to call it straight down the middle, if you're really into weather,
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or if you're into sports, or if you're covering Parliament Hill.
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Because then, now, we're going to wind up in this situation where trust in journalism is just taking a nosedive fast.
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And our wasteful spending is going up just as quickly.
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And so, if there is a different prime minister who then cancels all of this funding,
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it's probably going to come as a pretty big shock for a lot of people.
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You know, I was with Sun News Network when it got shut down.
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And that wasn't because we weren't getting government funding.
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It's because the government, through the CRTC, wouldn't give us access to an audience.
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And so, I know what it's like to have the government have its tentacles as to whether or not you exist as a newsroom.
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Yeah, and I think that's a great example there.
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I mean, the left-wing media at the time loved to say that Sun News was demanding some special favor from the government.
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It was saying, I want you to give us the equal treatment that you give everyone else.
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And that was, I think, what should have happened.
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And it was actually, and we could do a whole, you know, hour-long show on this.
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I'd say one of the great failings of the Harper government is not actually stacking the CRTC in a way that would be more amenable to a multitude of voices.
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So, just in closing here, Chris, map this out a little bit.
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Because what we've seen here is the big tech companies, Facebook and Google, being pretty stubborn on this.
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What we see now with this increasing resistance to allowing news on Facebook and Google?
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Or do you think that someone is going to blink here?
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I think, if I were to predict, it's usually the government that blinks in these situations.
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Because, and it's for a bad reason, they think they have an endless pot of money.
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And that is taxpayers' money and or the printing press.
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So, for some reason, this government thinks you can just print billions of dollars out of thin air and it'll solve all your problems.
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But that makes your problems much worse because it has caused this inflation crisis.
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Getting back to the idea of groceries not being affordable.
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Because the federal government has been printing billions out of thin air while cranking up your carbon taxes.
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So, that is helping to make your grocery bill higher.
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But I think that this speaks to a much bigger problem that is happening not just here in Canada, but throughout the English-speaking world.
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I can't speak to other Western countries because I'm monolingual.
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But if you listen to news out of the UK, for example, we're hearing a lot of censorship issues coming up there as well.
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So, if you combine Andrew, so now they're trying to go after big tech.
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They're in a huge fight as to whether or not who pays for media.
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And further, the state is now determining who a journalist is, who a qualified journalist is, which journalist gets money.
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And at the same time, they're trying to stifle online expression.
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So, they're trying to fund other media while potentially strangling alternative media sources like the one we're on right now.
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That's a really dangerous place to go if you value free expression.
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I would encourage everyone to take a look at Chris's op-ed on this at taxpayer.com.
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Journalists should not be paid by the government.
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Now, I agree with it on the headline alone, but the body has a lot more great substance as well that you should check out.
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Chris Sims, Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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That was Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, obviously taking a more right-leaning critique of Bill C-18.
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But I wanted to put into context here the fact that this is not a right versus left issue.
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And I think in general, the internet regulation that we are seeing from the government, especially on C-11,
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has been sometimes even more forcefully criticized by voices on the left than on the right.
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So, I want to sort of separate out the partisanship here and talk about some of the other critiques that are coming,
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not necessarily from the taxpayer advocacy perspective, but in general.
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I mean, the government's stated goal here is about saving journalism.
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Now, whether that's an accurate reflection of their goal or not, I think we could probably have some debate over.
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So, even just on that criterion alone, is C-18 going to be the savior of journalism,
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or is it actually going to have an adverse effect potentially?
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I want to welcome back to the program a gentleman who has been a voice on this with the group called Open Media,
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not a right-wing group by any stretch, but that doesn't mean we can't find common ground with them on stuff.
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And that is Matt Hatfield, who is the campaigns director and is returning to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Matt, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming back on.
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So, let's talk about this idea here, first and foremost, about whether C-18 saves journalism,
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because you've actually said that it could have the opposite effect.
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Yeah, unfortunately, the government has designed a bill that I think is almost guaranteed not to have the effect that they want it to.
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And for a variety of reasons, I think it's rotten at its core.
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And I also think we're seeing right now platforms just aren't going to comply with the government's intention on it.
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So, the whole bill was built around this idea that platforms are gaining so much value from news that's not being remunerated,
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and the government wants to fix that or make it fair.
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However, the platforms, both Meta and Google, are saying, well, if that's the case, we'll stop stealing the news,
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And, of course, a lot of small news in Canada are really freaking out about this,
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because this is going to take away, you know, 30%, 50% of their traffic in many cases.
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Yeah, and I mean, we are going to be talking a little bit later on in this show about how True North is doing its best to adapt to this.
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But the worst thing about it is that the small outlets are the casualties of this fight that wasn't theirs.
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I mean, to use one more on the left that I was chatting about earlier in the show, Canada Land.
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I mean, they weren't asking for this money, but now they're going to have their audience throttled.
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We weren't asking for this money, but now we're going to have our audience throttled.
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And these small outlets that really were not the target market for C18 in the first place are going to lose access to their audiences.
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And that's the thing here, is that it wasn't these bootstrap independent media organizations that were saying,
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And I think part of the tragedy of that is there's multiple small groups missing out.
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Of course, there's the upstarts like yourself in Canada Land that are being affected for no good reason.
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And in many ways, you folk were doing great and really succeeding on new platforms.
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And then there's also local or small local news in the sense of, you know, the little newspaper,
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conventional newspaper that wants to do reporting on the city council.
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And they're potentially losing a bunch of revenue here.
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And, you know, they were already really struggling to make a go of it.
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Some of them might go out of business specifically because of this bill.
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Yeah, and the one thing as well, and this gets into a bigger picture discussion that probably we can't solve in a few minutes here,
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I mean, look, I obviously am fully candid, but I approach issues from a particular political persuasion.
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But when you have a bill like this, you force someone to draw a line between what is journalism and what is not.
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And let's just say that if there's a spectrum between your fairest, most impartial fact-based reporting
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and you're just conspiratorial, you know, politically charged, made up, or clickbait outlet,
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at some point, if we're taking out the stuff over here,
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we're leaving people with only access to the stuff that is more harmful to discourse.
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So it remains to be determined exactly how a platform like Meta is going to handle this.
00:23:38.400
But if they are specifically removing everyone who's a qualified Canadian journalist organization,
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according to the government, that actually accomplishes the opposite purpose of what the government is aiming at,
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it would be only non-qualified Canadian journalist outlets that would be getting distributed on Facebook.
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Because I know open media was quite forceful, and I mean that in a good way,
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I mean, what were the amendments that you would have liked to have seen,
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I mean, I still think they ought to scrap the bill and restart.
00:24:11.780
I think there is a case that you can make for some need for public funding for journalism.
00:24:16.420
I think there's a certain brand of journalism that society needs that are never going to produce a lot of clicks.
00:24:21.620
And it's things like, you know, going to those council meetings,
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taking the notes on very boring meetings that we're probably never going to read those stories
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until it's a really important moment and we needed to have that reporter there.
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And they weren't there because it wasn't attracting the clicks.
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That said, below scrapping the bill, I think the biggest thing that it needed and still needs is more transparency.
00:24:42.880
So there's been a lot of critique of the fact that platforms already have some secret relationships with news organizations.
00:24:49.820
The bill's outcome is greatly expanding those secret deals.
00:24:53.140
And we don't know who's getting the money, what the terms are.
00:24:56.040
Unfortunately, I think because the government has realized their bill has gone awry,
00:25:01.120
they're, in my view, desperate to strike a deal with Google right now to make sure Google participates in some way.
00:25:08.320
But I think that's actually going to give Google tremendous scope to decide what they want from these deals.
00:25:14.740
And, you know, if it's Google who's making some of the determinations about like,
00:25:18.740
well, we think you as an organization deserve this much money a year or two from now.
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And then there's some reporting quite critical of Google coming from that outlet.
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I mean, we all know things could go awry there, right?
00:25:29.280
And these are some of the most powerful companies in the world.
00:25:31.760
It's deeply problematic for news organizations to be dependent on either them or the government for their welfare.
00:25:37.820
Yeah, and I think it's interesting because what you're describing when you talk about a role for public funding of media,
00:25:44.600
I'm a little bit more leery of than I think you are.
00:25:48.180
But if it were to exist, I would put it exactly where you've described it,
00:25:52.220
on sort of that gap-filling idea of the things for which there is no market.
00:25:56.540
And in theory, that's where CBC has a tremendous function, you know,
00:26:00.220
in talking about French language, indigenous coverage, remote and rural communities.
00:26:05.220
But I think CBC is also a bit of an interesting test case in that it's hard to resist the allure of the big glitzy stuff
00:26:12.220
like the Olympics and the Junos and the online opinion section.
00:26:17.100
And I mean, no one can say that opinions on the internet were an underserved market
00:26:24.840
And I'm wondering how you'd look at the local journalism initiative,
00:26:28.040
which I think is probably by design trying to do that.
00:26:31.660
But I don't think it's really stayed squarely focused on those local non-clickbait issues.
00:26:40.780
I mean, I think a main factor is that the funds are in no way comparable to C18.
00:26:47.420
The real purpose of C18 was just dumping a buckload of money from platforms into outlets like Postmedia.
00:26:54.520
And unfortunately, with no real guarantee that any of that money would be spent on journalism.
00:27:00.740
I mean, many of these conglomerates actually have enormous debts that a lot of their money goes to repaying those.
00:27:05.580
It's entirely possible that few, if any, journalists would have been hired,
00:27:08.780
even if C18 were transferring a lot of money, which is part of the problem there.
00:27:12.940
I'm not an expert on the local journalist initiative.
00:27:15.260
And, you know, our focus is really the internet and what happens through the internet.
00:27:19.560
But I do think, as you said, if there's any funding going out,
00:27:23.760
it should really be focused on news deserts, on things that can't find their audience otherwise.
00:27:27.880
And there's a lot of great reporting that can find its audience and doesn't necessarily need that support.
00:27:32.300
Have you heard anything from the government in terms of kind of a benchmarking C18 for what would constitute a success?
00:27:39.300
Like, would, you know, going the next five years with no major corporate media layoffs,
00:27:47.080
Because in my coverage, I actually haven't come across with, you know, how do we measure if this has worked?
00:27:53.800
No, I think they've been very leery of tying it to something like that.
00:27:57.220
Very early on, when the expectation was that Google and Facebook would both be in full compliance,
00:28:02.740
there was a budget estimate of how much revenue they thought would be produced.
00:28:05.820
And that estimate actually became quite controversial itself,
00:28:08.960
because what the revenue of us determined is they thought the vast majority of the funds
00:28:12.860
would not be going to sort of investigative print journalism.
00:28:16.060
It would be going to broadcast outlets, and it would be going to the largest players,
00:28:19.880
including potentially CBC, as well as, you know, the Rogers and Choruses of the World,
00:28:25.820
outlets that even if their news might be suffering, are actually extremely profitable as a whole.
00:28:31.660
And I should remind people as well, despite C-18 going through,
00:28:36.140
Bell has tried to remove all of their local reporting obligations recently,
00:28:40.220
which just speaks to the fact that this bill actually doesn't nudge anything directly
00:28:47.560
Yeah, and I think, you know, this brings us back to how we started,
00:28:50.460
which is talking about the adverse effects of this.
00:28:53.560
I mean, because all of this was based on, you're right,
00:28:56.320
this expectation that there would be a huge boatload of cash
00:28:59.420
that would be flowing from the tech companies to the media outlets,
00:29:02.780
which, regardless of what happens three, six months down the road,
00:29:06.680
I think it's safe to say is not going to happen at least as optimistically as the government was then.
00:29:12.040
So you either have a level of cash that is less than what was previously anticipated,
00:29:17.700
or you just have this indefinite blackout on tech sites for access to Canadian journalism.
00:29:25.500
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think looking at what people can realistically experience,
00:29:30.920
I don't think there's any way the government's going to be able to draw them back in.
00:29:34.500
They have not started blocking news on most of their platforms yet in Canada.
00:29:39.080
Some people are being blocked on Instagram primarily.
00:29:41.880
But I think we can expect to see news content blocked almost certainly in the next few months.
00:29:47.200
Google, I think the government will find some way of cutting a deal with,
00:29:50.020
but I'm concerned that it's going to be a deal that kind of works for post-media and kind of works for Google
00:29:54.640
and actually doesn't work for Canadians or for small news outlets and really kind of cuts out our interests.
00:30:03.560
What do you think is going to, or why do you think that'll happen?
00:30:06.220
Well, I don't think we're going to see any transparency into the deals, for example.
00:30:09.500
I think Google will, the government and Google are probably going back and forth on the number.
00:30:14.040
It is probably going to go primarily to the largest stakeholders on this, to the conglomerate outlets.
00:30:22.360
And then I guess my concern is just going to be if the government believes it has had to really cajole
00:30:28.400
and beg Google to stay in to cut these deals, their ability to pressure Google around
00:30:32.480
if those deals are set up in inappropriate ways is going to be very low.
00:30:36.800
So actually, I could see a world in which Google comes out of this with a tremendous amount of quiet influence
00:30:41.880
over the news sector that is actually legislatively locked in, that isn't just sort of a dark campaign.
00:30:49.120
I'm concerned about what may occur to the independence of a reporting on tech issues in that world.
00:30:53.620
I just, I mean, I don't know if you have an answer to this, but in closing, I was wondering, Matt,
00:30:57.100
if you know why Twitter has kind of gotten a pass on this?
00:31:00.220
Because Twitter is, I'd argue, far more relevant for, notwithstanding its recent changes,
00:31:08.120
But it seems to have been carved out of the discussions.
00:31:11.120
When I've read the legislation, and I don't actually see how it's not applicable,
00:31:17.320
but this has really been characterized as an assault just on Facebook and Google.
00:31:23.500
You know, I think a simple answer to that question is if it looks like the government
00:31:28.140
hasn't thought very hard about certain things, they probably haven't.
00:31:31.440
I think Google and Meta were seen as the big cash bags.
00:31:36.080
Twitter is very important to journalists and for breaking stories,
00:31:39.020
but it's not nearly on the same financial level.
00:31:41.720
As those two platforms, nor is nearly as many Canadians on it.
00:31:46.500
And I mean, realistically, if they know they're picking a giant fight with Meta,
00:31:51.840
obviously Elon Musk would be an even rougher one to pick a target with these days.
00:31:57.480
And so it tactically probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:32:00.080
But in terms of the, you know, letter of the bill,
00:32:03.820
it's very unclear why it should be just those two platforms.
00:32:06.200
Yeah, I know everyone's been talking about the Mark Zuckerberg-Elon Musk cage fight,
00:32:09.360
but I think the Elon Musk-Justin Trudeau cage match would probably be a little bit more of a hot ticket item.
00:32:16.360
Well, certainly interesting to look at this from all the angles.
00:32:18.980
And I know it's an unsatisfying answer to default to,
00:32:21.720
but I think it's an accurate one that maybe they just didn't think it through,
00:32:24.420
or at least not as well as they want to pretend they did.
00:32:27.680
Matt Hatfield, Campaigns Director for Open Media.
00:32:35.060
That was Matt Hatfield, Campaigns Director for Open Media.
00:32:38.740
And like I said, this is not just a right-of-center critique of these internet regulations.
00:32:43.680
There are voices on the left and the right that have grave concerns
00:32:47.120
with this whole litany of regulations that the Liberal government have been putting on the internet.
00:32:52.920
We've been speaking for most of the program up to this point about Bill C-18,
00:32:56.840
but I have to go back to the original of this little package of regulations, Bill C-11.
00:33:04.180
It's law, although we haven't yet seen the full-throated implementation of it yet that we know of.
00:33:10.620
But at its core, the bill requires the promulgation of Canadian content,
00:33:15.840
the promotion of Canadian content through streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube
00:33:23.140
which means, by definition, the manipulation of algorithms.
00:33:26.660
So you are actually, when you log on to YouTube,
00:33:29.500
instead of seeing what YouTube might have right now as your homepage,
00:33:33.380
which is content tailored to you based on your interests,
00:33:36.680
you will, it seems like, be forced to see what the Trudeau government wants you to see.
00:33:43.900
I mean, True North, my show is Canadian content,
00:33:46.440
but I have a hard time imagining the passage of a bill that will put my show in front of more Canadians' eyes.
00:33:52.200
I don't think that's what Trudeau would allow to happen.
00:33:54.780
I've seen some tremendous foreign programs on Netflix.
00:33:57.820
Money Heist, one of my favorite shows from Spain.
00:34:00.620
Maybe I wouldn't learn about that under Bill C-11,
0.51
00:34:03.160
because instead I'd have to watch some crappy Quebec soap opera.
00:34:07.020
And, I mean, the hilarity here is that we also have the government extending,
0.67
00:34:11.640
it sounds like, these regulations to pornography.
00:34:14.060
This is what has come out in the last couple of weeks.
00:34:17.060
The big porn companies are saying they want to be exempt from this,
00:34:20.040
because they don't want to have to serve up, you know, crappy discount budget Canadian porn.
00:34:24.180
They want to serve up the good stuff that is attracting the eyeballs of Canadians.
0.90
00:34:28.900
So, there are lots of ways in which I could see this being manipulated
00:34:33.140
and done so in a way that is not just about the benign promotion of Canadian culture and enterprise,
00:34:39.880
but is about promoting a particular type of content creator.
00:34:43.780
And, the government's left so much to the CRTC here as far as developing its own regulations
00:34:50.680
so that what is in the law itself is only going to be a jumping off point
00:34:56.280
for what actually happens when a lot of this stuff gets into motion.
00:35:00.020
And, I've had a lot of people, every time this topic comes up,
00:35:06.220
And, there was actually a great piece in the Epoch Times that was written by Roland Renner,
00:35:10.780
who is a contributor to the Frontier Center, that said, very tactically,
00:35:15.440
how to get the internet and not the Trudeau net.
00:35:18.140
So, I wanted to delve into this in a bit of detail here with Roland Renner himself.
00:35:23.140
Roland, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:35:29.600
For people that are not as well-versed in the tech of this,
00:35:32.580
what is a VPN and what does it do in relation to your experience as an internet user?
00:35:42.160
So, using security technology, essentially, you build a private network for a group.
00:35:52.400
The government uses them for internal communications.
00:35:56.060
Political parties use them so they can communicate without somebody else coming in and dropping in.
00:36:04.160
It's essentially something that's been developed to enhance security.
00:36:10.040
And the side effect of it, though, is what's important here, is that it eliminates the geofencing.
00:36:18.080
And geofencing is essentially identifying you as from a particular location.
00:36:24.700
So, as you were describing earlier, Andrew, if the government comes in or one of the big tech companies comes in and says,
00:36:32.980
all right, we think that Canada should be watching this or that, they have to identify you as Canadian.
00:36:41.000
And geofencing is the technique they use to do that.
00:36:43.540
And the VPN blocks that through its security processes.
00:36:55.460
Because normally, if you're Canadian, you'd want to watch Canadian news.
00:37:00.680
Maybe not mainstream news, depending on, you know, your opinions, obviously.
00:37:08.020
But if you're Italian, you know, you want the Italian news.
00:37:11.000
If you're Japanese, you want the Japanese news.
1.00
00:37:12.960
So, these things are helpful and generally positive, even though it's a lot of power.
00:37:23.500
But once you bring in C-11, and now the government is going to get in, even though the CRTC claims they're not going to do that.
00:37:34.160
All of a sudden, you're going to have to watch what they want you to watch.
00:37:41.480
And they're going to block things that they don't want you to watch.
00:37:44.080
If you get a VPN, which you can do as a commercial service, there are dozens of them out there.
00:37:50.400
All you got to do is go on the internet, Google it, VPN, Canada, see who's out there offering, compare and contrast,
00:37:59.000
just like you do any kind of internet shopping otherwise, and pick one that suits you.
00:38:08.320
You can do it to make sure that you're not blocked by this sort of thing.
00:38:12.540
And at the same time, you will get, you know, more opportunities to explore globally from the AI of the big platforms themselves.
00:38:22.040
Yeah, and you're right that sometimes it's done in a very benign way.
00:38:26.900
I mean, we've all been to websites and they say, oh, it looks like you're, you know, visiting from Canada.
00:38:36.940
But usually on those that you have the option to switch around.
00:38:39.960
I mean, I was once in the U.S. for a few weeks and I got hooked on some Netflix show and I didn't finish it.
00:38:45.500
And I was like, oh, I'll finish it when I get home.
00:38:46.980
And then I go home and, of course, it's nowhere to be found on Canadian Netflix.
00:38:50.860
So, I did exactly what you're describing, which I'm probably not supposed to do in this context.
00:38:54.660
But I got the VPN and, you know, said I'm in, you know, Seattle, Washington today and then, you know, finished the show off.
00:39:03.880
And I think they've had, in some cases, better experiences than others in trying to block this.
00:39:09.300
And I just before logging on to this interview, I did a little test from a VPN and was able to access German Netflix.
00:39:17.080
But in the past, I've received a message that says, basically, I know what you're doing and it's not going to work.
00:39:22.280
So, I'm wondering how advanced VPN blockers are and how that could come work against people that are trying to do this for the reasons you've mentioned.
00:39:33.020
Well, they might be improving them in the future.
00:39:36.580
You know, as you say, it's hit and miss sometimes today.
00:39:43.400
And if you go to the big things like Netflix, so they do have to worry about something like copyright.
00:39:54.240
So a lot of programming is owned by different companies and different people in different countries.
00:40:03.760
And that is, you know, one of the fundamental legal challenges that we have for the big platforms as to how they manage this so that creators of content get paid as they should be, really.
00:40:19.960
You know, one way or another by subscription or advertising and all the different models that we've had.
00:40:29.460
You were referring earlier to, you know, new companies and new creators that are going to be negatively influenced by some of this potential out of Bill C-11.
00:40:53.420
And so Netflix and the larger organizations do try to enforce that sometimes.
00:41:04.940
But if you go to some of these smaller organizations, they don't really have to worry about it, especially if they're generating their own content like you are, for instance.
00:41:23.000
And I know that it's a lost cause because you're being tracked in just every conceivable way imaginable when you go to this website or that website.
00:41:30.440
It's like I try, you know, every now and then I'll use the incognito browser because maybe I think that, you know, Google only has 95% of what I'm doing instead of 100% of what I'm doing or something.
00:41:39.760
But with VPNs, I mean, the one thing is that it's this process that sounds a lot more complicated than it is.
00:41:45.680
And I've met people, and this is not meant to insult anyone, but people that I would not consider technical sophisticates that have managed to do this.
00:41:53.260
Because there is this concern now that people are going to be forced into this Internet experience that is very much not authentic.
00:42:03.540
And I think one of the things that I'm glad you mentioned it, because I should have put that into my piece earlier for Frontier Center.
00:42:16.580
And there again, you get what you pay for, kind of.
00:42:19.660
So there are some complaints sometimes that it slows you down.
00:42:23.120
It can introduce another choke point into your experience of browsing.
00:42:30.640
However, other than that, it is a small expense.
00:42:39.820
I mean, you load it up like any other application, and away you go.
00:42:49.940
I'm sure the VPNs themselves will help you if you really have trouble.
00:42:54.980
But, you know, they have call centers and help desks like everyone else.
00:43:02.300
I was going to mention the name, and then I'm like, no, screw that.
00:43:04.280
I'm going to, like, ask them for money before I do that.
00:43:09.880
And certainly, you can learn pretty, pretty easily how to do it.
00:43:14.160
I'll just ask in closing here, Roland, about the concern that I have more fundamentally,
00:43:19.480
that what we're really talking about here is a Band-Aid.
00:43:21.840
I mean, this is a workaround to a problem that really doesn't need to exist,
00:43:26.620
but it's a problem that government is creating here.
00:43:37.860
In the interim, I mean, the only other thing to do is to get involved politically and complain loud and loud.
00:43:44.780
One of the great ironies of Bill C-11 in its primary role of getting the big platforms to contribute,
00:43:56.580
like Canadian cable companies, 5% of gross broadcasting revenues in Canada to Canadian production funds.
00:44:04.480
That's what it was supposed to initially before.
00:44:08.880
And, you know, the Canadian production industry is booming.
00:44:19.640
They've got lots of stuff going on for Netflix.
00:44:23.240
They've been, revenue has been growing by 10% a year.
00:44:28.920
We're protecting an industry that no longer needs protection, you know.
00:44:36.220
And they're like, as you're sure you've been discussing, there are five other bills out there.
00:44:46.440
I think there's a Senate bill as well that gets into some of the privacy issues.
00:44:54.660
Full court press on this stuff and getting after what they call lawful but awful in the online harm.
00:45:01.900
So, oh, we have laws against some of these things.
00:45:13.120
They've actually used this term, which tells you exactly where they're headed.
00:45:20.740
If it's lawful, it doesn't matter how awful it is.
00:45:24.900
Again, yeah, the Band-Aid is better than bleeding out if those are your only two options.
00:45:28.440
So I think it's good for people to take their tools as they can.
00:45:31.660
And I appreciate you shining a bit of light on it here.
00:45:34.120
Roland Renner, contributor for the Frontier Center.
00:45:36.600
And then this piece in particular that we've been discussing, picked up by the Epoch Times,
00:45:49.060
I always get the messages from people that say, yeah, we know the world is terrible,
00:45:54.040
So we try to throw a little bit of the practical news you can use into the mix here.
00:45:59.420
And I guess I wanted to wrap up this show because we've talked about, again,
00:46:03.640
internet regulations and there's still so much more we need to do.
00:46:07.440
And I actually want to do a whole show on the online harms component,
00:46:10.620
which is hard to do completely because we haven't yet seen the full scope
00:46:15.020
of what the legislation will be and what it'll look like.
00:46:18.200
So we focus on the stuff we know about, C11 and C18.
00:46:22.220
But I know that there is a big question looming over all of us,
00:46:26.380
which is what does this mean for independent media?
00:46:28.680
And I can be a little bit indulgent on this one because True North,
00:46:32.400
I would say, as the platform on which you're consuming this show,
00:46:35.220
is a platform that I hope you have somewhat of a relationship with.
00:46:40.800
If this is your first experience with us, they're a lot better than me sometimes.
00:46:45.840
But let's talk a little bit about how True North has adapted to this,
00:46:49.320
because obviously it's one thing to jump up and down and cheerlead for Facebook
00:46:54.040
kind of just thumbing its nose at Post Media and the Toronto Star.
00:46:57.720
But when they block the dissemination of news on their platforms,
00:47:00.900
they're actually going to be cutting off a large audience that we have cultivated
00:47:05.220
over the last several years of our existence on Facebook, similarly to YouTube.
00:47:10.140
I remember it was a great boon for independent media
00:47:12.760
when True North started to be included in Google News.
00:47:18.100
it's not just the Toronto Star they're seeing, it's also our reporting.
00:47:21.980
So when they're going to be in the process of killing that off,
00:47:25.300
that means some people that might not have accessed us otherwise
00:47:30.340
So I wanted to bring in our colleague who you've seen on previous shows.
00:47:34.160
He's also working away behind the scenes as our COO, William McBeth,
00:47:39.000
and a longtime political activist and operator in Canadian politics.
00:47:47.680
Well, it's an honor to be on your show, Andrew.
00:47:50.400
I mean, one thing that True North has always done very well, I think,
00:47:56.340
I mean, there's a reason that we upload on a bunch of different platforms,
00:47:59.600
and every now and then we'll get the people that,
00:48:01.340
even though we're on every platform, we think will be like,
00:48:06.420
And we'll be like, well, look it up and, you know, maybe we upload later.
00:48:09.120
But in general, how do you insulate against this environment
00:48:13.560
where we're seeing this major standoff between the government and big tech?
00:48:21.620
how do you guard against a government that is intent on being this incompetent
00:48:26.780
when it comes to actually supporting news media in Canada?
00:48:33.120
You know, you make the point about not having all of our eggs in one basket.
00:48:38.300
I would say that's a lesson we learned from legacy media,
00:48:41.340
who were so reliant on one form of advertising for all of their revenue,
00:48:46.080
and then were completely unable to manage the transition to the digital era.
00:48:51.080
For us, that means not just being on Facebook or not just being on YouTube,
00:48:55.820
but being on a whole variety of social media properties
00:49:02.660
and also maintaining traditional tools like having a great news website
00:49:09.480
so that people can get their content from us in a whole variety of ways.
00:49:14.080
Yeah, and I think the list is a big part of this.
00:49:17.480
And I know that everyone gets just bogged down in their inbox,
00:49:21.900
And every now and then I'll have to go on like an unsubscribed purge
00:49:25.120
because I'm on these mailing lists that I never asked to be on.
00:49:27.920
But that direct communication is really going to be
00:49:33.900
where you know you are getting access to content
00:49:37.080
that's not being filtered through a manipulated algorithm
00:49:45.380
But if someone is concerned who's a True North follower
00:49:49.780
that is like the number one way, which is join up our mailing list.
00:49:54.840
The single best way to make sure that the war between big tech
00:49:59.120
and the Canadian government doesn't preclude you
00:50:06.160
and is to make sure that you have bookmarked our website
00:50:14.260
if you make sure that your family, your friends, your loved ones
00:50:29.800
making business decisions means you can still see True North news
00:50:36.060
Yeah, I mean, we've always, as a point of pride,
00:50:38.940
have really celebrated that we're not on the receiving end
00:50:42.180
of the government media bailout money, nor do we want to be.
00:50:44.860
And I think that's what's the most unfortunate about all of this
00:50:49.540
as all independent medias are, for a fight that wasn't ours.
00:50:55.980
And in fact, if I could, I mean, just speaking for myself,
00:51:23.640
that instantly makes anybody who takes it suspect
00:51:30.200
that relies on taxpayer dollars to pay their payroll,
00:51:33.520
to pay their bills, to tell the truth about the government,
00:51:36.380
to now this latest one where they basically said,
00:51:41.540
into giving millions or even billions of dollars
00:51:46.900
And when people like True North and others said,
00:52:09.220
it's going to become a lot harder in order to do so.
00:52:21.380
Yeah, and I think it's important to contextualize it.
00:52:30.940
And I would love to be able to blame the government
00:52:38.460
which is that it causes people to be very suspect
00:52:50.160
So that's something that people can go to directly.
00:52:56.460
and their ability to limit exposure to new content
00:53:03.500
that might be produced out of say, Norway or something
00:53:06.220
that pre-C11 you might find in your homepage suggestions,
00:53:12.380
because it's going to be some crappy Quebec soap opera,
00:53:16.720
So that is basically it here is that it does really limit
00:53:30.320
is going to do a better job of telling big tech
00:53:36.180
that Canadians actually want to see is laughable.
00:53:40.100
Big tech invests billions of dollars building algorithms
00:53:43.480
that are solely designed to try and show you more of what you like
00:53:49.160
based on, you know, your previous viewing patterns
00:53:57.000
noted not for its deep competency and efficiency,
00:54:03.280
meddling in how the algorithms start to display Canadian content.
00:54:12.660
isn't going to be shown as much to an international audience
00:54:21.080
because a lot of YouTubers who are famous in Canada
00:54:44.160
to try and show it to more Anglophone Albertans.
00:54:51.420
And it's particularly ironic from the government
00:55:13.120
had their own domestic C-11 comparison or analog.
00:55:17.160
It means that all of a sudden these Canadian shows
00:55:19.620
that might have otherwise had an export value will not.
00:55:27.440
Schitt's Creek, which is a very popular Canadian show
00:55:30.480
in the US, would not necessarily be as popular in the US.
00:55:36.880
And I don't think the government has really anticipated
00:55:41.640
of not just closing off the foreign content stream
00:55:44.700
to Canadians, but also inadvertently closing off
00:55:47.840
the Canadian stream to international audiences.
00:55:52.820
I will say I'm annoyed, but I'm not defeated about this
00:55:57.520
But absolutely, if I can do the shameless plug,
00:56:01.020
And more importantly, if you can support independent media
00:56:06.800
it also allows us to have more tools in the toolbox.
00:56:30.300
with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show
00:56:35.080
Thank you, God bless, and have a wonderful weekend.
00:56:37.660
Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.