Bill C-18

Online News Act

An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada

This enactment regulates digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to its sustainability. It establishes a framework through which digital news intermediary operators and news businesses may enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries. The framework takes into account principles of freedom of expression and journalistic independence.
The enactment, among other things,
(a) applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to specific factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses;
(b) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting those factors;
(c) specifies that the enactment does not apply in respect of “broadcasting” by digital news intermediaries that are “broadcasting undertakings” as those terms are defined in the Broadcasting Act or in respect of telecommunications service providers as defined in the Telecommunications Act ;
(d) requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies;
(e) requires the Commission to exempt a digital news intermediary from the application of the enactment if its operator has entered into agreements with news businesses and the Commission is of the opinion that the agreements satisfy certain criteria;
(f) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting how the Commission is to interpret those criteria and setting out additional conditions with respect to the eligibility of a digital news intermediary for an exemption;
(g) establishes a bargaining process in respect of matters related to the making available of certain news content by digital news intermediaries;
(h) establishes eligibility criteria and a designation process for news businesses that wish to participate in the bargaining process;
(i) requires the Commission to establish a code of conduct respecting bargaining in relation to news content;
(j) prohibits digital news intermediary operators from acting, in the course of making available certain news content, in ways that discriminate unjustly, that give undue or unreasonable preference or that subject certain news businesses to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage;
(k) allows certain news businesses to make complaints to the Commission in relation to that prohibition;
(l) authorizes the Commission to require the provision of information for the purpose of exercising its powers and performing its duties and functions under the enactment;
(m) requires the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide the Commission with an annual report if the Corporation is a party to an agreement with an operator;
(n) establishes a framework respecting the provision of information to the responsible Minister, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, while permitting an individual or entity to designate certain information that they submit to the Commission as confidential;
(o) authorizes the Commission to impose, for contraventions of the enactment, administrative monetary penalties on certain individuals and entities and conditions on the participation of news businesses in the bargaining process;
(p) establishes a mechanism for the recovery, from digital news intermediary operators, of certain costs related to the administration of the enactment; and
(q) requires the Commission to have an independent auditor prepare a report annually in respect of the impact of the enactment on the Canadian digital news marketplace.
Finally, the enactment makes related amendments to other Acts.

[Dr. Joan Donovan, Online Disinformation and Misinformation Expert, Boston University College of Communication, As an Individual]

Thank you so much for being here and thank you for the invitation to testify at this hearing.

I'm Dr. Joan Donovan, and I've spent my career studying harmful online campaigns, including misinformation, disinformation and media manipulation. I'm an assistant professor at Boston University's College of Communication.

Until recently, I worked for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as the research director of the Shorenstein Center and the director of the technology and social change research project, also known as TaSC. TaSC focused on online media manipulation campaigns and influence operations by bad actors, including adversarial nations running misinformation and disinformation campaigns, skewing public discourse, seeding hate, violence and incitement online, and, of course, undercutting democracy's free and fair elections.

Before Harvard, I led my research at Data & Society, a non-profit where my team and I mapped how social institutions were intentionally disrupted through online campaigns. I chose to join Harvard after a lengthy recruitment period because they convinced me that they would support this work at scale.

As we know, governments around the world and the public have come to rely on my work, as well as that of many other researchers in this field, but from my work, they have learned who is behind COVID misinformation, especially the calls for hydroxychloroquine. We also learned what domestic and foreign operatives are doing to create division in communities, explaining the behaviour of 81 countries that deploy cyber-troops to manipulate public opinion online. I have worked with the WHO and the CDC on strategies to mitigate medical misinformation, and most recently, I've worked with the Canadian election misinformation project at McGill University.

In my whistle-blower disclosure submitted on my own behalf by Whistleblower Aid, my team's groundbreaking research in this field was ground to a halt in obeisance to Facebook by the dean of Harvard Kennedy School, a man now known for his deference to donor interests.

In short, in October 2021, a well-known Facebook fixer became enraged in a donor meeting when I told the group that I had Frances Haugen's entire cache of internal Facebook documents and that I planned to create a public collaborative archive of that. I said they were the most important documents in Internet history. This donor and Facebook PR executive attacked everything I said at that meeting. He and Facebook-affiliated donors have powerful influence at Harvard, so that was the start of the Kennedy School's campaign to stop my work and create unceasing misery for my research team. When Harvard received a donation of half a billion dollars from The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the fate of my research was sealed. HKS killed the TaSC project and fired me after silencing me and my team for two years.

Courtney Radsch testified here that tech giant intimidation includes researchers and academics and a further weaponization of the big tobacco and big oil playbooks, silencing and skewing research and protecting their profits and lies to the public. However, unlike the censorship campaigns of those before them, tech giants have more tools at their disposal because they control the information landscape and the data about it. For instance, Meta's actions in Canada to fight Bill C-18 have deprived Canadians of more than five million news interactions a day, according to McGill's media ecosystem observatory.

You see the damage of their for-profit motivation acutely in Canada. As Imran Ahmed from the Center for Countering Digital Hate testified to here, we know that bad actors fill the vacuum when credible news and information leave us, with little else to look at. When a school like Harvard is complicit in the corporate direction of research, what can protect those of us who work to document, analyze and share the truth? As others have noted, Facebook's actions to avoid accountability have targeted legislators and regulators in the U.S. and Canada.

I want to close by saying this. I support the online algorithm transparency act, known as Bill C-292 here in Canada, and the similar legislation introduced in New Zealand, the U.K. and the European Union. I was raised with the deepest conviction that I'm responsible for the consequences of my actions, and tech giants must be too. As an academic, I have a moral obligation to tell the truth—then and now.

Thank you very much.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

That bill is clearly still before the industry committee, I would assume. With cybersecurity, perhaps it could be with public safety.

I know that we had some serious concerns with that piece of legislation. I think we want to ensure that the rights of Canadians are always protected. When we're considering Bill C-26, which deals with cybersecurity, we know that this is an evolving field and there's an evolving threat level that comes with that. We know that the government, quite frankly, has failed to protect the rights of Canadians when it comes to their security—both personal security and in our communities. When it comes to the online environment, they've been lax. They've turned a blind eye, quite frankly, to threats to cybersecurity. I think we've seen that again and again.

We saw it when this government refused to ban Huawei from the 5G network for years in spite of overwhelming evidence that the communist regime in Beijing was using that technology in the Huawei network as a way to gain access to personal information. That was a security vulnerability.

We saw that our Five Eyes partners in the security establishment—our international partnerships with Australia, New Zealand and the United States—all took action to protect their citizens and their networks from cybersecurity threats. That's something this government did not do. It took them years and they fought it and fought it before they took the decision—much too late—to exclude Huawei from our cybersecurity networks. That resulted, quite frankly, in embarrassing situations where Canada was excluded from high-level meetings of the Five Eyes.

We saw it very recently, when Australia had its deal with the United States to purchase submarines, for instance. There was an exclusion of Canada because Canada's networks were not deemed to be secure enough to allow us to participate in those very important, high-level meetings. These are examples where the government has failed to take cybersecurity seriously.

As I said, we have grave concerns with Bill C-26. It's troubling to see that this bill would cede power to another piece of legislation or have this coordinating amendment, so there would be two pieces of legislation that we believe are flawed coordinating with one another. I think this is the sort of thing where we should be considering what is in Bill C-26 as we discuss this. We can't simply agree holus-bolus to something in another act if we haven't considered that fully, here at this committee.

I think that this particular clause is one where, perhaps as the evening goes on, we will find a way to bring about an amendment or to look at ways we can make sure that the concerns we had with Bill C-26 are addressed.

The summary of Bill C-26 states:

Part 1 amends the Telecommunications Act to add the promotion of the security of the Canadian telecommunications system as an objective of the Canadian telecommunications policy and to authorize the Governor in Council and the Minister of Industry to direct telecommunications service providers to do anything, or refrain from doing anything, that is necessary to secure the Canadian telecommunications system. It also establishes an administrative monetary penalty scheme to promote compliance with orders and regulations made by the Governor in Council and the Minister of Industry to secure the Canadian telecommunications system as well as rules for judicial review of those orders and regulations.

It continues:

Part 2 enacts the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act to provide a framework for the protection of the critical cyber systems of services and systems that are vital to national security or public safety and that are delivered or operated as part of a work, undertaking or business that is within the legislative authority of Parliament. It also, among other things,

(a) authorizes the Governor in Council to designate any service or system as a vital service or vital system;

(b) authorizes the Governor in Council to establish classes of operators in respect of a vital service or vital system;

(c) requires designated operators to, among other things, establish and implement cyber security programs, mitigate supply-chain and third-party risks, report cyber security incidents and comply with cyber security directions;

(d) provides for the exchange of information between relevant parties; and

(e) authorizes the enforcement of the obligations under the Act and imposes consequences for non-compliance.

Cybersecurity, as I've said, is a growing concern for Canadians. It remains a national security concern. It remains an economic security concern. We know we lose when things like patents, trademarked information and secrets are lost because of a failure to ensure we have adequate cybersecurity in place. We know the government doesn't have a legal mechanism to compel industry action to address cyber-threats or vulnerabilities in the telecommunications sector.

Bill C-26 is another example of the Minister of Industry being given sweeping powers, as we heard with Bill C-33, where the minister is given sweeping powers to enact orders that, in his opinion, are necessary to protect port infrastructure, port operations, etc. We just dealt with that in a previous clause. I think this is another example where we need to ensure that the powers given in Bill C-26 are proportional—that there are checks and balances, and that the rights of Canadians are always protected when the minister is exercising the rights and powers given to him or her in the legislation. It's another example of giving the minister broad powers to enact the legislation.

Now, cybersecurity is something that Conservatives have been raising the alarm about for a long time. We did it when we first created, under a conservative motion, the Canada–China special committee. That was an issue that was raised there. In the context of Huawei, it is something we raised time and time again: our concerns that our 5G network was not being protected.

There are opportunities to strengthen our cybersecurity protocols. We need to ensure that not only are the privacy rights of Canadians respected, but that there's also no attempt at censorship for Canadian citizens when they are operating in the cyber-environment. We've seen the government go down that road as well, with Bill C-18 and with Bill C-10. They want to control what Canadians see, and control the algorithms of what will show up in their social media, for instance.

We have a hard time trusting the government when it comes to anything to do with cybersecurity or Internet regulations. They've proven time and time again that they're willing to sacrifice the rights of Canadians in order to promote their own narrow agenda.

Bill C-26, unfortunately, increases regulation and red tape, often, we believe, without adequate oversight and without votes in Parliament.

We've seen, even here today, that the rights of members or parliamentarians, the supremacy of Parliament, are things that this government does not put as the highest priority. If Parliament gets in the way, they simply try to bypass it.

I think Bill C-26 is another example of where that has happened. We have grave concerns with that, as I outlined briefly. There is also—

[Rachel Curran]

Monsieur Villemure, we would love to not be in this position. We would love to have news on our platforms. The problem is that the government, through Bill C-18, the Online News Act, has asked us to pay an uncapped amount, an unknown amount, for content that has no commercial value to us.

We believe we provide a great deal of value to news publishers in the form of free distribution and marketing. That amount we've calculated at $230 million per year. We would love to get back to putting news on our platforms and providing publishers with those free tools. We're not able to do that under the framework of the Online News Act.

Mr. Villemure, if you could work with your government colleagues to make amendments to that legislation that would allow us to put news back on our platforms, we would love to do that.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Right now, under Bill C-18.... I'm sorry; I should not say that.

Google has managed to get an exemption from Bill C-18 and has offered $100 million to the news sector in exchange for that exemption. It is proposed by the PBO, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that about a third of that funding is going to go to the CBC, which is already a publicly funded broadcaster to the tune of $1.4 billion and has another $400 million in ad revenue and subscriptions.

What does this do to the overall news media market and its future in this country, when big tech and big government collude to give one-third of this money to a public broadcaster?

[Sean Speer]

One of the challenges, MP Thomas, that news start-ups face in terms of building an audience and building awareness in the marketplace is, of course, finding different channels to reach that audience.

Up until now, for The Hub—and I think others have testified similarly—Meta and Google have been a major part of that process. We don't see the platforms as a threat or playing a counterproductive role. They've enabled us to build and grow what are increasingly sustainable news organizations that can start to fill some of the gaps that have been created by the process of disruption, which is at the heart of much of the work the committee is doing.

One of the consequences, of course, of Bill C-18 has been that many of us have lost the ability to communicate, reach our current audience and grow it, because the law has caused Meta to leave the Canadian market. Fortunately, the agreement between Google and the government prevented a scenario whereby Google similarly left the market. Had that happened, I fear that a lot of the progress we're seeing in the new and independent media sector would have been fundamentally disrupted.

I would say that, as you think about the work the committee is doing, I would encourage you to start with the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Permit entrepreneurs, innovators and, of course, long-standing media organizations to go through the iterative process of trial and error to figure out how we can continue to deliver the news and information that Canadians need, reflecting the changing technological environment.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you. My first question is for Mr. Speer.

You said that right now in the news sector we're seeing lots of new and innovative approaches being taken and that they're largely being driven by market values. You said that this is a good thing and that government intervention is thwarting or distorting that innovation that's taking place.

I'm curious if you can expand on that a bit in terms of the impact that government interventions such as Bill C-18 have on the innovative news sector and its future.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

No. I was just going to say that it's interesting when we talk about governments at the national and provincial levels. They're the ones that have caused a lot of the crises in local newspapers. They pulled every ad they could in rural Canada. The crisis has hit, and some of the MPs around this table have really realized that, “Oh, the federal government is putting so much money into Meta and Google, and so on, and less into local newspapers.” We've been saying that, Madam Chair, around this table, particularly Conservative MPs, dealing with Bill C-18. Local newspapers are the ones that are disappearing faster than any other. Finally, everyone else has realized it.

That's all I have to say.

CBC/Radio-Canada

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, as a government, we have always supported CBC/Radio-Canada and the services it provides to local communities across the country.

One of the first measures we took as government was to cancel the Harper government's cuts to our public broadcaster. Supporting local news and journalists during these difficult times for the industry is exactly why we introduced Bill C‑18.

While the Leader of the Opposition celebrates Canadian families being laid off, we will continue to support local journalists and local news in Canada. We are very open to working with the Bloc Québécois on this, as always.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, we have always supported CBC/Radio-Canada and the services it provides to local communities across the country.

One of the first decisions we made as a government was to cancel the Harper government's cuts to our public broadcaster. Supporting local news and journalists in this difficult juncture is exactly why we introduced Bill C‑18.

While the Leader of the Opposition rejoices as Canadian families are facing layoffs, we will continue to support local news and journalists in Canada.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, we have been very concerned about what is happening in our media, our art and our culture for years now.

That is why the government has taken concrete action to support media across the country, to invest in local journalism and to stand up against the web giants in favour of journalists and the work they do, which is essential to our democracy. For example, we were pleased to reach an agreement with Google regarding Bill C‑18.

We will continue to be there to support and defend journalists across the country, especially local journalists who play an essential role in our democracy.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Menzies.

My follow-up to that, then, would be that Google went into a back room, entered into a deal with the government, and said that it would give $100 million to a collective of its choosing.

I find that very interesting. You have a big tech company that is going to ultimately determine which collective, if there are multiple, it is going to enter into this bargaining agreement with. It's going to hand the collective $100 million, and then that's supposed to go towards the perpetuation of news in the nation.

The minister has announced that the CBC has one-third of all the journalists in the country, and according to the regulations, we know that the money is supposed to be allocated according to the number of journalists in each office. The CBC, then, having one-third of the journalists in the country, would stand to gain $33 million. It already gains $1.4 billion in taxpayer money, and then it has access to another $400 million through advertising revenue and now the most recent Liberal announcement of $129 million in tax benefits.

I'm curious about the comment you made in your opening remarks with regard to the CBC and the fact that we actually can't level the playing field until it is omitted in terms of its ability to generate ad revenue. You also stated that it should be excluded from Bill C-18 or the $100 million that Google is granting. Can you comment on that further?

[Peter Menzies]

Sure. Unfortunately, one of the things that didn't get addressed in the way Bill C-18 ended up was the power imbalance issue. I had quite a bit of sympathy for that. Phillip Crawley used to raise that issue quite elegantly before this committee and before the Senate transportation committee. We're left without that.

Google would have to speak with regard to its intention regarding the fund, but putting the media in a position of being dependent on both taxpayers' money and taxpayers' benefits, and on big tech money—the two most powerful entities in our world that we need media to hold to account—which is the path we're going down right now, is just not where we want to be. We want to move forward. That's what I am trying to encourage here: that people think forward as to how we can get past these hurdles with Bill C-18, this roadblock that we've ended up with, this dead-end road that we've ended up with, and move forward to a place where the Unifor jobs can happen, where we can be flourishing and where journalists can be serving who they want to serve, i.e., readers and citizens.

That's basically where we are with that. Also, in terms of that, you don't have to like big tech to realize that. If you look at the National Post's editorial the other day, you will see that it went on about how terrible Google is and about some of the things like the antitrust suits in the States. Then it said that they looked forward to being great partners with Google. That's where we are.

[Dr. Erik Peinert]

Okay—we will try that.

I will continue where I left off.

I earned a Ph.D. from Brown University, where my research focused on competition, monopoly and antitrust and has been published in leading academic journals.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today about big tech's pattern of coercion in response to regulation and specifically Meta's recent action to block Canadian access to news articles across its platforms in retaliation for the passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This follows a nearly identical action in 2021 by Meta, then Facebook, to extract concessions from Australia with respect to its news media bargaining code.

This discussion comes at a time when the news industry across the globe is in peril. It's an industry I've watched closely since I was a child. I was raised by a journalist. My mother began her career as a reporter for a local paper in rural New England, moving to various editorial roles in minor cities, to the newsroom at The Boston Globe, and then to executive positions at The Boston Globe and GateHouse Media, now Gannett. She now owns several successful, independent local papers in Massachusetts suburbs.

My personal and professional experiences lead me to make two principal points today, the first being about the platforms' business models in this market.

Media companies pay to produce and distribute content that a large mass of readers find valuable. They then sell ads to businesses that want their offerings in front of those readers. On one side, Meta and Google have become a central way for readers to access news media, which gives them power over journalism outlets, with an implicit threat to cut off readership.

On the other side, Meta and Google also have an effective duopoly over digital advertising, and both face or have faced antitrust lawsuits for illegal monopolization in this space.

These companies are not providing viewership so much as using their dual control over Internet traffic and advertising to monetize content that journalists produce at considerable expense. Recent research by economists at the University of Zurich indicates that 40% of Google's total revenue from search advertising would go to publishers and other journalism outlets if it faced more competition. With media companies paying to produce the product [Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Dr. Courtney Radsch]

Yes.

Sorry about that.

First, tech giants use their platforms to propagandize against regulation they oppose, distorting public perception and debate. We saw this in Australia, Canada, Brazil and the U.S. with news media bargaining legislation. Google used its search page to advocate against proposed laws, and reportedly told evangelical preachers in Brazil that they would no longer be able to quote the Bible online. The Brazilian judiciary accused Google of undue influence in the legislative process.

Second, tech giants censor news and withdraw access to data and APIs, as well as threatening to leave entire markets to avoid meaningful regulation and deter oversight. Meta even impeded sharing links from Australian government sites during parliamentary deliberations about the bargaining code there as part of its negotiation tactics, according to a whistle-blower.

Google and Meta have threatened to ditch news entirely, despite the fact that disinformation degrades their platforms while news provides greater value and a better user experience, and they have pressured news outlets to kill stories, including coverage of a recent study that estimated they owe U.S. publishers more than $12 billion a year. This pattern of censorship and distortion can also be seen in motions to suppress information, destruction of evidence and obstacles to public scrutiny, as with the historic antitrust trial against Google happening now in D.C., where it opposed audio livestreaming.

Third, they undermine democratic institutions, seek to handicap regulatory agencies and evade laws they don't like. We saw this in Meta's decision to censor news in Canada rather than comply with Bill C-18, and in its lawsuit against the FTC over attempts to force the company to comply with restrictions on data gathering.

Fourth, big tech companies spend more money in Washington, Brussels and other world capitals than virtually any other sector, through direct lobbying and by funding industry groups and fellowships that help shape how policy-makers think about issues they regulate, putting big tech-funded experts into the heart of policy-making.

Fifth and finally, big tech provides funding to most civil society, research and advocacy groups working in tech policy, digital rights, AI governance and the media bargaining code space, as well as journalism.

I do not want to disparage the work of these organizations, but the perception of interference, along with the potential to divert attention for more important and consequential issues, is a way to subvert demand for regulation. Research shows that big tech funding to media correlates with countries where governments are considering fair compensation legislation, and now AI companies are following the same playbook.

In conclusion, big tech companies generate chaos and disruption, which then they leverage to blame governments for crafting unworkable regulation that only becomes workable once modifications that benefit them the most are made.

[Peter Menzies, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I hope I can provide some constructive remarks that you can take forward to help Canada's news organizations flourish once again.

First, though, I wish to clarify a couple of points.

I represent only myself. The blend of my experiences of three decades in journalism and a decade with the CRTC has given me a relatively unique perspective. I have been outspoken in raising the alarm concerning the problematic unintended consequences of legislation, much of which has unfortunately come to pass.

I've always done so only on behalf of myself. I am not a member of any political party, federal or provincial, nor do I contribute to any. I am not a member of any organization, a paid lobbyist or a shill for big tech, as has been inferred. I am just a citizen with a passion for sensible public policy and independent, competitive journalism.

I have no intention of retelling the story of Bill C-18. You all know that well enough.

The role of journalists in society is often described as being to hold the powerful to account, but in Canada, we now unfortunately have a news ecosystem in which most of our journalists could soon have at least half of their pay dependent on the government, Google and any other offshore money the CRTC might come up with as a result of hearings this week. Given that the two most powerful entities in our society are governments and large data-vacuuming tech companies, this is not where we want to be, for as much as the news organizations and journalists involved may swear on their mothers' graves that these realities do not and will not influence their coverage, what they say or how they view the situation, frankly, doesn't matter.

What matters is what the people who read, watch and listen to their news think. While, for sure, some people won't care, a great many will believe that news organizations are fatally compromised. As a result, the public's faith in journalists will continue to wither, and trust in journalism will eventually die. Many will increasingly come to see news organizations as businesses that saved their skin by selling their souls.

We need to find a better way forward. To that end, I recommend to you “And now, the news”, a policy paper authored by myself and Konrad von Finckenstein, published this spring by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. It calls for the development of a national news industry policy framework that would ensure that the news consumer is served by a healthy, modern, competitive and refreshed news ecosystem that delivers fair, balanced and accurate news that is trusted.

There's a lot to unpack in that paper, but there is one recommendation in it that you can act on, beginning right away. Get the CBC out of the advertising business.

There will be no flourishing for news organizations until the CBC's dualistic distortion of the marketplace is replaced with a level playing field. We will never have one of those, provided the CBC continues to compete for advertising revenue while being paid $1.3 billion a year by Parliament to be a public broadcaster.

That money is intended to allow the CBC to achieve its public mandate, and no doubt much of it does. However, it also allows the CBC to out-resource companies like The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Postmedia, Le Devoir and dozens of smaller start-ups, while soaking up as much as $400 million in advertising revenue. That's significantly more than all the government and Google supports combined.

This is not to say there is not a role for a public broadcaster, but that's not what we have. What we have is a publicly funded commercial broadcaster and online platform.

Meanwhile, TVA and CTV lay people off and Quebecor and Bell are begging the CRTC to get Netflix and Disney+ to subsidize their newsrooms. It's ridiculous.

A flourishing future for a free and independent press in this country is just not possible so long as the CBC exists not as a pure play public broadcaster but as a publicly funded commercial broadcaster and online platform operator. No industry could thrive in such circumstances.

CBC/SRC needs to be stripped of its ability to earn domestic advertising revenues and needs to streamline its operations to focus on its mandate and make its news freely available to others. Immediately eliminating it as a recipient of the Google fund would be a good start.

Thank you.