Madam Speaker, I am much in sympathy with what I have heard from the Conservatives around Bill C-18 to the extent of whether it will solve the problem. I am not hearing us identify the problem of social media outlets like Google and Facebook and the others having eviscerated the news media in this country, not necessarily by putting their content up without paying for it but by actually getting rid of the business model our newspapers used to rely on, like classified ads. The newspapers used to be able to rely on a source of income that is no longer there because foreign enterprises not paying taxes in this country have created a different marketplace that provides access to Kijiji and so on. I wonder if the hon. member has any comments on whether we could replace the word “platforms” with the word “publishers” and solve this problem.
In the House of Commons on June 20th, 2023. See this statement in context.