Canadian Heritage committee  I did not write that article to support you, but yes, there were a number of people—me included—who did think Bill C-18 was misguided from the get-go, for many different reasons. I think I said early on, as a lot of people said early on, that Facebook was not bluffing; Facebook was going to stay out.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would, and I really appreciate what you just said. I found it very refreshing because it's extremely true. When I was planning to come here, I had to cancel an appointment with my audiologist. I ended up talking to the receptionist about why I was cancelling, and she told me that she thinks the government being in any way involved with the news media completely destroys her trust in it.

Canadian Heritage committee  My name is Sue Gardner. I am the former head of CBC.ca, the English language website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I am also the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates Wikipedia. I have been dabbling recently in public policy, including a recent stint as the McConnell professor of practice at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, I don't think so, for the reasons I said before. I think they just don't have the bargaining power. They don't have the time, and they don't have the energy. They aren't big enough to support that kind of negotiation need. To your second question, obviously, as I have said, I do think a fund would be better for that purpose.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I don't know if I can provide them in the time you have, but there is a piece—

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I'd be happy to.

Canadian Heritage committee  I do agree that a lot has been brought into the room today that is not germane to Bill C-18, and is not about news organizations and their relationship with news disseminating platforms. I think we all agree, presumably, that there are many reasons to be critical of big tech. Those do include the algorithmic amplification of inflammatory material.

Canadian Heritage committee  The people who are doing the creativity and innovation right now don't think so, and I think that their perspectives are probably correct, because they are the folks doing that work. From my perspective, this bill will reward organizations that have deal-making capacity and employ lawyers and business development people, and it will reward organizations that have lobbying power and presence in Ottawa, and the little organizations definitely don't have that.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm sorry. I'll try to answer quickly. It's hard to define quality. I think that in previous meetings people talked about standards and practices, and there are ways in which journalism organizations adopt standards and practices. Perhaps that is one way to define quality. I think that excluding the very small organizations is a bad idea, because sometimes they are the only players, and sometimes they play a very important role.

Canadian Heritage committee  You are asking the wrong person. I'm sorry, but I'm not a sports person. I know nothing about sports arbitration.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, absolutely. I would throw in there, too, the indie publishers and the digital start-ups—all the little guys, whether they're operating at a local level or not. Originally, the indie start-up folks opposed Bill C-18. Then when it became pretty clear that it was likely to go through—and I think this has happened with a lot of entities—I think they shifted their focus to try to tweak it and have some amendments made so that they would be less disadvantaged by it.

Canadian Heritage committee  Right. I have had those questions myself. I think it's so important that this kind of legislation be considered in the context of what is actually happening in the news industry and not just in the context of the news industry needing dollars because one thing that has been happening in news is a fragmentation of audiences.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's appalling. It's terrible. I don't think anybody is arguing differently. The state of journalism in this country.... I lived outside Canada for 11 years, and I returned about a year and a half ago. The Globe and Mail is a brochure now. The institutions, even the ones that still exist, are hollowed out versions of their former selves.

Canadian Heritage committee  Right, and I think what it does is that it creates the conditions in which it could be, as you say, applied to other forms of information, other forms of knowledge. I don't know that it would go down a cable television kind of road where consumers would be buying packages. When I think about the commercialization, what I think about more is the idea that the Internet—what is shown to you, what is given to you—is fuelled by commercial deals and money changing hands in backroom corporate decision-making that you don't know about, right?

Canadian Heritage committee  I feel like in some ways this bill is the worst of both worlds. I think the minister has said he doesn't want to be in the middle between the news organizations and the platforms, but I think the truth is, if the government has policy objectives, it is in the middle. You can't escape being in the middle.