Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. On behalf of the Internet Society Canada Chapter, I would like to thank this committee for the opportunity to address this important subject. As a preliminary observation, the Internet Society supports initiatives to financially bolster news organization

Canadian Heritage committee  It isn't so much that I have views as to whether the CBC should be excluded. My principal concerns are with the extremely artificial circumstances under which the proposed negotiations take place. The principal danger is that small and local newspapers or news organizations will

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that's a serious problem. I think that, for instance, the approach that Mr. Singer's discussing in the United States, where all newspapers and news organizations are sort of forced into a collective and distributed that way, is a good deal more susceptible to positive out

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam Chair, this is a key question. I think there are a number of actual benefits to a fund as opposed to a regulatory approach. The first one, which will save an immense amount of litigation, is that the raising of revenue is clearly a federal power. It is not clear at all th

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. No, it's not like sports arbitration. Sports arbitration is one on an athlete versus his team. Here we're talking about what is now a partitioned group, various groups of news organizations that may coalesce or may not in approaching the bargaining proces

Canadian Heritage committee  Madam Chair, I believe I was speaking about clause 24, which strips from the digital news intermediaries their ability to rely on copyright law defences. This is simply a stacking of the decks in a way that distorts and prevents people from actually looking at the value of what M

Canadian Heritage committee  There is certainly nothing in the legislation that does that at the moment, and it would require an amendment. Certainly, yes, at the moment the danger is that the large organizations will scoop up all the dough and that there will be nothing left for the minor players.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, the Canadian legislation requires a person to self-identify against criteria that is very deficient. It requires that a person come forward and say, “I have an imbalance of bargaining power in my favour. I dominate a market.” There's no definition of “market”. Is this the ad

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. Thank you. I welcome that opportunity. As crafted, paragraph 27(1)(b) is the relevant provision. Paragraph 27(1)(a) is very precise. It follows the Income Tax Act. It incorporates by referencing the Income Tax Act definition. Paragraph 27(1)(b) is an entirely different ket

Canadian Heritage committee  You'll have to excuse me—

Canadian Heritage committee  Actually, no, I don't think so. It's hard to conceive of how these small organizations can coalesce and resource the kind of bargaining process that Bill C-18 envisages. The principal difficulty with Bill C-18 is that it's a partitioned process. The big players can afford to en

Canadian Heritage committee  That's probably a better solution than Bill C-18 in terms of being able to get money into the very lowest levels of the journalistic community. I don't think the present system ensures that result.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the opportunity. No, I think there is a great deal of work that needs to be done. My concern with Bill C-11 and with this legislation is that none of it is taking a comprehensive look at the Internet. This is piece by piece. The pieces don't necessarily all fit to

Canadian Heritage committee  My problem is that I don't think it's a good first step. I think it's a bad first step, and it will be a fatal first step for a lot of journalistic organizations and news organizations. That's my concern about this. The American model that is being suggested is to bring togethe

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, it could be, but you'd have to reshape it significantly to do that. I would be all in favour of something that would in fact force this kind of coalition that the Americans are looking at. I think that would be a very positive step.