Thank you so much for inviting me to speak today.

I was a journalist in Canada for 10 years, working in radio, television and online. I used to run cbc.ca. I used to run the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the non-profit that operates Wikipedia. That makes me the only Canadian to have run a global top 10 Internet property. Last year, I was the McConnell professor of practice at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

I am speaking here in a personal capacity, based on my own knowledge and my own experiences.

I think Bill C-18 is a very bad bill for three reasons that I'm going to unpack for you.

First, Bill C-18 misdiagnoses the nature of the problem. Bill C-18 characterizes as “unfairness” that Google and Facebook have such a large share of the digital ad market. That is a fundamental mischaracterization or misunderstanding.

Imagine it's the 1920s. I make buggy whips and you make cars. Bill C-18 is the government saying that you need to give me money forever because nobody is buying my buggy whips.

The journalism industry used to be profitable because buying ads in the news was the best way—or at least a very good way—to reach audiences. That's less true today. Google and Facebook have created advertising tools that are way more efficient and more effective than the old ones. That is why advertisers are using them. Google and Facebook out-innovated the business side of the news industry. That is not a fairness issue. It's not a moral issue. It doesn't make them villains.

Ben Scott told you that the government is, in effect, “refereeing a contest between big tech and big publishers”. He urged this committee to focus on the public interest instead. I want to say the same.

My second point is that Bill C-18 will not actually support quality journalism. As the former CRTC head, Konrad von Finckenstein, told you on Friday, “If you want to subsidize news publishers, you can do it a myriad of other ways”. He characterized this bill as “unnecessarily complicated”. I think he's right.

If the government's goal is to support quality journalism, the Public Policy Forum laid out a very good path for how to do that. In 2017, the PPF released “Shattered Mirror”, which was its report on the crisis in the news industry. It recommended that the government start collecting sales tax on foreign company ad sales in Canada and that this money be used to establish a journalism fund to be administered by a body independent of the government. That would support quality journalism.

Bill C-18 may attempt to achieve the same goal, but it does it by trying to awkwardly kind of force Google and Facebook into the role of directly funding journalism themselves and that is a really tough fit. Google and Facebook are private sector Silicon Valley megacorporations. Their job is to advance their own business interests. They don't have a mission to serve the people of Canada. We don't elect them and they are not accountable to us.

The government can try to give Google and Facebook very specific direction and stand over their shoulders and try to compel them to do what it wants, but that is not the simple way. The simple way is to take their money and make a fund.

My third point is that Bill C-18 will have significant negative unintended consequences. I'm going to speak here mainly about the Internet and Internet users.

Bill C-18 will encourage the creation of clickbait and nonsense.

Bill C-18 will create an incentive for Google and Facebook to back away from news.

Finally, Bill C-18 will enshrine in law the idea that ordinary Internet linking is “taking value”, and that puts us on a slippery slope. The Internet was designed to be open and to grow organically. The ability to link freely, and not just link but to share, to comment, to annotate and to build upon is at the heart of the Internet's openness. That is well understood.

With Bill C-18, the government introduces friction to linking. That brings us closer to an Internet that is fundamentally commercial, where what we see online is going to be determined by corporate deals. That kind of change happens extremely slowly. It's the accumulated effect of many decisions that, at the time, might not have seemed very consequential in that regard. It is one step on that bad road.

Thank you very much.

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