Bill C-18 has passed the senate and received royal assent. With that, freedom of the press has been abolished.
The effort to ram Bill C-18 through has now been completed. Earlier, the government cut off debate in order to pass the legislation. Shortly after, the bill passed the House of Commons and arrived at the Canadian senate. In response to the development, Meta announced that it will begin blocking news articles before the legislation comes into force.
Along the way, both Bell and the Globe and Mail were admitting to having reservations on where things are going to go from here. The fact that big media was calling these potential blockages little more than a bluff means these are pretty big admissions from some of the players. Still, nothing was slowing down the process of ramming this bill through.
Today, we learned that not only has the bill passed the senate, but also received royal assent. So, it is now no longer formally called Bill C-18, but rather, the Online News Act. Already, some lobbyists were in a self congratulatory mood with one saying that they are now calling on the platforms to just give up their positions and do everything they say because reasons and like such as. From Broadcast Dialogue:
While Meta continues testing a product solution that would end news availability in Canada – a vital source of referral traffic for many news outlets – Marla Boltman, Executive Director of public broadcaster watchdog FRIENDS, says she’s optimistic the tech giants will comply with the Act.
“The passing of the Online News Act is an essential step in providing much needed support for Canadian journalism. Compelling foreign tech giants to enter into compensation agreements with news outlets corrects a market imbalance that has threatened the very existence of the Canadians news sector and, by extension, our democracy,” said Boltman. “We wholeheartedly applaud Parliament for getting this challenging bill across the finish line while staring down the barrel of Google and Facebook’s threats to block news in Canada. Our hope is that these foreign tech giants will now abandon their intimidation tactics and show the Canadian democratic process the respect it deserves.”
So, supporters are still relying on magical thinking and pixie dust to allow them to carry the day. It’s no exaggeration to note that supporters really believe that if you just believe hard enough, then the problems this bill have will magically fix themselves and their venture into the land of the Horn of Plenty can finally begin. In its own way, it’s actually quite hilarious.
Meanwhile, back in the world of reality, the question now becomes, what happens next? A hint in all of this revolves around the Coming into Force provisions in Bill C-18. It reads as follows:
Coming into Force
Order in council
93 (1) Section 6 comes into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council, but that day must not be before the day on which the first regulations made under paragraph 84(a) come into force.
Order in council
(2) Sections 7, 8, 11 to 17, 20, 27 to 31, 53.1 and 59 and subsection 60(2) come into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council, but that day must not be before the latest of(a) the day fixed in accordance with subsection (1),
(b) the day on which the first regulations made under paragraph 84(b) come into force, and
(c) the day on which the first regulations made under paragraph 84(c) come into force.
Order in council
(3) Sections 18, 19, 21, 22 and 32 to 44 come into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council, but that day must not be before the day fixed in accordance with subsection (2).
Order in council
(4) Sections 49 to 52 and 68 come into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council, but that day must not be before the day fixed in accordance with subsection (3).
Order in council
(5) Sections 79 to 83, 86, 87 and 90 come into force on a day or days to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.
It’s… a lot of words that doesn’t tell most people reading it a lot. There’s a process for something in government to decide when this bill comes into force. At this stage, we don’t know what dates will be set and we, admittedly, aren’t all that familiar with this particular process. What we can infer from this is that there is a time window between royal assent and when this bill comes into force. It’s quite possible that Meta will use that time to continue conducting its tests, figuring out what to block and how to block such links in the first place. When this bill is enforced, the trigger will be pulled sometime beforehand and news links will get blocked in Canada. At least, that’s how one can easily read into everything above.
Google is a bit more of a mystery at this stage. Alphabet has said that they are considering blocking news links, but the thing is, their tests were already conducted. Rumours suggest that representatives are meeting with the government to try and negotiate something. Given the track record of the government refusing to listen to anyone other than their lobbyist pals, though, it’s not exactly the most hopeful thing from the start. We’ll see, of course.
So, now we wait. How severe will these blocks be? Will whole domains get blocked or just specific URLs? How will all of this work on Meta and Google platforms? Will the platforms do the most shocking thing imaginable and capitulate on this? Those questions may soon have an answer depending on when all of this comes into force.
Either way, though, freedom of the press is not really a thing in Canada any more. The government now has the power to pick winners and losers in the news space. Smaller players will have a much tougher time surviving regardless of the decisions made on the platforms. If the government decides it doesn’t like you, well, poof goes the funding (assuming links don’t get blocked altogether). The government can wait until the news outlet is completely starved of cash afterwards before the “problem” source can go away. Does that sound like a country that has freedom of the press? Not really. We are entering a rather dark era in Canadian journalism.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
