Major technology legislation could dominate the Liberals’ upcoming agenda. Here’s where things stopped and what may come next

OTTAWA — When Parliament returns Monday from its winter break, it will do so at a crucial time: the week that marks 100 days since the Liberal government received its new mandate in October.

The 100-day mark lands on February 3, and it’s more than just a milestone. It is the self-imposed deadline that the Liberals have set to introduce and reinstate a series of bills set out in their election platform.

Three of those bills grapple with the thorny issue of regulating web giants, reviving highly-charged debates between technology companies, Canada’s media sectors and politicians on issues such as censorship, hate speech and revenue sharing.

“Our priority is to enact legislation that holds technology giants accountable in a way that makes the Internet fairer, safer, more inclusive and competitive for Canadians,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement to the Star on Saturday. .

“I spoke to my peers from other parties and stakeholders from across the country to understand what their needs and priorities are. Our government is moving as quickly as possible on our three priority bills. ”

This is where MPs left the state of affairs before last year’s federal election, and where it looks like it could go next.

Update of the Broadcasting Act

Perhaps the most controversial of the Liberals’ promised legislation is the reinstatement of what was known as Bill C-10, or the updating of the Broadcasting Act.

The bill, first introduced in 2020 by then-Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, sought to bring foreign web giants (think major streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) under similar regulations already in place on traditional television and television. radio broadcasters in Canada.

Its purpose was to revamp Canada’s outdated Broadcasting Act – which was created before the Internet began to dominate the media landscape – to ensure that streaming and social media giants contributed to the creation and promotion of Canadian content. Traditional broadcasters already adhere to those rules, monitored by the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission.

But the bill came up in a series of hookups. One of the biggest came after the Liberals decided to repeal a portion of the bill that excluded any content created by social media users from the rules. This has raised concerns about the free speech of conservatives and other critics that everyday users might be considering individual postings.

Guilbeault soon found himself in hot water after making several conflicting statements about the department’s removal, and other parts of the bill, in several media interviews last spring.

“I think there were, it is fair to say, communication errors,” NDP heritage critic Peter Julian told the Star this week. “The minister was not very effective in actually explaining the bill.”

The bill eventually passed in the House with the support of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, but did not clear the Senate before the election was called.

Since then, Rodriguez’s office has met several times with YouTube representatives and other stakeholders linked to the file with his opposition counterparts to discuss the new legislation.

Julian told the Star that although the NDP still supports the bill “in principle”, it will work with the government to further develop the bill once it is introduced.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have targeted the Star on the party’s statements on last November’s bill, which called on the Liberals to scrap it altogether.

“Canadians have every right to worry that the Liberals are going on right where C-10 left off,” wrote the party’s legacy critic John Nater and digital government critic Ben Lobb.

Web Giants Paying Canadian News Stores

Also at the top of Rodriguez’s 2022 agenda is the introduction of legislation that will make web giants pay Canadian media outlets for links to news content on their platforms.

“In many cases, (Canadian content) was shared by online platforms that received traffic, views and money from advertisers for that content. There is a clear market imbalance, “Rodriguez said in a statement.

“Over the past few months, we have had good talks with publishers, journalists and news media organizations to make sure that the technology giants contribute to healthy news in this country. We will introduce legislation as soon as possible that will be based on my many discussions with the industry. ”

The bill will be based on Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, which has centered on negotiating payments with Facebook and Google for content shared on their sites.

Despite a lack of legislation, some technology giants have already moved forward on this front; last fall, Google partnered with Torstar, the Toronto Star publishing company. The Google News exhibit will allow users to access content from Torstar Publications – and a number of other publishers, including the Globe and Mail – in an effort to share news from trusted outlets and drive traffic back to their sites.

Facebook, now known as Meta, also signed a multi-year deal with Torstar in November that will see the web giant pay the publisher for the ability to post links to work produced by its publications. Seventeen other Canadian publishers are part of the program, called the News Innovation Test.

While Rodriguez has been tasked with introducing the bill quickly, legislation is also a key priority for the NDP.

Julian wrote a letter to the Minister of Heritage last week urging him to move quickly on the issue.

“For more than six years that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in power, instead of ensuring a fair distribution of advertising revenue between the digital giants and our media, the Liberal government (has) chosen to keep the profits of Facebook and To protect Google, “he wrote.

“The liberal government would like to reiterate that it wants to support the viability of our media, but its lack of action shows that this government is too close to the web giants.”

Julian told the Star the outburst of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic stressed the importance of throwing smaller outlets a lifeline.

“If people can not get good local journalism … that helps explain to them and what’s going on with COVID or any other crisis or any other community issue, some of them will turn to what were demonstrably dishonest sources of information,” he said. .

The federal conservatives, when asked for comment, did not address how they would approach such legislation once it was tabled.

Addressing online damage

The latest of three internet-driven bills the Liberals have promised to introduce this week is legislation to address “serious forms of harmful online content, specifically hate speech, terrorist content, content that incites violence, sexual abuse of children and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. ”

The government has also undertaken to amend Canada’s Human Rights Act and the Penal Code to better address online hate, although this promise has not been included in its 100-day time frame.

The Liberals’ proposed approach also includes the creation of a new digital security commission that will oversee and enforce the new rules.

But whether the Liberals will really meet their February 3 deadline is not clear.

The government’s consultation process on its proposed framework was criticized last year, in part because it took place amid a federal election in which stakeholders had no idea who could form a government.

The consultation’s submissions were never made public – something the NDP’s Julian says MPs should see before discussing the legislation. (The heritage department is currently working on publishing a summary of what he heard.)

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has compiled his own list of submissions from those who participated in the process.

One major concern is Ottawa’s proposal to mandate platforms to remove harmful content within 24 hours of being flagged. The problem, according to some submissions, was that a 24-hour window was too short and arbitrary to properly review the content and cool free speech.

Other criticisms include Ottawa’s decision to allow content to be moderated via artificial intelligence, a red flag given that automated systems can be biased against the marginalized populations they are meant to protect.

Trudeau’s mandate letter to Rodriguez called on the minister to incorporate the submission findings into his new legislation.

“It’s almost a tacit acknowledgment that there has been criticism and … that what they offered in the summer is not going to be what’s going forward,” Geist told the Star.

In a statement, Rodriguez said any content that was “illegal in person” should be “illegal online” and that he was taking steps to “get it done right.”

The federal conservatives have expressed concern that such legislation could “give massive and overriding powers to unelected bureaucrats to censor Canadian online content,” Rob Tore, a critic of Tory’s administration of justice, told the Star in a statement.