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iPolitics By Catharine Fulton. Published on Apr 3, 2021 12:15pm Parliament Hill in January (Jolson Lim/iPolitics)
We’ve hit the halfway mark of the Hill’s extended hiatus, but a small handful of committees will be back in business after the long weekend. Here’s the policy and politicking to keep an eye on in the coming week.
The House of Commons’ industry, science and technology committee will be studying Rogers Communications’ $26-billion bid to buy Shaw Communications, including debt, on April 6 and 7.
The committee will hear from Competitive Network Operators of Canada CEO Matt Stein, who argued in a recent Hill Times op-ed that “Canada needs a robust industry where the big carriers and the independents can compete on a level playing field.”
Canada Joins Australia in the fight for the future of the internet
Can’t share this
The fight for the future of the internet has gotten the heat turned up. Earlier this month, the conflict playing out in the Australian Parliament between Google and a proposed law that would make them and Facebook pay to link to news sources jumped to the public consciousness.
Google has since decided to get ahead of the legislation and began paying news outlets for their stories in their Google News Showcase program. This is a complete reversal after threatening to exit the country completely, should Australia go through with the legislation.
Documents from axed Competition Bureau probe appear to contradict Postmedia CEO.
Bryan Carney reports on privacy, technology and freedom of information and is director of web production at The Tyee. You can follow his very occasional tweets at @bpcarney. SHARES Postmedia executive chair Paul Godfrey was the news giant’s president and CEO in 2017 when he said neither side of the newspaper swap knew that the other side planned cuts.
Photo: Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press.
A three-year criminal conspiracy investigation into the swapping and closing of newspapers by Postmedia and Torstar was quietly shelved early last month. Legal experts say the Competition Bureau, Canada’s antitrust law enforcement branch, missed a chance to hone its legal weapons against monopolistic practices when it folded its case without bringing it to the courts.
He told me he’s “working really hard to prevent that outcome in Canada.” In other words, if Ottawa follows Australia and tables a bill forcing tech giants to share revenue with the news business, Facebook would drop the A-bomb on Canadian journalism as well.
Chan would prefer to work out partnerships with Canadian journalism. He said Facebook gave $10 million to various news projects in the past four years. He pledged “in 2021, we’ll do quite a bit more.” But don’t put a gun to our head, he basically said, or we’ll fight back.
Render unto Caesar
I actually share many of Chan’s views. Here’s one. Last fall, the lobby group representing the news industry in Canada published a report