Agir Pour La Liberte D'Expression by Deb Ransom https://flic.kr/p/2m7BZ4U Public Domain

Agir Pour La Liberte D'Expression by Deb Ransom https://flic.kr/p/2m7BZ4U Public Domain

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The Conservative Election Platform: Freedom of Expression Commitment Tainted By Support for Payments for Links, Restrictions on Fair Dealing

The Conservative Party released its election platform yesterday, providing a lengthy document that covers a myriad of policy issues. From a digital policy perspective, there are positions sprinkled throughout the document, covering everything from a new innovation policy (an issue that the Liberals de-emphasized over the past two years and the Conservatives are right to target) to labour rights for gig workers.

On many issues, the reality is the policy platform isn’t all that different from the Liberal government’s approach. Both parties promise to enact digital taxes, address high wireless and Internet costs (the Conservatives pin their hopes on foreign investment, which is unlikely to move the needle), enact platform liability (the Conservatives reference a stronger legal duty to remove illegal content), improve privacy protection (the Conservatives promise tougher rules that the failed Bill C-11), and payment from Internet companies to pay media companies. There is the usual Conservative questions for the CBC and a plan to end media support through the labour tax credit and local journalism initiatives that some will jump on, but the digital policy similarities outweigh the differences. Indeed, if the Liberals had hoped to criticize the Conservatives for being weak on tech companies (as Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault frequently claimed), the platform offers few targets.

Where the Conservatives differ is on the issue of freedom of expression. While the Liberals have claimed to be supportive of freedom of expression, their Bill C-10 involved regulating user generated content and the recent online harms consultation has sparked criticism from around the world with its vision of a bureaucratic super-structure to rule on content.  The Conservative platform regularly invokes freedom of expression as a central consideration in the policy development process. For example, its online harms package focuses primarily on enforcing existing criminal laws on illegal speech, noting:

What we do not support are restrictions on legitimate freedom of speech. Free speech, freedom of expression, and a free press are fundamental tenets of Canadian law and Canadian democracy. We will oppose government censorship of material that is not criminal in nature merely because some may find it to be offensive. Consequently, we have opposed Justin Trudeau’s attempt to create a national speech regulator for social media. Unlike the Liberals, we will not use the power of government to censor those we disagree with.

Similarly, its Bill C-10 alternative states that the party will “exempt the content Canadians upload onto social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok from regulation in order to protect free speech.”

These are welcome positions that the Liberals would do well to emulate. Moreover, the Bill C-10 alternative provides a solid approach that strikes a middle ground in a way Guilbeault rejected. It plans to regulate large streaming services with requirements to reinvest a portion of their Canadian revenues in Canadian programming, some of which must be French language programming. Failure to meet the requisite spending requirement would trigger an obligation to contribute the difference to the Canadian Media Fund. User generated content and social media sites would be exempt. The proposal meets the demands of contributing to Canadian production, but encourages investment, rather than simply providing a handout. Further, by limiting the obligations to large streaming services, it avoids the over-broad, regulate everything model of Bill C-10.

While the Conservative alternative to Bill C-10 represents the best of the digital policies in the platform, the media support plans and promise to reform copyright represents the worst. The media support from Internet platforms is largely indistinguishable from the recent Guilbeault consultation, promising a digital media royalty framework that require payments from Google and Facebook based on an arbitration model and a new copyright right for sharing news clips on social media. Yes, the Conservatives are proposing payments for links – frequently termed a link tax – for social media through copyright reform.

If that were not bad enough, the platform also promises to rollback fair dealing, citing support from a 2019 Heritage committee report. That report was discredited with poor process, limited participation, an imbalance of witnesses, and a deliberate decision to ignore evidence. The Industry committee study, which was the authoritative study on copyright reform, included active Conservative party participation and did not recommend new limitations on fair dealing. Neither, for that matter, does the Supreme Court of Canada, which just issued a key decision again affirming user rights. The court recognizes what the Conservatives seemingly don’t, namely that fair dealing is an essential safeguard for freedom of expression.

Given the rest of the platform, the Conservatives could have recommended pro-innovative copyright reforms such as the right to repair to support the agriculture sector, an exception for AI, limitations on digital lock rules, and the repeal of crown copyright. Instead, they bizarrely supports link taxes and restrictive fair dealing, both of which would have a negative impact on the very freedom of expression the platform otherwise supports.

18 Comments

  1. well they just blew my vote
    now im not gonna vote period

    no party is worth the vote

  2. So it’s slightly more liberal than the Liberal Party’s chosen path. I’ll read the Conservative Party’s whole novel when I have time. I think it’s their comprehensive party platform, a real tribute to bureaucracy, dumped on us during the election month. Their election platform is their uninspiring Csecure Thefutunre plan.

    The Liberal Party was surprised by the election call, and hasn’t finished their platform homework yet. The NDP, same boat, and mostly just talks about Trudeau. If you’d like to lead the Green Party, they’re taking applications. Watch this space, I guess?

    The PPC has a platform ready, linked in my name above, and would repeal this garbage. They are not liberal, so we have to watch our step, but they’re in the surprising position of defending our liberal ideals against the Liberals. If their local candidate this time wasn’t chosen for being the loudest drunk in the bar, they may get my vote. That kind of protest gets noticed.

    • Looks like that PPC platform is from 2019. I’m actually on the lookout for different parties releasing their platforms as I plan on analyzing as many of them as possible in great detail through a similar lens as Geist. I’ve only seen the Conservative platform (already did my analysis on that and I found a few points Geist missed i.e. CPTPP and TiSA), so I’ll be awaiting what other parties release.

      • I like that attitude too. I want to be open to ideas, and everyone should be at the table sharing them. I’ve even read the Green Party’s Green Book of policies, which had some good ideas that have since been implemented, in a sea of of another kind of ideas. The parties don’t have long to get their act together. Let us know what you find.

        The PPC updated their platform last week removing a vague indefinite covid measure that had put me off before. I’m linking their press release above from yesterday on C-10 and C-36 confirming they would repeal. I disagree with their principles on foreign policy and on Canadian identity, but I appreciate they have principles, and I’ll be watching my local candidate closely to see if they follow them. An illiberal Liberal Party lacks principles. Conservatives repealing C-10 alone is necessary but insufficient.

        The EFF commented on this mess, but be warned it’s written in American-
        https://www.eff.org/pl/deeplinks/2021/08/o-no-canada-fast-moving-proposal-creates-filtering-blocking-and-reporting-rules-1

    • the ppc party cant follow simple health guidelines and ran around all during pandemic spreading the fucking virus

      you want those fuckin nitwits running canada , are you lose in the brain

      no no JUST GODS DAMN NO

      • Justa Writer says:

        I agree, it was embarrassing. But it takes all kinds.

        Canadians did the work. We have the highest vaccination rates in the world, apart from some island micronations. The Prime Minister wants to ban travel for the few unvaccinated people after the election. Vaccine passports may make sense when there’s an uncontrolled pandemic and people aren’t getting vaccinated to herd immunity levels, but we did.

        I think the PPC was dumb to overreach early on lifting emergency restrictions. Spring was the wrong time, vaccines hadn’t been available to most Canadians. They’ve been available to all adults for two seasons now, with wonderful uptake, and now it’s the Liberals overreaching. Now it’s time to throttle back the restrictions, and the PPC has always had the right message for that, only poor timing.

        I’m not sure if I want them running Canada. I think they need representation in parliament, some time to mature as a party, and a better sense of timing. They’re the only party with a sane reply to C-36 and C-10 that may have a chance to speak up in parliament.

  3. Pingback: Conservative Party Releases Platform – An Analysis (Part 2)

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  5. Great! Your article is quite good and many good comments, hope you continue to do more articles. I will follow you

  6. Glad to know that the Conservative platform regularly invokes freedom of expression as a central consideration in the policy development process.

  7. There is the usual Conservative questions for the CBC and a plan to end media support through the labour tax credit and local journalism initiatives that some will jump on, but the digital policy similarities outweigh the differences.

  8. Great to know that they recommended pro-innovative copyright reforms such as the right to repair to support the agriculture sector.