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President Trump Meets with the Prime Minister of Canada by Trump White House PDM 1.0 https://flic.kr/p/2ghqjbV

Why the Trump Trade Threats Will Place Canadian Digital, Cultural, and AI Policy Under Pressure

If the first salvo fired by U.S. President Donald Trump in the form of a threatened 25-per-cent across-the-board tariff on Canadian goods (excluding energy, which would face a 10-per-cent levy) is a preview of future trade disputes, retaliatory tariffs alone will not solve the problem. Canada will need to turn to eliminating interprovincial trade barriers, rely on European and Asian trade deals to engage in new markets, and prepare for the prospect that long-standing Canadian regulations and market restrictions may face increasing pressure for an overhaul.

My Globe and Mail op-ed argues the need for change is particularly true for Canadian digital and cultural policy. Parliamentary prorogation ended efforts at privacy, cybersecurity and AI reforms and U.S. pressure has thrown the future of a series of mandated payments – digital service taxes, streaming payments and news media contributions – into doubt. But the Trump tariff escalation, which now extends to steel and aluminum as well as the prospect of reviving the original tariff plan in a matter of weeks, signals something far bigger that may ultimately render current Canadian digital and cultural policy unrecognizable.

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February 13, 2025 21 comments Columns
President Trump Signs an Executive Order by Trump White House, https://flic.kr/p/2jgs8nP PDM 1.0

Why Years of Canadian Digital Policy Is Either Dead (Prorogation) or Likely to Die (Trump)

The Canadian political and business communities are unsurprisingly focused on the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump instituting 25% tariffs on Canadian goods and services. The threat of tariffs, which could spark a retaliatory response by Canada and fuel a damaging trade war, would likely cause serious harm to the Canadian economy. But tariffs aren’t the only story arising from new Trump actions in his first day in office. Amidst the many executive orders signed on day one are several with significant implications for Canadian law, particularly Canadian digital policies such as the digital services tax, mandated streaming payments arising from Bill C-11, and mandated payments for news links due to Bill C-18. When combined the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament earlier this month, the results of years of Canadian digital laws and policies now largely fall into two groups: those that have died due to prorogation and those that are likely to die due to Donald Trump.

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January 22, 2025 13 comments News
President Trump Meets with Mark Zuckerberg by Official White House Photo by Joiyce N. Boghosian https://flic.kr/p/2hida5y PDM 1.0

New Era and New Risks: Meta’s Content Moderation Reforms and Freedom of Expression Online

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced significant new changes to the company’s content moderation policies. The five-minute video is worth watching in its entirety, as it demonstrates the shifting political sands that seemingly pressured even the world’s largest social media company to pay heed. Zuckerberg said the company’s reliance on third-party fact checkers had resulted in too much censorship and vowed to return to an emphasis on freedom of expression. That means the fact checkers are gone, replaced by the Twitter (X) model of community notes. Moreover, the company is moving its content moderation team from California to Texas (a nod to claims the California-based teams were biased), increasing the amount of political content in user feeds, and pledging to work with the Trump administration to combat content regulation elsewhere, including in Europe and South America.

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January 8, 2025 19 comments News
2024.0720 DC Street, Washington, DC USA 202 74155 by Ted Eytan https://flic.kr/p/2q65Xz3 CC BY-SA 2.0

The Year of Disbelief: The Relentless Rise of Antisemitism in Canada

I’ve posted several year-in-reviews of Canadian digital policy (blogs, podcasts, Substacks), but the most important story this year for me and the Jewish community was the relentless rise of antisemitism in Canada. Over the course of the year, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to emphasize the chilling effect of antisemitism, wrote op-eds in the Globe and Mail (2), National Post, and the Hub, and posted countless pieces on antisemitism in our streets and campuses. There were posts on the need for academic institutions to adhere to the principle of institutional neutrality, support for the government’s guide on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, social media challenges, and even a podcast on Wikipedia’s antisemitism problem. Canada is not alone in dealing with a dramatic rise in antisemitism, but when the attacks hit your synagogue, school, or community centre and it is your leaders that fail to respond, it hits close to home.

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December 30, 2024 27 comments News
10 by Duncan Cumming https://flic.kr/p/PvvVQ CC BY-NC 2.0

The Year in Review: Top Ten Michael Geist Substacks

My look back at 2024 concludes with a review of my most popular Substacks of the year. Unlike last year, where was considerable overlap between my most popular blog posts and Substacks, this year the list quite different. The Substack list features a significant emphasis on antisemitism in Canada in the wake of the October 2023 terror attacks, which occupy the top three posts and five of the top ten.

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December 27, 2024 7 comments News