It’s been a dizzying stretch since the launch of Chat GPT, with artificial intelligence regulation and policy bursting forward as top concern in Canada and around the world. From a Canadian perspective, Bill C-27 got most of its initial attention for its privacy provisions, but its inclusion of an AI bill – AIDA – has emerged as a huge issue in its own right. Meanwhile, the government has also quietly been pushing ahead with new generative AI guidelines that may debut this week. Bianca Wylie is a writer and an open government and public technology advocate with a dual background in technology and public engagement. She’s become increasingly uncomfortable with the AI regulatory process in Canada and she joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide her thoughts about AIDA, generative AI regulation, and a process she believes is in dire need of fixing.
Latest Posts
Why the Government is Quietly Undermining Competition Bureau Independence in Bill C-56
The government unveiled Bill C-56 yesterday, legislation it touts as supporting the building of more rental homes (through tax measures) and stabilizing grocery prices (through Competition Act reforms). While the proposed Competition Act changes include increased investigative and merger blocking powers for the Competition Bureau as well as the long overdue elimination of the efficiencies defence, the bill also includes provisions that undermine Competition Bureau independence. The government is not promoting those changes – there is no reference to it in the press release – but bill gives it broad powers to order inquiries into any market or industry and dictate the terms of the inquiry to the Competition Bureau. Those reforms are not subject to any significant limitations and are open to potential abuse.
A Reality Check on the Online News Act: Why Bill C-18 Has Been a Total Policy Disaster
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked this week about concerns with the implementation of Bill C-18, to which he responded that other countries are quietly backing Canada in its battle against tech companies. I posted a reality check tweet noting that Meta is not returning to news in Canada, the law’s regulation stipulating a 4% fee on revenues is not found anywhere else, and that Bill C-18 has emerged as a model for what not to do. With the House of Commons back in session, it is worth providing a more fulsome reality check on where things stand with the Online News Act. While the government is still talking tough, the law has been an utter disaster, leading to millions in lost revenues with cancelled deals, reduced traffic for Canadian media sites, declining investment in media in Canada, and few options to salvage this mess.
For those that took the summer off, Bill C-18 received royal assent in late June. Over the past three months:
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 177: Chris Dinn on Bill C-18’s Harm to Torontoverse and Investment in Innovative Media in Canada
The Law Bytes podcast is back after a brief break, and with it, talk about the Online News Act or Bill C-18. All news – both Canadian and foreign – is blocked on Facebook and Instagram in response to Bill C-18 and the reports suggest that the move has had no real impact in use of the platform. Where it has had an impact, however, is on news outlets themselves, many of whom have experienced significant reductions in referral traffic, which invariably leads to less revenues.
Much of the attention is on the big players, but the problem is particularly acute for smaller, independent news outlets. Chris Dinn is the founder and publisher of Torontoverse, a new Toronto news outlet that combines news with mapping technologies to create a different way of engaging with the news. The year-old site was growing quickly, but recently announced that it was slowing down in response to Bill C-18’s impact. Chris joins the podcast to talk about the business, the effect of the government legislation, and what he thinks should come next.
Why the Government’s Draft Bill C-18 Regulations Don’t Work: The 4% Link Tax is Not a Cap. It’s a Floor.
The Online News Act has quickly emerged as one of the government’s biggest policy failures with Canadian news outlets facing lost traffic, lost revenues, and lost competition. The source of the Bill C-18 failure was the government’s seeming inability or unwillingness to game plan the potential outcomes of the law, rejecting criticisms and calls for a “Plan B” by instead relying on the hope that the policy measures would simply unfold as they did in Australia. That obviously has not happened, leading to the growing realization that Meta’s blocking of news links, which has already gone on far longer than it did in Australia, is not a bluff. With Meta out of news in Canada, the government is hoping to salvage the law by convincing Google to pay at least $172 million for news links. Unfortunately, the draft regulations released by Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge suffer from the same failures as the law, namely an inability to game plan the potential outcomes of the regulations.
I’ve already written about how the draft regulations will do little to ensure more spending on journalism and how they are stacked against small, independent and digital first news outlets. But as I read analysis that suggests that Google got what it wanted – a cap on liability – I fear that the regulations are badly misunderstood. In fact, if you assess the competing policy objectives in the regulations and consider how they might actually play out, it becomes hard to avoid the conclusion that they don’t work and may well lead Google to walk away from news in Canada.
Recent Posts
What the CRTC’s New Registration Requirements Mean for Regulating Everything from Online News Services to Podcast Providers 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 179: Peter Menzies on Why the CRTC Feels Broken Right Now 
The Documents Don’t Lie, Even If It Appears Pablo Rodriguez Does: ATIP Reveals His Office Was Informed Within Minutes of CMAC/Marouf Termination Notice 
The Need for Truthful Accountability: What ATIP Records Tell Us About Pablo Rodriguez and Canadian Heritage Funding an Anti-Semite 
Why Industry Minister Champagne Broke the Bill C-27 Hearings on Privacy and AI Regulation in Only 12 Minutes
