Bell Media reportedly announced the dismissal of journalists just in time to help the Trudeau government pass Bill C-18 this week, which plans to force Google and Facebook to fund media outlets, accuses a Conservative MP.
“There is something suspicious in my opinion to see Bell cut 1,300 people a week before this bill is passed,” said MP Kevin Waugh on Monday at the entrance to the federal Parliament in Ottawa.
The elected representative of Saskatchewan is himself a former journalist who made a career at Bell’s CTV network, one of the victims of major job cuts last week.
He finds it suspicious that the cuts were announced now, in June, and not just before the start of the school year in September. According to him, Bell has lobbyists with knowledge of information withheld by the government on a bill about to be passed in the Commons.
“There must be something in this bill [C-18] which benefits Bell. [Mais] I don’t know what”, he adds to the questions of the Duty.
In an internal memo announcing the layoff of nearly 3% of its employees, Bell Media wrote that the company was dealing with “the ongoing migration of advertising revenues to foreign digital platforms” such as Facebook and Google. Bill C-18 specifically plans to force negotiations between these two Web giants and the news media, including the major groups.
The Conservatives have serious reservations about C-18. The bill was first promised to help regional or local media, but was “held hostage by CBC and Bell Media”, according to Kevin Waugh, who is also the deputy chairman of the parliamentary heritage committee.
A maximum price rejected
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government announced last Friday that it intends to refuse to set a limit on the amounts to be paid by Google and Facebook to Canadian media under this new law, as suggested by the Senate.
This is one of the changes requested by Google and Facebook. These companies criticize that C-18 would theoretically allow the government to force them to compensate the media for every link to news articles that appears on their platform. They both decided to block news sites for some Internet users in order to protest the bill.
Google claimed that this “test” allowed it to conclude that the news was of very low monetary value to its search engine. However, the senators voted to modify C-18 so that negotiations between the media and the platforms are limited by this amount.
“Journalism in Canada is not struggling, it is evolving. It’s the traditional business model of journalism struggling to survive,” said Conservative Senator Leo Housakos, who signed the report recording the Senate amendments to C-18, in an email.
“Bill C-18 is another example of the Trudeau government picking winners and losers between big tech companies and big telecommunications companies because the status quo best serves its agenda,” Housakos continued.
In his official response, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, indicated that this amendment proposed by the Senate “min [e] the bill’s objectives of encouraging fair deals” and “reducing [t] the scope of the negotiation process. »
Adopted this week
A whole series of amendments suggested by the senators were however accepted by his government. For example, the Senate has proposed including a six-month period for the entry into force of C-18 after its adoption, expected this week and possible as early as Tuesday.
The senators also added the guarantee that a media outlet can exclude itself from collective bargaining with Google and Facebook if it does not wish to be part of it. They also clarified sections of the law relating to official, black or aboriginal minority language communities.
In favor of the bill, Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux affirmed that he would “ensure that C-18 is adopted as quickly as possible. The support of the New Democratic Party (NDP) is also assured.
Minister Rodriguez says even Australia, which served as a model for his government, is learning from Bill C-18. “Canada is leading the way,” he said during final discussions on the text on Monday.
Bell Media did not respond to questions from the Duty at the time these lines were written.
With The Canadian Press