The Heritage Minister has said that he has no intention of repealing the destructive Online News Act and Online Streaming Act.
Canadian Minister, Steven Guilbeault, has reaffirmed his commitment to inflict maximum destruction and chaos on the journalism industry. This by refusing to repeal the devastating Online News Act and Online Streaming Act.
As many already know, the Online News Act has proven to be a relentless nightmare for the journalism sector. Since the Act was passed in 2023, a moment that professional bullshit artists and lobbyists called as the beginning of the golden era for Canadian journalism, massive layoffs that measured in the thousands ripped across the news sector with Bell, the CBC, Corus and Global among the leaders in the massive flood of pink slips. For the lucky news organizations, traffic to their websites have been absolutely gutted while the less fortunate have been forced to shut down entirely, unable to handle the additional strain being foisted on them.
With news deserts greatly expanding thanks to the destructive nature of the Online News Act, the Canadian government issued massive media bailouts to compensate the largest players for the devastating losses that has been incurred.
There is little doubt that the Online News Act alone was a colossal mistake. Experts warned the government throughout the process, but the government dismissed the valid warnings as just people being “shills for Big Tech”, and now those ignored warnings have all come true.
Back in August, faced with pressure from the US government over the discriminatory nature of these laws, there was some hope that relief might finally be soon on the way. Prime Minister, Mark Carney, suggested that he was mulling rescinding the Online News Act. This brought a ray of hope that the media dark age might soon be coming to an end and that a moment of healing for the sector might soon begin. Today, we learned that Heritage Minister, Steven Guilbeault, has pushed back, saying that he intends on staying the course in bankrupting the Canadian journalism sector. From MSN:
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s office says the federal government has “no intention” of repealing either the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act. For now.
“We are committed to supporting strong, independent newsrooms across the country,” Guilbeault’s director of communications Alisson Lévesque said in a statement first reported by Politico . “The federal government has no intention of repealing either of the Acts.”
Lévesque explained to National Post that though Guilbeault has no intention of repealing either law, the minister is not in charge of ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration.
That means she can’t say if the Acts are being used as a bargaining chip with the U.S by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade.
“For us, currently, the intention is not to repeal those acts… But I can’t pretend to know the end result of the negotiations with the United States” which are “very much” the main factor that will determine the future of both acts, she said.
So, at minimum, there are those who intend to continue to strangle the Canadian journalism sector within the halls of government. This is, of course, bad news for an already reeling Canadian journalism sector with many news organizations currently on the ropes. For many news rooms, the question isn’t how to grow the business and expand news rooms, but rather, figuring out survival methods including basically sucking up to the government for additional bailout money somewhere down the road. Hopefully, the efforts to overturn the failed law and the doomed to fail Online Streaming Act ultimately prevail because anything resembling hope is badly needed in this day and age.
PM Mark Carney replacing Steven Guilbeault would be a good sign, if that ever happens.