Post

I legitimately wonder if Mark Carney does not know that the internet is very big and economically important.

The basic notion that we can cede our ability to regulate American big tech, in exchange for lower (but not zero!) steel and aluminum tariffs, is just a basic misiread of what parts of the economy are most important and valuable.

Is it possible that Carney (like me) simply thinks that the Online News Act is an idiotic idea that American big tech couldn't care less about because they DON'T CARE if Canadians can't share news on their platforms because that doesn't impact their bottom line at all and only really harms us?

The problem with this perspective is that if we back down on the digital service tax, or the online news act, or the digital streaming levy, we effectively shut the door on any future effort to make any of those policies better, or make any other kind of adjacent policy.

I'm not interested in litigating the specific merits of the Online News Act. But if you think scrapping the Online News Act only affects that law, as drafted, you don't understand that we're effectively shut down the possibility of passing any regulation in a large swath of digital policy space.

Well if the federal government wanted to convince me that they're capable of passing meaningful and effective legislation in the digital policy space they shouldn't have started by passing disingenuous, effectively meaningless, counterproductive and harmful legislation in the digital policy space.

(I also think it's very possible that from Carney's perspective, if this IS a part of a deal, that it might well be an area in which the negotiating team managed to ring a concession or two from the Americans in exchange for agreeing to do something the government was already planning to do anyway).