Across the world, as digital companies’ advertising revenues climb, traditional news organizations’ revenues fall. As a result, many traditional news organizations, like broadcasters and newspapers, are going out of business. The public’s appetite for journalism, however, has not waned. If anything, the public needs reliable news sources more than ever in this era of “fake news” and internet-borne misinformation. Often it is the very digital platforms that share news organizations’ content that are perceived as putting news organizations out of business.

Governments around the world are contemplating various policies and legislation to save struggling traditional news organizations. Many of these solutions contemplate tying the fortunes of ailing news organizations to those of thriving digital platforms like social media companies. For example, Australia has been in long-standing disputes with large tech companies about its proposed law that would require big tech companies to pay news organizations for use of their content.

Recently, the first proposed legislation to tackle this problem in Canada was tabled in the Senate in the form of a private members bill, Bill S-225.