This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Peter Menzies, August 26, 2025
One of the Justin Trudeau government’s most notable failures was its inability to understand the internet and how it continues to change the way people consume information.
Mark Carney may have restored an aura of adult supervision to the nation, but there are hints the new prime minister—who often comes across as more #okboomer than Gen X—doesn’t “get” the internet any better than the last one did. And he doesn’t understand the news media ecosystem as well as he should.
This is why I worry.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Carney responded to a Kelowna reporter’s question about the lack of news links on Facebook by suggesting he might be open to scrapping the Online News Act. In case you missed it, that 2023 legislation was designed to force Meta to pay publishers for posting links for free. Rather than face a shakedown based on a false premise, Facebook chose to no longer carry news links. Google, for its part, paid what amounted to a ransom by setting up a $100 million fund for news organizations to squabble over and, in return, got exempted from the act.
This is now the third August—a month in which forest fires frequently dominate the news—without news links on Facebook. And while for the third straight year reporters have asked about the perils endangered citizens face because they can’t access their reports via Facebook, there is a paucity of evidence to suggest anyone in need of emergency or evacuation information was unable to access it because they couldn’t read their local Daily Bugle on Facebook.
That’s because Facebook, in particular, does a very good job of providing that information without news links. Nova Scotia Emergency Management, for instance, has all the information anyone needs on its website and all its social media platforms. The days when governments and first responders depended on the media to help them get the word out are long gone. Every news organization in the country could cease to exist tomorrow and people would be unimpaired, provided they had internet access, in getting the critical information they need. If they don’t have internet access, there is always radio, through which officials have direct access to the public any time they want via the emergency alerts system.
And if that isn’t enough, links will soon be as redundant as print newspapers now that artificial intelligence can provide us all the information we need with a simple request. No need anymore to hunt and peck through Facebook or a search engine.
The cold, hard truth is that while news media certainly have a storytelling and accountability role to play in covering major urgent events, when it comes to sharing critical information during an emergency, journalists are largely irrelevant. And yet they hold to the prayer that they still matter in that context and, aided by politicians, continue to perpetuate the myth of their vitality.
Trudeau didn’t appear to understand that, and Carney’s statements indicate that he doesn’t either.
In his response to the reporter in Kelowna, Carney suggested “that’s one of the reasons why we’ve made the commitment to invest and reinforce, and actually change the governance of CBC/Radio-Canada to ensure they are providing those essential services.”
This indicates that the prime minister still believes that emergency management officials are dependent on news media to collect and deliver critical information when that is no longer the case. Even if it was, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) can impose those obligations by condition of licence.
It also indicates that when it comes to the news media ecosystem, he thinks it’s still the 1930s when the CBC was envisioned as the nation’s one and only broadcaster (the original plan was to have it take over all existing private stations). If that’s the case, there’s even more need to worry, because the more he invests in the CBC and the longer he allows its television and online platforms to compete with the private sector for advertising revenue, the harder it will be for all those alternative news providers to exist. It shouldn’t be hard for an economist to join those dots.
I guess that, eventually, he will, and that, if he kills the Online News Act and Meta lifts its embargo on links, it will be a very good thing for a news industry that inflicted great harm on itself by lobbying to get truly foolish legislation passed in the first place.
The Online News Act is most likely to die because U.S. President Donald Trump, in defence of his nation’s tech giants, says so. But when Carney dumps it, he will probably claim it’s all part of a master plan to “save local news.” If he’s going to pull that off, though, he’ll need to improve his government’s grasp of the industry and how the internet is changing everything about how we access the information we need to form our opinions and organize our lives.
Because it is, after all, 2025.
Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, a Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, and a former vice chair of the CRTC.
