The newly introduced Bill C-18 (otherwise known as the Online News Act), will force digital platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay publishers in Canada for posting links to their content. Yet, upon closer inspection, this legislation has been built on a carefully-crafted bed of deception which keeps getting bigger and bigger, writes journalism researcher and author Marc Edge.

It turns out that all those government reports issued decades ago—the Special Senate Subcommittee on Mass Media (1970), the Royal Commission on Newspapers (1981), and the Senate Report on News Media (2005)—were right when they warned that Big Media in Canada were getting too big and powerful. Now they are monetizing their power over public perceptions and laughing all the way to the bank as a result, at least from New Jersey.