The Trudeau government’s attempt to ram through the Online News Act has been a series of cringe-worthy blunders, none more telling than Monday’s technical difficulties. But doubts over whether Ottawa really knows what it is doing in trying to regulate the Internet keep on growing and will not be alleviated by the technical problems which washed out a day’s hearings.

New Jersey’s largest newspaper chain shot another dozen Canadian hostages last week as the end game of its northern extortion scheme grows ever closer. If the federal government doesn’t allow Postmedia Network and the rest of the country’s press to start taking money from the pockets of Google and Facebook soon, more of the country’s captive newspapers could get whacked.

Does the Competition Bureau have a hope of stopping Rogers from swallowing Shaw and creating a nationwide cable monopoly? Probably not, but that’s just the point, and it’s a point the bureau itself has been trying to make for years. Its enabling Competition Act is not just unfit for purpose, it was seemingly designed to actually prevent competition.

Now that newspapers are moving to online publication, they are crying foul because they are finally having to compete on a level playing field. They have even now prevailed upon Ottawa to pass Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which would force Google and Facebook to pay a portion of their revenues to newspapers. Something just doesn’t smell right here.

Canada has been described as “three telcos in a trenchcoat” for the inordinate power they wield. They control all of the private TV networks, as Bell owns CTV, Rogers owns City, and Global is owned by the Shaw Family Living Trust. Giving back some of their monopoly profits to benefit Canadians is the second-last idea they want to hear. The first? Free public wifi.

It’s time to take a step back and re-think the patchwork quilt of newspaper bailouts we have been seeing for the past few years and instead come up with a long-term strategy for journalism in Canada. To that end, writes Marc Edge, it’s worth looking at what other countries are doing to promote local journalism and restore trust in news media.

Instead of plugging the holes in a sinking newspaper ship with successive bailouts, Ottawa should formulate a long-term national news media strategy that doesn’t undermine public trust in journalism, according to a former senior journalist and media regulator. Ottawa’s latest cash injection and its attempt to shake down the tech platforms will only make matters worse.

Those following the Senate and Parliamentary hearings into Bills C-11 and C-18 might think Canadian media are wasting away while foreign digital giants like Google, Facebook and Netflix are replacing them. But big telecom companies like Rogers and Bell continue to take the lion’s share from subscription revenues for cable, Internet access, and wireless services.

Heritage committee hearings into the Online News Act turned hostile late last week after MPs were forced to work overtime to hear from Facebook parent Meta and other witnesses. Liberal MPs accused Meta of “threatening” Canadians with “modern-day robber baron tactics” when it warned recently that Facebook might stop running links to Canadian news stories if required to pay for doing so.

The high-stakes game of chicken that is the Online News Act reached a new, dangerous level after the federal government closed the list of speakers on its pending Bill C-18 without inviting Meta. That prompted the owner of social network Facebook to issue a statement threatening to stop carrying links to news stories from Canada if Ottawa tries to force it to pay for doing so.