Eager viewers tuned in online Monday morning to watch as Google Canada head Sabrina Geremia was called before the Parliamentary committee that passed Bill C-18, the Online News Act, late last year. Some viewers out on the west coast, like your humble correspondent, even got up early since the proceedings in Ottawa were scheduled for 11 a.m., or 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.

We waited and waited. Then we waited some more. Finally, after more than an hour, a message appeared on ParlVu that the meeting had been cancelled. According to the Canadian Press, it was a result of technical difficulties that prevented some MPs from attending virtually. The Heritage Committee was hoping to reschedule Geremia’s appearance for later this week.

It wasn’t the first time that technical difficulties spoiled the ongoing drama over Bill C-18, which would force digital platforms like Google and Facebook to pay Canadian publishers for running links to their news stories. Heritage Committee MPs convened a special meeting last week after the CP reported that Google was test-blocking the news feeds of some of its users in Canada. The MPs immediately passed a motion summoning Google executives to appear before it and explain.

“It’s troubling that Google was doing this in secret to begin with but was caught by the press,” said Chris Bittle. “They asked the questions, and we found the answers.” MPs soon realized, however, that Bittle’s motion was not being webcast via ParlVu so those waiting to watch the proceedings online missed it. Service was soon restored.

Followers of the soap opera that has been the Online News Act did not wait in vain on Monday, however. As messages flew back and forth on Twitter wondering what was going on, some shared links to a possible explanation from the Senate, where Bill C-18 has been under study since being passed by the Heritage Committee. “Honest to God, I really feel like this is written by people who have never used the internet,” said Senator Paula Simons, a former long-time Edmonton Journal columnist.

Simons warned that the legislation could compromise press freedom and independence, telling the website Ricochet that she is “deeply uncomfortable” with Bill C-18, which could become law by spring. In so doing, she may have pulled back the curtain enough to show that politicians in Ottawa don’t actually know how the Internet works, as some have suspected for awhile.

It was a Mark Zuckerberg moment, similar to when the head of Facebook had to explain to a US senator a few years ago how his company made money. “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?” asked 84-year-old Senator Orrin Hatch. “Senator, we sell ads,” Zuckerberg famously replied after being called on the carpet in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which Facebook data were used in targeting online advertising during the 2016 presidential election.

The Trudeau government’s attempt to ram through the Online News Act, which is just one of a spate of bills designed to regulate the Internet, has been a series of cringe-worthy blunders, none more telling than Monday’s technical difficulties. First the Heritage Committee cut off the witness list last fall before hearing from Facebook, which then announced it was considering banning its Canadian members from sharing links to news stories if Bill C-18 passes.

MPs then scheduled an extra day of hearings only to be tutored by witnesses from Facebook’s parent company Meta on how the Internet works and how the Online News Act would violate some of its most fundamental principles.

The Parliamentary Budget Office first estimated that Bill C-18 would generate $329 million a year for Canadian news media and cover almost a third of their costs of news production, but two weeks later it revealed that more than three quarters of the money would go to broadcasters, including the CBC. Newspapers could get less than $81 million a year, which would be well short of the $150 million they had hoped for.

Publishers from Prairie provinces told MPs that most newspapers there were too small to qualify for payments since they did not employ two full-time journalists. An amendment that expanded eligibility, however, opened the door for some media outlets that might not even produce news, such as campus radio stations, but which broadcast at least 15 percent “spoken word” programming.

The bill could also bring retaliation after US senators called on the Biden administration to get tough on Canada if it unfairly punishes US tech companies and members of the powerful Senate Finance Committee complained that Canada’s “troubling policies” target US companies. The legislation could also violate the Berne Convention that governs international copyright law, which includes the right to quote from news articles, as well as a 2011 Supreme Court of Canada decision which ruled that a link “should never be seen as ‘publication’ of the content to which it refers.”

The biggest problem that Simons sees with the bill is that it could “accelerate the death spiral of the news industry in Canada” if it doesn’t work. “The idea that we can or should force two American tech giants to underwrite the independent news upon which Canadians rely is a logical and ethical fallacy,” she said.

Simons questioned the premise of the bill that tech companies are stealing content by linking to news stories that publishers post on their websites hoping they will be read. “The whole premise of the bill is ridiculous,” she said. “I have a hard time with the idea that Google and Facebook are stealing the links—links that media is begging them to take.

“More than that, I’m asking if it’s wise. How independent can the Canadian news media be if they are so deeply beholden to the goodwill and future economic success of two foreign corporations?”

Also troubling to Simons has been the long-running campaign by Canadian news media pushing for the legislation to replace the $595 million in federal bailout funding that runs out next year. “The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, CBC, Postmedia: they’ll all benefit, in some cases hugely—which makes it hard to get fair and balanced coverage, because everybody has a dog in this fight.”

Bill C-18 follows Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, which recently passed in the Senate but has YouTubers up in arms. Next up is a bill to protect online privacy, along with legislation to govern “online harms,” which has civil rights advocates nervous.

The 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 difficulties which washed out a day’s hearings.

Marc Edge is a journalism researcher and author who lives in Ladysmith, BC. His books and articles can be found online at www.marcedge.com.