Canada wants to regulate the internet giants, a “threat” to their culture

News 14 March, 2018

JOEL LEMAY/QMI AGENCY

AFP

Wednesday, march 14, 2018 12:44

UPDATE
Wednesday, march 14, 2018 12:49

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OTTAWA | The internet giants are a threat to the canadian culture and it is necessary to reform the cultural policies federal for a better mentor, said on Wednesday the ministry of Culture.

“The government of Canada recognizes that the large internet businesses operating outside of regulatory frameworks and can be a threat to our culture “, said to AFP a spokesman of the federal minister of Heritage (culture), Mélanie Joly.

Above all, we need to dust off the law on Radio-diffusion, which date from 1991, with a review process that will soon be started, said this source.

The liberal government of Justin Trudeau seems to have heard the anger of cultural backgrounds, and a part of the opposition which claim that the large internet companies are taxed in the same way as canadian companies.

In the near future, the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon and other digital platforms) will have to “respect our cultural policies and also to better distribute the benefits of their business model,” said Ms. Joly in the newspaper Le Devoir, on his return from a mission in the Silicon Valley (California) where are most of these giants.

“The fundamental problem is that the GAFA do not recognize their responsibilities,” noted the chief of cabinet is the former director of communications for Google in Canada.

The giants of the internet ” do not recognize the extent of their power, due to their size, their scope and their impact in areas such as journalism and culture. There is a fundamental change of culture that the GAFA need to do, because this is very worrying, ” added the minister.

Ms. Joly and his cabinet, however, were not able to specify a precise timetable of these reforms.

In the meantime the federal initiative, the government of Quebec is expected to announce at the end of the month a tax on the sale of the streaming services of Netflix.