Lobbying registration dated 2026-03-31
Registrant: PAUL DEEGAN
Client: News Media Canada
Targeted institutions:
Competition Bureau Canada (COBU)
Treasury Board Of Canada Secretariat (TBS)
Justice Canada (JC)
Privy Council Office (PCO)
Senate of Canada
Canada Post Corporation (CPC)
Global Affairs Canada (GAC)
House of Commons
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
Prime Minister's Office (PMO)
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC)
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED)
CUSMA Secretariat
Finance Canada (FIN)
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
Canadian Heritage (PCH)
Acts: Copyright Act
Online News Act
Income Tax Act
Government funding received:
Institution: Canadian Heritage (PCH)
Amount: 6726783.00
Lobbying activity details:
To halt the theft of copyright protected news content, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Treasury Board should ensure those on the government’s list of interested artificial intelligence suppliers sign a "supplier commitment to support the Government of Canada’s effort in leading the way on ethical AI” that includes a commitment to the principles of transparency, consent, and attribution with respect to all copyright-protected source content.
Protect intellectual property by preventing LLMs from scraping journalistic content. Ensure search engines cannot abuse their dominant position by de-indexing Canadian news sites if publishers block their AI bots from crawling our protected content without consent, credit, and compensation.
Ensure any policy changes to the Aid to Publishers component of the Canadian Periodical Fund take into account the importance of the program, especially to smaller rural community newspapers.
Align the Government of Canada advertising policy with the Government of Canada's "Buy Canadian Policy" by directing the Agency of Record to ensure a minimum of 25% of the Government of Canada domestic advertising budget to Canadian private sector news businesses.
Extending the Local Journalism Initiative.
Maintaining the Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit at 35%.
Ensure that the Online News Act continues and that funding is distributed in accordance with the Act and its Regulations. Ensure social media services covered by the Online News Act do not allow publisher content to be reproduced (screen shots, copied text, etc.) without providing compensation to news businesses.
Abuse of dominance and anti?competitive business practices related to online search, search advertising and display advertising services in Canada.
Ensure that the Copyright Act is not modified through an exception permitting Text and Data Mining (TDM) allowing AI companies to use Canadian news publishers' protected works to train generative AI systems without consent, credit, or compensation.
Amend the definition of a Qualified Canadian Journalism organization (QCJO), requiring that an organization regularly employ two or more journalists to include: journalists who do not deal at arm’s length with the organization. This would generally include owners/partners who actively pursue, research, analyze, explain, edit, format, design, write or report the news, or select, plan, or assign work, in accordance with journalistic processes and principles. They would work, on average, a minimum of 26 hours per week and spend at least 75% of their time engaged in the production of original written news content, including researching, collecting information, verifying facts, photographing, writing, editing, designing and otherwise preparing content.
Ensure Canada Post continues to perform its vital role deliver community newspapers to Canadians. Have Canada Post return to the long-standing policy of exempting community newspapers with commercial inserts (e.g., flyers from local hardware and grocery franchisees) from the Consumers’ Choice program. Community newspapers with commercial inserts are not ‘junk mail’.
Eliminating commercial advertising, including branded content, associated with CBC/Radio-Canada’s news and public affairs properties.
Keep advertising in dollars in Canada by closing the loophole in Section 19 of the Income Tax Act that allows for the deductibility of foreign internet advertising.
For transparency and to facilitate verification of eligible news publishers under the Online News Act, make the list of Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations public.