Government surrenders to Google: Peter Menzies

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Peter Menzies

In the short term, this is very good news. The bad news is that $100 million won’t save journalism

Heritage Minister Pascale St. Onge has surrendered to Google and Canadian media have avoided what would have been a catastrophic exclusion from the web giant’s search engine.

In the short term, this is very good news. The bureaucrats at Heritage must have performed many administrative contortions to find the words needed in the Online News Act’s final regulations to satisfy Google, a beast which isn’t easily soothed. In doing so, they have managed to avoid what Google was threatening — to de-index news links from its search engine and other platforms in Canada. Given that Meta had already dropped the carriage of news on Facebook and Instagram in response to the same legislation, Google’s departure would have constituted a kill shot to the industry.

Instead, the news business will get $100 million in Google cash. For this, all its members will now fight like so many pigeons swarming an errant crust of bread.

The agreement will also allow the government, while surrounded by an industry whose reputation and economics have been devastated by this policy debacle, to attempt to declare victory. Signs of that are already evident.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that while 100 million bucks is nothing to sneeze at, in the grand scheme of things it is a drop in the bucket for an industry in need of at least a billion dollars if it is to recover any sense of stability. Indeed, when News Media Canada first began begging the government to go after Google and Meta for cash, some involved were selling the idea that sort of loot was possible.

This did not turn out to be so.

Instead of the $100,000 per journo cashapalooza that was once hoped for, the final tally will be more like $6,666.00 per ink-stained wretch.

That figure is based on two assumptions. The first is that the government has agreed to satisfy Google’s desire to pay a single sum to a single defined industry “collective” that would then divide the loot on a per-FTE (full-time employee) basis to everyone granted membership in the industry’s bargaining group. Google had made it clear it had no interest in conducting multiple negotiations and exposing itself to endless and costly arbitrations. So, as we have a deal and Google held all the cards, it’s fair to assume it got what it wanted — a single collective with a single agreement and a single cheque.

The outcome, in the end, (and the government will deny this endlessly) is essentially what Google was offering from the outset and what Konrad von Finckenstein and I had recommended in our policy paper for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute — a fund.

Now comes the haggling within the collective: who counts as a journalism FTE? Newsroom editors, photogs, camera operators, graphic artists, illustrators, support staff, and so on?

The second assumption is that this fund will be distributed across about 15,000 media workers nationwide. But whether that number turns out to be 15,000 or 5,000, here’s what really matters:

Such an agreement is likely to bring an end to Google’s existing commercial agreements — at least with those organizations that join the collective. That means the incremental amount of cash coming into the industry once its internal negotiations have been completed could be somewhat less than $100 million. How much less would be pure speculation, but individual agreements certainly exist — with the Star, for example, and also with Postmedia. Or at least they did.

The largest beneficiaries — because they have the most journalists — will almost certainly be the CBC/SRC, Bell Media and Rogers, none of which actually need the money, and that may also convince the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to shake down foreign streamers to subsidize their newsrooms.

Just for reference, Bell Media’s parent company made $10 billion last year.

With 75 per cent of the dollars predicted to go to broadcasters, that leaves those organizations in the most dire financial circumstances — Postmedia and the Toronto Star for example — with about $25 million to fight over. So, the scraps will go to the starving (the Star has suggested it is losing close to a million dollars a week) while the healthy will be even more well fed.

And of course none of this means Meta, which had estimated that on top of the $18 million it provided to Canadian journalism directly via now-cancelled deals, it also once drove more than $200 million in business annually to Canadian news organizations, will get back in the business of carrying news. If we assume that was the case, the final impact of the Online News Act amounts to revenue losses to the nation’s news industry of something north of $100 million, likely closer to $150 million.

It also means that those smaller startup news organizations that may have represented the industry’s best chance to transition to the digital world no longer have access to Facebook or Instagram, which constituted a free platform through which they could launch and market their ventures.

The bottom line is that lobbyists for Canada’s news industry, in concert with the government, launched the Online News Act in the belief it would make the industry better off by as much as $600 million and no less than $230 million. The end result is an industry at least $100 million worse off and with severely reduced access to the eyeballs needed to survive.

Well played, everyone. Well played.

Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, past vice-chair of the CRTC and a former newspaper publisher.

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What Pelosi “earned” after 37 years in power will shock you

Published on November 8, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Nancy Pelosi isn’t just walking away from Congress — she’s cashing out of one of the most profitable careers ever built inside it. According to an investigation by the New York Post, the former House Speaker and her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, turned a modest stock portfolio worth under $800,000 into at least $130 million over her 37 years in office — a staggering 16,900% return that would make even Wall Street’s best blush.

The 85-year-old California Democrat — hailed as the first woman to wield the Speaker’s gavel and infamous for her uncanny market timing — announced this week she will retire when her term ends in January 2027. The Post reported that when Pelosi first entered Congress in 1987, her financial disclosure showed holdings in just a dozen stocks, including Citibank, worth between $610,000 and $785,000. Today, the Pelosis’ net worth is estimated around $280 million — built on trades that have consistently outperformed the Dow, the S&P 500, and even top hedge funds.

The Post found that while the Dow rose roughly 2,300% over those decades, the Pelosis’ reported returns soared nearly seven times higher, averaging 14.5% a year — double the long-term market average. In 2024 alone, their portfolio reportedly gained 54%, more than twice the S&P’s 25% and better than every major hedge fund tracked by Bloomberg.

Pelosi’s latest financial disclosure shows holdings in some two dozen individual stocks, including millions invested in Apple, Nvidia, Salesforce, Netflix, and Palo Alto Networks. Apple remains their single largest position, valued between $25 million and $50 million. The couple also owns a Napa Valley winery worth up to $25 million, a Bay Area restaurant, commercial real estate, and a political data and consulting firm. Their home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights is valued around $8.7 million, and they maintain a Georgetown townhouse bought in 1999 for $650,000.

The report comes as bipartisan calls grow to ban lawmakers and their spouses from trading individual stocks — a move critics say is long overdue. “What I’ll miss most is how she trades,” said Dan Weiskopf, portfolio manager of an ETF that tracks congressional investments known as “NANC.” He described Pelosi’s trading as “high conviction and aggressive,” noting her frequent use of leveraged options trades. “You only do that if you’ve got confidence — or information,” Weiskopf told the Post.

Among her most striking trades was a late-2023 move that allowed the Pelosis to buy 50,000 shares of Nvidia at just $12 each — less than a tenth of the market price. The $2.4 million investment is now worth more than $7 million. “She’s buying deep in the money and putting up a lot of money doing it,” Weiskopf said. “We don’t see a lot of flip-flopping on her trading activity.”

Republicans blasted Pelosi’s record as proof of Washington’s double standard. “Nancy Pelosi’s true legacy is becoming the most successful insider trader in American history,” said RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels. “If anyone else had turned $785,000 into $133 million with better returns than Warren Buffett, they’d be retiring behind bars.”

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Ottawa should stop using misleading debt measure to justify deficits

Published on November 8, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

Based on the rhetoric, the Carney government’s first budget was a “transformative” new plan that will meet and overcome the “generational” challenges facing Canada. Of course, in reality this budget is nothing new, and delivers the same approach to fiscal and economic policy that has been tried and failed for the last decade.

First, let’s dispel the idea that the Carney government plans to manage its finances any differently than its predecessor. According to the budget, the Carney government plans to spend more, borrow more, and accumulate more debt than the Trudeau government had planned. Keep in mind, the Trudeau government was known for its recklessly high spending, borrowing and debt accumulation.

While the Carney government has tried to use different rhetoric and a new accounting framework to obscure this continued fiscal mismanagement, it’s also relied on an overused and misleading talking point about Canada’s debt as justification for higher spending and continued deficits. The talking point goes something like, “Canada has the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7” and this “strong fiscal position” gives the government the “space” to spend more and run larger deficits.

Technically, the government is correct—Canada’s net debt (total debt minus financial assets) is the lowest among G7 countries (which include France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) when measured as a share of the overall economy (GDP). The latest estimates put Canada’s net debt at 13 per cent of GDP, while net debt in the next lowest country (Germany) is 49 per cent of GDP.

But here’s the problem. This measure assumes Canada can use all of its financial assets to offset debt—which is not the case.

When economists measure Canada’s net debt, they include the assets of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP), which were valued at a combined $890 billion as of mid-2025. But obviously Canada cannot use CPP and QPP assets to pay off government debt without compromising the benefits of current and future pensioners. And we’re one of the only industrialized countries where pension assets are accounted in such a way that it reduces net debt. Simply put, by falsely assuming CPP and QPP assets could pay off debt, Canada appears to have a stronger fiscal position than is actually the case.

A more accurate measure of Canada’s indebtedness is to look at the total level of debt.

Based on the latest estimates, Canada’s total debt (as a share of the economy) ranked 5th-highest among G7 countries at 113 per cent of GDP. That’s higher than the total debt burden in the U.K. (103 per cent) and Germany (64 per cent), and close behind France (117 per cent). And over the last decade Canada’s total debt burden has grown faster than any other G7 country, rising by 25 percentage points. Next closest, France, grew by 17 percentage points. Keep in mind, G7 countries are already among the most indebted, and continue to take on some of the most debt, in the industrialized world.

In other words, looking at Canada’s total debt burden reveals a much weaker fiscal position than the government claims, and one that will likely only get worse under the Carney government.

Prior to the budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised Canadians he will “always be straight about the challenges we face and the choices that we must make.” If he wants to keep that promise, his government must stop using a misleading measure of Canada’s indebtedness to justify high spending and persistent deficits.