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Tom is looking out for us. Thanks Tom. :)

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I agree with much of your criticism of Bill C 18 - there are indeed huge issues with the fairness of the Australian model and there is also far too much room for meddling by the CRTC and the government of the day.

However, regarding your statement that news never made money as it was the classified ads that generated the income and that those have moved to online providers as purchasing habits have changed, is accurate up to a point. I do think though that the argument can be made that if readers were only able to access the news on the internet via the newspaper's web sites that a) the news organizations would have a significantly greater commercial opportunity to monetize that access and b) the higher traffic on their platforms allow them to sell some classified advertising.

If we, as a small market country do not ensure that the news organizations are able to generate revenue, we will eventually end up with a greatly diminished press. I think that we can all agree that would be a disaster. Governments need to be held to account and investigative journalism is one of the key ingredients to do so.

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