Canada needs to address its productivity crisis, and the world needs to address climate change. Here is a common-sense solution: make it easier for climate innovators to do what they do, and we can work to tackle both problems.

Although the productivity crisis reached mainstream attention this year, analysts have been raising alarm bells for a while now. Experts have pointed to a lack of spending on research and development (R&D), a lack of investment in advanced industries (industries that rely heavily on STEM workers and R&D), and a lack of foresight in policymaking. All this leads to barriers to innovation.

Due to the urgency of climate change, Canadian climate innovators are persevering anyway. Already, for example, Canada is a global leader in the emerging carbon removal field. Permanent carbon removal is the act of removing existing carbon pollution out of the atmosphere and storing it away for thousands of years. There are many types of permanent carbon removal: the most popular is perhaps direct air capture, but there is also biochar, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and enhanced rock weathering, just to name a few.

The market is still deciding which pathways will become dominant in Canada but one thing is for certain: it will play a growing role in helping to solve climate change as the technology improves.

Companies are driven to innovate; they want to drive down their costs while increasing their reach and impact. Research, development, and demonstration projects are central to this process and critical to growing the carbon removal sector. Government can help to support these efforts.

There are a number of Canadian companies working on these different carbon removal methods today, and there is global interest in their work. To maintain Canada’s competitive edge in the global market, we need to do more to align government policies with private sector investments.

There’s the potential for real upside here: domestic companies want to expand and international companies are eyeing billions of dollars of investment on Canadian soil. The problem is that Canadian policies are not where they need to be.

For Canadian carbon removal to reach its full potential, we need policies that grow industries that are key to a low-carbon future and the next generation of good-paying jobs.

So what would it take? A tangible action that the Government of Canada could take is buying carbon removal credits from Canadian companies to deal with its own hard-to-abate emissions (emissions that cannot easily be reduced), such as from fighter jets or marine vessels. We can reduce military emissions without compromising operational readiness.

The federal government regularly makes purchases, and by deeming newer industries like carbon removal worthy of support, private companies are more likely to follow—unlocking new private financing options and enabling strong public-private partnerships to maximise impact.

Carbon Removal Canada, an independent think-tank that I lead, found that a well-designed procurement program could fund high-quality carbon removal projects and set the stage for both economic and environmental benefits. Here, procurement would benefit everyone: the government is investing tax dollars into Canadian companies while tackling its emissions, Canadian companies can then attract private capital to expand and create new jobs, and more money can be directed to further developing Canadian technology.

In addition to a strong procurement program, there are other economic incentives that would help not only the carbon removal industry but Canadian innovation more generally. The right combination of R&D funding, tax credits, and loans means that potential developers will be more willing to take risks and launch new projects in the country.

Canadians are coming up with climate change solutions. Now is the time to go all in—we need policy conditions that support this ingenuity and entrepreneurship, not hinder it. Let’s help the environment by making Canada a better business environment for carbon removal innovation and deployment.

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Late last month, David stood up to Goliath. Blacklock’s Reporter, a small mom-and-pop paywall-protected digital journal covering the federal government, filed an appeal of the Federal Court’s decision in Blacklock’s Reporter v Canada (Attorney General). Ottawa has aggressively defended the case, but if it wants to follow its own policy pronouncements and truly support independent journalism in this country it should settle with Blacklock’s.

This case is critical to the effective functioning of independent, non-subsidized journalism (and other paywall-protected content industries) in Canada. While the controversial court decision might be overturned, it may take years. Meanwhile, independent news media in Canada is facing an existential financial crisis owing to the migration of advertising to online platforms.

The government’s response has been to throw money at the media sector through subsidies of various kinds, including tax credits to “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations,” the further extension of the Department of Canadian Heritage-funded Local Journalism Initiative, a $100 million annual fund to be provided by Google, and, most recently, a requirement for online streamers to direct some of the levy that will be imposed on them to the Independent Local News Fund (for news broadcasters). It could reach the point where almost 50 cents on the dollar of newsroom salaries are beholden to government or government-engineered support of one sort or another.

This raises concerns about the future of independent Canadian journalism and its ability to hold government to account. The antidote is the ability to hold one’s own in the free market by producing a product that consumers want and are willing to pay for.

Media that are successfully making the digital transition put their content behind a paywall and grant access through a password after payment. As any subscriber to Netflix knows, passwords are not to be shared with non-subscribers.

Yet this is exactly what the Government of Canada did; in the hundreds. So far, it has shamelessly gotten away with it.

The Blacklock’s case

The Federal Court decision issued in May held that the wide sharing of an individual Blacklock’s subscription password within Parks Canada by an employee of that agency did not constitute copyright infringement. The judge ruled that because that individual password had been legally obtained and used for research purposes, the actions of the employee constituted “fair dealing,” a limitation on copyright protection under the Copyright Act. This was despite the fact the password was widely shared with a number of employees both inside Parks Canada and across other government agencies.

The ruling has called into question the role of passwords in protecting proprietary content as well as the section of the law that prohibits the circumvention of a digital lock, referred to in the Copyright Act as a “technological protection measure” (TPM). TPMs are the mechanism that allows content businesses to function in the digital age. Passwords are a common feature of digital access.

Legal experts are divided on whether the Court got this decision right. Much depends on the circumstances of this case, which dates back more than a decade. As with any appeal, there is no certainty to the outcome. But while the decision may turn on some fine legal points, the essence of the issue is crystal clear to me.

Does the Government of Canada truly believe that it is in the public interest to continue to fight tooth and nail to deny Blacklock’s the reasonable licensing fees they are seeking for an institutional subscription?

Does it believe the best way to support Canadian journalism and a free and healthy media sector in this country is to undermine the digital business model used by journals adapting to the new realities?

Does it want to give people free unfettered access to paywall-protected content because maybe, just maybe, it can win a case against a small business?

Ottawa in its various incarnations spends millions on media relations annually, counting the costs of communications offices in various government departments and agencies, along with their research, polling, and institutional subscriptions to a range of news sources. Why then stiff a small news provider by refusing to pay for content as any other major organization would be expected to do?

Why would the federal government roll out its big legal cannons to avoid paying a market-rate subscription for a product that some of its employees need access to as part of their job? From the perspective of policy consistency, this makes absolutely no sense.

According to Blacklock’s, it has already spent more than half a million scarce dollars fighting this case. The appeal, which is still in its early stages, will bring further costs. The outcome—defending the integrity of the paywall system for content—is important, but even under the best scenario, a final decision is years away. To dispel the climate of doubt over the validity of passwords as a device to protect proprietorial content, and to do the “right thing” in terms of walking the talk on supporting the media in Canada, the federal government, through the attorney general, should settle this case—today.

This would mean climbing down from an unsustainable ethical and business position. It would mean paying Blacklock’s the institutional subscription fee it is owed and would involve compensating the media outlet for the court costs it has incurred to date. More than that, the government should issue a formal apology for having resisted doing the obvious and right thing for so many years

Finally, for the sake of Blacklock’s and for all other businesses that depend on paywalls and password protection, the attorney general should petition the Federal Court to vacate the Blacklock’s decision. This would finally remove the doubt that has been cast over the validity of passwords and what circumvention of a digital lock (TPM) actually means in today’s digital world. This would remove it from the record for precedential purposes.

Only then can the Government of Canada claim that it is “walking the talk” when it comes to supporting journalism in Canada.