Election debates in Canada, brought to you by Google

For years, Canada has had a format for televised leaders' debates in elections based on an agreement between a "consortium" of broadcasters who are all in the news business.

While there is always some wrangling between political parties and organizers in any debate (even local ones), there are two important principles at stake.

Google should be the subject of a leaders' debate, not the sponsor of one.- Dougald Lamont

First, every network carries the same feed, so the maximum number of Canadians can see it, both on television and on the internet. Second, the networks themselves have independent, non-partisan news divisions. Partisans may complain about the political slant of media outlets, but journalists really are walled off from their corporate masters.

All that seems to have been tossed overboard, because Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are trying to set up "narrowcast" debates on their own terms, with corporate sponsors: Maclean's Magazine and Rogers, The Globe and Mail and Google, and TVA in Quebec.

• OPINION: Why Google is partnering with the media for election debates

There is plenty wrong with this picture, not least that the major English and French language broadcast networks — CBC, CTV and Global— and many Canadians won't be able to see the debates at all. More than 15 per cent of Canadians, including people in rural and northern areas, don't have internet. 

While news departments and journalists have an obligation to their viewers, Rogers and Google have no commitment to political neutrality: their obligation is to their shareholders. Both are companies whose businesses are incredibly dependent on favourable government regulation. 

The trouble with Google Canada

Rogers, at least, is Canadian, but the inclusion of Google Canada is truly problematic. 

Google Canada is the Canadian branch plant of a foreign company. Its spending on lobbying has outstripped the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and donations have included many conservative politicians and think-tanks. 

In 2012 and 2013, Google held fundraisers exclusively for conservative Republican senators in the U.S. The U.S. think-tanks they support include the American Conservative Union, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (which last year tried to launch impeachment proceedings against Barack Obama) and the National Taxpayers Union. 

Model bills

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is one of the most controversial organizations, because it actually writes "model" bills for legislators to pass into law in order to benefit their corporate donors. 

ALEC has written bills that: 

• Undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change

• Support school privatization 

• Undercut health-care reform

• Defund unions and limit their political influence 

• Restrain legislatures' abilities to raise revenue through taxes 

• Mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters

• Increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry

In Canada, Google has also supported free-market think-tanks like the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, which calls for cuts to public services, privatization and more. 

In fact, many of the key aspects to the way Google runs its business tie into major issues likely to be central to the Canadian election:

Jobs and Wages: Google was one of several tech companies (along with Apple, Intuit and many more) who spent years suppressing the wages of their employees by striking an agreement not to poach each others' workers. They settled the wage theft case last year.

Tax avoidance: In 2012, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he was "proud" of the way Google avoided paying billions in taxes in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, usually by claiming profits in lower-tax jurisdictions like Bermuda. 

Intellectual Property: Google's "news" is based on sharing and distributing content it doesn't pay for from media outlets. Not only does its search enable online piracy, but YouTube, which it owns, pays fractions of a penny to copyright holders while undermining the market for legitimate purchases.  

Surveillance the business model

One of the biggest concerns about Bill C-51 is the power of surveillance involved. But the business model of the Internet is surveillance: Google sells you to advertisers, based on a profile of your searches, location and all the personal data they can collect, and they have often taken data without permission. 

Google Street View cars scanned Wi-Fi hubs in people's homes, gathering all sorts of information in the process — including "passwords, emails and other personal information." 

In 2012, Google settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for $22 million — the largest penalty ever — for bypassing privacy settings on Apple's Safari browser and placing "tracking cookies it has said it would not place on consumers' computers." 

In 2013, Google was sued by email users for scanning messages to and from Gmail accounts. In their legal defence, Google said that email users "had no expectation of privacy." (The case was halted when the judge ruled it didn't qualify as a class action suit, but each complainant would have to sue individually.)

In 2013, Michael Horowitz of Computerworld raised concerns that Google's Android mobile phone software uploaded Wi-Fi usernames and passwords to Google's servers by default. Android, which is on 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the world's mobile phones, and Google, as a U.S. company, can be required to hand over any data on its servers to security agencies. 

In short, Google should be the subject of a leaders' debate, not the sponsor of one. In the meantime, the other party leaders should resist the temptation to outsource and privatize our democracy and its debates any further. 

Dougald Lamont is a writer and strategic communications consultant in Winnipeg. He has worked on many political campaigns and in 2013 ran unsuccessfully for leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party.