Canada has been a leader on smart media policy, but when it comes to reining in the theft of news content by artificial intelligence companies, it has been a laggard. Under its laissez-faire approach to date, the theft of news content is happening on an industrial scale.

Against this backdrop, over the past couple years, several large leading Canadian companies have entered into strategic partnerships with AI companies. Some have done so with great fanfare, making bold claims of sovereign AI. But the sellers didn’t create that content, nor did they licence it. They stole it and are passing it off as their own creation.

Corporate Canada’s chief legal officers, chief financial officers and chief corporate communications officers should carefully study the legal strategy unleashed by Robert Thomson, chief executive officer of News Corp.

During the news giant’s latest earnings call, Thomson told investors he expects “compelling, cash-rich” revenue from its legal war on AI — and that he’s stepping up the fight. He will now be suing not only the tech firms that scrape News Corp.’s journalism, but the customers who buy the stolen intellectual property, too.

He’s escalating his combative “woo and sue” doctrine. It’s seen him licence news to those who pay, and drag those who don’t into court for years. Litigation “is far from over,” he promised, adding that existing suits were spawning what he called “cash-rich legal sequels.”

And he put browser company Brave in the crosshairs next saying it was “brave in name only.”

And anyone purchasing News Corp.’s scraped content “should know that they are in possession of stolen goods,” he warned. “This will certainly not be the last litigation related to AI,” he told investors at its latest earnings call. “We’re focusing not just on companies that have scraped and stolen our content, but on their clients who knowingly or unknowingly have purchased stolen goods.”

Thomson’s outspoken attack on Brave is the latest salvo in an increasingly fierce fight with the privacy-first browser, but it was Brave that went to court first.

In March 2025, News Corp.’s lawyers fired off a cease-and-desist accusing Brave of infringement, threatening legal action and demanding compensation.

Brave ran to court and urged the judge to throw it out, using America’s fair use exemption on copyright. Brave’s lawyers cast the Murdoch empire as the aggressor, accusing it of “an anticompetitive bullying campaign, built on an incorrect legal premise.”

It argued News Corp. was waging a war on privacy by going after the little guy while partnering with search giant Google.

Last month, News Corp. returned fire, branding Brave’s “covert scraping” as “flagrant theft.”

Its counter-suit alleged Brave used masked crawlers to dodge being blocked, then resold News Corp.’ articles and IP to AI firms.

“The more content Brave copies and sells, the more revenue it generates, and the less incentive AI companies have to negotiate licenses with the publishers who produced the content,” the suit argued. “Brave profits while publishers are cut out.”

News Corp. has sought an injunction and up to $150,000 per infringement.

Thomson branded Brave’s conduct content laundering and “tacky tech trafficking” that “must come to an end if journalism is to have a sustainable future.” He doubled down: “Their scheming started with masked web crawlers scanning our pages to ingest copyrighted articles and continued when they repackaged those stolen files and delivered near verbatim copies.”

Then he upped the ante by widening the threat to Brave’s customers. “Companies who buy from these pirates should know that they are in possession of stolen goods” — opening a new front for more claims for damages.

Thomson flagged that damages from legal actions were now seen as a revenue stream for News Corp., as the AI economy emerges.

The boards of directors of large Canadian public companies should be asking tough questions of management. Are you buying stolen IP? What due diligence did you do? What is our legal exposure? What is our financial exposure? What is the risk to our brand and reputation? Canada’s federally regulated industries should not be doing business with pirates. Ignorance is not bliss. Canadian IP must be protected.

National Post

Ricky Sutton, a former media executive, is the author of Future Media, a Substack reporting on the collision of Big Tech and Big Media.

• Rod Sims: Governments must not give AI companies a free pass on copyright
• Björn Ulvaeus: To thrive, Canada must protect copyright from AI

Canada has been a leader on smart media policy, but when it comes to reining in the theft of news content by artificial intelligence companies, it has been a laggard. Under its laissez-faire approach to date, the theft of news content is happening on an industrial scale.

Against this backdrop, over the past couple years, several large leading Canadian companies have entered into strategic partnerships with AI companies. Some have done so with great fanfare, making bold claims of sovereign AI. But the sellers didn’t create that content, nor did they licence it. They stole it and are passing it off as their own creation.

Corporate Canada’s chief legal officers, chief financial officers and chief corporate communications officers should carefully study the legal strategy unleashed by Robert Thomson, chief executive officer of News Corp.

During the news giant’s latest earnings call, Thomson told investors he expects “compelling, cash-rich” revenue from its legal war on AI — and that he’s stepping up the fight. He will now be suing not only the tech firms that scrape News Corp.’s journalism, but the customers who buy the stolen intellectual property, too.

He’s escalating his combative “woo and sue” doctrine. It’s seen him licence news to those who pay, and drag those who don’t into court for years. Litigation “is far from over,” he promised, adding that existing suits were spawning what he called “cash-rich legal sequels.”

And he put browser company Brave in the crosshairs next saying it was “brave in name only.”

And anyone purchasing News Corp.’s scraped content “should know that they are in possession of stolen goods,” he warned. “This will certainly not be the last litigation related to AI,” he told investors at its latest earnings call. “We’re focusing not just on companies that have scraped and stolen our content, but on their clients who knowingly or unknowingly have purchased stolen goods.”

Thomson’s outspoken attack on Brave is the latest salvo in an increasingly fierce fight with the privacy-first browser, but it was Brave that went to court first.

In March 2025, News Corp.’s lawyers fired off a cease-and-desist accusing Brave of infringement, threatening legal action and demanding compensation.

Brave ran to court and urged the judge to throw it out, using America’s fair use exemption on copyright. Brave’s lawyers cast the Murdoch empire as the aggressor, accusing it of “an anticompetitive bullying campaign, built on an incorrect legal premise.”

It argued News Corp. was waging a war on privacy by going after the little guy while partnering with search giant Google.

Last month, News Corp. returned fire, branding Brave’s “covert scraping” as “flagrant theft.”

Its counter-suit alleged Brave used masked crawlers to dodge being blocked, then resold News Corp.’ articles and IP to AI firms.

“The more content Brave copies and sells, the more revenue it generates, and the less incentive AI companies have to negotiate licenses with the publishers who produced the content,” the suit argued. “Brave profits while publishers are cut out.”

News Corp. has sought an injunction and up to $150,000 per infringement.

Thomson branded Brave’s conduct content laundering and “tacky tech trafficking” that “must come to an end if journalism is to have a sustainable future.” He doubled down: “Their scheming started with masked web crawlers scanning our pages to ingest copyrighted articles and continued when they repackaged those stolen files and delivered near verbatim copies.”

Then he upped the ante by widening the threat to Brave’s customers. “Companies who buy from these pirates should know that they are in possession of stolen goods” — opening a new front for more claims for damages.

Thomson flagged that damages from legal actions were now seen as a revenue stream for News Corp., as the AI economy emerges.

The boards of directors of large Canadian public companies should be asking tough questions of management. Are you buying stolen IP? What due diligence did you do? What is our legal exposure? What is our financial exposure? What is the risk to our brand and reputation? Canada’s federally regulated industries should not be doing business with pirates. Ignorance is not bliss. Canadian IP must be protected.

National Post

Ricky Sutton, a former media executive, is the author of Future Media, a Substack reporting on the collision of Big Tech and Big Media.

• Rod Sims: Governments must not give AI companies a free pass on copyright
• Björn Ulvaeus: To thrive, Canada must protect copyright from AI

Etienne Alexandre Beauregarde joins the National Post’s Terry Newman to discuss his new book, “Anti-Civilization: The Collapse of Society and the Case for the Common Good.” Beauregarde argues the West is experiencing a profound crisis due to the excessive emphasis placed on individualism over common good and the absence of shared norms, typically transmitted through generations. Beauregarde argues that the isolation this societal change has created has deeply affected generation Z.

Plot twist: Beauregarde believes that this is precisely why it may be generation Z that saves the West by instituting the norms they never inherited but so deeply crave.

National Post

• Jesse Kline: Trump’s anti-vaccine order is a health disaster in the making
• Geoffrey Moyse: B.C. NDP behaving as if it can do anything it wants with land

Etienne Alexandre Beauregarde joins the National Post’s Terry Newman to discuss his new book, “Anti-Civilization: The Collapse of Society and the Case for the Common Good.” Beauregarde argues the West is experiencing a profound crisis due to the excessive emphasis placed on individualism over common good and the absence of shared norms, typically transmitted through generations. Beauregarde argues that the isolation this societal change has created has deeply affected generation Z.

Plot twist: Beauregarde believes that this is precisely why it may be generation Z that saves the West by instituting the norms they never inherited but so deeply crave.

National Post

• Jesse Kline: Trump’s anti-vaccine order is a health disaster in the making
• Geoffrey Moyse: B.C. NDP behaving as if it can do anything it wants with land

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This content is reserved for subscribers.

It should come as no surprise that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Wednesday deadline to impose 50 per cent tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods came and passed with little fanfare — the president is famous for making boisterous threats and then backing down at the last minute. But as businesses, consumers and investors eagerly await details of a trade deal that may-or-may-not come by Friday, the lesson for Canadians should be that we cannot continue to allow our fate to hang on the whims of foreign politicians.

Of course, that’s a lesson we should have learned long ago. It’s been over a year since Prime Minister Mark Carney, fresh off an election victory, promised to “do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen (in) generations,” including building “twice as many homes every year,” developing “new trade and energy corridors” that will turn Canada into “an energy superpower” and freeing inter-provincial trade.

It would be unfair to suggest that the Carney Liberals haven’t made any progress on their signature election promises. But at a time of profound political and economic transformation, which the prime minister likened to the start of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War, the pace of change has been anemic, at best.

Carney, for example, promised to create a system to fast-track major projects in order to free their proponents from the Byzantine approvals process put in place by his predecessor and facilitate a construction boom that would create jobs and provide the country with the infrastructure it so desperately needs. The Major Projects Office was set up nearly a year ago, and since then, 18 projects have been referred, but none have so far been green-lit.

Carney initially said he hoped projects would be approved within a “maximum of two years,” so he hasn’t yet missed his own deadline. But even projects that were already being planned and specifically cited in the 2026 Liberal election platform continue to progress at a snail’s pace.

While Ottawa and Victoria recently signed an agreement to fund the George Massey Tunnel replacement in Metro Vancouver, the cost estimate has more than doubled since 2021, the province terminated its deal with the consortium that was supposed to build it and the completion date has been pushed back to the fall of 2031. The Quebec City Tramway that was initially supposed to be up and running by 2029 has been delayed until 2033 . The list goes on.

On housing, too, Carney promised to build nearly 500,000 homes a year. Yet the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported this week that year-to-date housing starts are down four per cent compared to last year and July 2026 saw 19 per cent fewer housing starts in urban areas than July 2025.

Compare this to other countries that found themselves in a “crisis” and decided to “build, baby, build” (to quote our prime minister). During COVID, China built two fieldhospitals with a total of 2,500 beds in less than two weeks.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and sparked a European energy crisis, Germany didn’t have any liquefied natural gas terminals. That same month, then-chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that two terminals would be built posthaste. The Wilhelmshaven terminal was already being planned and its approval was fast-tracked. It started receiving shipments in December of that year. Additional terminals were up and running by early 2023.

After Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates announced plans to fast-track the approval of a new pipeline that is expected to be operational next year. And it’s not the only Middle Eastern country building at speeds not seen in generations: last month, Goldman Sachs predicted that new pipelines would be able to divert nearly half of prewar Persian Gulf oil exports around the Strait by the end of 2027 — before Canada is likely to have approved a single new pipeline.

On trade, too, the prime minister has generally prioritized announcements and photo-ops with other leaders over tangible results. Many of his trips abroad have culminated in statements emphasizing our “shared commitment” to “free and fair trade,” or pledges to “advance the strong and growing economic partnership between our two countries.” While some free-trade agreements are in the works , nothing major has yet to be put to paper. Carney hasn’t even managed to convince his buddies in the European Union to fully ratify the free trade agreement we signed in 2016.

Some progress has been made on inter-provincial trade, with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) giving the federal government an A+ on its latest “ State of Internal Trade ” report. But the CFIB cautions that the “high grades largely reflect commitments and policy intentions more than progress felt on the ground.” Landmark agreements on the mutual recognition of goods, direct-to-consumer alcohol shipments and labour mobility have yet to be fully implemented, or still contain major gaps.

Carney also promised last year to boost the economy by reducing the regulatory burden faced by Canadian businesses. While some steps have been taken, business leaders are still waiting to see tangible results. A KPMG survey released earlier this month found that Canadian companies are generally hopeful about the federal government’s economic policies, but that their “optimism is tempered by a desire for faster execution.”

Sixty-seven per cent of the 359 business leaders surveyed said that “regulatory compliance requirements,” such as red tape, “have created institutional gridlock, delaying projects and deterring investment”; while 65 per cent said “over-regulation and higher taxes make it harder for businesses to scale and remain in Canada.”

If Donald Trump’s Tuesday night social media post claiming that the potential deal may revive the Keystone XL pipeline is true, it would be a huge win for both countries. But we should not need a foreign leader to twist our arm in order to get shovels in the ground on projects like this. Trump will be a wildcard for as long as he’s in office. While Canada can’t control him, we can take steps to rapidly improve our economy and open trade with the rest of the world — if only our prime minister was willing to do so.

National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/accessd

• Geoff Russ: Danielle Smith is Canada’s most committed federalist
• Jesse Kline: Carney doing nothing to stop businesses fleeing to escape Trump tariffs

Three weeks before President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccinations and splitting vaccines into multiple shots, Johns Hopkins University announced that the number of measles cases in the United States had reached levels not seen since “Terminator 2” was in theatres.

If those optics weren’t bad enough, this week the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) released data showing a sharp increase in kindergarten students who sought vaccine exemptions in the 2025-26 school year. The percentage of kindergartners who received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine dropped to 92.4 last year, well below the 95 per cent coverage needed to prevent outbreaks.

This is significant for a disease that was officially eradicated in the United States 26 years ago and can lead to serious complications, including brain swelling, pneumonia and even death. Similarly low childhood vaccination rates have been reported for other potentially deadly diseases, including polio.

Despite these concerning numbers, Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., directed federal officials last week to split the MMR vaccine into three separate shots and reduce the number of diseases the federal government recommends children be vaccinated against from 18 to 11.

At first blush, splitting an existing vaccine into three doses may not seem like a big deal. After all, these are merely guidelines, not mandates, and children who follow them will still be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella.

But the guidelines will put pressure on states, doctors, pharmaceutical and insurance companies to follow suit. And separating the MMR vaccine into three doses delivered at three separate appointments means more medical bills, more time off work, more screaming children and a greater likelihood that doses will be missed, or parents won’t bother showing up in the first place.

In other words, it’s a surefire way to reduce vaccination rates even further — which is exactly what the president wants. While RFK Jr. has long been a prominent anti-vaxxer , according to a July 27 report in the Wall Street Journal, it was Trump who instructed Kennedy to come up with solutions to reduce the number of childhood vaccinations, going as far as to suggest the health secretary would be seen as a failure if he didn’t take action.

The directive flew in the face of Trump’s own advisors, who had previously told RFK to avoid anti-vaccine rhetoric as it was unpopular with the public and psoed problems for the administration. The new recommendations also contradict the guidance provided by the CDC, which notes that, “No published scientific evidence shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots.”

Although the administration claims to be following “gold-standard science,” it is actually motivated by the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. This myth dates back to a small study published in The Lancet in 1998, which claimed a potential link between the two but was retracted after it was found to have used falsified data and the author was revealed to have numerous undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Further research has failed to uncover a causal connection between vaccines and autism. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2019, for example, followed over 650,000 Danish children born between 1999 and 2010, and concluded that the “MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination.”

In 2021, the Cochrane Collaboration, the medical research group that became the darling of many conservatives after concluding that masks were of little use during the pandemic, reviewed the available scientific literature and concluded that the MMR vaccine is highly effective and does “not cause autism.” Similar findings were released last year by the World Health Organization’s global advisory committee on vaccine safety after reviewing 15 years worth of data.

Yet Trump has long been fixated on this issue. In 2014, he wrote on social media that, “If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take – AUTISM.” And his views have not changed despite the abundance of evidence showing that vaccines don’t lead to increases in autism and the growing spread of preventable diseases in the U.S.

Upon signing his executive order last week, the president again falsely claimed that the new measures would have a “huge impact on autism,” that “large amounts — like vats — of vaccine are currently pumped into your child’s body” (a typical dose is around 0.5 millilitres) and that the U.S. is merely following the lead of its peers (Canada administers the MMR vaccine as a single dose, and the United Kingdom recently consolidated the chicken pox vaccine into it, as well).

Skeptics will point out that we don’t know why autism rates have been rising and that the scientific method requires assumptions be constantly tested. While true, there are numerous other potential causes for increased autism diagnoses, not least of which is the fact that in 2013, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” combined a range of behavioural difficulties into what is now classified as autism spectrum disorder.

While further study is certainly warranted, the new vaccine guidelines essentially aim to turn the entire country into a giant science experiment, which will put many lives at risk in the process.

Yet this policy did not come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a trend witnessed in American society, and the West more broadly, which has seen a growing confluence between the conspiratorial fringes on the left and the right. Ten or 15 years ago, it was easy to classify most anti-vaxxers as either health-conscious, but scientifically illiterate, soccer moms or hippies — the type of people who dine at vegan restaurants and think crystals will cure their health problems.

But during the pandemic, we witnessed a flourishing of vaccine skepticism on the right, as well. Poor public health messaging during COVID, and the general failure of authorities to account for their mistakes, further eroded trust in medical professionals. Add to this an unconventional president who crafts policy on a whim and has little regard for the advice provided by his own government officials, and you have a perfect storm.

In 1991, the last time U.S. measles cases were higher than they are today, “Terminator 2” showed the world a terrifying vision of a future in which intelligent robots try to wipe out humanity. Today, those fears seem closer than ever. But when historians look back, they may realize that the threat of artificial intelligence paled in comparison to the communicable diseases that vaccines had largely eradicated in the 20th century.

National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/accessd

• Carson Jerema: Recruiting for the war against nonsense
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In the 1990s, a B.C. NDP government cabinet minister famously pronounced , “Remember, government can do anything it wants.”

That basic undemocratic ethos is alive today in the present B.C. NDP government headed by Premier David Eby, most particularly on the Aboriginal “reconciliation” agenda.

Controversy continues to swirl around what critics refer to as the governments “land back” ideology, which appears firmly rooted in the larger and more ominous ethos of “decolonization.”

For some years now, British Columbia’s non-Aboriginal population have been taunted by two NDP administrations as “colonizers,” “settlers” and “uninvited guests” — language that has even been used in the B.C. legislature by government MLAs.

The government has also instructed against using the term “British Columbians,” as this term is considered offensive to those who do not accept the sovereignty of the Crown or the legitimacy of the Canadian province of British Columbia.

In its pursuit of “decolonization,” the NDP government has been working assiduously to “return” as much land as possible as quickly as possible to Aboriginal communities, many of which are tiny in terms of on-reserve residents.

Changes have been made by the NDP to negotiation mandates, and those changes are now reflected in the approach of the B.C. Treaty Commission — allowing for negotiation of Aboriginal title outside of the treaty process in “Foundation Agreements” and “other arrangements,” designed to circumvent the regular treaty process.

Aboriginal title is being negotiated by the B.C. and federal governments with shocking results. For example, we have witnessed the creation of Aboriginal title over the entirety of the Haida Gwaii archipelago with no requirement for the Haida to prove the historical occupation necessary under Canadian constitutional law for the existence of such title.

Recently, real estate developer Rick Illich decried the province’s “closed door negotiations” on Aboriginal rights and title. In his words the “secrecy” of those negotiations is “undemocratic,” and “terribly irresponsible and disingenuous” to most of the province’s population.

The 2024 B.C. NDP election platform made no mention of actively negotiating Aboriginal title deals, referring simply to “carrying on with the implementation of DRIPA (the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act) ” and “advancing reconciliation in tangible and measurable ways.”

In other words, they appear to have given themselves a blank slate, leaving the government free to do “anything it wants” on the “reconciliation” file in pursuing its “land back” ideology.

Increasingly, British Columbians are treated to new and startling revelations about what public lands the government is transferring to Aboriginal communities. The latest in a long list of such revelations is the plan to transfer important public lands in and around Victoria to bands in the Te’mexw Treaty Association, all with a minimum of public information having been made available.

Apparently, the public lands in question have been deemed “surplus” by B.C. and Canada. Such “surplus” lands include significant parts of the federal lands that house the historic Hatley Castle and Royal Roads University and large areas of existing provincial parks in the Capital region.

How can iconic historical sites and B.C.’s public provincial parks be considered “surplus,” with no public involvement whatsoever in government’s determination of that conclusion?

In 2002, the B.C. Liberal government held a referendum seeking public input on treaty mandates. Question number four of that referendum saw 94.5 per cent of the respondents confirm that parks and protected areas should be maintained for the use and benefit of all British Columbians. Now, in 2026, that public mandate is being shredded by the present B.C. government.

Negotiations are underway throughout British Columbia in furtherance of the B.C. NDP government’s “land back” ideology, which appears to be a core feature of its “reconciliation” agenda.

While the public watches helplessly from the sidelines, hoping for further glimpses of what public lands their government is sacrificing on the altar of “reconciliation,” the Eby government continues to negotiate in secrecy — giving every indication that, like its 1990s counterpart, it is a government that also thinks, “we are the government and we can do anything we want.”

Surely, there must be a time coming when the population of British Columbia says enough, and demands that the government finally begins to act in the greater public interest?

Perhaps we are finally getting closer to that time?

National Post

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