I don't like the idea of link taxes myself.

But even setting aside the question of whether link taxes are a good idea, I don't understand why they're making a -- what to me sounds dubious -- antitrust argument. It seems like a simply bizarre angle.

If the Canadian government wants news aggregators to pay a percentage of income to news companies, I would assume that they can just tax news aggregators -- not per link to Canadian news source, but for operating in a market at all -- take the money and then subsidize Canadian news sources. It may or may not be a good idea economically, but it seems like it'd be on considerably firmer footing than trying to use antitrust law to bludgeon news aggregators into taking actions that would trigger a link tax by aggregating Canadian news sources.