Yet all the major news sites I checked provided Open Graph content.

In case you don't know, Open Graph was created by Facebook to give publishers control over what information is displayed on Facebook when a news resource is introduced into their system.

If you don't want Facebook to display that content, knowing it means you won't see the traffic, why explicitly provide and denote it for their use? Open Graph content isn't naturally occurring. These news companies are going out of their way to tell Facebook exactly what they want shown.

Is this simply a case of the top brass spending too much time in Ottawa and not enough time talking to the technical people?

It's more about forcing private companies to pay for the use of other private companies work.

What's the problem with private companies subsidizing an industry? They're taking advantage of our population to make money and often offshoring profits to avoid paying taxes.

I do believe some Canadian industries should be subsidized by private interests because they're just selling our own resources back to us, and they should pay for the privilege (while still receiving some profits). Telecom, utilities, energy, farms over certain capacities etc.

News Probaby shouldn't be one. I'm more than happy with government funded news so long as its independent of government and held to a higher standard than "entertainment" like we have with our neighbours to the south. This forces private news to compete with a competent news source, and it's not like the business model for news has really changed by much, selling ad space next to information, or offering subscriptions is as old as information sharing.