Because legislators are voted into position, their only proven qualification is an ability to persuade people to vote for them. They don't necessary have good negotiation skills. In this case, I believe the legislators took a clearly adversarial position against Google and not being good negotiators thought that strong-arming Google by rejecting all of Google's suggestions and just forcing them to pay was going to work. Instead, Canadians will be directed to overseas news agencies and their local news industry will rapidly wither. Mistakes are a great way to learn.