Bill C-18

Online News Act

An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada

This enactment regulates digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to its sustainability. It establishes a framework through which digital news intermediary operators and news businesses may enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries. The framework takes into account principles of freedom of expression and journalistic independence.
The enactment, among other things,
(a) applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to specific factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses;
(b) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting those factors;
(c) specifies that the enactment does not apply in respect of “broadcasting” by digital news intermediaries that are “broadcasting undertakings” as those terms are defined in the Broadcasting Act or in respect of telecommunications service providers as defined in the Telecommunications Act ;
(d) requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies;
(e) requires the Commission to exempt a digital news intermediary from the application of the enactment if its operator has entered into agreements with news businesses and the Commission is of the opinion that the agreements satisfy certain criteria;
(f) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting how the Commission is to interpret those criteria and setting out additional conditions with respect to the eligibility of a digital news intermediary for an exemption;
(g) establishes a bargaining process in respect of matters related to the making available of certain news content by digital news intermediaries;
(h) establishes eligibility criteria and a designation process for news businesses that wish to participate in the bargaining process;
(i) requires the Commission to establish a code of conduct respecting bargaining in relation to news content;
(j) prohibits digital news intermediary operators from acting, in the course of making available certain news content, in ways that discriminate unjustly, that give undue or unreasonable preference or that subject certain news businesses to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage;
(k) allows certain news businesses to make complaints to the Commission in relation to that prohibition;
(l) authorizes the Commission to require the provision of information for the purpose of exercising its powers and performing its duties and functions under the enactment;
(m) requires the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide the Commission with an annual report if the Corporation is a party to an agreement with an operator;
(n) establishes a framework respecting the provision of information to the responsible Minister, the Chief Statistician of Canada and the Commissioner of Competition, while permitting an individual or entity to designate certain information that they submit to the Commission as confidential;
(o) authorizes the Commission to impose, for contraventions of the enactment, administrative monetary penalties on certain individuals and entities and conditions on the participation of news businesses in the bargaining process;
(p) establishes a mechanism for the recovery, from digital news intermediary operators, of certain costs related to the administration of the enactment; and
(q) requires the Commission to have an independent auditor prepare a report annually in respect of the impact of the enactment on the Canadian digital news marketplace.
Finally, the enactment makes related amendments to other Acts.

[Dr. Michael Geist]

I actually think what we've seen take place in terms of broadcaster response, both on news and on calls for reduced CanCon obligations, which we are also seeing now, does come out of this legislation.

On CanCon, for example, it was an obvious consequence that, if you were looking for the international streamers—the foreign streamers—to shoulder more of the responsibility, one of the responses you'd get from Canadian broadcasters would be, “Okay, we can reduce what we have to do as part of that.”

On the news side, I suspect the timing may well have been a coincidence, but in terms of the amount of news we might get from some of those broadcasters, there's been little evidence to suggest that the results they might get from Bill C-18, which appear now to be pretty limited—with really only one company now subject to this legislation—would change the trajectory of some of the things those companies have been focused on when it comes to news.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you, Ms. Gainey.

We'll go now to the third round. I think we have time.

There will be five minutes for the Conservatives, and I'm actually going to lead it off.

Mr. Geist, the day Bill C-18, the Online News Act, was passed in the House of Commons, I found it ironic—some thought I was a conspiracist—that the big broadcasters slipped over to the CRTC chair and said, “We want to do less local news.” Isn't that ironic?

Of course, no money has come yet from Bill C-18 to the big broadcasters, but they are preparing for that, and I can tell you, in my city, that the local television station does two hours a day out of 216 First Avenue North.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

When you reference Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, who should set the standards there. Who should set these standards? Where do you think we should go?

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Geist, earlier you talked about the lobbyists who intervened in the study of Bill C‑18. You mentioned News Media Canada in particular. You're right in saying its members were very active. That organization represents 830 newspapers, dailies, weeklies and community newspapers across Canada. Since it's the group most affected by the crisis, particularly as a result of the domination by digital businesses, it's quite natural for the members of that organization to be the most active group seeking regulations.

I understand that we can have very broad discussions regarding the business models of both digital and conventional businesses, which perhaps should be reviewed.

I recently suggested that we take a break and conduct an extensive study on the state of conventional media in Quebec and Canada, particularly on the state of news media.

Do you agree with that idea? Isn't it time we held a kind of summit to review those models and look to the future with a clearer idea of what lies ahead?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Let's go there for a minute.

You said News Media Canada was the biggest lobbyist on this bill, and they got everything they wanted. We saw, immediately after C-18 was passed, that Bell Media decided to shut down over 1,200 news outlets that were local, and Métro followed suit. It looks, at the end of the day, like C-18 utterly failed to meet its objective and, rather, lobbyists and the CBC, Bell and Rogers ended up with the lion's share of the taxpayers' money.

Would you agree with that?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

With your permission, I'd like to expand that not just to C-18 but to C-11 as well.

One of the real concerns with the legislative approach that this committee and that the legislation has taken on both the streaming act and on the news act has been to have significant negative implications for access to foreign content for diaspora communities. One of the real fears of what we're seeing play out at the CRTC is the likelihood that the increased cost of regulation and registration—but even more than registration, the actual costs of regulation—could well lead many foreign streaming services to simply block the Canadian market, because it doesn't become economical anymore. It's particularly those communities that may be most directly affected. The same is true on the news side.

Yes, this was a likely outcome. Again, I'm going to come back to my opening remarks to emphasize that, if you weren't listening to these players, if you decided all you needed to do was by and large listen to News Media Canada and a few other cheerleaders, then you'd miss that large story.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

It appears there are even more harms coming from the way C-18 was implemented than expected. You may have seen the Substack from my colleague Michelle Rempel Garner yesterday, where she expressed concern about how the rollout of C-18 was going to impact especially diaspora and ethnic small media.

Could you comment on what you think the impacts of C-18 have been on them?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

Thanks for the question.

No, I wasn't surprised. I appeared before this committee a couple of times on C-18, and I thought that if you understood the business model that existed....

We've heard a lot of the negative aspects of the business model, which is why I think there is a role to play for regulation when it comes to some of the harms that have been articulated, but that wasn't what C-18 was about. If you understood the business model of trying, as we've heard, to keep people on the platform, capture information and deliver ads to them, the idea that news content was something they couldn't live without never made much sense. The reality is that it's the sort of content that actually sends people away, off the site. Given what had been taking place, it seemed to me that this was likely to occur.

I also have to say that sometimes it felt as if people didn't fully think through some of the implications. I mean, with all respect, it was this committee that established a specific exception for campus broadcasters to include them in the legislation, and we just heard today that campus news isn't included. This committee literally included it within one of its amendments so they would be eligible under the system.

It's also this committee that passed legislation that said that facilitating access to all news, whether in Canada or anywhere, brings you within the scope of being a digital news intermediary. You could have made the choice to say only news that's from a qualified Canadian journalism organization or only those who qualify for payments, which actually would have excluded some of these other entities and would have excluded many of the foreign entities, but that wasn't the choice that was made.

It seems to me these were the choices made in the legislation and the outcomes were pretty predictable.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I'm going to start with Dr. Geist.

Dr. Geist, you may have seen some of my interventions here at committee on C-18, where I did start by pointing out to the then minister of heritage what had happened in Australia when Meta blocked news content. I asked him what actions he was going to take to make sure that didn't happen in Canada. He said it was a simple business decision.

When Meta and Google were here, I asked them whether, if C-18 was passed in its current form and if the government made them pay for people to share news links, it would be a reasonable business decision to decide not to do that because they would have to pay. They both said it was, so I was not surprised when this result happened, although the Liberals and NDP seemed to be shocked and surprised. It looks like it's had very negative impacts on small and local businesses, when the whole point of C-18 was to try to protect small, local news outlets.

Were you surprised? What do you think the impacts have been?

[Jean-Hugues Roy]

Yes, it could be useful, but we can also go further. Earlier we were talking about a fund.

There's also a complex side to Bill C‑18. It can take a long time to negotiate with everyone. If two businesses said they were prepared to contribute to a fund, it might be up to you legislators to establish the amount of that contribution. You could set it at 30% of their revenue, for example. We already have mechanisms for then distributing those amounts, such as the Canada media fund, to which we could add an information component.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our guests for being with us today.

Mr. Roy, you said in your opening statement that Bill C‑18 might not ultimately be the right approach. I'm a bit surprised by that.

I'm not saying Bill C‑18 is the only approach we should adopt, but don't you think we're in a way throwing the baby out with the bathwater by concluding it wasn't the right one?

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I met with McMaster University's student newspaper recently, The Silhouette, and they told me that they're really struggling, because without being able to share on Facebook and Instagram they don't have a way to reach their audience, the students of McMaster University. They're finding that, in lieu of getting news sources, the students are reading various opinions that are posted online.

I do agree that there are lots of great news organizations that operate only online. If people take my previous comments to mean otherwise, then that's just because they were inelegantly stated. Of course there are great online journalists, but there's also a proliferation of opinion that's not based on news or fact.

What do you think about those tactics that pull in an organization that doesn't even fall under Bill C-18. Student journalists wouldn't benefit from Bill C-18, yet they're being caught in this intimidation tactic.

I'll go to Mr. Ahmed first.

[Imran Ahmed]

I think that's the soft bigotry of low expectations that we've been attuned to expect from these companies.

In a sort of twisted irony, my organization has shown that Meta has allowed state-controlled media in authoritarian countries to pay for advertisements containing disinformation. In 2022, we published a report on Chinese state media buying Facebook ads to push disinformation about the conflict in Ukraine. While Meta is punishing Canadian news publishers by removing their ability to operate on the platform, it has profited from disinformation content paid for by state-controlled media elsewhere in the world.

The truth is that we've come to expect the platforms, and Meta in particular, to behave in the worst way possible. Not only are these regulations.... I think that Bill C-18 has its value, but one thing we've urged to Canadian ministers when I've met them, and we will urge today, is that there needs to be a more comprehensive framework that surrounds these platforms.

Ultimately, if they can find a way to squeeze out of taking responsibility and retaliate against anything that you do try, they will do so. That's why a more comprehensive framework—based on what we call the STAR framework at CCDH—includes safety by design, transparency of the algorithms, economics and a content-enforcement policy. It includes real, meaningful accountability to democratic bodies like your own and also shared responsibility for the harms they create. The negative externalities that these companies are imposing are an unbearable cost on our societies, whether that's destroying the news media industry or harming young girls and young children with self-harm and eating disorder content.

In all of those respects, I think the lesson you need to be taking from this is that these companies will wiggle out of everything they can. They will act in the worst possible way, and that's why more comprehensive legislation—a framework, as your previous speaker said—is necessary.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Dr. Geist.

I want to follow up on something else you said, and it's somewhat related.

We know that the big broadcasters—Rogers, Bell and CBC—have a lot to gain from Bill C-18, potentially. However, we also know that the new up-and-coming platforms that are based online, which Ms. Hepfner referred to as not actual news outlets—and I would contend otherwise as I believe they're legitimate—are actually being hurt significantly by this legislation. To the point you raised in your opening remarks, many of them have made the determination to not hire more employees, because they know they might be put out of business, potentially, by this legislation.

In your estimation.... It's not fair to ask why. I'm sorry. I can't ask you to speculate, but I'm just curious. Could you expand a bit? Bill C-18 was put out by the minister at the time, Minister Rodriguez, as something that was meant to benefit the little guy. It was meant to benefit the local newspapers, the ethnic media, the local media sources, etc. Many of these exist online.

Why did it end up in a place where it is benefiting the big broadcasters?

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

My first question is for Dr. Geist. As you know, there has been a complaint filed with the Competition Bureau. The complaint was put forward by News Media Canada, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the CBC. The complaint has to do with Bill C-18, and the fact that Meta has determined that it is no longer carrying news links. Well before the legislation was passed, Meta made it clear that this would be the decision it would make in response to the legislation.

However, these outlets that I've just listed—or unions—are now complaining that:

By refusing to negotiate with Canadian news organizations in good faith for the access of Canadian news content on Meta’s platforms, and by blocking the news content on the platforms, Meta is denying Canadian news organizations fair compensation for their content, leaving them with limited resources to compete effectively in the news publishing market.

This last phrase here, “leaving them with limited resources to compete in the news publishing market”, would say that Meta served as a vehicle or a platform by which these news sources were being shared. That vehicle is no longer provided, and these news outlets are saying that it's hurting them.

However, the whole premise of Bill C-18 was that the news outlets were actually providing the value, and that Meta needed to pay them. It seems they're making an admission that the actual benefit was found in Meta being the vehicle.

Do you care to comment on this further or expand on it?