Has Meta's board of directors discussed the proposed content-blocking in Canada if Bill C-18 is adopted?
I can't hear your answer, Mr. Chan.
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal
This bill has received Royal Assent and is, or will soon become, law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Has Meta's board of directors discussed the proposed content-blocking in Canada if Bill C-18 is adopted?
I can't hear your answer, Mr. Chan.
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Has Meta's board of directors discussed the content-blocking decision you've made in the event that Bill C-18 is adopted?
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
I'm curious. For Facebook to continue to carry news and to continue forward with these deals that have been sprung—I think it's 14, or something like that—I'm wondering what is required in terms of legislative change. Right now, Bill C-18 is in the Senate, so it's possible to have amendments made. What should those amendments be?
Rachel Curran Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Thank you for the question, Mrs. Thomas.
Part of our concern with the online news act, with Bill C-18, is the fact that it ties the fate and the fortunes of the Canadian news sector to the fortunes of two American technology companies. We think that one of the major flaws with the legislation, as you've stated, is in fact that it makes the news sector almost entirely dependent on foreign technology companies. That is one of the points of concern we have with this piece of legislation.
Kevin Chan Global Policy Director, Meta Platforms Inc.
Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, it is a pleasure to once again be before you today. My name is Kevin Chan, and I'm a global policy director at Meta Platforms. I am here with my colleague Rachel Curran, our head of public policy in Canada.
Madam Chair, as you will know, your committee clerk wrote to us on Friday, April 28, to confirm an invitation to appear before this committee for its study on the “reaction of companies in the information technology industry to Bill C-18”.
We were delighted at the opportunity to once again make a representation to the committee of our serious concerns with the online news act and readily agreed to accept the invitation. To demonstrate how seriously we took this opportunity, our president of global affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, confirmed his participation as our principal witness.
Unfortunately, late last Thursday, May 4, we were notified by the committee clerk that the title of the hearing was changed to a much more confrontational one, one that seemingly had nothing at all to do with the online news act. Given this development, on Friday Meta notified the committee that our president would no longer be appearing.
I think we were all looking forward to a substantive discussion about Bill C-18 today, much like the thoughtful discussion that occurred at the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications last week. That seemed like a high-water mark of legislative deliberation.
As you know, the clerk of your committee wrote us on Friday, April 28, to confirm that we had been invited to testify before you in connection with its study on, and I am quoting now, the reaction of companies in the information technology industry to Bill C‑18.
We were delighted to have another opportunity to speak to your committee about our major concerns with respect to the Online News Act, and willingly accepted the invitation. To demonstrate how seriously we were taking this opportunity, our president of global affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, confirmed that he would be attending as the principal witness.
On Thursday, May 4, we were informed by the committee clerk that the title of the study had been amended and replaced by another much more worrisome version that apparently had nothing to do with the Online News Act. In view of this change in direction, Meta advised the committee on Friday that our president would no longer be attending.
I believe that we were all keen to take part today in a serious discussion about Bill C‑18, like the thoughtful discussions held at the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which seems to have been the high point of the legislative proceedings.
With that in mind, I am pleased to now share with you the opening statement that our president of global affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, had written and was prepared to make for your original study on the reactions of companies in the information technology industry to Bill C‑18.
This is what he said:
"Madam Chair, my name is Nick Clegg and I'm President, Global Affairs at Meta. I'm grateful for the opportunity to address this committee.
"Madam Chair, the Online News Act is based on a fundamentally flawed premise. Meta does not benefit unfairly from publishers sharing links to news content on our platform. The reverse is true.
“Publishers choose to share their content because it benefits them to do so, whereas it isn't particularly valuable to us at all. As such, we've taken the difficult decision that if this flawed legislation is passed, we will have to end the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada.
“The truth is, our users don't come to us for news. They come to share the ups and downs of life, the things that make them happy and sad, that interest them and entertain them. Links to news stories are a tiny proportion of that—less than three percent of the content they see in their Facebook Feed.
“But news publishers do find our services valuable. We estimate that Facebook Feed sent registered news publishers in Canada more than 1.9 billion clicks in the 13 months to April 2022. This amounts to free marketing we estimate is worth more than $230 million. Publishers choose to share their content because it drives traffic to their websites. It helps them sell more subscriptions, grow their audience and display their ads to more people than they might have otherwise.
“The traditional news industry faces profound challenges. New technology has emerged, consumer behavior has changed, and old business models don’t work anymore. Of course, everyone wants quality journalism to thrive. But it makes no more sense to claim social media companies are taking money from publishers than to say car companies stole from the horse and cart industry.
“It seems we’re having a debate as if the internet was frozen in time about 10 years ago. The way our users engage with content has changed dramatically. Just in the last year or two we’ve seen an enormous shift in people consuming creator content and short form video. Watching video is now more than half of time spent on Facebook and Instagram. People reshare Reels—our short form video format—more than two billion times every day on Facebook and Instagram, which has doubled in just the last six months.
“The world is constantly changing and publishers, like everyone else, have to adapt. Asking a social media company in 2023 to subsidize news publishers for content that isn’t that important to our users is like asking email providers to pay the postal service because people don't send letters any more.
“And not all internet companies are the same. We’re not Google. They are an amazingly successful company that does extraordinarily useful things for people, but they operate a search engine that functions by using links to news web pages. Meta, by contrast, doesn’t solicit, need or collect content from news websites to put on our services. Our users—and in this case, news publishers—choose to share it themselves. Globally, more than 90% of organic views on article links from news publishers are on links posted by the publishers themselves.
“I’ve heard a lot in this debate about how this legislation is replicating what Australia has done. In fact, the laws are different in important respects—and C18 will go further than the Australian legislation. First, the Australian code doesn’t apply to Meta because we haven’t been designated by the Treasurer there. If we do end up being designated and forced to pay publishers, we will be faced with the same difficult choice we are making in Canada. But perhaps more significantly, this legislation would make Canada the first democracy to put a price on free links to web pages, which flies in the face of global norms on copyright principles and puts at risk the free flow of information online. Canada—and Canadian liberals—have a long-standing reputation for believing in multilateralism, and for defending the free and open internet—C-18 would be a direct contradiction of that long held and honorable tradition.
“I spent 20 years of my life as a legislator, so I understand how difficult it is to craft good policy and sensible legislation. In this instance, I believe C-18 is flawed legislation which would deliver bad economic policy too. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that most of the funds generated by the Act will go to broadcasters, not the local and regional publishers it was supposed to support. It’s Robin Hood in reverse. The Act would subsidize big broadcasters at the expense of independent publishers and digital news sites, skewing the playing field so it’s even harder for smaller players.
“Ultimately, this legislation puts Meta in an invidious position. In order to comply, we have to either operate in a flawed...regulatory environment, or we have to end the availability of news content in Canada. With a heavy heart we choose the latter. As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, this is a business decision. It’s not something we want to do, but it is what we will have to do.
“I welcome your questions.”
With that, Madam Chair, Rachel and I welcome your questions as well.
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'll state it again.
I move that in relation to the committee's study on Google, Facebook and Bill C-18, Nicholas Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta be summoned to appear before the committee for two hours on May 15, 2023.
I move the motion. Hopefully this won't engender a lot of discussion.
He was invited. He is not appearing. This would be a summons, so he would have an obligation to appear.
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
The witness who is not appearing today, Madam Chair, is Nicholas Clegg. He was invited and has not appeared.
Hopefully we can move quickly on this point. I wanted to move that in relation to the committee's study on Google, Facebook and Bill C-18, Nicholas Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta be—
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I have another quick question. Based off a question I asked before about our media ecosystem, the government's been putting in place measures, like the online news act and other things, to try to make sure that we have public broadcasting as well as other news outlets for Canadians.
Do you think the closures that we're seeing globally are contributing to the rise in disinformation and misinformation? Should the government be doing more to protect our media sources?
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Madam Speaker, I would just note that, when the Liberal-NDP coalition was trying to shut me down on this, I was barely a minute into my speech. These members need to let me get to the point I am trying to make, instead of just trying to silence me, as the government is doing with its censorship bills. This is what we are dealing with here, being silenced.
Instead of debating the budget, as we are supposed to be doing, the NDP put something forward called a concurrence motion. That is what we are debating right now. The concurrence motion is to deal with a very tricky bit of Liberal-NDP machinations, which is actually really harming people and delaying the help that Bill S-245 would provide.
Instead of debating the budget, we are debating a concurrence motion on something that happened, and I want to break down what happened. Bill S-245 is an act to amend the Citizenship Act. It went through the Senate. It was introduced by Senator Yonah Martin to deal with a very narrow scope, dealing with something called “lost Canadians”. It was very narrow in scope, and because it was so narrow in scope, it sailed through the Senate, on the understanding that it would stay narrow and it would go through the Senate.
It came to the immigration committee. What ended up happening was that, first of all, before moving this in the immigration committee, the member for Vancouver East went and did a press conference, pre-positioning herself to do this.
The Liberal-NDP coalition got together and did two things. It moved a motion to extend amendments to the bill by 30 days, which delayed action for people who would have been impacted by the bill, and then it also moved a motion to extend the scope of the amendments that would be debated well past what was in the bill itself.
For those who are watching who may not understand what this does, it allows members, in a private member's bill, which is supposed to be very narrow in scope, to put forward any amendment they want. What that does, in effect, and the reason why I do not think we should have done that, is forces the bill to go back to the Senate yet again.
This is going to delay justice for the people who we had non-partisan, all-party agreement to deal with. That motion itself, to do what the NDP-Liberal coalition wanted to do, passed in the citizenship committee with its support. Even though it passed, it introduced this concurrence motion in the House of Commons today, and it is doing what? It is eating up time to debate the deficit budget issue because it doesn't want to talk about it.
If it is saying, oh no, nobody should talk about this and then we go back to the budget, we actually gave it an opportunity to go back to debate. My colleague from Calgary Shepard rose to move a motion about an hour ago to move on from the debate, yet it voted against that.
That is the agenda here. The agenda here is to curtail debate on the budget while it is supporting the passage of Liberal censorship bills Bill C-11 and Bill C-18. These are the types of tactics that we are going to see over and over and over again from this Liberal coalition because it does not want to stand up for what Canadians need, either in the budget or in Bill S-245.
When the Liberal and the NDP coalition decided that it was going to delay the passage of the bill through the committee and delay justice for people who were in that bill, who we all support justice for, and open up the scope of the bill, it forgot one thing. It forgot that, if it opened up the scope of the bill for its one issue, which the senator and the Senate did not want because they agreed to sail it through on a small amendment, it forgot that maybe other people would want to put forward amendments too, such as me and my colleague from Calgary Shepard.
It then had the audacity and the gall to stand in this place during this debate, which it did not need, and which it put forward to waste time on debate on the budget because it does not want to talk about how much deficit spending money it puts forward, which has caused an inflationary crisis in Canada, all while it is putting forward censorship bills. Because it does not want that debate to happen, it puts this debate forward.
Now it is saying that it is because the Conservatives want to put forward amendments to the Citizenship Act. Well, guess what? What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
If the NDP-Liberal coalition, which is supporting censorship bills Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 to shut down conversations in the Canadian public, are using a concurrence motion to shut down debate in the House of Commons, we are absolutely right that Conservatives will be putting forward motions beyond the scope of the bill. It is as simple as that.
If the NDP-Liberal coalition wants a statutory review of the Citizenship Act, then let us giddy-up and do it. I have a lot of great ideas, which I will definitely be bringing forward. This does nothing to help the people who could have been helped if the NDP had just let this go.
The other thing I can show is why we should not be delaying this bill and why the scope of the amendment should not be put through. It is not just because it delays justice for people within this bill; it is also because the NDP is propping up a government that has refused to do this in its own government legislation. If the government had actually wanted to do anything else, it has had nearly eight years to put forward, through its own government legislation, what my colleague from the NDP wants to do.
The NDP is actually in a coalition with the government. I do not know if the NDP wants to go to an election, but I know the Liberals do not. Considering what the polling numbers show today, I do not think there are a lot of people on the Liberal backbench who would want to go to an election today.
The NDP could be using that coalition agreement to say that, within a piece of government legislation, we need to do this. However, they do not actually have the leverage they claim to have over the government, so what they are trying to do is sneak through committee what they cannot get the government to do in the House.
To people who are watching and are impacted by this bill, I say that the Liberals delayed the passage of the bill because they did not understand what they were doing. That is brutal. It is terrible. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe they would not do what we all agreed to do in a non-partisan way, as the Senate did, which is to get Bill S-245 through.
Today, we are debating the concurrence motion and the substance of the motion, and we are using House of Commons time that we could have used to debate the budget. The Liberals moved this concurrence motion even though the bill has already passed through the immigration committee. They actually ate up hours of critical, precious House debate time, which we could have used to talk about the budget. This is a path to ruin that the government, the Liberal-NDP coalition, put us on by inflationary, deficit spending in the budget bill. That is critical.
People cannot eat. People in Vancouver, the member's home riding, are eating out of dumpsters because of the inflation crisis and the affordable housing crisis. Today, she moved a motion that would essentially cut off debate on the budget today, even though it has already passed through the House of Commons.
If my colleague wants to open up the scope of the bill so that it is going to have to go back to the Senate anyway, through her actions, not mine or those of any of my Conservative colleagues, then we will be putting forward other amendments as well. One of the amendments I would like to put forward, given that we are now reviewing the citizenship bill, has to do with the fact that the Liberals said they were going to do away with the need to have in-person citizenship ceremonies. This is something that has received wide, cross-party condemnation. I have an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star on April 10. The title is “I'm horrified by the suggestion of cancelling in-person citizenship ceremonies”. It goes through quotes from non-partisan people, including Adrienne Clarkson, a former governor general; a Syrian refugee; and others who are saying the government should not be doing away with the requirement for in-person citizenship ceremonies.
I would like to amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that, rather than doing away with the ceremonies because the government cannot figure out how to get services to where people want them, the government would actually be required to make sure new Canadians have the right and the ability to go to an in-person ceremony, take the oath with fellow new Canadians and be welcomed into the Canadian family in such a glorious way, instead of doing what it is doing now.
Members in this place have used up precious House time. I am speaking here because members of the Liberal-NDP coalition voted against a motion to end debate on this and move forward. They gave me an opportunity to speak. For once, instead of speaking on Bill C-11 or Bill C-18, the censorship bill, I am, they are darn right, going to speak in this place. I am certainly also going to be putting forward amendments. I do not know if they have forgotten how this place works or have forgotten that each of us has our own individual rights to work within the process that they put forward.
They stand up and say that one person can put forward an amendment that is completely out of scope, but they are going to use that to justify delaying justice for the people in the bill and use that to delay debate on the government's inflationary budget deficit crisis bill. Therefore, yes, I am going to put forward amendments that make sense for my constituents. My constituency is a diverse community in north central Calgary where the Citizenship Act matters. If the member for Vancouver East is going to use her Liberal-NDP coalition position to try to get the Liberal government to extend the scope of the bill and, in doing so, delay justice for people, while delaying debate on the budget, then yes, I am going to be putting forward amendments to amend the Citizenship Act.
To the people and stakeholders watching this, this bill could have been through our committee already. It could have been sailing through the House. However, what is the Liberal-NDP coalition doing? Instead of the government putting forward its own legislation to address any additional issues, the NDP is proposing a motion to extend this by another 30 days, plus have a statutory review of the Citizenship Act. It is plus, plus, plus. They did not think through the process. I am sure that when they were talking to stakeholders, they did not talk to them and were not honest with them about what could or might happen if this path were undertaken.
If I had been meeting with those stakeholders, I would have said that this is something we need to lobby the government for in different legislation, because the senator who put it forward in a private member's bill had agreement among her peers on a narrowly defined scope in the bill in order to get it through and get justice for people. If we do what the member for Vancouver East is suggesting, we would delay it for another 30 days. Then it would probably have to go back through the Senate. The Senate takes a lot of time to look at things. Then it would have to come back here again. That would be months and months of delay, when it could have been done maybe before June. Now we do not know when it is going to be done.
That is why I opposed the approach in committee. Frankly, it is why I oppose using all this time in the House to continue a debate that the NDP-Liberal coalition settled at the immigration committee, an unwise course of action, only to vote against it. They just voted, an hour ago, against moving forward. Also, as we saw at the start of this debate, time after time my colleagues were getting interrupted by points of order, with members saying we should not be allowed to raise the issue of the budget. Absolutely we should be able to raise the issue of the budget, after the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against a Conservative motion that would allow us to move forward to debate the budget.
However, here we are, and if members have given me the opportunity to speak by not moving on that, absolutely I am going to speak about it. Of course, the Liberal-NDP coalition does not want to talk about that inflationary budget, that big, expensive nothing burger that would cost Canadians more, that would lead to food inflation and that is not addressing the core issues facing this country, because it is an embarrassment. They do not want an election because they are all afraid of losing their seats. Canadians are on to them, just as I am on to them right now.
I am tired of this. I am tired of these games. We did not need to have this debate in the House. This could have gone forward to the immigration committee. What we have done, in effect, is delay justice for the people in Bill S-245, delay debate on the budget and, in doing so, delay justice for all Canadians, who are dumpster diving in Vancouver East to eat and who continue to not be able to afford places to live.
This is a hard truth. It is an inconvenient truth for everybody in this place. However, it is time coalition members are confronted with it. There are consequences for the actions of the coalition and its backroom dealings. They lead us into places like this, where they make mistakes on parliamentary procedures and where they do not explain the implications of their actions to stakeholders who are advocating for change in this bill. Again, the government could have done this.
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Mr. Walker, and Mr. Gingras, thank you.
We do look forward to receiving some information in a timely manner, if you don't mind. All parties and the analysts have asked you today, in the last couple of hours, for the transparency report, the information from Australia, and maybe even the Canada contracts that you have with 150 organizations. Timely would be in two or three weeks, if that's possible, instead of months or years.
I know there's pressure on your company, but there's pressure on us as we move forward with our study of Google, Meta and Bill C-18.
This two-hour session was a hell of a lot better than the first one we had. Gentlemen, I think you realize that in the first one, you should have been here. In the second one, you've cleared up a lot of things.
Thank you for being with us. You were frank, and we look forward to hearing further from your organization.
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
I would counter and say that a lot of journalists tell stories in order to inform their local communities. This is part of the journalism that we really value in Canada.
As we've heard today, Google has already made a whole bunch of deals with news organizations all over Canada. Why make such a big deal and have tests in the face of Bill C-18 when you're already doing what Bill C-18 would accomplish here in Canada?
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
You're not 100% sure, so that is something you would need to clarify.
I know the chair is signalling, but my final comment would be this. You have indicated that you are still looking at your options, including running a similar test for the business response on the passage of Bill C-18.
Are you not concerned as Canadians seeing that again as a threat by an extraordinarily powerful and profitable corporation to say, “Well, we're still evaluating our options of how we're going to respond” when you have also not indicated that you're not going to do a denial of service test in the future?
Do you not understand why many Canadians would see that as a threat by a very profitable global corporation?
If we were accurate in our assessment against the draft provisions in Bill C-18 with regard to eligible news businesses, then I would think so, though I would note that some of those that fall into those classes aren't online, so they weren't affected.
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
I want to come back to the issue of the test, because this committee substantially improved Bill C-18. After the PBO report that came out early in the fall, we enhanced access by community broadcasters, small community newsrooms and indigenous news outlets.
When you ran your test simulation, did it have an impact then? Did you take into consideration the amendments for small community news outlets, community broadcasters and indigenous news outlets when you ran the test?