Evidence of meeting #22 for Canadian Heritage in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was facebook.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Kevin Chan  Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Marc Dinsdale  Head, Media Partnerships, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Rachel Curran  Policy Manager, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Aimée Belmore

12:10 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

Our approach is uniform across the system, which is that derogatory language or discriminatory language targeted at specific groups, whether they be Asian or otherwise, is a violation of our community standards. We would enforce the same way across the system.

From my own personal experience working at Facebook, I can't say we have seen an uptick on enforcement. Certainly nothing has been escalated to my desk or to my screen, but I obviously read with concern the same things you're reading in the news about the challenge that Asian-Canadians are facing.

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

Marci Ien Liberal Toronto Centre, ON

For example, if something were to be found, Mr. Chan, a post on Facebook that contained hate, what happens? Can you walk us through that?

12:10 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

There are two ways of enforcing our systems, to be honest. One is the automated system, as I think one of your colleagues mentioned, which uses artificial intelligence. Some of the technology was developed in Canada: machine learning to go and find all these things.

In fact, I have some statistics here. In terms of hate speech, in the last quarter of 2020, our automated systems found over 97% of hate speech directed at groups automatically, before any human had seen them or reported them. That's where we are. Now, 97% is not 100%, so we still have a ways to go, but we're getting better every day. That's our posture. That's the way we do it right now.

The other piece, though, is that because speech is important from a contextual standpoint, we have to be careful on some of the grey zones for speech that, in fact, it is an attack on the community and not something else, for example, spreading awareness about Asian racism. We need humans as well, so part of that 35,000-person team that I referred to consists of people who are going to be looking at the context and saying that this image was shared, this video was shared, or this text was shared, but is the context of this to attack Asians, or is this to raise awareness about discrimination and racism? That context matters in terms of whether or not we would enforce and take it down.

It is really a parallel process that meets when we need to get more context. We have automated systems that go and find things automatically. We're constantly improving, but we're at about 97% of proactive identification and we need humans to verify some of the more challenging ones, where the speech is grey and we have to be sure of the context. Then, in the most complicated cases, they get escalated to people like me and Rachel, where we will look at specific pieces of content emanating from Canada, consult with experts and think through whether or not we're going to be drawing the line in the right place.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

Marci Ien Liberal Toronto Centre, ON

Mr. Chan, thank you.

I'm going to share my time with my colleague Ms. Dabrusin.

Ms. Dabrusin, please go ahead.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Alain Rayes

You have 30 seconds left, Ms. Dabrusin.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON

I will probably get back to this, then, in the next round, but I want to speak a bit about free resources. You talk a lot about free access to your network, say, for the press. I'm curious and will ask more questions about who pays for that.

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Alain Rayes

Ms. Dabrusin, unfortunately, your time is up. You may continue during the next round of questions.

Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chan, I would like to know if, as Facebook's global vice-president, you can answer this question that was asked of you earlier by one of my colleagues.

In 2020, what was Facebook's revenue in Canada, approximately?

12:15 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

Again, sir, I don't have that information.

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

Mr. Chan, I admit I'm a little surprised you don't have that number, as the global vice-president of a company like Facebook.

12:15 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

Unfortunately, I am not—

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

Facebook has an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue in Canada. Do you think that's plausible?

12:15 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

I honestly don't know. Unfortunately for me, I am not vice-president.

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

I'm sorry. You are the global director.

Facebook's annual revenues are estimated at $2.5 billion. You obviously generate a lot of traffic to your web pages through journalistic content, and you're well aware of that. It's also an invaluable addition to your business model, because you can get a lot of information and data from it.

You just announced an $8-million investment over three years in journalism in Canada. On average, that's $2.7 million a year on an estimated revenue of about $2.5 billion.

Do you find this investment generous?

12:15 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

I'll ask my colleague, Marc, to explain a bit more afterwards.

I would just point out that the $8 million is for the entire ecosystem, to build capacity for local news and to build capacity for under-represented voices. That is not at all—

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

We are already hearing about just such communities. These media already exist. They would simply like to have some form of equity in terms of ad revenue sharing, specifically.

People find their news on social media, especially Facebook. Advertisers know very well that it's easier to advertise on Facebook, because your rates are very competitive and you reach a large portion of the customer base.

Don't you think that the demand from print media to revisit the model a bit and share advertising revenue is legitimate?

12:15 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

I would just say again that it is a common misunderstanding, but when....

What I'm saying is true, sir. If my mother-in-law, who lives in Quebec City, sees a link posted by a publisher in her Facebook news feed and she clicks on it, the browser goes to the publisher's website. So, it's the publisher who makes money, not us.

12:15 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

I'm going to run out of time to say more about this. However, you know very well that this is not true. The news media has lost 80% of its advertising revenue, while social media, including Facebook and Google—

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Alain Rayes

I am sorry, Mr. Champoux, but your time is up.

12:20 p.m.

Bloc

Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC

I'll continue in the next round of questions.

Thank you.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Alain Rayes

Ms. McPherson, you have the floor.

12:20 p.m.

NDP

Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

I would like to follow up on some of the comments that my colleague, Mr. Champoux, brought up.

We are hearing announcements of an $8-million contribution to Canadian broadcasting, and, of course, it was made public on the weekend, the day before you were to come before this committee. It's great to see this contribution to local media, but obviously it's a very small amount of money compared—as Mr. Champoux pointed out—to the amount of money that Facebook makes in Canada.

It also seems to me that it is not the right way to do this. Clearly this is not the right way to solve this media crisis. Instead of you or the big web giants choosing how to interact, it seems to me that the role of government is to introduce legislation, like Australia did, that would in fact force you to pay your fair share instead of you creating the rules that favour you.

Wouldn't you agree that rather than looking for handouts from Facebook on one-offs, doesn't it make more sense to have legislation in place that holds you to account on that?

12:20 p.m.

Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.

Kevin Chan

Ma'am, again, as I indicated earlier, and others have said, too, from Facebook, the challenge with the Australian model is that it didn't reflect the realities of how the Internet works.

Once again, requiring Facebook to pay for links shared onto Facebook, where we don't have a say in that and we aren't able to control the volume, means we don't control the price. It fundamentally breaks the premise of how a free and open Internet works. That's the challenge.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't care about the future of news. That doesn't mean we don't want to invest in news. We have made a commitment of $8 million. I have also indicated, certainly to the media earlier, that we are going to look, in 2021, to commercial deals with publishers in a way that makes sense.

Perhaps I'll turn it over to my colleague, Marc, who can elaborate a bit—

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Alain Rayes

Thank you, Mr. Chan.

Mr. Shields, you now have the floor for five minutes.