Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 28th, 2023

[Jean-Hugues Roy]

I'm seriously concerned about that.

With regard to the $1 billion subsidy, I believe you're referring to section 19 of the Income Tax Act. Yes, that makes no sense.

You say that what happens online has an impact in real life. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm also greatly concerned about news-link blocking. Many people, especially our younger fellow citizens, conduct their entire lives on their cell phones. Their lives essentially take place online, on social media, and information is excluded from what they see on social media. If that continues, my impression is that people will think there's no such thing as information, that verified journalistic information doesn't exist. There will only be influencers.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Would you approve if the government immediately cut that indirect subsidy?

We urge Google and Meta to contribute to disinformation and simultaneously give them money. It makes no sense. These digital giants are getting a lot of money from indirect subsidies.

[Jean-Hugues Roy]

I absolutely agree with you.

I'd forgotten that section of the Income Tax Act. It could be the subject of a fifth recommendation: that indirect subsidies be immediately halted. That would rectify the situation in no time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Next, we have five minutes for the Conservatives with Martin Shields.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the witnesses for being here. It's an example of freedom of speech and freedom of opinions. I appreciate hearing them all.

Dr. Geist, to start with, when we talk about supplementing Meta, it's pretty well known that once the financial update came out, the Liberals immediately spent a lot of money. About 30 ads immediately went up on big tech. The NDP recently spent $2.5 million. Its leader spent $400,000. We are all using this particular service out there. I have many weekly newspapers in my riding. They say that the 30% they've lost from federal advertising went to the big techs.

What is the role of government in news? Is it advertising? What role does the federal government have in Canadian news?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

I do track some of the advertising activity. We do see both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party advertising. I don't believe I see the NDP advertising.

This notion of subsidies is being bandied about quite a bit. Advertising by government is not a subsidy. Advertising by government is designed to inform the community, whether it's about COVID or other sorts of issues or about the opportunities people have to take advantage of different programs that have been established, such as getting a passport or whatever it happens to be. These aren't subsidies.

It seems to me that what you want to do is to be able to advertise to people where they are. If they are on some of these platforms, that's where you're going to advertise. You can make the decision not to do so, and we've seen that in the aftermath of Facebook blocking news links. Nevertheless, I don't see that as a subsidy.

To be honest, this notion that deducting advertising as a subsidy strikes me as really odd. It's a deduction for businesses that advertise. The idea that we would eliminate the ability for those businesses to effectively advertise in places makes them less competitive, it seems to me.

I understand why we might be unhappy that big tech is getting this money. Tax them. I mean, the solution, if you don't think they are paying their fair share, is to tax them. Don't leave our own businesses at a significant competitive disadvantage by saying they can't deduct that kind of advertising.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

With social media removing links, what, in your opinion, has that created in the Canadian landscape? Social media links have been removed.

What did that create in our social fabric and our country when social media did that?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

We've already talked about how the removal of news links certainly harmed many news entities by losing audiences. We've heard from other witnesses about the concern that filling that gap is hateful content or other kinds of content. There have been some reports that suggest some of what has filled that space are, frankly, memes, pictures of friends and things like that. It isn't that harmful.

I want to state this unequivocally, because Mr. Julian raised the issue of hate online and anti-Semitism. We need to be absolutely clear here. I've been outspoken on these issues. I've been targeted by Laith Marouf on these issues.

A year or so ago, a former member of this committee suggested that I was racist for raising questions around anti-Semitism. This is deeply personal for me and my community right now. We need action. We also need true accountability, with everyone willing to stand up and say so. Where that hasn't happened, I find it enormously troubling when those things take place.

[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?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

Standards for what? Is it for what appears on social networks?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes. Who should set those standards?

[Dr. Michael Geist]

Freedom of expression is quite clearly there, but it is open to the government to establish online harms legislation that provides guardrails and addresses some of these issues.

Candidly, one of the things that I have found most inexplicable about the government's strategy is not that it hasn't decided to go forward and deal with some of these issues. There is a need to deal with these issues. It's that privacy was largely ignored or left to the end. AI has been moved forward without full consultation, and online harms have been left as a laggard.

I'm not saying that I want the government to come in and regulate everything people can say. I think there are real challenges around misinformation and disinformation from a regulatory perspective. Surely, we can ensure that platforms are responsible when it comes to content that we already know is unlawful, for example, terrorism content, certain kinds of hate content and the like. There is an opportunity there, and it is a source of frustration for many that the issue has not been prioritized but some of these others have been.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you, Mr. Shields.

We're going to move on to the Liberal party for five minutes.

Ms. Dhillon, you have five minutes, please.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

My questions will be for Mr. Ahmed.

Have you found that big tech companies cultivate friendly academics, experts, think tanks and advocacy groups to maintain a status quo and oppose regulation? We've seen in the past that the big tech companies try to resist and undermine and subvert experts from regulating them. Can you please comment on that?

[Imran Ahmed]

Thank you for the question.

We have seen an even more sophisticated version of the array of astroturf groups of paid influencers who support social media companies in their efforts to resist regulation and to resist having to take responsibility for the externalities of their company's own work. Also, even more importantly, they control the digital information ecosystem. They shape that—and we know they have in the past—to support the narratives that benefit them.

I think with the unprecedented power they have to shape the narrative and the enormous amount of cash they have on hand to try to get others to help them shape the narrative, you're right. We are up against a really dangerous enemy in that respect.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

My last question, before I hand it over to MP Gainey, is this: What advice do you have for legislators, government and civil society in general to counter that?

[Imran Ahmed]

I'm not Canadian, so internal political disputes between parties in Canada are like watching my in-laws argue. I just don't want to get involved. What I can say is that we are all patriots, because the public service is a job for patriots.

Right now, Meta is trying to make a joke out of Canada and of the ability of democracies to restrain companies when they create harm in their countries. As a patriot of my own country, and as someone who supports the Canadian government, please do not see this as a setback. See it as a reason for more comprehensive legislation that deals with the whole array of issues: good data through transparency, meaningful accountability, shared responsibility for the externalities and a culture of safety by design.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to hear from all of you today.

Mr. Kint, I will engage you on this one. I feel that we've kind of left you quiet there.

I'm curious. In all the talk of big tech, we hear about Google and Meta and occasionally Twitter. Apple strikes me also as big tech, and it's a company that we don't often hear about in the context of news. The Apple news model, I think, has grown rapidly. It's certainly a tool I use on my phone in my day-to-day life.

How does that model work? How do you see Apple engaging with local news and their profit model? Why has it escaped this discussion to date?

[Jason Kint]

That's a really good question. Thank you for asking it.

Partially it's that our justice department is still investigating Apple. Unlike Amazon, Google and Facebook, they don't have a lawsuit yet from our justice department or a federal trade commissioner or our state AGs, who are all suing the other companies in some form or fashion. I think that raises the attention level.

You are right that Apple has choke-point gatekeeper power. I think it's why the Digital Markets Act in Europe was so sharp and smart to include them. It puts limitations on that gatekeeper power.

We are learning, particularly through the Google antitrust lawsuit here in the U.S., that the shared power between Google and Apple, where Google is paying Apple well north of $20 billion a year and 37% of every single dollar that gets collected through their searches on Apple devices, is quite a choke point. These things are coming out, and I think we'll have more attention on Apple too.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Ahmed, I'm curious. The U.K. experience with the online harms bill was quite a journey. I followed it from a distance here.

Quickly, do you have any lessons learned for us from the British experience on that piece of legislation in particular?

[Imran Ahmed]

It really was a long journey.

I was the first witness to give evidence to the draft bill committee in September 2021. It took two years to promulgate that legislation.

The one thing I will say is that there is elegance in the British solution that says, “You set your own rules, but we want to see whether or not you enforce them in the right way.” You don't need to make it more complicated than saying, “If you act in a negligent way with respect to enforcing the rules that you tell others they have to abide by, and if that creates harm for our society, then we will impose significant economic consequences on you.”

I think it was the comprehensive nature, working within the platform's own community standards—because they need advertising and advertisers wouldn't advertise on there otherwise—that made that legislation so elegant.

[Anna Gainey, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you very much.

[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.

[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.

We'll move it over to Mr. Shields.

Go ahead. You have three minutes.