Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for the invitation to participate in your study of Bill C-18.
Access to authoritative news is critical for democracy and core to our mission at Google. For 20 years, we've been helping Canadians find the answers to what they are searching for online, including relevant and authoritative news content. Connecting people to news is a responsibility we take very seriously.
Let me be absolutely clear. Google shares your goal of supporting a sustainable future for journalism and the news in Canada. This includes thoughtful approaches to regulation and continuing to provide meaningful contributions, financial and otherwise. Our concerns with Bill C‑18 are serious. So is our commitment to working with the government and the news industry on solutions.
In its current form, Bill C‑18 will make it harder for Canadians to find and share trusted and authoritative news online.
The bill will have, at best, unpredictable outcomes for the evolving Canadian news ecosystem.
We have four principal concerns with Bill C‑18.
First, the bill includes an undue preference provision that prohibits a platform from disadvantaging any eligible news businesses. We appreciate the desire to prevent a platform from retaliating against a publisher, but that's not what this language does. Under threat of legal action, this measure will restrict Google and other platforms from applying policies and providing features that elevate trusted information sources over lower-quality content. This makes the search less relevant and less safe for Canadians. It is essential that the undue preference language be amended.
Second, unlike the Australian code, Bill C‑18 defines eligible news businesses extremely broadly and does not require a publisher to adhere to basic journalistic standards. This will lead to the proliferation of misinformation and clickbait. Combined with the undue preference provision, this means Canadians could be served foreign propaganda outlets alongside reporting from Le Devoir or The Globe and Mail. This isn't a hypothetical example. This happened in Germany under similar regulatory language. The government's existing framework of qualified Canadian journalism organizations is a model that should be built upon, not undercut.
Third is the payment for links. The Internet is built on the principle of freely linking between websites. We all find information, products and services by clicking through links. Businesses, including news businesses, want to be found by Canadians via search. Google sends billions of visits to Canadian news publishers a year at no cost to them, helping them grow their readership and subscriber base, build trust with readers, and make money. Including payment for links repeats the mistakes other jurisdictions have backed away from. It violates global copyright norms and local legal precedent, including the Supreme Court in Crookes. Payment for links also incentivizes cheap, low-quality clickbait content over public-interest journalism and clearly favours large publishers over small ones as they simply have more content to link to.
Fourth, as small and independent news publishers have warned, Bill C-18 lacks transparency and benefits large legacy publishers over small ones because they can afford the regulatory cost of this framework. A fund similar to the Canada Media Fund would resolve the issues we have raised and would ensure that a diversity of Canadian news publishers receive money in a timely, equitable and transparent manner.
This is a history-making opportunity for Canada to craft world-class legislation that is clear and principled on whom it benefits; legislation that actively supports diversity and inclusivity and ensures that financial contributions go to support thoughtful, local journalism; legislation that recognizes the full value exchange that already occurs between platforms and publishers and is laser-focused on supporting an innovative, diverse and sustainable Canadian news ecosystem for the long term.
Bill C‑18 is not that legislation.
I want to reiterate, Google shares your goal of supporting a sustainable future for journalism and the news in Canada.
In its current form, we do not think the measures enacted by Bill C‑18 are in the interests of Canadians, nor are they an effective response to the unique challenges facing Canadian news publishers. The bottom line for us is that Canadians deserve better than what we see in Bill C-18, which, to be frank, is simply bad public policy.
Thank you again for the invitation to appear. I look forward to your questions.