Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 28th, 2022

[Konrad von Finckenstein]

Well, I'm not running the CRTC right now, so all I can do is surmise. I would mention that mostly they will try to create in-house expertise to deal with this. As a temporary measure, they may hire from the outside, get some consultants and subcontract or something like that. Clearly, this is going to be now part of their main function. They will strive to develop the necessary expertise to do it in-house, as they've done with anything else that has been assigned to them.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

That is a good point, in the sense that they're probably looking at a transition in doing this. You would suggest that they will be looking for consultants. You've been in the position when things have come to the CRTC. They're going to be looking at a lengthy process, then, even in transition, to try to deal with this legislation.

[Konrad von Finckenstein]

You have to understand how the CRTC functions. The CRTC is a court of record. They don't just make decisions. They have an issue and they publicize it. They ask for submissions. They get submissions. They have a hearing. The hearing can be in person or it can be on paper. Then, after the hearing, the commissioner, with the help of staff, makes certain decisions, and with this it then becomes public.

It is a long process. You don't make it out of scenarios. You do it on the basis of what you were mandated to do in the legislation and on the input you get from people who come before you, who are affected by the legislation and who suggest that you should do A, B or C.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

What you would suggest by that is that in a sense you're setting up a very quasi-judicial process, which in legal terms—quasi-judicial—takes a lot of work to set up all of the infrastructure, the human infrastructure, to go with it.

[Konrad von Finckenstein]

If this act is enacted and proclaimed in force, what the CRTC will clearly do, as a very first thing, is have hearings—maybe one mega-hearing on it, or separate ones on specific issues—in order to get the necessary input from the people affected. They would then put it together and make it into a workable scheme.

For instance, there's a question that has been discussed here today of what is a DNI. They will seek input from everybody—assuming the legislation is not changed in order to somehow give this very loose mandate they have in this section some form, some structure—and will come out with some policy, some directive, so that people can understand what it is.

After all, the whole issue of all of these things is to make things predictable, to establish rules so that people know what they are and can comply with them.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

That would be the same situation with defining what journalism is.

[Konrad von Finckenstein]

That would be one of the issues. Defining journalism is very difficult.

I remember when we did the free trade agreement. I was chief lawyer on that, and the question came up of what a journalist was in terms of who would get temporary entry into Canada or not. There was a huge debate between us and the Americans, and there was a huge debate in Parliament as to whether we had done it right or wrong. Journalism is a nice broad concept, but specifically it defies precise definition, or it's very difficult—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Hatfield, the question you had, in the sense of limiting people who might be in it.... I had the experience in the sixties of being involved with some of the first indigenous newspapers as they attempted to do it. Is the kind of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Shields, your time has gone well over. Thank you very much. You've gone well over your time.

Now I would like to go to Mr. Housefather for five minutes. Thank you.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to start by saying that of course the committee can invite whomever it wants as witnesses, but normally we start from a list of people who approach our clerk saying they wish to appear. According to our clerk, by yesterday nobody from Meta had ever approached asking to appear.

I'd like to ask this of Mr. Dinsdale. Mr. Dinsdale, you were the first person—I think it was on October 21—who made what I'll call a “threat”—and you may not call it a threat—that Facebook would withdraw news content in Canada. Mr. Dinsdale, did you make that decision on your own, or did you consult with other people at Facebook in order to determine that you would make such a statement?

[Marc Dinsdale]

I think you can appreciate that anything we would discuss is not made in isolation, that what we're trying to discuss are the concerns we have with the legislation and that we are very happy and thankful for the opportunity to discuss them today. The fact that the legislation does not describe the relationship between publishers and platforms in the way that you would agree with—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I was just asking if you spoke with anybody else at Facebook. I am assuming from your answer that your answer is yes.

Before you made that statement, did you receive instructions from Mark Zuckerberg to make that statement? Did you have an approval from central head office in California to make that statement?

[Marc Dinsdale]

A direct conversation with Mr. Zuckerberg would be somewhat above my office, sir.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Were you advised that he authorized you to make that statement? Were you advised that it was approved by him?

[Marc Dinsdale]

I don't think there was ever any discussion of it in that sense. We work as a group that examines these things from a global perspective and from a local perspective, and anything that was done was part of the conversations about the impact of the bills and what they could be in Canada, but essentially there was no directive in that sense.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

This will be the last question on this, I promise.

The Canadian team would not have the authority to make such a decision or to make such a comment on its own. You certainly had, you felt, the support of your board and your executive team in California to make that statement, did you not?

[Marc Dinsdale]

Again, sir, when I look at the context of how we discuss these things, I'm privy to the communications within the group of people I work with and some of the things that happen there, but I think it's safe to presume that we are not kind of out on a limb here and sharing anything that the company at its foundation does not believe in.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Of course. Clearly it is a systematic procedure at Facebook to threaten national governments, when you don't like their legislation, with certain actions, as you did in Australia and in Canada, which again, according to whistle-blowers, was celebrated by both Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg.

[Marc Dinsdale]

Sir, this was an expression of our concerns with the bill and our concerns with the potential outcomes of the bill.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

But you didn't just express your concerns with the bill. That would be one thing. You threatened to take an action that would affect 21.5 million users in Canada.

[Marc Dinsdale]

I believe, sir, we expressed our concerns with the bill and wanted to be transparent about the unintended consequences it might lead to.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Well, they would be very intended consequences. The intended consequences would be that Meta would make a decision that it intended to make to strip Canadian users of the ability to see news.

Let me ask you this, Mr. Dinsdale. As you may recall, Facebook confirmed through news reports that it had manually adjusted its algorithms during the week of the 2020 U.S. election to favour authoritative news brands in order to increase the integrity of information. Why would you have done this if news has no value?

[Marc Dinsdale]

I believe Mr. Chan was about to answer some of this question, as well. I think the movement of our users.... As he indicated, the preference of our users is moving away from news.

We see that in independent reporting, as well. We see that in the Reuters Digital News Report, where people answered a survey, in that sense; 21% of the people on Facebook said they feel they see too much news or would like to see less. Only 3% said they'd like to see more.

When you look at the movements happening within our platform.... We're moving towards that user preference.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Of course, but what you're threatening to do is take down authoritative news and leave disinformation on your platform.

[Marc Dinsdale]

Sir, as I mentioned before—