Canadian Heritage Committee on March 10th, 2023

[Sabrina Geremia]

If there is a Canadian news story within something within the ambit of that test, it could conceivably not appear on Google, but it is not blocked. It is still available through other sources.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Then you would potentially block safety advocacy and thus put children at risk.

I will ask you another one. I was doing some research the other day. We're also studying violence in sport. There was a coach who was charged with sexual crimes. I used Google to search his name. It didn't come up. I used Bing using the same search terms and his name came up.

Therefore, the identities of sexual predators could also be blocked if there were a Canadian news story about them, as I found when using your product versus Microsoft's product.

Is that true under the ambit of this test?

[Sabrina Geremia]

Under the ambit of this test, if the news organization were included, that would be possible.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

It's pretty clear that you looked at what Facebook did in Australia and said, “This is a pretty good idea; we're going to test this.”

Your conduct here today has shown limited regard for this democracy, for this Parliament, for the representatives here. I would ask that you expedite your document review so that we can compare it with your testimony.

We may need to speak to the law clerk about further actions involving Google, because this has been wholly unacceptable, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Bittle.

I now go to the third round, which is another five-minute round.

We begin with Bob Zimmer for the Conservative Party.

Go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I just have a simple question: Where is your CEO, Mr. Pichai, today?

[Sabrina Geremia]

I'm here to represent.... I'm here for the second time this week. I can't comment on—

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Can I just follow up on that? Seeing all of the accounts of this C-18 legislation in reference to your company and the precedent it's supposed to set globally for you, I would have thought that at least you would send your CEO to speak to a country that represents 38 million people—or to the House of Commons that represents 38 million people.

I will move on to my next comment or question. I just spoke two days ago in the House of Commons about Bill C-27 and its implications for Canadians' privacy. Google once attempted to build a smart city in Toronto that would have collected massive amounts of personal and very private information for money. The basis of your business is surveillance, and you make a lot of money doing it.

We now see you as a company threatening Canadians that you will be censoring, or you have censored, 4% of the news content in Canada.

I have a simple question. Yes or no, do you think it's okay to block any news content to Canadians?

[Sabrina Geremia]

News is available through browsers, through apps, through websites. We're talking about product tests.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

The question I asked you was a simple one. I will repeat the question: Do you think it's okay to block any news content to Canadians? It's a yes-or-no question.

[Sabrina Geremia]

Respectfully, Madam Chair, we want to provide news to Canada. We provide significant value and news to Canada. This is—

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I have to move on, because my time is very short.

I take that as a yes, because you are doing it. We had a previous member speak up and ask you a simple question about blocking news on a car seat, and you agreed that it was happening.

I will move on, though, from us on this side in opposition. We don't trust Justin Trudeau either, frankly, or the legislation put forward by his government. Remember, this is the same government.... We talk about online monitoring and the digital public square and the threats that Bill C-11 poses to it, along with C-18. I think a lot of Canadians are fearful of what the Prime Minister can decide in terms of whether or not somebody will see a particular news item or cannot see it, or in terms of deplatforming a certain user or boosting another. Then we have what's before the House right now, the issue of foreign interference in our elections—and also the demonizing of peaceful protesters not that long ago.

I'm going to ask you a question about your concerns around Bill C-18. We have heard a lot of concerns about the Internet tax and the possible threat to freedom of information for Canadians.

What is the risk to freedom of information if Bill C-18 passes?

[Sabrina Geremia]

The important thing is that Canadians want us to work together on a healthy news ecosystem. There are many ways to do this that don't actually have a cost on the free links in search. On the path forward.... We've talked about funds in Taiwan. We've talked about other ways to do this.

As you can understand from this conversation, it gets very complicated really quickly. Putting a price on links is unprecedented. We haven't talked about the difference from Australia. I know that's come up many times. In Australia, no platform was designated under the bill, so the provisions of the bill remain untested. That is the difference here.

The whole point here is what the path forward is in order to make healthy news and to continue to support a healthy news ecosystem in Canada. The amendments we provided, which Jason can speak to, offer some very specific areas on how to amend the language so it's not about free links but rather about how to actually make this about news.

Again, thank you for the provisions that were made on journalistic standards. I think there's more to go, in that—

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I know my time is probably close to up. I would make a final comment.

Frankly, from my experience previously with Google's invasion of privacy and surveillance, Canadians can't trust Google. I'd say, for most Canadians now watching, about foreign interference, we can't trust Justin Trudeau or the Liberal Party either.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Zimmer.

Now I go to the Liberals.

Anthony Housefather, you have five minutes, please.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to clarify this. When somebody goes to the Google search engine and expects to see news when they put in a keyword search, they will not know that news isn't there. The idea that they can just go and find that news somewhere else when they're used to using Google, doing a keyword search and expecting that all the news related to that keyword would be there, yet you didn't disclose this testing to Canadians beforehand, as Mr. Waugh said, is completely contrary to what you're saying. You're saying that they can just go find the news somewhere else. People felt that they could rely on a product in the way they always had, and they were suddenly deprived of that.

I also want to put in context the fact that Google earned $279 billion in the last fiscal year. Google's CEO, Mr. Pichai earned approximately $280 million in compensation in 2019, mostly through stock awards. The entire amount paid to Australian news organizations in the first fiscal year after Australia passed a news bargaining code was $150 million. That's the context of the amounts that Google is so threatened by here.

Ms. Geremia, I'm going to come back. Who was the highest-ranking executive at Google who was aware of this testing before it occurred?

[Sabrina Geremia]

Mr. Housefather, it is a common practice....

Do I have an echo?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I just want a name. Was Mr. Walker aware of the testing before it occurred?

[Sabrina Geremia]

It is common practice for senior leadership to be aware—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Answer yes or no. You're under oath.

Was Mr. Walker aware of the testing before it occurred, yes or no? You are under oath.

[Sabrina Geremia]

It is common practice for leadership to be aware.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Chair, I would ask you to please order the witness to answer the question.

[Sabrina Geremia]

It is common practice for senior leaders to be aware.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Geremia, could you please answer the question? Thank you.

[Sabrina Geremia]

Yes, they were aware.