Canadian Heritage Committee on April 20th, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Good afternoon, everyone. Dr. Fry is away today, so I will be filling in as vice-chair for today and probably Monday as well. Apparently she had a minor accident at home playing with the grandkids. We wish her all the best.

I call the meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 75 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, February 28, the committee is meeting to begin its study of the activities of Google in reaction to Bill C-18. We have had one meeting with Google officials. This is the second. It will be a two-hour meeting. We will have plenty of chances to question Kent Walker, president of global affairs, who has joined us by video conference. We also welcome Mr. Richard Gingras, vice-president, news, also by video conference.

Welcome. As I said, we'll have several minutes of questioning, several rounds, by the parties in front of you.

I also want to welcome Alexandre, who is our analyst here today. Gabrielle is out of the country, and we're in great hands with you, sir. As usual we have Mike MacPherson as our clerk.

Mr. Walker, go ahead for 10 minutes, please. The floor is yours.

[Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs, Google LLC]

Thank you very much, Vice-Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you all for the opportunity to appear today. As the vice-chair noted, my name is Kent Walker, and I am president of global affairs and the chief legal officer for both Google and Alphabet. I am joined today by Richard Gingras, vice-president for news.

Let me start out by just reiterating that Google is deeply committed to Canada. We opened our first office here more than 20 years ago, and today Google Canada employs more than 3,000 people in Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and many other areas of the country.

We've been proud to support Canada’s economic growth. In 2021, Google’s products and tools helped provide $37 billion of economic activity for Canadian businesses, publishers, creators, developers and non-profits. In the last five years alone, we have provided over $16 million in Google.org grants to Canadian charities and non-profits, which have helped them expand the reach of innovative digital skills programming, empower Canadians to stay safe online and build more inclusive economic opportunities for indigenous communities.

Our commitment to Canada includes engaging constructively on regulation and policy innovation, which sometimes means identifying challenges with proposals that we believe may not achieve their stated objectives or that could have unexpected negative downstream impacts.

We support thoughtful regulation and advocate across the globe for updated rules on important issues like privacy, responsible AI development and a balanced international corporate tax system. We also have a responsibility to be clear about the potential impacts of new technology regulation and to speak up for the interests of the people and businesses that use our products and services.

Throughout our time in Canada, we have collaborated closely with the news industry and provided billions of dollars globally to support the creation of quality journalism in the digital age. Through our programs, partnerships and products, Google is one of the world’s biggest supporters of journalism.

We all recognize that the Internet has deeply changed the business models of news organizations. Technology companies, news organizations and governments need to collaborate to enable a strong future for quality content in ways that don’t disrupt access to the open web.

For over a year now, we have been advocating for practical solutions to our main concerns with Bill C-18. Both Richard and I have been directly involved in some of these engagements. That's because Canada is important to us, and we believe a reasonable and balanced solution is not only necessary but achievable.

In our conversations with the government and members of Parliament, we have repeatedly offered specific and practical solutions to the issues we have identified. We believe that the legislation could be amended to support journalism and to provide consumers with a more diverse range of perspectives, delivered in innovative and accessible formats, without undercutting core principles that allow the Internet to benefit Canadians and people around the world.

There are also thoughtful alternatives we believe would be even more effective at achieving the underlying policy goals here, such as a fund to which Google would contribute but that would be independently governed. Proceeds from this fund would be distributed in a manner consistent with clear criteria, governed by an independent board of experts, in line with the approach already adopted by Canada through its journalism tax credit.

This is not the path that Bill C-18 is currently on, but it’s not too late, and we do want to work with Canadian parliamentarians to get this legislation right.

I want to acknowledge that members of the committee were surprised by our product tests that sought to assess the potential impacts of the legislation, and we welcome the opportunity to address these issues today.

With that, let me turn it over to my colleague Richard to discuss Google’s approach to news, our more specific concerns with Bill C-18 and our deep commitment to journalism.

[Richard Gingras, Vice-President, News, Google LLC]

Thank you, Kent.

Thank you, Chair. My name is Richard Gingras. I am Google’s vice-president for news. Fifteen years ago I served as publisher of Salon.com, the web’s first digital news offering. I have some appreciation for the evolving market conditions facing publishers.

For over a decade I’ve worked with journalists and publishers around the world to advance quality journalism. We collaborate closely with the journalism community. We’ve trained half a million journalists on subjects ranging from journalist security to audience development. We’ve developed tools to help drive subscriptions. We offer free tools to help journalists with investigative work. We’ve created funds to drive innovation around the world. Recently we announced a multi-year fund in Taiwan called the “digital co-prosperity fund” crafted with stakeholders across the spectrum, governed by outsiders and with the support of Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs.

I have also worked closely with dozens of newsrooms and publishers across Canada, including both long-standing legacy publishers and emerging digital players. Canada has the most innovative digital news ecosystem in the world, from the award-winning efforts of The Globe and Mail to start-ups like Discourse Media and The Narwhal, to the remarkable profitability of Village Media’s network of local news sites in more than 100 communities across Canada.

We and many others are concerned with the impact of Bill C-18 on the evolution of journalism in open societies. It would make it more difficult for digitally innovative, entrepreneurial journalists and publishers to help Canadians understand important issues in their communities.

Bill C-18 would make Canada the first country in the world to put a price on free links to web pages, setting a dangerous precedent that is contrary to the long-term interests of both Canadian readers and Canada’s independent press.

Last year we sent more than 3.6 billion visits to Canadian news publishers, helping grow their audiences and make money through ads and subscriptions. This referral traffic was valued at $250 million last year alone.

Putting a price on links, as Bill C-18 does, will naturally cause any company to reconsider how they use them. Take Google News, for example, which is a specialized aggregator and search service that I expect many of you are familiar with. It was created to help users discover multiple stories on diverse topics and from many sources.

Please understand that Google News, like Google Search, does not distribute articles from news publications. We provide only a link and a short snippet of text, often only the headline. Google News, like Google Search, is a newsstand that publishers don’t pay to be on, quite different from the prior world of print. We send millions of visitors to their sites for free. Google News costs us millions to operate, yet it delivers zero revenue. If we had to pay publishers simply for linking to their sites, making us lose money with every click, it would be reasonable for us or for any business to reconsider why we would continue to do so.

Bill C-18 would subsidize large legacy organizations and broadcasters to a far greater extent than it would smaller, emerging and innovative organizations that provide quality local news to communities, placing them at a comparative disadvantage. It would incentivize the creation of clickbait content over high-quality local journalism and likely require Google to pay publishers for non-factual or misleading content.

If Bill C-18 is passed in its current form, it may affect our ability to provide products and services that Canadians use and enjoy every day. To understand that impact and our options, we ran tests based on the current wording of the bill. Those tests limited the number of news links for 3.3% of Canadian users, selected at random, for five weeks.

Many of you have questions about these tests. I hope to provide more clarity on what they involved and why we ran them. We are committed to enabling a sustainable future for news in Canada, but this bill threatens to create a situation in which everybody loses. We want to work together to ensure that doesn't happen.

We welcome your questions and look forward to continuing our engagement.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you both, Mr. Walker and Mr. Gingras. As you understand, the first round of questioning goes for six minutes. We start with the Conservative Party.

Ms. Thomas, go ahead, please.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Whomever wishes to answer can do so, unless I direct otherwise.

My first question here is whether or not you've done a similar test in other countries. For example, did you do a similar test in Australia before their legislation came into place?

[Richard Gingras]

We have, in various countries, performed tests with regard to how we might need to address regulation in those countries. As you might know, we do thousands of tests as we evolve our products, as we evolve Google Search.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm sorry, I'll be more specific. In Australia, did you do a test before that legislation was put in place?

[Richard Gingras]

We did a short-term test in Australia, yes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

What percentage of users did it impact?

[Richard Gingras]

I can't recall. I believe it was in a similar range as the test here in Canada, but I don't recall the specific number.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Would you be able to supply the committee with that information?

[Richard Gingras]

I don't see any reason why not.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Great, thank you.

Going forward with Bill C-18, once it's in place, will you use algorithms to refer or promote some content versus other content?

[Richard Gingras]

As you know, with Google Search and Google News, it is our objective to provide our users with sources of authoritative information relevant to the queries they ask us about. Indeed, as part of that process, we consider many signals as we consider them, to understand which sources we should provide.

As you know, our objective in all cases is to provide a diverse range of perspectives and sources on any of those questions, to be sure, again, that Canadian users, as with our users anywhere in the world, have the opportunity to decide for themselves which perspectives on issues they would prefer to consume.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

You used a key word, and that was diversity. You stated that the algorithms are used to make sure that there are diverse sources provided. You're nodding your head yes.

With Bill C-18, you're going to have to enter into contracts with various news businesses. Now, my understanding is that you already have started that process by entering into numerous contracts. Within those contracts, are there any promises made to give preference to some new sources over others?

[Richard Gingras]

Thank you for that question. Again, that's a very important one.

No, we would never do that with any of the sources that we have relationships with. We are extremely careful in principle and protective of how we approach our ranking in Google Search or in Google News. That would preclude us from doing anything you noted there.

In fact, internally at Google, we have an honest results policy that doesn't even allow people like me to have a conversation with a publisher about how we rank their content individually. That would be contrary to the principles that we espouse and follow with Google Search and Google News.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Do I have your assurance then that no current contract and no future contract will use algorithmic preferences toward one news company over another?

[Richard Gingras]

Yes, indeed. We would absolutely subscribe to that notion that we would not enter into contractual agreements that commit us to rank a certain site in a certain way, commit to certain levels of traffic or anything that would come close to that notion.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

There was a document tabled in Parliament a little while ago that showed that the current government pressured social media companies 214 times to remove content that it found embarrassing or didn't want the public to have access to. In a CBC article, it stated that Google also received numerous requests from the government to take down content.

Has Google ever taken down content based on the federal government requesting it to do so?

[Kent Walker]

Perhaps I could jump in on this one.

While I don't have the details here, we do publish a transparency report every six months, I believe. It provides a detailed list—broken out by country—of requests for removals that we've received from countries around the world. That would be most the authoritative source of information for this.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you. I do have that. It does say that the federal government has in fact made that request, and I'm wondering if you can tell me the nature of those requests.

[Kent Walker]

I don't have that information available, but I would be happy to follow up on that.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Is that something you could follow up on with the committee?

[Kent Walker]

Yes, I think we can. There's obviously a range of different potential requests. I would be happy to get that to the committee.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Sure. I'd love to know the number of requests over the last eight years, and I would love to know the nature of those requests from the federal government.