Canadian Heritage Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Kent Walker]

I believe we are open and transparent with regard to our lobbying practices, and—

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

Then why are you hiding this information? You're not answering my question.

[Kent Walker]

Perhaps I could finish my sentence and then come back to your question.

For example, with regard to registering as lobbyists, my understanding is that Canada's laws, as the laws of most democracies—

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

Mr. Walker, can you provide that information—yes or no?

[Kent Walker]

A list of...? I'm not quite sure, sir, what your question goes to.

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

Who are you paying money to to advocate on behalf of your company?

[Kent Walker]

There's a variety of things there. In many cases, the support we have for a variety of different groups is to help them advocate in their own interest rather than on behalf of Google—

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

Is it in their interest or your interest, Mr. Walker? Why would you pay them if it wasn't in your interest to do so?

[Kent Walker]

In many cases, we have YouTube creators, for example, or small publishers who disagree with Bill C-18 because they don't think it would benefit them—

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

Why would you have to pay them if it was in their own interest to do so? Why are you paying them to push this forward? This doesn't make any sense.

Mr. Walker, can you please provide this committee with that list?

[Kent Walker]

Your formulation of paying them to lobby I think misconstrues what has actually happened here. We have provided seed funding for—

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

That's up for the lobbying commissioner to do.... Can you please provide us with that list?

[Kent Walker]

We're happy to follow up with regard to the nature of the lobbying we have done and the work we've done with our groups. That is in fact part of what's covered by the question—

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

We have laws with respect to lobbying. Provide us with the list, Mr. Walker. I don't know why Google wants to hide behind others doing their work for them and engaging in astroturfing practices.

[Kent Walker]

We are neither astroturfing nor hiding, and we are complying with the lobbying rules of Canada. I believe the lobbying commissioner has actually ruled—

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

A member of Parliament has asked you, under oath, for that list. Please provide that list, Mr. Walker.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

We're going to move on, if you don't mind. I've been very lenient here.

We'll begin the third round with the Conservative Party.

Go ahead, Ms. Gladu.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm a bit concerned about the tone coming from the opposite side, as if it was some sort of a hunt.

Let me talk about business practice. I was in for-profit businesses for 32 years. It seems to me to be common sense that if the government of the day decides that you have to pay every time there's a news link shared, a logical reaction to that by a for-profit business might be to say, “Well, then, we won't allow people to share.” Do you agree that it might be a logical business decision?

[Richard Gingras]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Yes. I see a nodding of heads.

I'm interested, then, in some of the deals you were talking about that have been made in other countries and other approaches that you think would be more in line with the goal of Bill C-18, which is to try to keep local news media sustainable.

[Richard Gingras]

I want to be clear about a couple of things. First of all, we are completely in support of our providing further to the news industry in Canada. We also have no desire to limit the kind of linking we do to diverse sources in a news ecosystem in Canada.

As noted earlier, we think there are better solutions and more constructive solutions. We do think a fund approach would make more sense. In doing so, by the way, I'm not suggesting that we craft the criteria. We shouldn't. I'm not suggesting that we should govern the criteria. We shouldn't. I've never been comfortable with Google being in a position to directly fund news organizations. In fact, one of my concerns is that I'm not sure why a government would want a private entity to be responsible for striking relationships to fund a significant portion of the news ecosystem.

We think there are better approaches—better approaches not only for the health of the ecosystem and not only to drive the necessary innovation we need so desperately, given how much our world has changed, but also to do so in a fashion that is appropriate to the expression of journalism in an open society. We'd love to work further on that.

Again, we think there are simply more constructive approaches to the stated objective of Bill C-18.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

You've talked about the approach with Taiwan. Is there another example? I'm interested to know what has happened in Europe in terms of your relationships there.

[Richard Gingras]

In Europe there are several components. Again, these are obviously determined by the government. As you know, in Europe they did do a complete reassessment of copyright. That does reaffirm our ability to use a link and a short extract. We have entered agreements to support the use of further content beyond short extracts, because the law wasn't terribly specific about what a short extract was. We have entered into specific relationships with publishers in many countries in Europe as guided by the governments, or requested by the governments, and we have done so.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Are those the same kinds of relationships that you've entered into already with Canadian news organizations?

[Richard Gingras]

Yes, they're quite similar.

In fact, we try as hard as we can to exercise those agreements against that same common criteria. It's important for us that as we do that—and again it's not necessarily our preferred approach—we do it in a fair and equitable fashion.

Unfortunately, when a private company is in a position of doing that, it tends to drive suspicion, which isn't helpful. That is why we think an open approach would be more constructive and useful.