Evidence of meeting #79 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was meta.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You don't know.
Was the decision to do content-blocking in Canada if Bill C-18 was adopted made exclusively by the Canadian team?
11:45 a.m.
Global Policy Director, Meta Platforms Inc.
I think there were a number of people involved. I'm not really part of the Canadian team any more, as you appreciate, but I think this is concerning on the global level. I don't think, as I said in the opening statement, that we haven't seen—
11:45 a.m.
Global Policy Director, Meta Platforms Inc.
—any democracy make an attempt to put a value on links, which is concerning—
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Mr. Chan, I'm reclaiming my time. If you can answer questions with yes or no, I'll ask you to do that.
Was Mr. Clegg involved in that decision, yes or no?
11:45 a.m.
Global Policy Director, Meta Platforms Inc.
As president of global affairs, he would have been.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You don't know. Okay.
I'm going to focus my questions going forward on the Australian activities of a couple of years ago.
Per The Wall Street Journal's reporting of whistle-blower documents, Facebook deliberately over-blocked Australian emergency services, health and government pages as part of its news takedown. I'm going to focus on what I've heard from Facebook whistle-blowers in these documents.
One of the things the whistle-blower stated was that the Australian takedown was carefully planned over months. As the bill was tabled in the second half of 2020—many, many months before the eventual decision—Facebook created a special team of product staff and engineers to deal with the content-blocking scheme.
Has a content-blocking team for Canada been created, Mr. Chan?
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Yes, I can answer that.
We do have cross-functional teams working to understand the legislation and to prepare for the removal of news on our platforms, yes.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you, Ms. Curran. I appreciate the way you answer the questions.
Let me ask a question, then. Per the whistle-blowers in Australia, the team that was created for Australia was required to sign NDAs in an unprecedented way. It was not the existing NDA that you sign as an employee of Facebook, but a special project-related NDA.
Has anybody within Meta been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement in conjunction with planning for blocking content in Canada?
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
I can only speak for the Canadian team. We have not been asked to sign anything like the NDAs you referenced.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Are there others outside of Canada who would be on this team?
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
We have a broad cross-functional team, Mr. Housefather, working on this file, working to understand the legislation, working to prepare for the ending of the availability of news on our platforms, so it is a large team, yes.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Okay, perfect.
Are you aware of any documents that have been created to prepare for the content blocking?
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Thank you, Mr. Housefather.
I don't know if you're referring to specific documents. Certainly that team's work is under way, and in the normal course of business, they would be, of course, recording the work they do.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
The committee, in its order from March 20, had requested to receive these documents. I'm wondering, Ms. Curran, if you could tell me why they haven't been produced yet.
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Yes. As my colleague Mr. Chan said, we're working to comply with the committee's order for document production. We've just got to make sure that we respect confidentiality and various other legal considerations, so we're taking the advice of our legal counsel on this and working very closely with them to make sure that what we're providing is in accordance with all of the laws and rules around these documents.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you. Then I have time for one more question.
Whistle-blowers disclosed multiple company documents in the United States to the United States Department of Justice. As part of a deck, one slide called “product readiness timeline” states that ideal takedown timing is after legislation has been passed by the Senate but before it receives royal assent. This is, again, the Australian example. The same deck shows the takedown plans needed to be ready for February 5, a week before Facebook expected earliest passage of the bill.
Ms. Curran, that would seem to indicate that the takedown was essentially to maximize negotiating leverage in Australia.
Is the Canadian model similar? Is the threat similar to what was happening in Australia to maximize negotiating leverage, or is it different?
11:50 a.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Thank you, Mr. Housefather.
I can confirm that the way Australia unfolded was not ideal. There were some technical errors made in the way that we removed news from our platform. We fully intend that those errors will not be made in the Canadian context, and we're preparing very carefully to ensure that this is the case. We're going to make sure that we're fully transparent with Canadians, with parliamentarians, as we move towards news removal, if we're forced to do that.
Of course, Mr. Housefather, that's going to depend on the final scope of Bill C-18, and we don't want to pre-empt the work of the Senate in that regard.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Ms. Curran. You're well over time. Thank you very much.
Now we go to the Bloc Québécois and Martin Champoux.
Martin, you have six minutes.