Federal Government advertising with Facebook and Instagram was suspended on 6 July, though no such ban was adopted by Trudeau's Liberal Party.
Law professor Michael Geist pointed out that the sum spent on Federal Government advertising was just C$11 million (A$12.4 million), compared to the C$100 million or so that Meta would have to pay to news organisations under the Act, which is known as C-18.
The Act was approved by the Senate, the upper chamber of the Canadian parliament, on 29 June. It was later passed by the lower chamber.
|
|
Google reacted on 30 June, saying it would "remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada", adding that C-18 would "also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada".
Geist quoted Trudeau as claiming that Meta had attacked Canada, saying: "Facebook decided that Canada was a small country, small enough that they could reject our asks.
"They made the wrong choice by deciding to attack Canada. We want to defend democracy. This is what we’re doing across the world, such as supporting Ukraine.
"This is what we did during the Second World War. This is what we’re doing every single day in the United Nations."
Geist was sceptical of this claim, writing, "the suggestion that stopping sharing news links on a social network is in any way comparable to World War II is embarrassingly hyperbolic and gives the sense of a government that has lost perspective on the issue.
"Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has repeatedly described the manner of compliance with... C-18 as a business choice for the Internet companies, yet the prime minister now calls that choice an attack on the country."
According to CBC News, Rodriguez said on 8 July he would not be pushed around by Google and Facebook.
"They're superpowers. They're huge. They're rich, powerful. Lots of big lawyers. They can be intimidating," he was quoted as saying. "But are we going to let ourselves be intimidated? We can't."
Rodirguez' refusal to be intimidated was said to be couched in existential terms.
"We cannot have tech giants as powerful as they are, with big lawyers and everything, coming here and telling members of Parliament and the government elected by the people, 'This is what you're going to do'," he was said to have told CTV during the previous week. "We can't accept that. We're a sovereign nation."
CBC clarified that the position it and Radio-Canada had taken on the Online News Act was that it would help level the playing field and contribute to a healthy news ecosystem in Canada.
Geist said if the moves by Facebook and Google "were truly comparable to a world war, then surely the Liberal Party (joined by the NDP) would not continue to advertise on the platform".
"Yet since the 2021 election call, the party alone has run approximately 11,000 ads on Facebook and Instagram. That is separate from individual MPs, who have also run hundreds of ads.
"The Meta Ad Library provides ample evidence of how reliant the party has been on social media. For example, since the start of the year, Anna Gainey ran over 500 ads as part of her by-election campaign in Quebec.
"David Hilderley, who was a candidate in the Oxford by-election, ran approximately 180 ads on Facebook during the same timeframe."
And Geist concluded: "...everyone loses with Bill C-18 and that includes Meta. But it is readily apparent that the Canadian media sector will take the biggest hit with lost links, cancelled deals, and a bill that may not generate any new revenue.
"The recent experience of the CBC’s Brodie Fenlon provides a vivid illustration of the harm to Canadian media outlets that awaits under Bill C-18. In fact, even if Google finds a compromise position – the government is clearly holding out hope it can strike a deal – the lost revenues from even one platform means this legislation may prove to be a net-negative for the media sector.
"That suggests that it will soon be time for Plan C, starting with a de-escalation of the prime minister’s absurd rhetoric of a country under attack."
Asked for his take, Brett Callow, a threat researcher who is from Britain, but resides in Canada, said: "It seems a little peculiar that the government has reacted badly to Facebook’s decision to block Canadian news links.
"If news links being shared on Facebook was financially harming Canadian media, you’d think the government would have been ticked pink and crowing about its victory."
When the Australian Government tried to push through its News Media Bargaining Code in 2021, digital platforms, chiefly Facebook and Google, lined up in opposition.
The code was derived from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Digital Platforms Inquiry report which was handed to the government in June 2019.
Negotiations between digital platforms and news organisations went on for a while, with the provisions for the code being passed into law in February 2021.
But there was plenty of resistance from the digital platforms and though Google took a more low-key stance, Facebook upped the ante and blocked the ingress of news content into Australia.
The government hurried to placate Facebook and made numerous changes to the legislation after which the social media company reversed its block on content.
