Global Courant
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez says he is surprised by Google’s announcement that it will stop hosting links to Canadian news outlets.
“Well, Meta, I’ve always said it was complicated; Google, we’re still having conversations as recently as this morning,” Rodriguez told CTV’s Power Play Thursday afternoon. “I’m a little surprised by Google’s response.”
Earlier in the day, Google said it will remove Canadian news from its platforms and end existing deals with local publishers due to the Liberal government’s Online News Act.
Formerly known as Bill C-18, the Online News Act forces digital giants such as Google and Facebook parent company Meta to pay media outlets for content shared, viewed or otherwise reused on their platforms. Meta has also confirmed that it is pulling Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram and ending deals with local publishers, such as one that supported the hiring of up-and-coming journalists.
“We can’t have tech giants as powerful as they are, with big lawyers and everything, coming here and telling MPs and the popularly elected government, ‘This is what you’re going to do,'” the minister said. “We cannot accept that. We are a sovereign nation.”
Rodriguez said Google’s announcement surprised him because the law is not yet in effect. He said talks with the company are still ongoing and common ground has been reached.
“About 500 newsrooms across the country closed their doors…and they will continue to close their doors,” Rodriguez said. “The status quo doesn’t work because the money goes to the tech giants.”
While the Biden administration has not interfered with the legislation, some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns about the unfair targeting of U.S. companies.
“It was no coincidence that the United States did not take a position on C-18,” U.S. Ambassador to Canada David L. Cohen told CTV Power Play Thursday. “It’s not like the letter got lost in the mail. I mean there was a lot of discussion and there was just a decision that this wasn’t something we chose to intervene in.”
The law, which was passed on June 22, will take effect by the end of the year.
As declining advertising revenues add to Canada’s newsroom cuts, the Online News Act was designed to keep the industry afloat. Google’s search engine has a market share of about 90 percent in the country, while social media platforms such as Facebook are major drivers of digital traffic.
Michael Geist is a professor of law at the University of Ottawa and the Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law. He calls the new legislation ‘bad for everyone’.
“I think it’s bad for the company because the search features in Canada and Google News aren’t going to be as good,” Geist told CTV National News Thursday. “Obviously it’s bad for Canadian news outlets that rely heavily on Google and Meta for referral traffic… And it’s bad for the Canadian public because their access to search results won’t be as good.”
Geist says the legislation is also fundamentally “disastrous” for the government.
“The government made a big gamble, seemingly just based on the idea that somehow this was all just a big bluff; I don’t think it read the room,” he said. “I don’t think it has fully appreciated the current circumstances and compromised a fundamental tenet of the Internet – the idea of free flow of information through links.”
With files from The Canadian Press
