Global Courant
As the battle between US tech giants and Canada escalates, the country’s federal and Quebec provincial governments have halted advertising on Facebook and Instagram to force parent Meta to the negotiating table to implement Bill C-18.
“Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible and started blocking news,” federal heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez told a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday after Meta began blocking Canadians from viewing or sharing news on its Facebook and Instagram sites north of the border.
Bill C-18, which recently became Canadian law, is designed to get US digital tech giants to pay local publishers for news snippets shared or repurposed on their platforms. While Google is cooperating with the Canadian government on how to implement the new law, also known as the Online News Act, Meta has so far refused to negotiate commercial licensing deals with Canadian publishers for their local platforms.
“All we want is for these platforms to contribute their fair share, not more, not less, just what’s fair,” Rodriquez told the press conference as his government withdraws around $11 million in estimated advertising expenditures annually from Facebook and Instagram.
On another regulatory front, Canada recently passed into law Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, which will force digital platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify for the first time to subsidize local content.
Another round of lobbying in Ottawa will now take place as the CRTC, the country’s media regulator, is tapped to hammer out a new framework to ensure foreign streaming giants invest in local film and TV production, and also define how deep the Americans will dip into their pockets to do so.
Bringing US digital players into Canada’s media regulatory framework has placed Ottawa in a rare showdown with dominant American players in the Canadian market. “They can be intimidating. But are we going to allow ourselves to be intimidated?” Rodriguez questioned as he addressed how Ottawa will bring Silicon Valley giants around to accept first-time regulatory oversight north of the border.
The Canadian governments are also getting backing from two Quebec cable giants, Quebecor and Cogeco Media, which have chosen to pull advertising from the Facebook and Instagram platforms.
“Meta’s threats are an attempt to force Canada to abandon a fair negotiating regime with companies whose news content is shared on its platforms. Despite its public statements, Meta’s main concern is to limit the royalties it will have to pay to companies responsible for making credible news content available,” Cogeco Media said in a statement about its decision to join Ottawa in pulling ads from Meta platforms.
Canada is looking to follow the lead of Australia which in 2021 negotiated a deal to secure payments for local news content and sharing from Meta and Google after first forcing the US companies to do so. In Australia, Meta initially blocked news content from reaching local users before establishing a fund to compensate local publishers.
Rodriguez told the press conference that Bill C-18 will go further than Australia in requiring more transparency in how US digital players report on their Canadian market activities to the CRTC after they reach a certain threshold of confidential commercial agreements to pay local companies for content that appears on their platforms.
