By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his displeasure Friday with actions by Google to take its opposition to bill C-18, the Online News Act, to users of its search engine.
This week, The Canadian Press broke the story that Google would limit access to news content – including from Canadian broadcasters and newspapers – for under four percent of its Canadian users over about a five-week period.
“It really surprises me that Google has decided that [it] would rather prevent Canadians from accessing news than actually paying journalists for the work they do,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Toronto.
“I think that’s a terrible mistake and I know Canadians expect journalists to be well paid for the work they do.”
Shay Purdy, policy communications lead for Google Canada, said in a statement originally sent to CP and shared with Cartt that, “We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users. We run thousands of tests each year to assess any potential changes to ‘Search.’
“We’ve been fully transparent about our concern that C-18 is overly broad and, if unchanged, could impact products Canadians use and rely on every day. We remain committed to supporting a sustainable future for news in Canada and offering solutions that fix Bill C-18.”
The Online News Act introduces a bargaining framework, overseen by the CRTC, which would compensate Canadian media companies when their news content is reposted by dominant digital news intermediaries, generating an economic gain for the search engines and social media services.
According to Google, C-18 “leaves key details undecided,” so the Mountain View, Calif.-based company owned by Alphabet Inc., said that it has begun “exploring possible product responses to potential new obligations under the bill.”
Google said in a statement that it’s “focused on fixing the bill and it is our hope that we will be able to work constructively with the government to achieve the underlying goal of supporting news in Canada without compromising Canadians’ ability to find and share authoritative news online.”
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, however, views “Google’s tactic to limit news content for some users in Canada as reinforcing why Bill C-18, the Online News Act, is so vital.”
“These are bully tactics, and Google is trying to push the Senate to back down on Bill C-18. We hope senators will see these actions for what they are,” said CAB President Kevin Desjardins, who noted that the bill was “to set up fair negotiations between news organizations and these global digital giants on the value of their news content.”
He said that Google has demonstrated that it is “willing to block Canadians’ vital access to legitimate news content to maintain their dominance in the advertising field.”
The CAB said that “Google and Facebook are able to use the value of private broadcasters’ news content to identify who Canadians are and what they consume, then sell this data to advertisers. Those advertising dollars used to support our news organizations and cultural institutions, but now they are flowing out of Canada to Silicon Valley.”
On Thursday, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said in the company’s fourth quarter conference call that the bill must be passed urgently because news businesses are struggling financially.
Last October, Colin McKay, head of public policy and government relations at Google Canada, delivered the search engine’s concerns about Bill C-18 before the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
He said the bill includes an “undue preference” provision that prohibits a platform from “disadvantaging” any eligible news business.
“Under threat of legal action, this measure will restrict Google and other platforms from applying policies and providing features that elevate trusted information sources over lower quality content. This makes ‘Search’ less relevant and less safe for Canadians,” said McKay.
He said that unlike the Australian code, C-18 defines “eligible news businesses extremely broadly, and does not require a publisher to adhere to basic journalistic standards,” which McKay said “will lead to the proliferation of misinformation and clickbait.”
McKay said that C-18 also “lacks transparency and benefits large, legacy publishers over small, because they can afford the regulatory cost,” which is why McKay said that Google supports a model, similar to the Canada Media Fund, “which would resolve the issues we have raised and would ensure a diversity of Canadian news publishers receive money in a timely, equitable and transparent manner.”
Under the Online News Act, the operators of dominant digital news intermediaries affected by the law would be subject to “a new duty to bargain with eligible news businesses, which may bargain individually or as a group,” according to a Justice Department explanatory note on C-18.
When Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez unveiled C-18 last April, he said that while such tech giants as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, “are making a lot of investments in our country,” but at the same time, “continue to profit from the sharing and distribution of Canadian news content without really having to pay for it.”
“With this bill,” he said, “we are seeking to address this market imbalance.”
On Twitter this week, he said that it was “disappointing to hear that Google is trying to block access to news sites. Canadians won’t be intimidated. At the end of the day, all we’re asking the tech giants to do is compensate journalists when they use their work.
“Tech giants need to be more transparent and accountable to Canadians.”
