Since Meta blocked links to news in Canada last August to avoid paying fees to media companies, right-wing meme producer Jeff Ballingall says he has seen a surge in clicks for his Canada Proud Facebook page.

“Our numbers are growing and we’re reaching more and more people every day,” said Ballingall, who publishes up to 10 posts a day and has some 540,000 followers.

“Media is just going to get more tribal and more niche,” he added. “This is just igniting it further.”

Canada has become ground zero for Facebook’s battle with governments that have enacted or are considering laws that force internet giants — primarily the social media platform’s owner Meta and Alphabet’s Google — to pay media companies for links to news published on their platforms.

Facebook has blocked news sharing in Canada rather than pay, saying news holds no economic value to its business.

It is seen as likely to take a similar step in Australia should Canberra try to enforce its 2021 content licensing law after Facebook said it would not extend the deals it has with news publishers there. Facebook briefly blocked news in Australia ahead of the law.

The blocking of news links has led to profound and disturbing changes in the way Canadian Facebook users engage with information about politics, two unpublished studies shared with Reuters found.

“The news being talked about in political groups is being replaced by memes,” said Taylor Owen, founding director of McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, who worked on one of the studies.

“The ambient presence of journalism and true information in our feeds, the signals of reliability that were there, that’s gone.”

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The lack of news on the platform and increased user engagement with opinion and non-verified content has the potential to undermine political discourse, particularly in election years, the studies’ researchers say. Both Canada and Australia go to the polls in 2025.

Other jurisdictions, including California and Britain, are also considering legislation to force internet giants to pay for news content. Indonesia introduced a similar law this year.

Blocked

In practice, Meta’s decision means that when someone makes a post with a link to a news article, Canadians will see a box with the message: “In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be shared.”

Where once news posts on Facebook garnered between five million and eight million views from Canadians per day, that has disappeared, according to the Media Ecosystem Observatory, a McGill University and University of Toronto project.

Although engagement with political influencer accounts such as partisan commentators, academics and media professionals was unchanged, reactions to image-based posts in Canadian political Facebook groups tripled to match the previous engagement with news posts, the study also found.

The research analyzed some 40,000 posts and compared user activity before and after the blocking of news links on the pages of some 1,000 news publishers, 185 political influencers and 600 political groups.

A Meta spokesperson said the research confirmed the company’s view that people still come “to Facebook and Instagram even without news on the platform.”

Canadians can still access “authoritative information from a range of sources” on Facebook, and the company’s fact-checking process was “committed to stopping the spread of misinformation on our services,” the spokesperson said.

‘Unreliable’ sources

A separate NewsGuard study conducted for Reuters found that likes, comments and shares of what it categorized as “unreliable” sources climbed to 6.9 per cent in Canada in the 90 days after the ban, compared to 2.2 per cent in the 90 days before.

“This is especially troubling,” said Gordon Crovitz, co-chief executive of New York-based NewsGuard, a fact-checking company which scores websites for accuracy.

Crovitz noted the change has come at a time when “we see a sharp uptick in the number of AI-generated news sites publishing false claims and growing numbers of faked audio, images and videos, including from hostile governments … intended to influence elections.”

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Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge in an emailed statement to Reuters called Meta’s blocking of news an “unfortunate and reckless choice” that had left “disinformation and misinformation to spread on their platform … during need-to-know situations like wildfires, emergencies, local elections and other critical times.”

Asked about the studies, Australian Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said via email: “Access to trusted, quality content is important for Australians, and it is in Meta’s own interest to support this content on its platforms.”

Jones, who will decide whether to hire an arbitrator to set Facebook’s media licensing arrangements, said the government had made clear its position to Meta that Australian news media businesses should be “fairly remunerated for news content used on digital platforms.”

Meta declined to comment on future business decisions in Australia but said it would continue engaging with the government.

Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for current affairs content, studies show, even though it has been declining as a news source for years amid an exodus of younger users to rivals and Meta’s strategy of de-prioritizing politics in user feeds.

In Canada, where four-fifths of the population is on Facebook, 51 per cent obtained news on the platform in 2023, the Media Ecosystem Observatory said.

Two-thirds of Australians are on Facebook and 32 per cent used the platform for news last year, the University of Canberra said.

Unlike Facebook, Google has not indicated any changes to its deals with news publishers in Australia and reached a deal with the Canadian government to make payments to a fund that will support media outlets.

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More than 800 workers responsible for providing food and beverages on flights leaving Toronto Pearson International Airport are on strike.

The Gate Gourmet workers, an airline catering and logistics company, went on strike Tuesday after voting 96 per cent to reject a final offer from the company, Teamsters Local Union 647 said in a statement.

“Our members accepted a wage freeze during the pandemic to help this company survive,” said Martin Cerqua, lead union negotiator and president of Local Union 647.

“Now their managers brag about how profitable their operations have become at Pearson, while proposing wage increases as low as 89 cents an hour.”

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The union expects many flights leaving Toronto will have little to no food on board; impacted airlines include WestJet, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, Air India, Aero Mexico, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Jetlines, as well as Air Canada, which the union said will be most affected by the strike.

The union added Gate Gourmet workers are paid on average between $17.69 and $20 per hour, below other airline catering companies in Toronto and Gate Gourmet workers in Vancouver. The union also claims slashed staffing levels have put workers at risk.

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In a statement, Gate Gourmet Canada said it’s “disappointed” that a strike is underway.

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Busy summer travel season has begun at Toronto’s largest airport

“On Friday, the union informed us that they would cease negotiations and demanded a final offer, which Gate Gourmet Canada presented. The union walked away from the negotiating table, despite our belief that Gate Gourmet’s offer is fair and market competitive,” it said, adding the company was offering a 12 per cent pay raise over three years.

“At our operation in Toronto, we have established contingency plans with our airline customers to minimize any impact on them and their passengers. We remain committed to doing right by our employees and ending the strike so that we can continue to partner with our airlines customers and serve the travelling public.”

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Air Canada and WestJet, Canada’s largest airlines, said in separate statements they’ve prepared for the work stoppage.

“We anticipate there will be no impact on our international flights, but we plan to make some adjustments to food and beverage service on certain North American flights departing from and, in some cases on shorter routes, returning to Toronto,” an Air Canada spokesperson told Global News Toronto in a statement Tuesday.

“Short-haul flights of less than two hours duration being most impacted.”

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The airline added that flights over two hours within North America will have fewer menu options, while flights under two hours will not have hot meals available; snacks and water service will remain.

Meanwhile, WestJet said its Boeing 737 flights leaving Pearson will be impacted.

“Guests who are eligible to receive an inflight meal including those in the Premium cabin or extended comfort seating, and all guests travelling on transatlantic flights will receive either an alternative option or a food and beverage voucher for use in the terminal, pre-departure,” the company said in a statement on its website.

“In addition, WestJet is advising guests travelling to or from Toronto to plan ahead and bring an extra snack and/or beverage for their journey.”

More on Toronto

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Tuesday’s federal budget will include a tax increase on the richest Canadians, sources tell Radio-Canada.

It’s not clear exactly what form the tax measure will take but senior Liberal sources have told Radio-Canada that it will affect less than 1 per cent of Canadians.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers have been on a countrywide tour in recent weeks to make a series of pre-budget announcements.

Those announcements add up to more than $38 billion in commitments over a number of years. Because $17 billion of those commitments involve loan-based programs, about $21 billion could hit the government’s bottom line directly.

Since much of the spending side of the budget is already public, the focus on tomorrow’s budget likely will turn to how the government intends to pay for the new programs.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has ruled out tax increases on the middle class.

“We remain absolutely committed to being there for hardworking middle-class Canadians, and then we won’t raise taxes on them,” she said last week.

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Federal budget to include tax increase for wealthy, sources say

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On the eve of Tuesday’s federal budget, sources have told Radio-Canada that it will include a tax increase for wealthy Canadians. It’s not clear what it will exactly be, but senior Liberal sources say it will affect less than one per cent of Canadians.

The Trudeau government has made tax changes that target wealthier Canadians in the past. 

In last year’s federal budget, the Liberals introduced significant changes to the alternative minimum tax rate. Those changes affected Canadians who earn more than $300,000 per year.

The House of Commons finance committee has recommended the federal government implement a windfall tax on companies in all sectors that generate “oversized” profits during crises, as well as grocery giants, to fund another doubling of the GST rebate.

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