Tech giant Meta has decided to block Canadians’ ability to view or share news content on Facebook and Instagram if Ottawa’s online news bill becomes law, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The company made the decision this week amid concerns that it is not clear what the financial burden imposed by the legislation, known as Bill C-18, will be.
The bill would make Google and Meta compensate news organizations for posting or linking to their work.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company is planning to remove Canadians’ access to both written and broadcast news after Bill C-18 becomes law, if changes to the legislation are not made. The tech giant said it would warn Canadians of changes to its services in advance.
The online news bill has passed through the Commons and is currently being considered in the Senate. It is expected to complete its passage through Parliament by summer.
“If the Online News Act passes in its current form, we will end the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram for people in Canada,” said Lisa Laventure, a Meta spokesperson. “A legislative framework that compels us to pay for links or content that we do not post, and which are not the reason the vast majority of people use our platform, is neither sustainable nor workable.”
Posts with links to news articles make up less than 3 per cent of what Canadians see on their Facebook feeds, she added. She said this is not a significant source of revenue.
Facebook has warned that the system Bill C-18 would set up would allow publishers to charge it for as much content as they want to post on the platform, “with no clear limits.”
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Meta’s decision to pull back from news is a threat intended to persuade the government to make changes that would reduce the amounts the tech platforms would be required to pay news organizations.
Facebook temporarily withdrew access to news in Australia in response to a similar law, and restored it after the Australian government agreed to make changesthat lessened the legislation’s impact on the platform.
Mr. Rodriguez said it is “disappointing to see that Facebook has resorted to threats instead of working with the Canadian government in good faith.”
“This tactic didn’t work in Australia, and it won’t work here. Canadians won’t be intimidated. All we’re asking Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” he said. “This is part of a disappointing trend this week that tech giants would rather pull news than pay their fair share.”
Facebook has previously warned that withdrawing from news could be an option for it in Canada.
Publishers can currently share links and other content from their websites on their Facebook pages. The platform has argued this provides free marketing for news organizations, with an estimated value of more than $230-million.
For the past four weeks, Google has been blocking some Canadians’ access to news through its search bar, which it has said is part of a five-week-long test of a potential response to Bill C-18. Jason Kee, a Google public policy manager, told a Commons committee on Friday that “no decisions have been made” about whether it will restrict access to news permanently.
On Friday, MPs on the Commons heritage committee criticized Google for failing to warn the around 1.2 million Canadians included in the tests that it was restricting their access to news.
In a dramatic scene, Sabrina Geremia, the head of Google Canada, who was giving evidence to the committee via video link, was accused of failing to answer MPs’ questions and made to swear an oath partway through the two-hour hearing.
Chris Bittle, The Heritage Minister’s parliamentary secretary, told Ms. Geremia that “the members of this committee don’t think you are being truthful.”
He told her “you pretend to not know anything.”
“I think you’re being evasive,” he added. “You owe it to the Canadian people to answer these questions. You do billions of dollars worth of business here and Canadians expect answers. And we are here to ask them. So I expect answers.”
He said the committee may need to talk to the law clerk about her “wholly unacceptable” responses.
The committee also complained that Google had failed to complywith a request that it produce internal documents about its response to Bill C-18. Members said the company had produced only public information.
“Our experts and teams are going to continue to evaluate this document request,” Ms. Geremia said.
She admitted, after sustained questioning, that Google executives in the U.S. were aware of the decision to carry out the tests.
Last month, MPs voted to call Ms. Geremia and several other Google executives to testify for two hours. The others summoned were Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai; Kent Walker, its president of global affairs; and Richard Gingras, its vice-president of news.
But Google agreed to send only Ms. Geremia and Mr. Kee, who is based in Canada.
Conservative MP Martin Shields suggested Google had made a strategic mistake with the tests, and should have found another mechanism to resolve its objection to Bill C-18 “instead of playing games.” He said the tests had not gone down well with “grassroots” Canadians.
Conservative MP Kevin Waugh told Ms. Geremia: “We are not getting a lot of answers and we are very disappointed in your testimony today.” He said Canadians had not been warned about the tests.
“You’re a $1.2-, $1.3-trillion-dollar company and I think you’ve over-exceeded your boundaries,” he said.
Bloc QuebecoisMP Martin Champoux also expressed frustration over Ms. Geremia’s failure to answer questions, accusing Google of “disloyal bad-faith pressure tactics.”
Google’s Mr. Kee told the Commons committee that the company doesn’t know if it will be able to continue to link Canadians to news, because Ottawa’s online news bill will “radically change” the legal framework for providing free links to articles and broadcasts.
He said Google is testing a “range of potential responses” to Bill C-18.
Some Canadian news organizations, including The Globe, have already made compensation agreements with big tech platforms.
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
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