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.
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by the Prince Edward Island Potato Board to overturn a 2021 decision by the federal agriculture minister to declare the entire province as “a place infested with potato wart.”
That order prohibited the export of seed potatoes from the Island to prevent the spread of the soil-borne fungus, which deforms potatoes and makes them impossible to sell.
The board had argued in Federal Court that the decision was unreasonable because there was insufficient evidence to establish that P.E.I. was infested with the fungus.
In April 2023, the Federal Court dismissed the board’s application for a judicial review, saying the order was reasonable because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said regulatory measures had failed to prevent the transmission of potato wart to unregulated fields.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court dismissed the board’s appeal, saying the lower court had selected the correct reasonableness standard to review the minister’s order.
As well, it found the lower court was correct in accepting the minister’s view that the province was “infested” because the department had detected potato wart on 35 occasions in P.E.I.’s three counties since 2000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick health officials are urging parents to get their children vaccinated against measles after the number of cases of the disease in a recent outbreak has more than doubled since Friday.
Sean Hatchard, spokesman for the Health Department, says measles cases in the Fredericton and the upper Saint John River Valley area have risen from five on Friday to 12 as of Tuesday morning.
Hatchard says other suspected cases are under investigation, but he did not say how and where the outbreak of the disease began.
He says data from the 2023-24 school year show that about 10 per cent of students were not completely immunized against the disease.
In response to the outbreak, Horizon Health Network is hosting measles vaccine clinics on Wednesday and Friday.
The measles virus is transmitted through the air or by direct contact with nasal or throat secretions of an infected person, and can be more severe in adults and infants.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump is refusing to say how he voted on Florida’s abortion measure — and getting testy about it.
The former president was asked twice after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday about a question that the state’s voters are considering. If approved, it would prevent state lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability — which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks.
If it’s rejected, the state’s restrictive six-week abortion law would stand.
The first time he was asked, Trump avoided answering. He said instead of the issue that he did “a great job bringing it back to the states.” That was a reference to the former president having appointed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022.
Pressed a second time, Trump snapped at a reporter, saying “you should stop talking about it.”
Trump had previously indicated that he would back the measure — but then changed his mind and said he would vote against it.
In August, Trump said he thought Florida’s ban was a mistake, saying on Fox News Channel, “I think six weeks, you need more time.” But then he said, “at the same time, the Democrats are radical” while repeating false claims he has frequently made about late-term abortions.
In addition to Florida, voters in eight other states are deciding whether their state constitutions should guarantee a right to abortion, weighing ballot measures that are expected to spur turnout for a range of crucial races.
Passing certain amendments in Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota likely would lead to undoing bans or restrictions that currently block varying levels of abortion access to more than 7 million women of childbearing age who live in those states.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/N2VSZWZCARJUBBGSPWKB6QWULA.JPG)
