(Ottawa) A parliamentary committee could look into Google’s decision to block Canadian users from accessing news sites. The pilot project of the web giant, in reaction to the study of a bill which it dislikes, has been accused of “serious error” by Justin Trudeau.
The elected officials of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage will meet on Tuesday, at the request of some of them, to determine whether it is necessary to study “the censorship of news content by Google”. The legislation that the society opposes, C-18, was passed in the House.
Its goal is to coerce web giants like Google into deals that would compensate Canadian media for content that is republished on their digital platforms. And while the bill is being studied in the Senate, the company has conducted censorship “tests”.
Google has locked less than 4% of Canadian users of its products from access to news content, including its search engine and the Discover feature on Android devices that broadcast news and sports coverage, such as ‘found The Canadian Press last Wednesday.
“We are briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users,” Google spokesperson Shay Purdy told the news agency. a written statement.
The gesture made by the web giant angered the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, who did not hesitate to criticize it. “Canadians will not be intimidated,” he wrote on his Twitter account, calling the whole thing “very disappointing”.
The Prime Minister added a layer of it on Friday, declaring without being asked to comment on the issue that it was a “serious error” that Google would “prefer to prevent Canadians from accessing the news rather than want to fairly pay the journalists for the work they do as professionals”.
with The Canadian Press and Joël-Denis Bellavance, The Press