(Ottawa) Stakeholders from small media organizations say it is wrong to believe they risk being left behind by Bill C-18 to force Google and Facebook into indemnification agreements with media companies.
Posted at 4:28 p.m.
Several witnesses heard Friday by the Canadian Heritage Committee of the House of Commons argued that the piece of legislation will give them the means to get out of the game.
“Collective bargaining is the only way for us to alleviate this power imbalance,” said Sylvain Poisson, General Manager of Hebdos Québec.
Appearing virtually, Mr. Poisson and Benoît Chartier, chairman of the board of directors of the association of approximately 200 journalists covering regional information, urged parliamentarians to allow the adoption of C-18, tabled by the government of Justin Trudeau last spring.
“The web giants have cannibalized our income without assuming any of the social and fiscal responsibilities attached to it by controlling the algorithms, insisted Mr. Poisson. They have disrupted the business model and diminished the real value of information. »
The platforms subject to the future Bill C-18 will have six months after its adoption to enter into agreements on a voluntary basis with the media and demonstrate to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that these agreements are satisfactory under six criteria.
Among other things, they provide that the agreements provide “equitable compensation” to news organizations and that they contribute to “the viability of independent local news organizations”.
If the CRTC finds that the criteria are met, the platforms will be exempt from the eventual law. Otherwise, “compulsory negotiations” may be launched by newsrooms, which may also have recourse to arbitration.
Another witness heard by the Heritage Committee on Friday, the founder of the media specializing in innovation The Logic, David Skok, pointed out that many press companies have already concluded agreements with Facebook and Google, but that these remain confidential.
“The secret agreements […] have created a market imbalance that gives competitors an unfair advantage in the war for talent, viewership and distribution,” he said.
In his opinion, Bill C-18 promotes competition which is desirable.
Earlier Friday, a professor from the Australian National University, Rod Sims, also denied the belief that the Australian model on which the Canadian piece of legislation is based has been disadvantageous for smaller media.
“It’s just plain wrong. The facts are very clear,” said the former chairman of Australia’s Competition and Consumer Bureau.
Other witnesses heard by members of Parliament, however, sharply criticized Bill C-18. A freelance journalist and co-founder of The Line website, Jen Gerson, notably expressed concerns that the piece of legislation would have the opposite effect than what is intended.
“For example, if organizations like Facebook or (its parent company) Meta respond […] by simply restricting access to mainstream media news content as they have threatened to do, who do you think will suffer the most? Facebook ? No. Canadian publishers will lose access to a major distribution hub,” she told elected officials.
On this subject, Sims pointed out that the social network had made the same threat in the face of Australian legislation, but ultimately did not take action.
University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist argued that the definition of what constitutes compensatory content sharing is too broad. According to him, the bill establishes that simply sharing the front page of a publication without relaying an article as such would lead to compensation, which he considers inappropriate.