Quebec will continue to buy advertising on Facebook and Instagram, despite the blocking of news content by their parent company, Meta. The situation is of particular concern to the Parti Québécois, shunned by the company during the last election campaign.
“For the moment, there are no plans to stop government advertising on these two platforms. However, we remain attentive and are monitoring the situation closely, ”commented the office of Prime Minister François Legault, when questioned on the subject.
The Trudeau government, for its part, did not respond directly to our questions. “The fact that Facebook prefers to prevent people from reading and sharing information rather than paying their fair share to the media shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are,” commented the office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage. , Pablo Rodríguez.
Since last week, Meta has been conducting tests to block access to news media in response to the upcoming passage of Bill C-18 in Ottawa. The federal government wants to force Facebook and Instagram to enter into agreements with Canadian media companies in order to pay them a share of the profits made through their content.
Significant sums
The budget allocated by the Quebec state to the purchase of online advertising is significant: in 2018, Le Devoir reported expenditures of $6.1 million. During the pandemic, this envelope was valued at $9.6 million over a two-year period.
Political parties also spend substantial amounts on digital advertising; even before the start of the last election campaign, the CAQ had invested more than $120,000 over a three-month period.
Tuesday morning, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon invited the government and the political parties to suspend their advertising spending on these two platforms, while the “arm wrestling” between Meta and Ottawa lasts.
Australia, he recalls, has successfully imposed a similar law.
“We must consider measures where we demonstrate that the government remains the place where decisions are made in a democracy. Not at Facebook or at Meta,” commented Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon.
“Disdain” for democracy
The PQ leader also revealed that his party failed to buy advertising on Facebook during the last election campaign, thus depriving it of visibility with voters.
“The Parti Québécois was not able to advertise on Facebook, which created a significant disadvantage,” he commented. We never got an answer why. But this is one example of many where Facebook has behaved in complete disregard of governments and then of democracy.”
To this day, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon does not know if it is the separatist nature of his training that caused him to be shunned by the popular platform. “We can’t assume because Facebook has no transparency, has no interest when we write to them. Even when it comes to institutions representing democracy, they don’t care, they don’t respond, and that has an impact on our democracy,” he laments.