Passage of Bill C-18 | “No company is above the law”

Minister Pablo Rodriguez deplores Meta’s attitude and “threats”.

In his fight against the giants of the web, akin to that of David against Goliath, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, has the impression of measuring himself against two colossi whose attitude is diametrically opposed. In one corner, Google and its “common sense”, in the other, Meta and its “threats”.

“As we speak, there is a clear difference,” he notes.

Because unlike Google, with whom the minister says he had “a very constructive meeting” last week during which “precise proposals”, “based on common sense”, were discussed, Meta did “not give news” and “multiplies the threats”, he regrets in an interview.

The latest news from the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp came in response to the Senate passing Bill C-18 last Thursday. “We confirm that the availability of news on Facebook and Instagram will be terminated for all users in Canada,” the company wrote on its blog at the time.

Not all of Meta’s 24 million subscribers nationwide are seeing the impact yet: “Random testing” that began in early June is affecting 240,000 to 1.2 million users, according to the multinational.

But the tap will turn off “before the entry into force” of the law, warns Mark Zuckerberg’s company. The regulatory process is expected to be completed within six months. And in this battle to the end, Minister Rodriguez sees no other outcome than a victory for the Canadian government.

First, “because I have never made a threat-based decision, and I never will”, second, because “no company is above the law”, and finally, because Meta seems to want to use Canada as an example to cool other countries that would be tempted to imitate it, he lists.

Canada, guinea pig and spearhead

It is that nations like the United States, France and Germany “are going in the same direction”, underlines Pablo Rodriguez.

Before making the move to Canada, by the way, Meta had done it to Australia, in February 2021. The sharing of news content had been blocked in order to protest against a bill that Canberra was about to introduce. adopt. The company’s move sparked anger as citizens were unable to learn about COVID-19 or the raging forest fires.

Here, politicians from all political stripes except the Conservatives in Ottawa, and media bosses lambasted Meta. Could this opprobrium set the company back? “It is a decision that belongs to them, loose the minister. Me, I’m at the table, I’m ready to sit down with them, to discuss with them. »

What he did with American representatives of Google – the digital giant had carried out tests last winter to block Canadian users from accessing news content, before finally changing their minds. “They wanted more certainty, more clarity, which is normal”, explains Pablo Rodriguez.

The law forces web giants to enter into revenue-sharing agreements with the media whose content is republished on their platforms.

Canadian news organizations would share annual compensation of about $329.2 million under the legislative provisions, according to a report released last October by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

For its part, Meta estimates that Facebook’s feed generated more than 1.9 billion clicks between March 2021 and April 2022, which “represents free marketing” whose value the Silicon Valley company estimates “at more than 230 million,” one of its representatives told a House of Commons committee last May.

Meta camped on its positions

At Meta, we don’t hide it: yes, we shun meetings with the minister. We do not see the need for it, the legislative framework having already been established.

“We plan to end news availability once our testing is complete and believe we have an effective product solution to end news availability in Canada,” the Meta spokesperson adds, without providing a date. putative stopper in this sense.

The law could also sign the death warrant of agreements concluded between Meta and certain media to finance the production of news, warned on the airwaves of Meta, Rachel Curran on Tuesday on CBC. ” Reality […] is that there’s probably not a lot of future for these deals,” she said.