Suspension of advertisements on Meta | The boycott shunned in the rest of Canada

(Ottawa) The famous “two solitudes” in Canada are finding a new incarnation these days: the movement to boycott advertisements on Meta is far from spreading outside of Quebec.

The Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec, the cities of Montreal, Quebec, Longueuil and Laval, as well as a large number of Quebec media companies announced one after the other on Wednesday that they were ending their purchases of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta’s decision to end Canadian news sharing, in retaliation for adopting the Online News Act, is behind the initiative launched by the federal Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez.

However, with the exception of Quebec, no other province has yet expressed a desire to join.

“Ontario has no intention of changing its advertising policy and will continue to support Canadian media through government advertising campaigns,” Caitlin Clark, spokesperson for the office of the Premier Doug Ford.

Of the other provinces that responded to requests for The PressNew Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta have made the same decision.

In Manitoba, we have disassociated ourselves from federal law. “The government supports freedom of expression and does not support [la loi] and, at this time, will not follow the federal government with respect to activity on the Meta platforms,” wrote a spokeswoman for Premier Heather Stefanson.

On the Alberta side, Premier Danielle Smith believes that her fellow citizens “have the right to access news from a variety of media”, and hopes “that we will find a solution” to maintain the access to news “on all platforms”.

The governments of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Yukon have not yet decided.

“It is a decision that belongs to them”, reacted in a written declaration the Minister Pablo Rodriguez, while welcoming the States and companies which have added themselves to the list, which according to him sends “a message, a symbol, important “.

” Better than nothing ”

The dividing line does not surprise Alain Saulnier, former news director of Radio-Canada.

“I think the language factor comes into play. Historically, language has been like a bulwark,” he explains.

It is not impossible that this lack of interest outside Quebec is right for the mobilization, that Meta comes out of it with few stigmata, judge Alain Saulnier. “It’s possible that it will be potato, that it won’t go any further. But it’s better than nothing,” he said.

The movement is growing in Quebec

Meanwhile, on Quebec soil, the movement continues to generate support.

State corporations such as the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) and Hydro-Québec have also decided to freeze their purchases of advertisements on Meta. The sum of which the web giant will therefore be deprived has not been specified.

In Ottawa, these expenses are approximately $10 million a year. A study by the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project estimated that Facebook’s annual advertising revenue (excluding Instagram) in Canada was $2.9 billion in 2020.

Hard weaning for the parties

If the Liberal government has announced that it is cutting funding, the situation is different for the Liberal Party. “We will continue to advertise on Meta’s platforms,” training spokesperson Parker Lund wrote on Wednesday.

In the New Democrat camp, we have “no intention of changing anything for the moment”. We want to “monitor the situation in the hope that the suspension of advertising by the government will encourage the giants of the web to respect the law”, indicated Thursday the director of communications of the formation, Éric Demers.

The Conservative Party did not respond to our requests.

The Bloc Québécois, for its part, stopped buying advertising on Meta’s platforms at the end of June.