EXPLAINER: Now That Bill C-18 Has Passed, Why Is Meta Blocking Canadian News?

The Meta logo is seen in Davos, Switzerland, on May 22, 2022. Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

On the same day that the Liberal government’s Bill C-18 received royal assent and passed into law, U.S. tech giant Meta announced it would be blocking content from news outlets for Canadian users in order to comply with the new legislation.

The Online News Act requires that online platforms and digital news intermediaries like Google and Meta—which owns Facebook and Instagram—negotiate deals with and pay Canadian media outlets for any of their news and information linked on their platforms.

However, Meta said on June 22, the day the Online News Act received royal assent, that it had noted beforehand that it would need to completely drop news sharing in Canada by outlets, publishers, and broadcasters on its platforms in order to comply with act.

“As we have repeatedly shared, the Online News Act is fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers,” Meta wrote in a statement on June 1 and updated on June 22.

“As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, how we choose to comply with the legislation is a business decision we must make, and we have made our choice.”

Meta did not give any details about its timeline for ending news availability in Canada, but said it will pull all local news from its platforms before the new legislation takes effect.

The Online News Act is set to come into force this December.

Blocking News

Both Meta and Google had already begun test-blocking some news for Canadian users prior to Bill C-18 passing into law.

The move sparked outrage from MPs on the Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, who grilled Google executives on the matter during an appearance on March 10.

At the time, Google Canada’s Vice President Sabrina Geremia did not admit the tech giant was blocking any news in Canada, but voiced Google’s strong opposition to Bill C-18.

Geremia told the committee that the legislation “sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the very foundations of the open web and the free flow of information.”

“It also incentivizes the creation of cheap, clickbait content over quality journalism,” she said.

Cabinet has heavily criticized Meta’s decision, saying the move shows the platforms are more willing to remove news than pay local outlets for it.

“We do not accept the fact that some tech giants are threatening a government of a sovereign country,” said Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in the House on June 20. “We do not accept that they are trying to intimidate Canadians or that they are trying to intimidate senators.”

Rodriguez’s department held meetings with both Facebook and Google this past week, but didn’t disclose any details.

Rodriguez also rejected an amendment to Bill C-18 proposed by the Senate before it passed that would have aimed to prevent tech giants from blocking news for Canadian readers on their platforms.

The minister rejected the amendment on June 19 on the grounds that it would “undermine the objectives” of the legislation. He accepted nearly all of the Senate’s other proposed changes to the bill.

Local Journalism

Rodriguez also said in the House on June 20 that Canada needs the Online News Act in order to save local newsrooms forced to close in recent years due to heavy online competition.

“We need a solid, independent, non-partisan news system in our country,” he said. “We need the tech giants to contribute.”

However, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has said the Online News Act will benefit legacy media more than local journalism—a point Geremia also raised during her committee testimony.

Giroux wrote in his “Cost Estimate for Bill C-18” published in October 2022 that the Online News Act will profit large Canadian media outlets by upwards of $329 million in government subsidies.

He also wrote that he expects developing and implementing the act will cost around $5.6 million per year over five years for the Canadian Heritage Department and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

“The new regulations will give rise to regulatory compliance costs for businesses as well as costs to negotiate and enforce agreements,” he wrote. “This will in turn have fiscal consequence for the federal government.”

Opposition Criticism

While the NDP and Bloc Quebecois have been mostly supportive of Bill C-18, the Conservatives were heavily critical of the legislation prior to its passage.

“On the surface, Bill C-18 seems like a pretty innocent bill,” Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said in the House on June 20.

“The gist is that small independent news providers should have a chance to compete with the big fish and earn their fair share of revenue in a free market. That is fair enough as a concept, but when we dig deeper, we find that this piece of legislation is deeply flawed, and it would not accomplish the stated goal.”

The legislation will give the CRTC the responsibility of ensuring that tech giants reach licensing agreements with news outlets for sharing their content on their platforms, but Lantsman said small media outlets will not benefit from these deals.

Rather, she said the “established groups that can afford the high-priced lawyers and can curry favour with the CRTC” will benefit the most in striking these deals.

“These big media groups might have the ability to negotiate with Facebook or even the federal government,” Lantsman said. “Small mom-and-pop shops find themselves in a very different position.”

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.