Facebook threatens to leave Canada, MP wants it to testify on C-18

OTTAWA–Meta Platforms Inc., parent company of Facebook, is so upset that it has not been called to testify about the Online News Act that it is considering halting the sharing of news content in Canada. In a statement from the company, Marc Dinsdale, Head of Media Partnerships for Meta Canada, said the firm does not scrape content or links to news content. Meta has not been among the list of witnesses testifying about the bill, which is currently before the House of Commons Committee on Canadian Heritage. It said it is surprised by that and is seeking to join the list before the committee moves to clause by clause study of the legislation. The vice-chair of the committee agrees that Meta should be there just as Alphabet Inc. was. “We’ve had Google here for C-18, we need to have Meta here as well,” Conservative MP Kevin Waugh told the Wire Report. “They’re a big player in all of C-18.” Google testified that it has 150 agreements with news organizations across the country. We don’t know how many, if any, Facebook has, the MP noted. Facebook briefly shut down its operations in Australia after that nation brought in similar legislation. Waugh sees a parallel with the current situation. “It’s a stall tactic by them, a very good one I feel, that they want to talk about C-18 – the good, the bad, and the ugly,” he stated. In his statement, Dinsdale pointed out the Online News Act would require Facebook to pay content providers for data which they make freely available. He also decried the fact that money would go to broadcasters as well as print publications. When the idea of the bill was first introduced, the government suggested that it was bringing it in to help the beleaguered newspaper industry. Waugh shares that concern. “What we have now is Bell Media, Rogers, CBC, taking most of the money that will be available from this fund and to me it’s appalling,” the MP said. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the act should accrue $329 million. A great portion of that funding will come from Facebook and Google. Canadian Heritage MInister Pablo Rodriguez, who is responsible for the bill, is unimpressed by the threats from Meta. “We continue to have constructive conversations with Facebook, as recently as a couple weeks ago, yet they continue to pull from their playbook used in Australia,” he said in a statement to the Wire Report. “At the end of the day, we want to make sure Canada has a free and independent press, it’s fundamental to our democracy. Canadians need to have access to accurate and reliable news. All we’re asking the tech giants like Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work.” Meta wondered if it could continue its operations under its present form if C-18 passes. “If this draft legislation becomes law, creating globally unprecedented forms of financial liability for news links or content, we may be forced to consider whether we continue to allow the sharing of news content on Facebook in Canada as defined under the Online News Act,” Dinsdale wrote on Friday. “Canada is incredibly important to Meta,” he continued. “Canadians will always be able to use Facebook to connect with friends and family, to help build communities and to grow their businesses. But faced with adverse legislation that is based on false assumptions that defy the logic of how Facebook works, we feel it is important to be transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to consider whether we continue to allow the sharing of news content in Canada.” The Canadian legislation is only one of the battles Meta is currently facing. In the United States one of its shareholders, Altimeter Capital Management, sent an open letter on Monday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding cuts in staff and expenditures. According to a Reuters report, Altimeter wants a minimum of 20 per cent of jobs to be slashed, capital expenditure to be cut by $5 billion and annual investment in the metaverse to be halved from $10 billion to $5 billion. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Facebook threatens to leave Canada, MP wants it to testify on C-18

Broadcast | October 25, 2022

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Facebook threatens to leave Canada, MP wants it to testify on C-18

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