MPs Want Google Execs to Testify on Blocking of News Links

A view of the main lobby of building BV200, during a tour of Google's new Bay View Campus in Mountain View, California, U.S., on May 16, 2022. (Peter DaSilva/Reuters)

Google’s blocking of links to news articles for some Canadians in response to the Liberal government’s Bill C-18 will be discussed at a special House of Commons committee on Feb. 28, with MPs seeking to hear from the company’s leadership.

Seven members of the Heritage committee wrote to the Liberal Chair Hedy Fry requesting the meeting, citing a “concerning pattern of bullying and intimidation” by tech giants.

The committee members from the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the NDP are seeking a meeting at the earliest opportunity to have Google executives testify to explain their “damaging and reckless behaviour.”

Google has decided to block access to online news for less than 4 percent of Canadian users in response to Bill C-18, the Online News Act.

The bill, which passed in the House and is currently in the Senate, seeks to compel online tech giants to strike ad revenue sharing deals with Canadian media outlets.

The Liberal government is seeking this measure to support a fledgling news sector and preserve a free press. Critics say the bill was lobbied for by major media outlets and will make news providers dependent on big tech.

Companies like Google do not provide news content, but rather links to stories from media outlets.

“We’ve been fully transparent about our concern that C-18 is overly broad and, if unchanged, could impact products Canadians use and rely on every day,” Google spokesperson Shay Purdy said on Feb. 22.

Google went a step further in blocking content than its competitor Meta, which also threatened to pull news from its Facebook platform last fall over the same concerns.

Meta said after Bill C-18 passed the House that it “forces us to consider removing news from Facebook in Canada rather than being compelled to submit to government-mandated negotiations that do not properly account for the value we provide publishers.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the Google issue unprompted at the end of a press conference on Feb. 24 to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It really surprises me that Google has decided that they’d rather prevent Canadians from accessing news than actually paying journalists for the work they do,” Trudeau said.

“I think that’s a terrible mistake. And I know Canadians expect journalists to be well paid for the work they do.”

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.