While Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge confirmed she held “productive” talks with Meta over Bill C-18, she told the tech giant she would not give in to demands to “roll back” the legislation.
“We’ve had, I would say, a very positive and constructive and also honest conversation,” Ms. St-Onge told The Globe and Mail in an Aug. 24 report, adding that she told the company the legislation would not be brought back to Parliament and changed.
“I confirmed to them that we will not roll back the bill.”
The Online News Act (Bill C-18), which received royal assent on June 22, mandates that major tech companies pay Canadian media outlets for news content linked on their platforms.
On Aug. 1, Meta began the process of ending news availability in Canada on its Facebook and Instagram platforms saying Bill C-18 was “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.”
Google also threatened to remove links to Canadian news from its Search, News, and Discover products, but has not carried out the threat.
The talks between Ms. St-Onge and Rachel Curran, Meta’s head of public policy in Canada, and Marc Dinsdale, head of media partnerships, appeared to break the impasse between the federal government and Meta.Ms. St-Onge said she has also met with Google since she took over the role of heritage minister from Pablo Rodrigeuz in late July.
“The relationship with Google is extremely productive. And both for Facebook and Google, I think that there’s a way that we come out of this with viable agreements,” Ms. St-Onge said.
She added the government is preparing regulations for how the Online News Act will work in practice, which she says will create “an extremely positive, viable path forward” for the tech companies.
Ms. Curran said on Aug. 24 that Meta met with Ms. St-Onge at her request and will continue to “keep the government informed as we end news availability.” Ms. Curran said that as Meta had previously stated, regulations will be unable to “address the fundamental challenges with the legislation, and we’ve relayed this to the minister today.”
While Ms. Curran previously said she was “super optimistic” that Ottawa would modify the Online News Act so Google and Meta could continue supporting Canadian journalism, Ms. St-Onge said this is not an option.
Meta did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
