Opinion: Bill C-18’s Failure is Proof of Canada’s Naivety in the Information Sphere
In June of 2023, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-18. Known as the Online News Act, it aimed to address the power imbalance between the operators of digital news intermediaries—select social media platforms and search engines—and the news outlets whose content is posted within the online spaces these corporations provide. Put more practically, Bill C-18 was crafted with the intention to redistribute revenue generated by news content posted to social media giants like Facebook back to the news’ original producers. While Bill C-18’s aims are objectively benevolent, as news media companies deserve proper compensation for the distribution of their content, the bill’s impractical nature and poor implementation have made its failure to achieve the goal of a healthier Canadian news ecosystem explicit. Here’s why I believe this is the case.
In order to fully understand why the Canadian federal government passed Bill C-18 in the first place, it is crucial to recognize that Canadian news revenue is in significant decline. This is primarily due to the fact that print circulation has been supplanted by digital delivery, which has proven to be a far less reliable source of revenue for news producers. When Canadian news is posted to a social media platform like Facebook, the attention it garners generates revenue for Facebook, not for the original news source. Thus, as far as Bill C-18 is concerned, the platform is unfairly profiting from the content of Canadian news producers and can be considered a digital news intermediary under the legislation. I say “can” because this designation is not as simple as it may initially seem.
Digital news intermediaries are defined under the Online News Act as online platforms that have a total global revenue of $1 billion (CAD) or more in a calendar year, operate a search engine or social media site that distributes and provides access to news content in Canada, and have at least 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users. By design, these strict parameters solely designate two notorious Silicon Valley corporations as digital news intermediaries to which the bill applies: Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads). Other prominent online platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and LinkedIn are not affected by Bill C-18 due to their inability to meet these qualifications.
Initially, both Alphabet and Meta rejected Bill C-18 altogether. Faced with the prospect of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Canadian news producers, Alphabet and Meta announced their intention to instead block all Canadian news from appearing on their platforms. However, after the Canadian federal government communicated that negotiations would occur between the tech giants and a single collective of news outlets rather than individual organizations, Alphabet relented. Meta, on the other hand, has not. If you’ve ever tried to open a link on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads and been faced with the confusing message “People in Canada can’t see this content,” you now know why. Millions of Canadians, especially those from a younger age demographic who rely on social media to obtain news information, have been disconnected from their primary source of news.
While it is undeniable that there is an extraordinary imbalance of power between digital news intermediaries and news production outlets, the Canadian Federal Government’s pursuit of egalitarianism and Meta’s predictable response has resulted in its citizens encountering fewer, less reliable news sources. I deem Meta’s response predictable because this isn’t the first time they’ve been faced with a bargaining framework structured like Bill C-18 and opted to restrict news access rather than comply. Bill C-18 is modeled after Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which similarly saw Meta pull Australian news from their platforms shortly after its announcement. Unlike Bill C-18, however, Meta soon reached a compromise with the Australian government and restored Australian news to their platform only days afterward. Meta’s decision to compromise was likely due to a combination of widespread pushback from the Australian public and the prospect of facing steep fees. Why Canada has yet to achieve the same result isn’t entirely clear.
Bill C-18 specifically allows for “substantial monetary penalties” to enforce the act, but the Canadian government has not applied any economic pressure on Meta under the Bill up to this point. The difference, then, may be attributable to a lack of pressure from the Canadian public. According to a 2024 report from the Media Ecosystem Observatory, only 22% of Canadians even know that news is banned on Meta’s platforms in the first place. Because the Canadian public is unaware of this drastic limit on information access, let alone the bill that caused it, a lack of transparency and public communication about Bill C-18 from the Canadian Federal Government is easily discerned. General public apathy and Meta’s responsibility for this issue aside, the fact that the news ban has not been resolved in over a year is a concerning symbol of the Canadian Federal Government’s naivety in the information sphere. It is an egregious oversight to have not adequately publicized the consequences of the bill nor engaged the enforcement mechanisms they designed specifically for this scenario. I believe that both economic and public pressure is needed to see Meta relent on their policy and quell the growing number of Canadians who have been disconnected from reliable news media as a result of the ban. Ultimately, the source of this pressure must be the Canadian Federal Government, which has a responsibility to empower its citizens with knowledge about the unfolding dilemma and the direct authority to impose fees on Meta.
Before I end this article, the aforementioned 2024 report published by the Media Ecosystem Observatory is worth exploring further to fully appreciate the drastic chilling effect that governmental inaction has had on Canadians’ online news media engagement. According to the report, released a year after the introduction of Bill C-18, “Canadian news outlets have lost 85% of their engagement on Facebook and Instagram, and approximately 30% of local news outlets in Canada previously active on social media are now inactive.” Crucially, the report concludes that “Canadians continue to learn about politics and current events through Facebook and Instagram, but through a more biased and less factual lens than before, and many Canadians do not even realize the shift has occurred.” When Bill C-18 and Meta’s news ban were in their early days, it was harder to argue for their change because the consequences had not been realized. This is no longer the case—now, the data clearly shows that misinformation and disinformation have taken news’ place, leading to millions of Canadians digesting false information without even knowing it. This is especially worrying given the revelation that Kremlin money is funding Canadian political influencers that occupy online spaces. Notably, these political influencer channels categorize themselves as entertainment and get around the ban, but present themselves as news sources.
To remedy this deterioration of the Canadian news ecosystem, a serious and deliberate approach must be adopted by the Canadian Federal Government. There are amendments to be made to Bill C-18, economic and social pressures to be placed on Meta, and advice to be heeded from Australia. It is essential that our government learn lessons on how to negotiate with Meta from the Australians, and it is frankly embarrassing that this has gone on for over a year. A compromised news ecosystem wreaks havoc on democratic engagement—this is no secret.
