Province, PCs stick with Meta advertising

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This article was published 08/07/2023 (1061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Neither the Manitoba Government nor the governing Progressive Conservative party have plans to stop buying ads on Facebook or Instagram after the passage of the federal Online News Act.

Bill C-18, which received royal assent last month after passing in the Senate, requires tech giants to pay for news content shared through their platforms.

After the bill’s passage, both Google and Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, have threatened to block links to Canadian news article in retaliations.

In a tit-for-tat move, the federal and Quebec governments announced earlier this week that they would suspend media purchases on Meta platforms with negotiations still ongoing with Google. However, both the federal Liberals and the NDP both said their parties would continue to buy ads on the platforms.

Provincial government press secretary Miranda Dubé sent a statement to the Sun Thursday evening attributed to a government spokesperson saying Manitoba would not follow the other governments’ actions.

“The government supports freedom of speech and does not support federal Bill C-18 and at this time will not be following suit with the federal government in regards to activity on Meta platforms.”

Through an email, an unnamed spokesperson for the Progressive Conservatives sent a similar statement.

“The PC Party does not support Bill C-18 and we will continue to engage with Manitobans through Meta platforms. We will continue to stand up for free speech.”

The Manitoba NDP sent a statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson saying they were keeping an eye on the situation.

“We will be monitoring the situation with Meta and Google closely as it evolves,” the statement said. “In the meantime, we will make sure Manitobans hear our plan to fix health care and make life more affordable.”

In an interview Thursday afternoon, Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont told the Sun his party was still deciding what it would do, especially as the province is headed into a provincial election this fall.

“Honestly, I’d rather not be spending advertising (money) on Facebook while they’re defying this law,” Lamont said.

“People have said, this is the law of the land in Canada and if these companies want to operate in Canada, they need to obey the law. That’s the way I feel about it. For too long, they’ve been taking other people’s work and intellectual property without compensating them for it at all.”

What the party is hoping for, Lamont said, is that the federal government and Meta come to an agreement before the election.

In the wake of Meta and Google’s threats, Lamont said he believes the provincial government should step up and increasing advertising with local radio and TV stations as well as newspapers — though not for partisan ads.

“When it comes to democracy, independent journalism is like water,” he said. “You can’t replace it.”

He said the province’s decision to continue advertising did not surprise him, but that he believed it was an unfortunate decision.

The reactions from Manitoba political parties might be a result of them trying to match what their federal counterparts are doing in response to the bill, according to Brandon University political science professor Kelly Saunders.

She noted that the provincial Tories’ comments about the bill being censorship are similar to those espoused by the federal Conservatives.

The professor also remarked on the curious position that the federal Liberals and NDP are taking by supporting the federal government’s ban on advertising on Meta, but not actually doing the same thing.

“It’s no wonder then that the parties here in Manitoba maybe are a little unclear on what they want to do, because there hasn’t really been a lot of clarity from the federal government’s point of view,” Saunders said.

Past opinion polls, Saunders said, have suggested that almost one-third of voters get their news from Facebook. If Manitoba parties decided not to advertise on Facebook and Instagram, that’s a lot of potential voters they won’t be able to reach in an election year.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark