By Mikayla Geraghty – Staff Writer

What is Bill C-18? 

Bill C-18, the Online News Act, passed in June 2023 – a law that requires tech companies, such as Meta and Google, to compensate Canadian news outlets whose news links they display on their platforms. Meta has rejected the assumption that they benefit unfairly off of hosting the news links, therefore issuing a ban on Canadian news content on Instagram and Facebook, starting on Aug. 1. Google responded to the bill by stating they would remove links to Canadian news on Google Search and other products, but has yet to carry this out as of the end of August.

On Aug. 1, Meta announced that their ban would be implemented over the course of the next few weeks. Canadian users and publishers will no longer be able to view or share news links or posts on Meta platforms. Meta has stated that the Canadians who consume their news on their Facebook or Instagram will now have to obtain incoming news directly from news publishers’ platforms if they wish to continue viewing their content.   

The government’s aim with implementing Bill C-18 was to improve the economic relationship between news outlets and media companies, as well as to create a fairer playing field between the two. Hundreds of Canadian news outlets have gone out of business in the last decade as advertising revenue moved online.

The law has not been implemented yet, so its economic impacts are not known for sure. However, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the bill would shift $329 million to the Canadian news industry.

Jacob Robbins-Kanter, assistant professor and Canadian politics specialist speculates that: “in the short term, some news outlets that get a lot of traffic from social media could find themselves in financial trouble.” 

What are the potential effects Bill C-18 will have on Bishop’s students?

In an interview with Genna Buck, media industry worker and journalism instructor at Bishop’s University, Buck disclosed that at the beginning of each class she surveys her students on where they are consuming their news. Her results found that the majority of students used social media to consume their news and explore topics that they were interested in. 

When asked to comment on how she thinks Bill C-18 will affect students, Buck states that we as a community are going to need our media literacy skills now more than ever as the “information ecosystem has been even more polluted, and there will be even more opportunity to see a whole bunch of content that has not been made with you as the reader in mind, hasn’t been fact-checked, hasn’t been created using journalistic principles.” 

With Meta’s ban, students will now have to work harder to seek out Canadian news as it will not be directly available to them on their preferred platforms of social media. Students will now have to delve into other sources to seek out Canadian news, whether that be through new’s outlets websites directly, other search engines, or using the resources available to them at libraries to gather vetted news from reputable sources.