OTTAWA — The government has “no intention” of repealing or changing the Online News Act or its regulations, despite pressure from the United States to change or do away with the law ahead of trade negotiations, the heritage minister’s spokesperson has told The Logic. 

Despite the official denial, government officials have been in discussions with Meta about potential changes to bring news back to the platforms, two sources with knowledge of the matter told The Logic. The sources are not being named because they were not authorized to release the information publicly. Heritage Minister Marc Miller’s press secretary Hermine Landry did not respond to questions about the talks.

Ottawa made the declaration the same week as some Canadian users suddenly got sporadic and intermittent access to news content on Instagram and Facebook. Though links to specific news stories remained blocked, it was possible for some people in Canada to see and interact with posts on the Meta-owned platforms for the first time since the tech company implemented a ban in June 2023. The Logic was able to see and access content from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist from within Canada. 

Meta Canada spokesperson Julia Perreira said the platforms were not running any tests on news content in Canada and it’s not clear why news content had become visible for some Canadian users. “I don’t know how to explain that, to me it is unexplainable,” she said, adding that it could be a bug. 

Until this week, Canadian users who looked up major news outlets on Facebook or Instagram were unable to see any content on those pages. Users are also banned from sharing links to news articles on their own pages or in comments on other posts.

Meta’s move to block news in Canada is a response to the Online News Act, which compels Big Tech platforms to pay news publishers for their content. The law has been a source of tension with the U.S., and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has highlighted the impact on U.S. digital service providers as an irritant in the lead-up to the renegotiation of Canada’s trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico.

Despite those tensions, Landry suggested the Online News Act was still working as intended. “With misinformation and disinformation on the rise, we will keep supporting strong, independent newsrooms across the country so that reliable Canadian news content remains accessible to all,” Landry said in a statement. News outlets have struggled in recent years, and the Online News Act has helped tackle that trend, she said.

Perreira said Meta had no comment regarding talks with the government about the law itself, though Meta’s head of public policy Rachel Curran told a parliamentary committee in October the company would “love to bring news content back” to its platforms.

“We are hopeful that the government will take another look at that legislation, which we think misrepresents the value exchange between publishers and our platforms,” she told the heritage committee.

Meta has maintained that, unlike Google, which actively scrapes new sites for content, its social media platforms don’t seek out news. Rather, publishers voluntarily share content on its platforms to increase their distribution and monetize the clicks, Curran told the committee. 

“I think the new government is more open to these kinds of discussions and so we’re hopeful that we can make some progress with them,” she said at the time. Public lobby records show she made the comments after Facebook’s representatives met with officials from the heritage minister’s office and Prime Minister’s Office in September. 

Publishers have been pushing back on the idea of changing or making exceptions to the Online News Act, including in a meeting earlier this week between Miller and News Media Canada, an industry lobby group for print and digital outlets.

“I think the government needs to be very cautious in their decisions around what trades they make in those trade negotiations with the United States,” said Angus Frame, president of Torstar, which owns the Toronto Star, The Hamilton Spectator, and other newspapers and websites.

Amending the law or its regulations would “only serve to weaken the Act and potentially take away the benefit that the Online News Act is currently delivering to publishers across the country,” he said. Though Meta chose to block news after the Online News Act was passed, Google agreed to an annual $100-million payout distributed among publishers, which he said would likely vanish if the law were significantly changed.