MONTREAL — The McGill Faculty Club is located in an understated greystone building on the university’s lone pedestrian-only street. A cozy redoubt for academics and staff, the club has hosted writers, prime ministers and captains of industry, along with countless weddings and high school graduations. But on May 12, a wood-panelled room on the club’s second floor played host to Google’s unofficial campaign to derail the government’s plan to compel it to pay for news.

Billed as an off-the-record discussion about the merits and pratfalls of Bill C-18, the government’s Online News Act, the dinner quickly devolved into what one person present called an “attack” on fellow attendee Ron Ahluwalia, who, as director of policy for the minister of Canadian heritage, has overseen the government’s legislative effort to have Big Tech remunerate publishers for news published on platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Chris Ragan, director of McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, praised Google News VP Richard Gingras for “keeping his composure” in the face of the government’s “attack,” then railed against what he called “government overreach” of the bill, according to two sources whom The Logic agreed not to name because the event was conducted under Chatham House rule. 

The Financial Post columnist and former McGill economics professor William Watson did much the same, while Sue Gardner—formerly executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation and co-founder of U.S. journalism non-profit The Markup, now a visiting professor at Max Bell and the evening’s moderator—called Ahluwalia out for not doing enough during the dinner to defend the bill, the sources said. Through a spokesperson, Ahluwalia declined to comment.

“I have a pretty high threshold for awkward dinners, and this is one of the most awkward dinners I have ever been to,” one attendee said. “The main target was Ron, but Ron was a proxy for the federal government.” Things got even more awkward when Ragan and Watson both admitted to not having read the bill they were criticizing.

(Another of the dinner’s attendees, The Logic’s CEO and editor-in-chief David Skok, would not comment on the discussion. He did not attend any Newsgeist events. To prevent conflicts of interest, Skok is not involved in The Logic’s coverage of digital media and Big Tech. This reporter learned about the dinner from an outside source.)

Tabled in early April, Bill C-18, or the Online News Act, seeks to make the biggest digital platforms pay news publishers for links posted to their sites. It lets news publishers form groups and collectively bargain with the platforms, and imposes baseball-style final arbitration should the parties not come to an agreement. Under the bill, it falls to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to oversee the process, and dole out fines of as much as $15 million a day to non-compliant platforms. 

It is one piece of a raft of federal legislation seeking to impose constraints on Big Tech’s influence in the country. Bill C-11, the Liberals’ bid to make online platforms follow Canadian content rules, is heading to the Senate after passing third reading in the House of Commons. They introduced a proposed law on the use of personal information and data earlier this month, and have announced legislation regulating online content deemed harmful.  

With their focus on the biggest platforms, the bills will have the most profound impact on Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet’s Google. Facebook has made it known it is dead-set against the Online News Act, and hasn’t ruled out blocking Canadian news on its platform as it did temporarily when the Australian government was legislating a similar law.

Google, however, has been far more conspicuous in its attempts to stymie the Online News Act. Apart from its many official lobbying efforts against the bill, duly recorded in the federal government’s lobbying registry, Google has made its opposition to the bill known publicly, claiming in a blog post from Google Canada vice-president Sabrina Geremia that the bill would “break Google Search.”

The company sent a form letter from Google Canada government affairs and public policy head Colin McKay to politicians, repeating the claim. More privately, Google sent a note to various politicians and ministries after the tabling of Bill C-18, threatening to pull its news service from Canada altogether should the bill pass into law. “[Bill C-18] literally breaks the open web,” reads the message, a copy of which The Logic obtained. “We cannot not [sic] operate under a regime that compels us to pay for linking.”

“[Google is] much more of an effective lobbyist than Facebook,” said Poppy Wood, the U.K. director of Reset.Tech, a British digital-advocacy group. 

Earlier this month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai held a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in California, the details of which the Prime Minister’s Office declined to share. Instead, the PMO referred to a tweet from Trudeau’s account noting the two spoke in part about the “importance of protecting democracy through vibrant and diverse online media.”

The meeting came two days after the National Post reported that the company had offered to pay for a lobbyist for a group of independent publishers that disagreed with aspects of the proposed law. Since the law will eventually end up in the Senate, members of Google’s public-policy team have reached out to the chair and deputy chair of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Transport and Communications to voice their opposition to the bill, The Logic has learned. 

“We are transparent about our serious concerns about the proposed Online News Act being rushed through Parliament and its unintended consequences on the news industry and Canadians’ ability to safely find news online. We regularly engage organizations with various points of view and will continue to work collaboratively with the government and the news industry on public policy solutions that support publishers of all sizes,” Google spokesperson Wendy Manton told The Logic. 

But Google has embarked on a quieter parallel campaign to foment opposition to the bill. The company has leveraged its power and ubiquity to spread its opposition amongst academics, journalists and publishers whom the firm hopes will echo this opposition in the public square, putting pressure on legislators to change the bill or kill it outright.

At stake isn’t just the billions of dollars that Google and other digital platforms will have to hand over to newspaper publishers. In February 2021, despite a fierce (and at times underhanded) campaign on the part of Facebook and Google, the Australian government passed landmark legislation forcing the digital giants to pay for news content posted to their platforms. 

Should it pass into law, the Online News Act will serve as further legislative precedent for other governments around the world. German commissioner for culture and media Claudia Roth recently lauded Canada’s “impressive draft legislation” while the British government is “looking to Canada as a template” for its online-news legislation, according to Wood. 

In this sense, at least to some of those attending the McGill soirée, the evening was an attempt to recast legislative efforts to fund journalism in the country as a government power grab—which, as it happens, has long been a reliable Google talking point. Quietly pushing its point of view at such events, which are almost always bound by Chatham House rule to encourage discretion, isn’t unique in Google’s lobbying history. In fact, it is right out of the company playbook.

In October 2020, Google produced an internal document titled “DSA 60 Day Plan Update.” First reported by Le Point magazine, its 18 pages outlined the company’s strategy to counter the Digital Services Act, the European Commission’s legislative attempt to regulate online commerce and “gatekeeper platforms,” as well as enhance online safety and crack down on misinformation. 

Google’s goal, according to a copy of the document labelled “Privileged & Need-to-Know” that The Logic obtained, was to “remove from the Commission proposal unreasonable constraints to our business model, our ability to improve our products or roll out new features/services.” One of the strategy’s objectives was to “weaken support for proposals within the [European Commission].” To meet this objective, the company lists “Outreach to officials within the [director-general for competition]” as well as “Academic allies.”

According to Chris Ragan, Gardner first suggested the McGill dinner as an informal prelude to Newsgeist, the yearly invitation-only conference of journalists, publishers and tech types co-sponsored by Google and the Knight Foundation. “Sue Gardner said, ‘Google does this thing called Newsgeist, and it’s going to come to Montreal this year.’ And she introduced me to Richard Gingras, and said it might be an interesting thing to have a dinner. And I said, ‘This is a great idea,’” Ragan said.

A longtime journalist herself, Gardner has criticized digital platforms for what she says is their role in spreading misinformation and divisive content. Yet she has also criticized the government’s attempts to legislate against Google specifically, declaring that compelling the company to pay for links would “break the internet” in an April podcast from academic and frequent government critic Michael Geist. (Gardner didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.)

Ragan has a view similar to his colleagues. Though he admits to not having read the text of C-18, he said, “My impression of the bill is that it’s forcing the digital platforms to pay money to legacy newspapers for reasons that strike me as pretty suspicious. So whether you call that an attack or a shakedown, it’s forcing them to pay money in a bizarre way.” (Watson also confirmed he didn’t read the bill before the event. “In my experience, bills tend to be unreadable,” he wrote in an email to The Logic.)

At roughly the same time that Gardner was railing against the government on that podcast, Google was name-dropping the Max Bell School in its invitations to Newsgeist. Jason Kee, Google Canada public policy and government relations counsel, told invitees that Google was working with Max Bell in hosting the event in Montreal, according to invitations viewed by The Logic. Ragan denied that Max Bell was involved in the conference. “Max Bell had zero role in organizing Newsgeist. I don’t know who Jason Kee is,” he said.

“An employee who wasn’t involved in planning Newsgeist had received and privately shared erroneous information,” Google’s Manton told The Logic.

The day after the Faculty Club dinner, Gingras attended “WTF is going on with the Digital News Act?”, a 55-minute-long roundtable discussion about Bill C-18, one of nearly 70 Newsgeist sessions held over that weekend in May. The Canadaland publisher Jesse Brown, a roundtable participant, criticized the bill for roughly 10 minutes, with Gingras taking up the remainder of the time, according to three people who were at Newsgeist, and who spoke on the condition they not be named because the event was conducted under Chatham House rule.

During his talk, the Google executive reiterated that the proposed law would “break” Google’s search function and implored the independent publishers in the room to “make [their] voices heard” on C-18 to their local MPs, according to the sources.

Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint said the freeform “unconference,” in which participants set the agenda, has nonetheless become a de facto Google sounding board. “My experience in the last few years is that Newsgeist isn’t only a gathering for journalists, but also a chance for Google to infuse its own policy needs as global regulators continue closing in on it,” Kint said.

Since Newsgeist 2022, independent publishers have become increasingly vocal in their concerns over the bill. As the National Post’s Anja Karadeglija reported recently, Google offered to fund a government lobbyist to help telegraph their ire to the federal government. (The independent publishers’ group ultimately declined Google’s offer. “While we need the resources, this could ultimately discredit us. Even if we’re completely transparent about it, we’re going to look like puppets of Google,” Brown said on a recent Canadaland podcast.)

Google’s aims and those of the independent publishers don’t perfectly align. In an open letter co-signed by over a hundred small- and medium-sized publishers, Brown said the law contains provisions that would “let Big Tech off the hook.” Regardless, by virtue of criticizing the legislation, the independent publishers fit the definition of what Google calls a “third party” that can help “echo our message,” as Google’s DSA 60 Day Plan Update notes.

Google’s DSA campaign in Europe wasn’t particularly successful. In April, European Union negotiators agreed to the bulk of the DSA’s provisions, including those pertaining to algorithmic accountability, transparency and stricter obligations regarding the dissemination of disinformation and illegal content. The bill is now awaiting a final vote before being formally adopted by the European Union. The DSA has served as a model of sorts to U.S. lawmakers who, like their European counterparts, are eager to rein in Big Tech platforms—albeit through America’s hyper-partisan legislative gauntlet.

The federal government hasn’t heeded Google’s concerns about C-18. In fact, it has fast-tracked the bill. It’s perhaps why Google has turned its lobbying eyes to the Canadian Senate. In May, Google Canada government affairs and public policy manager Laurence Therrien contacted Senator Leo Housakos, chair of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, to voice the company’s concerns over Bill C-18, according to Housakos spokesperson Jacqui Delaney. Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, the committee’s deputy chair, said both Therrien and Jason Kee also approached her with concerns in May. This, even though Bill C-18 has yet to reach the country’s chamber of sober second thought.

“What is important to Google is that governments don’t set precedents that can be applied globally, which is exactly what [Australia’s] News Media Bargaining Code and the [EU’s] DSA do,” Kint said. “On C-18, I see the same tactics from Google. Because the concerns around the imbalance of bargaining power are just as strong in the United States as they were in Australia and Canada.”