Response by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Signed by (Minister or Parliamentary Secretary): Kevin Lamoureux
The Government would like to thank the petitioners for expressing their concerns regarding the serious issue of online safety and the rise of misinformation.
There are currently no industry standards to ensure the safety and well-being of Canadians online and the rise of misinformation online has led to manipulations and distortion of facts. In this context, the Government of Canada understands that everyone in Canada should be able to access an online environment where they can express themselves freely, without fearing for their safety or their life, going so far as to introduce the Online Harms Act, Bill C-63, which supports the objective of empowering Canadians to freely express their thoughts and opinions by creating a safer and more inclusive online space. The Government of Canada has also taken every opportunity to ensure Canadians always get reliable, independent and fact-checked news by passing Bill C-18, the Online News Act.
It is of utmost importance to uphold Canadians’ right to freedom of expression, which is essential in a healthy democracy. The Parliament of Canada operates independently from the Government of Canada; Members of Parliament of all parties, Members of the Senate, Officers of Parliament and employees of Parliament are responsible for the communication and management of their own social media accounts.
The House of Commons is responsible for managing their own social media accounts, including that of the Speaker of the House of Commons. The House of Commons generally uses its social media accounts to share timely and factual information about activities in and related to the House of Commons Chamber, committees of the House of Commons and parliamentary diplomacy; announcements, media advisories, news releases and other communications products from the House of Commons about events and activities at the House of Commons and on Parliament Hill; information about the Board of Internal Economy; information about products and services, digital and otherwise, maintained and offered by the House of Commons; information about recruitment and job opportunities at the House of Commons; information about the history, art and architecture of the House of Commons; and General interest content, including photos, audio, video and links to websites, information pertaining to activities related to the House of Commons, announcements and media advisories. The House of Commons does not publish any material considered to be of a political or partisan nature or that aims to support or oppose a political party or one of its members. Links and contact information can be found here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/en/social-media
The Senate of Canada is responsible for managing their own social media accounts. The Senate uses social media accounts as an alternative method of sharing the content posted on the Senate of Canada website. Links and contact information can be found here: https://sencanada.ca/en/sencaplus/social-media/
The Library of Parliament is responsible for managing their own social media accounts. The Library of Parliament shares relevant and non-partisan information about its products, programs and services, as well as Parliament’s processes, history and figures, on a variety of social media channels and platforms. Links and contact information can be found here: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/About/Social?selected=Social
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Typical boilerplate response. I may be misreading it, but I didn’t read a ‘no’.
Yeah, it’s not a no, it’s basically a “not our problem, everyone does their own thing.” Which is fair, but they normally have no problems loading extra work on public servants even though it’s not their job, so it’s a bit moot.
I suppose they’re suggesting that we contact these social media accounts for change.
It’s pretty disappointing that they don’t sound interested in the fediverse.
Why wouldn’t they choose Mastodon over Facebook and Twitter for communicating with the public.
Totally agreed, the site formerly known as Twitter especially. At least the CBC posts articles to mastodon, so there’s that.
Why WOULD they?
FB and Twitter are simpler, better-understood, and better-attended than Mastodon. They serve the goal of ‘meeting the votors where they live,’ admirably.
Spinning up a Mastodon instance would require money and effort and risk, but most of all, leadership; both in the sense of the groundbreaking, and in the sense of leading Canadians here (rather than going where they already are).
Honestly, the reasons to abandon the existing sites are non-issues for the majority, as evidenced by the majority still using them. The fascist robber barons who run them are an easily-ignored inconvenience.
I’m not happy with the government’s response, but it was 100% predictable.
I agree very disappointing. I find it increasingly difficult since Twitter closed its doors to those signed in as my account is long deleted.
deleted by creator
It doesn’t appear that the House or Senate currently sees any benefit to extending or moving its communications to the Fediverse on its own servers rather than X or Facebook.
Simultaneously, the response doesn’t seem to rule out individual members or groups from getting Fediverse social media accounts if it makes sense for them.
I would hit them back arguing that Facebook removes emergency news stories unnecessarily risking the lives of Canadians over an silly disagreement on a bill and that X has poor moderation putting vulnerable people at risk.
Facebook removes emergency news stories unnecessarily risking the lives of Canadians over an silly disagreement on a bill
Facebook is complying with the law as written. Perhaps the bigger issue here is how badly the law is written and not Facebook’s method of compliance.
Forcing any entity to provide a service and then taxing them for providing said service is fundamentally unjust.
Facebook is complying with the law as written. Perhaps the bigger issue here is how badly the law is written and not Facebook’s method of compliance.
Facebook is blowing a fit because they don’t want to pay for what they use to make money. Their entire business model involves traffic to and from their site and produce nothing of value on their own.
Yes they are complying with the law as written, but it is nothing but a dick move attempting to circumvent paying money to those who are owed it.
Forcing any entity to provide a service and then taxing them for providing said service is fundamentally unjust.
No one is forcing Facebook to operate in Canada, and anyone who operates in Canada has to pay taxes. As you already pointed out they are not offering the service in Canada, as I pointed out it is because they don’t want to pay for other peoples work to make money off of it.
What is “unjust” is what Meta does on a daily basis to their users who ignorantly stay on the platform because they believe it is the only option. Which Meta attempts to maintain as a narrative along with all the other big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and the rest.
Stop defending Meta. It’s a shit company with the sole purpose of taking your information and selling it to others while adding absolutely no value to the world.
I agree, except that the law, as written, is stupid.
Charging for outbound links and for sharing the robots.txt summary provided by the news outlets themselves for use is ridiculous.
Instead, they should have implemented a digital advertising tax. 20% of gross sales, maybe? Make exemptions for small groups (first $1M in #ad dashes is untaxed?) (Numbers to be determined by an actual trained economist and policy expert, not me.)
That would hurt them directly on the revenue side where they make most of their income, and make local print/TV advertising more cost-effective (helping local media companies).
And then use 100% of the tax to support journalist salaries as a tax rebate through the CRA, like CCB or the carbon rebate.
What am I missing? This seems so obvious to me idk why this wasn’t the original plan.
Oh I 100% after thay Meta is a shit company but in this particular instance I don’t think how they’ve chosen tk comply with the law is unreasonable.
In the future, maybe AI will improve sufficiently to allow them to pretend to respond to petitions like this one instead of what appears to be the current practice of providing a wall of text that does not address the proposal in any way except in that it matches some of the right keywords.
