This October, Canadians will head to the polls in what will undoubtedly be a heated federal election.
The outcome will depend on a variety of factors: Trudeau’s ability to stop the bleeding by saying – or, better yet, doing – anything of consequence, the Conservatives’ summoning of a viable opponent, and how much support the NDP can drum up as a perennial also-ran. Oh, and propaganda.
Expecting some wild shit, Google has decided to remove itself from the conversation regarding the last point.
“For the duration of the 2019 federal election campaign, Google will not accept advertising regulated by Bill C-76,” Colin McKay, Google Canada’s head of public policy, said in a statement.
Bill C-76 was passed in December to requires third parties like Google to keep a registry of all directly or indirectly published political ads. Either Google doesn’t want to do that or, with the election cycle set to begin in June, there’s not enough time for the tech giant to navigate the intricacies of the new law.
Instead, Google will focus its efforts “on supporting Canadian news literacy programs and connecting people to useful and relevant election-related information.” That sounds like a reasonable initiative, though what’s more likely to happen is that people will get their primary election propaganda from Facebook. Great.