The House of Commons Heritage Committee has summoned multiple Google executives to testify at a committee meeting next week after the tech giant prevented some Canadians for accessing news content in Canada.
MPs on the committee passed a unanimous motion to seek the testimony of Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at Alphabet, Richard Gingras, vice-president of news at Google, and Sabrina Geremia, vice-president and country manager for Google in Canada.
The committee meeting is scheduled to be held on March 6.
As the Post story notes, the summons is only enforceable for individuals in Canada. Only one of the individuals being called to testify is based in Canada.
Paul Deegan, News Media Canada’s president and CEO, has called Google’s actions to temporarily block news content from Canadians “bullying”.
“Canadians are going see this as a foreign company that is bullying Canadians, and I don’t think that this is going to go over well,” he said in interviews this past week.
