By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
The federal government has signed a $100-million deal with Google to compensate media outlets and ensure that articles from Canadian news outlets remain accessible on the market-dominating search engine, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced last week.
Earlier this year, Google threatened to de-index articles from Canadian news outlets unless the federal government walked back the Online News Act, a law passed this spring in order to create a mechanism for online platforms with annual revenues of over $1 billion to compensate news outlets. The company has agreed to put $100 million annually, indexed to inflation, into a compensation fund for Canadian media.
“For more than a decade the media sector has been disrupted by the web giants. More than 500 media outlets have closed, thousands of journalists have lost their jobs and a lot of information has gone unreported,” St-Onge, MP for Brome-Missisquoi and a former communications union representative, told reporters Nov. 29 on Parliament Hill. “Everywhere, governments are seeking to establish a more level playing field between the online giants and the media. Here, we’ve decided to pass the Online News Act. We’ve [also] found a way forward to respond to Google’s concerns.”
“Following extensive discussions, we are pleased that the Government of Canada has committed to addressing our core issues with Bill C-18, which included the need for a streamlined path to an exemption at a clear commitment threshold,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google and its parent company Alphabet, said in a statement. St-Onge, for her part, called the agreement “a historic development” and said the government had made no significant concessions to Google. However, the $100 million annual payment agreed to was below the $172 million for which Google was liable according to previous government estimates.
St-Onge said the agreement would allow Google to “do business with a single collective representing all admissible media outlets.” Much remains to be seen about how the money will be divided and administered. Quebec Minister of Culture Mathieu Lacombe has called for CBC and Radio-Canada to be exempt from receiving money and for Quebec to have “a seat at the table,” and the Conservatives have pledged to repeal the act in the event they take power.
Brenda O’Farrell is the president of the Quebec Community Newspapers Association, which represents 33 English-language, bilingual and diaspora publications across Quebec (including the Record and the BCN). She said the agreement is a partial victory for Canadian media outlets. “The fact that there’s an agreement with Google is a good thing. What was at stake is that news in Canada would not be searchable on Google, and that catastrophe has been averted.”
However, she still has concerns about the law itself and about how the funds will be distributed. “The bill is a flawed piece of legislation. Everyone thinks it’s going to help media, but it will help some media partially,” she said. She pointed out that instead of negotiating compensation with individual media outlets, as originally planned, Google will negotiate with a collective. “The big dailies will be at the front of the line, they will carve out a bit for the Globe and Mail and a bit for the [Toronto] Star and Postmedia will get the remnants. [Major dailies] have gotten the lion’s share of every benefit and they have still cut jobs, circulation and coverage. Support for local media still needs to be addressed.”
O’Farrell called on the federal government to support small, local media outlets with ad buys and other targeted programs. “The foundational problem is that the government has to stop looking at media as one-size-fits-all.”
The law goes into effect Dec. 19. Walker stated that “While we work with the government through the exemption process based on the regulations that will be published shortly, we will continue sending valuable traffic to Canadian publishers.”
Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, are the only two companies covered by the law, designed to cover online platforms with annual revenues of $1 billion or more. Since June, people in Canada have been unable to share news content on Facebook. As of this writing, no agreement has been reached with Meta. “It’s up to Facebook to show why they are leaving their platform [open] to disinformation and misinformation instead of sustaining our news system,” St-Onge said.