The Trudeau government will soon ask Google and Facebook to invest in a “diverse news media ecosystem” so that its Australian-inspired revenue-sharing model doesn’t just benefit big news organizations, we have learned. The duty.
The bill promised during the last election campaign aims to encourage the main digital platforms to agree with the news media whose content they share. This new Canadian framework will be designed to be more “transparent” than Australia’s, a government source said.
The text, which has still not been tabled in Parliament, would thus detail a series of criteria intended to assess the overall value of the agreements concluded between the media and the platforms, if the latter want to avoid a costly arbitration process. For example, they will have to ensure fair compensation for the media, preserve journalistic independence and freedom of expression and, finally, demonstrate that they invest in a diversity of media outlets.
The Canadian government thus wishes to avoid that only a handful of large media companies benefit from its new framework. This was one of the main criticisms of Australia’s model, adopted in 2021, which now serves as inspiration in Ottawa. The Google and Facebook platforms were then strongly opposed to the Australian project, one having threatened to leave the country and the other having temporarily restricted the sharing of news by its subscribers.
Balance left to market forces
According to this same source familiar with the matter, the government wants to “achieve a balance to protect freedom of the press”, by offering the legal framework, but not interfering directly in agreements between the media and the platforms. These agreements would be intended to be left “to market forces”. Small media would be eligible, and would have the right to bargain collectively.
The lists of platforms targeted by the future federal law and participating media would be public. For now, only the giants Google and Facebook would be affected, since they monopolize the lion’s share of online advertising revenue. However, the government reserves some leeway to include new platforms that may emerge in the future.
The bill would also clarify the role of a regulator. It would be responsible for verifying whether the platforms fulfill their obligations, in general, without however examining each agreement individually. This regulator could issue fines for non-compliance. Finally, the platforms would be required to subscribe to a “code of conduct” on freedom of the press.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed his Minister of Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, to “ask the web giants to pay their fair share” in his mandate letter released in December. During the last election campaign last fall, the Liberal Party promised to table a bill to “restore the balance with the digital giants” within the first 100 days of its mandate. The text is therefore expected from one day to another since February.
The social network Facebook, critical of the Australian model on the pretext that it “does not take into account how the Internet works”, had proposed in 2021 its own recipe for sharing its profits fairly with the news media, in the form of licenses to use the content. He then signed agreements with several media in the country, including The duty, for sharing articles in an experimental interface. Facebook was already saying it favored smaller organizations focused on local and digital journalism. The same year, the Google company also concluded agreements with the media, including The duty.