(Ottawa) CBC/Radio-Canada will get 7 million of the money that Google will pay to the media while the private broadcasters’ share will amount to 30 million. The written media will get the rest of the envelope, almost two-thirds as reported The Press This morning.
Written media across the country will therefore receive 63 million, or approximately $17,000 per full-time employed journalist, according to estimates from the Department of Canadian Heritage. Officials were unable to provide a similar estimate for broadcasters or for CBC/Radio-Canada during a technical briefing Friday since they made their calculation based on requests for the credit Canadian journalism labor tax available only for print media.
Quebec Minister of Culture and Communications Mathieu Lacombe asked Ottawa to exclude CBC/Radio-Canada from Google royalties the day after the conclusion of an agreement between the web giant and the federal government. A request taken up by the Bloc Québécois. The public broadcaster employs a third of the country’s journalists and could therefore have ended up with a large portion of the envelope.
The government took into account the fact that CBC/Radio-Canada already receives public funding, more than a billion annually. It also used a criterion of dependence of written media on digital platforms, the number of journalists employed and the relationship of media companies with digital platforms. For example, the use of search engines by broadcasters to discover their content.
The regulation of Online News Act (C-18) published Friday defines which platforms will have to enter into compensation agreements with the media, otherwise they will have to participate in a mandatory negotiation process supervised by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Google will have six months to reach an agreement with a media collective that will determine how the money will be distributed. The collective will be able to use part of the envelope of 100 million to pay its administrative costs. The regulation does not provide further details on the formation of this negotiating group. An official said it will be up to the media industry to organize itself.
The settlement also recognizes the non-monetary value of links displayed in the search engine, allowing Google to provide non-financial compensation to news organizations in addition to the $100 million.
For the moment, Google is the only web giant to which the law applies since Meta has blocked news content on its Facebook and Instragram platforms to avoid it. The government does not intend to grant it an exemption in exchange for publishing local media content.
If the American multinational were to reverse its decision, the share of funding it would pay to the media would be determined by the CRTC based on its advertising revenue.
To be subject to the law, platforms must generate global revenues of at least $1 billion annually and have at least 20 million monthly users to be covered by the law. Their activities must also involve the distribution and access to online news content in Canada.
Platforms must generate global revenues of at least $1 billion annually and have at least 20 million monthly users to be covered by the law. Their activities must also involve the distribution and access to online news content in Canada.
The legislation could potentially apply to Microsoft’s Bing search engine when it meets these criteria.