(Quebec) The Legault government is asking Ottawa to exclude CBC – Radio-Canada from the royalties that Google will pay to Canadian media thanks to the agreement reached with the federal government under the Online News Act (C-18) .
The Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, said Thursday that this agreement between Ottawa and the American web giant is “good news” and “a step in the right direction to support our local media”.
However, the Quebec government believes that this new fund of 100 million per year, which must be indexed to inflation, must be aimed at “private media which are losing advertising revenue”.
“I think that Radio-Canada should be excluded from this revenue sharing,” he said in the context where the public broadcaster already receives more than $1 billion in federal funding.
Quebec wants to have its say
In addition, “Quebec must have a say in how revenues will be shared [car] for the moment, the federal government is going it alone as if culture and communications were its responsibility,” denounced Mr. Lacombe on Thursday.
“Whatever Ottawa thinks, Quebec culture and media must be governed in Quebec and, whatever initiatives are taken in Ottawa, they must be in consultation with Quebec,” said the minister in a written statement.
The agreement concluded between Ottawa and Google provides for a sum of 100 million per year, an amount well below the 172 million which had been estimated by the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Instead of negotiating piecemeal agreements, Google will be able to pay this sum to a collective which will distribute it to eligible news media, “according to their number of full-time equivalents in journalism,” indicates the press release published by the Ministry of Heritage. canadian. The share that each media will receive remains to be determined.
Canada also reserves the right to reopen the agreement if better agreements are concluded elsewhere in the world.
– With Mylène Crête, The Press