A few days after the dismissal of 547 TVA Group employees, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, is not closing the door to emergency federal aid to the media.
On Tuesday, the Bloc Québécois demanded that the government set up an emergency fund of $50 million for the news media, the equivalent over three months of the portion of revenues resulting from the establishment of the new law on online news, estimated at around 200 million.
“We consider that three months of support for the news media is the least we can do at the moment and it is even essential to the survival of several media outlets,” declared the Bloc Québécois heritage spokesperson, culture and communications, Martin Champoux. He called on the Trudeau government to create this fund immediately to “stop the bleeding”.
Asked whether such a fund could be considered, Minister Pascale St-Onge said “look [r] what we can do to further support them in this transition period.” However, she did not give further details, simply adding that discussions with Google are “progressing well”.
Mr. Champoux claimed to have discussed several times with the minister and felt “an openness to something happening”.
The Online News Act, also known by its former bill name, C-18, will come into force on December 19. It would extract approximately $172 million per year from Google and $62 million from Meta to pay journalists in the country. Meta has already blocked news media links from its platforms to exclude itself from these obligations.
Google has threatened to do the same if profound changes are not applied to the legislation.
Bad news in the media sector has multiplied in recent months. At the beginning of November, the Information Coops, which brings together six regional dailies like The sun Or The rightannounced the end of publication of the weekly printed editions on December 30, as well as 125 workers having joined a voluntary departure program.
A few weeks earlier, CBC / Radio-Canada announced the immediate suspension of the creation of new positions to reduce its expenses. This summer, the Métro Média group, which includes the newspaper Metro and around twenty local weeklies in Montreal and Quebec, suspended all of its activities.