The experts and organizations in the information community interviewed by The duty are unanimous: Ottawa has learned from the Australian model to force the giants of the Web to share their revenues with the media. But his bill tabled on Tuesday remains imperfect and could be improved.
“It’s still an honorable balancing act on the part of the ministry. We can see that efforts have been made to listen to the stakeholders who have been asking for this bill for a long time,” underlines Jonathan Roberge, holder of the Canada Research Chair in New Digital Environments.
In his eyes, the Liberal government has learned from the Australian model, adopted a year ago, by making its own mechanism more “flexible and diversified”. In particular, he welcomes the possibility that the media will have — if the bill is adopted — to negotiate their agreements collectively in order to allow small Canadian players in the field to do better than those in Australia. “It’s in use that we’ll see if it works, but on paper, it’s promising. We have given ourselves the means to achieve this. »
The Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture (FNCC-CSN), which represents the vast majority of French-language news media employees in Canada, particularly applauds the fact that the government has limited the length of the negotiation period to six months. and that it provided for recourse to an arbitration mechanism in the event of an impasse.
For its part, the Professional Federation of Quebec Journalists (FPJQ) sees favorably the criteria established by Ottawa to define which news media will be able to benefit from the program. The idea is clear: we want to fight the rise of disinformation by excluding all those who present themselves as media, but who do not rely on the facts.
“It will help the environment. This is a huge boost, considering that 80% of media advertising revenues have been monopolized by the Web giants,” continues the president of the FPJQ, Michaël Nguyen. But the bill still needs to be adopted, he warns, refusing to get carried away too quickly.
Improvements
For his part, the journalism professor at UQAM Jean-Hugues Roy believes that there is still time to make some improvements to the bill.
Among other things, he mentions the distribution of the profits that the press companies will make. “The problem we have seen in Australia is that a good part of the money coming from the agreements with the platforms has mainly enriched certain leaders, like Rupert Murdoch, of the News Corporation group, he gives in example. Can we avoid that in Canada by establishing rules for the use of this money? Exactly as we do with tax credits which are mainly used to finance the salaries of journalists. »
Another flaw in the bill, according to him: the lack of transparency. Because unless they go to arbitration, the agreements concluded between the giants of the Web and the various media will remain confidential.
“The media would benefit from the agreements being made public, in order to compare themselves to each other, to see if they went for the maximum possible”, indicates the professor. Their credibility in the eyes of the public is also at stake. “The fact that it’s secret can reinforce the impression of collusion between the media, the government and the Internet giants. Why not extinguish this wick immediately by making the process more transparent? »