Google and the Canadian government managed to reach an agreement Friday regarding content distribution, ending a series of disputes that caused tech companies to block access to the news in the United States' northern neighbor in mid-June when the Online News Law was passed. However, two months later, New Zealand decided to present a bill to prevent both Google and Meta from taking their business out of the country.
This alternative was presented and approved at the end of November, and last Tuesday it came into effect, although only with the support of Google, since Meta decided to maintain its block. Through this agreement, the digital and print media will receive two-thirds of a payment of 100 million Canadian dollars (about $75 million).
This was explained by a federal official to journalists in a briefing after the agreement, as reported by France 24. It detailed the percentage that the different media channels will receive: "The portion that television and radio will receive is limited to 30%, that of CBC/Radio-Canada (the Canadian public broadcaster) to 7%, which leaves the remaining 63% for the written press."
In addition, the official explained that they had decided to allocate most of the payment to the digital and print media since they "depend a lot" on online platforms such as Google to distribute their content.
Meta yet to reach an agreement with Canada
This statement was shared by Canadian First Minister of Heritage Pascale St-Onge. She assured that "Canada achieved something historic" with the agreement, while she also wanted to highlight the importance of the media in the country. "The newsrooms are going through a crisis that affects journalism, the foundation of our democracy," said St-Onge.
Meta, the other major platform affected by the Online News Act, decided to continue applying the block and prevent access to news through its platform in Canada. As Meta Canada spokesperson Rachel Curran explained to CBC, they consider the agreement to be "fundamentally flawed" and, therefore, refuse to accept it:
We've been clear for months that the regulatory process could not address the fundamentally flawed premise of the Online News Act. News outlets choose to use our free services because it helps their bottom line, and today's release of final regulations does not change our business decision to end news availability on Facebook and Instagram in Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured Friday that the country would continue to insist that Meta accept the deal, like Google did. Canada will require the platform to pay the media another 100 million Canadian dollars for sharing news on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram: "We will continue to push Meta, that makes billions of dollars in profits, even though it is refusing to invest in the journalistic rigor and stability of the media."
