The federal government has put a price tag on what it would like to see Google and Facebook spend under an act requiring the tech giants to compensate media for news articles.
Federal officials estimate Google would need to offer $172 million and Facebook $62 million in compensation to satisfy criteria they’re proposing for exemptions under the Online News Act.
Draft regulations released by the government Friday outlined for the first time how it proposes to level the playing field between Big Tech and Canada’s journalism sector.
“The goal of it is to make sure that those that benefit the most from the Canadian market fall under the bill,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge told The Canadian Press following the proposal’s release.
Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge speaks to reporters during the Liberal Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)
The government said companies will fall under the act if they have a total global revenue of $1 billion or more in a calendar year, “operate in a search engine or social media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada,” and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.
For now, Google and Meta’s Facebook are the only companies that meet the criteria, though officials say Microsoft’s Bing search engine is the next closest to falling under the act.
“We know how technology evolves or how the market changes sometimes at a rapid pace and we want to make sure that this bill is relevant in five and 10 years,” St-Onge said.
Companies meeting the criteria can receive an exemption from the act if they already contribute to Canadian journalism an amount laid out by a government formula.
The formula is based on a tech company’s global revenues and Canada’s share of their global GDP. The government believes the calculation will deliver a contribution that is within 20 per cent of the earnings of full-time journalists working in a Canadian news organization.
Companies would be able to satisfy the criteria with both monetary and non-monetary compensation. While the draft does not specify which non-monetary contributions would count, officials said training and advertising could wind up meeting the criteria.
The draft regulations will be subject to a further 30-day consultation. Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, which blocked news on its platforms in anticipation of the act coming into effect at the end of the year, immediately expressed its disappointment with the proposal.
Meta says it will continue blocking news
The draft is based around a “fundamentally flawed premise,” said Rachel Curran, head of public policy at Meta Canada.
“As the legislation is based on the incorrect assertion that Meta benefits unfairly from the news content shared on our platforms, today’s proposed regulations will not impact our business decision to end news availability in Canada,” she said in a statement.
Google, which St-Onge has painted as more cooperative than Meta, also has threatened to pull Canadian news from its offerings.
“We’re carefully reviewing the proposed regulations to assess whether they resolve the serious structural issues with C-18 that regrettably were not dealt with during the legislative process,” Google spokesperson Shay Purdy said in response to the draft.
Both Meta and Google lobbied against the passing of the Online News Act. (Shutterstock/Primakov)
The two companies have long lobbied against the legislation, with Meta claiming news is a tiny fraction of its business and removing it would result in little revenue loss for the social networking giant.
Google’s president of global affairs Kent Walker, meanwhile, has said the legislation “exposes us to uncapped financial liability” and claimed it’s being targeted just because it shows links to news, “something that everyone else does for free.”
But St-Onge maintained the legislation is a “reasonable and predictable path forward for both platforms and media newsrooms.
“This is what we have said that we do,” she said. “I think we delivered on finding a way forward that should please everyone.”
The government said it is pushing forward with the act because Google and Meta have a combined 80 per cent share of the $14 billion online ad revenues seen in the country in 2022.
At the same time, news outlets have seen their advertising revenues shrink, forcing layoffs, a loss of media coverage in small and rural communities and 474 closures of Canadian news businesses between 2008 and 2023.
The government says 69 per cent of Canadians access news online but only 11 per cent pay for it.
After Meta made good on its threats to remove Canadian news, the federal government pulled $10 million in annual advertising from Meta’s platforms. News and telecommunications businesses Quebecor, Bell Media, Torstar Corp., Cogeco, and Postmedia Network Canada Corp. replicated the move.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
