Google exempt from Online News Act for five years, must pay news outlets $100M: CRTC | Canada News Media
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Google exempt from Online News Act for five years, must pay news outlets $100M: CRTC

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OTTAWA – The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has granted Google a five-year exemption from the Online News Act, ordering it to release the $100 million it now owes to Canadian news outlets within 60 days.

Google agreed last year to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million a year, indexed to inflation, in order to be exempt from the law, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers to pay for content reposted on their platforms.

The Canadian Journalism Collective has been tasked with distributing the money to news outlets.

The CRTC said in its decision Monday that it believes Google has met the requirements for an exemption, but has added stipulations including that it must allow more news businesses to join the collective.

“After reviewing the public record, the CRTC is granting a five-year exemption from the act to Google. Google must pay $100 million to the (Canadian Journalism Collective) within 60 days of this decision. The CJC will then distribute the funds equitably to eligible Canadian news organizations,” the CRTC said in a news release.

News Media Canada, which represents hundreds of publishers, said in a statement that it is “very pleased” with the CRTC’s decision.

“The Online News Act is a world-leading regulatory framework that addresses the significant bargaining power imbalance between platforms and publishers when it comes to content licensing,” said the group’s president and CEO Paul Deegan.

He said it’s now time for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to follow Google’s lead.

“We now call on Meta, whose platforms are more valuable with real news produced by real journalists, to follow Google’s socially responsible lead,” Deegan said.

The Canadian Journalism Collective submitted plans for its governance structure to the CRTC in July.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Poilievre promises to abolish federal sales tax on new homes under $1 million

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OTTAWA – A Conservative government would scrap the federal sales tax on new homes sold for less than $1 million and push provinces to do the same, Pierre Poilievre said Monday.

He made the case for the cut in a six-minute video published online, arguing governments are partly to blame for high home prices because they’re charging too much in sales taxes.

“The number 1 cost for a home is government: government bureaucrats, government taxes, government gatekeepers,” Poilievre said in a news conference in an Ottawa suburb on Monday morning.

The Conservatives estimate the new measure will reduce the cost of an $800,000 home by $40,000 and spur construction of another 30,000 homes per year.

Since becoming the Conservative leader in September 2022, Poilievre has gone after the Liberal government over the rapid increase in home prices and rents since Trudeau came into power in 2015.

That message appears to have resonated with Canadians who are fed up with the high cost of living.

The Conservatives have enjoyed a double-digit lead in polls for more than a year, putting the Liberals on the defensive.

Poilievre said Monday that he would pay for the tax cut by scrapping Liberal housing policies.

That includes the housing accelerator fund, which offers homebuilding money to cities if they adjust bylaws and regulations that are considered barriers to new construction.

Poilievre said a Tory government would also abolish the housing infrastructure fund, which sets aside $5 billion for agreements with provinces and territories in exchange for adopting certain housing policies.

The Conservatives expect income tax revenues to increase due to the boost in homebuilding spurred by the policy.

“And of course, we’re going to get billions of dollars in additional revenue from the fact that construction workers and businesses are making more money building more homes,” Poilievre said.

The Liberal government scrapped GST charges on new apartment builds last year to encourage more rental construction, but the NDP and Conservatives said they would only keep that cut for affordable or below-market price rentals.

Housing Minister Sean Fraser criticized the Conservatives’ plan to pay for the tax cut by ending existing housing programs that he says are delivering results.

Fraser said recent zoning changes by municipalities have legalized denser homebuilding as a result of the housing accelerator fund and suggested cutting the program would hurt low- and middle-income families.

“It’s unacceptable to me to advance a program if the result is going to be that middle-class families and low-income families pay more, if the benefit of the program is then opened up to the investor class who might have five or six homes and suddenly gets a tax cut paid for by ordinary Canadians,” he said on Monday.

New policy ideas to tackle the national housing shortage are very welcome, said Josh Morgan, chair of the big city mayors’ caucus at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the mayor of London, Ont.

But if Poilievre were to abolish the housing accelerator fund and other existing programs, the federal government would need to have a conversation with cities about what would replace it, he said.

“There’s a lot of front-end cost to growth that municipalities tend to get on the hook for,” he said, but he added that municipalities don’t have the revenue to build or maintain infrastructure without support from federal or provincial governments.

If Poilievre’s Conservatives were to put a sudden stop to the housing accelerator fund, Morgan said the impact would differ greatly city to city, since each has been using the money in different ways.

In London, the city plans to convert vacant office space into residential units, he said.

Mayors have called for property tax reforms to allow cities to generate more revenue on their own and become less reliant on the government of the day.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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British Columbia’s tight election, by the numbers

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The British Columbia NDP has squeaked out enough seats to form government after a tally of absentee and special ballots on Monday. The result came nine days after the Oct. 19 provincial election.

Here are some of the key numbers about the election, based of estimates provided by Elections BC:

Eligible voters: 3,550,017

Total votes cast: 2,105,534

Estimated turnout: 59.3 per cent

NDP vote share: 44.9 per cent

B.C. Conservative vote share: 43.3 per cent

Green Party vote share: 8.2 per cent

Advance votes: 1,001,331 (46 per cent of total)

Votes in initial Oct. 20 count: 2,039,460 (97 per cent of total)

Mail-in and assisted telephone votes counted on weekend: 43,538 (2 per cent of total)

Absentee and special ballots being counted Monday: 22,536 (1 per cent of total)

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28 2024

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NDP wins British Columbia election, The Canadian Press projects

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VICTORIA – The NDP appears to have won enough seats to form government in British Columbia, however it is unclear whether it will be a majority or minority.

The Canadian Press is projecting that Premier David Eby’s New Democrats have won at least 46 seats, while holding a razor-thin lead in the undecided riding of Surrey-Guildford amid an ongoing count of absentee ballots.

There are 93 seats in the legislature and if the NDP’s lead holds in Surrey-Guildford, it will have enough for the barest majority of 47 seats, although the prospect of a judicial recount looms because the margin is so tight.

The B.C. Conservatives were elected in at least 44 seats, while the Green Party won two, in an election battle that came down to a count of about 22,000 absentee ballots on Monday, nine days after the Oct. 19 vote.

NDP House Leader Ravi Kahlon said Monday he was “glad to see the numbers come in and I’m glad to see we can move forward.”

“It’s still going to require a lot of co-operation in the legislature. We’re still going to be reaching out to the Greens to find ways to work with them.”

Kahlon said it was too early to say when the legislature would be recalled, but suggested one of the first orders of business will be swearing in a new cabinet.

The NDP said Eby would speak at a media availability at the legislature in Victoria on Tuesday.

The NDP overtook the Conservatives’ 12-vote lead in Surrey-Guildford as Monday’s count of absentee and special votes unfolded, and a mid-afternoon update from Elections BC had the NDP in front by 18 votes.

A count of more than 43,000 mail-in and assisted telephone votes provincewide over the weekend had put the NDP within striking range in Surrey-Guildford, sending the race down to the absentee ballots.

Conservative candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa went into the weekend’s count with a lead of 103 over NDP incumbent Garry Begg.

While Monday’s absentee vote finally produced a winner in the election, there could still be judicial recounts in any riding where the margin is less than 1/500th of all votes cast.

Margins in two ridings were within that threshold on Monday, with a handful of votes yet to be counted — Surrey Guildford, where the recount threshold is about 38 votes, and Kelowna Centre, where the Conservative lead of 43 was below the recount threshold of about 51 votes.

There have already been two full hand recounts in the election, although neither played a significant role in the outcome.

In Juan de Fuca-Malahat, where a recount ended Monday, the NDP lead of more than 120 votes has put it out of Conservative reach.

A recount on Sunday in Surrey City Centre reduced the NDP lead by three votes but it grew to more than 200 as absentee counting progressed.

A partial recount in Kelowna Centre saw the Conservative lead cut by four votes.

Aisha Estey, president of the B.C. Conservative Party, said she spent the weekend in a warehouse watching the counting of mail-in ballots.

In a post on social media, she said: “Elections BC staff have been working tirelessly and doing their best within the confines of the legislation that governs their work.”

“Would we have liked mail-ins to be counted closer to (election day)? Sure,” she added. “But I saw nothing that caused me concern.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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