OTTAWA – The Liberal government has unveiled the draft regulations that will implement its Online News Act, legislation that Google and Meta have said could lead them to permanently block news content on their platforms in Canada.

The new regulations include a formula for calculating how much revenue the social media giants would be expected to share with Canadian news publishers under the law, while providing more details about how the tech companies can receive exemptions from the legislation by making their own deals with news-publishers.

Government officials said that under the legislation Google could contribute $172 million a year and Facebook $62 million to Canadian news publishers, based on Google’s global search revenues and Meta’s Facebook global revenues. That’s about in line with previous department estimates but lower than the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s $329 million estimate last year.

But officials said those numbers could be revised up or down because the government is open to consulting with affected parties and adjusting the formula.

Since a stand-off with the tech giants began after the Online News Act became law, the government has been hoping Google and Meta’s issues with the bill — such as the lack of a cap on how much they would have to pay news publishers — could be addressed through the regulatory process.

Meta, which is already blocking news in Canada on Facebook and Instagram, has maintained it could not, and has said it will permanently block news content in Canada. Google has suggested it is more open to compromise, though it has also said it plans to pull news from Google search and other products if its concerns aren’t addressed.

The legislation, original presented as Bill C-18, forces the two tech giants to share revenues with news publishers (Postmedia, publisher of the National Post, has publicly supported the legislation). But it’s structured in a way that means if the companies pull news from their platforms, the Online News Act no longer applies to them.

Google and Meta can reach voluntary deals with publishers that exempt them from the mandatory bargaining and arbitration process administered by the CRTC, and those deals could include both monetary and non-monetary contributions.

That also means the total payments to news publishers could be lower than the government estimates.

The government is using a formula that multiplies the platforms’ global revenue with the Canadian share of global GDP, multiplied by a contribution rate of four per cent. Exactly what the government will ultimately consider as “global revenues” was not made clear Friday — for instance, whether Meta’s revenues from its Instagram platform would be included.

Officials said in a technical briefing the regulations are a way for the government to show it’s addressing the major concerns from the platforms, including an unclear path to exemption. An official said the government is “looking forward to engaging with (Meta and Google) in a constructive manner in the weeks ahead on the proposed approach.”

The draft regulations are now open for a 30-day consultation period before being finalized.