Unnecessary delays to Bill C-18 are causing harm

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Australia has demonstrated how to protect its local media from technology platforms that have crippled the news business. In 2021, Canberra required tech giants to negotiate payments for the news content that is made available on their platforms. One year later, the reform has made all the difference. Canada has proposed similar legislation, but it’s been needlessly bogged down in Parliament.

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The carnage to the news industry is global and is due to the fact that the world’s digital giants — notably Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) — republish or link to articles that they earn advertising revenue from, but don’t spend money creating.

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Canada’s Bill C-18, which is now before Parliament, is similar to Australia’s reforms and aims to stop the erosion of local media. Between 2008 and 2021, nearly 450 news outlets closed in Canada. Since 2010, at least one-third of journalism jobs have disappeared.

Unfortunately, Bill C-18 is being slowed by the tech giants, but also by Canadian politicians and media hopefuls who want to use it to finance tiny and often questionable startups. This is only serving to delay what needs to be done. Canada should simply adopt the Australian model, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

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The Australians took on Google and Facebook and won. Their pioneering “News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code” has already benefited the country’s publishers. Google and Meta have paid 30 media companies around AU$200 million (C$183 million) in royalties for their content over the past year, preventing closures, layoffs and consolidations in the media industry.

The law’s objective was to level the playing field so that the country’s relatively small news publishers could negotiate with the tech giants to get a percentage of the revenue that their content generates. If they have difficulty negotiating, the government has the power to step in and arbitrate.

In order to be eligible, Australian media companies must create and publish news, be editorially independent from the subjects they cover, have generated AU$150,000 a year for at least three of the past five years, have a predominantly Australian audience and be subject to professional codes of practice for journalism. Notably, the system is designed to support news outlets that have a history of serving the Australian public, rather than niche startups.

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In Canada, one sticking point concerning Bill C-18 has been that some have been clamouring to allow micro news outlets with only one journalist to qualify for Big Tech revenue sharing. The Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association said that all but around four of its 56 members would not meet the current requirement to get funding.

Jeanette Ageson, publisher of the Tyee, suggested that if “a journalist starts a news company and they do the work of reporting and/or editing, they should be counted towards qualifying criteria. We should be encouraging hundreds more micro newsrooms to fill our news deserts, not disincentivizing people from launching them.”

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Yet Bill C-18 is about preventing the extinction of Canadian news-gathering for Canadian audiences. It’s also about levelling the playing field for the existing and proven news-gathering entities whose information is republished on tech platforms without compensation.

Any financing of niche platforms should should be outside the scope of C-18, as is already the case when it comes to government financing for the CBC and non-profit news outlets. Hopefully, Parliament will follow the Australian model, because it has proven to be effective in saving and creating jobs, it is fair and it levels the playing field with Big Tech.