Nearly two-thirds of the $100 million Google must give to news outlets across the country each year will be distributed to print and digital media, with the remaining third being split between CBC/Radio-Canada and private broadcasters, CBC News can confirm.
The annual compensation being given to news organizations, which is required by the Online News Act, will be distributed to outlets based on the number of full-time journalists they employ, but CBC/Radio-Canada’s share will be capped, a government source confirmed to Radio-Canada.
The news was first reported La Presse.
The extent of the cap on CBC/Radio-Canada’s share will be detailed by officials from the Department of Canadian Heritage, who will provide further details of the breakdown Friday morning.
The Online News Act, which became law on June 22, 2023, takes effect Dec. 19. It requires digital platforms with 20 million unique monthly users and annual revenues of $1 billion or more to compensate news outlets for sharing links to their pages.
Only Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, meet those criteria in Canada. Google’s deal requires it to pay $100 million a year, indexed to inflation. Facebook escaped the need to strike its own deal by no longer sharing links to news pages.
As part of the deal, Google provided assurances that Canadian news outlets will be treated fairly in comparison with deals it might strike with news media in other countries.
The federal government said that if news outlets in other countries strike a better deal with Google, the company would go back to the federal government “with a view to resolving any concerns.”
Eligibility and distribution
When it announced the deal, the Canadian government said Google would meet with “a single collective” to distribute the money, but Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge later said there could be “several collectives” negotiating with Google.
St-Onge has said the collective or collectives distributing the money will be required to do so in a “transparent manner under the legislation” and the process will be “supervised by the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission].”
Under Section 11.1 of the Online News Act, news organizations that are eligible to receive funding under the deal include non-profit and for-profit outlets that produce local, regional and national news content.
Critics of the bill have said legacy media outlets that employ most of Canada’s journalists will benefit most from the fund, while minority-language, community, Indigenous and independent news outlets could receive far less.
The legislation says that media outlets receiving a portion of the funding must include outlets covering “local and regional markets in every province and territory, anglophone and francophone communities, and Black and other racialized communities,” and must include “a significant portion of official language minority community news outlets” and “a significant portion of Indigenous news outlets.”