Media can't wait for 'perfect' solution, says St-Onge as Google demands overhaul
CTV
The Canadian media landscape is changing too quickly to wait for a perfect version of the Online News Act, federal Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said Friday, while Google once again threatened to remove news links from its ubiquitous search engine over what the company considers serious flaws.
The Canadian media landscape is changing too quickly to wait for a perfect version of the Online News Act, federal Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said Friday, while Google once again threatened to remove news links from its ubiquitous search engine over what the company considers serious flaws.
"We need to put our foot in the door and start doing it," St-Onge said Friday of the Liberal government's new legislation, previously known in Parliament as Bill C-18, that would require tech giants to compensate media for news articles.
"Even though it's not perfect, even though some are not pleased with what we're doing, but this new challenge is coming so fast that we need to address it as quickly as possible," she said while speaking at the MINDS international news agency conference in Toronto.
St-Onge said that part of the challenge is that the government waited too long to regulate digital platforms, so it's starting with this law and expects that both the digital media landscape and regulations will adapt over time.
The act, meant to help a struggling news industry, will force digital giants to negotiate deals with news publishers to compensate them for work that is shared or otherwise repurposed on their platforms.
It doesn't come into force until December, but Meta started removing news for Canadians from its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms this summer in what St-Onge said was an intimidation tactic.
"They've used it elsewhere in the world. They are also sending you, and the entire world a message, that they will resist any type of regulation."
