Online News Act could see Google, Meta pay combined $230 million to Canadian media

Canada on Friday unveiled draft rules for a law designed to compel Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms pay news outlets, saying Ottawa was addressing the companies' concerns that they may be facing an uncapped liability.

The federal government has put a price tag on how much it would like to see Google and Facebook spend under legislation that requires the tech giants to compensate media companies for Canadian journalism.

Federal officials estimate Google would need to offer $172 million and Facebook $62 million in annual compensation to satisfy criteria they're proposing be used to give exemptions under the Online News Act, a bill passed over the summer that will force tech companies to broker deals with media companies whose work they link to or repurpose.

Draft regulations released by the government Friday outlined for the first time how it proposes to level the playing field between Big Tech and Canada's news media sector, and which companies it will apply to.

"The goal of it is to make sure that those that benefit the most from the Canadian market fall under the bill," newly minted Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in an interview after the proposal's release.

The government said companies will fall under the legislation if they have a total global revenue of $1 billion or more in a calendar year, "operate in a search engine or social media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada" and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.

For now, Google and Meta's Facebook are the only companies to meet the criteria, though officials said Microsoft's Bing search engine is the next closest to falling under the act.

Veronica Langvee, head of communications for Microsoft in Canada, said the company "intends to comply with the legislation as it applies to our products."