Laws of the 49th Parallel

 

Canadian Bill C-18 – the Online News Act – has been a while in the making. Last year, we commented on how Australia was ahead in its scheme for news remuneration, while Canada was leading in developing an approach to bringing online streaming services within the regulatory framework. But Canada went to an election and its new bills – dealing with both issues – have only just been introduced to parliament. Meanwhile, we’re at the one year point of reviewing our news scheme, the Department of Communications has issued a discussion paper on streaming services, and it’s Australia that’s going to an election. 

The Canadians have the folk at the ACCC and those in government to thank for the hard work of the Digital Platforms Inquiry – and for standing firm in the face of proposed boycotts of the Australian market. The scheme is said to have resulted in about $250 million annually flowing from Google and Meta to Australian news producers.  

But there are some aspects of the Australian scheme that could be improved – and maybe the Canadians are showing us the way. You can hear an explanation of the Canadian approach in my interview with Grant Buchanan, Counsel in Business Law with Toronto law McCarthy Tétrault LLP and chair of the Canadian Chapter of the International institute of Communications.  

Here’s a few of the points that appear to mark out the Canadian approach from our own: 

• As in Australia, digital platforms would be encouraged to negotiate deals with local news producers in the first instance and the mandatory bargaining scheme would only kick in if this process failed. But unlike Australia, Canada is removing that decision-making role – whether to ‘designate’ the platforms and make them subject to the statutory scheme - from a government minister and giving it to the independent regulator, the CRTC, which will need to consider six criteria.  
• One of these criteria involves an explicit recognition of how these funds will be spent: the CRTC must be assured that ‘an appropriate portion of the compensation would be used by the news businesses to support the production of local, regional and national news content’. 
• The CRTC would engage an independent auditor to produce an annual report on these deals, thereby providing the public with 'a yearly measure of the impact of the legislation on the Canadian digital news marketplace’.  

Here at CMT, we think these look like improvements on the Australian scheme. They come from a comparable jurisdiction at exactly the time when they can be of direct benefit to us, and they address some aspects of concern that have been raised here over the last year.  

Taking the opportunity to enhance our scheme now doesn’t detract from the achievements of those who developed it; on the contrary, it could add to its overall success.

Derek Wilding, CMT Co-Director