Regulatory crossfire leaves vulnerable regional papers on the absolute brink of closure while global tech giants walk away.
Three Years After Bill C-18, Destructive Tech Boycotts Leave Independent Canadian Journalism Starved of Audiences and Ad Revenues
Three years after the Liberal government promised that the Online News Act would save Canadian journalism, independent media outlets find themselves entirely marooned in a digital wasteland of the government’s own making.
At the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage this month, lawmakers and department officials sparred over the catastrophic fallout of Bill C-18, which has left local news agencies permanently blocked from reaching audiences on Canada’s largest social platforms.
Conservative MP Andrew Lawton pressed the minister on the devastating, ongoing realities of the legislation. “It has been just under three years since Bill C-18 received royal assent, and local media outlets are still frozen out of being able to share their content on Facebook or Instagram, a direct response to government policy—a decision made by Meta, but a response to government policy,” Lawton explained.
Lawton questioned how local outlets are supposed to survive when government policy has effectively frozen them out of the primary infrastructure where modern citizens consume information. “Why not just stop blocking them from being able to access audiences that could monetize their content?” Lawton asked, calling out the hypocrisy of bankrolling media bailouts to fix a crisis the state created.
Minister Miller conceded that the ongoing blockade by Meta is tough, noting: “I won’t get into, here, the ongoing discussions with Meta because they are difficult, no question.” Miller pointed to an early agreement with Google as evidence of government intervention, asserting: “I would highlight the early success with Google that provided us $100 million a year. It’s up for renewal in a little bit. That went directly into small journalism to make sure they were being supported”. However, he admitted that the overall situation remains broken, stating: “There’s no question that it isn’t ideal that people can’t post news on Facebook.”
Meanwhile, the committee heard that the wider local journalism model is collapsing. Vice-Chair Martin Champoux raised a structural alarm regarding the broader media crisis, warning that “for several months now, our committee has been hearing from news producers and media representatives—primarily from news outlets, including many regional ones, such as those in Quebec, but also from across Canada—and they are unanimous: They want the same journalism labour tax credit as the one granted to print media.”
Conservative MP Bernard Généreux further slammed the department’s failed strategy under Bill C-18, confronting officials with the grim reality: “You admitted that there were fewer media businesses now than there were before Bill C-18 was passed. In the end, it didn’t fulfill the commitment to keep Canada’s entire journalism ecosystem intact.”
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