Sarah McLachlan will be a Canada Day headliner on CBC
June 7, 2025
Now that Parliament is back, and Culture and Identity Minister Steven Guilbeault is re-seated for a second tour of duty in his portfolio, there may be speculation about whether the Liberal government will do anything to bring Facebook and Instagram back into the scope of the Online News Act Bill C-18.
The Minister will keep an eye on Australia.
The Australians’ 2021 New Media Bargaining Code served as Canada’s model for Canada’s legislation that compels Google to pay $100 million annually in licensing payments to online Canadian news organizations.
In both countries, Meta’s response to bargaining codes was to ban news content from Facebook and Instagram in order to avoid regulation. In Australia, that meant Meta refused to renew the annual $65 million (AUS) value of its expiring voluntary agreements with news organizations which earned it an exemption from regulation in 2021.
Australia’s Labor government caught everyone’s attention last December when it announced that it would respond to Meta’s actions by legislating mandatory licensing payments regardless of the company’s ban on Australian news.
If and when it is enacted, a “News Bargaining Incentive” would provide a default cash levy on Meta, Google and TikTok if those platforms refused to bargain with news organizations, irrespective of any ban on news content.
The Incentive would be set at a price in excess of the estimated value of a voluntary agreement with news organizations. In late January the Australian government announced that a pre-legislative consultation paper would be “released shortly” but an election intervened.
Now that the Labor government has returned to a majority Parliament in a surprise comeback that paralleled the re-election of Canada’s Liberals, the expectation will be that it releases a white paper and legislates as promised in “late 2025.”
None of that will take place in a vacuum as the American tech platforms will seek the aid of the Trump administration and Congressional trade retaliation. Their lobby organization CICA has released a statement that characterizes the Incentive as “arbitrarily” targeting “select foreign companies” just like the Digital Services taxes that 11 OECD nations have enacted to collect corporate tax revenues that are alleged to be evaded by Big Tech.
An overview of different national versions of a news bargaining code is offered here.
There are also various attempts at the state level in the US. The Californian version was a flop as Google’s modest financial commitments have been scaled down in lock step with the Governor’s budget cuts to its parallel subsidy program. However legislation has been tabled in Oregon, New York, Washington and Illinois.
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Three independent Canadian television stations closed last month.
In mid-May, Stingray’s twin stations in Lloydminster (respectively affiliated with CityTV and CTV) shuttered. Ownership cited plunging revenues and audience.
Then last week Pattison’s Medicine Hat station also went dark.
It’s an attention-grabber for the CRTC which is poised to release a ruling later this week on revised cash allocations from the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF).
In a June 2023 submission to the CRTC, the umbrella organization representing 19 independent television operators —not counting the 15 Global News stations cut loose in the Rogers Shaw merger— reported that collectively they cover 70% of news production costs from $18 million in ILNF grants.
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Just as the window closed on submissions to the CRTC on audio regulation, industry leader Spotify published a news release touting the success of Canadian artists on its platform.
The gist of Spotify’s claim is that Canadian artists are growing their earnings on Spotify by expanding their global audiences.
The Canadian news release cites Spotify’s annual “Loud and Clear” global report on musician earnings that was posted in March. The break-out of Canadian data hasn’t been published other than summarized in the June 4th news release.
Significantly, the Spotify report does not cite any changes to consumption of Canadian music in domestic audiences in Québec or the rest of Canada. As far as we know, the CanCon share of domestic market remains at 10% of the Canadian audience and, in the French language market, less than that.
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If you’re making beer and cedar deck plans for Canada Day, it looks like a good CanCon line-up for the televised broadcast from Ottawa, Vancouver, Yellowknife, and Summerside. It’s on CBC.
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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2025.
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