The federal government is set to make an announcement revealing it has come to an agreement with Google regarding Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act. This information has been reported by various media outlets.Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge is scheduled to provide the specifics of the agreement during a press conference on Parliament Hill at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday.. The anticipated terms of the deal involve Google continuing to share Canadian news content, and in exchange, the tech giant will make yearly payments to news organizations of approximately $100 million.The Online News Act outlines a framework that would mandate digital giants such as Google and Meta to establish agreements with Canadian news websites. These agreements would entail providing compensation to the news sites for hosting their journalistic content on their platforms.Back in June, when the bill was passed, both Google and Meta said that instead of compensating media organizations, they would opt to block Canadian news from being on their platforms.Meta followed through with this threat during the summer. The company continues to block content from Canadian news platforms on Facebook and Instagram, despite facing political and public pressure to reverse this decision.Google had signalled that unless there were changes to the proposed federal regulations supporting the new rules, the search giant would be doing the same as Meta by removing links to Canadian news stories from its search and other products when the legislation takes effect on December 19.The tech giant expressed concerns about "serious structural issues with C-18 that regrettably were not dealt with during the legislative process.” Google referred to the bill as a "link tax" that "breaks the way the web and search engines have worked for more than 30 years" and exposes them to "uncapped financial liability.”The federal government had estimated earlier this year that Google would need to allocate approximately $172 million annually in compensation to meet the criteria outlined in the proposed exemption.St-Onge assumed responsibility for the contentious file from her predecessor and the bill's sponsor, Pablo Rodriguez, following a cabinet reshuffle in July. In recent months, St-Onge has taken the lead in the negotiations with online platforms regarding the Online News Act.
