Rules
Canada's Online News Act changed link sharing for good
Canada Online News Act link sharing, in plain terms: CRTC duties, Meta's news ban and what a compliant disclosure must contain for Canadian readers.
What to take away
- The Online News Act, once Bill C-18, gives the CRTC power to decide which Canadian news businesses are eligible and which platforms must bargain or seek exemption.
- Meta blocked news links for Canadian users on Facebook and Instagram from 1 August 2023, before the main rules came into force.
- An exemption is conditionalthe platform funds eligible news, reports annually and keeps records the regulator can demand.
- A platform that loses its exemption falls back into mandatory bargaining, while a news business that misses a filing can drop off the eligible list.
Link sharing in Canada now runs through a regulator, and the parties affected are platforms, news businesses and the CRTC. Knowing who files what separates a working relationship from a violation notice.
Who has jurisdiction over link sharing in Canada
The Online News Act received royal assent in June 2023, and its core provisions took effect on 19 December 2023. Reach is uneven anyway, and what travels versus what stays bound to a platform shows why one service carries a story everywhere while another carries nothing.
Online News Act key dates
- June 2023Royal assent received
- 1 Aug 2023Meta blocks Canadian news links
- 19 Dec 2023Core provisions take effect
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission administers the Act and publishes its decisions. The statute reaches platforms that run a digital news intermediary with a significant presence in Canada and a bargaining imbalance with news businesses.
Both tests are factual questions the CRTC answers case by case. Significant presence turns on reach into Canada and the revenue the intermediary earns here.
Bargaining imbalance turns on market power: whether a news business has any realistic route to the readers that the platform holds. The regulator sets the thresholds and states them in its published decisions.
Meta removed news links from Facebook and Instagram for Canadian users on 1 August 2023. Google took the exemption route and, in November 2023, committed $100 million a year to a collective of Canadian publishers. The Wikipedia article on Canada's Online News Act lists the provisions and the platform responses in order.
What a compliant disclosure contains
A platform applying for an exemption files a package with the CRTC. That package carries the applicant's identity and the services covered, the agreements or funding arrangements made with eligible news businesses, how contributions are administered, and the evidence showing the conditions are met.
Exemption application contents
- Applicant identity and services covered
- Agreements or funding with eligible news businesses
- How contributions are administered
- Evidence conditions are met
Disclosure does not end at approval. Annual reporting is required, and the CRTC can compel records or testimony under oath. Decisions and reasons are published, so the terms of an exemption become public.
The wider argument about what these services do to public life is set out in Critiques of social media.
Records a news business must keep
Eligible news businesses carry their own paperwork. The order below follows the sequence the CRTC expects.
- Confirm you meet the qualified Canadian journalism organisation criteria and hold the supporting documents.
- File the notice with the CRTC inside the window set by the regulations.
- Keep every agreement with a platform, plus the invoices and correspondence behind it.
- Report once a year on how funds were used and who received them.
- Retain records for the period the regulator specifies, including after an agreement ends.
The CRTC publishes the opening and closing dates of each filing window, so the deadline is a public date.
What happens if a party does not comply
The CRTC can issue a notice of violation and impose an administrative monetary penalty. The ceiling comes from the Act: not more than $10 million for a first violation and $15 million for each subsequent one. The CRTC sets the final amount case by case, weighing the nature of the violation, the party's history and its ability to pay.
A party served with a notice usually gets 30 days to pay or ask the Commission to review the penalty. Treat those 30 days as typical: the notice itself states the deadline.
The commercial consequence is sharper. A platform that fails to meet its exemption conditions loses the exemption and falls into mandatory bargaining with every eligible news business at once. For a news business the consequence is eligibility. Miss the filing and you are not on the list that platforms must bargain with.
The regulator can also order production of documents. Ignoring a production order is a fresh violation, not an argument.
Where the rules differ by place
Instrument
- Canada
- Online News Act, core provisions in force since 19 December 2023
- European Union
- Copyright Directive, Article 15 press publishers' right
- Australia
- News Media Bargaining Code, passed February 2021
- United States
- Section 230
Effect on news links
- Canada
- Platforms must bargain with eligible news businesses or hold an exemption; Meta blocked links on 1 August 2023, and Google pays $100 million a year to a collective
- European Union
- Publishers hold a licensing right over their content; member states had to transpose the rule by 7 June 2021, and France fined Google 500 million euros in July 2021 over its negotiations
- Australia
- The Treasurer designates platforms, and a designated platform must negotiate with registered news businesses with arbitration as the backstop; no platform has been designated, so deals signed since 2021 are voluntary
- United States
- No bargaining duty and no designation power; the platform decides, and federal bargaining bills such as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act have not passed
In the United States the baseline is discretion rather than obligation, as the text of Section 230 sets out. What did Section 230 protect explains why a link pulled in Canada was never a legal problem south of the border.
Canada also paired the news rules with broadcasting reform. The Online Streaming Act, Canada's other platform statute, covers user-generated content under a separate regime and is often mistaken for C-18.
A link that vanishes for a Canadian reader has not been banned by a court. It is a platform decision made to avoid a regulatory duty.
Example: a small publisher checks its eligible status
A Halifax digital outlet wants to be on the eligible list. It gathers its incorporation records, its journalism tax credit certification and its editorial independence policy, then files the notice.
The platform side is not its decision. Its work is evidence: who owns it, who edits it and where the money goes. If the CRTC asks for a document the outlet cannot produce, the file stalls until it can.
