The Olympic hockey gold medals were both determined by bruising 2-1 overtime games. Both between the United States and Canada. Both captivated viewers around the world. And both came down to skill, discipline, and the rules of the game (love ’em or hate ’em.) We can see that same principle in action in Canada’s policy arena: the Online News Act (C-18) is working. It’s delivering real resources into newsrooms. And that’s precisely why it is under attack. By Facebook. By Meta. By their proxies and lobbyists. By their friends in government.  

In Canada, the Act now delivers roughly $100 million annually from Google to support journalism. This isn’t theoretical.  All of the arguments on why news bargaining would fail are out the window now that it’s working.  The cash is flowing directly into newsrooms across the nation.  

Financial support that matters  

An independent, family-owned publisher in Alberta calls the roughly $28K per year her newsroom receives a “gamechanger.” A mid-sized outlet in Quebec reports hundreds of thousands annually. Both also lead associations representing hundreds of publishers in their respective provinces. All confirm the same: this support matters. It is stabilizing local journalism at a moment when democracy cannot afford further erosion. 

As an industry (notably in the tech and trade press), we are guilty of paying way too much attention to the political food fight while legislation is debated, then losing interest once implementation begins. We saw this play out when a similar law was passed earlier in Australia; the U.S. tech press and influential reporters made it a global story how Facebook was blocking the news neutralizing the efforts of parliaments but then failed to follow up when funds began to be distributed from Google and Facebook. 

The rationale behind Canada’s Online News Act – and its inspiring big sister law, Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code – was straightforward. Policymakers recognized a structural imbalance in bargaining power between dominant digital gatekeepers, primarily Google and Facebook, and news publishers. Antitrust enforcement was moving too slowly to address the harm in real time. Journalism, however, could not wait for multi-year litigation to conclude. These laws were designed as targeted, interim interventions to push platforms to negotiate and get money flowing while broader competition cases played out. 

Balance benefits from flexibility  

Yes, in the United States, antitrust enforcement is finally catching up. Google has been found to have violated antitrust laws in four different district courts. However, only one of these decisions has made its way through the appellate process and will bear fruit this year. In Canada, their Department of Justice is actively suing Google. Meta had an early win in its defense against the FTC but that too is now under appeal. Most importantly, recent court decisions validate the imbalance these news bargaining codes were designed to address. The premise was never radical. It was a bridge to restore a bit of balance while competition law ran its course. 

What makes these laws smart – something DCN and I have emphasized repeatedly in public filings and testimony – is their simplicity and flexibility. They do not attempt to set a fixed price on journalism, attention or (heaven forbid) clicks. They are not overly prescriptive about the value of content. Instead, they require platforms to negotiate in good faith with individual publishers. Sophisticated publishers are free to negotiate based on the strength of their brands, the distinctiveness of their journalism, and their broader strategic goals. Others can opt into models that distribute funds based on easily measured metrics such as the number of journalists employed, a structure Canada has broadly adopted. This hybrid approach respects market dynamics while ensuring broad support for newsroom employment. 

Equally important, these frameworks keep the government out of the business of picking the winners and losers in the press. Funds flow through negotiated bilateral platform and publisher agreements or structured industry mechanisms, not through political discretion.  

That safeguard is not theoretical. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom curtailed funding for a similar measure after it passed into law. At the federal level, under a President Trump — who has repeatedly attacked news organizations and sought to use governmental power against perceived critics — the danger would be obvious. Allowing the executive branch to influence which publishers receive support would be a profound threat to press independence. The Canadian and Australian models wisely avoided that trap. 

Question the Meta narrative 

The one aspect of these new bargaining laws that did not unfold as intended was Meta’s response in Australia or Canada. Rather than negotiating under a democratically enacted framework, Meta chose to block news entirely and leverage its platform to blame the government. That decision eliminated referral traffic for publishers who had relied on Facebook distribution. But despite Meta’s narrative, it was never evidence that the law failed. It is evidence that a platform, often labeled as hostile to journalism and hostile to democracy, chose retaliation over participation under the rules developed through a deliberated parliamentary process. Are we surprised? 

And Meta now argues the law should be dismantled because it supposedly inhibits their AI licensing deals. That claim also collapses under scrutiny. In the U.S. – where there is no such Online News Act, nothing close to it – there has been no surge in voluntary licensing deals for journalism out of Menlo Park. The absence of regulation has not unlocked a growth market of dealmaking here. The deals simply are not happening.  

Instead, both Meta and Google have entangled content licensing within the tentacles of their sprawling platform businesses, blurring any clear precedent for paying directly for journalism. Why? Because direct licensing creates precedent. And precedent matters, particularly as these companies fight consequential copyright litigation over AI training. In fact, internal emails disclosed in discovery of Kadrey v Meta, an early AI copyright case, showed employee concern that even licensing one copyrighted work could undermine the company’s sweeping fair use arguments; the claim that anything publicly accessible on the web can be used to train AI models without permission or payment. Let that sink in. That expansive interpretation of fair use is, at best, aggressive. It has already faced skepticism in court and in the U.S. Copyright Office’s report.  

But the facts remain stubborn for Meta. The Online News Act is delivering real dollars to real newsrooms. It was designed as a measured mitigation to a proven imbalance in market power. It pushes dominant platforms to the negotiating table without dictating deal terms. It protects against government interference in distribution decisions. And it serves as a bridge while antitrust enforcement addresses the deeper structural problems. 

An act to defend democracy 

Journalism is essential infrastructure for democracy. When market distortions threaten it, policymakers have a responsibility to act. Australia acted. Canada acted. And the results show that carefully constructed news bargaining frameworks can work. 

The answer is not to dismantle what is working. It is to refine it, strengthen it against retaliation, and ensure that dominant platforms cannot use their gatekeeping power to avoid accountability – whether in news distribution, competition law, or AI. 

Democracy cannot wait for perfect solutions. It depends on practical ones. And Canada should be applauded for this one.  

Even if America puts the final puck in the net ; )