18% chance. The Canadian Online News Act, or Bill C-18, signifies Canada’s initiative to create a framework ensuring that major digital platforms like Google and Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) compensate Canadian media organizations for hosting their news content. The Act seeks to establish a framework where digital giants develop agreements with Canadian news sites for sharing their journalistic content. This initiative echoes global efforts to have internet giants pay for news, akin to Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code.

The government is releasing its draft regulations for Bill C-18 today and the chances that both Google and Meta will stop linking to news in Canada just increased significantly. In fact, with the government setting an astonishing floor of 4% of revenues for linking to news, the global implications could run into the billions for Google alone. No country in the world has come close to setting this standard and the question the Internet companies will face is whether they are comfortable with the global liability that would see many other countries making similar demands. The implications are therefore pretty clear: there is little likelihood that Meta will restore news links in Canada and Google is more likely to follow the same path as the Canadian government establishes what amounts to 4% link tax from Bill C-18 on top of a 3% digital services tax and millions in Bill C-11 payments. 

The Online News Act has quickly emerged as one of the government’s biggest policy failures with Canadian news outlets facing lost traffic, lost revenues, and lost competition. The source of the Bill C-18 failure was the government’s seeming inability or unwillingness to game plan the potential outcomes of the law, rejecting criticisms and calls for a “Plan B” by instead relying on the hope that the policy measures would simply unfold as they did in Australia. That obviously has not happened, leading to the growing realization that Meta’s blocking of news links, which has already gone on far longer than it did in Australia, is not a bluff. With Meta out of news in Canada, the government is hoping to salvage the law by convincing Google to pay at least $172 million for news links. Unfortunately, the draft regulations released by Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge suffer from the same failures as the law, namely an inability to game plan the potential outcomes of the regulations.  I’ve already written about how the draft regulations will do little to ensure more spending on journalism and how they are stacked against small, independent and digital first news outlets. But as I read analysis that suggests that Google got what it wanted - a cap on liability - I fear that the regulations are badly misunderstood. In fact, if you assess the competing policy objectives in the regulations and consider how they might actually play out, it becomes hard to avoid the conclusion that they don’t work and may well lead Google to walk away from news in Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday criticized Meta for blocking domestic news from its platforms, saying the Facebook-parent was prioritizing profit over safety as devastating wildfires force tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.

50% chance. Resolution Criteria This market resolves YES if, before 2027, the "Online News Act" is amended or repealed in any way, regardless of the specific consequences of the change. This can occur either by an act of Parliament, or by a ruling of the Supreme Court that specifically deems some aspects of the law or its execution to have been illegal and requires a change. This is not satisfied by merely regulatory decisions, such as from the CRTC. (I'm not sure of the exact legal terminology here, but hopefully my intent is clear.) Otherwise, this market resolves to NO at the beginning of 2025 (UTC time). Context On June 22, 2023, Canada's government signed into law An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada (the "Online News Act", bill C-18 of the First Session of the Forty-fourth Parliament). The law, sometimes described as a "link tax", requires "digital news intermediaries" to negotiate with "news businesses" if they want to link to their content. Google and Facebook both described the terms as "unworkable" and announced that in response they would be removing links to news websites from their services in Canada. Facebook began blocking links to news websites for Canadian users on August 1, 2023, and in response Canada's largest media companies are calling for an antitrust investigation of Facebook. The law was proposed by the current minority government of the Liberal Party under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (152 MPs). It was supported the Bloc Québécois (32 MPs), the New Democratic Party (25 MPs), the Green Party (2 MPs), and the one Independent MP. It was opposed by the Conservative Party (115 MPs, with one voting in favour, detailed breakdown here), although the party's official 2021 election platform did advocate for a potentially-similar policy they called "digital media royalty framework". Canada's next election is scheduled to happen on or before October 20, 2025. Because the Liberal party to not control a majority (170 MPs) of parliament, an election can occur before this date if they fail to secure the support of another party in order to pass certain significant legislation. At the time of this market's creation, the Conservative party is significantly ahead in the polls and is projected by 338Canada to have a 90% chance of winning if an election were held today.