April 11, 2022
SHARE
CANADALAND
#770 Google And Facebook To The Rescue: Canadian News Gets On Big Tech’s Payroll
Canada is two years into its news media bailout. How the policy has had both good, bad and unintended consequences.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Jonathan Goldsbie
News Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Senior Production Supervisor
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts

Canada is two years into a news media bailout that was lobbied hard for by the country’s newspapers. As it turns out the money that’s flowed has had uneven impacts on the industry. And last week the Online News Act was tabled that will mandate tech companies – like Google and Facebook – to pay news companies compensation for posting their content on their sites.

Will this expansion of government news aid inflame disparities? Will it help an industry in crisis? Are we destined for a media landscape where government approvals are the only way to survive?

Featured in this episode: Colette Brin, journalism professor at Université Laval; Tim Bousquet, editor-in-chief of the Halifax Examiner; Emma Gilchrist, editor-in-chief of the Narwhal

Further reading:

Support Canadaland at canadaland.com/join

Sponsors: oxio, Skipper Otto, HelloFresh

Additional Music is by Audio Network

More from this series
“ Kevin looked at him and said, ‘Your tears add no value to this deal.’ It was just a great fucking moment.” -Stuart Coxe, Dragons’ Den Producer
July 20, 2026
“In the corner in the room there was a screen and there I could see the numbers going up. Then I figured that this is the amount of eggs that they're retrieving and it felt like a scoreboard in the operating room.” - Sana Al-Badri (IVF egg donor)
July 13, 2026
 It was an awful time. And to also be told, “You were unethical by using this facilitation letter." It was, it was like I was in some kind of nightmare. -Investigative Reporter Laura Robinson
July 6, 2026
The Theresa Kielburger lawsuit, Jesse’s union negotiating tactics, a new JSP.
July 2, 2026
Today, we’re headed to “Bovine University” to figure out what’s at the heart of an Ontario law, and why animal rights activists are unhappy about it.
June 29, 2026
 Things that are misleading, like “mystery illness,” I hope are lost from the general vocabulary in the public media sooner rather than later. -Dr. Michael Coulthart
June 22, 2026
“Nothing about this World Cup is uniting the world. If anything, it's dividing it further.” -Karim Zidan
June 15, 2026
“ If you don't know who Cohere is, you will.” -Mark Carney
June 8, 2026
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND