Canadian news and media outlets are facing new challenges with the passing of Bill C-18 (The Online News Act), which was intended to be a new bargaining framework to support media outlets to secure fair compensation when their news content is made available by social media and search engines such as Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and Google.

That bill passed in June 2023, and Meta responded with the following statement on June 22nd:

"Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect.

We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada."

This non-comply by Meta has local municipalities voting on whether or not they should pull their funding from Facebook and Google.

Alex Freedman, the Executive Director of the Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) spoke with CICK News about the role of local municipalities in regards to their stance on advertising on Facebook and Google moving forward.

"We're seeing a number of municipalities have voted around whether or not they too should pull their Facebook and Google advertising. And I'll just touch on this one important point that if municipalities go down that road, it's not about the sum total of the dollar figure they withdraw from Google and Facebook in so much as it's a message that says we value local journalism."

Listen to the full interview with Alex Freedman on CICK News in the following clip.