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Heritage minister to testify on Online News Act after deal struck with Google

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Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge is set to appear at a committee hearing Thursday morning to discuss the Online News Act following the deal struck with tech giant Google just one day earlier.

The minister called Wednesday’s agreement a “historic development” that is a win for both the federal government and local news publishers, who the law has been designed to support.

Google has agreed to spend a maximum of $100 million a year to compensate Canadian news outlets for their use of content, a far backtrack from the original $172 million initially called on by the government.

The legislation, set to take effect on Dec. 19, requires tech conglomerates to form compensation deals with news publishers for content that generates revenue on their platforms.

It is a law designed to compensate broadcasters and newspapers, including French and Indigenous organizations, with a sum dependent on the number of full-time journalists that they have on staff.

READ MORE: Federal government reaches deal with Google over Online News Act

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been steadfast in its refusal to negotiate and has opted to instead block all Canadian users from accessing news content on its platforms.

“We have found a path forward to answer Google’s questions about the process and the act. Google wanted certainty about the amount of compensation it would have to pay to Canadian news outlets,” St-Onge said Wednesday.

“Canada reserves the right to reopen our regulations if there are better agreements struck elsewhere in the world.”

Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, thanked the minister for “acknowledging our concerns and deeply engaging in a series of productive meetings about how they might be addressed.”

The search engine says the deal means there will be immediate changes to the existing deals it holds with news outlets in Canada under the Google News Showcase agreements, part of a $1-billion global investment.

WATCH MORE: Google to block Canadian news content due to online news law

Google said Wednesday that it will be reviewing its ongoing investments in Canada when the final regulations are shared.

However, the company refused to disclose the amount it is currently paying publishers, citing the agreements as confidential commercial agreements.

The Online News Act currently pertains to tech companies that report a global revenue of $1 billion or greater in one calendar year “operate in a search engine or social-media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada” and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average active users each month.

At this time, Google and meta remain to be the only firms to meet the outlined criteria.

This report was created with files from The Canadian Press