Minister urges U.S. to stand strong with Canada in regulating tech giants like Meta

Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge is urging the United States to stand strong with Canada over regulating tech giants in order to protect the news industry.

St-Onge made the comments today during a keynote address at the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute.

She says Canada and the U.S., along with other G7 nations, need to stand strong to protect democracies from companies like Meta that are making major decisions that shape citizens' online environments.

She says Meta, which recently removed news from its platforms in Canada, is using Canada as an example to send a message to the world.

In June, Parliament passed the Online News Act, which will require tech companies to compensate news publishers for work that is shared or otherwise repurposed on their platforms.

The United States has a similar bill that proposes that Meta and Google should negotiate deals with news organizations for access to their content, with Meta responding by threating to pull news in the U.S.