Journalism is in a state of crisis in Canada, and around the world. With platform giants taking the lion’s share of the advertising dollars and journalism suffering historic layoffs and closures despite the government’s $595 million package for journalism in 2019, Australia’s 2021 News Media Bargaining Code offered Canada’s beleaguered industry a beacon of hope. The Australian legislation aimed to address the imbalance of power between publishers and platforms and offer a lifeline to journalism—a vital pillar of democracy. Canada followed in Australia’s footsteps, tabling its own bill in 2022. In June 2023, following nearly two years of intense debate and lobbying, Bill C-18: An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada—or, the OnlineNews Act—became law.

The following report is the first full and unabridged account of C-18. It hopes to give policymakers, civil society, and journalists in Canada and abroad a full overview of its successes, challenges, and far-reaching implications. Through media accounts, expert testimony, as well as interviews with journalists, government officials, and global policy experts, the report details the context for the bill, its journey through Canada’s legislative process including the key debates and points of contention throughout, the lobbying and media discourses, the critical differences and similarities with Australia’s bill, the aftermath and implications for Canadian journalism, as well as future directions for news bargaining codes—or their alternatives—in Canada and abroad.

Sophia Crabbe-Field, Principal Investigator and Lead Author

Asha Sivarajah, Senior Researcher and Contributing Author

Sequoia Kim, Editor 

Helen A. Hayes, Editor & Directional Support

Suggested citation: Crabbe-Field, Sophia, Asha Sivarajah, Sequoia Kim, and Helen A. Hayes. 2025. Canada’s News Bargaining Code: An Unabridged Account of C-18. Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy. mediatechdemocracy.com/c-18-news-bargaining-report.

License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to share, copy and redistribute this material provided you give appropriate credit; do not use the material for commercial purposes; do not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits; and if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license, indicate if changes were made, and not suggest the licensor endorses you or your use. Images are used with permission and may not be copied, shared, or redistributed outside of this material without the permission of the copyright holders.