Opinion: The Online News Act was meant to save local news. It's shutting us out instead.
Opinion: The Online News Act was meant to save local news. It's shutting us out instead.
Topics: Community
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OPINION
By Kyle L. Stewart
This is an opinion piece. It reflects the views of the author, who runs Windsor News.
Ottawa passed the Online News Act to protect Canadian journalism. Three years on, my view is simple: it has backfired on the people it was supposed to help, and no government should want to keep it as it is.
Here is what happened. The act became law in June 2023 and took effect in December 2023. It forces the biggest tech platforms to bargain with news outlets and pay for news. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said no. In August 2023 it blocked news for everyone in Canada, and that block is still in place today.
For a small outlet like mine, that block wiped out one of the biggest growth options there is. Facebook is where many people in Windsor and Essex County get their local information. When Windsor News tries to share a story there, we get a notice saying news content can't be shared "in response to Canadian government legislation." We can report on council, courts, crime and the Oct. 26 municipal election, but we can't put it where a big share of our neighbours are looking.
We are not alone. Researchers at the Media Ecosystem Observatory, run by McGill University and the University of Toronto, found that a year into the block, almost a third of local news outlets had gone inactive on social media. They estimated Canadians were seeing about 11 million fewer views of Canadian news a day. Local outlets took the hardest hit.
To be fair, the act did produce money. Google signed a deal worth $100 million a year, and the federal government says the first year paid out more than $96 million to 459 outlets. But that money goes through rules that many of the smallest operations can't meet, such as having at least two regularly employed journalists. A one- or two-person local newsroom can lose its biggest audience channel and still not qualify for the fix.
In my view, that is the worst part. This law hurts press freedom more than anything else. The point of a free press is that people can find and share reporting about their own community. When a law ends with independent local reporting blocked from one of the country's largest platforms, the public loses access to information. Big outlets with brand names and large websites can ride it out. Small, new, independent voices can't.
People also don't know this is happening. My own impression, from talking with people around Windsor, is that maybe four in ten know about the act at all. That's my read, not a survey. But the research points the same way. The Media Ecosystem Observatory found in 2024 that only 22 per cent of Canadians knew news was blocked on Facebook and Instagram. In June 2026, it found that only 41 per cent of Facebook users and 26 per cent of Instagram users knew news outlets can't publish there. Many people simply see less local news and don't know why.
That gap matters. When real reporting disappears from people's feeds, something else fills the space: rumours, screenshots, and posts with no source. Canadians need news that is checked and fair, from every side, and they need to be able to find it where they already are.
Windsor feels this more than most places. We sit across the river from Detroit. We share bridges, a tunnel, workers, families and businesses. The block means Michigan residents who follow Windsor news can't see or share our reporting on those platforms either. A border community that works as one place is cut off from its own news.
The law is now a trade fight too. The U.S. Trade Representative lists the Online News Act as a trade barrier in its 2026 National Trade Estimate report. U.S. trade officials have tied it to the review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, and those talks are stalled. Ottawa is left defending a law that hasn't delivered on its main promise for local news, while it costs us at the bargaining table.
Ottawa has said talks with Meta are ongoing, and its own briefing notes say Meta has "signaled interest" in returning under certain conditions. That's not good enough after three years.
So here is my ask. Ottawa, fix the Online News Act or repeal it. Put local news back where Canadians can see it. Make sure the smallest independent outlets aren't locked out of any solution. And tell Canadians plainly what this law has done to the news they rely on.
Kyle L. Stewart is the founder of Windsor News. Tips: windsornewsdesk@gmail.com
