House committee approves one-year interim exemption for platform-news negotiations in C-18

By Denis Carmel OTTAWA – The House Canadian Heritage committee yesterday unanimously adopted an NDP amendment to the Online News Act, bill C-18, that would give technology platforms an interim one-year exemption from negotiations with news organizations to host their articles until they can be granted a full five-year exemption. The five-year moratorium on negotiations with news organizations was adopted in a committee hearing on Friday, and the committee was looking to define the limit on an interim exemption that exists in the current version of the bill. So yesterday, the committee decided that the interim period should be limited...