There's only one country with even a remotely similar legislation, that being Australia. Facebook got the amendments it wanted before the Australian Code received royal assent.
If you're going to cry foul about how Facebook is following the legislation Canada is putting in place, you'll need to try harder than that.
CBC is grasping at straws trying to put the blame on Facebook for the very bill they pushed through, that had very predictable consequences. Canadians news publishers have no one to blame for this but themselves.
The article basically reads as though they're upset for not being paid by Meta during emergencies and sad they can't profit as much off people glued to watching emergencies (it's absolutely not because they're truly concerned for the actual ppl facing the emergency). It's quite tasteless for them to pull the misinformation card when news publishers aren't always known to spread accurate or helpful information -- they're mostly there for the fear mongering. And Meta's response on that front is the correct one: they're not blocking government sites and government sites should be considered the sources of truth and information during emergencies.
That said, unrelated to news link sharing, there's a larger discussion to be had around emergency broadcasts over the internet: should the government create legislation to have an emergency notification tool in place that can be triggered on Canadian websites and websites catering to Canadians (social media included)? Many institutions, including universities, have their own systems for doing exactly this so why can't the government?
Awesome shot!
Sensational news articles like this are also expected in the fallout. Most news companies in Canada lobbied for the change and simply hoped that big players would cave right away. But now that Meta and Alphabet have announced that they'll block news in Canada (a predictable response), news companies are realizing the impact it'll actually have on them and the amount of lossed revenue it'll entail if things don't work out the way the want them to. They're basically crapping their pants and writing up these types of headlines to pressure Meta/Alphabet as a last-ditch effort.
Got pretty big hail out west
The amendments were passed and enacted before the Australian media code ever received royal assent. Meanwhile Bill C-18 already received royal assent in Canada, so amendments won't be anytime soon. You're right that it can happen, but if the government or our news publishers cared to avoid any fallout, then they would have negotiated on agreements and possible amendments prior to royal assent (which is what Australian news corporations did), not after.
And so as long as a difference exists, we can't expect the Canadian situation to develop in the same way as Australia. And the interim fallout in terms of lost revenue for our own news publishers is actually very significant, despite everyone saying 'good riddance to Meta and Alphabet'.
Australia implemented amendments that were sought by Facebook, not at all the same.
Are the question marks around the northern route vs southern route addressed in the study? Or are they just assumptions?
Have our premiers done anything themselves?
Please stop rehashing the same dead argument over and over and whining about Facebook being a bully when they're very clearly following the terms of the legislation and this outcome was very clearly predictable. News publishers are not victims of bullying, they're victims of their own legislation. And no Meta never once asked for the bill to be dropped, they expressed concerns around wording and requested some amendments; so did Alphabet. Ask yourself why Meta is fine paying news organizations in Australia but not Canada.
Further, as others have already pointed out in this thread and in others on this topic, the bill has received royal assent. The only next step is the Coming into force, which will happen 180 days after that. So whether Meta pulls news now or in 180 days really doesn't matter: the effects, the impacts and the results will be the same. Others have also given the extreme example that if a country that had no legislation around murder were to pass a bill making murder illegal, you wouldn't run around murdering as many people as possible until that act came into force. It's the same idea here.
Keep also in mind that the Online News Act grants the CRTC the ability to name any company it wants at any point as a "digital news intermediary". So this act could have far reaching consequences on much more than Meta and Alphabet in the long term. And it's very likely that any other platform they name will also drop Canadian news for the simple reason that Canadian News needs social media, but the reverse isn't true at all.