Canada’s newspapers are asking the federal government to follow France and Australia in forcing companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook, Inc. to pay to display their news content.

“Both France and Australia have set deadlines to have mandatory solutions in place by July. That means paying for copyrighted content and sharing the advertising dollars and data that flow from it,” said a letter signed by newspaper executives including Andrew MacLeod of Postmedia and The Globe and Mail’s Phillip Crawley. “The situation is urgent, with media companies suffering huge advertising declines because of the coronavirus pandemic.”