If no-one pays, then society as a whole clearly disagrees that it is a public good. Or, at least, that it is a public good worth the expense.

There are plenty of news websites with paywalls, it's common amongst conservative media. It's primarily the left wing media that thinks the government should tax tech firms instead of newspapers being required to charge customers.

…what? I’m not familiar with Canadian papers, but at least with American news sources most of the national newspapers have paywalls regardless of ideology (NYT, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal), while television news (CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC) and right-wing sources tend to be ad supported (Breitbart, New York Post), and more left-wing sources usually tend to be some form of donation funded (Jacobin, Mother Jones). If this were passed in the US, the big winners would be right-wing sources and the television news networks.