If CNW had published a book, Google purchased it off of Amazon, and paid an intern to retype it in to fact boxes - that is clear copyright violation.
The fact that Google bought the data from a third party data broker who scraped CNW does not absolve them of liability in my mind.
... in the US.
In the EU and UK there is separate copyright-like legislation that covers this, so-called "database rights".
But as you say, the point is moot. The collection itself should certainly be covered by copyright whether its contents are a mere collection of "facts" or not.
It’s my understanding that this ceased to be true in the USA in 1991 and that a minimal degree of creativity is required [0]. Other countries have started following suit more recently.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
One is a list of informed estimates, the other is a list of (essentially) facts.
Informed guesses are IMO essentially much longer pieces of creative content, just condensed into a number.