Government subsidies for Canada’s media were supposed to be temporary, but they keep on growing—and could be here to stay: Dave Snow in – The Hub
April 22, 2025
Just how free and trusted can Canada’s media be if they are dependent on government subsidies?
As we enter the final weeks of the federal election campaign, it has become clear that Canada’s news media have a major financial stake in its outcome.
Mere weeks before the election was called, the Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC) began distributing the $100 million that Google is required to pay to news organizations under the Online News Act. This is in addition to the tens of millions in government subsidies the Liberal government has earmarked for news outlets in recent years. While Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre previously criticized the Liberals’ news policies, it’s no longer clear he would eliminate them, having recently suggested a Conservative government would fund local news media. As Peter Menzies noted in The Hub, this election isn’t “about whether news organizations get government support or not”; instead, it is about “how they get it.”
Amid this obvious conflict of interest, this DeepDive seeks to do two things: first, it catalogues the myriad government policies that directly or indirectly subsidize private news outlets in Canada. Second, it explores how News Media Canada, the industry’s main advocacy group, has publicly lobbied for increasing government support over the last several years, including on the eve of the election.
