The government is doubling down on its support for the Canadian news sector by proposing to massively expand the Labour Journalism Tax Credit to include television and radio news. The announcement in yesterday’s Spring Economic Update didn’t garner much attention, but it will mean tens of millions of dollars for Bell, Rogers, Corus and other broadcasters. The tax credit is the most important support for those who meet the standard of being a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO) as it provides a 35 percent refundable tax credit up to $29,750 per employee. The government paid out roughly $71 million for just over 3,000 journalists in 2024, but that would likely double if coverage extends to television and radio news.
The current credit, which I have written about repeatedly since the 2023 Fall Economic Statement bailout, was structured to exclude broadcasters. To qualify as a QCJO, an outlet must not hold a licence under the Broadcasting Act. That carve-out reflected a deliberate policy choice since print and digital outlets had no comparable revenue streams such as must-carry rules or simultaneous substitution. The Spring Economic Update reverses that logic without acknowledging it. The government is consulting on the measure, but expect the broadcasters to push for the broadest possible definition of which roles should qualify for the tax credit.
For the government to cover one-third of the labour cost of the newsrooms of Canadian broadcasters would undoubtedly be worth tens of millions to the big private broadcasters. For example, Bell Media operates CTV News, the country’s largest private television news network, with more than twenty owned-and-operated stations, a 24-hour news channel in CP24, BNN Bloomberg, French-language Noovo Info, and news operations at over 100 iHeartRadio Canada stations. That is likely at least 1,000 employees, and if the Canadian Association of Broadcasters succeeds in lobbying for the expansive definition of “newsroom employee” it has previously pursued, one that would extend eligibility from journalists to sound and video engineers, researchers and fact-checkers, the number climbs higher still. Indeed, the CAB has already signalled that it will use the consultation to push for the credit to reflect “the many roles and functions in the provision of broadcast news,” which is the same lobbying play it ran during the Bill C-18 regulatory process.
The Canadian Journalism Collective’s public funding data from the Google money distributed under the Online News Act shows Bell ranked first among private broadcasters ($8.1 million), with Corus ($5.4 million) and Rogers ($3.4 million) tracking close behind. Translating those rankings to the labour tax credit context yields a combined annual benefit for the three companies in the $50 million to $80 million range, with further millions flowing to Quebecor, and a long tail of smaller broadcasters. In other words, this single line in the Spring Economic Update has the potential to roughly double the size of the labour journalism tax credit program, with the bulk of the new money going to vertically integrated companies that already benefit from a broad range of regulatory supports and Google money.
The impact on the independence of the Canadian news sector warrants further scrutiny, as increased government support will raise questions about the independence of news coverage. There are already serious concerns about the impact of government media policy on the independence of the major print outlets. Extending the tax credit to broadcasters means that more than a third of the labour costs for news operations at Bell, Corus, and Rogers, the people producing the on-air reporting, including the political coverage, would effectively have a portion of their salaries paid through government tax policy.
The consultation process has not yet been published on the Department of Finance website, but the focus there is likely to be on which companies and roles should qualify for the tax credit. But the bigger question is whether the federal government should be paying more than a third of the news payroll at the country’s largest vertically integrated communications companies. If the answer turns out to be yes, the consultation should at least be required to confront what that means for the future of press independence in Canada.
*sighs* More bailouts for the media sector.
The problem with all of this is that the media sector has already largely adopted a policy of never adapting and never changing with the times. They’ve spent their time just going with a policy of “business as usual”.
This has contributed to the rise of cord cutting as people see just how low quality the broadcast offerings truly have become. In any normal sense, this would be the trigger that would see industry leaders push for change. Whether that is actually covering stuff that matters to Canadians beyond the usual Boomer or older audience or making additional fundamental differences that changes things.
The problem is that there is just no incentive to change. As the public losses mount from people tuning out, they just expect the government to keep bailing them out. Every year, they come back, cap in hand, and ask for more because hitting up the government for money to pay for their expenses has become the new normal for these businesses.
As a result, we’ll continue to see a further decline in the broadcast industry that sees the studio lights on, but no one is watching. All of this paid for by taxpayers.
Pingback: The Libranos: Partners In Crime – small dead animals
“The announcement in yesterday’s Spring Economic Update didn’t garner much attention, but it will mean tens of millions of dollars for Bell, Rogers, Corus and other broadcasters.”
Of course it didn’t gather much attention. The folks lined up to receive this money don’t want to jeopardize their chances of actually getting it by drawing attention to the fact that they are lined up looking for money from the folks that they claim to hold to account. To do so would serve only to reduce the remaining trust (as little as it is) that the viewers have in the “news” that they are being fed.