The government’s ever-increasing financial support for the news media was the subject of a non-public consultation earlier this year, with Canadian Heritage asking funding recipients what they think of the programs, what more needs to be done, and whether they have concerns about the risks to the independence of the press that can come with greater reliance on public funding. If you ask groups whether they want more money, they invariably say yes, so it may not surprise to learn the industry supports expanding the media funding programs and sees little reason to worry about independence concerns. The consultation, which focused on the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) and Canada Periodical Fund (CPF), was not posted on the department’s public consultations page. Instead, the department circulated it to departmental contacts and stakeholders that “included current CPF clients and LJI delivery organizations,” and encouraged them to share it within their networks. Because I was included on that list and provided my thoughts, I received the summary of the results this week. I have posted the document here, since the government has yet to make it publicly available.
The consultation was framed as a “stakeholder engagement”, resulting in more than 260 written submissions and a dozen meetings with 61 stakeholders, drawn from a group which the department acknowledges does “not represent a statistically representative sample of the entire media ecosystem.” My submission argued that the current measures do not adequately address independence from government, that the Online News Act should be replaced with a consolidated, arm’s-length fund rather than the preservation of older business models, and that the government should pair AI experimentation in local civic journalism with a text and data mining exception in the Copyright Act.
The industry primarily wants the programs made permanent and their scope expanded. They want stable, multi-year funding provided for wages, printing, and distribution, with postage and provincial recycling fees also covered. They argue the Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit should remain at 35 percent of eligible salary costs, subject to a cap, a rate set to return to 25 percent next year. They believe eligibility should be extended to broadcasters, student newspapers, arts and literary magazines, trade publications, and outlets with a single journalist. They also want magazines included in the Online News Act and a long list of new incentives, tax credits, commitments to domestic advertising, and government matching programs.
The department also asked whether the current measures are sufficiently independent from government. Participants responded by expressing “concern that without continued or expanded public support, more outlets will close, newsroom capacity will shrink, and more communities will become news deserts.” The report adds that “many respondents viewed the current support measures as adequately independent from government influence,” citing “the absence of editorial interference, the existing arm’s-length delivery mechanisms, and overall confidence in existing governance and safeguards.” In other words, little to worry about. In fact, the sector seems more concerned about private money, with some cautioning about the risks of philanthropic funding to keep “producing journalism that is not influenced by corporate interests.” That same concern does not extend to the far larger amounts of money that come directly from government.
Yet the concern with government funding is not that politicians dictate coverage, but that reliance on government support influences coverage of the funding and whether the public trusts what it reads. I have argued since the Online News Act was first introduced that the more the government funds journalism directly, the greater the risk, real or perceived, to editorial independence, and that government media policy has itself become a source of declining public trust. My submission noted that beneficiaries of government media policy may tilt their coverage to align with government policy, including by excluding commentary from critics of that policy.
The coverage of the consultation itself offers a small illustration. Hundreds of millions are at stake, but aside from a single June report in the Wire Report, a subscription-based trade publication, I can find no reporting in any major Canadian outlet on the consultation’s existence, scope, or findings. An industry that regards itself as adequately independent from government might have been expected to treat a non-public government review of its own funding as news.
The department says the feedback will “inform ongoing policy and program development,” with decisions on the LJI required before the March 2027 sunset and the CPF already being refocused on editorial content. Those decisions may be determined by a non-public consultation that effectively asked the sector if it wants more money. Given the department’s parallel review of film and television policy is proceeding through a series of memos provided to an advisory panel whose members were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, this approach does not appear to be an outlier. If the government were truly confident that its media policy poses no threat to the independence of the press, it would make that case in public and invite Canadians to respond. The fact that it did not suggests that the industry may not have much to worry about, but Canadians concerned with an independent press do.
