OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The Trudeau government has refused to disclose how much taxpayer money individual legacy media outlets received from its near $600 million 2019 media bailout, citing cabinet confidentiality.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Canada’s Revenue Agency (CRA) declined to state actual payment amounts in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled in the House of Commons.
Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier stated, “Confidentiality provisions under section 241 of the Income Tax Act prevent the Agency from releasing taxpayer information.”
Lebouthillier was replying to a request from Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Chris Warkentin to reveal how much funding since January 1, 2019 “… each outlet [has] received to date.”
As it stands now, the only bailouts to legacy media that have been disclosed are those to companies that are publicly traded, such as the Winnipeg Free Press, which gets $1 million a year in government rebates.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the newspaper executives who were required to assist Trudeau’s cabinet design the terms of the 2019 bailout have themselves agreed to not make public how much they received in payments.
Bob Cox, the former publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press and chair of News Media Canada, served as chairman of a panel made up of eight executives who were tasked with working out the details of the media bailout. They were all appointed by Canada’s Department of Canadian Heritage.
Cox then said that there is “always self-interest” for media companies as “we are an industry association.”
He added that the actual amounts of press bailout money were not addressed. Cox thought “the numbers should be included, but that’s my personal opinion.”
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, there was only one newspaper executive who called out his fellow publishers for conflict of interest.
Panelist Thomas Saras, president of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council and once publisher of the Greek-language Patrides North American Review, said he would not even “file for our publication because I believe it is a conflict.”
“I do believe it is a conflict for someone who is presiding over an organization, then works on the panel to set criteria, and then applies for the benefits themselves,” added Saras.
Saras continued by saying he was not going to “apply although [his] publication qualifies.”
Martin O’Hanlon, the president of CWA Canada, an organization that represents newsroom unions, said that bailout money is “skewed heavily in favour of entrenched newspapers and their managers.”
“If this was supposed to be open and transparent, I don’t think that happened here,” said O’Hanlon.
This time last year, Justin Trudeau and his media allies were at the forefront of falsely accusing Catholic institutions of having buried Indigenous children in mass graves at various residential schools across Canada.
There was and is no credible evidence to support these wild accusations, but many Canadians are still unaware of the facts.
SIGN to demand an apology from Justin Trudeau for promoting the "mass grave" smear
The anger generated by the media at home and abroad saw over twenty Canadian churches burned, and extensive damage done to many more, but the record has never been set straight in what amounts to a disinformation campaign.
Terry Glavin at the National Post recently wrote a masterful piece that may go down in history as the definitive “debunking” of the assertions about the mass graves that never were.
Glavin points out that “nothing new was added to the public record” concerning the history of residential schools in Canada.
“The legacy of the schools had already been exhaustively explored in the testimony of hundreds of elders and a series of inquiries, public hearings, criminal cases, settlements and federal investigations going back decades. Most important of these efforts were the widely publicized undertakings of the 2008-2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), and the content of its voluminous findings,” Glavin wrote.
“…[N]ot a single mass grave was discovered in Canada last year,” he added.
“The several sites of unmarked graves that captured international headlines were either already-known cemeteries, or they remain sites of speculation even now, unverified as genuine grave sites.”
“Not a single child” accounted for during the extensively researched commission “was located in any of these places,” Glavin underscored.
“In none of these places were any human remains unearthed.”
SIGN and SHARE the petition calling on Justin Trudeau to set the record straight.
Even Trudeau's kneeling at what was reported upon as a just-discovered residential school burial ground was a lie - it was actually a well-known Catholic cemetery, but the media didn't let these details get in the way of reinforcing their narrative.
Trudeau also called on Pope Francis to come to Canada and apologize for what had happened, as outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and scores more told the world that “nearly 1000 bodies” had been found in two mass graves.
Those online articles were quietly edited from "mass graves" to "unmarked graves", but we still have the Twitter posts from major outlets like Reuters to prove the staggering level of misinformation.
SIGN: Justin Trudeau must tell Canadians the truth - there were no mass graves
According to an extensive investigation by Professor Emeritus Jacques Rouillard from the Université de Montréal: “The ‘discovery’ was first reported last May 27 (2021) by Tk’emlúps te secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir after an anthropologist, Sarah Beaulieu, used ground-penetrating radar in a search for the remains of children alleged by some to be buried there.”
“Her preliminary report is actually based on depressions and abnormalities in the soil of an apple orchard near the school – not on exhumed remains.”
Professor Rouillard opined that the unverifiable narrative of what could have amounted to child-murder has led to the false assertion of genocide, an assertion without any supporting evidence.
“By never pointing out that it is only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the ‘disappearance’ of children from residential schools,” Rouillard wrote.
“And all of this is based only on soil abnormalities that could easily be caused by root movements, as the anthropologist herself cautioned in the July 15 press conference.”
The vast majority of Canadians have been misled by the media and Mr. Trudeau, believing the most incredible smears imaginable, leading to scores of attacks on churches around the country.
It's time we heard the truth.
Please sign the petition today.
We are also cc'ing Canada's Catholic bishops on this petition - they must also demand the record be corrected, lest Canadians continue believing the mainstream media's disinformation.
For More Information:
How the world's media got it wrong on residential school graves - National Post
Trudeau lied about the bogus mass grave story - LifeSiteNews
Trudeau's narrative was a hoax - LifeSiteNews
**Photo: St. Jean Baptiste Church in Morinville burned to the ground on June 30, 2021**
For decades, Canada’s legacy media were essentially on their own when it came to revenue.
That all changed in 2019 when the Trudeau Liberals made an election promise that they would give legacy media $600 million over four years in federal assistance.
In 2021, the Trudeau Liberals gave the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) $1.4 billion, which accounts for around 70 percent of its total revenue.
News organizations must be given Qualified Canadian journalism organization (QCJO) status to receive special tax breaks and to receive government funding.
In 2019, Canada’s parliament amended the Income Tax Act to allow 25 percent payroll rebates up to a maximum of $13,750 per journalist at QCJO. Cox’s panel had asked for 35 percent in rebates.
Popular Canadian conservative media outlet Rebel News recently said they would sue the Trudeau government for refusing to give their news organization QCJO status.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) in February started a petition to demand Trudeau end the billions of dollars in subsidies given to Canada’s CBC as well as other mainstream media outlets.
