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OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government wants mainstream media cash handouts to continue indefinitely.
According to a Blacklock’s Reporter article posted this past Friday, the Department of Canadian Heritage says it’s committed to providing funds to money-losing Canadian legacy media after 2024, the year a $595 million federal journalism bailout ends.
The funding will continue despite a 2021 briefing note from the heritage department showing that the millions in government bailout money never succeed in saving mismanaged media outlets, Blacklock’s reported.
According to David Larose, spokesperson for the Department of Canadian Heritage, “The government is committed to supporting the long term viability of the Canadian news sector including through various tax measures and programs.”
Larose claims that “departmental officials are not aware of any imminent closures” of legacy media outlets.
In 2019, newspapers that ceased print production included the Canadian Jewish News, Vancouver Courier, Ontario’s Paris Star, and Manitoba’s Stonewall Argus. The Paris Star and the Canadian Jewish News continue as online concerns.
Halifax’s Chronicle Herald fired 111 employees in 2020, despite getting $13,750 per worker in payroll rebates and tax credits.
For a long time, Canada’s legacy media were essentially on their own when it came to revenue.
That all changed in 2019 when Trudeau made an election promise that the Liberals would give legacy media $595 million in federal assistance over four years.
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.
The current $595 bailout funds will expire on Mach 31, 2024.
News organizations must be given Qualified Canadian journalism organization (QCJO) status to receive special tax breaks and to receive government funding.
Canadians’ trust in legacy media is at an all-time low, as can be attested by a recent Oxford University study showing that faith in journalism has tumbled to record lows.
According to the study, only 42 percent of Canadians surveyed trust “most news,” which is a 13 percent decline from 2016.
Critics of Canadian legacy media have come out against these subsidies in recent months.
Dr. Leslyn Lewis, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP and party leadership candidate, has said that she would “restore” Canada’s media “independence” and stop media bailouts by the federal government should she one day become prime minister.
In January of 2022, a producer and journalist exposed the “radical political agenda” and increasingly “woke” culture of Canada’s CBC in a scathing letter explaining why she quit working there.
“In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press. Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted,” Tara Henley wrote in a column dated January 3 and posted to Substack.
Canadian mainstream media, including the CBC, was caught spreading fake news stories about the trucker Freedom Convoy.
The CBC had to retract a story that falsely claimed most support for the Freedom Convoy came from foreigners. Trudeau himself used this narrative as a basis for triggering the Emergencies Act.
This came after the CBC had earlier retracted a story that falsely claimed Russia was behind the Freedom Convoy.
Under Trudeau, free speech online has come under attack in the form of Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, which seek to regulate the internet and force Big Tech companies to champion selected media outlets based on a special designation given by the federal government.
Bill C-11 was passed by Canada’s House of Commons in June and is currently before the Senate.
Lewis, who is unashamedly pro-life, has firmly criticized against government overreach, including COVID travel jab mandates and proposed digital IDs, during her campaign.