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Journalists should not be paid by the government

Published

2 years ago

5 minute read

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Kris Sims

Trust in journalism is crumbling while government funding of the media ramps up.

The Trudeau government is currently in a spat with tech giants Google and Facebook which could cost taxpayers big money.

Bill C-18 is forcing internet companies to pay media corporations when links to news stories are posted. In retaliation, the companies are vowing to block news links from their services.

The brass from media companies say if their news links are banned, they will lose out on millions of dollars.

What happens if Big Tech refuses to pay?

This Trudeau government is eager to have a place in the newsrooms of the nation.

“We have to make sure that newsrooms are open, that (journalists) are able to do their job and (they) have the resources necessary,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters.

In government speak “resources” means taxpayers’ money.

It’s time to set out a fundamental truth: having the government sign the paycheques of journalists who are supposed to impartially cover that very same government is a massive conflict of interest.

Columnist Andrew Coyne penned it well back in 2019 when the so-called media bailout was first being hatched:

“Taking money from the people we cover will place us in a permanent and inescapable conflict of interest; that it will produce newspapers concerned less with appealing to readers than to grantsmen.”

Fast forward four years and those media bailout deals are coming up for renewal, with the funding set to run out at the end of the fiscal year.

According to the heritage minister wielding the taxpayer piggybank, it sounds like more government-funded media is on the way.

That’s the last thing we need.

The CBC already gets more than $1.2 billion in taxpayers’ money every year and the feds budgeted $595 million for the media bailout over the past four years.

This means taxpayers have poured about $5.3 billion into the CBC and private-sector newsrooms over the last four years.

That kind of money would buy a year’s worth of groceries for about 350,000 families. It could cover the annual income tax bill of more than 380,000 people – about the population of London, Ontario. It could buy about 7,400 homes.

This government-funded media scheme isn’t just a waste of money, and it’s not just a conflict of interest – it also isn’t supported by Canadians.

More than 59 per cent of Canadians surveyed said the government should not fund newsrooms “because it compromises journalistic independence.”

That “journalistic independence” is an endangered species.

A Trudeau government committee is deciding what a journalist is, what a qualified newsroom is and the government is paying journalists.

The term “free press” doesn’t mean newspapers were free to take off a newsstand. It means the press is free from government influence and censorship.

Journalists should not be paid by the government. Newsrooms should rely on money from advertising, subscriptions and free-will donations from people who support them.

Under Trudeau’s bailout program newsroom employees get 25 per cent of their salaries covered by the government, up to a maximum of $13,750 per person.

Imagine being a journalist and knowing a big chunk of your paycheque is covered by the same government you are covering.

That’s like referees saying they can call the game fairly while also making bets.

Even the perception of corruption or bias erodes trust and a majority of Canadians have lost trust in journalists.

According to a longstanding survey that gauges trust, 61 per cent of Canadians think “journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

Most Canadians now think journalists are trying to mislead them on purpose.

For journalists who believe their craft is a calling and that speaking truth to power is a nearly sacred task, that distrust is very tough to hear.

But we must listen. We can’t afford not to.

Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former longtime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

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Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ calls for new political party

Published on July 1, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

The Tesla CEO warned that Trump’s $5 trillion plan erases DOGE’s cost-cutting gains, while threatening to unseat lawmakers who vote for it.

Elon Musk has reignited his feud with President Donald Trump by denouncing his “Big Beautiful Bill” in a string of social media posts, warning that it would add $5 trillion to the national debt.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” Musk exclaimed in an X post last month.

Musk renewed his criticism Monday after weeks of public silence, shaming lawmakers who support it while vowing to unseat Republicans who vote for it.

“They’ll lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he posted on X, while adding that they “should hang their heads in shame.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also threatened to publish images branding those lawmakers as “liars.”

 

Trump responded on Truth Social by accusing Musk of hypocrisy. “He may get more subsidy than any human being in history,” the president wrote. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa… BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk responded by saying that even subsidies to his own companies should be cut.

Before and after the 2024 presidential election, Musk spoke out about government subsidies, including ones for electric vehicles, stating that Tesla would benefit if they were eliminated.

This latest exchange marks a new escalation in the long-running and often unpredictable relationship between the two figures. Musk contributed more than $250 million to Trump’s reelection campaign and was later appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw the termination of more than 120,000 federal employees.

Musk has argued that Trump’s new bill wipes out DOGE’s savings and reveals a deeper structural problem. “We live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he wrote, arguing that the legislation should be knows as the “DEBT SLAVERY bill” before calling for a new political party “that actually cares about the people.”

In June, Musk deleted several inflammatory posts about the president, including one claiming that Trump was implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files. He later acknowledged some of his comments “went too far.” Trump, in response, said the apology was “very nice.”

With the bill still under Senate review, the dispute underscores growing pressure on Trump from fiscal hardliners and tech-aligned conservatives – some of whom helped deliver his return to power. Cracks in the coalition may spell longer term problems for the Make America Great Again movement.

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Business

Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

Published on June 30, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

It’s now more than four years since the federal Liberal government pledged $30 billion in spending over five years for $10-per-day national child care, and more than three years since Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to deliver this child-care plan.

Not surprisingly, with massive government funding came massive government control. While demand for child care has increased due to the government subsidies and lower out-of-pocket costs for parents, the plan significantly restricts how child-care centres operate (including what items participating centres may purchase), and crucially, caps the proportion of government funds available to private for-profit providers.

What have families and taxpayers got for this enormous government effort? Widespread child-care shortages across Ontario.

For example, according to the City of Ottawa, the number of children (aged 0 to 5 years) on child-care waitlists has ballooned by more than 300 per cent since 2019, there are significant disparities in affordable child-care access “with nearly half of neighbourhoods underserved, and limited access in suburban and rural areas,” and families face “significantly higher” costs for before-and-after-school care for school-age children.

In addition, Ottawa families find the system “complex and difficult to navigate” and “fewer child care options exist for children with special needs.” And while 42 per cent of surveyed parents need flexible child care (weekends, evenings, part-time care), only one per cent of child-care centres offer these flexible options. These are clearly not encouraging statistics, and show that a government-knows-best approach does not properly anticipate the diverse needs of diverse families.

Moreover, according to the Peel Region’s 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government (essentially, a list of asks and recommendations), it “has maximized its for-profit allocation, leaving 1,460 for-profit spaces on a waitlist.” In other words, families can’t access $10-per-day child care—the central promise of the plan—because the government has capped the number of for-profit centres.

Similarly, according to Halton Region’s pre-budget submission to the provincial government, “no additional families can be supported with affordable child care” because, under current provincial rules, government funding can only be used to reduce child-care fees for families already in the program.

And according to a March 2025 Oxford County report, the municipality is experiencing a shortage of child-care staff and access challenges for low-income families and children with special needs. The report includes a grim bureaucratic predication that “provincial expansion targets do not reflect anticipated child care demand.”

Child-care access is also a problem provincewide. In Stratford, which has a population of roughly 33,000, the municipal government reports that more than 1,000 children are on a child-care waitlist. Similarly in Port Colborne (population 20,000), the city’s chief administrative officer told city council in April 2025 there were almost 500 children on daycare waitlists at the beginning of the school term. As of the end of last year, Guelph and Wellington County reportedly had a total of 2,569 full-day child-care spaces for children up to age four, versus a waitlist of 4,559 children—in other words, nearly two times as many children on a waitlist compared to the number of child-care spaces.

More examples. In Prince Edward County, population around 26,000, there are more than 400 children waitlisted for licensed daycare. In Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County, the child-care waitlist is about 1,500 children long and the average wait time is four years. And in St. Mary’s, there are more than 600 children waitlisted for child care, but in recent years town staff have only been able to move 25 to 30 children off the wait list annually.

The numbers speak for themselves. Massive government spending and control over child care has created havoc for Ontario families and made child-care access worse. This cannot be a surprise. Quebec’s child-care system has been largely government controlled for decades, with poor results. Why would Ontario be any different? And how long will Premier Ford allow this debacle to continue before he asks the new prime minister to rethink the child-care policy of his predecessor?

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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