An election fund that paid cash for news coverage will not reveal individual recipient amounts or reasons, reported Blacklock’s. Recipients include The Logic, whose publisher previously criticized subsidies as an "insult to the audience" before receiving over $1.5 million in federal funding.

The Election 2025 Fund totalled $500,000, though managers would not say if all the funds were dispersed, who received which amounts and what applications were rejected. 

Publishers receiving other media subsidies since 2019 were not required to reveal how much aid they receive annually, citing confidentiality.

The Michener Foundation released a list on Friday of newsrooms that applied for election journalism grants up to $35,000, funded partly by the federally subsidized Rideau Hall Foundation. The Elections Fund distributed grants to dozens of publications.

Details on the distributions of the $500,000 Fund remain undisclosed, including recipients and rejected applications. Known recipients included The Logic, where CEO Skok solicited subsidies after criticizing media bailouts as corrosive.

"It will have a direct impact on the daily assigning and editing of a journalism product," Skok wrote in the 2019 commentary, Canada’s New Journalism Subsidies Will Pick Winners And Hurt Start-Ups. "But worse, the policy is an insult to the audience."

Skok founded The Logic on the principle of journalistic independence through financial independence, he wrote in a 2018 commentary. The company received an additional $1.48 million in federal funding starting in 2020, reported Blacklock’s. 

Tory leader Pierre Poilievre agreed that media should fund themselves through subscriptions, advertising, and sponsorships, practices he stated have existed for 3,000 years, he said in a media interview. When asked about media funding, he reiterated these methods.

In 2019, Parliament amended the Income Tax Act to provide payroll rebates to cabinet-approved newsrooms, initially up to $13,750 per employee. This was doubled last year to a maximum of $29,750 per employee, with the rebates set to expire in 2027 after two extensions.

The Logic received undisclosed amounts from the media bailout fund.

Google also distributed $22.2 million to 108 Canadian news outlets, including The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, Metroland Media, and Black Press Group (each over $1 million) and the CBC ($6.8 million). This move, framed as support for journalism, is viewed by some as a calculated power grab endangering independent media and editorial independence.

For years, Poilievre has criticized subsidized media as a cabinet scheme to "leverage news coverage in its favour." Newspaper executives assisted cabinet in drafting the bailout agreement, which hid payment details.

FP Newspapers Inc., the publisher for the Winnipeg Free Press, Brandon Sun and other Manitoba publications, received $989,000 in payroll rebates in 2023, reported Blacklock’s. It lost more than $6 million in operating expenses that year, records show.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux is analyzing newsroom employee counts and salaries from rebate claims for an upcoming report.

Canadian Heritage briefing notes from 2021 indicate that handouts have not created net jobs, with 78 newspapers closing since 2019 and over 500 newsrooms shutting down nationwide.

"We are going to make sure the government does not use tax dollars to leverage news coverage in its favour," Poilievre said. "That undermines confidence among Canadians in the news media."

A September 7 report indicated that few Canadians believe protecting and supporting the news industry should be a federal government priority. They believe that other issues, like housing affordability and the cost of living, are more pressing. 

"Our Party does not support tax dollars for media outlets because that's when we wind up with biased media like you who come here and articulate the Prime Minister's Office talking points rather than delivering real news to the Canadian people," Poilievre told reporters in 2023.

"We need a neutral and free media, not a propaganda arm for the Liberal Party."

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