Poilievre says media must ‘forego federal aid,’ survive on private revenues
‘Sell subscriptions and advertising, get sponsorships,’ Tory leader Pierre Poilievre told The Lake Report, a subsidized weekly. He intends to rescind media handouts if the Conservative Party forms government.
The Official Opposition maintains that future Conservative governments would cut off all media handouts. They must sink or swim on private revenues, said Tory leader Pierre Poilievre.
“Sell subscriptions and advertising, get sponsorships and do what media have done for, I don’t know, 3,000 years,” Poilievre told The Lake Report, a subsidized weekly.
“How has the media funded itself for 3,000 years?” the publication asked the MP Thursday. “Subscriptions, advertising, sponsorships,” he replied.
The Lake Report received $19,367 in federal subsidies last year, reported Blacklock’s Reporter. Records show the Department of Canadian Heritage also provided the publication a free reporter under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federal program where taxpayers fund the entire cost of select staff.
Asked if he would eliminate the initiative, Poilievre said: “I am looking into it.” Federal subsidies had resulted in publishers printing “regurgitated propaganda paid for by taxpayers,” he claimed.
Parliament in 2019 amended the Income Tax Act to pay rebates of up to $13,750 per employee of cabinet-approved newsrooms. Payroll rebates this past April 1 were doubled to a maximum $29,750 per employee. Rebates are to expire after the next election.
Poilievre has repeatedly criticized subsidized media as a cabinet scheme to “leverage news coverage in its favour,” he told reporters last January 12. Subsidized publishers are not obliged to disclose the value of federal aid they pocket annually.
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 Reporter. It lost more than $6 million in operating expenses last year, records show.
“We are going to make sure the government does not use tax dollars to leverage news coverage in its favour,” he said. “Right now Justin Trudeau is censoring those he disagrees with and trying to buy off the rest. That undermines confidence among Canadians in the news media.”
“The question is, how do we bring back free speech?” Poilievre told The Lake Report.
Pierre Poilievre shuts down a reporter from The Canadian Press over media bailouts.
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) February 12, 2024
"You're a tax-funded mouthpiece to the PMO," he says. "Are you going to let me answer the question or are you just going to heckle on behalf of Justin Trudeau?"https://t.co/vD78U4ZuZQ pic.twitter.com/E12QYuEJMR
In a subsequent February 12 exchange with reporters, he said media corporations asking for taxpayer handouts were “bought and paid for.” His comments came after a Canadian Press journalist repeatedly interrupted him while discussing public affairs with other reporters.
“Canadian Press, you are a tax-funded mouthpiece to the Prime Minister’s Office,” said Poilievre. “That is the reality.”
The Canadian Press is a wire service which prominent government-funded publications, like the state broadcaster, pay into.
Last April 13, the publication asked Poilievre if he would alter the Broadcasting Act to defund CBC News. He alleged the outlet is the public broadcaster's "biggest client."
“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,” he continued.
“We need a neutral and free media—not a propaganda arm for the Liberal Party. When I'm prime minister, we're going to have a free press.”
NEW ANGLE: Pierre Poilievre schools a Canadian Press reporter for trying to shame him for citing "media reports" of terrorism as a potential cause of the Niagara explosion in Parliament yesterday.
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) November 23, 2023
MORE: https://t.co/nz1pGZVJL8 pic.twitter.com/cXQKwOdWGk
Government caucus members have defended media subsidies as popular. “I think it’s important that sometimes what you may hear from Conservative MPs may not actually reflect the will of Canadians,” Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed told a November 23 hearing of the Commons heritage committee.
Poilievre accosted The Canadian Press that day for posing a misleading question concerning the recent Niagara border explosion.
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge earlier called Poilievre “thin-skinned” for his criticism of select media. “It's our job to answer questions from journalists; we're accountable to the Canadian population,” she said.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland earlier claimed that any reporter could ask her any question “without fear of retaliation.”
“Canada will always defend this right,” she said in 2019. Her remarks follow a 2018 acknowledgement that the media is “essential” in “defending and advancing the truth.”
On January 8, Freeland’s security detail arrested Rebel News reporter, David Menzies, under false pretense of assault. She did not comment on the incident.
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