Extra! Extra! Read all about it! In a day and age in which the Justin Trudeau Liberals are subsidizing and bailing out various Media Party members with YOUR money ($1.5 billion to the CBC; $595 million for select newspapers; a $150 million package to “rejuvenate” the Canadian magazine industry), the City of Richmond Hill has moved in the opposite direction.

Namely, after a decades-long agreement, the city has cancelled its advertising contract with the unfortunately-named Richmond Hill Liberal weekly newspaper. The reason? Officially, this move is all about fiscal responsibility. Why pay more than $160,000 a year (and sometimes more than $200,000 per year) for copy-intensive print advertisements that very few people actually read – especially since the same information can be distributed online for a mere fraction of that cost?

But perhaps there’s another unspoken (albeit understandable) reason at play here? For example, the Richmond Hill Liberal – owned by Torstar – certainly lives up to its moniker. The paper has long championed and come to the defence of left-of-centre council members (even giving the left-leaning mayor a free weekly column.) By the same token, the paper has long been overly critical of right-of-centre councillors. This was perhaps a very prudent strategy to embrace when Richmond Hill city council leaned left, but since the 2018 election, there’s been “regime change” on the Hill and council now leans right.

Apparently, the Liberal has been hoisted upon its own petard. Indeed, this paper was so blindly entitled to its taxpayer-funded handout that it inexplicably continued to bite the hand that feeds, unaware that there was a new mindset in place on council. And now this dispensary for supermarket flyers has paid a high price indeed for its ongoing biased news coverage.

By the way, Rebel News did reach out to the Richmond Hill Liberal for comment. Amazingly, nobody from the editorial department would come on camera. Sure, these Media Party scribes like asking questions galore when they’re chasing down a story, but when questions are asked about their practices and behaviour they suddenly clam up and hide behind the receptionist. Funny that, eh?

But we did speak to Richmond Hill Deputy Mayor Carmine Perrelli.