Get used to it.  This was no aberration.  This IS the future. This was a glimpse into Canadian media in 2026 and beyond. And this is the change about half the voting public is prepared to support.

By the end of 2025 most of mainstream Canadian media, including CBC, could be dead or almost there. The only media left will be X, Google, Facebook and TikTok and our top Canadians journalists will be Ezra Levant and Jordan Peterson.  Elon Musk will be reflecting Canadians to ourselves. 

I cannot help but be alarmist about the future of Canadian news media, as we prepare to hand over our media scene to a handful of ragtag far right rage-farmers - Rebel Media, True North and friends - along with American billionaire tech landlords who are against fact-checking and don’t really believe in Canada.  And let’s be clear these two groups – the right-wing media and the American billionaires need each other to expand their economic and political hegemony without any accountability which old-fashioned media provide. 

Note to Canadian political leaders and journalists: This is the future.  You have seen it.  Don’t claim surprise when it is the full-time real real real reality a year from now.

Today a lot of news media in Canada have some form of support from the federal government.  There is an argument to be made that government financial support for the media can cause the media to be unduly biased towards that government – be it the government in general or a political party in government.

That is the argument that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been putting forward in his plan to end all subsidies to private and publicly owned media, some which goes back many decades and some which are in response to the more recent financial crisis facing all media - print, broadcast and online. Programs put into place by Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.  Yes, that Harper!

While the promise to defund the CBC has gotten all the attention, the Conservative Party has been clear in recent years.  It’s all gone.

But here’s the thing, today, subsidies are literally the essential lifeblood of many mainstream and traditional media.  Without the subsidies they die a quick or slow, but certain, death. Even with current subsidies, many current newspapers and TV and radio networks are seriously struggling.

And the same goes for the fledgeling online news media, whose initiation coincided with the move away of advertising from news media (traditional and online) to social media - like cat videos and homemade music. 

Why in Canada and why now?  Quite simply with the growth of social media, almost all the advertising (formerly the life blood of traditional news media) has shifted away from traditional media and to social media.  And the newer online media never had the chance to get any serious level of that advertising.

With so much news, real or fake, being available freely on the internet, citizens are less and less willing to pay much for it.  Subscribers are no longer a reliable source of income for Canadian news media.

The government support becomes a conundrum – support it and they survive with the risk of bias, or end the support and traditional Canadian media will be no more.  The fledgling media in the online world are not ready to replace the big traditional media by a long shot, except for the handful of far right media it seems. Rumours surround about how some online media are funded – whether it is moneyed soulmates in the US or other foreign interference.   Whatever it is, we just don’t know.  Suffice it to say that bad actors out there, state or non-state, are looking forward to a number of Canadian traditional media disappearing, and they may well be helping that death to come soon.

If a Conservative government is elected this spring, expect all these subsidies to be gone by year’s end. Gone!  And with the subsidies gone, few of the traditional media will survive.

And add to this the Conservative promise, no, the rallying cry, to defund the CBC.  Joyously, first on the chopping block.

The promise is to first cut $1billion, from the current $1.4 billion both CBC and Radio-Canada combined received.  While the plan is to keep the French Radio-Canada, it will be left with $.4 billion, instead of the half of $1.4 billion which is more like $7.5. And its ability to share services and facilities with English CBC, especially in studios across the country, will be gone.

The other question that no one has posed is how will English-speaking taxpayers feel when they realize they are paying for a French-language service, but that their English-language service was taken away from them? Are we walking into a divisive national unity controversy?

The Bill C-18 money. Also gone will be the private sector money from the web companies, currently $100 million from Google, pursuant to the Online News Act, Bill C-18 passed in 2023.  This act is to be repealed ASAP. $100 million gone!

Currently there are six federal programs.  Here’s the info and be forewarned about the lengthy program names and acronyms – government can’t do business unless it is complicated and has lots of acronyms.  (Note to governments: In these circumstances the obfuscated nature of government programming makes it difficult for supporters to understand and defend and easy for critics to mis-characterize and attack.)

• The Canada Media Fund, the largest and longest serving. Originally launched in 2010 under the Harper government as the merger of two preceding funds, The CMF has a total budget of $357 million to distribute for the 2024-25 fiscal year of which about half the funding usually comes from federal government coffers. In previous years, this money has supported well over 1000 projects. 

• The Canadian Periodical Fund was launched at the same time as the CMF but is focused on print and digital rather than broadcast media. The total available for the 2023-24 fiscal year was $84 million.

These four programmes were created in 2019. 

• The Local Journalism Initiative is due to provide a total of $128 million over 8 years (up until 2027) to support original civic journalism covering underserved communities. It places over 400 reporters in 1400 communities across Canada. 

• The Journalism Labour Tax Credit offers a tax credit for each journalist employed by a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO). This currently supports about 1000 positions.  It is estimated that this will amount to total support of $320 million over five years, including $67 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year. 

• The Digital News Subscription Tax Credit, a personal income tax credit providing a 15% credit on digital news subscriptions. The aim here is to encourage citizens to consume quality news by reducing subscription costs. It is a modest tax credit, capped at $75 per taxpayer, but it expired at the end of 2024. The total cost in foregone revenues for 2023 was about $41 million. 

• The Registered Journalism Organizations, a subset of the aforementioned QCJO’s, programme which allows a media organization to become tax exempt and to issue gift receipts, like a charity. This represents a new model of media funding, a route most famously taken by La Presse, although uptake has been limited and there are currently only 11 RJOs.

For those who feel, a Poilievre government will, c’mon…never really do what he is promising here, understand this:  for today’s Conservatives, the actual policy is sometimes less important than doing what they promised to do.  And as we see down south, when some folks get the keys to the building, they do a lot more. Not less.  Never.

So, coming to the election.  I am an independent senator.  So my message is not to vote or not to vote for this or that party. Instead, my plea is to all parties.  Stop and think this through. 

For the two parties that want to end all forms of funding, Conservatives and People’s Party, please re-evaluate your policies, think about how this rolls out and undermines our democracy.  For the other parties, Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Greens, think through the conundrums, strengthen the conflict of interest screens, recognize the serious threats to media and address these issues clearly during the election.  

It is about a free media and our democracy.  It is about the future of Canada as we know it.

That said, regardless of the outcome of the election we need to have an in-depth national discussion on the future of news media in Canada.  The critics of the current situation have some valid points and even the supporters have their reservations.  But we have to work to avoid media coverage being a violent hateful venue.  We may never have a complete consensus, but we should see what aspects of consensus we can find.

Andrew Cardozo is an independent Senator from Ontario and a member of the Progressive Senate Group. In 2024 he initiated a debate in the Senate on the future of CBC/Radio-Canada. He is also a past Commissioner of the CRTC.