While speaking at a security forum in the United States, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland expressed concerns about media being overly funded by the government and said that tech companies should foot the bill instead.
“I think there’s a real challenge with news organizations deriving a great deal of their revenue from the public sector, from the government,” said Ms. Freeland while addressing the Aspen Security Forum on July 21, as part of a session with Politico’s editor-in-chief Matthew Kaminski.
“At the end of the day, the resources do have to come from the tech companies.”
Mr. Kaminski was asking about the Liberals’ passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, and whether the government planned to modify it given pushback from social media giants.
The deputy prime minister and minister of finance said that she doesn’t like every question asked by journalists but that journalists need to be “well paid and well resourced” for Canada to have a “healthy democracy” and to hold decision-makers to account.
“The reality is, because of the economics of the web advertising business, Canadian newsrooms are being hollowed out,” said Ms. Freeland.
Bell Media, which controls outlets such as CTV and CP24, said that it was cutting 1,300 positions and shutting down six radio stations in June. This followed Corus Entertainment laying off online journalists at Global News in March.
Ms. Freeland said that Canadians are “very, very supportive of what the government is doing” with the legislation.
The poll found that 48 percent of Canadians say the government should back down and rescind Bill C-18, with 26 percent disagreeing and 25 percent not having an opinion on the matter.