As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to lavish the media sector with taxpayer funding, a majority of Canadians say that government subsidies prevent the news media from reporting the news neutrally.
A poll commissioned by True North and conducted by One Persuasion shows that 55% of Canadians either moderately or strongly agree that news media companies dependent on taxpayer funding are incapable of impartially reporting on the government. Only 32% of Canadians disagree with the sentiment while 13% are unsure.
Younger Canadians are more distrustful of government subsidies to the legacy media, as 68% of men and 63% of women ages 18-34 agree subsidies hurt the media’s impartiality.
Those who voted for the federal Conservatives and People’s Party of Canada in 2021 are far more distrusting of the Trudeau government subsidizing the news media than their political adversaries, as 73% of Conservative voters and 80% of PPC voters believe the subsidies hurt the media’s impartiality.
However, an even number of Liberal and NDP voters sat on either side of the issue, with 44% of Liberal voters agreeing and disagreeing that government subsidies for the media affect neutrality. Similarly, 42% of NDP voters both agree and disagree about the effect government subsidies have on the media’s reporting.
Even 46% of Bloc Québécois voters and 52% of Green Party supporters think government funding of the media impacts their reporting’s impartiality, creating a cross-party consensus on the issue.
In 2019, the Trudeau government pledged $595 million for qualifying news organizations to help subsidize the wages of journalists in newsrooms nationwide.
The Trudeau government also passed the Online News Act in 2023 to force digital platforms like Facebook and Google to pay news media organizations to allow them to post news links on their platforms.
Earlier this year, the heads of several independent news organizations along with some freelance journalists signed the Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism denouncing the current subsidy regime that the Trudeau government has imposed on the news media landscape.
Signatories of the declaration include True North’s Candice Malcolm, Derek Fildebrandt of the Western Standard, Jonathan Kay of Quillette, freelance journalist Paul Wells, and The Hub’s Sean Speer.
An online panel of 1,005 Canadians were surveyed for the poll between August 2-7, 2024. The margin of error is +/- 3.1%, nineteen times out of twenty and the results have been balanced to match the demographics of Canada.