Not one penny of journalism cash spent

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This article was published 18/10/2018 (2263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The federal Liberals insist they’re eager to help save Canada’s collapsing news industry, but won’t commit to a timeline for funding they earmarked seven months ago.

“There’s no holdup,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told the Free Press. “As we’ve said before, this is an absolute priority for all of us, and (news) journalism is one of the fundamentals of our society.”

In the March budget, the Liberals allocated an annual $10 million for five years, to “support local journalism in underserved communities.” That funding came into effect in April, but Canadian Heritage hasn’t published any information on how to apply for it.

Rodriguez took over the department in July, and getting that funding out the door was listed among 11 priorities in his mandate letter.

Yet, Rodriguez couldn’t confirm whether those any details would come before 2019. “We’re working on that. We’re taking it very seriously, and it’s a priority you will hear about soon,” he said Friday.

On Monday, general trade union Unifor’s media branch will lobby the government for more funding, dispersed faster. They also want a timeline on the Liberals’ pledge (also outlined in the mandate letter) to allow newsrooms to fundraise through non-profits, a move Montreal’s La Presse already intends to make.

The union’s media director, Howard Law, noted the $10 million annual funding came after outcry from journalism advocates, after the Liberals’ sweeping cultural policy review didn’t include any funding for daily newspapers.

Unifor and the National NewsMedia Council (whose board includes Bob Cox, the publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press) originally asked Ottawa for $350 million per year.

It’s unclear whether the promised annual $10 million will subsidize reporter salaries in newsrooms across Canada — just as long-standing grants do for magazines and weekly newspapers — or other initiatives such as open-source, investigative projects.

Law claimed Heritage bureaucrats told media advocates not to expect funding information until February 2019. That would mean the current year’s funding will likely be folded into the coming year.

The department did not respond to an email asking to confirm the timeline.

Daily newspapers in Nanaimo, B.C., Moose Jaw, Sask., and Guelph, Ont., have closed during the Liberals’ recent time in office. Each paper had operated for more than 100 years.

Heritage Canada estimates Canada has lost 10,000 media jobs in the past 12 years. Last month, the Public Policy Forum released a report finding the number of articles generated by newspapers has dropped by almost half over the past decade.

Law said the Liberals have helped the CBC and topped up magazine subsidies, but have left newspapers at a crisis point.

“They have been kicking the can down the road constantly on everything else.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca